Path of the Assassin

by Brad Thor

Meg Cassidy’s will to live was proving even stronger than her fear of reliving her worst nightmare. Without consciously knowing why, she placed one foot in front of the other as she and the hijacker climbed the stairs and finally found themselves alone in the upper-deck lounge.

  The man sheathed his blade, but not before warning Meg in his thickly accented English what he would do with it if she cried out or made any trouble. He then wrenched her arm in a quick and painful twist to further make his point. A slight cry, more out of fear than pain, escaped her lips even though she fought to hold it back. She didn’t want to give this bastard the satisfaction.

  The man ran his hands over her body once again, appraising it, before pushing her down onto the floor. He hesitated a moment, then reached up and removed the ski mask from his head.

  My God, Meg thought to herself as she looked at his face. She knew that the man had remained disguised so that no one would be able to identify him. Removing his mask in front of her left no room to doubt that once he had had his way with her, he was going to kill her.

  As the man tore off her jacket and ran his hands over her breasts, Meg tried to struggle, but the man struck her again. Blood began to pour from her mouth. He had her outweighed and pinned to the floor of the lounge. Her eyes frantically scanned the area around her for anything that might help. All she saw were drink stirs, peanuts, and crumpled United cocktail napkins scattered across the floor. There was nothing she saw that could help her.

  Again she struggled, this time trying to bite her attacker’s wrist. The attempt was met with the loud slap and numbing sting of the man’s hand once more striking her face. In a flash, he had his long blade unsheathed and placed under her chin with the tip resting behind her ear.

  “If you resist me further, I will cut your throat. Do you understand me?” he said.

  Meg responded by spitting in his face.

  The man lifted the blade ever so slightly away from Meg’s throat and swung his other hand, which he’d balled into a heavy fist, in a swift arc. He delivered a searing blow to Meg’s abdomen, knocking the wind out of her. She heaved and gasped for air. She could tell he enjoyed watching her writhe beneath him. As he moved the tip of his knife blade toward the button on Meg’s pants, there was a sudden shattering noise from the other end of the lounge.

  The hijacker spun just in time to see Mayor Fellinger’s second bodyguard, who had been handcuffed and locked in one of the upper-deck lavatories, barreling down on top of him. With his wrists secured behind him, the best weapon the guard had was his massive square shoulders. Tucking his chin in to the left, he led with his right shoulder and rammed it into the hijacker. As he did, the cold steel of the man’s blade sliced deep into the guard’s stomach and flayed him open to the sternum.

  Meg, whose breath had just barely returned, knew this was her only chance. While the hijacker struggled to get out from underneath the dying weight of the bodyguard, she frantically looked around again for some sort of a weapon. There was nothing. The only thing she had were her bare hands. Primal instinct took over. Her long nailed fingers immediately curled into talons and she leapt for the hijacker. Just as she was about to close in on his throat, the butt of his pistol, protruding from his jumpsuit, caught her eye.

  The hijacker must have sensed what Meg had seen because he stopped trying to get out from under the dead bodyguard long enough to grab her wrist as she lunged for the gun. She managed to slip the man’s grasp and grabbed his gun. She pointed it at him and felt her hand tighten around the weapon’s grip. She found herself shaking with rage and fought to get control of herself. Though she tried to ease up on the trigger, her finger tightened upon it still further. There was a loud burst of fire followed immediately by another.

  It amazed her that a silenced pistol would make so much noise. Just downstairs, when the hijacker had shot Bernard Walsh, the weapon had made nothing more than the sound of two muffled spits. It was then that Meg realized her pistol hadn’t even so much as twitched and that the shots she heard hadn’t come from the weapon she was holding.

  Meg spun just in time to see two hijackers who had mounted the stairs to the upper-deck lounge quickly closing the gap with her. She hit the deck and, remembering what she had been taught by her father, aimed and fired at each man. She watched as they fell to the floor and came to a sliding stop only feet away.

