Path of the Assassin

CHAPTER 22

Harvath and the rest of the team immediately switched on their NODs. Morrell did the same as he hailed the Delta commander and demanded to know why the lights had been shut off before the agreed to time. Speed, surprise, and overwhelming force of action were the key to a successful takedown, and surprise appeared to have been all but taken away from them.

Finally, the Delta commander radioed back that the 777 unit had jumped the gun and weren’t responding to his orders to hold up. On a separate channel, they had given the command in Arabic to airport staff to kill the lights and were currently zooming across the tarmac on their mobile staircase.

“Fuck!” was the next thing to come out of Rick Morrell’s mouth. Harvath wanted to say, I told you so, but choked it back. Now wasn’t the time.

Morrell finally recovered and gave the “Go” command for the teams to move out. Harvath pushed the door all the way open and, crouching low, ran across the gravel-covered roof, followed by the rest of Bravo Team. He dropped noiselessly onto the top of the heavy Jetway and ran forward as the SAS man inside began maneuvering it closer to the plane.

Before Harvath got all the way to the end, a hail of gunfire erupted from the cockpit and the Jetway stopped moving. He and the rest of the team were sitting ducks. Harvath hit the deck and prepared to return fire, but even with the NODs on, couldn’t see anyone through the foil-covered windows of the cockpit. There was no telling if the hijackers were holding any flight crew in there with them. Harvath didn’t want to risk killing one of the pilots.

Morrell called frantically over the radio to get the Jetway moving again, but his man below was not responding. One of the Alpha operatives reported from below the plane that the Jetway’s navigation station had been riddled with bullets and it looked like they had a man down.

Once again, the first thing that came to Morrell’s lips was, “Fuck!”

This party was going ugly early. It was obvious to Harvath that Morrell was quickly coming to the end of his command ability, and there was no way he was going to sit with his ass hanging out in the wind on top of the Jetway waiting for Hashim Nidal or one of his guys to pick them all off. It was time to take control.

Harvath activated his throat mike and called over the radio to the Delta sniper team. “Tick Tock One, Tick Tock One, this is Bravo Team, do you copy?”

“Roger that, Bravo. This is Tick Tock One. We copy,” came the voice of Bullet Bob.

“I’ve got a VUP in the cockpit, but he may have flight crew with him. I need you to pin him down. Throw some of that heavy lead in there nice and high.”

“Roger that, Bravo Team. ‘Very unfriendly person’ in the cockpit, possible friendlies present. I’ll see what I can do to pin him down. Tick Tock One out.”

Harvath next radioed the SAS sniper team to take out the plane’s auxiliary power unit mounted in the 747’s rear fuselage. His hope was that it would disrupt power within the plane and shut off the interior lights.

“Who the fuck is this?” demanded the CIA sniper.

“This is Norseman,” replied Harvath, “now take out that APU!”

“I don’t take orders from you, Harvath.”

“Do it now!” broke in the voice of Morrell, who must have finally found his balls rolling around somewhere on top of the Jetway. Next, he focused his attention on Harvath, “We need to get somebody down to that navigation station and get the Jetway up against the plane.”

“No time,” answered Harvath, who crawled past Morrell and back up the Jetway.

“Harvath! Harvath! What the fuck are you doing?” hissed Morrell.

Scot ignored him and kept crawling until he was alongside the team’s designated demolition man, none other than the operative he had elbowed in the mouth in Jerusalem.

“Give me your demo sack,” said Harvath as he reached for it.

“What the hell for?” he asked, pulling the bag out of Harvath’s grasp.

“I’ve got a plane to catch. Hurry up.”

“No way. That’s not the plan,” responded the man.

Harvath hated it when people refused to cooperate, especially disagreeable people. “So much for team spirit,” he said as he pinned the man’s hand in a sophisticated joint lock, quickly retrieved the demo sack, and slung it over his back along with his MP5. As Harvath was sliding his gloved hands through the specially designed fittings of the black polymer climbing cups, Rick Morrell crawled over.

“What the hell’s going on here?” he asked.

“Beats me,” said Harvath.

“I don’t know what you’re up to, Harvath, but—”

“What we’re up to is making a jump for that plane.”

“Are you crazy?” responded Morrell. “There’s no way we’ll make it. It’s too far away. I’ll get one of the Alpha Team guys up to get us closer.”

“There’s no time. We go now.”

“Bullshit. We go when I say, and I say we get the Jetway closer!”

“Sorry. No can do,” said Harvath as he got up and took off running down the Jetway.

