Blowback

EIGHTY-FOUR

Reynolds trusted Harvath’s instincts. Without even waiting for an explanation, he yelled for everybody to hang on and pulled a hard right turn followed by a quick left.

Pulling a walkie-talkie from beneath his seat, he asked Harvath to describe the car he had seen. Once he knew what they were looking for, he raised the walkie-talkie to his mouth and said, “Bluebird, this is Pelican. Do you copy? Over.”

“Who’s Bluebird?” asked Harvath as he glanced over his shoulder to see if they were still being followed.

“He’s one of my men. His name is Zafir.”

“Is he a Saudi?”

“No, Pakistani. He’s ex-military and one of the few people I trust with something like this. He’s on a rooftop down the street from the warehouse keeping an eye out for us. In about a block he’ll have a clear view, and we’ll know if anyone is following us.”

“Pelican, this is Bluebird. I copy. Over,” broke a voice across Reynolds’s radio. “What’s your status? Over.”

“Pelican is inbound with possible company. Please check our tail for a beige, late-model Nissan Sentra. Over.”

“Late-model beige Nissan Sentra. Roger that,” said Zafir. “Take a right turn at Al Mus’ad and another right turn at Khair al Din. Will let you know. Over.”

“Roger that. Pelican out,” said Reynolds as he handed the radio to Harvath and prepared to execute the turns.

Three minutes later, Zafir radioed back that they were all clear. Either Harvath had overreacted and they weren’t being followed, or they had managed to lose whoever was behind them. Something told Harvath it was the latter. He had a bad feeling that they were about to walk into something they might have a very difficult time walking out of.

Taking the radio back from Harvath, Reynolds did one final check with Zafir, who told him the warehouse had been quiet all day. Even though the parking lot was empty, Reynolds chose to park on the street about a block away. The last thing he wanted to do was draw attention to the fact that someone was visiting.

Fool them once, shame on them. Fool them twice, double shame on them was Reynolds’s feeling as he removed the prayer mat, which, just as in his last visit to the warehouse, was wrapped around his Remington twelve-gauge tactical shotgun. The nice thing about this trip, though, was that unless the owners of the structure had changed the locks, Reynolds had his own set of keys.

Working their way around to the office at the rear of the structure, Reynolds tried several of the keys until he found the one that worked. With Harvath helping cover him with his H&K, Reynolds pulled his Remington from the prayer rug, and they quietly crept inside with Jillian right behind them. At the end of the hallway, Reynolds held up his hand and counted to three, at which point he and Harvath both swept into the office and found it totally empty.

Every desk drawer stood open and bare. Harvath checked the file cabinets and found the same thing. The entire place had been cleared out. Somebody had decided they didn’t want to wait around to see if the shotgun-toting Westerner was going to make a second appearance.

Motioning toward the opposite doorway, Harvath struck off into the warehouse and signaled for Reynolds to follow. When they entered the cavernous space, they saw that it too had been completely cleared out. All that was left was a battered forklift with two flat tires, a few stacks of discarded pallets, and other assorted pieces of trash. By the looks of it, no one would ever have known the space had been recently occupied. Bending over to get a closer look at one of the pieces of garbage, Harvath heard Jillian say, “Whatever you do, don’t touch anything.”

Harvath immediately drew his hand back. Wearing a pair of surgical gloves from the plane’s first aid kit and using some plastic trash bags she had brought with her from the galley, Jillian began combing the warehouse gathering samples. As she did, Harvath continued his examination of the premises.

In the far corner, he came across a stack of pallets that at some point had been knocked over. Whoever had been clearing the place out must have been in an awfully big hurry, because they failed to recognize that something had been caught underneath. Using the toe of his boot to kick the pallets out of the way, Harvath uncovered a large cardboard box with what appeared to be a military uniform of some sort inside.

Mindful of how the British provided American Indians blankets infected with smallpox, Harvath called Jillian and her latex gloves over to help him check it out.

As she approached, he could see from the bags she carried that she had already collected quite a few samples. “Look at these,” she said excitedly as she held up a pair of matching water bottles. “Muslim holy water from a sacred spring near Mecca.”

Harvath stared at the Arabic writing on the front of the bottles and asked, “You can read Arabic?”

Jillian shook her head. “It’s written in English and about eleven other different languages on the back. Whoever bottled these was planning for some major exporting. We’re going to need to get the water tested, but we may have just found how the Ottomans planned on getting the cure to the Sunni faithful.”

“Now if we can just find the source,” replied Harvath.

Holding up another bag that she dared not open, Jillian added, “I’ve also collected several packets of what could be our elusive infective agent, but again, until we can test it, I can’t be certain.”

