Full Black

CHAPTER 12

H arvath was on his way out of the farmhouse with a blanket and a bottle of water, when his cell phone rang. “Go ahead,” he said, answering the call and setting the items down.

“We’ve got a fix on the mobile phone Phoenix Three contacted from the accident site,” said Reed Carlton. Phoenix Three was the code name that had been given to Sean Chase for the operation. Harvath was Phoenix One and Riley Turner was Phoenix Two.

“We’ve got an address?” asked Harvath.

“That’s affirmative,” said the old man. “I’ll pass it off to you on the back channel.”

The back channel was a reference to the secure network the Carlton Group used to communicate and pass information to each other.

“Roger that,” said Harvath.

Using the code name they had created for Mansoor, based on his initials, the old man asked, “Any progress with Massachusetts?”

“Not yet,” replied Harvath, “but I think he’ll be warming up to us soon.”

“Good. I want this op wrapped up and everyone out of there as soon as possible. Understood?”

“Roger that,” replied Harvath. He and Carlton spoke at length about how long to give Phoenix Three before launching their takedown of the Uppsala cell. They both understood that the longer Chase was in their midst, the more he might be able to learn. They also understood that the longer he stayed, the greater the odds were that he might be discovered. If he was, they’d kill him on the spot.

The call ended, Harvath gathered up the blanket and the water bottle, and headed outside.

“Anything?” he asked as he approached the operative standing guard at the barn. “Praying? Crying? Anything?” Knowing how their prisoner had spent the time since Harvath had been gone would affect how he decided to continue the interrogation.

“Nothing,” replied the operative, an ex-CIA man named Andy Bachmann. He was in his late fifties and built like a drill instructor. The Old Man had suggested him for this operation as they’d known each other in the old days back at Langley, and Bachmann had worked in Sweden before. “Not a sound.”

Mansoor Aleem might be tougher than Harvath had thought. Nodding, he walked past Bachmann, unlocked the barn door, and jerked it wide. He stood there with the door open for several seconds to encourage the flow of cold air. The prisoner didn’t move.

Considering how he’d been shivering, there was no way that Mansoor could have fallen asleep. Had he slipped into unconsciousness? That would be a world record. He hadn’t been exposed to the cold that long.

For a moment, Harvath wondered if he was being played. “Time to wake up, Mansoor,” he said as he walked up to the man and snatched off his hood. There was no reaction.

The man’s head was bent forward, his chin resting on his chest. Harvath grabbed a fistful of hair and tilted his head back so he could look at his face. He slapped him, but the man didn’t even flinch. He wasn’t conscious.

Harvath opened one of his eyelids. The eye failed to dilate. He placed two fingers against the man’s carotid and felt for a pulse. Nothing.

“Fuck,” said Harvath, as he then yelled for the operative outside. “Andy! Andy, damn it!”

Bachmann threw open the door and charged inside, his MP7 drawn from beneath his coat. “What is it?” he said, scanning the barn as he tried to figure out what was happening.

“Get Riley,” Harvath ordered. “Now! Tell her Mansoor has flatlined.”

As a medical student and Winter X Games athlete, Turner had been one of the first recruits into a covert Department of Defense program known as the Athena Project. Its goal was to provide women with the same training male Delta Force operatives received, making it possible to send them into the field alone, on all-female teams, or in various mixed assignments such as Harvath’s Sweden op. The bad guys could often see the men coming but rarely, if ever, suspected women. He had requested Riley, now a trauma surgeon, personally. Having worked with her before, he knew she was exceedingly capable. There were also personal reasons he wanted her along, but those were far from his mind right now.

As Bachmann took out his radio to raise Riley, Harvath cut his prisoner loose and laid him on the floor. Harvath had killed plenty of people in his career, but they’d all been bad guys who had deserved to die. Harvath had killed each of them intentionally. Mansoor Aleem was definitely a bad guy, but Harvath didn’t want him dead. And he definitely didn’t want it to happen because he had screwed up.

With him on the floor, Harvath immediately began CPR. The new guidelines called for doubling the number of chest compressions and not worrying about blowing air into the victim’s airway. “Don’t you die on me, asshole,” he said as he rapidly compressed the man’s chest. “Don’t you die.”

“What happened?” Riley shouted as she ran into the barn and saw Harvath on the floor performing CPR.

“I’ve got no idea,” said Harvath, as he kept focused on his prisoner. “When I came back in, he didn’t have a pulse.”

“Don’t BS me,” she replied as she rushed to his side. “I can’t help him if I don’t know what happened.”

“I just told you I don’t know what happened.”

“Did you hit him?”

“No, damn it,” Harvath snapped.

“If you struck him,” she said, “I need to know exactly where and with how much force.”

“For God’s sake, Riley. I didn’t touch him.”

“Fine,” she said, reaching out to check Mansoor’s pulse. “Stop the compressions for a second.”

Harvath did as he was told and watched as she checked for a pulse. “Anything?”

Riley shook her head. Picking up where Harvath had left off, she continued chest compressions with quick, swift pumps. “We’re going to need to get him to a hospital.”

“The hell we are,” replied Harvath. “We do that and we’re going to have an international incident on our hands.”

“Scot,” she said, as she continued the compressions. “He’s dead.”

“Hypothermia?”

“Hypothermia. Heart attack. What difference does it make?”

Harvath didn’t respond.

“If it’s hypothermia,” Riley added, “that could work in our favor. You’re not dead till you’re warm and dead, but I don’t have the kind of equipment we need to revive him.”

Harvath looked at the bag she had run in with and had tossed on the floor. “What about adrenaline? Can you use a syringe and pump it straight into his heart?”

“Intracardial injection?”

“Whatever you call it. Can you do that?” asked Harvath.

“Sure,” she replied, “but you need to defibrillate the patient as well. We don’t have a defibrillator.”

“Prep the adrenaline,” said Harvath as he waved Bachmann over. When the ex-CIA operative neared, Harvath told him to take over for Riley and keep giving Mansoor chest compressions.

“What are you going to do?” asked Riley.

“Don’t worry. Just hurry up and get that syringe ready.”

As Riley opened her bag and prepped the adrenaline, Harvath drew his Taser and pulled out its cartridge. “A Taser won’t give him the kind of jolt he needs. They’re not built that way,” she said.

Harvath didn’t care. He’d seen people take punches to the chest and have their hearts restart. If he could put enough juice in Mansoor’s body and cause it to convulse violently enough, maybe it would work. Grabbing the Taser from the holster on Bachmann’s belt, he removed its cartridge as well.

When Riley had the syringe ready, she nodded, and Harvath told Bachmann to stop the compressions and stand back. Looking at Riley, he said, “Do it.”

With no time to swab the man’s chest with an alcohol pad, she felt for the fourth intercostal space and pushed the needle through tissue and into his heart. Depressing the plunger, she injected the contents of the syringe into the young man’s ventricle.

When she was finished, she withdrew the needle and stood back. “This won’t work.”

“It has to work,” said Harvath as he kneeled over the body. Riley pointed to where defibrillator paddles would normally be placed and then stood back. “Here we go,” said Harvath, indicating that he was ready.

When Riley nodded, Harvath counted to three and pulled both the Tasers’ triggers at once.