Foreign Influence_A Thriller

by Brad Thor

  CHAPTER 9

  BILBAO

  WEDNESDAY

  Harvath spent a good portion of the morning doing additional reconnaissance on the tobacco shop. Just after ten a.m., he stepped away from the tour group he was shadowing and with both his Glock and Taser handy, entered the shop.

  The old man behind the counter didn’t even bother looking up.

  “Do you have Argos and Draco brand cigarettes?” he asked in Spanish, using the names of the Troll’s two dogs.

  “Three Euros,” the old man replied, reaching under the counter and producing a pack of Fortuna Lites.

  Harvath gave him the cash, pocketed the cigarettes, and exited the store. He conducted what felt like his hundredth SDR of the day and when he was confident he wasn’t being followed, walked into a small hotel he had identified earlier and headed into its café. Taking a table near the back, he ordered coffee. Once the waiter had walked away, he pulled out the pack of cigarettes and examined it.

  It had a plastic wrapper, but had been opened from the bottom and resealed. Harvath peeled off the plastic and opened the package at the top. It was stuffed with tissue paper. After removing the paper, he withdrew a car key rubber-banded to a prepaid parking receipt. In addition to the name and address of the parking facility, someone had written C-11.

  Harvath remembered having joked that the only thing the Troll’s offer was missing was a dark alley. It would seem that he hadn’t been creative enough. A dark parking structure was much more apropos.

  The underground garage was on the other side of the river. It took Harvath about fifteen minutes to walk there, fifteen minutes for reconnaissance, and another five to locate the car. So far, so good.

  He found a structural column and used it for cover as he depressed the button on the remote. The lights flashed. The door unlocked.

  After thoroughly checking the vehicle for explosives, he tossed in his backpack, climbed into the driver’s seat, and started the car. He reversed out of the space, drove up two levels, and after using the prepaid receipt, exited the facility.

  He drove through several neighborhoods before finally pulling over and looking for a clue as to where he was supposed to go next.

  Inside the glove compartment were a portable GPS device, a window mount, and cigarette adaptor. After powering up the GPS, he toggled to the screen with pre-loaded routes and saw it contained one destination labeled “Nicholas.”

  It appeared to be a village in the Basque Pyrenees. According to the GPS, the drive was five hours and forty-three minutes. Harvath kept his gun where he could get to it.

  Incredibly, he found a radio station playing the American funk classic “Pass the Peas” by Fred Wesley, and turning up the volume, he pointed the car toward the Autopista and stepped on the accelerator.

  Fifteen kilometers outside of Bilbao, he noticed he was being followed.

  CHAPTER 10

  The immediate exits outside the city offered only bad neighborhoods, and the shoulder of the highway was equally dangerous. Harvath decided to wait.

  As long as they weren’t trying to overtake him and run him off the road, he was fine. The problem lay in whether or not there was an ambush waiting somewhere up along the route; somewhere he could be forced off the road and everything could be made to look like an accident.

  It seemed a bit over the top, especially when they could have arranged for something to have happened to him in Bilbao, but maybe they had another scenario in mind. All Harvath knew was that he didn’t like being followed. He needed to find out who these people were and what they wanted. Fifty kilometers later, an opportunity presented itself.

  Gunning the car, he sped off the Autopista and raced down the exit road to the service area. The parking lot was crowded and Spaniards coming or going from their cars gesticulated wildly and cursed him for his excessive rate of speed.

  He slowed down as he neared the restaurant and parked in one of the handicapped spaces up front. Grabbing his backpack, he unplugged the GPS device, tucked it in his pocket, and left the keys in the ignition. He wouldn’t be coming back for the car.

  The lot was peppered with cars and long-haul trucks. Inside the café cum restaurant, most of the business was gathered around the beer taps at the counter. There were two families having a late lunch and Harvath noted four police officers drinking coffee at a nearby table, but that was it.

  He stepped to the far end of the crowded counter and ordered a beer. Seconds later, he saw the car that had been following him since Bilbao, a black Peugeot, roll through the parking lot. When it came upon his vehicle parked in one of the handicapped spaces up front, it slowed down and then moved on. If Harvath had needed any further proof that they were following him, that was it.

  The Peugeot had been moving slowly enough that Harvath could make out a large man at the wheel with a thick neck, a sloping forehead, and eyebrows so thick they were like Brillo pads. Then, the car disappeared from sight.

  Harvath had a good vantage point. Not only could he look out the windows onto the parking lot, he could also see straight through the building’s front door.

  As he continued to watch, he ordered a sandwich. He didn’t have to see them to know they were outside waiting for him. The same questions that had been plaguing him since he’d first seen them in his rearview mirror continued. Who were they, and why were they following him?

  Asking the police for help was out of the question. The men outside would say they had no idea what he was talking about and that they had pulled in simply to rest and get something to eat. Naturally, they would then have plenty of questions for Harvath, who was carrying a firearm, a stack of cash, and had no idea exactly where he was going. He would have to pull this off on his own.

  Removing the GPS device from his pocket, he powered it up and copied the directions down on the back of his paper placemat. Then he requested the device plan an alternate route for him, but because he was indoors and out of range of the satellites, the device was unable to complete the task.

