Backlash: A Thriller

by Brad Thor

  Driving up to a gas station was out of the question. It didn’t matter that one of the things not lost in the river was the currency he had taken off the dead Spetsnaz operatives. He had to avoid all interactions. It took only one grocery store clerk, one hotel manager, or one gas station attendant to blow the whistle on him. His SERE trainers had been adamant: Only mix with locals as an absolute last resort. And when you do, don’t mix, but rather disappear among them.

  Harvath knew a few things about the Russians. They were tough and proud, more enamored of their past than their future. Their “best” days as a nation were always those behind them, never those yet to come. The desire, among the very young and the very old alike, to return to Communism was startling.

  That said, there was an overall distrust of, and even a disdain for, government. It was well-placed.

  Little had changed in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The country was still being run as it had been during the Cold War. But instead of a Politburo, a handful of former KGB people now controlled everything, and they used that control to line their own pockets at the expense of the Russian people.

  The contempt that Russians had for their government only grew the farther you traveled from Moscow. Out in remote areas, the evidence of the Kremlin’s failures was everywhere: lack of basic services, crime, corruption, and desperation. Across the country, standards of living, life expectancy, and literacy were all decreasing.

  Russian President Fedor Peshkov and his cronies had grown astronomically wealthy by raping the country. It was a modern kleptocracy. They lived like royalty, and there was nothing the average Russian could do.

  Every election was rigged, and those journalists, dissidents, or political opponents of Peshkov who did stand up were quickly knocked down, or worse.

  In Russia, you learned not to question Peshkov or his allies. Survival existed along one path—the path of least resistance. No one in today’s Russia had ever taken on the government and survived, much less won.

  But as much as the citizens of Russia detested Peshkov, Harvath was under no illusion as to where their loyalties lay. Their pride came from a deep sense of nationalism, something Peshkov was expert at manipulating.

  Not a week went by that he didn’t accuse America of being the source of his nation’s woes. It was straight out of the Soviet playbook.

  An ex-KGB man himself, Peshkov was masterful at pointing the finger overseas in order to distract from his problems at home. If he didn’t continually blame “capitalism” or “American arrogance” or “American imperialism” or any of the other bogeymen he laid at the feet of the United States, the Russian people might start wondering if he and his government were to blame for their crappy existence.

  On the run in almost any other nation, Harvath might have been more hopeful of soliciting aid from sympathetic locals. The history of snitching, even on family members—along with the consequences for not snitching—were so entrenched in the Russian psyche, though, that it barely seemed worth considering. An American evading authorities represented only one of two things: a big reward, or a big punishment. And even the most clueless Russian, in the deepest of the sticks, was wise enough to know what would happen if they didn’t do right by the powers that be.

  With that in mind, Harvath’s plan was simple: stay out of sight and as far away from civilization as possible. The only exception was for supplies, and even then, his search would be limited to the very outskirts of any town or village.

  Cleaning out the saucepan, he put on water for tea. While it heated, he would check the situation in the shed. There was one thing more he needed to add to his supplies before he could leave.

  CHAPTER 27

  * * *

  * * *

  The final item Harvath was missing was a length of tube or a hose—anything that would allow him to siphon gas from any vehicles he found along his way. Short of stumbling across full cans that he could just up and run with, this was his plan for replenishing fuel.

  Without having powered up the GPS, he had no way of knowing how much fuel he was going to need. His goal was to stop as infrequently as possible—get in, get what he needed, and get going. That was the plan. Whether it would actually work remained to be seen.

  After an extensive pass back through the workshop, Harvath found neither a hose nor any tubing. That was a problem. “Hoping” to find a siphon somewhere along the way was stupid. Hope was not a plan.

  Think, he admonished himself. There had to be something. Then it hit him. He already had a length of tubing back in the cabin.

  Stoking the cast-iron stove, he picked up an old water bottle he’d come across and headed back. Once inside the cabin, he opened the plastic bin and pulled out the wall cord for the booster pack. The rubber insulation was, in effect, nothing more than a four-foot-long tube.

  Fully cutting off the end that plugged into the booster, he then carefully sliced through the insulation at the other end, making sure not to cut through any of the wires inside. Then he placed the plug on the floor, stepped on it, and pulled off the insulation.

  It worked perfectly. He had his tubing.

  Though he would have preferred a much wider pipe through which to siphon, it was better than nothing.

  Opening the toolbox, he removed a sharply pointed awl, probably used to poke holes in leather. Unscrewing the cap from the 1.5-liter water bottle, he pierced a hole through it and then widened it with a screwdriver. He only needed it to be slightly narrower than the insulation tubing.

  Screwing the cap back onto the bottle, he threaded in one end of the tubing and smiled. That was it. He’d done it.

  In order to give his siphon a test, he placed the water pail atop the fireplace mantel. Into it he placed the free end of the tubing. Holding the water bottle below the mantel, he began to squeeze it.

  He heard bubbles in the pail and then seconds later saw the bottle begin to fill with water. He couldn’t believe it. It was slow, but it actually worked.

