by Brad Thor
“We’ve got a fix on the mobile phone Phoenix Three contacted from the accident site,” said Reed Carlton. Phoenix Three was the code name that had been given to Sean Chase for the operation. Harvath was Phoenix One and Riley Turner was Phoenix Two.
“We’ve got an address?” asked Harvath.
“That’s affirmative,” said the old man. “I’ll pass it off to you on the back channel.”
The back channel was a reference to the secure network the Carlton Group used to communicate and pass information to each other.
“Roger that,” said Harvath.
Using the code name they had created for Mansoor, based on his initials, the old man asked, “Any progress with Massachusetts?”
“Not yet,” replied Harvath, “but I think he’ll be warming up to us soon.”
“Good. I want this op wrapped up and everyone out of there as soon as possible. Understood?”
“Roger that,” replied Harvath. He and Carlton spoke at length about how long to give Phoenix Three before launching their takedown of the Uppsala cell. They both understood that the longer Chase was in their midst, the more he might be able to learn. They also understood that the longer he stayed, the greater the odds were that he might be discovered. If he was, they’d kill him on the spot.
The call ended, Harvath gathered up the blanket and the water bottle, and headed outside.
“Anything?” he asked as he approached the operative standing guard at the barn. “Praying? Crying? Anything?” Knowing how their prisoner had spent the time since Harvath had been gone would affect how he decided to continue the interrogation.
“Nothing,” replied the operative, an ex-CIA man named Andy Bachmann. He was in his late fifties and built like a drill instructor. The Old Man had suggested him for this operation as they’d known each other in the old days back at Langley, and Bachmann had worked in Sweden before. “Not a sound.”
Mansoor Aleem might be tougher than Harvath had thought. Nodding, he walked past Bachmann, unlocked the barn door, and jerked it wide. He stood there with the door open for several seconds to encourage the flow of cold air. The prisoner didn’t move.
Considering how he’d been shivering, there was no way that Mansoor could have fallen asleep. Had he slipped into unconsciousness? That would be a world record. He hadn’t been exposed to the cold that long.
For a moment, Harvath wondered if he was being played. “Time to wake up, Mansoor,” he said as he walked up to the man and snatched off his hood. There was no reaction.
The man’s head was bent forward, his chin resting on his chest. Harvath grabbed a fistful of hair and tilted his head back so he could look at his face. He slapped him, but the man didn’t even flinch. He wasn’t conscious.
Harvath opened one of his eyelids. The eye failed to dilate. He placed two fingers against the man’s carotid and felt for a pulse. Nothing.
“Fuck,” said Harvath, as he then yelled for the operative outside. “Andy! Andy, damn it!”
Bachmann threw open the door and charged inside, his MP7 drawn from beneath his coat. “What is it?” he said, scanning the barn as he tried to figure out what was happening.
“Get Riley,” Harvath ordered. “Now! Tell her Mansoor has flatlined.”
As a medical student and Winter X Games athlete, Turner had been one of the first recruits into a covert Department of Defense program known as the Athena Project. Its goal was to provide women with the same training male Delta Force operatives received, making it possible to send them into the field alone, on all-female teams, or in various mixed assignments such as Harvath’s Sweden op. The bad guys could often see the men coming but rarely, if ever, suspected women. He had requested Riley, now a trauma surgeon, personally. Having worked with her before, he knew she was exceedingly capable. There were also personal reasons he wanted her along, but those were far from his mind right now.
As Bachmann took out his radio to raise Riley, Harvath cut his prisoner loose and laid him on the floor. Harvath had killed plenty of people in his career, but they’d all been bad guys who had deserved to die. Harvath had killed each of them intentionally. Mansoor Aleem was definitely a bad guy, but Harvath didn’t want him dead. And he definitely didn’t want it to happen because he had screwed up.