He bounded down the roof of the Jetway and ran as hard as he could while Bullet Bob tore up the hijacked 747’s cockpit with half-inch rounds. At the very end of the Jetway, Harvath pushed off with all his might and flung himself out into space toward the big bird.

When he hit, he hit hard, but true to all the propaganda from Fretwell Industries, the suction cups didn’t fail and he was now adhered to the aluminum skin of the plane. Using the grip and release buttons on the sides of the suction-cup handles, he quickly pulled himself up to the top of the plane. It was similar to the hull climbing he had learned in his SEAL days, only a lot drier. Once atop the plane, instead of turning left and heading toward the bubble, he turned right and ran toward the tail.

Morrell’s voice could be heard immediately through his earpiece. “Harvath! What the hell are you doing? The plan was to make for the bubble and breach there.”

“That was the old plan,” replied Scot. “Now we’re going to do things the way they should be done.”

“Harvath, you’ve gone too far—”

“So have the Egyptians. From what I can see from up here, it’s only a matter of minutes before they arrive, and they’ve got a head start on the Delta boys. Do you want them doing the takedown or us?”

“Us, of course,” replied Morrell.

“Good. Then we do it my way,” replied Harvath as he reached the tail-end section of the airplane and fished the ribbon charge from the demo sack. From what he had memorized about the 747–400’s layout, he knew he was above an open area in economy class with four lavatories and no passenger seating.

“Okay, we do it your way, but I want you to know I am not happy about this,” said Morrell.

“And I am? Just instruct Alpha Team of the change and to wait for my signal.”

“Will do. Hold a sec—”

“What’s up?” asked Harvath.

“It looks like Tick Tock Two knocked out the APU. Behind the window shades the plane has gone totally dark.”

“Perfect. I’m framing my hatch. Have Alpha get ready to blow the belly.”

“On your mark.”

Harvath thought about what his next move was going to be. Every single terrorist between the tail end of the plane and business class was going to be his responsibility once he blew his hole and jumped inside. He pulled what he always referred to as “Man’s best friend,” the roll of duct tape he never traveled without, from his pocket and pulled up the suction-cup devices sitting next to him. Wrapping the tape beneath the handles and around his legs, he quickly secured the devices to the back of his calves. Harvath activated the cups to “grip” and then radioed Morrell. “This is Norseman.”

“Roger, Norseman,” came Morrell’s voice.

“Is Alpha Team online?”

“Roger that,” came the voice of Alpha Team’s leader.

“We go on my mark. In three… two… one… Now!”

Harvath’s explosion kicked in first, followed by a devastating concussion from the bottom of the aircraft. He pulled out two flash-bang grenades from his hip pouch, jumped across the gaping wound in the plane’s skin, and slammed the suction cups around his calves against the exterior aluminum. With his legs secure, he readied his MP5, chucked the flash bangs into the plane, and swung into the hole headfirst.

He was hanging by his legs with his head pointing toward the floor, so everything he saw was upside down, but a properly tuned laser sight on an MP5 never lied. He took out two hijackers at the rear of the plane, and as two more, about fifteen rows up, began shooting, he nailed them as well.

Harvath pulled his knife from his vest and cut himself free of the suction cups. He swung his legs over his head, hit the ground on his feet, and quickly made his way up the port aisle yelling in English and Arabic for the passengers to get down on the floor of the plane.

Two more terrorists came shooting at him down opposite aisles, and Harvath quickly took them out with perfect shots to the head. A massive explosion rocked the front of the plane, followed by multiple bursts of submachine gun fire as smoke began filling the main cabin. For a moment, Harvath wondered if the front door had indeed been rigged and if maybe Morrell and the rest of Bravo Team had breached it. That was impossible; Harvath had the demo sack and nobody in their right mind would have touched that door with their bare hands. The only way through it was to blow it. It had to have been something else. Harvath looked behind him and didn’t see the 777 unit. Could the Delta boys have beaten them to the plane? He couldn’t tell.

Harvath kept making his way forward. He picked up two more hijackers, armed with Beretta model 12S submachine guns and emergency flashlights, and blew them away. More smoke began to fill the cabin as another explosion and more gunfire rocked the front of the plane. A few passengers had opened emergency window exits and were now fleeing as fast as they could scramble over one another.

