Blowback

NINETY

Crown Prince Abdullah agreed to Harvath’s next request on two conditions. The first condition was that he promise not to kill his son. The second was that Harvath, Reynolds, and Alcott convert to Islam before being allowed to enter the holy city of Mecca.

While the second condition came as a surprise to Jillian, Harvath and Reynolds both knew it was not the first time the Royal Family had made such a demand. When the French GIGN team had gone in to help liberate the holy city from radical fundamentalists in the 1970s, they had done so not as French Catholics, but as newly converted followers of Islam.

Once the trio’s temporary conversion, which had been conducted on the tarmac of the King Fahad Air Base, was complete, they climbed aboard a Royal Air Force UH60 Blackhawk helicopter with a team of National Guard Special Warfare soldiers. Dressed in urban camouflage, the Special Warfare team was as serious a group of men as Harvath had ever seen. Outfitted with 5.56mm M4 automatic rifles, 9mm H&K MP5 sub-machine guns, and two M700 sniper rifles, it was obvious the Crown Prince’s handpicked team had come to play.

A half mile out, the chopper’s pilot radioed to make sure the local security forces were in place and, upon confirmation, swooped in low and fast on their approach.

As they neared the gates of Prince Hamal’s sprawling compound in an industrial neighborhood on the dusty outskirts of Mecca, the two AH64 Apache attack helicopters escorting them opened up with a barrage of Hydra 70 rockets and an onslaught of heavy lead from their 30mm cannons.

Hamal’s security force was taken completely by surprise, but they soon regrouped and mounted their response. Battle-hardened mujahadeen who had fought in Afghanistan against both the Soviets and the Americans, the men responded instantly.

Before anyone in the Blackhawk knew what was happening, the early morning sky was filled with the contrails of rocket-propelled grenades. Though their pilot did his best to avoid being struck, one of the rockets found its mark, shearing off the rear tail rotor. The pilot yelled for everyone to hold on as the helicopter was launched into a violent spin.

The bird whipped around in circles as it lost altitude and the packed earth of Hamal’s main courtyard rushed up to meet it. Harvath could hear gunfire, but with the enormous force created by their spin, it was all he could do to hold on to his breakfast, much less figure out where any of the shots were coming from.

The Blackhawk slammed into the ground, its spring-loaded safety seats barely breaking their fall or, in Reynolds’s case, not breaking his fall at all as his leg snapped on impact.

To the Special Warfare unit’s credit, they were out the door, weapons hot, before Harvath even had his seatbelt unfastened. Rushing over to Reynolds, he tried to assess the man’s injuries, but Reynolds waved him away.

With Jillian’s help, he pulled Reynolds as gently as possible from the wreckage of the helicopter and propped him against the mud wall of a large cistern.

Jacking a round into Reynolds’s twelve-gauge, Harvath handed it to her and told Jillian to keep her head down as he took off after the Special Warfare team.

Ten feet away he heard the roar of Reynolds’s Remington and turned in time to see one of Hamal’s security people fall facedown into the dirt. Behind a cloud of blue gunsmoke, Alcott flashed Harvath the thumbs-up. Obviously she had learned something from shooting rabbits in Cornwall. That was the second time she had saved his life.

Getting his head back in the game, Harvath raised the MP5 provided to him by the Special Warfare unit and slipped into the main building. By the time he reached the team members inside, he had three tangos to his credit, and with every man he dropped, he quickly searched each face for any resemblance to the two militants they were still looking for.

Inside, Harvath followed the unit as they plowed through wave after wave of gun-toting jihadis intent on defending whatever or whoever lay at the center of the compound.

By the time they reached the center, the team was faced with a set of stairs going up to the second story, as well as a door that led somewhere down belowground. Knowing Arab terrorists’ penchant for using tunnels, especially when under siege, Harvath chose to accompany the part of the team that was going below grade.

When several rounds into the lock and hinges of the reinforced door failed to open it, the unit’s demolition officer placed a shape charge on the door and backed the rest of the men up. Turning away from the blast, he hit a button and blew the door right out of its frame. Another team member then threw two flashbang grenades down the narrow stone staircase.

