by Brad Thor
He chose his steps carefully, making sure to stay to the outside of each tread. The stairs were solid. Not one groaned under the weight of his boots.
At the top of the landing he stopped, looked left, and then he looked right. All of the doors were open except for one—Baseyev’s.
He listened again, but still heard nothing. He had no idea if the man was awake or asleep. Holstering his pistol, he removed the black Taser X26P Williams had provided him with in Amman, and powered it up.
The floors of the hallway were covered with stone. He wouldn’t have to worry about a board creaking and giving him away. Even so, he chose his steps just as carefully as he had coming up the stairs. Baseyev was so close he could almost feel him.
But no sooner had he neared the bedroom door than he realized he was in trouble. It didn’t have a handle. For security, Baseyev had rigged it so that it could only be opened from inside.
“Fuck,” Harvath cursed under his breath.
He examined the door itself and then the frame, looking for a latch or a switch, anything that might open it from this side. He came up empty.
Think, he told himself. There has to be a way. There’s always a way. Then he remembered the balcony and the shutters that were open to the outside.
Retreating from the door, he retraced his footsteps to the top of the stairs and began searching for the roof access. It had to be somewhere on the second floor.
Moving quietly through each room he searched—looking for a panel in the ceiling, a ladder or some sort of hidden staircase. As he did, he tried to recall the images he had seen of the roof. How was it accessed?
Finally, he realized the access had to be from Baseyev’s room. In fact, it probably was a trap door of some sort that he had covered up with one of the upturned satellite dishes. That meant Harvath was going to have to find another way up.
He stuck his head out the windows of two rooms before he finally found a part of the façade with enough handholds to get him all the way up to the roof. Securing all of his gear, he stepped out onto a narrow ledge and began to climb.
It only took a couple of seconds to get up and over the top.
“What are you doing on the roof?” Ryan asked from back at Langley.
Harvath looked up, though he knew he wouldn’t be able to see the drone. “Long story. Is Pitchfork still in bed?”
“Roger that,” she replied. “The Reaper just made a pass. He’s still there.”
At least something was going his way. “Roger that,” Harvath whispered. “Going to zero comms.”
Zero comms was code for no further communications. He didn’t need people talking in his ear as he was preparing to take down Baseyev.
“Zero comms. Roger that,” Ryan said. “Good luck.”
Harvath appreciated it. With what he was about to do, he was going to need all the luck in the world.
CHAPTER 68
Climbing up onto the roof was one thing. Climbing down was something altogether different.
Harvath was forced to leave most of his gear behind. In addition to weighing him down, it rattled and made too much noise. He couldn’t afford to make a sound.
Slipping over the edge of the roof, he began his descent toward Baseyev’s balcony.
It was much more difficult here than the other side of the house had been, far fewer handhelds and places to put his feet.
The grips were so minimal that there were places where he was digging his fingernails into soft pieces of mortar just to hang on.
He moved not by inches but by millimeters. His hands ached and his body was soon covered with perspiration. If anyone happened by below, he’d be exposed.
Shoving the pain and the pounding of his heart from his consciousness, he kept going. The balcony was only a few more meters away.
He kept running out of places to put his hands, as well as his feet. But each time he did, he took a breath and willed himself to look around. Find something, he told himself. It’s here, you just have to look for it. And each time he did, he found it.
The balcony now was only feet away. It was almost over. He kept moving toward it, ready to let go of the wall.
But no sooner had he reached it than he heard a sound from inside. Baseyev had set an alarm on his phone to wake himself up.
Harvath couldn’t even manage to utter the word fuck. The pain in his hands was excruciating—and it was spreading. He could feel it in his legs, his arms, and his back. His entire body wanted him to give up. It was begging him to.
Each nerve ending was screaming for him to let go and just drop to the ground. The fact that he’d be badly injured in the fall made no difference. All the muscles of his body could focus on was immediate relief. Let go, they screamed. Let go!
Harvath bit down and redoubled his tenuous grip on the wall. He wasn’t going to let go. He forced himself to keep moving toward the balcony.
But what about Baseyev? He strained his ears for any hint of what was going on inside.
The alarm had been silenced. Did that mean he was awake? Or had he activated the snooze feature and rolled over and gone back to sleep?
He was too close to even whisper back to Ryan to give him a SITREP from the drone. And unless the drone was making a pass right at that moment, it wouldn’t be able to provide him the feedback he needed. There was only one way to know for sure.
Pushing himself the last foot and a half, he reached the balcony and eased himself down onto its solid concrete wraparound. Relief immediately coursed through his body.
He didn’t have time, though, to stand there and allow his body to uncramp. He needed to move.
Stepping quietly off the surround and onto the balcony floor, he willed his stiff fingers to obey and drew his Taser. This was it. Baseyev was about to pay for everything that he had done.
Moving toward the large shutters that separated the balcony from the bedroom, he paused. There was no sound. Harvath took that as a good sign. The exhausted man had rolled over and gone back to sleep.
