by Brad Thor
“Which is why they would need Gotland. To control the Baltic Sea.”
“Exactly,” Harvath stated, relieved to be speaking with someone who understood the big picture. “America doesn’t want to go to war and we’re certain that Sweden doesn’t want to either. In our opinion, all that matters—”
“Is stopping the Russians—no matter what it takes.”
Harvath nodded. “That is our position.”
“It is the right position,” replied Ingesson. “What can I do to help you?”
“Do you have a picture of Gashi?”
“Sure. I can pull his file from the company server. What else?”
“I have spoken with two of his associates, neither of whom has ever been to his home. Can you give me some idea of where he lives?”
“I can do better than that,” the big man replied. “I’ll take you right to him.”
CHAPTER 47
* * *
Gashi lived in a crappy, run-down cabin on a poorly maintained piece of land in the middle of nowhere. Ingesson knew it because he had driven the man home after he’d had too much to drink at the company Christmas party.
Gashi allegedly augmented his income from the processing plant by acting as a caretaker. He worked for several mainland homeowners who rented out their beach houses to the tourists who flocked to Gotland in the summer.
Off-season, he simply dropped by once a week to make sure pipes hadn’t frozen and nothing had been stolen.
It was easy money. What he did with it, though, was anyone’s guess. He definitely wasn’t putting it into where he lived.
Haney assembled the drone and got it up overhead. Harvath told him to take his time. He definitely didn’t want a repeat of Norway.
Slowly, Haney conducted a reconnaissance of the property. In addition to the cabin, there was a detached garage, a woodshed, and an old, decrepit outhouse.
Harvath, as usual, stood next to him, watching the feed on the tablet.
“Looks pretty quiet,” said Haney.
“I know,” Harvath replied. “That’s what bothers me.”
“Maybe the guy’s just inside sleeping.”
Harvath knew there wasn’t a chance in hell that was so. Johansson had already admitted that Nikolai had called Gashi, filling him in on everything that had happened at O’Learys, and that Gashi had then called him. There was no way that Gashi would just roll over and go to bed at that point. He’d want to know what Johansson had uncovered. And when Johansson failed to report back in, Gashi would be forced to assume the worst.
If Gashi was inside that cabin, he’d probably be sitting behind the front door with a shotgun, ready to blast the first person who showed up. More than likely, he had already taken off. But to where? Unless he had a boat or a plane, there wasn’t much he could do besides go to ground. Harvath decided he needed to see the cabin for himself.
Looking at Sloane, he said, “You’re with me. Haney stays on the drone. Staelin and Palmer will come in via the woods to the south. Barton’s had the longest day of all of us. He’ll watch the vehicles. Jasinski, you can stay with Barton, or come with us. It’s your call.”
Jasinski hadn’t expected to be in a position where she had to decide whether to opt in or opt out. “I’m in. I’ll go with you.”
“Okay,” said Harvath, pleased with her answer. “You’re with us.” Then, addressing the team, he said, “Everyone should absolutely be expecting booby-traps. Is that clear?”
“Roger that,” they all replied.
Ingesson had wanted to be part of the raid. He had even volunteered to carry his own weapon, a short-barreled tactical rifle he kept, in violation of Swedish law. By the looks of him, he was no stranger to dodging bullets and kicking serious ass, but Harvath had politely said no.
The former K4 Army Ranger was too valuable a find. A pro-Western local, with elite military training, skilled at surviving behind enemy lines, was something Harvath would rather keep as a future asset, already in place.
In short, as formidable as he was, fortunately, they didn’t need him. Harvath’s team was more than well-equipped to handle this.
Taking the lead, Harvath cut across the adjacent property and approached the cabin from the east with Ashby and Jasinski tight behind him.
