Black Ice

by Brad Thor

  Taking a breath, he steadied himself and snuck a look into the hall. He glanced in both directions. There was no one there. He chided himself for being so on edge.

  Quickly and quietly, he made his way down the hall, trying the other doors, all of which were locked. He decided against kicking them in. All that would do was shout a warning that he was in the building. Better to return to the ground floor and see if he could pick up Han’s trail somehow.

  At the door that led to the stairs, he paused and listened once more. Yet again there was nothing. Readying his flashlight, he turned the handle and pushed the door open with his foot.

  The moment he did, he heard the distinct pop of a Taser being deployed by someone on the other side.

  Electrified fire raced through his muscles, his body seized up, and he went down hard.

  It had been a long time since Harvath had been on the receiving end of a Taser. He hadn’t forgotten how unpleasant it was to ride the lightning. It sucked just as much tonight as it had the other times.

  No sooner had he hit the ground than there were rough hands all over him. His wrists were cinched behind his back with a pair of flex-cuffs and he was yanked to his feet and half lifted, half dragged down the stairs.

  The men on either side of him were big. At least one of them had been drinking. The unmistakable scent of vodka—or “Russian aftershave” as it was known—permeated his nostrils.

  As he began to regain his faculties, he noticed a man walking in front of them and it sounded like there was one behind. Four in total.

  The man in front had short hair and tattoos up the side of his neck. He wore a gold chain and was dressed in jeans and a sport coat.

  The three remaining men looked like rent-a-goons, slabs of beef in cheap dark suits with matching shirts, no ties. Han was nowhere to be seen.

  When they got to the lobby, they steered him through the empty security door frames and farther back into the building. There, atop sheets of heavy plastic they had scrounged, an old chair had been placed.

  Forcing him down, they secured him to the chair and turned on two sets of construction lights, blinding him.

  “Hvem er du?” someone asked in choppy Norwegian. Who are you? The heavy accent was unmistakably Russian. “Hva gjør du her?” they continued. What are you doing here?

  “Lost my dog,” Harvath replied in English, squinting against the glare. The man in the jeans and sport coat appeared to be asking the questions.

  Apparently, however, he didn’t like the answer, because he sent one of the goons over to drive his fist into Harvath’s stomach. The giant hit him so hard, it knocked the wind out of him.

  That was another experience he hadn’t endured in a long time. It also sucked just as much as he remembered.

  Heaving for air, he tried to relax, to take in deep breaths and allow the spasming of his diaphragm to pass.

  It took a minute, but once he could breathe again, the questions resumed.

  “I will ask again,” sport coat stated, switching to English. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

  “I told you,” Harvath repeated. “I lost my dog.”

  “We’ve been following you since you left the Radisson.”

  Damn it, he thought to himself. He’d been so intent on not losing sight of Han that he apparently hadn’t done enough to make sure he himself wasn’t being followed. There was no excuse for that. He’d been too focused on his target.

  “You don’t have a dog,” the man declared, “which makes you a liar. You also prefer to speak English, which, judging by your accent, makes you American. I’m thinking CIA. How am I doing so far?”

  “You couldn’t be further off the mark.”

  “Let’s make it easier. One question at a time. First, your name.”

  A team of Russians had been camped out at the hotel to make sure Han wasn’t followed. That could mean only one thing: He had an important meeting, one that Moscow didn’t want him followed to.

  But why employ a group of cheap thugs led by a guy in jeans with neck tats? Normally, they’d use more sophisticated operatives out of the local Russian Embassy.

  At the moment, the answer wasn’t important. Harvath wasn’t going to tell them anything, and so he remained silent.

  “Name,” the man demanded. He was losing his patience.

  Harvath refused to answer.

  The other goon appeared and pounded him so hard in his right side that he knocked him over, chair and all.

  There was no way to brace his fall. Harvath’s head hit the concrete floor and he saw stars.

  Before he could shake them, the goon grabbed hold of him and righted him in his chair.

  “Who are you?” the man repeated. “What is your name?”

  Harvath’s head felt like it had been split open with an axe. His ribs, if not cracked, were going to be badly bruised. He was good and pissed off. “Fuck you,” he replied.

  The Russian was nearing the end of his rope. “Why were you following that man from the hotel?”

  No matter what he told them, they were never going to let him leave. Not alive, at least. That’s why he had been searching for a way to saw through his restraints. If he could get free, he could go for one of the weapons the goons were carrying in their shoulder holsters.

  The chair he was tied to, though, was too smooth. There was no spot upon which he could grind or snap off the plastic cuffs.

  “I’m not going to ask you again,” said his interrogator. “Why were you following him?”

  Harvath wanted to make sure the man absolutely understood his response, so he said it slowly, breaking it into two very separate and very distinct words. “Fuck. You.”

  The man with the jeans, sport coat, and neck tats had had enough and gave an order to goon number three.

  But this time, instead of walking up and punching him as the previous two had, this man walked around and stood behind him. He had something in his hand, but Harvath couldn’t see it.

  He had no idea what it was until the thick plastic bag was placed over his head and pulled back hard around his throat, cutting off all his air.