With his Taser tucked in to the ready position at his chest, he spun into Baseyev’s room and prepared to fire.
The bed, though, was empty. In the corner was an AK-47, but no Baseyev. Harvath barely had any time to process what was happening before his target was on top of him.
Baseyev must have awoken and heard a sound from the balcony. With no time to get to his weapon, he must have simply pressed himself up against the wall to wait for his attacker to materialize. When he did, Baseyev sprang, leveraging the element of surprise for all it was worth.
He landed two devastating blows—one under the man’s jaw and one to the side of his head. Harvath saw stars immediately and his already fatigued legs went rubbery on him.
Baseyev didn’t give him a moment or a millimeter to collect himself. He rained the blows down like a gorilla swinging a pair of sledgehammers.
It was pure Systema—the lethal Russian martial art taught to the Spetsnaz and all of the nation’s intelligence operatives.
The elbow and knee strikes came again, and again and again. Harvath’s vision dimmed and he lost control of the Taser. He barely heard it fall and go clattering across the floor.
The blows came so hard and so fast, Harvath couldn’t get himself into a position long enough to reach for his pistol or his knife.
He was getting his ass kicked. There was no other way to phrase it. Baseyev was an amazingly well trained and brutal fighter, relentless in his attack.
If Harvath didn’t do something fast, he was going to lose consciousness. And if he did, it would be game over for him. There was only one thing he could think to do.
Planting his feet, he dropped into a squat and lunged at Baseyev, catching him around the waist and driving him over backward.
They landed hard on the concrete floor and the air raced from Baseyev’s lungs. Harvath sho
wed him no mercy.
Harvath beat him twice as hard as Baseyev had beaten him. He beat Baseyev for every American he had killed. He beat him for every loved one and family member who had been left behind.
He broke ribs and watched Baseyev vomit up blood. He grazed him with a punch across the top of his head so severe it removed a piece of scalp.
And then, on the razor-thin edge of killing the man, he stopped and rolled off him.
Baseyev gasped, trying to fill his body again with oxygen. He coughed repeatedly, aspirating on his own blood. A river of it ran from his torn lip. Some even ran out of his left ear.
Harvath had been opened up in a couple of places across his face, but he looked like a supermodel in comparison.
Struggling to his feet, he retrieved his Taser and then came back over and kicked Baseyev as hard as he could in the ribs.
The blow hit so hard he could actually hear them crack. “That’s from the President of the United States.”
He was tempted to deliver another kick, but he didn’t want to risk puncturing and collapsing one of the man’s lungs. There were still several things he needed from him.
Rolling Baseyev over onto his stomach, Harvath zip-tied his wrists and ankles, placed a piece of duct tape across his mouth, and then forced him to sit upright against the wall.
Harvath felt like he had been hit by a train. Sliding down the wall into a sitting position next to him, Harvath caught his breath and waited for some of his strength to return.
It took everything he had not to kill Baseyev right there and right then. As far as D.C. was concerned, that was a perfectly legitimate option. Harvath, though, wanted more.
Pulling out his phone, he got ready to interrogate him. But before he removed the tape from the man’s mouth, he explained what his options were.
He was offering him a one-time-only deal. If Baseyev agreed, Harvath would honor his end of the bargain.
If he didn’t, Harvath would leave him for ISIS and would make sure they knew he was a traitor.
“So what’s it going to be, Sacha?” he asked, as he yanked the piece of tape off his mouth.
The man turned to the side and spat a glob of blood and saliva onto the floor. Turning his gaze back to Harvath, he replied, “I accept.”
CHAPTER 69
Harvath’s original plan had been to get to Baseyev, interrogate Baseyev, and identify the location of the meeting honoring Baseyev. From there, he would call in a drone strike. Then he and Nicholas would embellish.
Nicholas would rework the drone footage to make it look like the Russians had carried out the strike. He would get it out to anti-Russian jihadist websites, forums, and chat rooms. The Islamists in all the places Russia was worried about would go berserk.
For his part, as ISIS fighters rushed to the scene of the attack to look for survivors and help dig people out of the rubble, Harvath would lie in wait with the sniper rifle. He would pick off as many as possible and then flee.
Near the edge of town, the Hadids would have staged an accident. Baseyev would be trapped, unconscious, in a rolled-over vehicle. Harvath would plant the rifle, as well as a few other pieces of incriminating Russian evidence, and they’d all be off. When ISIS found Baseyev, they would tear him limb from limb. Harvath was a sucker for happy endings.
But as things often did in the field, something changed. Baseyev revealed a piece of bombshell information.
Inside the house glowing with monitors, the one with all the extra generators and air conditioning, was the social media mastermind for ISIS—the creative force behind not only their Internet recruiting but all of their propaganda, including their horrific videos.
There was one additional factor that made him special in Harvath’s eyes—he was the HVT Salah had identified. Because of him, the CIA SAD team and their pilots had been killed in Anbar. Because of him, three American women from the U.S. embassy in Amman had been brutally raped and killed. And because of him, Harvath was willing to take a huge risk. The man was too valuable a target to pass up.
