Brad Thor Collectors' Edition #3 Read online

  The giant threw another combination of punches that sent an intense wave of pain radiating throughout his body.

  Harvath responded with another left and connected once again with the man’s head, but it had no effect whatsoever. It was like trying to melt an iceberg with a hairdryer. Still fighting for breath, Harvath took another shot to his ribs as he tried to figure a way out.

  Thinking he might have noticed a weakness when he had first tried to clobber the giant with his briefcase, Harvath drew it back and swung again.

  Sure enough, as Big Bird raised his arm to block the case, he lowered his head beneath the level of his arm and that was all that Harvath needed to see. He absorbed two more blows before he could launch his counterassault.

  Summoning what few reserves of strength he had left, Harvath let the briefcase fly.

  This time, when Big Bird raised his forearm and lowered his head, Harvath was ready for him.

  As the man’s head came down, Harvath’s came up and the pair met with a sickening crack of bone against cartilage. There was a spray of blood as Harvath tore open a wound that ripped through the top of Big Bird’s beak and into his forehead.

  The giant roared in pain as his hands flew to his face and Harvath wasted no time in going to work on him.

  With his breath coming in such shallow gasps, Harvath had trouble gathering his strength. Pulling the briefcase back, he took advantage of the fact that the giant’s eyes were flooding with blood and couldn’t see what was coming.

  The briefcase nailed the man square in the temple. His hands dropped from his face and he sat there for what was only a second or two, but what for Harvath felt like an eternity, before he slowly keeled over to his right and collapsed into the center of the street, unconscious.

  Harvath struggled to roll out from underneath the man, but as he did, he was greeted by a new vision just as terrible. Whistles was coming right at him with a pipe in his left hand.

  Sitting up with the briefcase clasped to his chest, Harvath tried to stand, but his legs wouldn’t obey. Trying to get Big Bird off of him had been like doing a million squat thrusts and his legs were like rubber. The best he could manage was a feeble scoot on his ass toward the other side of the street.

  When his back hit a parked car, he knew that was as far as he was going to go. Even if Whistles was only half the fighter Big Bird was, Harvath was a dead man.

  If only he had brought a weapon with him. A knife, pepper spray, anything would have been better than nothing at this point.

  When Whistles saw that Harvath couldn’t stand, he smiled. His mouth was filled with bad teeth and though he knew it was impossible, Harvath almost thought he could smell the man’s rancid breath from across the street.

  There was no doubting the giant’s intentions as he drew back his pipe and ran forward into the street.

  The situation was close to hopeless, but Harvath refused to go down without a fight—even a half-assed one.

  As he drew back one of his legs to deliver a kick to the man’s knee, there was a scream from off to his left and two flashlights rushed toward him.

  At first, Harvath thought it was the police. The f word floated to the forefront of his mind, but evaporated in a haze of tire smoke and a squeal of brake pads as the trunk of Moussa’s taxicab slammed into Whistles.

  The young Algerian had the rear passenger door open and was yelling for Harvath to get in before the giant’s body even hit the ground.

  Harvath staggered inside and collapsed on the rear seat, his briefcase still clasped in his right hand.

  Moussa reached back and after closing the door, sped down the street and into the night.

  CHAPTER 42

  As they drove back to Paris, Moussa asked nothing more than where Harvath wanted to be taken. The man probably had a lot of questions, but to his credit he kept his questions to himself and allowed Harvath to close his eyes and rest.

  Per his passenger’s instructions, Moussa headed his cab for the Ile Saint-Louis. They came in via the Pont Marie and maneuvered through the tiny streets down the Rue Boutarel to the Quai d’Orléans. From there, Harvath had a clear view across the Seine to the péniche that functioned as the Sargasso safe house. He asked Moussa to pull over.

  Handing two thousand euros over the seat, Harvath said, “This should cover the repairs to your taxi.” He then reached for the door handle. “Goodbye, Moussa. Thanks for your help.”

  The young Algerian turned to say something, but his passenger had already exited the cab.

  Harvath walked down to the water, slid the Don Quixote into a plastic bag he found in a trash can, and then ditched the briefcase. Being careful to remain in the shadows, he watched the barge for the next twenty minutes.

  During that time, he did a lot of thinking. Foremost in his mind was the question of who the people were on Anthony Nichols’ tail and how they had tracked Harvath to the Bilal Mosque. He planned on making it one of the first questions he asked the professor once he returned to the boat.

  When Harvath was convinced that everything appeared okay, he crossed the river by the Pont de la Tournelle and observed the barge for several more minutes from the other side before finally descending to the quai.

  Harvath slipped inside the wheel house and quietly descended the stairs. He found René Bertrand right where he’d left him, tied to the dining room chair. His head was slumped forward and he appeared to be either asleep or passed out. Nichols was in the galley with his back turned and Harvath caught him by surprise.

  “You scared the life out of me,” he said as he turned around, his hand clasped to his chest. “Did you get it?”

  Harvath held up the plastic bag. “How’s Tracy?” he asked.

  Nichols drew a deep breath and set the mug he was filling with hot water onto the counter. “She’s gone.”

