Brad Thor

by The Apostle

  Harvath strained his ears once more. “There are definitely people still alive out there. I’m hearing voices just north of us.”

  “Roger that,” said Fontaine as he went back to communicating with Captain West’s combat controller over the radio. He repeated that they had “danger close” and that the Spectre crew was clear to use their own night vision to engage any targets outside the mud brick building with the IR strobes atop.

  Fontaine then turned back and said, “Thirty seconds.”

  Harvath instructed everyone to take cover again and crawled away from the window.

  When Flash 22 reengaged, they did so once again with a vengeance from their Bofors.

  After the Spectre ceased firing, Harvath retook his post at the window. He couldn’t hear or see anything moving outside. Fontaine spoke with the Canadian combat controller again and then joined him.

  “Flash 22 says we’re the only thing they can still see moving, but they’re going to remain on station for us,” he said.

  “Good. How about that helicopter?” asked Harvath.

  “West’s team is en route. ETA is less than five minutes. They’ll have the LZ secured and the helo will be on the ground by the time we get to the bottom of the road. They’re sending two LAVs up to meet us.”

  “With their medic, right?”

  “That’s affirmative,” replied Fontaine.

  Harvath looked at Gallagher and said, “Are you ready to rock and roll, buddy?”

  Baba G attempted a smile and flashed Harvath a halfhearted thumbs-up. Raising his arm caused him to start coughing pink froth again. They didn’t have a lot of time, and while Harvath didn’t like the idea of moving him, he liked the idea of wasting what little time Gallagher might have even less.

  With Harvath covering him, Daoud crept out the back of the mud hut and retrieved the weapons of the two Taliban Gallagher had killed.

  There was no comfortable way to carry Gallagher with his collapsed lung. All they could do for him was to try to get him back up to the road as quickly and as safely as possible. Harvath opted for the superman carry again, but this time, instead of Fontaine manning Baba G’s right arm, Fayaz insisted it be him. He considered it an honor.

  Harvath nodded, and he and Fontaine switched places. While not exceptionally fast, Harvath figured the old man was probably up to the task. And, for the little amount of speed they were giving up, they were gaining a lot more security. Having Fontaine free to accurately fire one of the AKs Daoud had just retrieved instead of relying on his pistol while carrying Gallagher would make a big difference.

  Removing his knife, Harvath cut two strips of fabric from Asadoulah’s patoo. He then retrieved the two IR strobes and secured one to Baba G and the other to Daoud. He wanted everyone, especially the Canadian troops and the American Air Force crew of Flash 22, to be able to see their party through their night vision devices and know that these were the good guys.

  Once everyone was ready, Fontaine radioed the Canadian combat controller that they were about to move and then Harvath gave the actual command to move out.

  Five meters outside the mud hut, the carnage was instantly evident. Dead Taliban were everywhere. Had Flash 22 taken even a few seconds more to get there, Harvath and his team would have been totally overrun.

  As they moved toward the road, Harvath reminded himself to scan and breathe, scan and breathe. Though he found it difficult to imagine that anyone could have survived two passes by the Spectre, it wasn’t impossible.

  When they finally reached the road, the scent of burnt flesh and scorched earth was replaced by the smell of the exploded vehicles. The noxious black smoke, a stomach-churning mixture of charred metal, flaming tires, and burning gasoline, was carried on the wind to the place where they now took cover.

  “How far out is West?” asked Harvath, as he tried to help position Gallagher so he didn’t have to breathe the fumes.

  Fontaine spoke into his radio and replied, “They’ve got two LAVs securing the LZ and the other two coming up the road right now.”

  Harvath collected both IR strobes and used one to mark their exact position; he crept out from behind their cover and placed the second in the middle of the road.

  Less than a minute later, he heard the roar of the enormous Canadian LAVs as they thundered up the road.

  All of West’s men were switched on and ready to fight. The LAV gunners watched for any sign of movement, while the rest of the soldiers poured out onto the road and took up defensive firing positions.