As Harvath ran forward, the rows of seats stopped and he found himself in a somewhat open area. Out of instinct, he dropped to the ground, just as shots sliced by his head from the economy-class galley. Within seconds, a wave of smoke passed, and through his NODs, Harvath could make out another hijacker swinging his weapon from left to right, trying to reacquire his target. Harvath didn’t give him the opportunity. He drilled a bullet straight through the hijacker’s brain. Another hijacker appeared right behind him, and Scot dropped him without a second thought.

Harvath couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t seen any of the Alpha Team members working their way toward him. Taking advantage of the lull in the action, he pulled the first of the doubled magazines from his weapon and slammed the second into place. He swung his MP5 from right to left, the laser sight slicing eerily through the smoky darkness. All around him he could hear the screams of passengers as they tried to evacuate the plane.

An explosion from the rear starboard door of the plane signaled the arrival of the Thunderbolt 777 force to the party. The danger factor had just increased exponentially.

Harvath knew the only way to avoid heavy civilian casualties with these jokers now on the scene was to make sure that all of the hijackers had been taken out. With his laser sight arcing from side to side, Harvath crept forward into the business-class section of the plane. Just as in the economy class, passengers were scrambling to get to any available exit. It was absolute chaos.

As he neared the carpeted stairs that connected the lower-level workout facility with the main level and upper deck, Harvath saw two bodies slumped together across seats 16 A and B. Carefully, he rolled the top body off the one beneath. There was blood everywhere. The man on top was of Middle Eastern descent and had been shot in the throat. But by whom? Harvath wondered. He still couldn’t see or hear any trace of the Alpha Team.

Beneath the Middle Easterner lay the almost lifeless body of another man, who appeared to be a passenger. He had taken two rounds to the chest, but was still alive — barely. Harvath found a blanket nearby and after folding it, quickly applied it to the man’s wounds as a makeshift pressure bandage.

“Is he okay? Is he alive?” came a voice from behind him in the aisle.

With his MP5 up and ready, Scot whirled and locked the little red dot of his laser sight onto the forehead of one of the female passengers. Harvath couldn’t believe his ears. With almost all of the passengers running for their lives, this woman wanted to know if another passenger was going to make it.

“He’s pretty bad. Come over here and keep the pressure on this blanket. Don’t let him lose any more blood.”

Georgia Bormann did as she was told, and as she took over for Harvath, a faint whisper escaped Bernard Walsh’s lips. “Find Meg. Help her.”

Harvath had no idea what the man was talking about, nor did he have time to figure it out. The aircraft was not yet secure. Hashim Nidal was somewhere on board. Scot could smell him. This wouldn’t be over until he had him in his sights and made him pay for all of the killing he had been responsible for.

With Bormann tending to Walsh, Harvath made his way to the carpeted stairwell. Carefully, he looked over the railing down toward the workout facility. Between choking waves of smoke, he could see three bodies lying motionless on the ground. Part of Alpha Team was down. As much as Harvath wanted to help them, he couldn’t. There were still hijackers aboard and it was his job to find them.

He decided to move forward, up to the first-class section, and as he passed the main forward door, he noticed that it was indeed wired with explosives. He took a red paint marker from his pocket and drew a fat X on the door’s porthole-style window, warning any teams on the other side not to use the door, as it was rigged from the inside with explosives.

When Harvath got into the first-class section, he looked from right to left with his NODs and was amazed. It was completely empty. No United CEO, no Chicago mayor, nothing. His first thought was that maybe they had all evacuated. As he was sweeping the cabin again with his night-vision goggles, he heard, “Now!”

Immediately, he was blinded by a powerful emergency flashlight that had been turned on him. Once again, he reflexively hit the deck. It took him a moment to clear the spots from his eyes, but when his vision returned, he could see that the first-class passengers had been hiding behind their seats waiting in ambush. Now he looked up at no fewer than six submachine gun muzzles pointing down at him.

“Drop your weapons. Do it now!” commanded Harvath, raising his MP5.

“Identify yourself,” said one of the voices.

“Delta Force. Now, put that flashlight and your weapons down. I’m not going to tell you again,” said Harvath as he pushed himself to his feet. With his right hand still holding his MP5, he used his left to tear a Velcro’d piece of fabric from his right upper arm area. Underneath was a bright red, white, and blue American flag.

“We’re here to get you out,” he continued. “Is everyone okay?”

“Everybody’s okay,” said Mayor Fellinger, who tilted his head in Meg Cassidy’s direction. “Thanks to her.”

Even through his goggles he could tell the woman was beautiful. She had been put through the ringer, but she was still gorgeous. He tore his mind away from the vision in front of him and got back to business. “I don’t know how you got those weapons,” he said, “but I want you to set them down.”