They moved as one unit, each covering their respective pieces of the pie, weapons up and ready to engage. They were carrying a new close-quarters weapon called the Sig “Rattler,” a compact tactical rifle in the .300 blackout caliber. It was a nice fat round that packed high speed and an incredible punch. Theirs had collapsible stocks and were outfitted with suppressors. They were super smooth and returned almost zero recoil.
Two hundred meters out from the target, Harvath slowed down. They needed to be very careful now. As good as their goggles were, any trip wires would be basically invisible.
Step by careful step, they moved forward. Every tree, every rock, every pile of leaves might hide a Claymore-style antipersonnel device.
Coming up from the south, Palmer and Staelin exhibited the same degree of caution. There was every reason to believe that this cabin would be as well protected as the one in Norway.
In addition to trip wires, Harvath was also concerned about land mines with pressure plates. Via a submarine a few miles off the coast, it would have been nothing for Russian commando teams to get all sorts of equipment onto Gotland. Harvath wasn’t taking anything for granted.
As they neared the cabin, he had his team find cover and then called for Haney to bring the drone in for an extreme close-up.
Harvath didn’t have the tablet with him, so he had to go by the play-by-play coming in over his earpiece from Haney.
“Garage windows impenetrable to camera. Possibly painted, or just really dirty. Moving on to woodshed.”
Several seconds later, Harvath said, “Woodshed appears to be clear. Three, maybe four cords. Nothing else visible.”
“No clear angles on outhouse interior. Proceed with caution in regard to all structures.”
Harvath waved his team forward. The first building they came upon when accessing the property was the garage. Its windows had been painted black. He tried the main door. It had been locked. Pulling out a short crowbar affixed to his pack, he went to work.
Seconds later there was a snap, along with the sound of a piece of metal skittering into the garage. The door was open. Lifting it, Harvath looked inside.
In the center of the small space was a vehicle covered by a tarp. Approaching it, Harvath flipped back a corner of the canvas.
Underneath was a 1990 Mercedes Benz 250-GD SUV. Flipping up his goggles, he pulled out his flashlight and turned on the low beam. The vehicle’s color was olive—an exact match for the mark he had found on Lars Lund’s Volkswagen.
Pulling the cover the rest of the way off, he walked around the front of the vehicle and found damage along the right front quarter panel. This was the car that had been used to kill Lars. He was certain of it.
Turning off his light, he flipped his goggles back down and allowed his eyes to readjust. Then he checked out the woodshed and the outhouse. They were both clear.
He asked Haney to do a final flyby and search the windows of the cabin. He, Ashby, and Jasinski took cover positions while he did.
It took several minutes for him to scan each of the tiny openings and what lay inside. Finally, he reported, “No heat signatures and no movement from inside.”
This only made Harvath more nervous. Had Dominik Gashi been inside, there was the hope that the cabin hadn’t been wired to explode. The Russians weren’t big on suicide. They might drink themselves to death, but that was seen as a virtue, religiously committed to over a significant period of time. Booby-traps were something else entirely.
An empty house, previously inhabited by an assumed GRU intelligence officer, now believed to be on the run, could only be bad news. There were dozens of ways that it could be wired to explode.
A device could be affixed to the door and deton
ate on entry. It could be rigged to a specific floorboard and explode once an unlucky member of the entry team put weight on it. It could be attached to a closet door or a dresser drawer, just waiting for some poor bastard to open it. The options were both endless and terrifying.
Harvath was aware of them all and he took the lead, starting with the front door.
After checking, as best he could, to make sure it wasn’t wired, he pushed it open with the toe of his boot and stepped back.
Nothing happened.
Relieved, Harvath slowly crept inside.
The structure was built around a rough stone fireplace, big enough to walk into. Horns and antlers were nailed to the walls. There was a variety of dead animals, in various stages of taxidermy, scattered throughout the space. A rough-hewn railing blocked off an elevated sleeping area above. The entire place smelled like mold.
Harvath scanned his weapon from left to right as he and his team made entry.
“Clear!” he heard Ashby eventually yell.
