by Brad Thor
Suddenly, two digital squelch clicks chirped over his earpiece. Harvath dropped, flipped off his goggles, and buried his face in the ground. Somebody stateside had seen something.
He didn’t move a muscle. He didn’t even breathe. All he could do was listen. But there was nothing. What the hell had they seen?
He laid there on the cold ground wondering, until the wind gave him an answer. Above the smell of cold, damp earth, he began to detect something else—cigarette smoke.
Somebody was taking a smoke break and must have wandered in his direction.
He took slow, controlled breaths, trying to gauge the smoker’s distance, but the scent faded. Did the smoker walk away?
Almost in answer to his question, he received the “all clear” from Round Top—three squelch clicks.
Replacing his goggles, he allowed his eyes to readjust and then slowly looked up and assessed his situation.
There was no one in sight. The smell of cigarette smoke had also all but evaporated.
Pushing himself up, he moved toward the structure. Quickly. Quietly. As he moved, he swung his head from left to right, scanning for threats, his suppressed pistol up and ready to fire.
The main door for the residential building was unlocked and he let himself in. He had rebuilt everything from memory—what he had seen in each room, what staff members belonged to each apartment. She wasn’t in this building. Malevsky and his wife would want her close to them, close to the children. She would be inside the main house, but there was someone else of value that slept here. The chef.
Harvath had seen him while touring the kitchen with Jakob. He had noticed the broken capillaries of the man’s nose, the tremor in his hand, the coffee cup nearby, filled with something other than coffee.
As Jakob had taken him through the residential building, Harvath had identified the man’s apartment by the personal photos on his dresser, the Russian cookbooks on his bookshelf. The poorly hidden vodka bottle in the bathroom had confirmed his suspicions.
Standing outside his door now, Harvath could hear the man’s snoring. It sounded like the bellows of a gigantic blast furnace. In and out, in and out. It was like someone was trying to parallel-park a mile-long freight train.
Harvath tried the chef’s doorknob. It was unlocked. He slowly pushed the door open so as not to make any noise and then stepped inside.
The man hadn’t even made it to his bed. He lay passed out on his couch. There was a half-eaten plate of food on the coffee table, accompanied by the “coffee” cup Harvath had seen him with earlier. He was still wearing his uniform.
Harvath shook his head and scanned the living room until he found what he was looking for. The chef had dropped his keys on the floor.
Carefully, so as not to make a sound, he picked them up.
Now all Harvath had to do was to get into the house—something that was going to be much easier said than done.
CHAPTER 25
Harvath had secured enough buildings, events, and estates in his time to know that the key was to limit entry and exit points. With estates, that normally meant the owners came and went via the garage or front door. Servants came, went, and normally received deliveries via some unseen service entrance.
In the case of the Villa Malzoff, it was the grand, restaurant-sized kitchen in back. It was connected to the staff apartments by a small service lane that split off from the driveway.
Harvath used the trees for concealment as he made his approach to the main house. During his tour, he had seen staff coming and going through the main kitchen door.
Unlike the other doors in the hunting lodge, the alarm system didn’t chime every time it opened or closed. It probably saw so much traffic that the chime had been disabled.
But was it reactivated at night? That was Harvath’s biggest question mark at this point.
It didn’t matter that he had a set of keys and that one of them likely opened the door in question. If opening the door meant setting off the alarm, things would instantly go from game on to game over.
He checked out the fifty-meter dash he was going to have to make to a row of garbage cans near some stairs outside the kitchen. Stopping behind the last tree, he requested a SITREP. Three squelch clicks came back in response. All clear.
A couple of lights were on in the kitchen, but he couldn’t see any activity. The rest of the house was asleep, its windows dark. Harvath decided to make his move.
Unlike his last sprint across open ground, this one went down without incident. Flattening his back against the outer wall of the house, he crouched down between two of the cans and waited.
There were two things Russians could always be counted on to do—drink and smoke. The chef had been passed out drunk, just as Harvath had anticipated. Based on what he had seen during his tour, there were no ashtrays in the house and it didn’t smell of cigarettes. Wanting the place to show well, Malevsky had likely issued a ban on smoking indoors.
All Harvath needed now was someone to step out for a cigarette break. Once they used the kitchen door, he’d be able to ascertain a lot about its security.
Twenty minutes went by. The temperature continued to drop. The air was frigid. It was like a saw made out of ice, slicing at him, carving into every fold of clothing it could find.
He had long since given up crouching. It was too rough on his knees. Nobody could hold that position for that long.
Sitting, with his knees pulled against his chest, he continued to wait. In the back of his mind he began to formulate a Plan B. If no one came out, what would he do? Would he risk the door? Abort the operation?
He was running through his options, when he heard someone unlock the kitchen door. Quickly, he got into a crouch.