  A stretcher was rushed over and Gallagher was placed upon it. Immediately, the medic went to work assessing his injuries. He then took his vitals while another Canadian soldier started an IV.

  The medic studied the makeshift tourniquet and, as it was doing its job, decided to leave it in place. He then turned his attention to Baba G’s other wound.

  Cutting away Gallagher’s jacket and tunic, they then removed his armor and the medic cut through his T-shirt beneath, fully exposing Baba G’s left side. Though his pulse was thready, the medic gave him a couple of cc’s of morphine anyway and then applied a topical anesthetic to the space between his ribs where he was going to need to open him up.

  “This is going to hurt,” he said to the Marine, and then asked Harvath and Fontaine as well as two other Canadian soldiers to help hold him down.

  When the medic used the scalpel to slice between Gallagher’s second and third ribs, the man’s body seized. He was on minimal morphine, and though the procedure was incredibly painful, he didn’t cry out.

  The medic worked quickly, inserting the chest tube and feeding it into Gallagher’s collapsed lung. As soon as the tube was in place, the medic began his “9 Line” medevac procedure, calling out the patient details to a radio operator, who fed them to the inbound helicopter pilots over the medical freq and told them everything they needed to know about their landing zone, as well as the patient they were going to be transporting.

  Once the medic had Gallagher’s lung reinflated, he informed his superior that they were ready to move the patient.

  The LAVs were an extremely tight squeeze, but they managed to get everyone inside and once the hatches were closed, they took off for the landing zone at the bottom of the road.

  Sitting atop a marker panel with twin door gunners, the two other Canadian LAVs and the balance of Captain West’s team for added security, was a UH-60Q Black Hawk. Its rotors were hot and its crew ready to transport Gallagher to the trauma bay of the Craig Joint-Theater Hospital at Bagram Air Base.

  Fontaine and Harvath helped load Gallagher aboard the bird. As they did, Baba G opened his mouth and tried to speak. Harvath had trouble hearing him over the roar of the helicopter blades chopping up the night air. He bent down so his ear was just above the man’s mouth.

  “Get Asadoulah back to his village. Fayaz too,” said Gallagher.

  “I will,” said Harvath as he took his friend’s hand and gave it a squeeze.

  Baba G squeezed back and added, “Don’t be a cowboy. If you can’t get Gallo out safely, make the trade.”

  “Sir,” interrupted the flight medic, addressing Harvath. “We need to get going.”

  Harvath let go of Gallagher’s hand and said to the medic, “You take care of him.”

  “Will do, sir,” said the man.

  Harvath flashed Gallagher a final thumbs-up and stepped away from the chopper.

  Joining Fontaine near one of the Canadian LAVs, he watched as the Black Hawk medevac lifted off and headed toward Bagram. They never saw anyone else from the village. No matter how honorable its inhabitants were, they all knew better than to involve themselves in a Taliban firefight.

  Once the chopper was clear, Captain West approached and, pointing at Harvath and Fontaine, said, “I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but unless you two have a phone number for a Taliban taxi service, you’d better start talking or I’m going to leave both of your asses right here.”

  CHAPTER 50

 
WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Elise Campbell had several pieces of the puzzle, but no matter how she spun them, she still couldn’t get them to fit together.

  The night Nikki Hale died, she might or might not have been drinking with the president. Whatever the case, when she left, according to Max Holland, she didn’t appear drunk. Todd Hutchinson was the next to see her, and he claimed the same thing. She might have been a little flushed when she left, but she didn’t tumble down the stairs or weave on her way out the door, so according to him, he had no way of knowing if she was drunk. This despite the fact that she had apparently been drinking with the first lady.

  But the most inexplicable pieces of the puzzle were Porter’s accusation that Hutchinson and Hale had something going on between them and the fact that Hutchinson had looked Elise right in the face and lied to her. She was certain of it. Those microexpressions hadn’t been a figment of her imagination.

