Brad Thor Read online

  He worked quickly, pulling out belt after belt and stacking them neatly on the floor. As soon as he’d made a big enough dent, he stood back and let Pamir tackle the other lock.

  Once it was off, Pamir motioned for Harvath to help him. Together, they slowly pulled back on the cast iron. The minute it began to groan, they stopped. Marjan appeared with the oil and nodded for them to continue as he applied extra doses to the hinges.

  The groan abated and Harvath and Pamir opened it the rest of the way. Now, the only thing standing between them and the mechanical room were the crates.

  Flipping his goggles back down, Harvath stood guard as the other men carefully began removing the crates and stacking them in the tunnel.

  It took over twenty minutes before they had cleared enough space to crawl inside.

  When it was ready, Harvath hoisted his shotgun and reminded Marjan and Pamir one last time of their number-one rule of engagement. The Afghan Special Forces soldiers were not their enemy. None of them were to be killed.

  CHAPTER 30

  Harvath and Gallagher entered the mechanical room first. It was nearly identical to the one back at the hospital. Once they had it cleared, Gallagher signaled for the Afghans to join them.

  As Gallagher helped them crawl across the crates and made sure they didn’t make any noise, Harvath tracked down the electrical panel.

  Power outages were a daily fact of life in Afghanistan, but Harvath doubted the Special Forces soldiers were equipped with NODs. Plunging them into darkness would give his plan a major advantage.

  Marjan was positioned at the electrical panel while Harvath, Gallagher, and Pamir assembled near the door of the mechanical room. Harvath flipped up his goggles and Gallagher followed suit. He allowed his eyes to get accustomed to the green light radiating from Pamir’s Streamlight and then signaled for it to be turned off. Harvath then cracked the mechanical room door and peered into the hallway.

  As Harvath’s eyes adjusted still further, he saw that straight across from their position, exactly as Marjan had said it would be, there was a heavy metal door that led to the stairwell to the officers’ barracks. That meant that just around the corner, and outside his line of sight, was the interrogation facility.

  Harvath listened for sounds of a sentry or anyone in the stairwell. There was nothing.

  He nodded to Gallagher, who opened his pack and removed a lock and a length of chain.

  Counting down from three on his fingers, Harvath then eased the door the rest of the way open and slipped silently across the hallway.

  With his weapon up and at the ready, he entered the stairwell and checked to make sure it was completely empty. When he exited, Gallagher was waiting for him. Quietly, they closed the door and chained it shut.

  Harvath did a quick peek around the corner. Pulling his head back, he gave the all clear and then signaled Pamir, who turned and flashed his Streamlight to Marjan inside the mechanical room to begin the count-down.

  With the clock ticking down, Harvath took one more look around the corner and then he and Gallagher got moving.

  They crept down the hallway and stopped just before the door to the interrogation facility. Voices spilled out from inside, which was the good news. The facility was being used. The bad news was that it sounded like much more than two guards.

  Taking a deep breath, Harvath adjusted his weapon and waited. Behind him, Gallagher did the same.

  It was only sixty seconds, but sitting there, exposed in the hall, it felt like an eternity. All of Harvath’s senses were on fire. His entire body was coiled, ready to spring. As he let the air out of his lungs, Marjan threw the switch and the entire basement level went dark.

  Flipping down his NODs, Harvath applied pressure to the trigger of his shotgun and spun into the room.

  It was about thirty feet long by fifteen feet wide, and along the opposite wall were three cell doors, two of which were open.

  Four Afghan Special Forces soldiers sat on rugs in the middle of the room chatting as if nothing had happened. None of them had even bothered to turn on a flashlight, so certain were they that their auxiliary generator would kick in at any moment. Their weapons sat on the floor next to or in front of them, while two more soldiers were sound asleep in the open cells on either side of Mustafa Khan. Harvath fired his first round before even fully entering the room.

