Act of War

CHAPTER 5

The USS Florida was an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine just off the Pakistani coast. Fitted behind its sail structure, piggyback style, was a pressurized garage called a dry deck shelter, or DDS for short. It was capable of launching not only SEAL Delivery Vehicles, but also the SEALs’ fast, highly maneuverable inflatable Zodiac boats known as combat rubber raiding craft, or CRRCs. These boats could be launched or recovered regardless of whether the Florida was on or beneath the surface.

Harvath would have loved to have brought Ahmad Yaqub aboard the Florida via a subsurface recovery. It would have scared the hell out of him and made him even more pliant to interrogation. Trying to get him to calmly breathe oxygen from a SCUBA tank while dragging him underwater, though, was a disaster waiting to happen. Instead, Harvath had another plan.

A SEAL team from the Florida had rendezvoused with Harvath and his prisoner near Karachi’s Clifton Beach. After hog-tying Yaqub and placing him facedown in the CRRC, Harvath hopped in with the SEALs and headed out into the open ocean. Chase and Sloane would link up with the rest of the team who had hit the ISI safe house, review any materials they had found, and prepare a report to be transmitted back to the States. After that, a private plane would return them to the United States.

Powered by its fifty-five-horsepower outboard motor, the black, fifteen-and-a-half-foot-long CRRC skipped over the top of the water, but landed hard off a couple of particularly large waves. Each time it did, Harvath heard Yaqub grunt as the terrorist took the brunt of the impact via his face and his already broken nose. That was nothing compared to what was coming.

With a spray of water, the USS Florida broke the surface. It was an impressive sight to behold even through the gray-green of the night vision goggles Harvath and the other SEALs were wearing. Prepping the team, the SEAL helming the CRRC signaled for everyone to make ready. Adjusting his throttle, he aimed right at the massive vessel.

Seconds later, there was the whine of the outboard’s engine as the rubber boat came up out of the water and skidded to a stop atop the Florida. Instantly, there was a flurry of activity.

Pulling out his knife, Harvath cut Yaqub’s feet free. Two SEALs grabbed him under the arms and lifted him out of the boat. There was the distinct clank, clank, clank as the heavy locks of the DDS were released and its large hatch began to open.

Members of SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team 1 hurried out to help drag the CRRC inside. As they did, one pointed Harvath to the gear he had requested.

Once the boat was inside, they began to rapidly deflate and dismantle it as the hatch closed.

The DDS was shaped like an airplane fuselage. It was nine feet high, nine feet wide, and thirty-eight feet long. It consisted of three separate compartments, all capable of being pressurized. The compartment they were in now was known as the “hangar.” This was where the SDVs and CRRCs were stored, and could be flooded to launch SEALs and their equipment from underwater.

At the other end, opposite the hatch, was the “bubble”—a Plexiglas booth that came halfway down from the ceiling. It was pressurized, and as water filled the DDS, it would only come up waist-high for those inside the bubble. It was where the controls for the DDS were located and where a member of SDV Team 1 communicated with the crew down inside the Florida. When everyone in the DDS was ready, the SEAL in the bubble relayed the message to the Florida.

Moments later, the chamber operator passed the warning that the Florida was preparing to dive. Harvath reached over and removed the hood from Yaqub’s head and ripped off the piece of duct tape covering his bearded mouth. The tape was covered in dried blood and pulled a lot of hair with it. Yaqub grimaced.

Even though the lights inside the DDS weren’t particularly bright, it took the Saudi’s eyes a moment to adjust. The first thing he noticed was that everyone around him was suiting up in SCUBA gear. Harvath nodded and the two SEALs who had walked Yaqub into the DDS took turns minding him as they also suited up.

Harvath remained silent as the Florida dipped beneath the surface and the submarine began its descent. As he climbed into his own drysuit, he could see the fear building in Yaqub’s eyes. He had no idea if the man could swim or not, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t the swimming part Yaqub was going to have to deal with.

Opening up the valve of his oxygen tank, Harvath depressed the purge button on the regulator. It made a loud hiss, indicating that oxygen was flowing.

Harvath signaled the SEAL inside the bubble to begin flooding the hangar.

“What are you doing?” Yaqub demanded as the water started rushing in.

Harvath looked at him as he spat into his face mask. “I told you. I’m taking you back to hell.”

The terrorist glanced down. Harvath had removed the man’s shoes and socks back in Karachi. The cold water was already covering the tops of his feet.

“What do you want from me?”

Harvath ignored him and held his mask up to the light to judge whether he had fully coated the inside.

“Answer me,” the Saudi demanded.

Picking up his tank, Harvath carefully slung it over his back and slowly adjusted the straps. Finally, he addressed his prisoner. “How long do you think you can hold your breath, Ahmad?”