  Without the water bottle, he would have been forced to suck on the tubing himself. That only ended one way—with a mouth full of gas. It wasn’t necessarily fatal, but it was a level of miserable that no human being should ever have to experience. This was yet another small victory, and he was proud of it. He took it as a sign that he was going to make it, that the snowmobile was going to start and he was going to get the hell out of here.

  Draining the tube and bottle, he returned the pail to where it had been and brewed another mug of tea—likely his last one for a while.

  He had everything he needed at this point, and it was time to move. The storm had all but passed, and that meant planes were likely already in the sky looking for the wreckage. Half of the day’s light was already gone. The sooner he got going, the better. Adding a few more items to his canvas rucksack, he began transferring all of his gear, including the snowmobile battery, to the workshop. The last thing he did was to disconnect the booster pack, coil up its cable, and retrieve the solar panel.

  Before exiting the cabin, he extinguished the fire and gave the place a final inspection—a “dummy check,” as they called it in the military—to make sure he wasn’t forgetting anything.

  Confident that he had everything, he brought the trapper’s corpse back inside and placed it gently on the cot. Standing there, he thanked the man once more. If not for what he had built and stored here, Harvath probably wouldn’t have made it.

  Stepping outside, he made sure to close the cabin door firmly behind him. The trapper deserved to rest in peace, not to have his door blown in and his corpse turned into a carrion feast.

  Back at the shed, he installed the snowmobile battery. Making sure the kill switch was firmly attached, he turned the key and hit the starter. Nothing.

  Getting out the booster pack, he attached the jumper cables to the corresponding battery terminals. Taking a deep breath, he powered on the booster pack.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the green charge level ligh
ts began to cycle. Power!

  Reaching for the snowmobile’s start button, he applied pressure. Instantly, the machine roared to life.

  Harvath couldn’t believe it. It had worked. All of it. He let out a cheer.

  This wasn’t a small victory, it was a huge victory. It felt as if he had been injected with a syringe full of adrenaline. Instinctively, he grabbed for the throttle and revved the engine. The growl was music to his ears.

  He sat there for several more moments, revving the engine and charging the battery back up.

  Once he felt comfortable enough, he unclamped the booster, closed the engine cover, packed everything up, and opened the double shed doors.

  Returning to the sled, he gave it some gas and navigated out into the snow. He drove slowly, getting a feel for the machine as he warmed up its engine and pumped life into the battery. Then came the real moment of truth.

  Coming to a stop, he removed the GPS unit from inside his anorak. Plugging it into the twelve-volt outlet, he powered it on and snapped it into the holder above the handlebars.

  It took a moment for the device to make satellite contact, but once it did, Harvath’s chance of survival skyrocketed.

  He had a topographic picture of everything around him: what his elevation was, where the river ran, and multiple waypoints selected by the trapper, which likely marked the position of his traps. But more important, as Harvath zoomed out, he could finally pinpoint his location.

  He was in a densely forested area north of the Arctic Circle, more than 120 kilometers from the Finnish border. According to the GPS, the nearest inhabited area was forty kilometers away. After that, it was nothing but ice, trees, and snow for farther than the eye could see.

  Marked on the trapper’s digital map with what looked like the Russian word for “home,” the town didn’t appear to be much more than a provincial backwater. That was a good thing. Such a small, out-of-the-way location probably wouldn’t have much of a law enforcement presence.

  As Harvath prepared to get going, there was one critical piece of gear he hadn’t been able to find in the cabin or the workshop—eye protection. Snowmobiling through the bitterly cold wind with no goggles, or even sunglasses, was going to be painful. There was also the possibility that if he pushed it too hard, he could damage his vision. But he had zero choice. It was a chance he was just going to have to take.

  Though he hadn’t yet seen any search planes, he could almost feel them closing in on him from above.

  Hopping off the sled only long enough to extinguish the fire in the stove and close the shed doors, he hopped back on and let the GPS be his guide. The feeling of power and movement was exhilarating, but so, too, was his very real sense of fear.

  He had at least seventy-five miles to go. A lot could happen over the course of those miles. He was by no means home free. Not yet. That wouldn’t be the case until he had safely crossed the border into Finland. And at this point, he still had no idea how that was going to happen.

  Would it be by snowmobile? If so, how much ground could he cover before it got too cold to keep going and he had to stop for the night? Was stopping for the night even an option? No matter how bad the cold was, didn’t it make sense to push on? But once the Russians did start looking for him, wouldn’t the beam from his snowmobile headlight, cutting through the darkness, give him away? And, if he did decide to stop for the night, what if the snowmobile refused to start again in the morning? What then? He couldn’t expect to stumble across another abandoned cabin within snowmobile-dragging distance.

  His best bet was to steal a car, or a truck of some sort. Actually, his best bet was to steal a car or truck that had a trailer, onto which he could load the snowmobile. He wasn’t going to be crossing at any official border checkpoint. The more remote the location, the better his chances, and that meant no roads and lots of snow. Like it or not, the sled was his key to getting out of Russia.