With him on the floor, Harvath immediately began CPR. The new guidelines called for doubling the number of chest compressions and not worrying about blowing air into the victim’s airway. “Don’t you die on me, asshole,” he said as he rapidly compressed the man’s chest. “Don’t you die.”
“What happened?” Riley shouted as she ran into the barn and saw Harvath on the floor performing CPR.
“I’ve got no idea,” said Harvath, as he kept focused on his prisoner. “When I came back in, he didn’t have a pulse.”
“Don’t BS me,” she replied as she rushed to his side. “I can’t help him if I don’t know what happened.”
“I just told you I don’t know what happened.”
“Did you hit him?”
“No, damn it,” Harvath snapped.
“If you struck him,” she said, “I need to know exactly where and with how much force.”
“For God’s sake, Riley. I didn’t touch him.”
“Fine,” she said, reaching out to check Mansoor’s pulse. “Stop the compressions for a second.”
Harvath did as he was told and watched as she checked for a pulse. “Anything?”
Riley shook her head. Picking up where Harvath had left off, she continued chest compressions with quick, swift pumps. “We’re going to need to get him to a hospital.”
“The hell we are,” replied Harvath. “We do that and we’re going to have an international incident on our hands.”
“Scot,” she said, as she continued the compressions. “He’s dead.”
“Hypothermia?”
“Hypothermia. Heart attack. What difference does it make?”
Harvath didn’t respond.
“If it’s hypothermia,” Riley added, “that could work in our favor. You’re not dead till you’re warm and dead, but I don’t have the kind of equipment we need to revive him.”
Harvath looked at the bag she had run in with and had tossed on the floor. “What about adrenaline? Can you use a syringe and pump it straight into his heart?”
“Intracardial injection?”
“Whatever you call it. Can you do that?” asked Harvath.
“Sure,” she replied, “but you need to defibrillate the patient as well. We don’t have a defibrillator.”
“Prep the adrenaline,” said Harvath as he waved Bachmann over. When the ex-CIA operative neared, Harvath told him to take over for Riley and keep giving Mansoor chest compressions.
“What are you going to do?” asked Riley.
“Don’t worry. Just hurry up and get that syringe ready.”
As Riley opened her bag and prepped the adrenaline, Harvath drew his Taser and pulled out its cartridge. “A Taser won’t give him the kind of jolt he needs. They’re not built that way,” she said.
Harvath didn’t care. He’d seen people take punches to the chest and have their hearts restart. If he could put enough juice in Mansoor’s body and cause it to convulse violently enough, maybe it would work. Grabbing the Taser from the holster on Bachmann’s belt, he removed its cartridge as well.
When Riley had the syringe ready, she nodded, and Harvath told Bachmann to stop the compressions and stand back. Looking at Riley, he said, “Do it.”
With no time to swab the man’s chest with an alcohol pad, she felt for the fourth intercostal space and pushed the needle through tissue and into his heart. Depressing the plunger, she injected the contents of the syringe into the young man’s ventricle.
When she was finished, she withdrew the needle and stood back. “This won’t work.”
“It has to work,” said Harvath as he kneeled over the body. Riley pointed to where defibrillator paddles would normally be placed and then stood back. “Here we go,” sai
d Harvath, indicating that he was ready.
When Riley nodded, Harvath counted to three and pulled both the Tasers’ triggers at once.
CHAPTER 13
The young Muslim’s body went rigid, his head rolled back, and his back arched off the floor.
Harvath withdrew the Tasers and rocked back on his heels as Mansoor’s body landed with a thud on the dirt-covered barn floor. Riley reached forward and placed two fingers on his neck to see if he had a pulse.
“Anything?”
Riley shook her head. “Scot, this is not going to work.”
Harvath ignored her. “Stand back,” he said.
“Scot.”
“Stand back,” he repeated.
When she was out of the way, Harvath reapplied the Tasers, gave the warning he was about to deploy another charge, and then pulled the triggers.
