by Brad Thor
The powers that be back at Langley didn’t much care for Harvath’s cowboy reputation. They cared even less for Harvath’s boss, Reed Carlton, but they had little choice but to cooperate.
Chase had invested years of his life in infiltrating Aazim’s network. He knew more about it than anyone else in the intelligence world, and he made it crystal clear to Agency brass that if they didn’t sign off on his joining Harvath’s op, he would quit and sign up with the Carlton Group. Either way, he would finish the job he had started.
Chase was a virtual encyclopedia of Aazim Aleem information. British by birth, the terrorist had been a fat man in his late sixties with a long gray beard when he had been shredded in Yemen. But his girth and facial hair were not his most distinguishing features.
That honor belonged to the two stainless steel hooks that he had where his hands should have been. He had traveled to Afghanistan in the eighties to fight in the jihad against the Soviets, and legend had it that Aazim had lost his hands attempting to defuse a land mine near a school. The story was pure propaganda. The jihadist was a bomb maker and had lost them in a premature detonation.
He had been an adept Islamic scholar who had studied at Egypt’s prestigious hotbed of Muslim extremism, Al-Azhar University in Cairo. Known only as the “Mufti of Jihad,” his anonymous writings and audio sermons on violent jihad were famous throughout the Muslim world. Until Chase, no Western intelligence service had ever been able to uncover the Mufti of Jihad’s true identity. Aazim had traveled extensively promoting war against the infidels and the West while collecting a full disability pension back in the United Kingdom.
Since no one really knew who he was until Chase discovered him, the man had traveled freely under his real name. Once he disappeared, Chase went back and studied that travel extensively. It wasn’t hard to put together a trail of tickets and every time his U.K. passport had been scanned. It was how he was able to answer Karami’s question. “I saw him about three months ago,” he replied. “Before he left for Chicago.”
“And who was he meeting in Chicago?” asked the leader of the Uppsala cell.
“Marwan Jarrah.”
“And then?”
“And then,” replied Chase, “New York and Los Angeles, but he left for Yemen and I never saw him again.”
Karami studied the young man’s face. There was no way he could know these things unless he was exactly who he said he was. Nevertheless, Sabah distrusted the newcomer, and Sabah had excellent instincts. “Tell me about the Sheikh. The Sheikh from Qatar.”
Sabah seemed interested in this question and leaned forward.
Chase looked at both men. “What Sheikh?”
“Surely,” stated the cell leader, “your uncle confided in you enough to mention the Sheikh.”
“Apparently not completely. He never mentioned any Sheikh.”
“You never questioned where the funding came from?”
“Why would I care? I’m an IT person,” replied Chase. “I had nothing to do with his finances.”
Chase’s mind was moving like a Rubik’s Cube, trying to align the information so that the entire puzzle fell into place. He had never heard about any Sheikh from Qatar. This was completely new to him.
Marwan Jarrah had been near the top of the organization’s pyramid, but Chase had always known he was taking his orders from someone above him. That someone had turned out to be Aazim Aleem. The next question was, who had been giving Aazim orders? Was he the ultimate string-puller, or was there someone else? And what was the Uppsala cell’s connection to all of this?
At least Harvath had played it smart. Had he thrown a hood over the nephew’s head and dragged him off to some black site in Eastern Europe for interrogation the minute they’d uncovered him, instead of surveilling him, the United States might not ever have learned about the Uppsala cell. It had come as a complete surprise even to the real Mansoor Aleem. His uncle Aazim had been smart. The man kept his network compartmentalized. He had to. It was like bulkheads. If one was compromised, it didn’t have to mean the entire ship was going down.
Which brought Chase back to the Uppsala cell. Why had Aazim set it up? What was its purpose? Was it an insurance policy of sorts, a guarantee that if he was taken out, their mission would continue? If so, did that mean he had entrusted them with the knowledge of his nephew? There were so many pieces of the puzzle missing.
As Chase spun the blocks of information in his mind, Karami asked him another question. It put him on edge, because it showed the cell leader was not fully convinced he was who he said he was. “Tell me about your uncle’s impairment.”
“What impairment?” Chase replied. “His hands?”
Karami said nothing. His face was impassive, inscrutable.
“He lost them in Afghanistan,” Chase continued. His gaze was locked on Karami. Just out of his field of view, he could feel Sabah’s eyes burning a hole right through him.
“How did he lose them?” asked the cell leader.
Chase could sense Sabah was ready to handle any incorrect answer. “Do you want the fable?” replied Chase. “Or the truth?”
“As the prophet, peace be upon him, said, we should appropriate truth for ourselves and avoid lying.”
Chase nodded. “It’s a shame, as the fable is much more glamorous. He lost his hands when a bomb he was building detonated prematurely. It also resulted in pitted scars around his left eye. This is why he often wore sunglasses, even in the evenings. People mistook him on occasion for being blind, but he had perfect vision.”
The answer seemed to satisfy Karami, who smiled. He also sensed Sabah relax slightly, but not much.
The cell leader was about to ask another question when one of the cell members appeared in the doorway and asked if the trio would be joining the others for Asr prayers.
