Path of the Assassin

CHAPTER 49

When the guards locked Harvath back in his room, he knew he’d been blessed with the rarest of opportunities — a second chance. He went over the room again inch by inch, searching for anything he could use as a weapon. Out of frustration, he walked into the bathroom for the third time, and that’s when inspiration struck.

It took several hours of digging at the grout with his fingernails, but Harvath finally was able to loosen one of the large square tiles and then remove it from the wall. He scored the back of it as best he could by rubbing the tile continuously across one of the metal flanges used to bolt his bed to the floor. Once the tile was scored, he placed the guide cut over the edge of the bed frame and punched down on the tile with his blanket-wrapped fist.

The tile broke perfectly, leaving a jagged, sharp edge. Harvath worked the bottom of the tile against the metal flange a little longer, fashioning a makeshift handle, which he then wrapped tightly with strips of cloth torn from his sheets.

He took a moment to sit back on his mattress and admire his handiwork. It wasn’t pretty, but by prison-shiv standards, he had created quite a formidable weapon. Judging from the night sky outside his window, there were only a few more hours until daylight. Harvath didn’t even want to begin to imagine what morning and Hashim Nidal might have in store for them.

A loose plan had begun forming in his mind. He tried to quiet all of the competing thoughts whirling in his head and focus on how he was going to get them out of this. If anything happened to Meg Cassidy, he’d never be able to forgive himself. She had suffered more than enough already.

A loud explosion broke Harvath’s meditation and drew him across the room to the window. It was soon followed by another explosion and then another. They all sounded as if they were coming from the other side of the compound.

At first, Harvath wondered if the terrorists were doing some sort of oddball nighttime training, but discarded that idea when the lights dipped twice and then went out. The room was completely black, except for the faint glow of moonlight streaming in through the window. Harvath heard a commotion in the hallway and crossed from the window to that side of the room in three quick strides.

He pressed his ear up against the door and heard what sounded like retreating footsteps. He tried the handle of his door, but it was still locked from the outside. He couldn’t be sure if Morrell had arrived to rescue them, but something was definitely happening.

He kept his ear against the door for several more minutes, but heard nothing. The explosions continued outside, but at wider intervals. They seemed to be coming from different directions.

With his shiv at the ready, Harvath finalized his plan. It wasn’t the best one he’d ever conceived, but he figured trying it was a lot better than waiting for Hashim and his men to come take him down to the dungeon torture chamber that he knew in his bones this place possessed. If Morrell was somewhere outside, he’d need all the help he could get.

Scot began pounding on his door and calling out for the guard. He would keep the shiv hidden underneath his shirt until he could get close enough to one of the men and take him out. He would then try and take out the second guard and free Meg Cassidy. He calculated the odds and didn’t like them, but they were a whole lot better than the potential alternative. The bottom line was that Adara and Hashim Nidal were never going to let Harvath or Meg leave the compound alive.

When he stopped pounding and pressed his ear up against the door again, he heard the faint sound of footsteps. Seconds later there was the sound of the bolt on the other side being drawn. Harvath had had no idea someone was that close. The footsteps had sounded much further off. He decided he would let the guards find him doubled over and maybe they would think he was ill. If he could get at least one, if not both of them, to lower his defenses for just a moment, that would be all the time he needed. He jumped back and readied his weapon.

The door swung open and blazing flashlight beams pierced the darkness. Then they turned off. Harvath could just make out several large forms entering the room in classic buttonhook fashion. They fanned out and cleared the room and bathroom area in less than five seconds. Harvath had no idea what was happening. He was surrounded by three heavily outfitted men in tactical gear with helmets and armed with silenced Mark Eleven Mod Zero assault rifles.

“Somebody order room service?” asked one of the men, whose face was covered with a black balaclava.

Harvath recognized the voice immediately. It was Gordon Avigliano! “Where the hell have you guys been?” asked Harvath.

“Long story,” replied Avigliano. “I’ll tell you in the car. Where’s Ms. Cassidy?”

“Straight across the hall.”

Avigliano handed Harvath a silenced forty-five-caliber H&K Special Operations Command pistol and some extra ammunition. Mounted on the rail beneath the barrel was a SureFire tactical light complete with pressure switch. With the pressure-sensitive switch affixed to the pistol’s grip, you could activate the beam when, and only for as long, as you needed it.

