Takedown

by Brad Thor

  “Like I said, it’s all in the file. I am very meticulous about my work.”

  “As am I, but sometimes small details have a way of getting left out.”

  “I don’t leave out details—small or otherwise,” said the Troll.

  “You never know. Something that may have seemed inconsequential at the time might turn out to be quite important to us now. Please. Humor me.”

  The Troll took a long sip of brandy. He knew that lying to the man could prove to be a very bad mistake. There was no telling if al-Qaeda had a piece of the puzzle he was not aware of. All he could do was stick to his plan. It was inevitable that they would come to interrogate him. He was one of the few people who knew where Mohammed bin Mohammed had been hiding. “Your man in Somalia was targeted by an American covert action team.”

  “American,” repeated Ali, “not Israeli? You’re sure of that?”

  “As the file I sent your superiors clearly states, he was taken by a private vessel to waters off the eastern seaboard of the United States and then flown by helicopter to somewhere in New York City.”

  “And he is still alive?”

  “From what I understand, but he wasn’t in very good health to begin with. Apparently he has a serious—”

  “Kidney problem,” interjected Ali, finishing the Troll’s sentence for him. “We know.”

  “To his credit, it seems to be making his interrogation quite difficult for his captors.”

  “This is where I get confused. If it was the Americans, why would they bring him to America straightaway? Why not take him to a cooperative country for interrogation first?”

  “I don’t interpret intelligence, Mr. Ali. I simply facilitate its transfer. Now, if there’s nothing else?”

  “Actually, there is,” said the assassin. As his hand moved toward the inside of his sport coat, the Ovcharkas began to growl.

  The Troll placed his finger on the tiny trigger of a special customized weapon recessed beneath his desk and with his other hand signaled the dogs to be silent.

  Well aware that there was a weapon trained on his stomach, Ali slowly removed a piece of paper from his jacket, leaned forward, and slid it across the desk.

  The Troll took his time in reading it. Now, the al-Qaeda operative’s real reason for wanting to meet face-to-face was out in the open. “Your organization doesn’t pay me for advice, but I’m going to give you some anyway. No charge. Cut your losses and move on. Even if I could pinpoint his exact location, what you are suggesting is suicide. It can’t be done.”

  “That’s not your concern. All we want to know is if you can put a team and equipment in place by the specified date.” said Ali.

  “With enough money anything is possible, but—”

  “Twenty million dollars, on top of which you’ll be paid twice your normal fee and a bonus of five million once the operation has been successfully completed.”

  “Meaning once you have recovered your colleague.”

  Ali nodded his head. “Think of it as an added incentive.”

  The Troll was silent for several moments as he pretended to reflect upon the offer. They had played right into his hands. With this kind of money he would have enough to buy what he needed from his contact at the NSA, but his mole at the Department of Defense would be much more expensive. Nevertheless, he was confident he could get the information he needed with plenty of money left to spare. Finally, he said, “The biggest problem I see you facing, Mr. Ali, is time. If you can allow for more, it might help increase your probability of success.”

  “No, there is no more time. Mohammed is scheduled to complete a very sensitive transaction for us in the very near future.”

  “Then I would suggest you get somebody else to do it.”

  “There is nobody else. The man Mohammed has been negotiating with will only deal with him. If Mohammed fails to appear, we forfeit our place in line and the man will simply contact the next prospective buyer. If that happens, we will end up losing much more than just a highly valued member of our organization.”

  “What is it you are buying, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “It is none of your concern,” responded Ali.

  The Troll smiled. He knew exactly what they were buying. There were very few things al-Qaeda would be willing to pay so much to get their lead negotiator back for. “If you’re successful, the Americans will throw open the gates of hell itself to find you—all of you.”

  Abdul Ali wasn’t quite sure if the dwarf was referring to their rescue of Mohammed bin Mohammed, or what they intended to do once Mohammed’s transaction was complete. Either way, it didn’t matter. “You have our offer. Take it or leave it.”

