Use of Force

CHAPTER 90

It wasn’t that they hadn’t been asking the right question about the CCTV cameras. It was that they had only been asking one—where was the man going? No one had thought to ask where had he been?

Focusing on the moment the man had arrived at Vatican City, Argento’s contact with the City’s cameras had been able to work backward. Even though the man had disappeared into a crowd as he left St. Peter’s, his arrival had been via quiet, uncrowded streets.

As soon as the City’s computer system had locked in on him and had begun piecing his route together, Argento and Harvath had hopped back in the Fiat sedan and had given the driver directions on where to go.

Over his cell phone, Argento’s contact continued to update him until the trail led to video of the man leaving a hotel near Rome’s Termini station. Once the ROS operator had that information, he called the tactical team back at Campo de’ Fiori and told them to get there as quickly as they could.

Stopping a block up, the Carabinieri officer pulled over and dropped Argento and Harvath off. With their backpacks slung over their shoulders, they walked down to the hotel and entered the lobby.

As Argento approached over to the front desk, Harvath kept an eye on the front door, along with everything else.

In under two minutes, the ROS operator had the man’s room number and a pass key. The young lady working the desk this morning had been working the desk when he checked in two nights ago. She prided herself on remembering guests.

At Argento’s request, she had called up to the room. There was no answer. They had beaten him back to the hotel.

Hustling up the stairs, they stepped out into the hallway and walked down to the room. The man, who had used an Austrian passport at the Vatican, had checked into the hotel under a Ukrainian passport.

Drawing their weapons, they took position on either side of the door as Argento knocked. There was no answer.

Identifying himself as hotel security, he knocked again, but there was still no answer. He dipped the card into the reader, the light flashed green, and he pushed open the door.

The room and its contents were unremarkable. There were clothes in the closet, a few things in the dresser, and toiletries in a shaving kit in the bathroom. The only thing that caught Harvath’s eye were the two different types of phone chargers on the desk. Other than that, there was nothing in the room that would give the man away as a terrorist.

They went through his clothes and his suitcase, looking for any hidden compartments or things that might have been sewn into the lining. They found nothing.

They then turned the room upside down, looking under drawers, in air vents, and behind draperies. Still nothing.

After putting the room back together, they had a decision to make. Stay and wait him out, or try to pick up his trail out in the city?

Without a solid lead, Harvath wasn’t keen on driving around Rome, hoping to get lucky. All the man’s belongings were in this room. They had every reason to believe he was coming back. Whether that was in five minutes or five hours there was no way to tell.

In the meantime, though, they could begin moving guests and isolating this end of the hotel. Already the room next door and the one across the hall were empty. If there was a shootout, or worse, they’d be glad they had minimized collateral damage as much as possible.

While Harvath remained in the room, Argento went back downstairs to speak with the desk clerk and wait on the tactical team.

Pulling out his phone, Harvath scrolled through to see if he had received any messages. There was one from Haney, letting him know that he and Gage had made it back to the United States and…

Harvath’s thoughts were interrupted by a sound at the door. Argento would have knocked. This was not a knock. It sounded as if someone had started to dip his room key into the card reader, had second thoughts, and had suddenly stopped.

Picking up his pistol, he began to move off the bed when a hail of bullets tore through the door. Rolling hard onto the floor, he returned fire.

He ran his H&K dry, ejected the spent magazine, and inserted a fresh one. Depressing the slide release, he focused on the door and waited for another round of incoming fire, but it didn’t come.

Pulling the alarm clock off the nightstand, he yanked the cord out of the wall, tossed it at the door, and waited. Nothing happened.

Hugging the floor, he crawled over to the door. Reaching up, he released the handle and opened it just far enough to get his fingers in between the door and the jamb. Taking a deep breath, he pulled it the rest of the way open.

From the other end of the hall, there was another barrage of gunfire, but it all went high, where the man had expected him to be.

Harvath returned fire, hitting him in both legs. He heard him cry out and fall back into the stairwell.

Down in the lobby, Argento had to have heard the gunfire. Without radios, their cell phones were their only means of communication.

Harvath pulled his out to call him and tell him what was going on, but he saw that Argento had already texted him.

He couldn’t let him do that. That was where the injured shooter was. Argento would run right into him.

Pushing into the hall, he hit the Dial button on his phone as he rushed toward the south stairs with his gun up and ready.

Before he could get there, the whole building shook with two horrible explosions.

They had come from the stairwell. Without even opening the door and seeing the destruction, he knew what had happened — a pair of grenades had been detonated.

Bracing for gunfire, or even more grenades, Harvath flung open the stairwell door. One flight down, bleeding badly from both legs, was the man they had been chasing.

It took everything Harvath had not to finish the job and put a bullet in him right there. “Hands!” he yelled. “Show me your hands! Do it now!”

Slowly, the man complied.

With his gun trained on him, Harvath descended the stairs and kicked his pistol away. When he was sure he wasn’t hiding a live grenade, ready to blow them both up, he rolled the man onto his stomach, flex-cuffed his hands behind his back, and searched him for other weapons.

Confident that he was clean, Harvath peered over the railing. There, halfway between floors, was Argento. The grenades had torn him apart. Harvath had no words.

From the ground floor, he could hear the tactical team, finally on scene, entering the stairwell.