Jasinski responded in kind. “Clear!”
Reluctantly, Harvath added his assessment. “Clear!” Dominik Gashi was not here.
Rapidly, they searched chests and wardrobes, under the couch, and inside the tiny bathroom. There was no sign of the man.
There was, though, a sign that he had recently been there. Seeing a bright blue kettle sitting on the stove, Harvath reached out and placed his hand above it. It was still warm. Gashi had been here, and not that long ago.
He gestured Ashby and Jasinski over to show them what he had found. Each of them touched the kettle, and then, nodding, they fanned out and conducted a renewed search.
“Friendlies,” Palmer said over the radio as he and Staelin arrived at the front door.
Knocking twice, they waited for a response, and when Ashby gave the all clear, they entered.
Looking up from her search, she pointed at the kettle on the stove, indicated it was still warm, and then went back to what she was doing.
“I think I’ve got something,” Harvath said from upstairs in the sleeping loft.
Inside a small cubby he had found a key rack. On it was an assortment of keys, each with a brightly colored plastic tag. Inside each tag was a piece of paper with what looked like an address. One of the pegs was empty.
Explaining what he had found, Harvath slung his Rattler and went back to his search. He was looking for any information about Dominik Gashi and what he was doing on Gotland.
Minutes later, as Staelin was scanning the man’s bookshelves, it was Chase who called out, “I may have something.”
Harvath came to the railing. “What is it?”
“It looks like a ledger.”
“What kind of ledger?”
“A property ledger. There’s a chart here with multiple addresses. Then there are dates last visited, status, repairs needed, that kind of thing.”
“Read out the addresses,” said Harvath as he went back, pulled the keys off the rack, and lined them up on the bed.
As Chase read off the addressees, he discarded the corresponding sets of keys. At the very end, he was able to identify the property to which the matching set belonged.
Pulling out his cell phone, he looked it up on his mapping app and then called Nyström.
“Yes,” the Chief Inspector said. “I know it. There are a lot of houses on that stretch of beach. Some are quite close together. But at this time of year, it’s normally quiet. Those are almost entirely summer cottages.”
Harvath, convinced that he knew where Dominik Gashi had gone to ground, asked Nyström for a favor—a big one.
“I don’t think I can do that,” the Swedish police officer answered.
“We don’t have a choice,” replied Harvath. “Beyond the public safety concern, if you don’t, everything we have done up to this point is worthless. And we also will have handed the Russians a huge leg up.”
Nyström, as was his custom, took several moments to consider what Harvath was asking of him. Each of the American’s requests seemed to be more involved and more dangerous than the last.
Finally, the Chief Inspector said, “I’ll do it, but only on one condition.”
Harvath wasn’t a fan of conditions, but he also wasn’t in a position to say no, especially not now. “What is it?”
“After this, it’s over. All of it. You and your team get on your plane and are gone. Before sunrise.”
Harvath had no idea if he’d be able to live up to that kind of promise or not. There was no way he was leaving Gotland without Gashi in tow, but he needed to humor Nyström. In an attempt to prolong the Chief Inspector’s cooperation, Harvath agreed. “We’ll be gone by sunrise. You can count on it.”
“I’ll try to pull together what you asked for,” the man replied. “Meet me in a half hour.”
Harvath hung up the phone and immediately began forming Plans B, C, and D. He had very little faith that what they were about to attempt was actually going to work.
CHAPTER 48
* * *
As far as beach houses went, the tiny rental near the village of Nyhamn was not at all what Harvath had expected.
When the sun was up, it probably had a million-dollar view of the ocean. But in the dark, it resembled a double-wide trailer with a long, covered porch and a smattering of cheap outdoor furniture.
By the time Chief Inspector Nyström got to the rendezvous location, Haney had already done multiple drone passes over the target.
“What is the situation?” Nyström said as he climbed out of Johansson’s squad car, dressed in a patrolman’s uniform.