The prisoner’s body went stiff once more and then came to rest on the floor. “Check his pulse,” Harvath said.
Riley did as he asked. Feeling nothing, she shook her head and scooted back.
“Damn it,” cursed Harvath. “Everybody back up. I’m going to hit him again.”
Riley and Bachmann did as they were told. Placing the Tasers against Mansoor’s left and right chest walls, Harvath applied yet another stun drive of electricity.
As had happened each time previously, the young man’s body convulsed and then dropped back to the dusty barn floor.
“He’s gone,” said Bachmann.
“He doesn’t get to choose when he goes,” snapped Harvath. “I’m not done with him.”
Without any warning this time, Harvath repositioned the Tasers and pulled the triggers. Mansoor’s body stiffened and then dropped back down.
“Check him again,” he said.
Riley moved forward and reached out her fingers. “Nothing.”
“Fuck!” Harvath yelled.
Abandoning the young man’s right and left chest walls, Harvath placed both Tasers directly over Mansoor’s heart and pulled the triggers. When the body fell back to the ground, he did it again, and then again once more.
“Scot,” Bachmann said, but Harvath ignored him. Angry at the prisoner and even more angry with himself, Harvath pulled the triggers two more times.
Riley said something, but Harvath didn’t listen to her either. She put her hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off. It wasn’t until she grabbed his arm just above his triceps in a viselike pinch that she broke the spell.
“Son of a-” he began, as he turned his anger toward Riley.
“He twitched,” she said.
“He what?”
Riley shoved Harvath aside and laid her fingers on Mansoor’s carotid. She then leaned her ear over his mouth. “I think I can feel a breath.”
Tilting the prisoner’s head back, she pinched his nose, placed a CPR barrier over his mouth, and delivered a breath of air. She waited for several seconds and then repeated the process two more times until he began breathing on his own.
“Is he alive?” asked Harvath.
“Barely,” replied Riley. “We need to get him warm and get an IV started.”
Bachmann wrapped Mansoor with the blanket Harvath had brought with him and then went to the farmhouse to gather more.
Harvath handed Riley the items she requested from her medical bag and then rigged up a makeshift IV stand.
Once she had the fluids running into the young Muslim’s arm, Harvath asked, “How long until he’s ready to be interrogated again?”
Riley looked up at him. He couldn’t tell if what he was seeing on her face was admiration or disgust. He figured it was probably a mixture of both. “You’ve got to be one of the luckiest people I’ve ever met. Don’t push it.”
Harvath had often said it was better to be lucky than good, but he didn’t offer that sentiment to her. “I need to know how soon I can start asking him questions again.”
Riley shook her head. “First he’s got to regain consciousness.”
“How long?” Harvath insisted.
“It’s indefinite at this point. He probably has some sort of underlying heart condition. I think that’s why he coded. He could also have brain damage now. He’s going to need some tests; tests we can’t conduct where we’re supposed to be going. We’re going to need access to a friendly hospital.”
Harvath knew what she meant by a “friendly” hospital. They had planned for the possibility that Mansoor might get injured in the car crash. Whether that happened or not, he was going to be drugged up and flown out of Sweden on a Sentinel Medevac jet. All the paperwork was in order and an impeccable passport had been created for him. They’d be portraying him as the son of a wealthy Arab who’d had a stroke and was being flown back to the UAE for emergency medical treatment. Not even the most rigorous of authorities would have any reason to suspect the party and their patient were anything other than who they said they were.
By the time Mansoor awoke from his drug-induced stupor, the flight plan would have been refiled for Jordan and he would find himself in one of the multiple “extraordinary rendition” black interrogation/detention sites still in operation despite the U.S. government’s public proclamations to the contrary.
Based on the cyber jihadist’s enhanced medical needs, though, they were probably going to have to reevaluate which host country’s site they were going to use. Carlton and the DoD would make the final call.
