Brad Thor Collectors' Edition #3

by Brad Thor

  Outside the cottage, he cleaned the sand from his feet and then opened the screen door and stepped inside.

  He stripped out of his swimsuit and rinsed off in a hot shower. With his hair slicked back and a towel wrapped around his waist, he retrieved his backpack, a glass, and walked out onto the wraparound veranda.

  He placed everything on the table, sat down, and powered up his satellite phone. As it worked to establish a signal, Dodd opened one of the bottles of Arundel rum he’d bought at the airport in Tortola and poured three fingers into his glass. He and Lisa had gone through at least two bottles of it during their honeymoon.

  The brown liquid burned as it went down and though it had been years since he had had a drink, the taste and the sensation were pleasant and familiar, like coming home.

  His Koran should not have been sitting right there next to a bottle of alcohol. He knew that, just as he knew that he should not begin drinking again. Alcohol had only added to the darkness and despair of losing his wife and son, but here he and his Koran were anyway.

  He had prayed relentlessly for guidance, but none had come. After retrieving the al-Jazari device, he had studied his heart and made his plans accordingly.

  The assassin looked down at the glass in his hand and laughed. Though he was far from soft, he certainly wasn’t exhibiting much self-discipline at the moment.

  Islam was the answer for America. He felt more certain of that than anything else. He was just without any idea of how to bring such a shift about.

  Nevertheless, he knew that Omar with his hate-spewing mosques and Waleed with his laughably corrupt Foundation on American Islamic Relations were all standing in the way of the truly good work Islam could do in America. The two men were not part of the solution. They were abominations and unquestionably part of the problem.

  Dodd poured himself another drink. He sipped slowly at it as he watched the minutes tick away on his watch.

  At the appointed time, he picked up the satellite phone and dialed Sheik Omar’s private number.

  Omar picked up on the first ring. “Is that you, Majd?” he asked.

  “It is I,” said the assassin.

  “Allah be praised. We have been so worried about you since your last call. We barely had any time to speak. Did you find it? The invention of al-Jazari?”

  “I did.”

  “Allahu Akbar, my brother. Allahu Akbar.” The sheik was overjoyed. “Allah’s work—our work is now secure. Allahu Akbar!”

  “Are you at your desk?” asked Dodd.

  “Of course I am. You’ve called me on my private line.”

  “And Abdul is with you?”

  “He is sitting right here,” replied Omar. “Just as you requested. When can you bring us the device?”

  Dodd had no intention of staying on the phone any longer than he needed to. “Stay right there and don’t move,” he said. “I will call you back in thirty seconds.”

  Omar, though frustrated, respected the need for security. What’s more, he was so happy with his assassin that at this point the man could have asked anything of him and he would have gladly obliged. “I understand,” he said. “We will be right here waiting. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar!”

  Dodd hung up with the words Allahu Akbar, God Is Great, ringing in his ears.

  A man of his word, the assassin began dialing the digits almost immediately, except they weren’t for the sheik’s private line. They belonged to a cell phone attached to an improvised explosive device that had been hidden behind Omar’s desk.

  CHAPTER 87

  BITTER END YACHT CLUB

  THE NEXT EVENING

  As the last rays of daylight faded, Scot Harvath watched Matthew Dodd drain the final drops out of the bottle he was drinking and stumble inside his cottage.

  Having watched the man drink himself into a stupor, Harvath liked his odds. It didn’t mean the assassin wasn’t still dangerous, but it did mean his reflexes and his situational awareness would be significantly dulled.

  Harvath put away his binoculars and grabbed his dry bag, grateful to finally be going topside. Though he had rented a sizable sailboat for the operation, being cooped up belowdecks with not much of a breeze for the better part of the afternoon was not his idea of the perfect Caribbean getaway.

  Needless to say, he was here to work, not to play. But a luxury yacht beat any of the snake-, scorpion-, or bug-infested hide sites he’d been forced to endure over the course of his career. Life, especially an enjoyable one, was all about perspective and as Harvath checked the restraints in the cabin he had prepared for Matthew Dodd, he reminded himself of that.