“All quiet,” Haney replied. “No movement inside.”
“Where are your people?”
Using a still from the drone, Harvath marked the locations on his tablet and then asked, “Were you able to get what I asked for?”
Nyström tilted his head toward the backseat of the cruiser.
Harvath opened the door and removed a duffle bag. Dropping it on the lid of the trunk, he unzipped it and inventoried the contents. There was a regulation police uniform, boots, duty belt, cap, and jacket. There was also body armor.
“Were you able to get the other item?”
He nodded and knocked on the side of the trunk.
Harvath cleared his gear off the lid and opened it. He ignored Johansson, who was still lying inside, and grabbed the plastic case.
The Chief Inspector still hadn’t decided what to do with Johansson. Fortunately, Johansson was off-duty when Harvath caught him. Neither he nor his patrol car, which was a take-home vehicle, would be missed until tomorrow night.
Closing the lid, Harvath put the case on the trunk and opened it up. Inside was a tear gas launcher with several canisters.
“I am hoping we don’t need that,” said Nyström.
“Me too,” replied Harvath. Latching the case, he handed it to Haney and told him, “Get this to Sloane and then hustle back.”
The Marine accepted the case and struck off into the pines on the side of the road, disappearing into a gathering mist.
“What do we know about the nearby houses?” the Chief Inspector asked.
Picking up his tablet from where he had laid it on the roof of the patrol vehicle, Harvath pulled up another photo. “There are four of them. As far as we can tell, they’re all empty. But, if we did have to go hot and a round over-penetrated and exited our target house, there’s a possibility it could enter any one of them.”
“Based on your conversation with Martin Ingesson, I overheard that you were a Navy SEAL?”
Harvath nodded.
“I assume you were taught to control your rounds?”
“It’s not my rounds I’m worried about,” he replied. “Dominik Gashi, or whatever his real name is, may have Sparrman’s Spetsnaz operatives in there. It doesn’t take much to get those boys into a gunfight. And when they’re triggered, they don’t give a damn where their rounds go.”
Nyström took one of his long, pregnant pauses as
he tried to figure out the best course forward. “How do you know the other houses aren’t occupied?”
“No lights on inside, no cars outside. We looked through the windows using IR and thermal.”
“There’s no cars outside the target house either.”
“True, but that could be for several reasons. At the cabin Ingesson sent us to, we found an olive Mercedes SUV, under a tarp. If you reexamine Lars Lund’s vehicle back at the wrecking yard, you should see damage to the left rear quarter panel that contains traces of the same paint.”
“So you did notice something when you examined the car.”
“I notice lots of things,” said Harvath. “It’s part of my job. It wasn’t worth mentioning at the time. Now it is.”
“Fair enough. What other reasons might there not be any cars near the target house?”
“The house may have been a fallback location for Gashi and the Spetsnaz. If they’re hiding here, they wouldn’t want to give their presence away.
“I disabled their two vehicles in Visby. If they got them working again, maybe they drove here and hid them. They also could have Ubered to a location nearby and hiked the rest of the way in. Same with Gashi.”
It made sense to Nyström, and he nodded. “Before we do anything, I have to check the nearby houses.”
“I just told you they’re empty.”
The Chief Inspector held up his hand. “And I’m the one who might have to answer to a police review board at some point. Change clothes. While you do, I’ll check the houses for myself.”
Reluctantly, Harvath agreed. He waited for Haney to reappear and then sent the two men off together.
Opening the trunk of the car, he removed Johansson’s hood and peeled the duct tape from his mouth.
“Are you thirsty?” he asked.
The man nodded.
Nyström had some water bottles in a crate in the trunk. Grabbing the corrupt cop by his tunic, Harvath lifted him into a kneeling position. Then, opening one of the bottles, he tilted it so that he could drink. Once Johansson had had enough, Harvath screwed the cap back on the bottle and set it back down in the crate with the others.