by Brad Thor
“Of course,” replied Rashid, “but where am I supposed to find men in two days with weapons experience who are willing to be Shahid?”
“Do you have faith in Allah?”
“Of course I do.”
“Good, for He has already provided you with everything you need.”
Rashid’s brow furrowed. “I don’t understand.”
“Allah has already given you six Iraqi National Guardsmen.”
“Your thugs at the mosque?”
“They are not thugs. They are exceptional instruments if wielded properly.”
“I thought they were just muscle you used for security.”
The older man shook his head.
“You should have told me about their backgrounds.”
“At the time, you did not need to know. Now that you do know, perhaps you will treat them with more respect.”
Rashid rubbed his mouth with the palm of his hand and said, “While we’re talking about respect, let’s talk about where I fit into the bigger picture.”
“One step at a time,” he replied as he changed the subject and gestured toward the second story of the atrium that overlooked the lobby where they now sat. “Aleem has suggested the men work in three teams of two. I think that is a good idea.”
“But two of your National Guardsmen were shot last night, remember?”
“They will be fine. One of them we will put up there, on the second floor, to act as a sniper.”
“That’s not really the plan, is it? We’re not just going to pick four hotels with the best fields of fire and turn the guardsmen loose, are we?”
“Why not? Anyone can walk into these hotels. There is no security whatsoever. Our men only need to make it as far as the lobby.”
Maybe it was the fatigue that caused him to take a moment to catch on. “Mumbai was a combination of bombings and shootings. It turned the entire city upside down. Police, fire, ambulances; none of them knew where to go. It was mass chaos.”
Marwan smiled, “Very good, Shahab.”
“I should have thought of that.”
“Yes, you should have. You have been focused on the success the brothers had in Bali and the 7/7 bombings in London. You must remember to always ask yourself, how can we do better. Mumbai was definitely better.”
Rashid nodded. “So three teams means three hotels?”
“Come, Shahab. You’re not thinking big enough. This is Chicago. The hotels sit side by side. The men will go from one hotel to another and then to another and another still. As our bombs rip through the city, the police will be overwhelmed.”
“And then what?”
Marwan removed a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and set it on the table. “You concentrate on succeeding in Chicago. The rest of the plan will take care of itself.”
CHAPTER 60
AMSTERDAM
Three hours ago, Harvath and de Roon had almost come to blows in the infirmary of the Sacleipea. With al-Yaqoubi barely clinging to consciousness, he had given them everything he could about the Amsterdam bombing cell, but Harvath had wanted more. He had wanted to know who the overall architect of the plot was. What were the cities targeted for attack in the United States? When and by whom? How could they be stopped?
Al-Yaqoubi had lost consciousness twice and both times Harvath had brought him back around again with the salts. The third time he lost consciousness, though, de Roon had stepped in. If Harvath hadn’t stopped, he would have killed the man. The accountant would have ceased being of use to anyone. De Roon needed him to be awake and alert enough to help ID the bombers if they were lucky enough to spot them.
Harvath had known his friend was right, but he also knew that he couldn’t stop until al-Yaqoubi gave them everything. In the end, Casey’s had been the voice of reason that had convinced Harvath to back down. The Amsterdam attack had to be neutralized first. The red-light district would be packed with Americans. That’s where Harvath’s focus needed to be. The accountant was cuffed to the bed of an infirmary of a confiscated ship in the Dutch port, its crew cooling its heels in a Dutch jail cell. Al-Yaqoubi wasn’t going anywhere. This was their chance to see if he was really telling the truth. If he was and they succeeded, then they could return to the ship and take the interrogation to the next level. She was right.
Harvath had apologized to de Roon, who called him a klootzak and suggested they formulate their plan and get their people into position. It had happened only three hours ago, but in the wake of the adrenaline dump it felt like three days.
But now, with fresh adrenaline pumping through his system, all Harvath could think about was taking out the bombers.
Back at the ship, al-Yaqoubi was awake and alert. He had ID’d “player one,” the man spotted by Harvath, as one of the cell members. One of de Roon’s teams was tracking him, but they were in a “shadow,” an area where none of the snipers could get a clean shot.
Harvath had faith that the problem would soon remedy itself. What bothered him, though, was that no one had ID’d the controller yet. He was the wild card; the one who could detonate the explosives remotely. He needed to be found and neutralized immediately.
As Harvath was trying to put himself inside the controller’s mind, his earpiece crackled with radio traffic. One of Martin’s men had been speaking in Dutch, and de Roon quickly reminded him to speak English. The operative apologized and repeated his transmission. The “soccer team” at one of the hash bars had just spotted “player two.”
With that sighting, the floodgates opened. Back-to-back, three more sightings were registered—Indonesian men overdressed for the weather. Each one was confirmed. That made five. If al-Yaqoubi was telling the truth, there was only one more left. Once the sixth bomber had entered De Wallen, the countdown would accelerate.
Hidden from view in the back of the room, Harvath removed the map de Roon had given him and plotted where the men had been spotted and the direction they were all moving. He still had the same question: Where’s the controller?
As the targets were confirmed via cell phone from the Sacleipea, the snipers locked in and held ready. They were all waiting for the final bomber to appear.