  The TASER XREP, which stood for Extended Range Electro-Muscular Projectile, was a self-contained, fully functional TASER circuit pay-load housed inside a twelve-gauge shotgun shell that could take down targets at up to a hundred yards and had recently been issued to the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police in order to deal with riots and civil insurrection.

  As the XREPs were totally self-contained, they had the benefit of allowing the shooter to engage a separate target with each pull of the trigger. But with no wires leading back to the shotgun, the suspect could only be given one hit from the projectile’s battery. Once the effect wore off, no further electricity could be introduced unless the subject was reengaged with another round. This meant the shooter had to act fast.

  The rounds were incredibly quiet and there was only a hushed thump as Harvath’s first XREP left the barrel of his shotgun and ripped down the length of the room, catching his target in the upper chest. The man’s body stiffened and he roared as the voltage coursed through his body and incapacitated his neuromuscular system.

  Entering the room right behind Harvath, Gallagher pulled his trigger and nailed his first target dead-on. Both men then moved to engage their second targets, but while Harvath caught his soldier square in the center of the chest, Gallagher’s shot went wide.

  Suddenly, a soldier who had been sleeping on the bunk inside one of the open cells appeared with his AK-47.

  “Check the cells!” Harvath yelled.

  Gallagher engaged the soldier in the open cell and fired while Harvath took out the remaining soldier sitting on the floor.

  Gallagher’s shot was perfect, and the soldier’s weapon clattered to the ground as his muscles seized and he fell like a tree trunk.

  But just as suddenly as the first soldier had appeared, another sprang from the cell at the far end of the room bobbling a flashlight and his weapon. Harvath didn’t have a good angle, but he turned his weapon in the man’s direction and pulled the trigger anyway.

  The XREP raced from the barrel of his Mossberg, only to clank off the cell door as the man let loose with a burst of fire from his barely level rifle.

  As the room erupted in strobes of muzzle flash and a deafening barrage of rifle fire, the rounds ricocheted off the concrete walls.

  There was a loud slap when one of them slammed into Harvath’s back as he dove to the ground.

  It felt as if someone had walked up behind him and cracked him with a heavy metal shovel. And while the air hadn’t been completely knocked out of his lungs, it had come real close.

  Rolling onto his side, Harvath ignored the pain and jacked his final XREP into the chamber. He brought his Mossberg up to fire, but stopped as Gallagher, who had closed on the soldier, bravely stepped around the cell door and fired.

  Harvath couldn’t tell if it was one of the dumbest or most courageous things he had ever seen, and he didn’t have time to figure it out. Even though in general the XREPs packed a lot more punch than the conventional, pistol-style TASER and subjects tended to remain out of it for a lot longer, there were always exceptions where the effect could be short-lived.

  He sucked in a deep breath and pushed himself up off the floor. Everything still worked, which meant he wasn’t paralyzed, and as best he could tell, he wasn’t bleeding—all good signs.

  Gallagher had seen Harvath get hit and wanted to check the extent of the damage. Harvath waved him off. They had too much work to do.

  The center cell door was locked up tight, and after they had divested the soldiers of their weapons, hogtied them with EZ cuffs, and covered their mouths with duct tape, they searched for the keys.

>   When Harvath found them, he opened Khan’s cell. Despite everything that had just taken place in the room, the al-Qaeda operative sat smugly on the edge of his bed in the dark as if he had expected this all along. Harvath hated the arrogance of the Muslim fanatics, and laying eyes on this one in the eerie green of his night vision goggles, he immediately despised him.

  “Stand up and turn around,” Harvath ordered.

  “Who are you?” demanded Khan.

  “The Tooth Fairy,” replied Harvath as he drew back his hand and struck Khan in the face. “Now get up.”

  Harvath had to yank the man to his feet. Once he was up, Harvath spun him around, secured his hands behind his back, and slapped a piece of duct tape over his mouth.

  Gallagher had reloaded both of the shotguns, and he handed Harvath’s to him as he exited the cell guiding Khan.