  Considering that the Troll had dreamed about this exact opportunity for years, how could he do anything other than accept?

  As Abdul Ali left the manor house, he couldn’t help smiling. That the Troll would accept the assignment and help them in their task was a foregone conclusion. What amused the assassin more was that the little man had no idea that al-Qaeda knew that it was he who had betrayed Mohammed bin Mohammed to the Americans. Their network of contacts might not have been as vast, but it could be incredibly efficient.

  Soon, the Troll’s usefulness would run its course, and when it did, Abdul Ali would take particular pleasure in bringing the man’s parasitic existence to an extremely painful end.

  Six

  MONTREAL, CANADA

  JULY 3

  When Sayed Jamal entered the bedroom of his government-subsidized apartment, Scot Harvath slammed the butt of his H&K right into the bridge of his nose, knocking the terrorist to the floor and causing him to bleed profusely.

  “Don’t you know that Allah prefers playing to a full house?” said Harvath as he Flexicuffed the man’s wrists behind his back. “He doesn’t like it when you skip out of morning prayers early. And neither do I.”

  As Harvath stood up, he gave Jamal a sharp kick to his ribs to emphasize his unhappiness with the man’s premature return to the apartment.

  Like Ahmed Ressam—the Algerian-born terrorist who had been caught at the Canadian–U.S. border with over 120 pounds of explosives and a plan to blow up Los Angeles International Airport on New Year’s Eve 1999—Sayed Jamal was yet another Algerian national who had taken advantage of Canada’s liberal asylum policy to hide out just north of the border and plan attacks against the United States.

  With its quaint cobblestone streets and European architecture, Montreal was a city that made many people forget they were only twenty-nine miles from New York State. Scot Harvath, though, was no longer one of those people.

  Finding a Canadian penny mixed in with his U.S. change once or twice a year, Harvath used to joke that Canada was the most patient invading force in the world—one penny at a time, one pop singer at a time, one actor at a time…. It might take them ten thousand years to conquer the United States, but they were on the move, and the American people needed to wake up. But when Canada started to become an operational staging ground for Middle Eastern terrorists bent on destroying the United States, the joke was no longer funny.

  Upon reaching Canada or its territorial waters, all that these “asylum-seekers” had to do was claim status as political refugees, and they would be granted Canadian protection under the UN Convention. That was it. The screening process was so poorly managed that nearly one hundred percent of them were granted a formal hearing complete with free legal advice, money, and a place to stay while they often waited more than two years to appear in front of a Canadian magistrate—if they even bothered showing up at all for their hearing.

  With laughable screening procedures and nonexistent enforcement, significant numbers of these fake asylum-seekers found their way to Montreal where they joined Muslim terrorist organizations with strong ties to al-Qaeda. One such organization was known as the Algerian Armed Islamic Group, or GIA, and it was the GIA that had brought Agent Scot Harvath to Canada.

  The United States had been trying unsuccessfull
y to convince the Canadian Government to extradite Sayed Jamal to stand trial in the United States. Jamal was a former chemistry professor who somewhere along the line found religion—radical Islam, to be specific—joined the GIA, and followed several of his GIA counterparts to Iraq, where he took up arms against the Western imperial crusaders, aka the American military.

  Interestingly enough, of all the foreign fighters in Iraq, the majority—over twenty percent—came from Algeria. And while several Syrian terrorist groups were known for producing exceptional snipers, it was the Algerians—the GIA in particular—who were known for being the best bombmakers in the business. In fact, the most horrific roadside bombs—the ones that scared the hell out of even the most experienced EOD, or Explosive Ordnance Disposal techs, were the ones produced by the GIA’s most proficient bombmaker in Iraq, Sayed Jamal.

