Authors: Brad Thor
CHAPTER 58
S
martphones in hand to light their way, the long-haired, T-shirt- and high-top-wearing Hadids strode into the lobby of the apartment building like they lived there.
The moment they did, the Russians were all over them.
“Hands! Hands!” the two remaining Spetsnaz operatives ordered in horrible Arabic as they shined flashlights into the brothers’ faces.
The twins complied immediately and raised their hands in a “don’t shoot” gesture.
“On the ground!” one of the soldiers commanded.
Mathan looked at him.
“On the ground?”
“ON THE GROUND!” the man roared again in Arabic. He had no idea who these two were and he didn’t care. He wasn’t playing. The QRT would be here any second. Once it was, they could make their escape. Until then, he was in charge and these two Syrians were going to obey.
“But we live here,” Thoman protested in Arabic. “Fourth floor.”
The Russian put the barrel of his weapon right in his face.
Mathan appealed for calm and encouraged his brother to cooperate. Slowly, the Hadids lay down on their stomachs.
“Who the hell are you?” Thoman demanded. “What’s this all about?”
“Shut up,” the Russian growled.
At that moment, the twins’ phones chimed with a group text from Harvath. That was their signal.
“This is bullshit,” Mathan said as he began to get up.
“Total bullshit,” Thoman agreed, starting to get up as well.
The Russians closed in. One drew his boot back, ready to kick the nearest Hadid. As he did, a shot rang out from across the marble-clad lobby.
Harvath, his SIG Sauer gripped in his hands, had sent a round speeding toward the Spetsnaz operative. It caught the man just above his left ear and went straight through his brain, killing him instantly.
Before the other Russian could react, Thoman and Mathan had drawn their pistols from beneath their shirts and began firing. The man never had a chance.
The brothers kept firing until their slides locked back and their weapons ran dry. Then they just stood there taking in the carnage.
“Let’s move!” Harvath ordered, breaking the spell.
He had covertly surveilled the lobby before the Hadids had entered and now dragged Proskurov from the stairwell where his security team had hidden him. “Back door,” he said. “Now!”
Inserting fresh magazines into their weapons, the Hadids followed.
Harvath jammed his pistol into the back of General Proskurov’s flabby neck. “I know you speak English,” he said as he hustled him along. “If you resist, I’ll kill you. Is that clear?”
Proskurov nodded. He had trained countless soldiers on how to deal with capture.
This, though, felt different. And Proskurov was aware of what the Americans were capable of. He would need to do everything he could to stay alive.
Out on the street, Harvath steered them away from the grand boulevard and back toward the saltbox. It was about to get very nasty.
They had only made it a half block when they heard the vehicles from the Russian Embassy screech to a halt outside the apartment building.
And as soon as the quick response team leapt from their vehicles, the Syrian rebels lit them up.
The .50-caliber rounds from three blocks away chewed through their soft vehicles and the Syrians on the adjacent rooftop sprayed them with AK fire. Then they began lobbing grenade after grenade—and all of them detonated.
The Russian team was overwhelmed. They took heavy casualties. There was blood everywhere.
Through the windows of the lobby, they could see the dead Spetsnaz soldiers. Panic took over. The team gave up and pulled out.
Retreating to their vehicles, they didn’t even attempt to gather their dead. They fled so fast they left tire marks.
As they fled, a van skidded to a halt in the middle of the street near Harvath and the Hadids. Two men in black balaclavas jumped out.
Throwing a bag over Proskurov’s head, the men pulled him inside. Harvath and the Hadids joined them.
Reversing back up the street, they spun ninety degrees at the next corner and took off. Other vehicles were already in place to pick up the rest of the team.
• • •
They drove to the mechanic’s garage Mathan operated. Jumping out of the van, he opened the rollup door. Once the van had driven through, he stepped inside, rolled the door back down, and locked it.
The garage was small and only had one lift. It smelled like spilled motor oil. There was no waiting area—just an office and supply room.
“Where are we set up?” Harvath asked.
Mathan opened the supply room and turned on the overhead lights. A black drop cloth had been hung along the rear wall. A chair sat in front of a tripod with a video camera on it. There were two stands with lights.
Harvath looked at his watch. He was in uncharted water. Vella had said the drug worked differently on different people. It could take fifteen minutes or it could take three hours. They had to just watch and monitor him.
Pulling Proskurov out of the van, they dragged him back to the supply room and secured him to the chair.