  Darkness was settling in as Harvath stepped outside and took a deep breath. The evening breeze felt great against his sweat-soaked body. Quickly, he wiped himself down with fresh water and then tossed his gear into the Zodiac RIB he’d kept moored on the opposite side of the sailboat.

  After casting off, he started the engine and moved toward shore, the noise from the small outboard engine just one of several that would be making their way in from the deep water harbor to the Bitter End for cocktails and dinner.

  Harvath pulled the boat onto the beach just out of sight of Dodd’s cottage and unloaded his dry bag and a small beach towel. The .40 caliber suppressed Glock 23 he had been issued for this assignment was meant to be a tool of last resort. Plan A was a new waterproof TASER that had been developed for the SEAL teams along with a potent drug cocktail that would keep Dodd sleeping like a baby until Harvath could get him back aboard the sailboat and out into the ocean where he’d be able to start his interrogation.

  As Harvath got closer to the cottage, he stopped to listen for signs of what was going on. The last he had seen of Dodd, the rogue CIA operative had come back onto his veranda with another bottle and had round two of the drinking Olympics well under way.

  Keep going, my friend, Harvath had thought to himself. You’re only making it easier.

  The cottages were built on stilts with wooden staircases on each side of the verandas. Based on how Dodd had positioned himself to look out over the harbor, Harvath decided to come up the south set of stairs and hit him from behind.

  Stopping once more at the bottom of Dodd’s staircase, Harvath listened. There was the sound of glass on glass as Dodd poured another drink and then silence.

  With the beach towel over his arm and the Glock hidden beneath, Harvath crept soundlessly up the sun-bleached stairs of the cottage.

  When he stepped onto the veranda he moved to the wall and kept himself pressed up against it as he continued forward.

  He reached the first set of windows, their sheer curtains moving in and out with the breeze. Looking through the bedroom, Harvath could see Dodd’s outline through the open doors on the other side silhouetted by the faint glow of light from the harbor.

  The assassin’s back was to him. It was time.

  Harvath ducked beneath the windows and stood up on the other side. At the corner of the cottage, he listened and with nothing changed, he raised his weapon and stepped out directly behind Dodd.

  As he did, Dodd shot out of his chair and leapt to his feet, but the reaction had nothing to do with Harvath.

  CHAPTER 88

  Harvath was surprised to see one of the Defense Department’s highest-ranking officials, Imad Ramadan, standing at the other end of the veranda with a suppressed SIG Sauer pistol in his hand.

  He was a balding, barrel-chested man of average height in his mid-fifties with a thick gray goatee and dark eyes.

  “You’re a long way from D.C., Imad,” said Harvath, his Glock up and at the ready.

  Upon hearing the voice from behind, Dodd spun to see who it was and almost lost his balance. He had to reach out and grab the table to keep from falling over. Even then, he was so drunk he couldn’t stop swaying.

  “Whoever you are,” said Ramadan, “none of this concerns you.”

  “Why? Is this an official Defense Department matter now?” asked Harvath as he adjusted his aim. The levels
of government the Islamists had been able to infiltrate and the degree to which they were working together was astounding. Nevertheless, Harvath had no reservations about killing him if he had to. The Navy would probably even give him a medal for it.

  “I’m going to guess,” continued Harvath when Ramadan didn’t answer, “that the Defense Department has no idea you’re here. Somehow you wormed your way into the loop and were able to access Mr. Dodd’s classified whereabouts. So where does the defense secretary think you are? Sick day?”

  “Shut up,” replied Ramadan.

  To his list of unsavory accomplishments as an Islamist apologist and enabler whose loyalty was to Islam above all else, the United States could now add traitor. Harvath wanted to choke the man with his bare hands.

  Looking at Dodd, Harvath saw that he was still swaying slightly from side to side. “What happened to the device you took from us at Poplar Forest?” he asked.

