The Lions Of Lucerne

79

Between the two of them, the only weapon they had left was Scot’s Beretta. Out of habit, he examined the clip and drew back the slide to check the chamber. He had sixteen shots, semiautomatic. Not much against a group of men carrying submachine guns, but it was better than nothing. He and Claudia kept running.

They came to another intersection, and before they knew what was happening, two men with H amp;Ks appeared from around a corner. Scot dropped to one knee, and Claudia hid behind him. He fired three shots at each man, taking them both down in a roar of gunfire that echoed throughout the tunnel. Scot and Claudia were deafened by the blasts from the Beretta and couldn’t hear the men from the cargo bay coming down the hall behind them, but Scot sensed it.

He whirled, and managed to keep Claudia protected as he fired again from his crouched position. The bullets didn’t find their targets as quickly this time, and he pulled the trigger repeatedly until, finally, one man fell and then another. Scot yanked Claudia to her feet and pushed her down the corridor. They came to another intersection.

“Which way?” she yelled.

Scot pointed left and they ran. Thirty meters later they hit another intersection. Scot glanced quickly behind them and motioned for Claudia to go right. They did, and Claudia stopped dead in her tracks.

She wasn’t sure what she noticed first, the man or the smell. Fifteen feet in front of them was a man dressed in desert fatigues with an Arabian-style headdress. Only his eyes were visible, but even then, they were shaded by the fabric. In his right hand, he held a model 61 Skorpion machine pistol, and it was pointed right at them.

Scot, who was right behind Claudia and had almost bumped into her when she stopped so suddenly, reached his left hand out for her waistband, knowing the man in front of them couldn’t see it.

“Drop your pistol on the floor!” Scot yelled.

Harvath hoped Claudia understood what he was going to do, or they were both dead for sure. He gave her waistband the first tug as if to say, one. Then came another tug, two. Claudia nodded her head ever so slightly as if to say she understood, and on tug three she let her legs go limp, and the two of them dropped.

Scot’s first shot went off just as he was hitting the floor and missed the man’s head by a fraction of a centimeter. His next shot was dead-on, right between the eyes, and the man went down. Scot’s pistol was empty, and he let it fall where he lay.

The man had been sitting at a small wooden desk across the hall from a large metal door. On the desk was a ring of keys. Harvath stepped over the man to grab the keys and almost had to pinch his nose from the stench of body odor. Fucking Middle Easterners. Why hadn’t some of them ever heard of showers?

Scot had been convinced that neither Abu Nidal, nor his FRC was involved with this whole mess, but now it looked as though he might have been wrong. Or had he? Harvath reached down and yanked off the headdress. Underneath was the head of a man with blue eyes and blond hair who looked more Swiss than Heidi of the mountains herself. Scot glanced at Claudia, whose face was registering the same bewilderment as his own. Why pose as a Middle Easterner? What’s the point?

With the keys in his hand, Scot motioned to Claudia to pick up the Skorpion.

“Cover me,” he said.

Claudia nodded and looked both ways up and down the hallway.

Approaching the door, he noticed a shelf had been built directly to the left and on it sat a box. Wires ran from the box up the wall and above the door. Booby trap? Very gently, Harvath opened the box and looked inside. What he saw made absolutely no sense at all-a tape recorder. He pushed the play button and he heard a faint wailing sound coming from the unit’s built-in speaker. It was a Muslim call to worship. Even more bizarre.

Above the door, was another box with some sort of fan unit pointing toward whatever lay on the other side. Scot dragged the creaky wooden desk chair around the body and beneath the box so he could check out this other mysterious item.

Once again, he eased off the lid. Immediately he was sorry. It was like being punched in the face. The stench was horrible. There was only one thing in the world that smelled like that-camel shit.

The two boxes were not booby traps. They were meant to annoy the hell out of whoever was on the other side of that door, and Scot was finally sure of one thing. He knew exactly whom he’d find inside.

He gave the door a last once-over and also checked beneath the desk for any hidden wiring or switches. There were none. Claudia stood ready with the machine pistol as Scot found the correct key and turned it in the lock.

As the door opened, Harvath was greeted with a hot gust of air and the terrible smell of camel feces. The temperature had to be at least thirty degrees higher than in the hallway. The room was dark, and it took his eyes a moment to adjust. The walls had been treated to look like sandstone, the floor was covered with straw, and there, sitting in the corner, his hand in a dirty bandage, was the president.