Harvath had been expressly warned not to up-dose the prisoner. No matter how long it took, he needed to go slowly. Too much of the drug too fast could scramble Proskurov’s brain.
The General was wearing the hood Harvath had brought from the
Solarium in Malta. They had bound his hands, as well as his feet in the van and had placed a piece of duct tape over his mouth.
Unpacking several strips of cloth and what looked like a bottle of cold medicine, Harvath prepared everything exactly as Vella had shown him.
Once the pieces of cloth were soaked through with the synthetic pheromone, he removed them from the bowl, folded them in half twice, and then packed them into the pocket of the hood covering Proskurov’s nose and mouth.
Then he adjusted the bezel on his watch and went to wash his hands. He didn’t want to get any of the compound near his own mouth, nose, or eyes.
“How long does it take?” Mathan asked as he grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler in his office.
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve done an interrogation like this before?”
Harvath shook his head and took a long drink of water. After swallowing, he screwed the cap back on. “Have you heard anything? Did the rest of your men make it out okay?”
Mathan nodded.
“I’m sorry about the two you lost.”
The young Syrian nodded again. “They were good fighters. It was an honorable death.”
Harvath appreciated the sentiment. It was one many wouldn’t understand. If you had to go, dying on your feet, for a cause you believed in, was the best way.
He was about to say as much when Thoman came running up to the office door. “Something’s wrong.”
“With what?”
“With Proskurov. He’s sick.”
Harvath set the bottle of water down and followed Thoman to the supply closet.
Even though he was still secured to the chair, Proskurov’s body was convulsing wildly.
Harvath rushed over and snatched off the hood. The General’s eyes had rolled back into their sockets. All he could see were the whites. Proskurov was having some sort of a seizure.
“What’s wrong with him?” Mathan asked.
“I don’t know.”
Harvath snatched off the tape covering Proskurov’s mouth and was greeted by a spray of sudsy pink foam. Everyone leapt back.
“Cyanide,” Thoman stated.
Harvath had no idea what the hell was going on. Pulling out his encrypted cell phone, he tried to call Vella, but couldn’t get a signal inside the garage.
Damn it
.
Tossing the phone aside, he unsheathed his knife. “Hold on to him,” he ordered.
The Hadids grabbed hold of the man as best they could while Harvath cut through his restraints.
Moving everything out of the way so he couldn’t hurt himself, they lay Proskurov on the floor and then rolled him onto his side. His body continued to violently jerk and contort as the pink froth oozed from his mouth.
Grabbing his phone back, Harvath told the brothers to keep an eye on him as he ran for the front of the shop.
Near the roll-up door, he was able to get one bar of service. But every time he tried to place the call, he got the same message—
call failed
.
Unlocking the door, he rolled it up a few feet and slipped underneath. He didn’t like having to stand outside to make his call, but he had no choice.
Vella picked up on the first ring and Harvath explained what was taking place.
He fired back a series of health questions Harvath couldn’t possibly have answered. He asked about fatigue, hypertension, blood sugar, stress.
Of course the Russian was stressed. He had just been involved in a major gun battle and had been taken prisoner.
Vella asked him to detail how he had prepared and administered the compound. He then asked how long after introducing it the seizures had begun.
Harvath answered all the questions as quickly and succinctly as he could. None of this was helping, though. Harvath needed to know what, specifically, to do.
He was stunned by Vella’s response. “Nothing.”
Nothing?
Harvath was about to push back when Thoman ducked under the roll-up door and stepped outside.
He didn’t need to ask why he wasn’t back inside with the Russian. He could read it on the man’s face. Proskurov was dead.
CHAPTER 59
H
arvath was pissed. The Hadids had lost two good men and all they got in return was a dead Russian general.
Vella didn’t buy that Proskurov may have bitten down on a cyanide tablet. Nobody did that anymore, especially Russians. They made deals—comfortable sanctuary in the United States in exchange for information. Proskurov had to have had an underlying medical condition.
It didn’t matter to Harvath what the cause of death was. His plans for recording Proskurov’s “confession” and then using that to sow doubt, mistrust, panic, and fear throughout the ranks of ISIS were shot.
He set the laptop bag from the saltbox on top of Mathan’s desk and unzipped it.
Inside was a thin, ruggedized laptop—a style popular with soldiers and spies deployed to harsh environments. Opening the lid, the first thing he noticed was the fingerprint sensor.
A lot of things had moved to biometrics. They eliminated the need to constantly change passwords.
