by Brad Thor
Halfway up, there was an old metal ladder bolted to the stone. Carefully, he tested his weight on it. Confident that it would hold, he used it to speed the rest of his climb.
The rear of the chapel, where the building faced the sea, had no windows whatsoever. On its east and west sides, beneath the slate-covered roof, the windows were too high to peer into and the stones too smooth to scale. Even if he could make it up that high, he didn’t know how good his view through the leaded glass would be. Perhaps he could have detected a human form of some sort inside, but if Aubertin was sitting completely motionless it would have been tough. His only choice was going to be the lone entrance.
Creeping around the chapel, he climbed over its low wall, and arrived at a weathered gray door and an arrow-slit-style window. Drawing his pistol, he made sure not to cast a shadow.
He stood for several moments, watching for movement, and didn’t see any. Approaching the old wooden door with its rusted iron rivets, he strained for any sound coming from inside. All he could hear was the wind and the rush of the tide. Making ready, he reached for the door handle.
CHAPTER 52
The door was locked. Whether it had been locked from the outside because Mont-Saint-Michel didn’t want anyone in there at night, or whether the assassin had done it from within, he only had one way of knowing. Standing back, he raised his boot and slammed it home.
The wood splintered and the door flew open as Harvath spun and pressed himself up against the stone exterior outside. Standing in the doorway, he would have made an easy target.
As it was, no shots were fired. He risked a quick look inside. The chapel was empty. That left only one place Aubertin could be.
The beach was now gone, consumed by the rising tide. The shoreline that remained was nothing but jagged, sharply edged boulders, stretching from the chapel to the Fontaine Saint-Aubert. Soon, they’d be under water too.
Trying to climb across them was out of the question. He’d have to scramble through the trees and underbrush along the steep hillside instead. At least he’d be concealed.
It was about a hundred meters, but it was tough terrain. Not only did the vegetation snag his boots, but the angle was such that if you didn’t place each step with precision, you could end up slipping and crashing headfirst down into the water and onto the rocks.
He also had to take care to be quiet. The wind and the tide could only mask so much. A snapped branch could give away his approach and bring a hail of gunfire down on top of him.
The assassin, if he was there, was cornered. He had his back to the sea. There was no escape. He’d be ruthless—and every option would be on the table. Not so for Harvath.
He needed him alive. He had come too far to have it all abruptly end with the assassin’s death.
Aubertin had information that was critical. And until Harvath was in possession of that information, he was going to have to do everything he could to keep him breathing. Which, as black-and-white as that sounded, did leave a little bit of gray.
Arriving within sight of the ruins, he stopped and crouched down. The view, unfortunately, wasn’t good.
The Fontaine Saint-Aubert dated from the eighth century. Supposedly, on that site, fresh water had sprung from a stone and supplied the monastery for the next seven hundred years.
With weeds and grasses growing from its pointed roof, it looked like a decrepit mausoleum. Carved from local stone, there were no windows—only a small opening, several feet off the ground. Iron stanchions and a rusted chain encircled the structure’s base, meant to keep out the curious.
Even more than the drone, Harvath wished he still had a flashbang left. Dropping one through the opening would have rendered Aubertin an absolute wreck. Reaching in and snatching him would have been a piece of cake. But, as he didn’t have a flashbang, he was going to have to come up with another plan. Something, hopefully, that would smoke the assassin out.
The moment the phrase popped into his head, as odd as it was, he knew that was exactly what he had to do.
Part of him found it hard to believe that he worked for a multimillion-dollar global business, and that he was now reduced to rubbing sticks together. But those were the kinds of skills he had been hired to deliver. Failure wasn’t an option.
After gathering the materials he needed, he found a wide, thick piece of bark the size of a snow shovel head to help him deliver his surprise, and kept moving across the hillside. Just past the structure, he began his descent.