He was dressed in the simple robes Harvath had seen on so many Arab peasants during missions in the Mideast. The same type of robes the members of operation Rapid Return had been wearing when they were all killed. The light from the open door hurt the president’s eyes, and Scot maneuvered himself in front of it to help shield the glare.

“What do you want? If you’ve got my food, then leave it. If you’re going to take another finger, then get it over with!” said the president. His voice reflected how drained he was.

“Nobody’s going to hurt you anymore, Mr. President,” said Scot.

Rutledge lifted his hand to his forehead and tried to peer into the light. “Who is it? Who’s there?” he asked feebly, too forlorn to even hope that a rescue had been achieved.

“It’s Secret Service Agent Harvath, sir. You’re going home.”

“I seriously doubt that,” said a voice as Claudia was struck in the back of the head and thrown in a heap across the floor, landing next to the president.

Scot spun just in time to see Gerhard Miner bring the machine pistol down hard across the top of his head.

Harvath’s knees buckled and gave out. He fell to the ground and before he could catch his breath, Miner kicked him hard in the jaw, sending him reeling backward.

“Do you know how many of my men you have killed? Do you have any idea what an incredible inconvenience you have been?”

While he ranted, Miner kicked Harvath repeatedly in the ribs. “Some of the finest men I assembled for this mission are dead. I worked tirelessly, thinking of everything, and then you come along and ruin it all.”

The blows fell again and again. Scot was unable to breathe. The man was going to kill him, and then Claudia, even Rutledge. Scot was seeing stars, the blow to his head had been incredibly painful. He needed to do something now, or it would be too late.

As Miner drew his foot back and came forward for the next kick, Scot was ready for him and grabbed at his ankle in mid-strike.

“Do you honestly think I am that stupid, Agent Harvath?” said Miner, who’d anticipated the move, avoided it, and now pointed the Skorpion right at him. “You seem to have more lives than a cat, yet this is how it is going to end for you, and your president will be able to watch you fail him yet again. I would like to say it has been nice knowing you, but it hasn’t. As I said last time, I hope never to see you again. Now I will make sure that happens.”

Harvath started laughing.

“What’s so funny, Agent Harvath?”

“Ah, Gerry. If you only knew how much I hate having things pointed at me.”

Miner’s smug look of satisfaction was quickly replaced by fear as he was barreled sideways into the wall of the makeshift cell. Claudia had taken advantage of the fact that Miner was distracted and thought her unconscious to surprise him. He fell to the floor with the machine pistol in his hand, rolled, and struck Claudia full across the face. Once again, she fell in a heap along the floor, and this time Harvath knew she wasn’t faking.

Without wasting a moment more, Harvath fought back his dizziness to pounce on Miner. As Scot fought to subdue him, Miner struck him repeatedly with the gun. Harvath returned the favor with a knee to Miner’s groin, an elbow to his face, and an uppercut to his jaw. Harvath hammered at the man’s shoulder and reached for the hand that held the gun, which was once again swinging dangerously toward him.

Scot caught Miner by the wrist and drove it with incredible force into the area where the wall met the floor. He heard a snap as Miner let out a scream and his finger squeezed the trigger. The twenty-round magazine emptied in the blink of an eye. Bullets showered the room. Scot could only pray that neither Claudia nor the president had been hit. As he continued his assault Miner began to weaken, and Scot knew he had hurt him…badly.

He pounded the man relentlessly, the blows falling faster and with more ferocity. He pounded him for Agents Maxwell and Ahern and Houchins. He pounded him for the betrayal he had suffered at the hands of William Shaw and for the lives of his friend Natalie Sperando and her friend André Martin. He pounded Gerhard Miner for all of the innocent lives that had been lost, especially that of his best friend, Sam Harper. Miner was going to die, and Harvath was going to send him to hell an on express train, all expenses paid.

Scot’s hands were covered in blood. He heard bone shatter as he landed his blows. His rage, guilt, and remorse drove him on like a madman. In the middle of it all, something called out to him, urged him back toward the shores of sanity. There was a hand on his shoulder, the president’s. He was speaking to him.

“Agent Harvath, that’s enough,” he rasped. “We need him alive. Come on now. He can’t hurt us anymore. Let up on him.”