  Porter claimed to have seen them groping each other by the garage that night, just as Nikki Hale was leaving. He’d also seen them exchange a very intense kiss. Setting aside the fact that such behavior from a Secret Service agent, especially while on duty, was incredibly unprofessional, if Porter was telling the truth, then Hutchinson had to have known how wasted she was. Even so, he still let her go that night. Why?

  And what was the president’s role in all of this? What had he done that Stephanie Gallo could threaten to bring down his presidency with?

  Somehow, he had not been honest about the events of that night. Elise had hoped she could ferret out the information from witness statements in the police reports, but with Hale dead, none had been taken.

  Elise’s attention then shifted to the people who could fill in the blanks. As she couldn’t directly confront the president, she had approached Max, and he had pointed her toward Hutch, and because of that, another piece of the puzzle had been set on the table by Matt Porter.

  Still, Elise’s intuition kept drawing her back to the president. Gallo had accused him of being involved in Nikki Hale’s death and participating in a cover-up. A cover-up by definition was an attempt to obscure or divert attention from the facts. In the absence of any statements made to the police, there was only one other way Elise could imagine the president might have attempted to conceal what had happened that night.

  A forty-five-minute meeting with Nikki Hale, regardless of what they had been doing and even if they had been drinking, would not be enough to lose Alden the presidency. And as damaging as an affair’s becoming public might be, it wouldn’t be enough to force him from office. To lose the presidency, a crime would have to have been committed, and even then, it might not be enough to completely shove him out. For that to happen, the crime would have to be so scandalous that even someone as masterful with the press as Alden was couldn’t spin it.

  But Elise Campbell still believed that President Alden was a good man. Despite what people wanted to pin on him and the aspersions they loved to cast, having an attractive woman in charge of your Internet campaign wasn’t a crime, nor was having a beautiful and powerful donor cum media ally. Just because he had working relationships with attractive women didn’t mean he was sleeping with them.

  Elise looked down at the telephone number Christine De Palma had texted her from East Hampton. Along with it was a five-word message; He’s waiting for your call.

  Highlighting the digits, Campbell selected the option to dial and waited. Three rings later, Herb Coleman answered the phone at his home in Naples, Florida.

  “Mr. Coleman, this is Elise Campbell. Christine De Palma told you I would be calling?”

  “Yes, she did,” said Herb Coleman. He had a calm and relaxing voice. “I’d ask you what I can do for you, but Chris already explained everything to me.”

  “I want to make sure that you also know that this is all off the record and you are under no obligation to speak with me.”

  “But you’re operating within your capacity as a Secret Service agent, so this is somewhat official, isn’t it?”

  Elise took a deep breath. “Mr. Coleman, I wouldn’t blame you if you hung up on me right now. Ms. De Palma was very clear that your settlement agreement with Mrs. Gallo and President Ald—”

  “Senator Alden,” corrected Coleman. “He wasn’t president yet when all of this happened.”

  “Correct. He was not yet president when this happened. Nevertheless, as part of your settlement you’re required not to talk about the case in any way.”

  “Agent Campbell, I’m not going to the papers with any of this, and from what I understand, you’ve got your own reasons for playing things pretty close to the vest. Alden was under oath when he responded to those interrogatories at the beginning of our lawsuit against him. If he lied in any of them, then that’s a felony. That’s pretty damn serious. But from a court of public appearance perspective, it’ll be a supernova if he did so to cover up what happened that night to our son, our daughter-in-law, and our two little grandchildren.”

  “So you’re prepared to read me the president’s answers to your interrogatories?”

  “I am,” said Herb Coleman, “and I hope you’re sitting down. I think you’re going to find this very interesting.”

  CHAPTER 51

  NANGARHAR PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN

  The name of the village they were headed to was Dagar, which in Pashtu meant open space. It also meant battlefield, which Harvath hoped wasn’t going to turn out to be prophetic.

