Blowback

FORTY-SEVEN

Call the woman back in here,” commanded Alomari as Jillian disappeared down one of the tunnels. “If I have to go looking for her, I assure you I will make her death as painful as I am going to make yours.”

“Kiss my ass.”

“Wrong answer,” replied the assassin as he stepped forward and struck Harvath across the face with his Steyr tactical machine pistol.

Harvath stumbled backward against the chest. It was all he could do to keep from losing his balance.

“We’ll try this again. Call the woman back in here, now.”

“Call her yourself, asshole,” replied Harvath, who could taste blood in his mouth.

The assassin waved Harvath away from the box with his weapon and said, “Have it your way. She won’t get far.” As Harvath complied, Alomari continued, “I’ve enjoyed watching you on television. It’s unfortunate that al-Jazeera was not able to address your good side.”

“What’s unfortunate,” replied Harvath, clenching his hand into a fist, “is that I wasn’t able to address your good side.”

“You had your chance, though, didn’t you?”

That was a fact Harvath was all too well aware of. “How the hell did you find this place?”

“I’ve been here before,” said Alomari as he raised his TMP and pointed it at Harvath’s chest. “I didn’t think I’d ever come back, but before our mutual friend at Sotheby’s died, she suggested I might want to make a return visit. I would have been here sooner, but it took me a while to find a doctor I could trust to pull your bullet out of my shoulder.”

Harvath hated him for his command of English, as well as all the other languages he used to move so effortlessly around the world carrying out the dirtiest of al-Qaeda’s dirty work. But in his anger, Harvath found some small measure of satisfaction and couldn’t help smiling. One of his bullets in Paris had definitely found its mark.

“You find my injury amusing,” replied the assassin. “I guarantee you it isn’t half as painful as what I intend to inflict upon you and your colleague. Now, take those ice axes from your belt and slowly drop them on the floor.”

Harvath had no intention of doing anything the man asked of him. “If you’re going to shoot me, go ahead and pull the trigger.”

“That would be too easy. I have something else in mind for you. Now drop those axes. I will not ask you again.”

“Fuck you,” Harvath responded.

Alomari stepped forward and struck him again with his weapon, this time twice as hard.

Harvath’s head spun and he saw stars, but he wasn’t going to go down without a fight. Trying to focus on the al-Qaeda operative, he gathered his strength and lunged at the man with all his might.

Despite his shoulder injury, Alomari easily sidestepped the attack and watched as, even with his crampons on, Harvath lost his footing and banged his head against the entrance to one of the tunnels.

Before Harvath could slide to the ground, Alomari was on him. The powerful killer pulled him up by the neck of his parka and then swung his machine pistol around hard into Harvath’s solar plexus, knocking the wind from him. As Harvath doubled over in pain, Alomari came up from below with a searing punch that connected with Harvath’s jaw and snapped his head straight back.

Harvath flailed his arms, trying to grab onto anything to break his fall, but got nothing but air. What finally broke his fall was the icy ground, and when it did, Harvath’s head hit it with such a loud smack it echoed throughout the cavern and into the tunnels. Once again, he saw stars, but this time there was something more, an overwhelming blackness that threatened to completely overcome him. Harvath fought it off. The only hope he had of staying alive was staying conscious. Alomari was playing with him, but the minute Harvath passed out, the assassin would finish him off. He knew it as sure as he knew he never should have left his gun in his backpack.

Rolling over onto his stomach, Harvath struggled to get up onto his knees. When he did, Alomari kicked him hard, right in the ribs and right in the same place he’d been kicked by the security guard at Sotheby’s two days before.

The extra gear he had stowed in his parka did little to soften the blow. The precious bit of air Harvath had managed to get back into his lungs was forced back out, and his chest started heaving. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a faint voice told him to consider giving up. He was no match for Alomari. The man was much too strong for him. The voice was a sign of weakness, and Harvath despised weakness. Now, he not only slammed the iron door of his mind tight against it, he willed himself to suck in large gulps of air. He had to pull himself together. He had to rally his strength and his wits or he was going to die here, just like Ellyson, Bernard, and their Sherpa, Maurice.

As his lungs heaved for air, Harvath looked around him for anything that could be used as a weapon. He tried to remember what he had stuffed in his parka and whether any of those items could be used to his advantage. He rapidly sorted through the possibilities, but none of them seemed as if they would do the trick. Then it hit him, literally.

There was a jangle of metal on metal as Alomari delivered another searing kick to his ribs. If Harvath could only unbuckle the nylon webbing strung with pitons, carabiners, and other climbing accessories around his waist, he just might be able to use it as a weapon.

Harvath sucked up the pain and fumbled for his buckle. He suffered two more blows before it came free, but he put those blows on account, along with all the rest, determined to make Alomari pay in full. This time he had the right guy, and even if there had been cameras present, he was still going to beat him to within an eighth of an inch of his life. He wouldn’t stop until Alomari begged to die. Then he’d drag him back and turn him over to the United States to be interrogated and spend the rest of his life rotting in a jail somewhere while Harvath roasted a pig in his honor each weekend under his prison window.

As Alomari drew his foot back for yet another kick, the belt came free, and Harvath rolled away from his attacker, swinging it in a wide arc. He wanted to fell the man by nailing him right in the back of the legs, but first Harvath had to rid him of his weapon.

With a sharp crack, Harvath brought the equipment-laden piece of webbing around and hit Alomari’s hand so hard that his Steyr TMP was torn out of it and sent clattering across the floor. With the weapon out of the way, Harvath could go to work, and go to work he did. Springing to his feet, he swung the belt in a large figure eight above his head and then struck Alomari across the back. The metal pitons tore huge pieces of fabric away from the assassin’s parka. Harvath could only fantasize what they would do when he finally connected with flesh.

Whipping the belt around harder this time, he tore straight through Alomari’s parka. The man screamed as the last piece of metal hanging from the webbing split open a deep gash in his neck. Alomari could do nothing but recoil as Harvath kept coming at him. Blow after blow, Harvath swung the belt harder and harder. Backing the man up against one of the many tunnel entrances, Harvath beat the assassin mercilessly. Alomari’s screams filled the entire cavern as Harvath made good on his promise that the assassin would pay for every innocent life he had ever taken.

The killer’s parka hung from his body in bloody shreds as Harvath pulled the belt back for another devastating blow. But just as he was about to whip the belt forward, it went completely slack. It made no sense until he started hearing pitons, carabiners, and other pieces of climbing metal hitting the ceiling and raining down on the floor. The belt had broken.

It made no difference to Harvath. He was more than happy to turn his bare hands on the remorseless assassin, but before he could land the first punch, Alomari turned the tables on him. Harvath took two steps backward when he saw what the man had in his hands. In his absolute rage, Harvath had once again underestimated his opponent, and this time he knew he was going to pay the ultimate price.

“Now I am going to kill you,” spat Alomari. He had a double-action, hammerless .357 Ruger KSP revolver pointed right at Harvath’s chest.

Harvath dropped the broken belt to the ground, looked Khalid Alomari right in the eye, and said, “You just don’t get the point, do you?”

“What point?” he sneered as he steadied his hand and began applying pressure to the trigger.

“This one,” said a voice from behind as a twenty-four-hundred-year-old Celtic falcata was thrust through the assassin’s back.

The powerful sword erupted through his chest in an incredible spray of blood. With its curved blade, it kept climbing upward. Still alive, Alomari was able to see it come back at him and feel the tip of the blade thrust up from underneath his chin and impale his entire face.

As Alomari’s dying body fell twitching to the ground, Jillian released the falcata’s handle and stared at what she had done.