The president was right. Scot slowly rolled off Miner and looked at the badly beaten body lying before him. He couldn’t tell if the man was breathing or not, and frankly, he didn’t care.

The president had begun to regain his equilibrium. Despite his haggard appearance, some of the stately confidence was back in his eyes.

“Are you okay, Mr. President? Can you make it on your own?”

“I’ll be okay. Let’s get her up.”

To Scot’s relief, Claudia was coming around. Her lip was split and bleeding, but at least she was responding. He put his arm around Claudia’s waist and struggled with her to the door. He was beyond the point of exhaustion. We’re almost there. Don’t give up, he told himself. Don’t give up.

“Mr. President,” said Scot, motioning toward Miner, “unless you’ve got an idea on how to get him out of here, we’re going to have to leave him. My mission is your safe evac, period.”

“You called the man Gerry. Do you know who he is?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. President. He is a high-ranking member of Swiss intelligence.”

“Swiss intelligence? What’s he doing over here in the middle of the godforsaken desert?”

“Actually, sir. You are in a mountain in Switzerland.”

“Switzerland?”

“Yes, sir. For some reason-I don’t know why-they wanted you to believe you were being held by a Mideast terrorist group.”

“Fine. We’re in Switzerland; we’ll let the Swiss handle him. Let’s get out of here.”

“Yes, sir!”

Scot steered Claudia out the door and to the right. The president followed behind. Harvath had no idea if any of Miner’s men would be in front of them, but he knew they had to chance it. Going back the way they came didn’t seem like the best idea.

Not even five feet down the hallway, they discovered the direction Scot had chosen wasn’t such a hot idea either.

A tall man, with the build of a linebacker, stood blocking their way with a submachine gun. Unlike Miner’s men, he was dressed in street clothes. The minute he spoke, Harvath knew exactly who he was.

“No gun, eh? What a shame.”

It was the hired killer who had been after him since D.C.

“You know what?” the man continued. “You are the biggest pain in the fucking ass I have ever encountered. I’m going to charge double for you and waste your girlfriend for free. Good men, talented men, died trying to nail you, and I guess that makes me the best because I finally got you.” The hit man raised his gun for a better firing angle. “I took two rounds from you in D.C., and my ribs are so fucked up, I can hardly breathe. If I’d had a clean shot, I would have nailed your ass before you led me up this godforsaken mountain. You know, you actually lost me for a bit. You almost got away. While you were climbing up the side, I took the easy way up and eventually saw you going into the church. That’s when I knew I had you. It’s been fun, but now it’s time to meet your maker!”

The assassin’s finger had just begun to apply pressure to the trigger when his head exploded. His lifeless body lurched toward the wall and then fell to the ground.

Standing behind him was his killer. He was quickly joined by a group of similarly dressed figures in black Nomex fatigues with goggles and black balaclavas. My God, how many men does Miner have? Harvath thought desperately.

He had no idea what to do. His mind raced for options. He knew he had to protect the president at all costs, but what could he do against a group of six heavily armed men when he had nothing? He and Claudia had almost made it. Almost.

The man who had killed the assassin reached across his weapon and pulled a piece of black material from his arm. Underneath was a red, white, and blue flag along with the symbol for the army’s elite Special Forces. He then removed his balaclava, revealing the face of Dr. Skip Trawick.

Using his favorite mock Scottish accent, the first words out of his mouth were, “Surprise, surprise.”

“You guys sure took your time,” deadpanned Harvath.

“We were on our way for a pint and heard ya needed a wee bitta help,” said Trawick still in character. “Where’s the president?”

“Right here,” he said as Claudia and Scot parted to let him pass.

Trawick dropped the accent immediately and identified himself.

“Glad to see you. Hell, I’m glad to see all of you. Is the area secure?” asked the president.

“Yes, sir. It is now.”

“Thank God you got here in time.”

“If you don’t mind, sir, I would like to check you out before we evac.”

“Absolutely not. First you check on the young lady, and next it’s Agent Harvath. Then I want your men to-”

“I’m sorry, sir, but these are not my men. I just happened to be first down the hall and got a clean shot. This is a JSOC op. These men are from SEAL Team Two.”

As the men started removing their balaclavas, Scot recognized almost every one of them. Their commander shot Harvath a thumbs-up and several others followed suit.

It was finally over.