At this point, the only question normally on Harvath’s mind was kill or capture? But while killing had always provided a certain satisfaction, it no longer felt like it was enough—not after so many lives had already been lost. He wanted more than blood.
He wanted substantive revenge—against both ISIS and the Russians. That meant the social media mastermind and Baseyev were actually worth more to him alive. And so, he had made up his mind.
• • •
“Wait. You’re asking permission to do what exactly?” Ryan replied from Langley.
“I’m not asking permission,” Harvath clarified. “Now, can you get it done or not?”
She knew better than to argue with him. His ability to adapt under high-stress situations and prevail was why they had hired him. He was his own man, especially when he was in the field. With or without them, he was going to do it. His mind was made up.
After a quick discussion with the Pentagon, she came back online. “DoD has a Reaper in Western Iraq. It’ll take them at least forty-five minutes, though, until they can get it on station over you.”
“What’s it carrying?”
“Four Hellfires, plus two five-hundred-pound GBU-38s.”
JDAMs. Harvath knew the munition well. It was a bolt-on guidance package that turned “dumb,” unguided gravity bombs into smart, precision-guided game-changers.
The DoD drone represented a massive amount of ordnance. Harvath liked that. He was a big fan of overkill. If a little was good, then a ton was even better—and it sent a hell of a message.
“The meeting starts in half an hour,” he replied. “Tell them to step on it.”
As Ryan signed off, Harvath’s mind turned to how they were going to pull off snatching the social media guru.
According to Baseyev, there were two guards inside the house—one on the first floor and another up on the second, as Yusuf had seen.
The house also contained three racks of servers. If Harvath could grab their hard drives, in addition to the media mastermind, it would be a huge coup for the United States.
Everyone in the house, though, had explicit instructions to destroy everything if they came under attack. That left Harvath with a serious problem.
The downstairs had been converted into an open area where the social media people worked.
Besides the guru, there were six key players—two video editors, plus four operatives who monitored all the ISIS social media channels and fed ISIS propaganda to a series of sympathizers around the globe who acted as “repeater” stations.
The servers were kept in a locked room upstairs, and Baseyev gave Harvath a complete rundown of how the home was laid out.
If it was all accurate, and considering that Baseyev’s life hung in the balance, and he had no reason to believe it wasn’t, Harvath had the advantage. He would have the element of surprise. What he didn’t have, though, was a plan.
He had beaten Baseyev so badly, the man couldn’t be used as a ruse to get him inside. And while there were only two guards, the rest of the social-media people, though admittedly geeks to greater or lesser degrees, all had AK-47s. They carried them to look tough, but none of them were killers.
Even so, all it took was one lucky shot. An armed combatant was an armed combatant. Geeks or not, they were committed jihadists and Harvath wasn’t going to show any of them an ounce of mercy. The only person he cared about in that house was their head of social media.
Baseyev said his name was Rafael—a twenty-seven-year-old British national of Pakistani descent. He was short and fat with a scraggly beard, greasy hair, and glasses. And while he professed to hate the West for its decadence, he could always be found wearing a vintage Western rock band T-shirt, such as The Clash or Elvis Costello. He was also known for living on huge amounts of strawberry licorice and tall cans of sugar
y energy drinks.
Reflecting on the details, Harvath thought, Who the fuck lives on strawberry licorice and energy drinks in the middle of a war zone?
Then, like a bolt from the blue, a brilliant and elegantly simple plan crystallized in his mind.
CHAPTER 70
Harvath and Mathan left twenty minutes before everyone else. With the help of the CIA’s Reaper, they had pinpointed the perfect spot.
The half-finished building had never been occupied. From the roof, it provided a perfect view of the street in front of Rafael’s house.
They filled the pillowcase from Baseyev’s with sand, and once Harvath was all set up, Mathan melted away into the neighborhood to conduct a final round of reconnaissance.
Using the Reaper’s onboard equipment, Ryan confirmed back in Langley both shots Harvath would be taking. Based on how the rifle had performed out in the dunes, he adjusted for a little Kentucky windage and settled in.
He was lying on an old pallet that had been left up on the roof and was using the pillowcase as a rest for the rifle. He’d already urinated twice—once before leaving Baseyev’s and again when arriving at the building. He had slugged back almost an entire bottle of water and wouldn’t be able to move until his job was done.
Ryan continued to feed him a play-by-play from Langley of what they were seeing from the drone. “Pitchfork is rolling,” she said. “Repeat, Pitchfork is rolling.”
That meant Baseyev’s Land Cruiser was on the move. Thoman would be at the wheel, Baseyev in the captain’s chair behind him, and Qabbani and Yusuf in the third row.
Thoman was the most important. Harvath was counting on him to both mind Baseyev and to be immediately ready to go hot if things went kinetic. It was a tall order, but he had no doubt he was up to it.
Peering through his night scope, Harvath settled in behind the weapon and got ready to take his shots.
“Inbound,” Ryan relayed. “Pitchfork. Ninety seconds. Make ready.”