by Brad Thor
“Thank you,” said Johansson. “May I urinate?”
There was a time in Harvath’s past where he probably would have vented his anger at the corrupt cop by slamming the lid down on the man’s head. Instead, he looked down at him and said, “Be my guest.”
As he began to object, Harvath tore off a new piece of duct tape, slapped it across his mouth, and put the hood back over his head.
Closing the lid, he picked up the duffle bag, dropped it on the trunk, and began to gear up.
By the time Nyström and Haney returned, Harvath looked like a model Swedish policeman.
The uniform fit so well, he could have been posing for officer of the month, or the much maligned, yet extremely popular Swedish policeman’s calendar.
“Put your coat on,” ordered Nyström. Then pointing at Harvath’s Rattler, added, “Sidearm only. In its holster. Nice and easy. We’re just two cops responding to a suspicious activity call.”
Harvath appreciated the man’s attention to detail, but he hadn’t intended to bring the Rattler. No need to tip Dominik Gashi that anything was out of the ordinary.
Haney did a final team radio check, and then flashed a thumbs-up. They were all ready to go.
Harvath looked at the Chief Inspector and said, “Just two cops, responding to a suspicious activity call. A casual knock and talk.”
CHAPTER 49
* * *
In their patrol uniforms, they both got into the patrol vehicle and headed down the narrow beach road toward the house.
A light fog had begun to gather. Nyström was on edge. Harvath could see it by how tightly he gripped the steering wheel.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” said Harvath.
“Have you done this a lot?”
“Use the police as a ruse in order to capture a bad guy?”
The Chief Inspector nodded.
“I have, actually.”
“Where?”
Harvath thought for a moment. “The last time was in Germany. Similar to this. We had an actual Bundespolizei officer, in uniform, as another member of my team posed as a plainclothes detective from the Kriminalpolizei.”
“I assume it worked, or we wouldn’t be doing this, right?”
“It worked perfectly. The target was also a Russian. They treat the police in their own country with disdain, but when operating abroad, especially illegally, they’re highly deferential to law enforcement.
“That’s why I like this approach. It’s safer. They don’t want any trouble, so they go along with what a uniformed officer asks. By the time they realize what’s happening, it’s too late. You have them.”
“And what happened to that Russian?” asked Nyström.
“To be honest,” replied Harvath, “I don’t know. It was only my job to pick him up.”
“Who hired you for the job?”
Harvath smiled. “I can’t remember.”
“I see,” said the Chief Inspector, relaxing a little bit. “I imagine memory loss happens a lot in your business.”
“I wouldn’t know. I keep forgetting.”
Nyström grinned. He was fairly certain that the American was much more than just a NATO liaison.
As they neared the house, the Chief Inspector said, “Don’t talk. Just follow my lead.”
Harvath nodded. “Don’t worry. My Swedish isn’t that good. That’s why I have you along. I plan to let you do all the talking.”
“Good. We’ll start off with an inspection of the perimeter. You still have your flashlight? The one that’s brighter than mine?”
He pulled it from his pocket and gave a quick flash against the palm of his hand.
“Okay, then,” said Nyström, pulling up near the house. “Here we are.”
Reaching behind, he withdrew a handheld spotlight, plugged it into the cigarette lighter, and handed it to Harvath. “Roll down your window and sweep the light slowly across the house and around the perimeter.”
Harvath did as the Chief Inspector had asked. When it was complete, he turned off the light, rolled up his window, and handed it back. “What now?”
“Now,” he said, lifting the microphone of his police radio to his mouth and pretending to toggle the Talk button, “we call it in, and then we exit the vehicle.”
Harvath followed his lead and exited the vehicle. They both got their flashlights out and began sweeping the area with their beams. Then, slowly, they walked a complete circle around the house. Though he couldn’t see his team set back in the trees, Harvath knew they were there.
Curtains were drawn across most of the windows. Where they could, they peered inside. Either housekeeping had never come after the last set of guests, or there were several people inside who had quickly scrambled for cover. There were coffee cups and dirty dishes visible in the kitchen.
Nyström rattled the back door, to see if it was unlocked, and then kept moving. Eventually, they made it back around to the front of the structure.
Walking up the front steps, the Chief Inspector approached the front door and gave a loud “police” knock.
He allowed a few moments for a response, and when no one came to the door, he knocked again, even louder this time. He knew there were people inside and he was making it quite obvious.
Suddenly, they heard noises as someone made his way to the door. In a move so subtle that Nyström didn’t even see it, Harvath unfastened the safety mechanism on his holster. Fortunately, the Swedish police also carried the Sig Sauer, so he had been able to bring his own sidearm along.
He stood half a step back, just behind the Chief Inspector’s right side. He had wanted to be up front, but it was out of the question. Nyström had to take point, as the encounter had to be done in Swedish.
Having dated several Swedish flight attendants, Harvath spoke a little of the language, but it was composed of relatively useless words—pickup lines, a few naughty sentences, and drinking songs, and some tourist phrases he had used when he’d previously been over to visit. And, of course, it was all built upon the foundation of the first thing anyone learns in a foreign language—swear words.