  Nevertheless, he knew circumstances, more than anything else, were going to dictate how everything would go down. It was the nature of what he did for a living. You couldn’t control everything. In fact, you couldn’t control most things. What made him an exceptional operative was his ability to change from moment to moment and adjust to the facts on the ground. He was an expert at adapting and overcoming. No matter what happened, no matter what was thrown at him between here and the Finnish border, he would adapt and overcome. Success was the only option.

  With its wide, specially designed skis and higher-profile track, the Yeti was built for deep snow.

  Hunching low, to keep as much of his face as possible behind the short windscreen, he prepared to punch the gas. But all of a sudden, he saw a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye.

  Before he knew what had happened, he was struck from behind and knocked off the sled. Then a new pain began.

  CHAPTER 28

  * * *

  * * *

  FBI HEADQUARTERS

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  The Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell was buzzing with activity. Normally, a presidential “hostage” briefing would take place at the White House. President Paul Porter, though, wanted to thank the men and women of the Fusion Cell personally.

  There were fifty of them, drawn from across a broad spectrum of government agencies, working together to achieve one common goal—bringing a very important American home safely.

  Each of the desks in the war room–like setting represented a different agency: Treasury, Justice, State, Defense, CIA, NSA, DHS, and others. Their job was to draw in information from their respective organizations and share it with the other team members, thereby developing the most current, accurate picture possible.

  Overseeing the operation was Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, or SPEHA, Brendan Rogers.

  Rogers was a hard-charging former Navy JAG officer turned corporate attorney who had turned over his practice to his partners when the President had asked him to accept the SPEHA position. Though it was a pretty significant pay cut for a man in his late forties with a hefty mortgage and two kids in college, he had never said no when called upon by his country.

  To be honest, Rogers relished the challenge. Interacting with some of the world’s worst dictators and bad actors was exciting. They ran the gamut from despotic regimes to criminal cartels and terrorist organizations. Getting Americans safely back home to their families was more rewarding to him than any litigation he had ever prevailed in.

  Though he went to some absolute shithole places and carried out some of the toughest, most tension-filled negotiations anyone had ever seen, he loved the job. And part of the reason he loved it so was that he was good at it. He hoped, for Scot Harvath’s sake, that his winning streak continued.

  Since accepting the SPEHA position, Rogers had helped secure the release of more than twenty-two Americans held in such places as North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Mexico. Harvath’s situation, though, was extremely difficult.

  After the President had thanked everyone out on the floor, the principals adjourned to a secure conference room for the Harvath briefing.

  Rogers knew the President was a detail guy who liked to ask questions, and he had prepared a detailed update.

  “Mr. President,” he said. “Again, let me welcome you to the Hostage Fusion Recovery Cell. I know I speak for the entire team when I tell you what an honor it is to have you here. We have some of the best, brightest, and most patriotic people working in government here. Your recognition of their commitment to bringing American hostages home safely is much appreciated.”

  “It’s the least I can do,” replied the President. “I know you all have been working around the clock. Why don’t you bring me up to speed.”

  “Yes, sir,” Rogers stated. On his laptop, he activated a piece of video and projected it on the monitors around the room. “This is security footage from the day of the attack. It comes from the neighbor across the street from the safe house on Governors Island. We’ve sped i
t up, but here you see former Deputy Director of the CIA Lydia Ryan arriving, followed later by Scot Harvath and Lara Cordero. Later that day, a black Lincoln Town Car shows up. That’s where I’d like to start.”

  Porter nodded, and the SPEHA continued. “The Town Car was carrying a lone male passenger. He has been identified as a Polish intelligence officer working out of their embassy here in D.C. His name is Artur Kopec, and apparently he had prior relationships with Lydia Ryan and Reed Carlton. As you can see, Kopec gets out of the car, goes into the cottage for about three hours, exits the cottage, and leaves via the Town Car.

  “It has been explained to me by DCI McGee that Kopec is a known Russian asset. The Russians, though, are unaware that we possess this information. Therefore, CIA wants this knowledge, and the man’s identity, kept a secret.” Looking over at CIA Director McGee, he sought clarification. “Is all of that correct?”

  “Yes,” replied McGee.

  The President piped up with his first question. “Would it help if the rest of your team knew the man’s identity?”

  Rogers thought about it for a moment. “We’re a clearinghouse for intel and analysis. That’s why we exist. Is it imperative anyone outside this room know who the man is? I can’t say, but the more information they have, the better they can do their jobs.”

  Porter looked to his CIA Director. It was obviously an invitation to chime in. “Kopec is highly valuable. However, getting Harvath back is our top priority. If we have to burn Kopec in the process, we’re prepared to do that. He might, though, be able to help us.”

  “How?”

  “We’re working on it,” McGee responded. “All that matters is that we don’t want to burn him if we don’t have to.”

  “But we’re confident that he’s the leak?” asked the President. “We’re certain he’s the one who revealed the location of the safe house and led the hit team there?”