Harvath complimented her work and then pointed to the box he had uncovered and asked her to pull the uniform out for him.

“What is it?” she asked as she laid it across one of the pallets.

“The top half of a SANG uniform,” said Reynolds as he came over to join them.

Jillian looked unfamiliar with the term.

“It’s an acronym,” explained Harvath. “It stands for Saudi Arabian National Guard. It’s made up of tribal elements loyal to the Saudi Royal Family and is in charge of protecting them against the country’s regular armed forces or anyone else who might try to push them from power.”

“Why would one of those uniforms be here?”

Harvath thought back to what Kalachka had said to him—Killing the most prominent members of the Saudi Royal Family wouldn’t cause outrage in the streets; in fact, people would be dancing for joy. Instead, the Royal Family is going to kill the top members of the Wahhabi leadership—and Harvath now knew how it was going to happen. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

“I’ve got all I need,” said Jillian as she reattached the niqab across her face, gathered up her sample bags, and prepared to head outside.

Reynolds toggled the transmit button on his radio and tried to raise Zafir for a situation report on how things looked outside, but there was no response. “Bluebird, this is Pelican. Do you read me? Over,” he said for a second time.

The uncomfortable feeling Harvath had had upon arriving at the warehouse returned to the pit of his stomach with a vengeance.

Though he knew better, Reynolds wondered if maybe the radio was having trouble penetrating the warehouse’s cinderblock construction and decided to try his cell phone. When the phone showed full signal status, he knew they were in trouble. Zafir was not a man who would abandon his post.

Activating the voice-dial feature of his phone, Reynolds said, “Zafir, cell.”

The phone rang several times before dumping Reynolds into the Pakistani’s voice mail. Looking up at Harvath and Alcott, Reynolds didn’t need to say anything — they all knew they were in trouble.

With all of the windows blacked out, they were completely blind to what might be going on outside. “Back out the way we came?” asked Harvath. “Or do we try another door?”

For all Reynolds knew, the entire place was surrounded and any of the doors would be suicide. As far as he was concerned, the exit that put them the closest to his Land Cruiser was the one they wanted. That meant either going back through the office or to the door about twenty feet to their right. Either way, the rooftop sniper support he’d hoped to have from Zafir if things went bad was now out of the question. “We’ll take this one,” he said, selecting the door twenty feet to their right.

As they reached the door, Reynolds saw that it was locked and needed a key to be opened, even from the inside. Keys in hand, he was already searching for the right one when Harvath grabbed his arm. “What are you doing?” he demanded as he tried to twist away.

“Look,” replied Harvath, pointing to a pair of barely discernible wires leading from behind the doorframe.

Glancing up, Reynolds now saw them as well. “What the hell?”

Tracing the wires, Harvath discovered that they led to enormous blocks of C4, which were in turn attached to remote detonators. “It looks like somebody was expecting us.”

“Not us,” said Reynolds as he studied the devices. “Me. I think they knew I’d be back and wanted to teach me a lesson.”

“Well, this is one hell of a lesson.”

“That’s what I get for terminating one of their guys without permission.”

“That’s what we get,” corrected Harvath.

Reynolds forced a smile. “Can you defuse it? I don’t know shit about explosives.”

“I’m not sure,” said Harvath as he scrutinized the setup. “This can’t be the only door. It’s a one-in-six shot they would have been able to get us with this one.”

“We need to check the other doors.”

Harvath took the doors in the back while Reynolds checked the doors in the front, and Jillian checked all the windows. When they met back up, she said, “All the windows are wired.”

Reynolds used the sleeve of his dishdasha to mop the sweat from his forehead and added, “Same thing with all the doors up front.”

“And in back,” replied Harvath, “but with one slight difference.”

“What?”

“When we came in through the office door, we must have armed the system. It’s now officially active.”

“So we’re okay then as long as we don’t try to go out one of the doors or one of the windows,” said Jillian. “Right?”

“That’s the way it looks,” replied Reynolds. “All the exits are connected to each other. Open any one of them, and it triggers every charge in the building. There’s got to be enough C4 here to take down half the block.”

Harvath looked at them and said, “We’ve got an even bigger problem.”

Jillian and Reynolds both looked at him.

“There’s a padlocked electrical panel near the office. I was able to pry it open enough to sneak a peek inside.”

“And?” said Reynolds.

“I found the system activator.”

“Then let’s go get it.”

“Not so fast,” cautioned Harvath. “The panel door is wired. Open it up any further, and all the charges will be set off.”

Jillian set her bags down and threw up her hands in defeat. “That’s just great. What else could possibly go wrong?”

“Actually, that’s only part of our problem. The other part’s the timer.”