  Meg knew that she needed to make sure that they were not just playing dead. As she rose to her feet and was about to make her way over to the fallen hijackers, she felt a searing pain across her ankle. Looking down, she saw her would-be rapist was still alive and moved back before he could swing at her again with his deadly blade.

  The man had almost freed himself from beneath the enormous bodyguard. He was going to kill her. She was certain of it. Without a moment’s hesitation, she raised the pistol and shot him in the head. As he slumped back to the floor, the blade tumbled from his hand.

  Meg examined the wound on her on ankle. The cut was bad, but could have been much worse. She needed to stem the flow of blood, and though she was loath to do it, she reached for the hijacker’s ski mask and used his knife to rip part of it into a makeshift bandage, which she tied tightly around her ankle. She knew there was no time to rest. She could hear the dead hijackers’ radios crackling with calls in what she assumed was Arabic, probably instructing the men to report on the cause of the gunshots. Though the weapon Meg carried was silenced, the weapons carried by the men shooting at her were not.

  She stole a glance behind where she had been standing and saw that the hijackers’ shots had not been as wildly placed as she had thought. They had blown out two of the windows on the left-hand side of the aircraft, and from what Meg could see, the remaining shots had just narrowly missed hitting her. Maybe Judy was somehow watching out for her, after all, or maybe, just maybe, her father really had taught her “everything” he knew about shooting.

  “We’re not done yet,” Meg said half to herself as the smell of gunpowder hung in the quiet air of the upper deck. She knew that the decisions she made in the next seconds would undoubtedly mean the difference between life and death not only for her, but for the entire crew and passengers as well.

  Carefully, Meg removed two Italian-made, nine-millimeter Beretta model 12S submachine guns from the dead hijackers.

  She slung both over her shoulder and, with the silenced pistol carefully gripped in both hands, crept toward the stairwell. Before she could get there, another hijacker emerged from it halfway up. Meg crouched in the ready position, and when he made it to the top of the stairs, she hit him with two shots to the chest. Despite the adrenaline, or maybe because of it, she was dead-on accurate.

  As the hijacker fell to the floor, he came dangerously close to sliding backward and falling down the stairs. Meg ran to him and caught him by his collar just in time. The last thing she wanted to do was tip off his friends that she was coming, and bringing hell with her.

  Slinging the third hijacker’s weapon over her shoulder, she now felt as if she weighed a thousand pounds. Stepping around the dead man’s body, she slowly made her way down the stairs. Meg swept her pistol from side to side, just as she had been taught, alert for any movement. It’s only a matter of time, she told herself. Be ready.

  By the time she hit the bottom step, Meg knew what her next move would be. Both Mayor Fellinger and United CEO Bob Lawrence were ex-military. If anyone could make a difference here, it was them. Based on the men she had killed upstairs and what she had observed during the hijacking, Meg figured there were at least two hijackers left in business class and two more in first.

  With her pistol at the ready, she swung out from the stairway into the aisle on the port side of the aircraft. No more than five feet away was one of the hijackers guarding the business-class passengers. He saw Meg and was quick in raising his weapon, but not quick enough. Meg hit the man with a shot in the throat, and he fell in a heap on top of the body of Bernard Walsh. In a flash, a nearby passenger, whom Meg recognized
as Dan LeHay from United’s ad agency, stripped the newly departed hijacker of his weapon. Meg instructed him to proceed parallel with her up the opposite aisle toward first class. She told him not to shoot unless absolutely necessary. If there was any shooting to be done, she wanted to do it with the silenced pistol.

  Another passenger quickly offered his services, and Meg instructed him to watch their backs as she unslung one of the submachine guns and handed it to him. There was no way for her to know how many hijackers were in the rear of the plane.

  Meg and Dan Lehay made their way toward the front of the plane. From across the forward business-class cabin, the remaining hijacker guarding the business class passengers saw Dan coming and raised his weapon. Before Meg could take a shot, three sharply dressed passengers in blue blazers with University of Southern California and American flag lapel pins took advantage of the distraction and leapt from their seats. As quietly as they could, the USC men beat the crap out of the hijacker.