All of it was useless as the door opened and Nyström leaned in to engage.
The first thing the man did was something Harvath had watched seasoned American cops do. The moment the door opened, he stuck the toe of his boot inside so that it couldn’t be closed.
As soon as Harvath saw him, he knew that they had their man. Gashi’s Swedish was terrible, and he asked the police officer if he spoke English. As he had done with Harvath upon their first meeting, the Chief Inspector instantly transitioned over.
“Good evening,” he said. “Just a routine check. A neighbor called in a report of suspicious activity.”
Gashi looked around, trying to ascertain which neighbor it might have been, then flicked his eyes toward Harvath. “I haven’t seen anything,” he said,
“Are you the owner of this house?”
“No, I am the caretaker.”
“Are you alone inside?”
“I’m sorry,” Gashi replied. “What exactly is it that you are looking for?”
“We’re just here taking a look and making sure everything is okay,” Nyström reassured him. “It’s quite late. Are you living in this house?”
“Me? No. I have a full-time job at FörsPak. I do my caretaking on the side—at night and on weekends.”
“May I see some identification, please?”
“Of course,” the man replied, flicking his eyes toward Harvath again.
If Harvath didn’t know any better, he would have sworn that the man had recognized him from somewhere. But that was impossible.
What Harvath couldn’t know was that Gashi recognized him from the CCTV footage that Johansson had pulled from Visby Hospital.
Regardless, Harvath’s ‘Spidey sense’ was officially tingling. Transitioning the flashlight to his left hand, he let his right hand drop and hover just above his holster.
Keep an eye on his hands, he though
t as Dominik Gashi reached back as if to retrieve his wallet.
Instead, the man pulled out something that looked like a Victorian surgical instrument. It was long and highly polished, catching what little light there was in the fog.
Gashi slashed in a downward motion with amazing speed. His target—Chief Inspector Nyström.
Upon seeing the blade, Harvath reacted. He drove his left shoulder into Nyström, trying to knock him out of the weapon’s path.
At the same time, he double-punched the tail cap of his flashlight, triggering an eruption of strobe lights. He tilted the beam as best he could, hoping to catch Gashi in the face to blind him, as he drew his pistol.
He fired twice at the man’s left knee and then two more times into his left shoulder. He wanted him incapacitated, not dead.
The Russian dropped the knife and it clattered to the ground as he stumbled backward. Stepping in, Harvath kicked it aside and shoved Nyström fully out of the way.
Holstering his pistol, he quickly patted Gashi down to make sure he didn’t have any more weapons. Then, grabbing him by the collar, he yanked him away from the house and back toward the patrol car.
The Chief Inspector was slow to follow.
When Harvath looked back, he could see that the Swede was badly injured. He was bleeding profusely from his left arm and part of his chest.
He had raised his arm to shield himself from Gashi’s knife, which had cut right through the chunky plastic strap of his digital watch, and deep into his forearm, and had kept going across part of his chest—above where his vest was. The weapon was incredibly sharp, having cut through his jacket and the uniform beneath before slicing through his flesh, revealing bone.
Dumping Gashi behind the patrol vehicle, Harvath buffaloed him with the butt of his Sig Sauer and gave the signal for his team to move in.
Just as they began to appear from the trees Gashi’s own team appeared in the windows and the doorway of the house, and opened fire.
CHAPTER 50
* * *
Nyström, despite his injuries, found a reservoir of strength and summoned an incredible burst of speed.
As he caught up with Harvath behind the patrol vehicle, his pistol was already out and he was putting rounds on the house.
“Where’s your med kit?” Harvath yelled as he slammed a fresh magazine into his Sig and returned fire at the Spetsnaz soldiers.
“I’ll be okay.”
Nyström was bleeding a lot and starting to look weak. He clearly needed medical attention, and soon. But before that could happen, they needed to neutralize the threat inside the house.
Hailing Sloane over his radio, Harvath said, “Hit them with the gas!”
Seconds later, the first tear gas canister sailed out of the launcher, crashed through one of the windows, and began aerosolizing inside.
Quickly, Sloane worked her way through the trees and pumped three more rounds into different parts of the house.
Harvath had made the rules of engagement crystal clear. Whoever stepped outside holding a weapon was a legitimate target.
With tear gas filling the structure, Harvath secured Gashi with Flex-Cuffs and then searched for the medical bag in the patrol car.
Finding it, he returned to Nyström.
The Chief Inspector was leaning against the left front tire, trying to use the engine block as cover. Laying the bag on the ground next to him, Harvath tore it open and removed what he needed to tend to the injured man.
Around them, gunfire crackled as his team returned fire and put rounds on the beach house. Windows shattered and shards of glass went flying as pieces of wood splintered in all directions.
Using a pair of shears to cut away the clothing, Harvath examined Nyström’s wound. He was bleeding badly, but the wound wasn’t spurting. Applying a tourniquet could mean the loss of his arm.
He ripped open packages of bandages and used an Israeli battle dressing to stanch the bleeding. It was all he could do for the moment.