Harvath was tense. Sitting back with Rodriguez was driving him crazy. That sixth bomber was going to show up any minute, or worse, any second. They could no more wander around the red-light district aimlessly for hours without drawing attention to themselves than Harvath and de Roon’s teams could.
Suddenly, the sixth potential bomber was sighted. Two minutes later, he was positively identified by al-Yaqoubi. They were in the final stretch, except for the controller.
Moments later, the snipers reported that the targets were all changing direction. As Harvath studied his map, de Roon’s voice came over his radio. “They’re all converging toward the center. That’s where the attack is going to happen.”
“Hold on,” cautioned Harvath as something Rodriguez had said played through his mind. “We don’t know that. Everyone stay calm.”
He then told Martin to meet him on the corner. The Athena Team members wanted to get into the fight, but Harvath wasn’t exactly sure this was over and asked them to remain in place.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” asked de Roon when he met Harvath at the corner and they both headed for the center of the district.
“Why didn’t any of your people spot the controller outside De Wallen?”
“Maybe they didn’t see him,” replied the intelligence officer.
“Or maybe that’s not where he is,” said Harvath. “Maybe he’s actually inside the district.”
“Then why didn’t our teams spot him?”
“Because maybe they didn’t know what they’re looking for.”
De Roon stared at him, confused, but Harvath didn’t have time to explain. Within seconds, one of the bombers walked right past them. The chill of death surrounding him was almost palpable.
“Did you see his hand?” asked Harvath.
De Roon nodded and radioed
the others that the bomber they had just passed was holding a dead man’s switch in his left hand.
“Okay,” said Martin when they arrived at the center of the district, the only point the bombers’ paths had intersected, “what are we looking for?”
Harvath’s eyes scanned the area until they fell on one particular window. “Her,” he said.
The intelligence officer looked, but couldn’t understand what Harvath was talking about. “The ugly prostitute in the blue cover-up?”
Harvath kept moving. “What do you think her nationality is?”
“Who knows? They all dye their hair blond.”
“Look at her face.”
He did, but he still couldn’t figure it out. “With all that makeup, she could be Palestinian, or she could even be Norwegian.”
“Look at the eyes,” said Harvath.
“Filipina?”
“How about Indonesian?”
De Roon saw it. “You think that’s the controller?”
“She, he, whatever, is the only hooker in De Wallen wearing a robe and a scarf in the middle of summer.”
De Roon understood that Harvath meant it was probably a man trying to disguise himself as a woman and watched as the American pulled his pistol.
Harvath kept the weapon hidden behind his leg as he approached the window. The man inside had been gyrating to music that couldn’t be heard out on the street. He stopped as he noticed Harvath’s approach.
The subtle change in the man’s demeanor wasn’t lost on Harvath. He kept walking forward and said to de Roon, “Tell the snipers to get ready to fire.”
Either the man in the window was an incredible lip reader or he saw on Harvath’s face that his cover had been blown.
Out of the blue, he lunged for his purse and that’s when Harvath raised his pistol and fired.
The glass of the window erupted and people began screaming and running in every direction.
Harvath took the steps up to the little private room two at a time and kicked the door open. The figure with the scarf around its neck lay dead, a pool of blood rolling across the sloped wooden floor toward the front of the room.
Behind the man’s left ear, Harvath saw a thick, ropey white scar. “Take them down,” Harvath said over his radio. “Take all of the bombers down now.”
He looked up to locate de Roon and as he did, a burst of traffic came over the radio. Less than a second later, an enormous detonation shook the entire red-light district as a roiling fireball exploded into the night sky.
CHAPTER 61
Leaving de Roon’s men to process the corpse and secure the scene, Harvath raced in the direction of the explosion.
“What the hell happened?” he screamed over his radio.
“One bomber detonated before we could take a shot,” a voice replied.
“What about the others?”
“All neutralized.”
Harvath ran against a sea of people who were all fleeing the bombing. Klaxons wailed in the distance and a heavy pall of dust and smoke hung in the air. It was like 9/11 in miniature. The force of the blast had shattered every window he passed. Shards of broken glass blanketed the street. As he got closer, he began to develop a sense of how bad the attack had been.
The walking wounded stumbled past him, unsure of where to go, knowing only that they had to get away, they had to get out of the area.
Then came the people who couldn’t move. They sat or lay near walls, and despite the bravery of a few Good Samaritans, there weren’t enough hands to administer aid, so the wounded stayed where they were, waiting for help. Many were crying and in extreme pain. There was blood everywhere. Then came the bodies.
Harvath had no idea how much explosive the bomber had been carrying, but its impact was unbelievable. It was one of the worst scenes of carnage Harvath had ever witnessed. The dead and dying were scattered everywhere. Some had even been tossed into the air and were hanging from signs or out of second- and third-story windows.
The buildings were charred and the stench of burnt human flesh was overwhelming. It took Harvath a moment to get his bearings and when he did, he was overcome with a sense of dread. The bombing had happened almost directly in front of the window Nikki Rodriguez had been in.
He attempted to hail her over the radio as he rushed into what remained of the building. Its entire facade had been sheared away.