He worked fast, creating a makeshift basket filled with dried grasses, pine needles, and other highly flammable items, including powder he extracted from one of his pistol rounds. It was all about things that would burn hot, fast, and produce a lot of smoke.
Wading into the water, he positioned himself behind the building and pulled the cartridge out of his Taser. Depressing the trigger, he activated the electric arc between its poles and used it to ignite his homemade smoke grenade.
Once it was lit, he moved around toward the front of the structure and prepared to toss it into the opening.
To not tip his hand, he had to come from the downwind side. As he did, some of the smoke began to blow back on him, partially obscuring his vision.
Hurrying his pace, he tossed the burning mass through the opening and retreated, blinking his watering eyes repeatedly, trying to clear them. With his pistol raised, he took cover behind a slab of rock and waited for the assassin to show himself. It didn’t take long.
The smoke quickly filled the small enclosed space, leaving no breathable air. Aubertin remained inside for as long as he could and then, hacking and coughing, climbed out.
“Drop your weapon!” Harvath yelled. “Do it now!”
The assassin tossed his gun, which clattered off a rock and splashed into the water.
“Come out slowly!” Harvath ordered.
Aubertin did as he commanded, rubbing his eyes and continuing to cough as he climbed down.
Harvath was feeling a range of emotions. He was thrilled to have caught the guy, but enraged that this was the man who had killed Carl and, very likely, had sent men after Marco. He was angry over all the trouble the assassin had caused, and remorseful for the role he himself had been forced to play.
While he was alert and on edge, having not yet restrained Aubertin, he was also feeling a sense of relief. This part of the hunt, at least, was over.
Even so, this was an impossible location in which to take someone into custody. Every rock, slick with moisture—as well as a thin cover of algae—was a potential hazard. He couldn’t have the assassin lie facedown because there was no flat ground to put him on. He would have to get creative. That started with making sure Aubertin wasn’t carrying any additional weapons.
“Lift up your shirt!” he ordered.
“Fuck you!” the man replied.
“Don’t test me, Aubertin. You won’t like how it ends.”
“If you’re going to shoot me, get it over with! Otherwise, fuck you!”
“Last chance,” he warned.
When the Irishman gave him the middle finger, Harvath made good on his promise and gave him what he had asked for.
Applying pressure to the trigger, he fired his Sig and sent a round into the assassin’s left leg.
Unlike in the movies, getting drilled with a nine-millimeter didn’t send you flying dramatically backward. But, if you were precariously balanced on a pile of slippery rocks, knee-deep in water, when it happened, the chances were pretty good that you were going down. And that’s what happened to Aubertin. The man lost his footing and went down hard.
There was a splash as he hit the water. Harvath waited for him to get up, but he didn’t move.
Fuck, thought Harvath. If the assassin slammed his head against one of the rocks when he fell, they might be in real trouble. Getting this guy anything resembling medical attention wasn’t part of his plan.
The other problem was the old mountain man rule about never firing your weapon twice in Indian co
untry—at least not if you wanted to stay hidden.
Already, the gendarmes were swarming all over the abbey and throughout the village looking for a shooter. And now, thanks to him, a new shot had just rung out. It would be hard to pinpoint where it had come from—unless he was forced to fire again. At that point, the French police would be drawn to the beach and any hope he had of interrogating the assassin would be gone.
In reality, the clock was already ticking. It was only a matter of time before officers, just as a matter of course, came to check the structures along the beach. Holstering his weapon, he waded into the water after Aubertin.
As he got closer, he could see ribbons of blood staining the water near his thigh. Confirming his worst fear, there was also blood coming from a gash to the man’s head. He had hit something on the way down. Fuck.
Kicking him with the toe of his boot, Harvath tested him for a reaction. He wasn’t moving. He didn’t look to be breathing either as the tide continued to come in and water washed over his face. He was going to have to try to resuscitate this guy. Damn it.
Not giving a rat’s ass if the assassin had a cervical injury, Harvath reached down, grabbed him by the shirt, and dragged him out of the water, over the rocks to the base of the hill.