  With over two hundred American servicemen and women killed and wounded as a result of Jamal’s specialty IEDs known as EFPs, or explosively formed projectiles, which could penetrate up to four inches of armor from over 300 feet away, the United States had pulled out all the stops to track him down. When the heat got too intense in Iraq, he fled to Canada. There, he spun an elaborate cover story and was granted full refugee status. But while you can take the jihadi out of the jihad, you can never really take the jihad out of the jihadi. NSA intercepts revealed a dramatic increase in terrorist chatter suggesting that Jamal was coordinating future attacks within the United States.

  Once the United States had pinpointed the terrorist’s location, they began extradition requests. Despite a mountain of evidence in favor of the extradition, the Canadians refused. The liberal prime minister wasn’t convinced that Jamal was who the Americans said he was. Even so, the PM made it clear he wouldn’t even begin considering extradition unless the United States promised to waive the death penalty in the case. As far as the United States was concerned, there was no way in hell that was ever going to happen.

  Soon after talks broke down, a copy of Jamal’s Canadian Intelligence dossier magically appeared on the president’s desk. Jack Rutledge didn’t need to ask where it came from. He knew how back channels worked, and he also knew that there were several high-ranking members of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service who were sick of seeing their country’s benevolence exploited by Muslim extremists. Considering the sensitivity of the assignment, he knew there was only one person he could call.

  With Jamal now zip-tied and under control, Harvath turned his attention back to the most dangerous part of the assignment—securing Jamal’s laptop.

  He’d been briefed that the United States had recently lost two very experienced operators when they attempted to retrieve a high-ranking al-Qaeda member’s PowerBook. Harvath didn’t know what spooked him more—the fact that the United States had taken down an al-Qaeda operative so high-ranking that even with his above-top-secret Polo Step clearance he couldn’t find out who it was, or that as the two members of the assault team had gone for the terrorist’s laptop, it had detonated, killing them instantly.

  All Harvath knew was that Jamal’s computer was believed to contain a veritable treasure trove of information and that because of some association with the aforementioned high-ranking al-Qaeda member, his laptop most likely had been rigged with similar explosives and a mercury tilt switch.

  It was at times like this that Harvath would have given a year’s pay to have had a good EOD tech along for the ride. But he didn’t have a good EOD tech; he didn’t even have a bad one. All he had were two empty aerosol cans and a Styrofoam cooler packed with dry ice.

  The idea had been to render the mercury in the tilt switch useless with a product used for flash-freezing biological specimens known as Quick-Freeze. After the tilt switch was immobilized, it would create a window of several seconds during which he could pick up the laptop and place it in the cooler. It then could be transported back across the border where a team was waiting to defuse it. At the time, the plan made sense. What nobody had counted on was Jamal coming home early. Because of it, Harvath’s attention had been diverted and now he didn’t have enough Quick-Freeze left to attempt refreezing the tilt switch.

  He had to think of something else. Returning empty-handed, or worse, no-handed were not options he was willing to consider.

  Though Harvath was just two careers removed from his days as a United States Navy SEAL, the lessons he had learned with the Secret Service at the White House and now as a covert counterterrorism operative for the Department of Homeland Security only served to reinforce his Special Operations training—there was an answer to every problem, you just had to look hard enough to find it.

  Glancing at the special Suunto X9Mi watch he’d been issued for the trip into Canada, Harvath saw that he was very close to falling behind schedule. He had a rendezvous to keep and if he missed it, it was going to be hell getting out of the country and back across the U.S. border.

  As he cycled through various options in his mind, something suddenly bubbled to the surface. Sayed Jamal was a bombmaker and unfortunately a pretty good one. From the intelligence reports Harvath had read, he knew that the man was meticulous. And if he was meticulous, he was probably also very safety conscious. The question was would he have what Harvath was looking for and if so where did he keep it?

  Dragging Jamal up by the hair, Harvath put his gun under the man’s chin and said, “You’ve got a lot of soldering equipment in here, Sayed. If a fire broke out it could be pretty expensive—not to mention the undesirable attention it would draw. That was Ramzi Yousef’s mistake with that little chemical fire in the Philippines. If I recall correctly, his pal got busted going back later for their laptop, didn’t he? But you’re smarter than that. I can tell. So tell me, where’s your fire extinguisher?”