Yaqub nervously looked around the narrow, cramped space. Despite the chilly temperature, he had begun to perspire.

The dry deck shelter hadn’t been Harvath’s first choice. What he had wanted to do was get onboard and drag Yaqub straight down to the torpedo room, stuff him in a tube, and flood that. The sensation would have been much more unnerving. The problem had been getting him past the Florida’s crew. There’d be too many witnesses, so the plan was nixed back in D.C. Whatever Harvath intended to do with Yaqub, it had to be done in the confines of the dry deck shelter.

That meant either threatening to drown him, or locking him in the forward hyperbaric chamber and keeping him there until his ears bled or his eyes popped out of his skull. One way or another, Yaqub was going to tell Harvath everything he wanted to know.

Each of the SEALs who were present had been read in on the prisoner and the imminent threat to the United States. Not only would they never reveal whatever Harvath was going to do, they’d help him with it. The President himself had pulled out all the stops. Harvath’s instructions had been perfectly clear — do whatever needed to be done to neutralize the threat. And that’s exactly what he would do.

He had no reservations about torturing a scumbag like Ahmad Yaqub if he had to. He had done it before.

While the politically correct crowd was against any form of coercion, Harvath appreciated its merits. The uninformed often confused enhanced interrogation techniques like loud music, sleep deprivation, and open-handed slaps with torture. Those weren’t torture. And they didn’t bring America down to the terrorists’ level.

What would bring America down to the terrorists’ level was if the United States had the same callous disregard for human life. Life was cheap in the eyes of the terrorists, not so for America. The United States revered human life and therefore would do everything it could to protect it. Using enhanced interrogation techniques, or even torture in some cases, demonstrated the high value America placed on the lives of its citizens.

People liked to talk about the Geneva and Hague conventions, but very few had read them. Not only were terrorists not signers to the conventions, but they also didn’t wear uniforms to identify themselves on the battlefield — a key provision. They hid in the general population, behind women and children, and therefore were not entitled to any of the Geneva and Hague protections.

In any other time in history, terrorists would have been shot on sight, not shipped off to some Caribbean island for religiously sensitive Halal meals including dates, honey, olive oil, and fresh-baked pita bread, along with access to lawyers, newspapers, unlimited DVDs, a library, and soccer games.

The terrorists had chosen to not only go to war with the U.S.A., but to keep that war going through attack after deadly attack. Their convoluted religious ideology was beyond reasoning with. It was impossible to convince them, facts be damned, that America had been the greatest force for good in the history of the world. They would slaughter innocent men, women, and children to impose their will on the entire world. As far as Harvath was concerned, America and its allies couldn’t kill these people fast enough.

The water in the DDS was now up to Yaqub’s knees. “If you had wanted to kill me,” the terrorist said, feigning bravado, “you would have done it in Karachi.”

Harvath thought he heard a slight tremor in the man’s voice, though it could have been from the cold.

“That’s right,” Harvath replied. “I don’t want to kill you. I want to watch you suffer and then I want to kill you.”

The expression on Yaqub’s face tensed. Just for a moment, before turning defiant again. It was a microexpression, something Harvath had been trained by the Secret Service to detect. It was a subconscious indicator given off by a subject when under stress. It normally meant the subject was lying or intending to do harm. It could also mean you had him scared shitless.

Yaqub was anxious, but tried to cover it. He looked around. “All of this for just one man?”

Harvath’s visage was like stone. “Not just any man, Ahmad. This is for you. This is what happens when you kill Americans. We come for you. We never forget. We never stop hunting. Sooner or later, we find you.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said, the frigid water nearing his genitals. Yaqub tried to rise up onto the balls of his feet.

The SEALs holding him by the arms forced him back down. His body began to shake from the cold. It was time for Harvath to increase the pressure.

“I want you to remember my face, Ahmad. For the few minutes you have left alive, I want you to study it. After you’re dead, we’re going to defile your body and dump it into the ocean, they way we did to Sheik Osama, in order to make sure you don’t go to Paradise. Then I’m going to visit your family.”

He paused to watch the expression on the terrorist’s face before continuing. “Your wives, your children… I’m going to torture them and then I’m going to kill them. All of them,” said Harvath. “And then I’m going to visit your father, your mother, your four brothers and your two sisters and their families in Saudi Arabia. They’ll meet deaths even more horrific than yours. And as each of them writhes in pain, as they beg death to come and take them, I’ll make sure they know that it was you who brought that misery upon them.”

Yaqub’s lips were beginning to turn blue and his teeth had started chattering. “I curse you and your entire country. You and your American arrogance. You are doomed.”

Harvath stepped forward and drove his fist into the terrorist’s chest. When the Saudi doubled over in pain, Harvath signaled for the SEALs to release him, and then he grabbed the back of his neck and plunged Yaqub’s head beneath the water.