“Do you feel up to it?” Karami asked.
“The key of Paradise is prayer,” replied Chase, quoting Mohammed. Apparently the men who had been watching him at the garage had told Karami of his inability to complete the Salah.
The men stood and Chase was directed to a bathroom where he could perform his ritual ablutions. After washing his hands and feet, he joined the others in the apartment’s dining room. There was no furniture, only prayer rugs spaced evenly along the floor.
Once all of the men were present, prayers were begun. Chase had been given an extra rug to use and he went through the motions perfectly. No one would have known that he wasn’t Muslim.
As he prayed, he was able to take a head count of how many men there were in the apartment. He’d also been able to at least glance into all of the rooms. From what he could tell, there were no booby-traps. He didn’t see any explosives or weapons, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t hidden away somewhere. What it did mean, though, was that there weren’t any right at hand. When Harvath and the assault team hit, they would have surprise on their side and therefore the upper hand. That was, if they hit.
Chase had still not had a chance to get to one of the windows to look outside for the car with the book on its dash. He had decided he might only get one chance to get near a window and that if he did, he should kill two birds with one stone. If he did get the opportunity, he’d look for the car while positioning the window treatments so that the team outside would have a rough idea of what was waiting for them when they took down the apartment.
Both while moving through the apartment and while at prayer, Chase kept his eyes peeled for objects he could use as weapons. If Harvath and the assaulters didn’t succeed in locating the safe house, Chase was going to have to either sneak out or fight his way out. With nine men present, Karami probably ran an around-the-clock guard. Chase slowly began preparing himself for what fighting his way out might look like. Once again he reflected on the lessons of Hagakure.
But try as he might, he couldn’t quite focus. Something was bothering him. It took him several minutes to figure it out. There was something missing in the apartment. It wasn’t just weapons that
were absent. It was computers. There wasn’t a single one to be seen. If a raid did take place, they might be able to get to hidden weapons quickly, but computers? Not a chance. Not unless there was a rack of them in one of the closets, all powered up and ready for their hard drives to be wiped clean or blown to kingdom come with the touch of a button.
There weren’t many places they could be hidden. He planned on finding out if there were any here or not.
After prayers, he expected Karami to pick back up with his questioning, but the cell leader apparently had other pressing business and disappeared into one of the rooms along with Sabah and two other men and closed the door. This left Chase free to converse with the remaining cell members. It also left him somewhat free to move about the apartment.
CHAPTER 21
In the first room, Chase found multiple mattresses, only one of which was covered by a sheet. There was a milk crate for a nightstand and atop it a table lamp with an exposed bulb and no shade. A small TV, DVD player, and cushions scattered across the floor completed the makeshift dormitory cum rec room. In the corner he noticed a couple of old hookah pipes.
Sitting on cushions in front of the TV were four cannon-fodder cell members—all mouth breathers, as Chase liked to call the IQ-impaired. They were watching footage of American military vehicles being taken out by IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan. The men found the carnage extremely amusing and were laughing out loud at every explosion.
That’s okay, thought Chase. Yours is coming soon enough. Keep laughing.
Only one of the men looked up and acknowledged that Chase had walked into the room. The cell members seemed to know that he was related to someone important, which meant he was treated with a certain amount of deference. But he was still a newcomer, so despite that deference, they kept him at arm’s length. None of the men invited him to sit.
That was fine by Chase. He had other things on his mind. Pretending to be interested in what they were watching, he made his way across the room. The closet was partially open and he stole a quick glance inside. Nothing. Only shirts, trousers, and a row of cheap shoes.
Stepping near the windows, he stopped and leaned against the wall. The view outside would be perfect—right out over the street.
Minutes passed. The explosions on the TV continued, and the four men guffawed right along with them. The joy they took in the killing and maiming of American soldiers spoke to how incredibly sick they were.
As not one of them had given him as much as a second glance, he decided to risk a look through the blinds, which had been drawn tightly shut.
It took him a moment and at first his heart sank as he thought the car wasn’t there, but then he saw it—book and all. It was like a shot of caffeine being pumped into his bloodstream. Immediately, his heart raced and he could feel a rush sweep through him. Harvath and the rest of the team knew where he was. This jihadist rats’ nest was going to get the shit kicked out of it.
Withdrawing his hand from the aluminum blinds, he forced himself to take a deep breath. Be cool, he told himself just as he had back at the garage. Everything’s cool.
He ran through his head exactly how he needed to construct his signal in order to let Harvath know what was going on inside. He debated whether he should check out the other rooms first. Waiting was a gamble. What if Karami sent for him or Sabah decided he needed to be watched more closely? It definitely was a crapshoot.
Chase decided on the bird in the hand. He’d send the signal now. He could convey the number of men and that he had not seen any booby-traps, weapons, or explosives. The assaulters would still hit the safe house just as hard, expecting all of those things to be there. So, without wasting any more time, Chase got to work.
“What are you doing?” one of the men asked when he heard Chase monkeying around with the blinds.
“I’m opening the window,” he replied in Arabic. “It stinks in here.”