  Jamal spit in Harvath’s face and cursed him in Arabic.

  “Ebn el Metanaka!” Harvath responded as he jammed the silenced barrel of his weapon into the painfully soft tissue beneath Jamal’s chin. “We can do this in Arabic or English. I don’t really care. I just want to know where it is.”

  The bombmaker tried to spit at him again, but Harvath cut him short with a knee to the groin. He’d had a feeling he wasn’t going to get much help, but it was always polite to ask—and Scot Harvath was nothing if not polite.

  He dragged the terrorist to the kitchen, where he found what he was looking for under the sink. “Good choice, Sayed,” he remarked as he pulled it out. “Powder extinguishers leave such a nasty residue. CO2 is much cleaner and a lot colder.”

  Looking around, Harvath then asked, “Now then, where do you keep your falafel mitts, asshole?”

  Seven

  Forty-five minutes later, Harvath pulled his car over to the side of the road, yanked Jamal out of the trunk, and shoved half a tampon up each of his nostrils to stem his nosebleed. After putting a Windbreaker over the terrorist’s shoulders and zipping it up the front to hide his stained shirt, Harvath slid him into the front passenger seat, fastened his seat belt, and warned him what would happen if he tried to make any more trouble.

  Once again, Jamal tried to spit, but Harvath was ready for him. He nailed him with a blow to his solar plexus, doubling him over and knocking the wind out of him.

  Reaching back into the bag of goodies he had bought at the convenience store just outside Montreal, Harvath withdrew a PowerBar and a bottle of spring water. At thirty-six, his carefree days of unlimited cheeseburgers and beers were now behind him. At five feet ten and a muscular 175 pounds, Harvath was in better shape than most men half his age, but he found it took more and more work just to maintain his level of physical fitness. If an assignment in a Muslim country required that he grow a beard, after a couple of days he soon saw traces of gray mingled with the light brown that matched the hair on his head. His father, a Navy SEAL instructor who had died in a training accident when Harvath was in his early twenties, had gone completely gray by forty.

  Despite the small lines starting to form at the corners of his bright
blue eyes, it wasn’t anything Harvath couldn’t live with. Everybody had to get older sooner or later. What the signs of aging did make him wonder about was how much longer he wanted to put up with the stress of working for the government. The fact that he couldn’t get any good information that might have helped him on this assignment about the high-ranking al-Qaeda terrorist the United States had recently bagged was just another in a ongoing string of frustrations he was grudgingly putting up with.

  While he respected his president and loved his country, the mounting bureaucratic bullshit was really beginning to piss him off. Having been both a SEAL and a Secret Service agent at the White House, Harvath understood the value of rules, regs, and a proper chain of command. But when the president had created a special international branch of Homeland Security dubbed the Office of International Investigative Assistance and had offered Harvath one of its plum assignments, Scot had thought things were going to be different.

  Known as the Apex Project, Harvath’s covert unit was supposed to represent the collective intelligence capability and full muscle of the United States government to help neutralize and prevent terrorist actions against America and American interests on a global level.

  Though it “technically” didn’t exist and Harvath was nothing more than a benignly titled “special agent,” just last year a self-aggrandizing senator with her sights set on the White House had been able to discover enough about him and his involvement with the Apex Project to force his resignation. Though it was only temporary, not knowing what his next move would be or what his life might be like with his cover blown was not a very pleasant experience.

  He knew that his was a quiet, thankless profession that could only be lived in the shadows, but he was growing very tired of being at the mercy of partisan hacks and career politicians who sought advancement by stomping on the backs of true patriots guilty of nothing more than a deep love for their country.

  He was so fed up with all the crap that he’d recently presented his boss, Gary Lawlor, with a .50-caliber bullet wrapped in red tape. The bullet was designed to take out targets at extremely long distances and Lawlor understood that it represented Harvath, who was constantly being sent on missions overseas to take out terrorists. The red tape was self-explanatory.