Planting his feet, he tried to raise a section of collapsed wall, but it was too heavy. He radioed de Roon and told him to bring jacks and any earthmoving equipment he could get his hands on. Then, he began to dig.
There were severed electrical wires and the scent of gas from ruptured lines. Harvath ignored all of it.
He lifted piece after piece of heavy stone. Shrapnel and twisted metal tore at his hands until they began to bleed, but Harvath kept on.
At some point, Casey arrived; then Ericsson, Rhodes, and Cooper. De Roon and three of his men materialized with a long, iron pry bar. They used a piece of rubble for a fulcrum and managed to raise part of the wall.
Underneath, Harvath saw skin; Nikki’s skin. Hitting the ground, he slid beneath the wall and crawled toward her. In the darkness, he couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead. He had a flashlight in his pocket, but the space was so tight, he didn’t have enough room to pull it out. The claustrophobic darkness reminded him of the pit full of children he had crawled into nine days ago in Iraq.
Behind him, Harvath could hear de Roon and his men grunting under the weight of the wall and yelling for Casey and her operators to find something to help prop it up before it fell.
As he got closer, Harvath tried to talk to Rodriguez, but she didn’t reply. “I need some light down here,” he shouted.
Someone cast a flashlight into the narrow confines. Harvath’s body blocked most of the light, but he could just make out the side of Nikki’s head. Her hair was matted and covered with blood. He strained his eyes to see if she was breathing, but he couldn’t tell.
As he inched forward, the crawl space became smaller and smaller. His legs and arms burned and he realized that it wasn’t from the exertion, but that he was worming his way across broken glass.
When he reached Rodriguez, he tried once more to get her to respond. “Nikki?” he said. “Can you hear me?”
She still didn’t reply, and Harvath silenced his own breathing to listen for hers. De Roon yelled for him to get out, but Harvath told him to be quiet. He thought he’d heard something.
When the voices behind him fell silent, he cocked his head and didn’t make a sound. That’s when he heard her breathe. Rodriguez was still alive.
Ignoring the instability of the pile of debris he was crawling through, he muscled his way forward. When he got close enough, he reached out and touched the side of her face. He heard her groan in response.
“We need to get you out of here, Nikki. Can you move?”
Rodriguez didn’t respond.
“Scot,” de Roon yelled. “You need to get out now. We cannot hold the wall any longer. Leave her. We’ll try again.”
“You hold that goddamn wall,” Harvath ordered as he reached for Nikki’s shoulders. He had no idea what the extent of her injuries were, and moving her went against all rescue protocols except for one, saving someone’s life.
Inching backward, he gave a tug and pulled her toward him. Rodriguez screamed in pain and the sound tore right through him.
He tried not to think about it as he backed up and gave her another tug forward. She screamed again, but this time she didn’t move.
Please, no, thought Harvath. She’s pinned.
They were close enough now that he could tell she was having trouble breathing. Her breath came in short, shallow gasps and was becoming more rapid.
“Nikki?” he said. “Can you move your legs?”
The woman was unable to respond.
“Nikki, listen to me. I know it hurts, but we need to get you out of here. I’m going to count to three and when I do, I’m going to
pull as hard as I can. If you have any ability to help me; if you can push with your legs, or twist your body in any way to get free, you need to do it. Do you understand me?”
Rodriguez said nothing. It didn’t matter. Harvath knew what he had to do. With his hands beneath her arms, he inched his way back as far as he could without losing purchase and then, counting to three, he pulled.
There was a wrenching sound and then a snap, which he prayed was the crack of dried wood from somewhere behind her in the rubble and not bone.
De Roon yelled that they were losing the wall, but Harvath refused to let go of her. He had her now; they were moving. It was slow, inch by painful inch, as if she was dragging some sort of incredibly heavy weight.
“Hurry, damn it!” yelled de Roon. “Hurry!”
Harvath’s entire body burned from the strain, but they were almost free. He continued to slide back a foot and pull, slide back a foot and pull.
He had no idea how close he was to the end of the tunnel until he felt hands on his boots and then his legs, helping to pull him back. Then there were hands on his belt pulling him hard.
De Roon and his men grunted under the weight of the wall. They were yelling and cursing for the others to hurry. With Harvath out, there was only Rodriguez left. Already, the wall was beginning to fall.
Harvath rolled away from the rubble pile as Nikki’s teammates reached in to pull her out. As they did, he saw a sharp piece of metal that had embedded itself in her right side. The realization that the metal protruding from her chest had caused all the drag on her body as he struggled to extract her made him almost want to throw up. Then there was a shout from one of the Athena Team members of “Don’t drop the wall!” and he realized how wrong he had been and how incredible Nikki Rodriguez was.
While Harvath was pulling her out, she was pulling out someone else; a young woman who had been in the room next to her. Despite her injuries, and the high probability that the rest of the building could have collapsed, Rodriguez had never let go.
With his last half-ounce of adrenaline, Harvath leapt to his feet and helped de Roon’s team hold the wall. When the second woman was free, they attempted to lower the wall as gently as possible, but no one had the strength to see it all the way down.