  Frustrated, Harvath turned the device off and slid it back into his pocket. Using his limited Spanish, he asked for the check, paid it, and then waited for the right moment to walk back to the men’s room.

  The man at the urinal was about twenty years old and Harvath ignored him as he walked over to the sink and turned on the water. He splashed some on his face and then leaned heavily on the edge of the bowl.

  When the young man approached, Harvath pretended to lose his balance before righting himself.

  “Se siente bien, señor?” the young man asked. Are you feeling okay?

  He feigned difficulty focusing. “Do you speak English?”

  “I do. Are you okay?”

  “I left my pills in the car,” Harvath said, gesturing toward the door.

  “Do you want me to get them for you?”

  He took a deep, labored breath. “I would really appreciate it. Thank you.”

  “Give me your keys and tell me where your car is.”

  “It’s a blue Opel,” he said. “It is in a handicapped spot just outside the front door. The keys are in it. It’s unlocked. I think I left the pills in the glove box or they may be in the pocket behind the passenger seat.”

  “Wait here,” replied the Good Samaritan. “I’ll be right back.”

  Harvath thanked him, and once he left the men’s room, followed him at a safe distance. He cut through the gift shop and exited the structure via a side door at the far end.

  Since no one from the black Peugeot had come in looking for him, there was only a handful of places they could be. Either they had given up and left, which he highly doubted; they had driven off to another point where they would wait to pick up his trail again, virtually impossible to do without being seen; or they were sitting out in the parking lot somewhere. And if they were out in the parking lot, they would be positioned so that they could keep an eye on his car while they waited for him to come back out. It was the answer that made the most sense and therefo
re the one he went with.

  It didn’t take Harvath long to find them. The young man from the men’s room was politely ransacking the Opel, looking for a nonexistent bottle of pills while the two men in the Peugeot watched in silence, trying to figure out what was going on.

  The Peugeot was three rows back and they never saw Harvath coming. Using the butt of his Glock, he smashed the rear passenger window. Popping the lock, he opened the door and sat down upon the spill of broken glass.

  “Nobody move,” he said, holding his pistol so that both of the startled men could see it.

  Next to Eyebrows was the driver, an equally beefy and thick-necked mouth breather with a thin scar on his right cheek. Whoever these two were, they were not operators. They were muscle. And poorly dressed muscle at that.

  “Why have you been following me?” asked Harvath.

  “No hablamos ingles,” said Eyebrows.

  “Bullshit. Why have you been following me?”

  “No hablam—”

  “Shut up. Do you have any weapons on you?”

  “Qué?”

  “Dónde estan las armas?” he said, pulling Eyebrows’ shirt up so he could check his waistband. “Las pistolas? Dónde estan?”

  “No pistolas. No armas.”

  Harvath put the gun against Scarface’s temple and patted him down. He was clean.

  He used his pack to brush off some of the glass on the seat and settled back. These two needed to be dealt with, but not here. “Vamonos,” he said.

  “A dónde vamos?” replied Scarface nervously.

  Leaning forward Harvath put his Glock against the man’s head and slowly repeated, “Va-mo-nos. Got it? Now quit jerking around and get moving.”

  The Spaniard started the engine, put the car in gear, and pulled out of the rest area and onto the motorway. Two exits later, Harvath signaled for him to turn off.

  They followed a small country road and he instructed Scarface to pull behind a thick copse of trees. He then told him to turn off the engine.

  Climbing out, he instructed them to exit the vehicle one at a time. “Afuera.” His Spanish was lousy, but the pistol was a wonderful interpretive aid that seemed to help get his points across.

  He motioned for the men to put their hands on their heads and get down on their knees. It was obvious from their faces that they believed he was going to execute them.

  He walked around to the back of the vehicle and popped the trunk. Pulling back an old blanket, he discovered two sawed-off shotguns. “No pistolas. No armas, huh?”

  Eyebrows began to speak, but Harvath cut him off. “Shut up.”

  He searched the rest of the trunk, but didn’t find much. There was an empty gas can, some road flares, snow chains, a spare, and a jack. What he really would have loved was some duct tape, but there wasn’t any. The plastic Tuff Ties from his kit would have to do.

  Walking around to the front of the car, he tucked his Glock in the back of his jeans and after making sure it was loaded, set one of the sawed-off shotguns on the hood of the car. With his eyes on Scarface and Eyebrows, he fished through his backpack and removed the plastic ties.

  He walked over to Eyebrows and demonstrated how he wanted him to secure his friend. When Scarface was zipped up, Harvath had Eyebrows lie facedown in the dirt and he returned the favor.

  With their ankles zipped together and wrists bound behind their backs, Harvath had them hop over to the car and helped load them in the trunk facedown. Once they were in, he chained a couple more Tuff Ties together so he could hog-tie the men. It was cramped quarters in the trunk and neither of them was going to be able to move until they were cut loose.

  After gagging the men, he slammed the lid shut and climbed into the driver’s seat. He removed the GPS unit, fired it back up, and once it had acquired the satellites, planned an alternate route to the destination, which he quickly memorized.