  CHAPTER 19

  Harvath threw his weight from side to side, trying to knock the chair over and get the goon to let go. Seconds felt like minutes. Minutes felt like hours. None of it was working. The harder he fought, the faster he was running out of oxygen.

  The semitransparent bag over his head allowed him to make out the construction lights and blob-like silhouettes of the Russians standing nearby. But as those started to dim, he knew his brain was going into hypoxia.

  With his mouth wide-open, sucking against the plastic, he battled for breath. There was none to be had. His vision began to go black.

  Losing consciousness, he thought he heard something. A series of repeated, staccato clacks. They were almost indistinguishable from the noises made by the plastic pulled so tightly around his head and his struggles in the chair. But he heard them nonetheless. Clack, clack. Clack, clack. Clack, clack. It was the last thing his mind processed before everything went dark.

  * * *

  There was no white light. No host of deceased friends and loved ones waiting to welcome him home. Only darkness. Absolute, permanent, black darkness.

  At the very least, he had expected to see the disembodied spirits of those he had killed, those whose faces had always remained so fresh, so unforgettably permanent in his mind. There was nothing save emptiness.

  It was impossible for him to tell how much time had passed before the light made itself apparent.

  A pinprick at first, it then exploded in brightness and with it came a rush of delicious, life-affirming air.

  Opening his eyes, he saw Sølvi.

  “Don’t ever do that again,” she whispered, trying to compose herself.

  He was lying on the floor, surrounded by what looked like dead Russians. The bag had been removed from his head.

  Any lingering question as to whether he was still actually alive was
answered as his splitting headache came racing back. It was complemented by a searing pain in his ribs as she helped him sit up.

  “What happened?” he asked. “How did you get here? How did you know?”

  “You told me you were going to stake out the lobby at the Radisson. I wanted to take a break and thought I’d come keep you company. But as I was pulling up, I saw you on your way out. I texted you but didn’t get a response. I figured you must have had Han in your sights.”

  “I did.”

  “The last thing I wanted was to spoil your surveillance, so I was going to head back to work. That’s when I saw two of these guys hop out of their car and start following you on foot. I was worried you might need backup, so I decided to join in—at a distance.

  “By the time I arrived, the men I was following were already headed inside. I figured that’s where you were. I sent you another text and thought it best to wait. But a few minutes later, when Han exited and you didn’t, I decided to see for myself what was going on.”

  Harvath was very glad she had. “Thank you. How bad was I?”

  “Bad. If you had a pulse, I couldn’t feel it. I gave up and went right to mouth-to-mouth.”

  “Pretty lousy interrogation technique, if you ask me. Hard to interrogate someone if they’re dead.”

  “I don’t know if that was their intent,” she replied. “But sometimes stupid people overdo it.”

  Not only stupid people. He had pushed that line multiple times in his own interrogations. In a couple of cases, he had crossed it and had been unable to bring the subjects back. It wasn’t something he was proud of. The circumstances had left him no choice.

  “Are they all dead?” he asked, gesturing toward the Russians, pretty sure he knew the answer.

  She nodded. “That’s the rule. No medical attention until the threat is neutralized.”

  On the floor next to her was the weapon she had used to kill the men—a suppressed CZ 75 pistol from the Czech Republic.

  “We need to scrub the bodies,” Harvath said as he got himself up to standing. “Phones, IDs if any, pocket litter, all of it.” Picking up the plastic bag that had been used to suffocate him, he added, “Anything you find, dump it in this.”

  They patted down each of the bodies, removing anything that might be helpful. Harvath found his phone in the pocket of the man wearing the jeans and the sport coat. Sure enough, there were two texts from Sølvi. She was a woman of her word.

  She was also a hell of a marksman. The series of clacks he had heard was her double-tapping each of the Russians. She had caught them completely by surprise.

  That they hadn’t had the foresight to post some sort of a guard was further proof that they were not professionals dispatched by the embassy.

  Once they had all they needed, he took photos of them and asked, “What do you want to do with the corpses?”

  Picking up a rag, she wiped down the chair Harvath had been secured to, just in case he had left any fingerprints. She then wiped down her suppressed pistol and placed back it on the ground.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  “That’s it? We leave everything like this?”

  “Just like this.”

  “What about CCTV footage outside?” he asked.

  “There isn’t any. Not for several blocks. They knew what they were doing when they picked this spot.”

  Harvath didn’t argue anymore. She obviously knew what she was doing.

  Outside, they made a beeline for her car. He tossed the plastic bag into the trunk, right next to the unzipped go bag she carried. Her mentor, just like his, had been a fan of untraceable black market guns that could be easily disposed of and even left at the scene. Down to the shell casings of the subsonic ammunition, there wouldn’t be a single thing that could be traced back to her.

  “Where to?” she asked as he got into the passenger seat and she started the car. “Maybe we should head back to the apartment. Or out to the cottage. I think we should get you checked out by a doctor. I know one who makes house calls and doesn’t ask too many questions.”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” he replied. Pulling up her GPS, he plugged in the address for the safe house. “My personal physician should be arriving shortly.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Prior to his time in the U.S. Army’s elite Delta Force unit, Tyler Staelin had been a Green Beret with the 5th Special Forces Group. There his MOS, or military occupational specialty, had been as a Medical Sergeant known as an 18D. As soon as he had joined The Carlton Group, the team had adopted him as their de facto medical officer.

