Blowback

SEVENTY-NINE

Harvath could feel the heat tightening the skin on his face as he ran into the room. It was impossible to see, and he had to make his way completely from memory.

Once he made it to the Aga Khan’s enormous wooden desk, he bent down beneath the level of the smoke, where he could see pieces of parchment and the pages from ancient manuscripts already starting to curl because of the heat. Opening the top three buttons of his Nomex shirt, he began stuffing it with whatever he could get his hands on.

As he shoved the remaining pages inside his shirt, the sides of the desk glowed a fluorescent orange and then burst into flames. Harvath leapt back as the wood from the burning desk began to snap and pop from the intense heat. At least, that’s what Harvath initially thought was happening.

When a bullet narrowly missed his shoulder and sent him stumbling backward, he suddenly realized it wasn’t the fire he’d been hearing. Raising the MP7 he had taken from Schroeder, he raked the entire room with gunfire and then dropped to the floor. As he ejected the spent magazine and inserted a fresh one, Harvath greedily took in enormous gasps of air.

“Sloppy work, asshole,” yelled Rayburn’s choked voice from somewhere within the wall of smoke and flames consuming the room.

Harvath was tempted to empty another magazine and spray the room with lead, but he restrained himself. He needed to stay in control. Fishing the remote detonation device from his pocket, Harvath powered it up and depressed the transmit switch again, but nothing happened. Rayburn had somehow deactivated it.

The heat in the room had Harvath close to passing out. He forced himself to think. If he were Rayburn, where would he be? He’d either be standing in the doorway where he could at least have some sort of reasonable air supply from the hall, or he’d be hugging the floor. If Rayburn was in the doorway, he’d make a decent target, but if he was hugging the floor, there could be any number of pieces of furniture standing between the two of them.

“Show yourself, motherfucker,” yelled the ex — Secret Service man, “and I promise I’ll kill you quick.”

Hearing the voice, Harvath ascertained that the man wasn’t standing in the doorway after all. He was crawling along the floor, and he was closing in.

Harvath had to bite his tongue to keep from responding. There were only about a million things he wanted to say, several of them quite clever, but if all they wound up doing was help Rayburn zero in on his position, he knew he was better off keeping his mouth shut.

It was a smoke-shrouded Mexican standoff. Neither knew exactly where the other was, but both had a somewhat vague idea. They could have played at it all day if the fire wasn’t sucking the last vestiges of air from the room and the flames weren’t on the verge of consuming them both. The heat had become so intense he needed to raise his arm to shield his face.

As he did, he heard a scuffing noise intermingled with the roar and crackle of the flames. Rayburn was sliding one of the leather chairs along the floor, using it for cover as he tried to get closer. That was all the information Harvath needed. Creeping as near as he could to the burning desk, he aimed his weapon toward the fireplace and began to spray rounds back and forth two feet off the ground in front of him.

When he connected with Rayburn, he heard the man cry out in pain. Rayburn’s weapon clattered to the floor, and then there was silence. Harvath inserted another clip and emptied it in Rayburn’s direction. The handle of his gun had grown so hot from the fire he could barely hold it anymore.

Ejecting the spent magazine, he decided he could use it as a diversion by throwing it against the far wall as he ran for the doorway. Counting to three, he pitched the magazine toward the front of the room, and as he awaited a reaction, he heard a groan of wood and plaster from above. A fraction of a second later the ceiling came crashing down.

Harvath dove as far away as he could and ended up tangled in a set of flaming draperies. Had he been wearing anything other than Nomex, he would have instantly gone up in flames.

His exit from the Aga Khan’s chambers blocked by the collapsed ceiling, he used a nearby chair to bat the blazing curtains away from the window. Once he had them clear, he pulled his hand up into his shirtsleeve and used it to unlock the hinged windows and push them open.

The burst of fresh air only doubled the fire’s intensity, and the raging inferno clawed for any hold it could get on his body as Harvath rolled out the window.

Once on the slippery Spanish tile roof, he moved as far away from the source of the fire as he could. Looking up, he not only saw the rest of the motorgliders circling overhead, most likely awaiting instructions on where they could safely land, but he also saw Ozan Kalachka’s helicopter as it steadily rose in the mountain air. Unfortunately, the MP7 slung across his back was made for close-quarters battle. There was no way he could hit the helicopter from this distance.

Down on the patio beneath him, Harvath saw a large plastic case, which most likely contained the shoulder-fired missile spotted during his surveillance flight, but it was also useless. Even if he could get to it in time and pull it out, the sky above was filled with friendly aircraft. Any miscue, and the missile could lock onto a latent heat signature from one of the motorgliders and more innocent people would die. That was something Harvath couldn’t live with.

The only thought he could find to console himself with as he climbed down from the roof was that he had a pretty good idea of where Kalachka was headed, and if he moved fast enough, he just might be able to catch him.