  “Gone? What do you mean she’s gone?” demanded Harvath as he abandoned the galley and headed toward his stateroom.

  Flipping on the lights, his eyes were drawn to the empty bed. He pushed open the bathroom door only to find it empty as well. “How long?” he asked as he heard Nichols pad into the room behind him.

  “At least an hour,” he responded.

  “Did she say where she was going?”

  “She said she needed to see a doctor and that you would understand.”

  Harvath set down the book and then opened the false panel and removed the box containing the pistol.

  Nichols sensed what Harvath was thinking and added, “She also said she didn’t want you coming after her.”

  “Every police officer in this city has our pictures by now,” said Harvath as he withdrew the weapon and tucked it into his waistband. “How far do you think she’s going to get?”

  “Probably not far and I think she knows that. I also think she feels that she was only slowing you down by staying here.”

  “You do, huh?” Harvath replied rudely.

  “Scot, her headaches were worse than she was letting on,” stated Nichols.

  “So you’re a doctor now?”

  “She didn’t want to put you in a position of having to decide between her and what we need to accomplish.”

  Harvath looked at Nichols. “What we need to accomplish?” he repeated.

  “She said you weren’t going to be happy about it.”

  “You know what? Don’t tell me what my girlfriend thinks or feels anymore, okay?” snapped Harvath as he crossed to the tiny desk, fished the headset out of its drawer, and powered up the laptop.

  The professor realized they were done talking and quietly backed out of the room.

  Harvath chose an e-mail address from the host of anonymous accounts he maintained and sent a message to both Ron Parker’s cell phone and his desktop.

  It took some time before he appeared in the video chat room.

  “You look like shit,” said Parker as he came on line from the Sargasso conference room in Colorado. He was in his late thirties, about Harvath’s height with a shaved he
ad and a dark goatee.

  Parker was normally a wiseass until he understood the severity of a situation, so Harvath ignored the remark. “What took you so long?”

  “I was doing a training exercise with SEAL Team 10 on the other side of the property, and my Ducati only moves so fast. What’s up? Your message said it was urgent.”

  “Tracy’s gone.”

  Parker straightened up and leaned forward into his camera. “What happened?”

  “She left while I was out. She said she needed to find a doctor.”

  “For what? Is she injured?”

  “She’s had headaches. Bad ones, apparently.”

  “What do you mean apparently?” asked Parker. “You don’t know?”

  “She didn’t want me to know,” replied Harvath. “She’d been taking painkillers under the radar.”

  “If you sit tight, she’ll probably come back in a bit. Don’t worry.”

  “Ron, I am worried. Every cop in this city has to be looking for us. You’ve got contacts here that I don’t. How quickly can you find out where she is?”

  The video chat room was not as fast as Harvath would have liked and it took a moment for Parker’s response to be piped back.

  “I’ll reach out to my guys now, but Tracy could be anywhere—a hospital, a doctor’s office. I’ll try my embassy sources first. We’ll see if anyone contacted them looking for a referral.”

  “No,” replied Harvath. “No one from the embassy. I want this kept off their radar screen.”

  Parker adjusted his camera so Harvath could see the owner of the Sargasso Intelligence Program, Tim Finney, who was sitting off to his side.

  Finney was a former Pacific Rim shootfighting champion now in his early fifties who towered over Harvath by at least seven inches and rang in at an impressive two hundred fifty pounds of solid muscle. He had intense green eyes and, like Parker, his head was completely shaved—a similarity that Harvath had often attributed to Finney’s resort having the world’s laziest or most uncreative barber. But despite his size and his reputation as an absolutely ruthless, no-holds-barred fighter in the ring, Finney, like Parker, was one of the best friends an honest man could ever have.

  Finney held up a pink telephone message sheet while Parker said, “Gary Lawlor is looking for you. He’s called twice already. He says he has a message from the president.”

  “Why would he call you two?”

  Finney took the microphone away from Parker and said, “Don’t be an idiot, Scot. He knows damn well there’s only two numbers you dial when you’re in trouble and since his phone hasn’t been ringing, it isn’t hard to figure that you reached out to us. Now what should we tell him?”

  “How much does he know?”

  “He knows you’re in Paris.”

  “How does he know that?” asked Harvath.

  “He says that’s what the president wants to talk to you about.”

  Harvath had told Nichols not to make any calls or to use the computer while he was gone. He wondered if the professor had disobeyed him. He doubted it. More than likely, the French had already ID’d him and had contacted the president. Either way, things were now even more screwed up than before.

  “Gary asked if we were putting you up,” continued Finney, “and how he could contact you.”

  Harvath had no desire to hear what the president had to say. “What’d you tell him?”

  “We told him that if we heard from you, we’d tell you to check in with him.”

  “Did he buy it?”

  Finney put his hands up. “I’ve got no idea, Scot. He’s your boss.”

  “Was my boss,” clarified Harvath.

  “Whatever. Why don’t you call him and ask him yourself?”

  “I’ll think about it,” he lied.

  “Well think about this. You’re in the shit way up past your eyeballs, and so is Tracy. I don’t think we’ve got a rope long enough to throw to you. You might want to put your pride on the back burner and think of someone other than yourself for a minute. Gary Lawlor and President Rutledge might be the only people who can help untangle this mess.”