“You look like shit,” said Avigliano.

Harvath wanted to say that the Nidal family health spa left a lot to be desired, but he bit his tongue. The men formed an assault column known as the Conga Line, with each operative covering a different angle with their weapons.

Avigliano drew back the bolt on Meg Cassidy’s door and cautiously pushed it open. Before he knew what was happening, Meg was flying at him with a large vase held high above her head. Since he was decked out in full tactical gear, she couldn’t tell Avigliano was one of the good guys. He tried to blind her with the beam from his flashlight, but it was too late. Meg Cassidy had already locked on.

Avigliano raised his rifle just in time. The vase shattered against it sending shards of porcelain, water, and flowers in all directions.

One of Avigliano’s teammates quickly wrestled Meg to the ground. “Ms. Cassidy, my name is DeWolfe. We’re part of the Operation Phantom team. We’re here to get you out.”

Meg struggled underneath the large man, who had taken her down and pinned her arms behind her back in the blink of an eye.

“Where’s Scot?”

“Scot?” asked DeWolfe.

“Harvath. Norseman,” said Meg as she struggled to break free of the man’s powerful grip.

Harvath came into the room and tapped DeWolfe on the shoulder. He let up on Meg. “I’m right here. Are you okay?” asked Harvath.

“Why the hell did he have to do that?” she asked as the men quickly swept the rest of the room.

“It was for your own protection.”

“My protection?”

“It’s just the safest way to do things. They didn’t want you hurting them or yourself. I would have done the same thing.”

“Thanks. I’ll remember that.”

“Can we do this later, Meg? Right now, let’s focus on getting out of here.”

“Roger that,” said Avigliano from behind Harvath. “Let’s beat feet.”

“Where’s the rest of the team?” asked Harvath as the men prepared to go back into the hall.

“This is it,” replied Avigliano.

“What do you mean, ‘this is it’?”

“We dropped in with the FAVs. Morrell instructed us to follow the truck you’d been loaded into after you got captured. Once we found out where they had taken you, we radioed back. The team was going to rendezvous with us, but Libyan soldiers are crawling all over the place. Nidal must have called them in. Morrell and the guys made it back to their FAVs, but got cut off. They couldn’t get around the Libyans to get here and help out.”

“So you pulled this off yourselves? Just the three of you?”

“And against orders. Morrell told us to pull out.”

“Pull out?”

“He didn’t want to risk it. He wanted to wait until we had regrouped before doing anything.”

“I’m glad you didn’t listen to him. Thanks for coming,” said Harvath.

“The party’s not over yet. I’d hold your thank-you’s if I were you. Let’s get out of here first.”

“Amen. Let’s roll.”

The team snaked down the hall past the dining room. Suddenly, Avigliano held up a fist, signaling the team to come to an immediate stop. DeWolfe drew up shoulder to shoulder with Avigliano, and when Harvath and Meg’s two guards came running around the corner, DeWolfe and Avigliano popped them both with silenced rounds to the head. The men fell straight to the ground, and their rifles clattered on the dark stone floor. Harvath wanted to grab their weapons, but as they weren’t silenced, he knew they couldn’t use them.

Avigliano waited several seconds before signaling that it was all clear to move out. As they passed the two lifeless forms sprawled on the ground, Harvath felt cheated. One of the guards was the man who had struck him several times while they were in the study. That feeling disappeared two minutes later when they entered the compound’s enormous columned rotunda and Harvath saw a certain man before anyone else did.

It was the captain of the guard whom he had fought with the day before. The man had an AK-47 and was playing peekaboo from behind a pillar halfway across the room. There was no time to warn the rest of the group. In a fraction of a second, they would be trapped in his line of fire.

Harvath took a running slide across the slick marble floor and repeatedly pulled the trigger on his silenced H&K. The powerful gun bucked in his hand and tore huge chunks of stone from the column behind which the captain of the guard was hiding.

Avigliano and the rest of the team fanned out in all directions as they tried to shield Meg Cassidy and simultaneously spot any additional shooters.

As Harvath’s slide came to a stop, the captain fell forward from behind the shelter of his column. He had taken two bullets to the chest and another through his left eye.