Powering it up, he carried it back to the supply room and waited for the security prompt. When it appeared, he reached under the drop cloth, grabbed Proskurov’s right hand, and swiped his index finger along the sensor.
Thinking he was good, Harvath stood up, but was greeted by a second security prompt, a picture of an eyeball with crosshairs over it. He called for the Hadids to come help him. He also told them to bring some more tape.
Putting the General in a sitting position, they propped him up against the wall. Harvath then taped his eyelids open.
He had no idea if the computer required an iris or a retinal scan and whether it was the left eye, the right eye, or both. With Proskurov ready to go, Harvath held the laptop in front of him and activated the scan. A status bar charted its progress.
Two seconds later there was a chime as the General’s desktop screen came to life.
Tan folders littered a bland, medium-blue background. Everything was written in Russian.
Technically and linguistically, Harvath was nearing the outer edge of his expertise. He knew better than to push it. It was time to get a professional involved.
In order to do that, though, he was going to need better signal strength for his phone.
It took Thoman a half hour to pick up his taxi and return. Once he did, Harvath hopped in back and got to work.
Using the USB cable from his charger, he connected the laptop to his encrypted phone. Over his earpiece, he listened to Nicholas explain what he was doing as he took control of his screen.
Harvath watched as the little man back in the United States remotely opened folder after folder for him.
There were reams and reams of inane government memos. The Russians seemed to paper their employees to death in much the same way that the Americans did.
Finally, Nicholas hit on something.
“What is it?” Harvath asked.
“Something apparently worth encrypting.”
“Can you decrypt it?”
“It’s password protected,” the little man replied. “It’s going to take some time.”
Harvath looked at the battery life remaining on the computer and said, “The laptop is at about thirty percent power.” Making sure there was a cord in the carrying case, he turned his attention to Thoman. “I need somewhere to plug in. How long will it take us to get to the loft?”
“Twenty minutes. If there are no checkpoints.”
Harvath doubted the laptop’s battery would last that long. He also didn’t want to run the risk of hitting a checkpoint. “Let’s go back to the garage. We’ll charge it up there and try again.”
“I know someplace we can try,” offered Thoman. “Not far from here. You should be able to plug in. Your phone should get a good signal.”
“Is it safe?”
“Safe enough.”
• • •
It was a hole in the wall. A couple of men sat at a table in back, smoking a hookah and playing backgammon.
Thoman signaled for two coffees as he let Harvath choose where he wanted to sit. He picked a table near an outlet with a good view of the front door.
“How’s your signal?”
Harvath looked down at the phone. “Excellent.”
“Good.”
When the café owner brought over the coffees, he and Thoman spoke for several moments. As they were finishing, Thoman asked Harvath, “Do you want to smoke?”
Not particularly,
thought Harvath, but as he was trying to blend in, he nodded. “Sure. Thank you.”
The café owner returned and prepared the hookah with watermelon-flavored tobacco. Harvath wasn’t a fan, but he took a few pulls nonetheless.
As he watched the smoke rise toward the stained ceiling, he thought about all of the cigarettes Yusuf had smoked on their ride from Jordan.
He knew where his mind was going to go next—to Yusuf having cancer and getting robbed at the border.
Though he normally liked silence, he decided talking might be better. “Why did you pick this place?” he asked Thoman.
“Because of the owner.”
“What about him?”
“He grew up with my father. They were good friends.”
So much for steering away from serious issues
. “Where’s your mom? Is she in Damascus?”
Thoman shook his head. “Paris. Moved there after the regime murdered my father.”
“She can’t be happy that you and your brother stayed behind.”
“No. She’s not happy, but I think she understands. Our father worked with the Americans. CIA. That’s why he was killed.”
“I’m sorry,” Harvath replied.
“You shouldn’t be. He was doing what he thought was right. He was an honorable man.”
“I’m sure he was.”
“And you?” Thoman asked.
“What about me?”
“Your father. What does he do?”
“He was a Navy SEAL. He died in a training accident.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. He loved it.”
“And your mother?”
“She lives in California,” said Harvath.
“Is she bothered by what you do?”
It was a good question. Harvath had to think about the right way to respond. Finally, he said, “She doesn’t really know what my job is. What she does know is that I try to do the right thing.”
Thoman smiled. “Because that’s the way you were raised.”
“By both of them. Yes.”
“We have a few things in common.”
Harvath smiled as well. “We do.”
Sitting back in his chair, he was about to take another puff from the hookah when a text message appeared on his phone from Nicholas.
It was in all caps and read
URGENT. CALL ME.