  Dodd was silent for a moment. Finally, he slurred, “I took care of it.”

  “What do you mean?” demanded Ramadan.

  “I did what was right.”

  “Right for whom?”

  “Right for my religion.”

  “Your religion,” exclaimed Ramadan. “What are you talking about?”

  “What did you do with it?” interjected Harvath, who knew all too well that this was not the right way to conduct an interrogation. “Where is it?”

  “Who cares where?” Dodd slurred.

  More people than you can possibly imagine, thought Harvath, but he didn’t want to get into that argument. What he wanted were answers, and so he changed tack. “What about the Don Quixote and everything else you took from my house?”

  “It’s all gone.”

  That was exactly what the president had been afraid of and if the truth be told, so had he. There was zero incentive for Dodd and his extremist cohorts to hold on to any of the materials that so threatened them. All the same, Harvath needed to be absolutely certain the assassin was telling the truth and for that he needed Dodd all to himself, someplace quiet, preferably out in open water on his sailboat. First, though, he had to deal with Ramadan. “Put your weapon down, Imad,” he ordered. “Right now.”

  The Pentagon official ignored him. Instead he asked Dodd, “Are you aware that Sheik Omar and Abdul Waleed were killed in an explosion yesterday?”

  “Yes,” mumbled Dodd, his eyes glassy.

  “I thought so,” replied Ramadan as he tightened his grip on his pistol.

  “Imad, I’m not going to give you another warning,” said Harvath. “Drop your weapon or I’m going to drop you.”

  Again, Ramadan ignored him and posed another question to Dodd, this time using his Muslim name. “Majd,” he said, softer, as if addressing a small child, “has the al-Jazari device been disposed of properly?”

  Harvath watched as Dodd’s swaying grew worse. His lips were moving, but no sound was coming out. Though the swaying was due in large part to the amount of alcohol he had consumed, there was an additional reason for it.

  Many Muslims rocked back and forth during their prayers. Harvath had seen it again and again in mosques and also with suicide bombers right before they blew themselves up.

  Harvath refocused on Ramadan. “How did you know about the al-Jazari device? What’s your connection to all of this?”

  “Do you think Sheik Omar and Abdul Waleed were just two men working all alone? This is much bigger than you will ever know.”

  Harvath didn’t doubt that, but his attention was focused on Ramadan’s eyes. They had changed and his expression had become more resolute. He was going to kill Dodd even if it meant he would be killed as a result. Harvath could feel it. He had no choice but to act.

  Harvath began applying pressure to his trigger just as Dodd rocked backward once more and suddenly came forward in an explosion of movement. He threw the wooden table in front of him into the air.

  Ramadan was barely able to get a shot off before Dodd and the table were on top of him.

  Harvath fired as well, but it was too late. Dodd was dead. A single round from Ramadan’s weapon had drilled through his nose and out the back of his head. Harvath’s shot had been equally well placed. Imad Ramadan’s lifeless body lay on the veranda, the weathered floorboards turning bright red with his blood.

  CHAPTER 89

  ST. MARTIN

  It took Harvath less than a day to sail from the Bitter End to St. Martin—the nearest overseas administrative division of France. En route, he contacted the president to give him a full debriefing on everything that had happened and to strategize what their next course of action should be. Like it or not, and neither Harvath nor the president did, the al-Jazari device and all of the promise it contained was lost. They needed to focus on moving forward.

  Though Rutledge didn’t expressly request the disposal of Ramadan’s body, Harvath knew how to read between the lines. The president didn’t want what little time remained in his administration to be taken up by a scandal. The Pentagon official was a traitor to his country, and now he was dead. As far as the president and Harvath were concerned, justice had been served.

  Harvath thought it a fitting end that Imad Ramadan should go the way of the al-Jazari device, though he doubted the device had been torn apart by Caribbean reef sharks.