A man stepped outside with an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth. Removing a Zippo from his pocket, he flipped open the top and struck the flint wheel against the side of his leg. Raising the lighter, he lit his cigarette. Harvath was so close he could almost smell the lighter fluid.
Once the cigarette was lit, the man flicked his wrist, the lid snapped shut, and the flame was extinguished. The man took a deep, long drag. He filled his lungs and put his head back, savoring the hit from the nicotine as it raced into his system.
The man stepped the rest of the way out, and closed the door behind him. Harvath noted that there had been no sound of a chime from the alarm pad just inside. The door appeared safe.
The man was larger than the security guards he had seen earlier. He was bald with a thick neck. He looked like a circus strongman minus the handlebar mustache. When Harvath pictured low-rent, Russian mob muscle in his mind, this was exactly the kind of person he envisioned—gold jewelry and all.
He looked to be in his late fifties, maybe older. It was hard to tell. Russians lived hard and aged badly, particularly in the criminal arena.
In his crouch, Harvath tried to slow his respiration. He didn’t want the sight of his breath rising into the cold night air to give him away.
The man took a couple more puffs off his cigarette and then stubbed it out. But instead of flicking the remainder somewhere into the service lane or the grass, he began walking toward the line of garbage cans.
Fuck was the first word that came to Harvath’s mind. What’s this idiot doing? Was he going to throw his recently lit cigarette in the trash?
But when he heard the first lid open, it only took him a matter of seconds to realize what was up.
There was the sound of glass against glass as the Russian fished a bottle of who knows what out of the trash and unscrewed the cap.
Whatever he had found, there wasn’t much of it because the bottle went quickly back into the trash and he moved to the next can.
He was close now. Way too close. Fuck, Harvath said to himself again. Even with subsonic ammo in his suppressed H&K, the 9mm pistol still made a lot of noise. It would
sound even louder this close to the house. Somebody was going to hear it. And whoever did was going to come to investigate. Fuck.
He tried to think. Improvise, he told himself as he looked around. He could hear the large man fishing another bottle out of the can two down from where he was hiding.
Harvath was going to have to shoot him. There was no getting around it. The man seemed determined to rut through every garbage can before he turned and went back inside. Booze and cigarettes, he thought. Fucking Russians.
Leaning against the wall, he shifted his weapon into his left hand. This was going to screw everything. He’d have to find a place to hide the body and hope it bought him enough time to do what he needed to do inside.
Somehow, he’d have to figure out how to grab Malevsky and get him out of the house. He hated the idea, but he was going to have to use one of the mobster’s kids. Damn it.
The Russian was one garbage can away now. It was only a matter of seconds before he came to the gap between the cans and saw him.
Harvath would have to move fast. In order to muffle the sound of his weapon, he’d need to get it up against the man. He planned to shoot him in the back of the head or the heart—multiple shots in quick succession. Then he would drag his body around the side of the house and place it out of sight.
This was not how any of this was supposed to go down. There had to be a better way. Think, he told himself. But it was too late. He had to act. The man was now on top of him.
Launching full force up out of his crouch, he came at him like a battering ram. He delivered a searing punch into the best target he had, right up between the man’s legs.
The air whooshed from the man’s lungs and he doubled over. As he did, Harvath slipped past, turned, and then drove his elbow as hard as he could into the base of his skull, knocking him the rest of the way to the ground.
He drew back his foot to kick him in the head, but stopped. The man was lying on the ground, on his stomach, not moving.
Harvath figured he was out cold. Leaning forward, he placed his pistol to the back of his head and began applying pressure to his trigger. Then he noticed his eyes. They were open, but he wasn’t breathing.
He reached down and checked his pulse. He didn’t have one. He was dead.
Harvath could smell the alcohol wafting off him, and that gave him an idea. The stairs.
Grabbing the huge man under the arms, he dragged him over to the flight of six stone stairs that led downhill and took him to the bottom. He posed the body as best he could and then ran back up to the garbage cans to fish out a bottle of liquor.
Returning to the body, he tucked the bottle halfway underneath. He then placed his knee on the corpse and applied his weight until the bottle broke.
The accident scene was complete. Whether or not Malevsky would buy it was another matter entirely.
All Harvath knew was that he had caught a break. He didn’t expect to catch another one. Moving quickly up the stone steps, he headed for the kitchen door.
Slipping into the house, he closed the door behind him and quietly climbed the back stairs. He had a good feeling he knew which room was hers.
The door was unlocked. He opened it slowly.
Despite the hour, she wasn’t asleep. She wasn’t even in bed. A small, semiautomatic pistol was in her hand. She looked at him as he entered the room and said, “You shouldn’t have come back.”
CHAPTER 26
WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM
WASHINGTON, D.C.
President Porter nodded and the lights were dimmed. The glowing presidential seal on the monitors was replaced by the black flag of ISIS. There was the sound of wind. Slowly, the flag began to ripple.
Haunting music in Arabic poured from the overhead speakers. A picture of the Secretary of Defense faded up from the black.