  Finney was right, but Harvath was hardheaded enough to not want to admit it.

  When he didn’t reply, Parker took the microphone back and said, “I’ll get back to you as soon as we have something. In the meantime, get yourself cleaned up.” Then the feed from Sargasso went dead.

  CHAPTER 43

  Harvath had always had a good relationship with Gary Lawlor. The former FBI deputy director had been a close friend of the Harvath family for almost as long as Scot could remember. And when Scot’s father, a SEAL instructor, had died in a training accident in California, Gary had become like a second father to him.

  When President Rutledge had decided to mount the Apex Project to battle terrorists on their own terms, he wooed Gary away from the Bureau to put him in charge. Though they often butted heads in their attempts to get results, Scot and Gary worked well together.

  Even so, Harvath had not spoken with Lawlor since he and Tracy had left D.C. To a certain degree, he felt guilty about that. Gary had always been there for him and his mother. He was tough, but also fair, and had pulled Harvath’s bacon out of the fire too many times to remember. Harvath owed him a lot more than a phone call right now.

  It was just one of those things that had gotten away from him. The longer he put off calling, the harder it was to do it. Gary was a real by-the-book kind of guy. Though his job was to be as unconventional as the terrorists he was charged with hunting, there was still an ingrained sense of due process and fair play that had been instilled in him over his lifelong career at the FBI. He had gotten better about it, but only because he’d learned to save his questions until Harvath was done with an assignment or to not even ask them at all.

  Scot had known that when he did finally reconnect with Lawlor, the conversation wasn’t going to be about the weather or the places he and Tracy had visited. He wasn’t much for BS. Harvath knew Gary would stick him with tough questions about when he was coming back and what he was planning on doing in the future. That was probably one of the biggest reasons Harvath had been avoiding him. Until he had answers, the last thing Scot had felt like facing was questions.

  But things had changed and Finney was right. Whatever message or marching orders Lawlor might have for him from the president, Harvath had no choice but to shelve his animosity and put Tracy’s welfare first.

  Routing through a series of anonymous proxy servers, Harvath tapped into one of his VoIP accounts and dialed Gary’s cell phone back in D.C.

  The man answered on the first ring. “Lawlor,” he said, a faint metallic hum to his voice.

  Harvath cleared his throat. “Gary? It’s Scot.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Good. You’ve got every police officer, gendarme, and intelligence operative in France looking for you right now. Do you know that?”

  “Popularity is a real pain in the ass,” replied Harvath.

  Lawlor chuckled for a moment and then was serious again. “You’ve got big problems, my boy.”

  “You wanted me to call you so you could tell me things I already know?” The words came out harsher than Harvath had intended, but he made no effort to pull them back.

  “A bombing this morning. A shooting in the afternoon. What do you have planned for this evening?”

  “How about a stampede at a local mosque?”

  “Don’t jerk me around,” replied Lawlor.

  “Fine, I’ll come up with something else,” said Harvath. “What do you want?”

  “You drop off the grid for months. No goodbyes, no nothing. Just left your BlackBerry and credentials behind along with a smartass note that says gone fishing and now you’ve got the nerve to act like I’m interrupting your vacation.”

  Harvath fought back the urge to defend himself and instead tried to think of Tracy. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I should have contacted you.”

&
nbsp; “You’re damn right you should have,” replied Lawlor. “You’re lucky the president feels beholden to you. No other operative would have been allowed to just disappear the way you have.”

  “You could have found us any time you wanted. We’ve both been using our own passports.”

  “Give me a break, Scot. Tracking you has been like playing whack-a-mole. One day you pop up on the grid entering a foreign country and then there’s nothing for three weeks or a month till you pop up someplace else just long enough to cross another border and get your passport scanned.”

  He was right. Harvath and Tracy had not gone completely to ground, but the only trail they had been leaving to follow was dust. “I needed some time off to think.”

  “Well, time’s up. You have to get back to work,” said Lawlor. “The president needs your help.”

  Harvath reminded himself to keep the volume of his voice under control. “I don’t work for him anymore. And with all due respect, I don’t work for you either.”

  “In that case, you can have all the time you want to think. French prisons are very lonely places—especially for a foreigner.”

  “The bad-cop routine doesn’t really work with me, Gary. You should know that.”

  “And you should know that the evidence the French have on you does not look good. It could take a couple of years before the investigation into all of today’s events is complete and the case against you is finally brought to trial. You might get your day in court, but under their antiterrorism laws, you’re going to sit in a cell counting the months until it comes. And while you sit there, it’ll be as an American tied to a bombing that killed multiple French citizens and a shooting that resulted in the deaths of three French cops. It’s not going to be like shacking up at the Ritz.”

  Harvath started to speak, but Lawlor plowed right over him. “And what about Tracy? Do you want to put her through the same thing? Is that the kind of man you are?”

  “Let’s leave Tracy out of this,” said Harvath.

  “Too late. She’s in it. Just as deep as you are. Probably even worse now. Are you even aware that the French have taken her into custody?”