  As per Captain West, it had been Fontaine’s idea to mushroom him, and as much as Harvath regretted having to feed the guy so much BS and keep him in the dark, they had no choice. Until Julia Gallo was recovered, operational security was of primary importance.

  This wasn’t the first time Harvath had lied to get what he needed. It was just how the game worked. If West had been in his shoes, he would have done the same thing. Sometimes, the ends did in fact justify the means. It was the height of moral folly to play by a set of self-imposed rules when your enemy played by none whatsoever. While Harvath would readily admit that rules were important, there were also times when they weren’t, and this was one of them.

  Harvath stuck to the same story they had told West in the beginning and kept his embellishments as simple as possible from there. While they did get their interpreter out of the first village, he informed them, the al-Qaeda bomber they were after had fled. They had proceeded to Massoud’s village to gather more info on the bomber and his Taliban accomplice only to be ambushed on their way out. Now they wanted to hit Dagar in the hopes of getting up to Massoud’s summer grazing pasture to confirm that the bomber was there, and either take the men into custody or call in another airstrike to make sure they never carried out another attack.

  Whether West fully believed Harvath was beside the point. Wiping out seventy-plus Taliban fighters and helping to weaken a local Taliban commander was a good thing, regardless of who got the credit for it. Taking out forty or fifty more would only run up the score and make for a much better night. West only wished his men could help.

  Understanding that he couldn’t roll his armored column right through Dagar and that even if he could, he’d have considerable difficulty actually getting his men to the final objective, Captain Chris West proved that he and the Canadians were true partners in the international war on terror by offering Harvath anything else he needed.

  Harvath eagerly accepted the help. West and his team transported them back to Asadoulah’s village, where Fayaz provided a Toyota pickup truck and offered to send along as many armed men as the vehicle could carry.

  While the idea of having extra men was appealing, Harvath declined. He did, though, accept the truck and promised to have it returned as soon as he was done. It was exceedingly generous of Fayaz, considering the fact that the village had just lost two vehicles in a firefight and would need to return to reclaim their dead.

  From the Canadians, Harvath took as much ammo for Gallagher’s sniper rifle, the MP5s, and his and Fontaine’s pistol
s as could be spared. He also changed out the batteries in their NODs and was extra-grateful when West handed them several fragmentation grenades.

  Daoud knew Dagar, so they let him drive the truck while Harvath rode shotgun and Fontaine sat in back.

  “So how do you know Dagar?” asked Harvath as they drove.

  “I have a friend there,” said the interpreter. “We grew up in the same refugee camp in Pakistan. We used to play cricket together.”

  “Would your friend be willing to help us?”

  “He is a good man,” replied Daoud. “He doesn’t like al-Qaeda and he does not like the Taliban. He will help us.”

  “I hope he can help us to some coffee,” Fontaine added from the backseat.

  Harvath looked at his watch and then rubbed his eyes. It was well after midnight, his back was throbbing again, and he was out of Motrin. Baba G’s med kit had gone up in flames with his Land Cruiser. The only things he wanted as much as finding Julia Gallo were a hot shower, a stiff drink, and a soft bed. In fact, despite how grimy he was, he’d be glad to forgo the shower and move right to the drink and the bed.

  In order not to focus on his fatigue, he tried to envision again what Julia Gallo was going through. The fact that she had scratched her initials into her previous cell meant that she had remembered her training. That was a good sign. Harvath hoped she also remembered the part about keeping her spirits up and not allowing herself to slip into depression as she imagined the worst that might befall her. It was an easy lesson to teach, but much more difficult to actually put into practice.

  As the truck, with its worn-out shocks, bounced and jostled toward Dagar, Harvath closed his eyes and allowed his mind to rest. He knew all too well that the next couple of hours were going to be extremely tense and most likely, extremely dangerous. Fontaine and Daoud seemed to be thinking the same thing, as both men were silent for the rest of the ride.

  A deep pothole a kilometer outside the village drew Harvath’s mind back to the here and now.