  They moved quickly to the hallway where already they could hear the sound of pounding coming from the other side of the stairwell doorway. Harvath knew it wouldn’t be long before the Special Forces soldiers retreated upstairs and dropped a grenade down in an effort to blow the door open. He didn’t want to be anywhere near when that happened.

  Once they were all in the mechanical room, Harvath sent Pamir and Marjan up and over the crates while Gallagher used his second chain to secure the door. When that was done, he scrambled over the crates and waited on the other side to assist Khan.

  After Harvath climbed into the tunnel and snapped the locks shut behind him, he could see Pamir and Marjan standing in the green glow of their Streamlights. Reassuming control of the prisoner, he told Gallagher to take point and for Marjan and Pamir to follow. Harvath and Khan would bring up the rear.

  “Are you okay?” Gallagher asked.

  “I’ll be okay,” replied Harvath. “Go.”

  Gallagher nodded, and as he and the NDS operatives disappeared into the darkness, Harvath nudged Khan forward. The man refused to move.

  Harvath’s back was throbbing and he was in no mood to play around with this asshole. He slid his arm underneath Khan’s, grabbed his trapezius muscle in a vise grip, and lifted up on Khan’s arms.

  Pain shot through the terrorist’s body and he stutter-stepped forward to get away from it. Reluctantly, he began walking.

  The hardest part of Harvath’s assignment was almost complete. He had Khan. Now all he had to do was get him someplace safe and then coordinate the exchange for Julia Gallo.

  His injury notwithstanding, he should have felt much better than he did. But having laid eyes on Khan, Harvath knew that he wouldn’t be able to trade him for Julia Gallo. He couldn’t let an animal like this just return to terrorism. He was going to have to come up with another way, and that meant this thing wasn’t over, not by a long shot.

  CHAPTER 31

  Harvath peeled off his soft armor and dropped it to the bathroom floor. Pulling up his T-shirt, he turned and looked into the mirror at the softball-sized bruise growing on his lower back. The ricochet had missed his plate entirely and had slammed right into his soft armor. Though the bullet had been flattened out and its impact had been somewhat blunted from having skipped off the wall, his injury still hurt like hell.

  Opening up Gallagher’s med kit, he fished out a one-thousand-milligram horse-pill-sized Motrin, affectionately referred to by SEALs as Vitamin M, and chased it down with a long swig from the can of Red Bull he’d brought into the bathroom with him.

  Transporting Khan, from the hospital to the safe house Gallagher had arranged for them, had gone exactly as they had planned. After donning their white doctors’ coats, they wrapped the terrorist’s head with gauze, strapped him to the gurney, threw the blanket over him, and wheeled him right out the front doors to their van. Pamir and Marjan had followed, pushing the hand truck loaded down with all the gear. After helping load Khan and the equipment into the back of the van, they had left the grounds the same way they had come in. The hospital had remained quiet the entire time. Never once did they see another soul.

  The safe house was in Kabul’s Shahr-e Naw district—home to many of Afghanistan’s opium kingpins and corrupt politicians. The neighborhood was full of newly constructed mansions, impressive even by American standards. Many of Shahr-e Naw’s dubious landowners had built more than one residence and made sizable, not to mention quasi-legitimate flows of income by renting out their additional homes to Westerners. It was exactly such a property that Gallagher had secured for them.

  Taking Khan back to ISS’s Kabul compound was out of the question. Not only was it not set up to hold a prisoner, there were too many people who would ask too many questions. Here, nobody asked any questions and the neighbors kept to themselves. Even better, the cops had been paid off by the opium lords to stay out of the neighborhood and anyone who could afford to live here had private security, which meant it wasn’t unusual to see men with guns coming and going at all hours of the day and night.

  Only four people knew about the safe house—Flower, Harvath, Hoyt, and Gallagher. Inspector Rashid had offered to act as an escort on their way back, just in case there were any checkpoints, but Harvath had turned him down. Instead, once they were free of the hospital, he had Flower sit with Rashid and monitor his radio. Flower knew the route Gallagher and Harvath were driving and could warn them in time of any potential problems. As it was, things went off without a hitch.