Taking the cop’s empty sidearm, he ejected the spent magazine, flicked it aside, and inserted a new one. “You’re topped up,” he said as he depressed the slide release and handed the weapon back to the Chief Inspector.
Popping up over the hood, Harvath focused on the front door. When two Spetsnaz operatives emerged, choking on tear gas, but with weapons still in their hands, he and his team let their rounds fly. Both men dropped dead right there on the doorstep.
From the rear of the house came the sound of more gunfire. Harvath knew that meant additional Spetsnaz operatives were likely trying to escape via the back door.
Three more Russian soldiers appeared at the front door, stumbling over the bodies of their dead comrades, but with their hands held high.
Unlike his lousy Swedish, Harvath actually spoke some passable Russian, and he yelled out a series of commands, which the remaining men obeyed. He warned them to stay facedown on the ground, and said that if they did not, they would be shot.
With the three Spetsnaz lying in the dirt, plus the two dead at the door, that made five. He radioed Sloane, who told him that they’d killed three more who had come running out the back with their guns blazing. That brought the total to eight—the same number of men that had been seen running at the Sparrman farm.
Harvath glanced down at Nyström. He was bleeding through the thick bandages. They couldn’t wait any longer. Harvath had to get him to a hospital.
Though it had taken multiple rounds, the police vehicle was still functional. Haney helped load the Chief Inspector into the passenger seat.
He left the medical kit so that Staelin could tend to Gashi. And, after a brief rundown of what he wanted everyone to do, Harvath lit up the light bar and raced for the hospital in Visby.
• • •
In a police car, in the early Sunday morning hours before dawn, with no one on the roads and no fear of being pulled over, Harvath should have been able to make the half-hour trip to Visby in fifteen minutes. The fog, though, had gotten worse, and he was forced to drive more slowly than he would have liked.
On the flip side, it might have been for the best, as the fog provided them with a modicum of concealment. A bullet-ridden police car, driven by an officer no one on the island recognized, would have raised a lot of alarms. As absolutely messed up as everything had been, they still had managed to keep most of the operation “quiet.”
Harvath kept Nyström engaged by talking to him and asking lots of questions. They made it to the hospital in just over twenty minutes, which meant that—for the conditions—Harvath had still been driving way too fast.
Skidding up to the Emergency Room entrance, Harvath saw the redheaded nurse at the desk inside and waved for her to come out and help.
Exiting the vehicle, he came around to the side and opened the passenger door for Nyström.
“We made it,” said Harvath. “You’re going to be okay.”
“Thank you,” the Chief Inspector replied. His voice was weak, his eyes a little glassy.
As the nurse came running out, pushing a wheelchair, she already had two doctors in tow behind her.
“Knife wound. Left arm and left side of the torso,” Harvath said to them. “He has lost a lot of blood.”
They positioned the wheelchair next to the vehicle, carefully lifted the policeman out, and transitioned him over.
The nurse recognized Harvath from earlier, but Nyström hadn’t bothered introducing him. Now he was back, wearing a Swedish police uniform, and speaking in American-accented English, not Swedish. She didn’t really know what to make of it.
“He’s a good man,” said Harvath, interrupting her thoughts. “Take care of him.”
As the doctors rushed the Chief Inspector inside, she nodded and then turned to follow them.
At the doorway, she turned back around, but the American had already gotten back into the patrol vehicle and had disappeared into the mist.
CHAPTER 51
* * *
The team met ba
ck at the wrecking yard. After the rental house had been compromised, Nyström had agreed to let Harvath and his people use the office there as a secure location until they left Gotland. Neither his uncle nor any employees would show up there until Monday morning.
Harvath had a lot of loose ends to tie up. What’s more, he was only going to get one shot. If he screwed up, he wouldn’t be able to come back and fix them later. It would be too late. He needed to think. In fact, what he really needed was coffee.
Hopping into the Camry, Chase left the yard and drove back to the gas station minimart—one of the few twenty-four-hour places on Gotland—and returned with supplies. They had left the rental house so quickly that no one had packed up the kitchen.
With a cup of hot coffee in his hand, Harvath sat at a battered worktable jotting down notes.
Under the heading of “Absolutely Unbelievable” was the fact that Johansson had survived the shootout. Multiple rounds had pierced the trunk of the police cruiser, but not a single one had touched him. God must have intended for the corrupt cop to a do a very lengthy prison sentence.
Then, in his own category, was Sparrman. He had been trussed up with Flex-Cuffs, hooded, gagged, and left in the minivan up the road from the beach house. At some point, very soon, his mother was going to start looking into what had happened to him.
On top of the treasonous twosome, there were the three surviving Spetsnaz soldiers—also bound, hooded, and gagged at the wrecking yard.
Harvath hadn’t decided what to do with any of them yet. Right now, the only captive whom Harvath cared anything about was Dominik Gashi. Gashi was the key to the next level.
Fortunately, Harvath’s shots had been well-placed and none of Gashi’s injuries was life-threatening. The wounds probably hurt like hell, which was okay, but more important, the Russian would survive. Staelin had done an excellent job of patching him up.