  Meg quickly moved into the center aisle and called Dan Lehay over to her. “From what I can guess, there’s no more than two of them guarding first class. We need to get up there and arm the mayor and Bob Lawrence. If you can distract them, I think I can take both of them out.”

  “Are you that good a shot?” he asked.

  “For all of our sakes, I’d better be.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “First, we’re going to pass your weapon up to those guys in the blue blazers. I’m sure one of them will be able to handle it. You’ll then walk up your aisle to first class and walk directly in. Hopefully that will confuse the hijackers and that’s when I’ll do my thing.”

  “That’s it?” asked Lehay.

  “That’s it. But don’t just stand there. Act lost or sick or something. Do whatever you can to help confuse them. When I start firing, get down on the ground.”

  “Try to shoot straight, okay?” said Dan Lehay as he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and walked past the galley and into the first-class cabin, praying the entire way that Meg Cassidy would be able to pull it off.

  The minute he entered first class, both of the hijackers snapped to. At least there were only two of them. So far Meg was batting a thousand.

  The hijackers told him to put his hands up.

  “What you do here?” one of them asked in broken English.

  “Ah, well, you see,” replied Lehay, trying to mask his fear and grasping in his mind for something, anything, to say to distract the hijackers. “We’re all out of Colombian coffee back in business class and—”

  Colombian Coffee? The two hijackers couldn’t understand what they were hearing. They turned to look at each other, and that was when Meg sprang from the opposite aisle. Her first shot went wide, but she ran straight at them and kept pulling the trigger until both men were lying on the floor in a pool of blood. Once again, the passengers began screaming.

  Quickly she made her way to the mayor and Bob Lawrence. Meg recounted what had happened as she handed over the two submachine guns she had slung over her shoulder. As she was finishing her story, Dan Lehay appeared, armed to the teeth like a Mexican bandido.

  Meg told Lehay to watch the aisle and turned back to the mayor and Bob Lawrence. “Any ideas?” she asked.

  “First and foremost,” said Lawrence, “we have to see to the safety of the passengers on this plane.”

  “I agree,” said the mayor, “but let’s keep in mind one thing. The only language these people understand is”—he paused as he pulled the slide back on his submachine gun—“nine-millimeter.”

  Before anyone could respond, an enormous explosion rocked the back of the plane and was followed immediately by automatic-weapons fire.

  21

  When Harvath and the CIA SAS team landed at the old Cairo airport, it took them only fifteen minutes to unload their weapons pallets from the cargo hold of the United 747-400. Morrell had anticipated every eventuality. In addition to the standard equipment the team would need for the takedown of the hijacked aircraft, the pallets also contained a host of concealable gear they could use, on the off chance the hijackers changed their minds and allowed a maintenance crew on board to service and restock the plane.

  One of Harvath’s favorite “sneaky” weapons was the extremely short H&K MP5K submachine gun covertly mounted in a toolbox, which could be fired via a button on the toolbox’s handle. He had used one years ago in Turkey, where a prominent American businessman and his family had been taken hostage. In this instance he’d had the weapon mounted inside a briefcase, and when he showed up for the exchange, all of the kidnappers thought he was carrying the ransom money. Their expressions of shock and surprise barely registered on Harvath as he took out every last one of them. They never saw it coming. When the rest of Harvath’s team stormed the building, there was nothing left for them to do but help escort the businessman and his family safely back to the U.S. Embassy.

  After strapping on his body armor, Harvath stuffed every pocket he had with extra clips of ammunition. The CIA had spared no expense. Not only were the weapons top-of-the-line, but so was the tactical gear. All of it had come from BlackHawk Industries out of Norfolk, Virginia. Harvath placed several flash bangs into a hip pouch, then wrapped the support strap of his low-slung black nylon assault holster around his right thigh. He glanced around at the SAS team, all dressed in Delta Force’s black, fire-retardant Nomex fatigue uniforms, as he was, and knew he was going to have to watch his own back when the takedown took place. None of these guys were going to take care of him. That was fine by Harvath, because as far as he was concerned, not only could he outshoot and outmaneuver all of them, he could also outthink them.