  The reason he had been able to ID Eyebrows and Scarface coming out of Bilbao was that they had been following close enough to be seen. If the GPS unit or the Opel he had been driving contained some sort of a tracking device, they should have been able to stay back and out of sight. Nevertheless, he didn’t want to gamble that the GPS device might give him away to whoever had sent the two geniuses in the trunk, and so as he pulled back out onto the country road and headed for the motorway, he dropped the unit out the window.

  He had no idea that the car he was now driving was the biggest giveaway of all.

  CHAPTER 11

  CHICAGO

  After leaving Area Five headquarters, Sergeant John Vaughan drove to the intersection where Alison Taylor had been struck. He parked his vehicle and surveyed the entire area on foot.

  Beyond the lone Chicago Police Department blue light camera used to discourage street crime, Vaughan located five other privately owned security cameras that might have footage of the hit-and-run.

  The first belonged to Alison Taylor’s apartment building. Vaughan scared up the resident manager, who had “already” spoken to the Area Five detectives. John mollified the man and explained that he was simply following up.

  The manager told him exactly what he had told the detectives. The building’s exterior camera provided a 24/7 feed so that residents could see who was buzzing them from the front door. Unfortunately, the feed wasn’t recorded.

  Was it possible that a resident could have had their TV switched to the video loop when the accident occurred? Yes, but at three o’clock on a weekday morning, he doubted it. The majority of his renters were young professionals like Ms. Taylor. What’s more, he assumed that if anyone had seen something, they would have alerted the police.

  The manager agreed to send an e-mail to his residents asking if they had seen anything and took Vaughan’s card.

  The next three cameras belonged to merchants near the intersection, all of whom had previously spoken with the detectives. Of the businesses, one’s camera had not been turned on that evening, another stated that her camera was a fake and only there to deter crime, and the third merchant replied that unless he’d been broken into during the night, he automatically erased the footage every morning when he came in and started anew.

  The fifth camera was from a bank ATM, and they still had their footage from the night in question. Though the Area Five detectives had already screened the footage, the bank manager was happy to let Vaughan see it.

  Considering the camera’s field of view, it should have been perfect. In fact, it would have been perfect if not for a large delivery truck that had parked on the street just in front of the ATM that evening. All of the bank’s customers had been recorded perfectly, but seeing beyond the truck to the intersection was impossible.

  Vaughan had figured it was a long shot, but sometimes those were the ones that paid off. His hopes of catching the act on tape now were all but gone.

  After dinner at home with his family, homework, and baths for the kids, Vaughan returned to the intersection and went into the subway station. He wanted to re-create the scene for himself as closely as possible to the way it had happened.

  Coming out of the subway, he turned to the right, exactly as Alison and her friends would have, and retraced their steps along the sidewalk.

  He spent hours studying the intersection and its flow of pedestrians and traffic. He watched the timing of the lights and how many vehicles rushed the reds. He charted the vehicles that turned into the crosswalk where Alison had been struck and noted their rates of speed.

  For most people it would have been mind-numbing tedium, but for Vaughan it was a challenge; a puzzle. He was convinced that he could find the answers he was looking for here. He just needed to keep looking.

  At 5:30 in the morning, he went home in time to shower and change into a new suit before the children were up and wanting breakfast. Thirty minutes, four kisses, and one family hug later, his wife took their son off in one direction to his school, while he took their daughter to hers.

  As a Marine who had seen hundreds of firefi
ghts in Iraq, he was no stranger to sleep deprivation. In fact, he’d often joked that he could handle sleep deprivation in combat. It was the sleep deprivation of parenthood that was the real killer.

  Because there was no Dunkin’ Donuts near his daughter’s school, he broke one of his hardest and fastest rules and stepped into a Starbucks. The minute he did, he could hear the giant sucking sound of money being vacuumed out of customers’ pockets. Starbucks had good coffee, and as a capitalist, he didn’t fault them for getting the most they could for their product. He just disliked the whole vente/grande, mocha-frappu-B.S.-cino, coffee-as-art shtick. Hot, black, and in a cup—that’s the complete extent of the relationship he wanted with the beverage.

  Instead of taking his large cup of house blend back to the car, he found a table and took a seat. His eyes were glazed over as he stared absently out the window and there were probably multiple customers who found the sight of a man with a pistol on his hip and a thousand-yard stare more than a little disturbing.

  If people were looking, he didn’t notice. The weapon was so much a part of who he was that he never really thought about it. It was just one of several tools necessary for doing his job.

  As his mind wandered, he watched a Yellow taxi drive by outside. He watched as it neared the corner and slowed to a stop. A uniformed crossing guard directed the cab to stay where it was while she crossed a group of kids with backpacks and skateboards.

  He had never liked cabbies very much. The fact that they were predominantly immigrants wasn’t what bothered him. As long as they had come in the front door like everybody else, he was okay with it. What bothered him was what lousy drivers they tended to be.

  It didn’t make any sense. A rational person would be correct in thinking that the more one performed a task, the better one would become at it. But that didn’t seem to apply to cab drivers.

  He seriously doubted the cab would have even stopped for the kids if the guard hadn’t been there.