Once Harvath had replaced the spent magazine, he carefully approached the man and rolled him over. Definitely dead. Harvath retrieved his Rolex and went through the man’s pockets until he found his knife too. “Now, we’re finished,” said Harvath to the dead man. “Say hi to Allah for me, asshole.”

DeWolfe booby-trapped the body with two fragmentation grenades and rolled the dead man onto his stomach.

Harvath rejoined Avigliano, who had moved the team toward the entrance of the building. “How are we getting out of here?” asked Harvath.

“If we go out and pull a hard right, there’s a narrow slot canyon. We’ve got a FAV stashed at the end of it about a mile-and-a-half down.”

“Won’t there be a little resistance outside?”

“Tons, but we’ve got that handled,” said Avigliano as he drew a small transmitter from his pocket. “On three. One. Two. Three!”

Avigliano depressed the red and green buttons on his transmitter, and the team ran outside. Explosions ignited at the far end of the canyon, back toward where Harvath had first been held. The canyon floor was littered with dead bodies — the victims of previous explosions. There were still many men left, and they seemed to be running in all directions. It was mass chaos. Trucks drove this way and that, some men apparently fleeing, some trying to help put out the fires and locate the cause of the many explosions. Avigliano and DeWolfe silently took out several terrorists as they made their way to the canyon.

Fifteen yards in, Avigliano’s third operative, a muscle-bound comedian named Carlson, removed two claymore mines from his backpack and handed one of them to Harvath. Where the claymore usually read, “Front Toward Enemy,” Carlson had made a slight change. He had placed a long piece of masking tape with writing on it that read, “Have a Nice Day.” Carlson flashed Harvath a thumbs-up and moved to the other side of the narrow canyon. Once the devices were set, the two men ran to catch up with the others.

Thirty seconds later they heard the sound of the fragmentation grenades detonating inside the rotunda. Someone had found the booby-trapped captain of the guard. Harvath hoped that Adara and her brother had stumbled across the body together, but he doubted they’d been that lucky.

The signature clack-clack-clack of AK-47 fire erupted from behind them in the canyon. Adara Nidal’s men were hot on their trail.

The canyon was the most dangerous part of Avigliano’s escape plan, as it acted like a funnel, channeling all of the terrorists’ fire right at them. The only thing they could do was keep on running.

They then heard the sound of the claymores detonating behind them. Hailstorms of steel ball bearings propelled by the exploding hunks of C4, showered anyone within fifty meters in front of the antipersonnel devices. Agonizing screams followed from the few men who had actually survived, but had been torn to bits. This bought the team a little time, but not much.

Avigliano worked his radio, calling in their status, as his long legs kept propelling him forward. “Big John, Big John. This is Point Guard. We have the package. I repeat. We have the package. Kick the tires and light the fires. Point Guard out.”

Harvath mouthed, Big John? to DeWolfe, who was running alongside Meg Cassidy and who answered, “That’s our exfil,” short for exfiltration.

It seemed to take an eternity to run the almost mile and a half, but suddenly, the canyon ended and opened up onto a wide, barren plain. Avigliano and his men quickly removed the camouflage netting that disguised their Fast Attack Vehicle.

“Where’s the other FAV?” asked Harvath.

“That’s it. There aren’t any other ones,” said Carlson as he handed Harvath and Meg encrypted radios with headsets. “We’re going tisket-tasket.”

Harvath knew what that meant. He and Meg would be riding in the supply baskets on either side of the vehicle. Harvath quickly helped Meg secure her radio and then belted her into one of the baskets.

“She knows how to use one of these, right?” asked DeWolfe as he handed Meg his Mod Zero.

“I’m a fast learner,” replied Meg, who grabbed the weapon with her right hand and held out her left for extra clips of ammunition.

Harvath hopped in the opposite basket and strapped himself into the modified shoulder straps. Carlson tossed him his Mod Zero, and in less than a minute they were rolling.

Avigliano was behind the wheel with DeWolfe sitting next to him manning the Mark 19 grenade launcher. Up top, Carlson had his choice of either the forward .50-caliber machine gun or a 7.62 millimeter covering their rear. In addition, he carried one Stinger antiaircraft missile as well as an AT4 antitank missile. As it turned out, they were going to need everything they had.