  Harvath and Gallagher stashed Khan in a cleverly constructed panic room the safe house’s owner had constructed in his basement. The room was perfect for holding their prisoner. There was a hole in the floor that functioned as a Turkish-style toilet, there were no windows, and the walls and ceilings were solid concrete. Mustafa Khan could make as much noise as he wanted and no one would ever hear him.

  Gathering up his gear, Harvath stepped out of the bathroom and walked down the marble-floored hallway into the living room. Gallagher was sitting on one of the leather sofas with a bottle of Heineken in his hand, watching the large plasma TV. “Want one?” he asked, holding it up.

  “Why not?” replied Harvath as he sat down on the couch.

  Gallagher walked into the kitchen and returned with another beer for himself and one for Harvath. “How’s your back feeling?” he asked as he handed over one of the bottles.

  “I’ll live.”

  Gallagher was silent for a moment. “Listen,” he finally said. “About missing my second target—”

  Harvath stopped him. “Those XREPs take some getting used to. The important thing is that you popped that last guy before he could get off a second burst.”

  Gallagher nodded and after a lengthy sip of beer asked, “So now what?”

  It was exactly the question Harvath had been wrestling with. Technically, he shouldn’t have had any misgivings. His assignment was very straightforward—find Mustafa Khan and trade him for Julia Gallo.

  For simply agreeing to undertake the operation, Harvath had already been paid five hundred thousand dollars. Bringing Julia back alive would net him another five hundred thousand dollars. He’d be an idiot to screw that up. All he had left to do at this point was to conduct the exchange and the assignment would be over.

  The problem, though, was that Harvath had decided not to let Khan go. The man was a terrorist, and that’s exactly what he would go back to being. There was no reforming these assholes. You had to either lock them up or kill them. Setting Khan free was an option Harvath was not willing to entertain. Not when it meant more people who didn’t deserve to die would die. There was also the possibility that a man with Khan’s background could be behind the next 9/11 or 7/7 attacks. Knowing he had had him and had released him back into the wild if something like that ever happened was not something Harvath could live with. And the more he thought about it, the more he realized he might not have to.

  Looking at Gallagher, he asked, “How long do you think it will be before word gets out that the Afghans have lost Khan?”

  Baba G rolled the bottom of his Heineken on the armrest, leaving a chain of wet
circles. “I don’t know. This is going to be pretty embarrassing for the government. The Afghan president has made a big deal out of how Afghanistan is a nation of laws and how he intended to see that Khan was put on trial. My guess is that they’re going to keep it secret for as long as they can.”

  “How long until the Taliban and al-Qaeda know he’s been snatched?”

  “With the moles they’ve got everywhere? I’d say twenty-four to forty-eight hours tops.”

  Harvath looked at his watch and calculated the time difference with D.C. He owed Stephanie Gallo an updated report. He also needed her to do something for him.

  “Do you think we can get Hoyt and Mark Midland to help babysit?” he asked.

  Gallagher nodded. “If the price is right.”

  Putting down his beer, Harvath pulled out his cell phone. “Good. Call them and tell them to get over here.” Then he added, “And I need to have a powwow with Fontaine.”

  “Fontaine? Why?”

  “Because now that the Khan part of the operation is over, he’s going to help us get Julia Gallo back.”

  CHAPTER 32

  TOWN TAVERN, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  “So, you want to tell me what we’re doing here?” asked Max Holland as he set his drink down on the table and looked Elise Campbell in the eye.

  Holland, a twenty-five-year veteran Secret Service operative, had short gray hair, blue eyes, and hands the size of catchers’ mitts. He had been Robert Alden’s lead protective agent during the campaign and had been promoted to head of his detail when Alden was elected president. At fifty-three, he was the oldest agent protecting the president—something his smartass colleagues were more than happy to point out at all hours of the day and night. In fact, they liked to joke that Holland could never stand too near the military officer who carried the nuclear football for fear that his “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” Life Alert necklace might trigger an accidental launch.