Backlash: A Thriller

by Brad Thor

  Before even opening his eyes, he had grabbed his phone, activated the call, and pressed it up against his ear.

  “Haney,” he said, blinking at his watch to see what time it was.

  “I think we’ve got a fix on Harvath,” the little man stated.

  “Where?” he asked, throwing back the blanket and getting out of bed.

  “What’s up?” asked Barton, his head still on his pillow.

  “We may have a fix on Harvath,” he replied.

  “The National Reconnaissance Office had a satellite searching the area over Murmansk Oblast. They picked up something outside Nivsky.”

  “They’ve got Harvath?”

  “If it’s not Harvath, then the Russians have got another very big problem on their hands.”

  “What did you see?” Haney asked.

  “I’m transferring the imagery now. Hulkkonen and the Colonel are going to meet you in the ops center,” Nicholas answered. “We’ll pick back up via conference call there.”

  Haney hung up and quickly got dressed. As he exited the room, Barton was right on his heels. Haney wanted to tell him that it might be nothing and that the operator should go back and get some sleep, but he knew it was no use. If their positions had been reversed, Haney would have insisted on coming along as well.

  When they got to the operations center, the Colonel was already there. One of his techs patched in Nicholas via a secure video link and put his image up on one of the large screens on the opposite wall. He looked like a giant and Haney told him so as Barton brought over cups of fresh coffee.

  As soon as Hulkkonen had arrived, Nicholas explained what the NRO believed it had picked up.

  After the message had come in from Harvath, they had worked like crazy to get a satellite over Nivsky. The presence of the two helicopters in the town square told them the Russians were onto him.

  From there, they started looking for vehicles traveling west. There were only a handful, but nothing definitive. There was also one person traveling via what had to have been skis, and even a couple of dog teams in the area. Again, there was nothing definitive.

  “That,” said Nicholas, as he switched from the still images he had been feeding to the op center’s screens to infrared video, “was when this happened.”

  They all watched as there was a commotion in the square and people and equipment, including two snowmobiles, were loaded onto one of the helicopters and it lifted off.

  The satellite followed the bird as it traveled toward a speck of a village Nicholas identified as “Friddja,” about twenty klicks west.

  There, the bird touched down and disgorged the two snowmobiles and all the people who had gotten on in Nivsky. One person, it appeared, was being dragged, or at least forced, by the presence of figures on either side.

  A handful of other figures then got into a stack formation and made entry into one of the houses. Moments later, several more followed.

  A short time later, they emerged with an additional person.

  As the snowmobiles raced off, several figures went house to house. Then, all the figures got back onto the helicopter and flew to the next village, ten klicks over.

  This, Nicholas explained, was another indigenous Sámi village, called Adjágas.

  They watched as the snowmobiles approached, only to have both of their riders knocked off and a mysterious figure appear out of the woods.

  “That’s got to be Harvath,” exclaimed Haney.

  “Like I said,” replied Nicholas. “If it isn’t, then the Russians have another very big problem on their hands. Keep watching.”

  All eyes were glued to the screens as the rest of it unfolded. They sat riveted as six figures rappelled out of the helo only to hit a house and have something explode inside. Then as the survivors were dragging out their injured, they were all engaged by sniper fire from the same mysterious figure, who moments later began firing at the helicopter and caused it to crash.

  The footage began getting crackly and then went dark as the satellite passed out of its window.

  “That is definitely Harvath,” Barton stated.

  “We agree.”

  The Colonel had one of his people pop up a map. “Adjágas is close, only about sixty kilometers from the border.”

  Haney recalled Staelin’s complaint about potentially having to ski eighty kilometers. He wondered if he’d feel any better knowing it had been cut to sixty.

  Turning to Hulkkonen, he said, “Based on this new information, I’d like your government’s permission to scramble our aircraft out of Luleå Air Base in Sweden and for it to enter Finnish airspace.”

  “As part of our joint training exercise,” he responded.

  Haney nodded and the man pulled out his cell phone, walking away so he could converse with his superiors discreetly.

  Looking back at Nicholas, and careful not to implicate the U.S. President directly, even in front of an ally, he asked, “Has the White House seen this?”

  “He has. They want final approval over whatever the plan is, but you’re the ones on the ground, so you get to set the board.”

  Haney looked at the Colonel. “Mr. Hulkkonen mentioned that there’s a hole, a blind spot of some sort, we can exploit at the border.”

  “That is correct.”

  “He also said we’d have to go in via foot, or at least on skis, but perhaps not the entire way. What did he mean by that?”

  The Colonel looked at the Ministry of Defense representative and then returned his attention to Haney. “We have an asset in that area. Someone who might be able to help.”

  “Someone who can provide transport?”

  “Yes, but it’s complicated.”

  “It’s always complicated,” Haney said.

  “But in this case, even more so.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” said the Colonel, “the asset hates Americans.”

  CHAPTER 56

  * * *

  * * *

  MURMANSK OBLAST

  All this? All the cold, all the pain, and all the miles just for this? Just to get captured? Harvath was pissed. He was pissed at himself. He was pissed at his circumstances. He was pissed at everything. In fact, he was more than pissed. He was fucking angry.