“Set them down?” said the United CEO, confused.

“There are Egyptian commandos entering the aft of the aircraft as we speak. We don’t want any of you folks to get confused for hijackers and shot,” replied Harvath. “Now drop those weapons and get yourselves down on the ground between the seats. This thing isn’t over yet. Don’t move until someone comes for you.”

“And what about you?” asked Meg Cassidy, her eyes riveted on Harvath.

“Me? I’ve got a bone to pick with someone whose parents should have practiced better birth control. Now, everybody on the floor.”

After a moment of studying the mix of sheer determination and icy calm written across his face, Meg followed suit with the rest of the people around her, setting her weapon on a nearby seat and getting down on the floor.

Harvath made his way out of first class and back through business class to the stairs that led to the upper deck. When takedowns came, hijackers traditionally fled to what they believed was the safest place on the plane — the cockpit. Though cockpits on all planes had been significantly fortified after September 11, there wouldn’t be enough fortification in this plane’s cockpit to prevent Scot Harvath from getting in and getting what he wanted. He swore to himself that the only way Hashim Nidal and any of his remaining men were going to be leaving this plane was feetfirst.

As Scot climbed the stairs, he noticed that the walls were charred and pitted. Small pieces of shrapnel littered the carpeting. It appeared as if a fragmentation grenade had gone off in the stairwell. That must have been one of the explosions he had heard after breaching the rear of the aircraft. It seemed too dangerous a weapon for the Alpha Team to have used in a hostage situation. Then Harvath was reminded of what the CIA team’s top priority in this mission was. Still, a frag grenade was excessive, even by Morrell’s standards.

Before reaching the top landing, Harvath pulled a flash bang from his vest and hurled it over the railing into the upper-deck lounge. He averted his eyes, waited for the detonation, and then sprinted up the remaining stairs and stormed onto the upper deck. Right at the top of the stairs, he almost tripped over the dead body of another Middle Easterner. He figured it was a hijacker and guessed that this had something to do with how the passengers in first class had gotten their weapons.

He cleared the lavatories, the galley, and then searched behind every seat, as well as the bar. He found the bodies of two more Middle Easterners as well as a large Caucasian man who appeared from his clothes to be American. Harvath pegged him as an air marshal or one of the mayor’s bodyguards. His build and style of dress screamed law enforcement, and knowing how good the air marshals were at blending in with other passengers, Harvath figured the man had been one of Mayor Fellinger’s police bodyguards.

Throughout his search, Harvath kept one eye on the cockpit door, ready for it to spring open at any minute.

When he got to the thick outer flight-deck door, he could see up high where the half-inch, fifty-caliber rounds from Bullet Bob’s sniper rifle had penetrated clean through the cockpit and had probably kept flying through the upper-deck area. The question now was how to breach the door? He could blow it with a ribbon charge, but if there were flight crew on the other side, they might end up seriously injured. That was a risk Harvath would have to take. Injured was better than dead any day of the week. He reached into the demo sack and was about to remove the explosive when he heard a noise and the cockpit door began to open.

Scot leapt back, his MP5 raised and ready. The first thing to appear was a hand covered in blood, gripping the outer edge of the doorframe. Harvath could just make out an aviator chronograph watch strapped to the man’s wrist. In an instant, the full form of a man in a flight crew uniform was visible as he stumbled out of the cockpit and fell to the floor. He was badly injured. Scot checked his pulse. It was weak, but steady. He hated to leave the man, but he needed to sweep the cockpit. It only took a moment. Both the captain and the first officer were dead.

There was the faint thumping of boots from the stairwell in the lounge and Harvath spun to see a Delta Force team cresting the landing and fanning out across the upper deck. A disjointed chorus of “Clear… clear… clear…” rang throughout the upper deck as the Delta team swept for any hidden hijackers.

Harvath stepped forward, identified himself to the team leader, and said, “I’ve got a man injured here.”

The team medic raced over and produced a small bag and began tending to the flight crew’s injured navigator.

Once Harvath felt sure the man was in good hands, he approached the team leader. “Did we get Nidal?”

“I’ve got no idea. It looks like a fucking shooting gallery down there. We’ve got several Alpha Team members down, a badly injured flight attendant, one passenger with multiple gunshot wounds, and about three hundred plus other passengers jumping out of any exit they can find. They’re all running around the tarmac in the dark. At this point, there’s no telling where your guy is.”

Harvath’s blood ran cold.