  When Harvath arrived in St. Martin, his contact from France’s Direction de al Surveillance du Territoire, also known as the DST, which was the counterintelligence/counterterrorism branch of the French national police, was extremely unhappy at being presented with the dead body of Matthew Dodd.

  After the Paris bombing and the killing of three French national police officers, the French were justifiably out for blood.

  The DST operative, a rather intense man about Harvath’s age, asked how the hell they were supposed to put a corpse on trial. Harvath appreciated his anger and held his own in check in order to not make things worse.

  He knew it looked bad. Dead men tell no tales, and this American ex–CIA operative had been whacked by Americans before being turned over to the French. The DST man had every reason to be suspicious.

  The man’s anger continued to build. Not only did this put their whole agreement in jeopardy, but maybe he was going to have to take Harvath into custody as well too. He wasn’t shy about revealing the fact that he was armed. So was Harvath, but he kept that to himself.

  Harvath offered the man the only other thing he had. Through avenues the CIA wouldn’t divulge, and which Harvath assumed was code for Aydin Ozbek’s off-the-books operation, they had managed to acquire a list of the Muslim extremists Dodd had worked with on the car bombing in Paris.

  The DST operative asked if his agency could have a clean exclusive on the list, meaning it could take full credit for developing the names on the list and trust that the CIA would stay quiet. Harvath assured him they would. That left only one problem.

  The Frenchman sitting aboard Harvath’s boat had been assigned the job of personally telephoning the president of France once he had Dodd in his custody. The fact that Dodd was dead, and had been killed by the Americans no less, would not go over well. It quickly became apparent that his biggest concern was the French president’s reputation for shooting his messengers.

  Harvath reached below the bunk Dodd’s corpse was lying on and withdrew Imad Ramadan’s pistol. Handing it to the DST operative, Harvath said, “If you hadn’t reacted so quickly, he would have killed us both,” and fell silent.

  The intelligence agent processed the angles. “I’m going to need to make a couple of phone calls,” he said, “but I believe we may be able to work this out.”

  Harvath could see the wheels turning in his mind as he ran through the list of people he would invite to his Legion of Honor ceremony.

  They met forty-five minutes later at a nearby beach where Harvath quietly brought the body ashore and helped load it into the intelligence agent’s trunk.

  As the man prepared to leave, Harvath put his hand on his car d
oor and said, “There’s one other thing I’m going to need.”

  “It’s her,” said Harvath as Tracy Hastings climbed out of the DST operative’s car and began walking down the dock. It was the second delivery the DST agent had made that day.

  Thanking the president, Harvath disconnected the call and set the encrypted satellite phone down.

  Hopping onto the pier, he made a beeline straight for her. Despite everything that had happened, she had a smile on her face that cut right through him. She was still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

  Chucking decorum, Harvath ran for her.

  When they met halfway in the middle of the dock, they wrapped their arms around each other so tightly, he was afraid he was going to crush the air from her lungs.

  “Don’t ever leave me like that again,” he said.

  Tracy untangled her arms and reached up to hold Scot’s face with both of her hands. “I love you,” she said.

  “I love you too,” he replied. “But don’t ever—”

  Tracy kissed him before he could finish his sentence.

  Finally, Harvath broke their embrace and asked, “How are you feeling? Are you okay? The flight was all right?”

  “The flight was fine,” said Tracy. “I’m fine. The swelling is all gone. I’m just supposed to watch my stress.”

  Harvath smiled and hugged her again. “Do you think you can handle being out on the water?”

  “What kind of question is that to ask a United States Naval officer?”

  “The S.S. Harvath is a tight ship,” he replied. “I’m very picky about my crew. I only sail with the best.”

  Tracy laughed and conspiratorially looked over both shoulders. “I don’t exactly see people lining up for the job.”

  “Actually,” said Harvath, “the rest of the crew is already aboard.”

  “The rest of the crew?”

  Turning around to face the boat, Harvath placed two fingers in his mouth and whistled.