He was about to set him down when the man’s eyes snapped open and Harvath felt a white-hot searing pain across his chest.
Looking down, he saw a small karambit—an Indonesian-style knife shaped like a claw, clutched in Aubertin’s hand.
Though he had taken him by surprise, Harvath had no intention of giving the man the upper hand. He immediately dropped him, but instead of recoiling and clutching his wound, he brought his boot down hard to stomp Aubertin’s face.
The Irishman must have known it was coming because the moment Harvath released him, he rolled to his left.
As he did, he lashed out once more with the blade, tearing through the right leg of Harvath’s jeans, missing his skin by less than a millimeter.
With shades of the bar fight in Key West, Harvath knew he needed to end this now.
Backing away, he made sure he wasn’t standing in any water as he pulled out his Taser, slammed the cartridge back in, and let the assassin ride the lightning.
Despite the injury to his thigh, the man’s body went rigid from the shock and he arched his back off the rocks.
Once the effect had passed and his body had relaxed, just for good measure, Harvath hit him with another jolt.
And then, just because, he gave him one more.
When he finally stopped tasing him, Aubertin’s eyes had rolled up into his head and his chin was covered with saliva.
Snatching up the karambit, Harvath tossed it into the water and waited for the man to come back around.
Finally, Aubertin’s eyes began to focus. And when they did, the first thing they saw was Harvath’s fist as it came down like a hammer onto the bridge of his nose. There was a spray of blood and the crack of cartilage as it shattered.
The man’s instincts were to protect his face, but he couldn’t raise his arms. Harvath had him pinned, and he beat him mercilessly.
He beat him for Carl, he beat him for Marco, and most importantly, he beat him for himself. He let the beast off the chain and let out all of his rage.
He broke the man’s jaw, half of his ribs, and even one of his orbital sockets. But that was only the appetizer.
Standing up, his chest—and now his hands—bleeding, he dragged the Irishman back down into the brackish tidal water and pushed his head all the way under.
He felt the man thrashing beneath his grasp, struggling to surface so that he could breathe. Harvath kept him there, looking out over the water toward the sky. It was turning that deep shade of blue, which preceded the black of night.
Closing his eyes, he held the assassin there for as long as he dared and then yanked him back up. He wasn’t done with him. Not just yet. He still needed him alive.
Aubertin simultaneously vomited and attempted to suck in huge hungry breaths of air.
“The contract,” said Harvath. “Who hired you?”
“If you’re going to kill me,” he panted, “Just do it.”
“I’ll make you a deal. If you tell me what I want to know, I won’t kill you.”
Still gasping for air, he vomited once more and then said, “I don’t believe you.”
Grabbing the back of his neck, Harvath went to put the assassin’s head back underwater again, when Aubertin yelled, “Stop! I’ll tell you.”
Harvath kept the man’s neck painfully bent, his head hovering just above the surface of the water, as the waves splashed his face. “You’ve got three seconds,” he said. “Make them count.”
“His name is Lieu Van Trang,” said Aubertin.
“Where is he?”
“In Paris.”
“How do I find him?”
Harvath held the man there in the water until he had answered every one of his questions.
He was about to drag him back up onto the rocks, when he heard the unmistakable sound of a pistol hammer being cocked behind him.
“Did he tell you what you needed to know?” Sølvi asked.
Harvath nodded.
She gestured with her pistol for him to step away.
Harvath complied.
Straightening up, Aubertin turned to see who Harvath was talking to. He didn’t know who she was, but he sensed something bad was about to happen. He watched as Harvath waded in toward shore and the woman pointed her suppressed weapon at him.
“We have a deal,” the Irishman insisted. “I tell you what you want to know and I walk free.”
Sølvi smiled. “That was your deal with him. Not me.”
Pressing her trigger, she delivered a single shot—straight through his heart.