  Switching on his penlight, he checked the dilation of Harvath’s pupils and then had him track the beam with his eyes.

  Satisfied, he switched it off, put it back in his kit, and addressed his patient. “I’ve got some bad news for you. It looks like syphilis.”

  Harvath shook his head and looked at Sølvi. “And people wonder why he stayed a gunfighter and never went to a legitimate medical school.”

  “I like him,” she replied. “He’s funny.”

  Mike Haney, whose background was as a Force Recon Marine and who was passing through the room, carrying gear from one of the SUVs, said, “There isn’t anything funny about syphilis. Right, Sloane? How many times have you had it now?”

  Behind him was Sloane Ashby, one of the team’s youngest operators and the lone female. She was ex-Army and had no trouble holding her own among the boys. “You know what they call an IQ of 160 in the Marines, Mike?” she asked.

  “Average?”

  “No. A platoon.”

  Sølvi smiled. “Also funny. I like her too.”

  “Don’t encourage them,” Harvath implored her. “It only gets worse.”

  Staelin popped the lid off a bottle of pills, shook a few out, and handed them to him.

  “Penicillin?” Harvath inquired with a wry smile.

  “Ranger candy,” the man clarified, using the Army slang for ibuprofen. “For your headache.”

  “What about my ribs?”

  “It’ll work for those too. I can also give you a couple of cold packs. Twenty minutes on, twenty minutes off. After that, if you think you need it, we’ll tape you up.”

  “You’re not suddenly getting too old for this, are you?” asked Chase Palmer as he came through the room hauling a heavy Storm case. Like Staelin, he was also ex–Delta Force.

  “How come every time we meet up with Harvath, he needs a cold pack for an owie?” asked Kenneth Johnson, a former Green Beret from the 10th Special Forces Group.

  “Because SEALs are damage magnets,” said the man bringing up the rear, who loved to jibe Harvath’s military career. Peter Preisler had been a MARSOC Marine but had really made his bones in the CIA’s paramilitary detachment known as Ground Branch.

  Massaging his temples with his middle fingers, Harvath sent a message to his comrades while trying to relieve some of the pain inside his skull.

  “They’re all exactly the way you described them,” said Sølvi, smiling.

  These weren’t the circumstances under which he had hoped to introduce her to his team. He had figured that at some point she’d come visit the States and he would put together a dinner out or throw a barbecue at his place along the Potomac. He was reminded of the famous line: Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

  The only person Sølvi hadn’t met yet was Nicholas. And as if on cue, the sound of the dogs could be heard coming from a small room at the back of the house where Nicholas had set up his “office.”

  The dogs were very happy to see Harvath, as was Nicholas.

  “All things considered, you look better than the last time I saw you,” the little man said as they embraced. “Even a new haircut. Someone has had a very good influence on you. And I think I know exactly who it is.”

  Breaking off from Harvath, he padded over and shook Sølvi’s hand. “I’ve heard nothing but good things about you. It is a pleasure to finally meet you in person.”


  “Likewise,” she replied. “What beautiful animals. May I pet them?”

  “Of course,” said Nicholas. Bringing them to her, he made them sit and then introduced them: Argos, then Draco.

  Once the dogs had had enough time to smell Sølvi’s hand and get comfortable, he told her it was okay to pet them.

  They really were incredible, enormous beasts. She had never seen any dogs like them. As she rubbed their muscular necks and scratched them behind their ears, Nicholas explained how Caucasian Ovcharkas were known for loyalty and fearlessness, as well as how they had been the breed of choice for the Russian military and the East German border patrol.

  When he was done, Harvath asked, “How’s Nina? Everything on track?”

  He smiled. “She’s good. The baby’s healthy. We just had another ultrasound.”

  “Boy or girl?”

  “We decided that we want it to be a surprise.”

  Harvath was proud of him. He had come a long way. At first, he was terrified that any child he fathered would, like him, also be born with primordial dwarfism. He knew, though—and Harvath had reminded him—that the gene had to come from both parents and the odds were incredibly, infinitesimally slim.

  Nicholas knew this, of course, but becoming a parent had worried him. Because of his size, he counted on the dogs to protect him. How could he protect someone else, much less a child?

  Harvath had assured him that he would make an excellent father. Eventually, Nicholas had overcome his fear. His excitement for the baby’s arrival was palpable. He would be every inch the proud papa and shower his child with whatever he or she needed, including protection against any harm.

  “It’ll be a wonderful surprise,” Harvath promised. “I’m glad Nina let you come along for this assignment.”

  “She’s drawn her line in the sand,” said Nicholas. “It’s circled in thick red Sharpie on the calendar. Thankfully, we’re still on the right side of it.”

  “How long until the baby arrives?” asked Sølvi.

  “She just entered her third trimester. We’ve got about twelve more weeks, give or take.”