  And his anger was calling up something deeper, something much more deadly. His anger was calling back up his rage.

  “Very slowly,” Teplov ordered, well aware of the type of man he was dealing with. “Let the rifle fall to the ground.”

  Reluctantly, Harvath did as he was ordered.

  “Now the chest rig.”

  His rage building, Harvath unclasped it and tossed it to the side.

  “Remove the whites. And your coat. Slowly.”

  Trying to come up with a way out of this, Harvath did as the man instructed and let them drop to the ground.

  “Now turn around,” the Russian commanded.

  As Harvath turned, the intense, bitter cold bit through his remaining clothes and into his flesh. And though his eyes should have been fixed on the Russian and his gun, he couldn’t help but glance at Christina.

  He wanted to convey to her that everything was going to be okay, that he would protect her, but she couldn’t see his eyes. They were hidden behind the night vision goggles suspended over his helmet.

  Somehow, as if Teplov could read his mind, the Russian commanded, “Take off the helmet.”

  Flipping the goggles up, he unfastened the chinstrap and tossed the helmet aside. He didn’t like losing his edge, but now they were on even ground. The Russian wasn’t wearing night vision either.

  As his eyes adjusted, he quickly shifted them to Christina. She looked terrible—beaten, defeated. The Sámi man standing next to her looked even worse.

  But they had survived the crash. And they hadn’t survived just to be killed now. Harvath had to do something. But what? He needed to buy himself more time, so he attempted to engage his captor.

  Apropos of nothing, he raised the issue that had been
burning him up, “After my plane went down, there was one person I couldn’t find—a man named Josef.”

  Teplov smiled. “He made an impression on you, did he?”

  “A big one,” Harvath stated, the hatred revealing itself across his face. “In fact, I promised him that I’d be the last person he ever saw before he died. Did I succeed?”

  “We found him in the woods, beyond the wreckage. His back was broken, and he was suffering from hypothermia, but he is still alive. So it looks like you failed.”

  “For now.”

  The Russian’s grin broadened. “On your knees.”

  Harvath held out his arms as if to say, “Cuff me.”

  Teplov, though, was too smart for that and not in the mood for games. “Mr. Harvath,” he said. “It’s quite cold and we all know how this is going to end. Let’s not drag this out. On your knees.”

  Harvath refused to move.

  Adjusting his pistol, Teplov fired into the ground just next to him.

  “On your knees,” he repeated. “Or I’ll put my next shot in one of your knees.”

  Disabling Harvath would make it difficult to get him out of the gulley and back to the village, but something told him the Russian wouldn’t care. Harvath had no doubt that he’d shoot him. So, with no other choice, he began to bend his knees.

  Just as he did, there was an enormous explosion as the fumes from the ruptured gas cans inside the helicopter ignited.

  The force of the blast threw Harvath more than twenty feet away, almost impaling him on a piece of severed rotor blade.

  Leaping to his feet, he spun and saw his captor. Teplov had also been thrown a considerable distance and appeared to have come into violent contact with a tree. He was much slower in getting up. Christina and the Sámi man were lying nearby. Neither one of them was moving.

  Harvath scanned for a weapon, but didn’t see one. Knowing he wasn’t going to get another chance, he put his head down like a running back and charged.

  Hitting Teplov was like running into a wall. The man was a good half a foot taller and weighed at least seventy more pounds. As he struck him, the big Russian just absorbed it. Then Teplov began to rain down his own blows.

  Fists, knees, and elbows flew. Harvath couldn’t believe how fast the man was. Every time he thought he saw an opening, the Russian closed it and struck him again.

  Harvath could taste blood. Whether it was coming from his mouth or his nose, he had no idea. It was probably both.

  What he did know was that he couldn’t keep going for much longer. He didn’t have the strength.

  He managed to land a decent jab, cross, hook combination, but the Russian wasn’t even fazed. He just kept coming.

  Harvath angled to take out one of Teplov’s knees, but every time he did, the man seemed to sense what was coming and got out of the way. And as he did, Harvath would catch another elbow, often to the head, in the process.

  He was bleeding, short of breath, and almost completely out of energy. He needed to end this fight, now.

  Pretending he was going for Teplov’s knee again, he stopped halfway through the move. The Russian, though, had already set in motion the changing of his footwork and couldn’t pull it back. He had left himself wide open.

  Stepping in, Harvath delivered an absolutely searing kick to the man’s groin. The big Russian doubled over in pain. And as he came forward, Harvath met him with the biggest uppercut he had ever thrown.

  There was the sound of breaking bone and he didn’t know if it had come from his hand or Teplov’s jaw. The Russian’s head was so hard that it was like hitting a cinderblock.

  Harvath’s punch was followed by a spray of blood from Teplov’s mouth as his head snapped back.

  He couldn’t have timed or delivered the strike any better than he had. It should have been a knockout blow. But it wasn’t.

  Teplov’s eyes looked unfocused and he must have realized that he had almost been rendered unconscious, because out of nowhere, he pulled a knife.

  Harvath leaped back, but barely in time, as the blade sliced through his clothing, just missing his skin.