It did in fact smell, quite badly, but the man either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care. “We were told not to go near the windows.”
“I have to get some fresh air,” said Chase.
“It is forbidden.”
Chase signaled to the man not to worry. “It is my decision, brother. I will take the responsibility. Enjoy the television.”
Used to his place at the bottom of the cell’s hierarchy, the man gave up admonishing the newcomer and he and his associates went back to watching war porn.
Chase didn’t waste any time. He lifted two sets of blinds to the same height, about a quarter of the way up. He then adjusted the angle on one set, opened each of the windows differing amounts, and let the string for the blinds hang out the window on the left. With his Bat signal blazing, he grabbed a cushion and sat down with the jihadists to watch TV.
By his estimate, the windows had been open for a little more than ten minutes when Sabah entered the room. “Who touched the windows?” he bellowed in Arabic.
No one answered.
As he repeated his question, he looked directly at Chase. “Who did this?”
“I think the dates don’t agree with my stomach,” said Chase, fanning the air with his hand.
“What’s going on?” said Karami, who suddenly appeared in the doorway.
Sabah gestured toward the windows. “Our guest has been busy creating problems.”
“I wasn’t creating problems,” Chase insisted. “I just opened the window. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal,” said Karami as he walked over to the windows, “is that we have certain rules. One of them is that the windows and blinds must remain closed.”
Chase didn’t like how intently he was studying them. After a moment, he retracted the cord, closed the windows, lowered and shut the blinds.
Turning back to Chase, he said, “The rules were not explained to you, so you will be forgiven your transgression. This time.” Gesturing to Sabah, he signaled for him to follow. At the doorway, he beckoned the Palestinian to lower his head and spoke so that only Sabah could hear.
He removed a pen and a small pad from his pocket. Whether what he did next was to sketch or write something down, Chase couldn’t tell.
When Karami was finished, he tore off the piece of paper and handed it to the Palestinian, who glared at Chase for a moment and left the room.
Karami then said, “I do not wish for any more problems. Is that understood?”
“I just opened the window—” Chase began, but the cell leader silenced him.
“No more problems. None.”
At that moment, Chase heard Sabah bark at one of the other cell members in the hallway. Seconds later, the front door opened and the giant stomped out, slamming the door shut behind.
Chase had no idea if they were on to him or not, but before backing out of the room, Karami forced a smile. It reminded him of the mouth of a shark curling back and revealing its teeth. Every fiber of his being was telling him that he was blown, that he needed to get the hell out of there—now. But he refused to let the fear take hold of him.
Instead, he tried to relax. Everything’s cool, he told himself. Everything’s cool. It was a lie of course, and he knew it, but he kept repeating it anyway. Either way, it was all going to be over soon. He just prayed to God that Harvath had seen his signal.
CHAPTER 22
The apartment buildings up and down both sides of the street were nearly identical. It was only by tracking the signal of the phone Chase had called right after the accident that they were able to pinpoint the exact location of the safe house.
Harvath had spaced the trips past it as far apart as he could. They had rotated half of Schiller’s men through over the last two hours. They were debating whether they should send the car down the street on the next pass, when one of the assaulters came back to the moving truck and said, “We got it.”
Every man who had gone down the street had been carrying the hidden video camera system Riley would have carried in a ruse they had concocted for her had she been able to accompany t
hem. Removing the memory card, Harvath slid it into his computer, pulled up the file, and scrolled through the footage till he got to what they had all been looking for. The resolution of the video of the outside of the safe house was excellent. Freezing the shot he wanted, he zoomed in. There was Chase’s signal. No doubt about it.
They were all gathered in the back of the moving truck and Harvath proceeded to decode his fenestral semaphore for the team.
“So, nine tangos total,” said Schiller, referring to the number of men Chase had signaled were in the apartment. “Plus, no traps, explosives, or weapons.”
“None that we know of,” replied Harvath.
Schiller thought about it for a moment and then began sketching out a plan with his assaulters. There had been a lot of talk in the run-up to the operation about use of force. The CIA wanted as many of the cell members taken alive as possible. Though this technically wasn’t an Agency assignment and they’d deny any knowledge of it if it became public, both Harvath and the Old Man had been inclined to agree with them. There was no telling who was inside, what they knew, or how valuable any of them could be. Having been on the inside, Chase would have a rough idea of the structural hierarchy and would be able to help interrogators separate the wheat from the chaff pretty quickly, which reminded Harvath of something.
He pulled up two photos of Chase on his computer. He didn’t like telling people how to do their job, but he was in charge, and the ultimate responsibility for how things went down rested with him. He showed the photos to the team one last time. They had been taken that morning and showed both a full-length and a tight head-and-shoulders shot of Chase. “Everybody got him committed to memory?”
The team all nodded. “He may still be dressed like this,” continued Harvath, “or they might have made him change clothes. Just remember his face.”
Once again the team nodded as Harvath added, “And don’t forget, you take him down just as hard as you do the others. If you have to Tase him, Tase him. He’s a big boy. He can handle it. The other cell members have to believe he’s one of them. Got it?”