Public photos from the last thirty years of Richard Devon’s life began to appear. Each one materialized quicker than the last.
As the pacing of the photos built to a crescendo, so too did the music. Then everything went black.
Everyone in the Situation Room braced for the worst.
But, like a terrifying horror movie, it was a feint—a move meant to keep its viewers off balance.
Secretary Devon’s voice now filled the room. The screens pulsed with digital snow, as if trying to capture some faraway signal. Then the video came into focus.
It was the Secretary’s swearing-in ceremony at the Pentagon. The words were his oath of office, administered by the Vice President.
But the swearing-in video was soon replaced by images of war and carnage. American tanks, troops, and planes were shown intercut with dead and dismembered Middle Eastern men, women, and children. All the while, Secretary Devon could be heard proudly and confidently reciting his oath.
There was applause as the Vice President congratulated Devon and the screens in the Situation Room went black once again. Now the worst would come.
A fraction of a second later, the video roared back to life. The motorcade was under attack. The attackers shouted “Allahu’akbar” as they stepped into the street firing their fully automatic rifles.
The attack was covered from multiple angles. Not only were the terrorists wearing GoPro cameras but there was also footage of the carnage taken from up above. Cameras must have been placed in windows or on rooftops.
It was slick and well produced. It looked like something out of a Hollywood action movie.
It was gut-wrenching to watch.
No one in the Situation Room spoke. They were saddened and sickened by what they were watching play out on the screen.
Everyone knew how it ended, but no one could turn away. They were all mesmerized, prisoners of the violence and barbarity unfolding in front of them.
When the final moment came, and the first car bombs exploded, the video transitioned into slow motion. If there was an Academy Award for evil, ISIS would have taken home an Oscar. It was as if the Devil himself had gotten into the film business.
The video ended with a masked figure standing in the desert, taunting the President. He spoke English like an American. He was different from the Brit and Aussie spokesmen the world had seen before.
“Unite your coalition. Mobilize your armies. Exact your revenge,” he said. “You know where to find us. We’re waiting for you.”
And with that, the video shrank into a single point of light and disappeared—like an old television set being switched off.
The lights in the Situation Room came back up. The members of the President’s National Security Council sat stunned. No one spoke. They were all without words.
Then, as if a starting gun had gone off, they all began speaking at once. Tempers were hot.
President Porter called for quiet and directed CIA Director McGee to bring everyone up to speed on the latest.
“The video you just saw was published by the media arm of ISIS less than two hours ago,” the Director said. “We’re in the process of analyzing it now. In the meantime, I want to update you on the explosion last night in Antalya, Turkey.”
Activating his presentation, he put a slide up on the monitors that showed two pictures. One was the smoking, burned-out hulks of at least fifteen vehicles. The other looked like a huge bomb crater.
“The photo on the left,” the Director narrated, “is a crime scene photo from the car bomb attack on Secretary Devon’s motorcade. The photo on the right is from an explosion, about six-and-a-half kilometers away, that happened several hours later.”
“We’re assuming they’re connected?” the Vice President asked.
McGee nodded. “The FBI had already sent forensics teams to Antalya to gather evidence from Secretary Devon’s attack. When the second explosion happened, a small contingent of FBI technicians agreed to aid Turkish police in their investigation.
“The explosio
n leveled almost half a city block. It was an industrialized area, mostly warehouses. No word yet on casualties.”
“What’s the connection?”
“The FBI’s preliminary finding is that the explosive signatures match,” McGee replied. “We think ISIS was using one of the warehouses as a bomb factory.”
“And judging by the size of that crater,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs stated, “they still had a lot of ingredients left.”
“Which Turkish intelligence assumes was meant for further attacks inside Turkey. They see this as a major escalation. Ismet Bachar, the Chief of the Turkish General Staff, has even canceled his vacation and returned to the capital.”
“Good,” the National Security Advisor chimed in. “If they’d actually been serious about ISIS from the get-go, maybe Secretary Devon would still be alive.”
Maybe, but McGee didn’t want to get into hypotheticals. “At this point, they’re bending over backward to give us everything we need.”
“What about the man in the video?” the Secretary of State interjected. “He sounds American. Do we have any idea who he is?”
“Not yet.”
“How about where they got their intelligence?” the Attorney General asked. “Have we identified a specific leak yet?”
“No. Not yet.”
“What about the three Turks that Secretary Devon’s team plowed down during the attack? Have we learned anything more about them? Anything that might be helpful?”
McGee shook his head and repeated, “No. Nothing yet.”
“Has the NSA had any luck isolating what part of the cloud the attackers uploaded their GoPro footage to?”
The CIA Director shook his head. It was demoralizing for everyone present. A silence fell back over the room.
The Secretary of State decided to take advantage of the lull. “Mr. President, if I may ask. Are you still planning to renounce recognition of the Sykes-Picot boundaries?”