  With blood pouring from his face, Teplov advanced.

  From the way he was holding and moving the knife, it was apparent he was very skilled.

  He came at Harvath fast, thrusting and slashing. It was everything Harvath could do to fend off the blows and not get cut.

  He was at a serious disadvantage. Teplov was driving him backward, through the wreckage-strewn snow, and he couldn’t see where he was going.

  With his long arms, the Russian was able to keep the knife out well in front of his large body. It was absolutely impossible for Harvath to land any blows to the man’s head or body. His only options were to either trap the knife and wrench it away, or create another feint, and this time actually drive his boot into one of the Russian’s knees.

  Considering how skilled and how fast Teplov was with the knife, Harvath decided to go for the man’s knee—the right one.

  But no sooner had he made the decision than he hit a piece of debris and stumbled. He tried to catch himself, but only caught a handful of air as the knife sang past and sliced off the top of his glove, missing his index finger by a millimeter.

  As he fell backward, the Russian kept coming, lunging for him and incorporating himself into the fall.

  Harvath hit the ground with the taller, heavier, and considerably stronger Teplov right on top of him.

  The Russian switched the knife into his left hand and wrapped his right around Harvath’s throat and began to squeeze.

  Harvath tried to summon every grappling and ground fighting technique he had ever learned, but none of them worked

  As he struggled in the snow, the Russian increased the pressure of his choke on him. Harvath was starting to see stars—little points of light—as his vision dimmed. Then he saw the man pull back the knife and raise it into the air.

  There appeared to be a glint in the blade. Maybe it was light from the burning helicopter, or perhaps it was a trick caused by the oxygen being cut off from his brain. But he thought he saw something. Movement.

  Before he brought the knife plunging down, Teplov increased his impossibly tight hold on Harvath’s throat even further.

  With the last ounces of strength he had remaining, he attempted to drive his knee up and into the Russian. The moment he did, he heard a crack—and everything went black.

  CHAPTER 57

  * * *

  * * *

  Like a bungee jump in reverse, oxygen filled his body and Harvath was snapped back up onto the bridge of his consciousness.

  Upon opening his eyes, he found himself staring right into the same face again. But something was different. Teplov’s eyes were lifeless.

  He was no longer straddling Harvath, trying to plunge the knife into him. Instead, he had fallen partway to the side. Harvath pushed him the rest of the way off and rolled away from him.

  As he did, he could see that a piece of the back of the man’s head was missing. What the hell had happened?

  Scrambling away from the body, he struggled to get to his feet.

  “Easy. Go slow,” a voice said. It was Christina’s.

  Turning, he saw her walking toward him, his AK-15 in her hands. The crack he had heard wasn’t from bones or cartilage snapping, but from the rifle. She had shot Teplov and in so doing had saved his life.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I’ll be fine,” she replied. “We need to get moving, though. The copilot put out a distress call. Reinforcements are coming.”

  Harvath had gotten lucky bringing down the first helicopter. He didn’t expect to get that lucky again. What’s more, he had lost the element of surprise. The second Wagner helo would be coming in hot and probably shooting at anything that moved. They needed to be gone before it arrived.

  He found his helmet, with the night vision goggles still intact, but there was no sign of his coat, so he stripped Teplov of his and put it on, along wi
th the man’s gloves. While he did, Christina went to get Sini’s husband, Mokci.

  The man had taken some shrapnel in the explosion, but he was conscious and fully ambulatory.

  Joining them, Harvath asked Christina to translate that Sini was back in Adjágas, that she was unharmed, and that there was a snowmobile nearby. They would all ride back together.

  As Mokci nodded, Harvath accepted the AK-15 from Christina. He then pointed the way out of the gulley and told them he would catch up.

  “Why?” asked Christina. “What are you doing?”

  “Just go,” he insisted, not wanting her to see. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  Once they were out of sight, Harvath scalped what was left of Teplov’s head and used the Russian’s own knife to nail the bloody trophy to the nearest tree. He wanted the rest of those Wagner fucks to know who was responsible for killing their boss.

  It would also, like the scalps he had left at the airplane crash site, add to their fear of him. Fear slowed people down. It made them pause and think twice. Even the shortest of pauses might make the difference between capture and escape.

  The final thing he did was to make an exception to his “no booby-trap” rule. They were far enough from the village, and he knew the mercenaries would be on-site shortly. The gulley was narrow and, as he rigged Teplov’s facedown body with multiple frag grenades, he hoped to kill or injure as many of them as possible.

  When everything was set, he chased after Christina and Mokci and reached them about halfway to the snowmobile.

  It was difficult to move in the deep snow, but he urged them to pick up their pace. They needed to hurry.

  With each step, he pushed himself to come up with a plan. Where would Teplov’s men be drawn first? To the downed chopper? Or, would they do a quick overflight of the village and see the bodies of their dead colleagues outside Jompá’s cabin and start there?

  Either way, it didn’t matter. Not counting Teplov and the pilots on the first helicopter, Harvath had taken out eight Wagner mercenaries. If they really had arrived in Nivsky with two dozen, there could be as many as fourteen more speeding their way toward him.