  Harvath did one last check of his equipment. Though the locked and cocked H&K USP pistol at his side was an excellent backup, the hope was that any shooting would be done quickly with his MP5. Transitioning weapons mid-assault normally meant things were not going well. To that end, he used a magazine “doubler” for the MP5 to secure two thirty-round magazines together for fast and easy changes. He checked the submachine gun’s laser sight and then bent down to strap on his kneepads.

  Though Morrell had said not to bring anything with him at all, Harvath still brought along his favorite combat folding knife—a Benchmade 9050 automatic.

  The stainless steel blade featured a razor-sharp edge and a needle-sharp point that swung into place with the push of a button. Harvath had no idea whether he would need it, but he felt good just knowing he had it with him. He clipped the knife into a vest pocket and realized that it also felt good knowing he had found a way to disobey one of Morrell’s direct orders.

  As it closed low and fast, Harvath could make out the distinct rotor noise of a MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. The men gathered their gear and made their way to where the helicopter was preparing to land. Within three minutes of touching down, the Black Hawk was loaded and once again airborne, rushing Harvath and the SAS team the twenty-five miles to the new Mubarak International Airport.

  Through the open side doors of the darkened Black Hawk, Harvath could taste the dry desert air. He slipped on his night-vision goggles, often called NODs—short for Night Optical Devices—and watched through glowing green lenses Cairo’s chaotic jumble of decrepit mud dwellings and crisp modern buildings slip rapidly beneath them as they sped through the night sky. In a matter of minutes, it would be show time. Scot felt the familiar quickening of his pulse and tightening of his muscles. He was like a racehorse chomping at the bit, ready to explode from the gate.

  Scot, like everyone else, tuned his Motorola to the same encrypted frequency and listened via his headset as the Delta Force commander sitting next to Morrell relayed the codes and radio frequencies that were being used for the operation. He did one last check of his gear as the Black Hawk flared and came in for a landing on the far side of Cairo’s new international airport. The helicopter had covered the twenty-five-mile distance from airport to airport in just over ten minutes.

&n
bsp; A group of Suburbans sped across the tarmac toward the Black Hawk and pulled up as the team was unloading the last of their equipment. The gear was quickly transferred to the oversized black SUVs, and the men grabbed whatever seats they could find. Harvath recognized a Delta Force operative behind the wheel of one of the Suburbans and jumped in the passenger seat next to him. The man was a no-BS guy from Brooklyn who had a gift for getting to the point. He was also an incredible shot. Everyone referred to him as Bullet Bob. Scot knew him from Delta’s Special Operations Training facility at Fort Bragg.

  “Harvath? What the hell are you doing here?” asked the man, surprised to see him.

  “I’ve crossed over to the dark side, Bobby,” said Harvath in an exaggerated, monster theater voice as the Suburban raced toward the terminal.

  “So, you’re doing black ops for the CIA now? What the hell happened to the Secret Service?”

  “I’m still Secret Service, but these CIA guys are so fucked up, I got asked to come along and give them some pointers.”

  “Well, if you came to give them tips on killing, you’re going to be preaching to the choir.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of. This group is very ‘Tango’centric. There’s no question that the passengers in this op are not a priority for them. Where are we going to be?” asked Harvath.

  “We’re actually in the terminal—at the EgyptAir clubroom, a few gates down from where the plane is.”

  “Isn’t that a little dangerous?”

  “It depends on what your definition of ‘dangerous’ is. It gives us perfect access. All of the windows in the airport are reflective, like those two-way mirrors in interrogation rooms. We can see them, but they can’t see us. If they take a pot shot and hit anything, it’d only be through sheer luck.”

  As they neared the terminal and began to slow down, Bob spoke again. “Well, here we are, Mubarak International.”

  Harvath looked up at the immense white marble structure rising out of the desert sand and hoped that it wouldn’t be covered in blood come morning.