The flashbangs detonated in quick succession, and the men poured down the narrow opening with the demo officer and Harvath bringing up the rear.

The stairway was incredibly tight, so tight in fact that men had to twist sideways at points just to squeeze through.

Five more feet, and the earsplitting echo of new weapons’ fire filled the confined space along with the thick smell of cordite. With no way to see what was happening, Harvath had no choice but to follow the man in front of him.

Suddenly, though, there was a reverse surge as the men turned and tried to run back up the steps. Before Harvath could move, he heard a series of horrible screams as an explosion detonated and a searing orange wave of fire consumed the stairwell.

He dropped to the ground as the flames roared overhead and tried to protect his already burned face.

After the flames dissipated, Harvath checked himself to make sure he hadn’t been injured. Deciding everything was okay, he stood and then noticed that the rest of the team hadn’t been so lucky. Based on the condition of the demo officer in front of him, he could see that they all had been riddled with shrapnel. Either someone had tossed a grenade into the stairwell or the Special Warfare unit had triggered some sort of antipersonnel device. Either way, somebody was trying very hard not to be followed.

After grabbing the demo officer’s bag of charges and flashbangs, Harvath carefully picked his way over the other bodies and down the rest of the stairs. When he reached the bottom, he found himself in a tight subterranean chamber. Haphazardly placed beams supported the low ceiling and a string of bare lightbulbs lit a long passageway stretching out in front of him. Just as Harvath had suspected, Hamal’s complex was indeed attached to a tunnel system.

With the ringing in his ears somewhat subsided, Harvath could make out the sound of one or more people moving somewhere up ahead. His MP5 up and at the ready, he crept cautiously forward, mindful of the potential for further booby traps.

The height of the tunnel rose and fell over a distance of what felt like two or three city blocks. It finally dead-ended at a wooden ladder that stretched upward toward some sort of trapdoor. If someone had been in the tunnel, this was the only way they could have gone. Readying his weapon, Harvath used his free hand to steady himself as he climbed the ladder. He gently applied pressure to the trapdoor, but it wouldn’t budge. He tried once again, harder this time, but still it refused to move.

Searching through the demo bag he had taken, he found another shape charge. Affixing it to the bottom of the trapdoor, he attached the necessary amount of det cord, climbed back down into the tunnel, and got as far away as possible. Plugging his ears and opening his mouth to equalize the pressure change that was about to take place, Harvath counted to three and blew an enormous hole right through the middle of the door.

He removed two flashbangs from the bag, scrambled up the ladder, and pitched them up and into the room above him.

Immediately after their detonation, Harvath sprang off the top rung of the ladder and into what could only be described as some sort of bottling plant.

Terrified by the explosions and the heavily armed man who had just crawled out from beneath the floor, workers ran in all directions. They scurried around and beneath rows of automated conveyor belts carrying bottles just like the ones Jillian had recovered from the warehouse in Riyadh.

Heavy stainless steel machines filled the plastic bottles with water and some other compound which Harvath assumed had to be the antidote. They were then sent in orderly rows to be capped, labeled, shrink-wrapped, and stacked on enormous pallets, where they were picked up by a forklift operator and moved to a loading area.

As he was studying the operation, all of a sudden everything around him erupted in a hail of gunfire. Hitting the deck, he saw Ozan Kalachka and the man who would be caliph — Prince Hamal — flanked by two of the meanest-looking, long-bearded, turban-wearing men Harvath had ever seen. With their earth-tone robes and huge machine guns, the bodyguards appeared more suited to the Wild West — style streets of Kabul than a holy city like Mecca.

Harvath rolled beneath one of the conveyor belts and fired his MP5, sending a shower of sparks along the metal platform where the men were standing. Immediately, they returned fire, and Harvath felt water pouring down on him as the bottles up above were sawn in half.

Rolling back out into the open, Harvath applied pressure to the trigger of his MP5 and dropped one of the two Taliban twins bracketing Hamal and Kalachka.

The remaining bodyguard once again returned fire, but this time capped it off with a special twist — a live grenade. As the grenade hit the concrete floor only feet away, Harvath scrambled farther beneath the machinery. He crawled in the other direction as fast as his hands and knees would carry him. And then the unthinkable happened — he got stuck.