The members of the Uppsala cell were another matter. Harvath had decided it would be foolish to put all of his eggs in one basket. He wanted Mansoor out of the country as quickly as possible. He had developed another plan for getting the safe house terrorists out of the country, though he still had no idea at the moment how many there were.
First things first. “How long until he can be ready for transport?” asked Harvath as he gestured at Mansoor.
Riley glanced at her patient and again shook her head. “At this point, I don’t even want to try to move him to the farmhouse. That said, the plane has a lot of the medical equipment he’s going to need, so as soon as he is ready to be moved, I think we should move him.”
Getting Mansoor to the airfield was another shell game, which would be played out via a private ambulance service from Stockholm willing to make the drive up to Uppsala. Looking at the man lying on the floor, Harvath wondered if he’d even survive the trip to the airport. Fortunately, that wasn’t his problem. It was Riley’s. He had other problems.
The biggest among them was deciding how long to leave Sean Chase in place and when to take down the Uppsala cell. With Riley now tied up with overseeing Mansoor, Harvath was going to have to shift to his contingency plan. He didn’t like it, but they had all known that it was a possible outcome. The team, and more important Harvath, would have to do without her.
That meant that things were about to get much more dangerous.
CHAPTER 14
The two brothers who picked Chase up at the soccer field did not speak. They didn’t ask about his medical condition, nor did they offer him any food or water. They simply drove him to an abandoned garage on the outskirts of Uppsala and kept an eye on him while they all waited.
What they were waiting for, Chase wasn’t exactly sure, but he had an idea. More than likely, the man he had spoken to over the phone, the man he assumed was in charge of the cell, was checking out his story about the accident.
When it was time to pray, the two men let Chase pray alongside them, but he stopped when the wound on his head opened up and started bleeding again.
Fairly confident of how the authentic Mansoor Aleem would behave, he made sure to make a real pain in the ass out of himself. He lectured his two guards about Islamic doctrine and their duty to see to his well-being.
He harangued them so badly that one of the men threatened to kill him. Eventually, he wore them down, and one of them left to purchase some items he had asked for.
The man came back twenty minutes later with energy drinks, candy bars, and first-aid supplies. They allowe
d Chase to use the garage’s filthy, foul-smelling bathroom to clean himself up and tend to his wounds. He did the best he could and then came out and choked down some nourishment. He hated energy drinks and he wasn’t all that big on candy bars, but that was the quintessential IT/hacker diet and it was important that he looked the part, right down to the smallest detail, as the smallest details often played the biggest part in making or breaking a cover.
If he had wanted to, Chase could have taken out both in quick succession. There were multiple items lying around the old garage that could have been used as weapons. In the bathroom, he had found a decent strip of metal that he had folded to about four inches long. It was rusting, yet had a sharp enough point that it could be used as a shiv. He wrapped the handle portion of the weapon with plumber’s tape he’d found around one of the pipes beneath the sink.
He’d been processing every single nuanced, nonverbal cue the two men had been giving off since they had picked him up. He knew all too well what he could end up having to do and how far he might have to go and he was getting himself all jacked up over it. He had to get it under control.
Taking a look in the mirror, he took a deep breath and told himself to relax, everything was cool. All that nervousness was just his limbic system. A student of Hagakure, he’d meditated extensively on death. He’d done so right before this operation. It was the same before every operation. Death was inevitable. He imagined the worst for himself daily. Whatever was going to happen, was going to happen. That didn’t mean, though, that he wouldn’t take as many of them with him as possible. Nevertheless, he decided to abandon the homemade weapon.
While he probably could have concealed it in his pocket, if it had been discovered, it would have created no end of problems for him. Even the most paranoid of computer geeks wasn’t going to be fashioning his own shivs.
In the gray half-light that spilled in from the dirty glass skylights above, Chase studied the men who’d been charged with babysitting him. If he had to, he could take them, but there was a lot that could go wrong, and if something did go wrong, he had no doubt either of the men would kill him without hesitation.