“That’s for Carl Pedersen,” she said as he fell into the water, dead.
CHAPTER 53
ONE WEEK LATER
The slice across Harvath’s chest was nothing to laugh at. But it also wasn’t deep enough to have required a doctor. Sølvi had cleaned and dressed his wound, then waited with him until the Quick Reaction Force portion of his team arrived from Joint Base Andrews. Once they were there, she returned to Norway, her role in this assignment complete.
News of the shooting at Mont-Saint-Michel had been all over TV, the internet, and newspapers, especially in France. When the team found Lieu Van Trang, he had been moving from relative to relative, staying in a different house or apartment each night. Though the name of the tour guide shot and killed had not yet been released, he knew in his bones that it had to be Aubertin—and that he would be next. He had been right—on both counts.
His wound still fresh, Harvath was not able to get too physical with Trang. His teammates Haney and Staelin, on the other hand, were more than happy to step in.
With time, the Vietnamese man broke. He gave up all the details, including how he and Aubertin intended to keep the bounty for themselves. Most important, he gave up the name of the man who had opened the assassination contract on Harvath—Andre Weber.
With Morrison and Gage standing guard outside, and Barton warming up their SUV, Harvath asked Haney and Staelin to leave him alone with Trang.
Once they had exited the abandoned warehouse in the Parisian suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, Harvath spent a few more moments speaking with Trang before making sure the man would never run another drug ring, sex ring, or assassination ring ever again.
It turned out that Andre Weber lived and worked in Basel, Switzerland, which was too bad for him because Harvath had a very good friend in the Swiss government who lived and worked just south of Basel in Bern.
When, as a Secret Service agent, he had been framed for the kidnapping of the U.S. President, Claudia Mueller had helped him get the President back and clear Harvath’s name. They had been good together, and probably should have made a better go at carrying their relationship further. But things being what they were at the time, at least they had remained friend
s.
When he reached out to her, Claudia knew better than to ask too many questions. Trusting him, she quietly put a surveillance team on Weber, and arranged for a hangar and transport once The Carlton Group jet touched down.
She appeared only long enough to say hello and hand Harvath an address. Anything that happened after that, she made clear, she didn’t want to know about. He was on his own in Switzerland.
As the Americans pulled up outside Weber’s residence, Claudia’s surveillance team drove away. The handoff was complete.
The home was located in one of the most exclusive areas of Basel: St. Alban-Vorstadt. On an enormous lot, bordered by trees and green space, there was no reason for them to spirit Weber away as they had Trang. His interrogation could happen in the luxurious comfort of his own home.
Harvath decided to allow Morrison and Barton, the youngest guys on the op, to handle subduing Weber when he walked in.
Back in the home’s impressive kitchen, Gage brewed coffee while Haney and Staelin iced their knuckles from Paris, and Harvath sent an encrypted update to Nicholas. Finally, just after midnight, Weber got home.
Being somewhat of a gourmand, in addition to the hams, sausages, and salamis the man had hanging in his walk-in refrigerator, he owned a large stainless steel meat and cheese slicer like you might see in a deli. Morrison and Barton had both wanted to use it to “scare the fuck out of him.”
Harvath explained that the threat was only as good as their willingness to carry it out. Could they put his hands in there and start slicing off the tips of his fingers? Had they weighed what he had done? Did it warrant that kind of response? It was important to get the younger guys thinking.
As it turned out, none of it was necessary.
Unlike Trang, the moment Weber saw Harvath—he knew he was screwed. It was game over and the only hope he had of getting out of this alive was to cooperate.
Weber claimed not to know who had put up the money for the contract, but he had no problem revealing who had paid him to fly all the way to Vietnam and bring it to Trang.
The use of cutouts didn’t surprise Harvath. The name of this one, though, did. Harvath not only knew him, but had also dealt with him before. Years ago, he had been a middleman, charged with hiring an assassin to go after Nicholas.