Foreign Influence_A Thriller Read online

  The men galloped off with the horses, and she was left alone outside the little stone structure. Pushing open the front door, she saw a long wooden table covered with a fine linen tablecloth. Upon it was set a myriad of gourmet dishes. Champagne sat in a sterling silver bucket, a riot of exotic flowers exploded from a large crystal vase, and sitting at the head of the table was the Troll.

  He was flanked by his two ever-present companions—a pair of white Caucasian Ovcharkas named Argos and Draco. Standing over forty-one inches at the shoulder and weighing over two hundred pounds each, the giant animals had been the dogs of choice for the Russian military and former East German border patrol. They were exceedingly fast, possessed a powerful urge to defend, and could be absolutely vicious when the situation called for it. They made perfect guardians for a man who stood just under three feet tall and had very powerful enemies—many of whom were also his clients.

  What the man lacked in height, he more than made up for in charm and intelligence. He had a sweet face with deep, warm eyes. He proved himself to be a perfect gentleman, and his guest was more than happy to provide what he was paying for.

  Through intense carnal rituals such as the Etruscan Butterfly and Erotic Entrainment, she took him to new heights of ecstasy.

  They engaged in acts of sexual pursuit forbidden by even the most permissive of ancient societies. For the two of them, nothing was off-limits. In fact, the more outrageous or dangerous the act, the more willing she was to indulge in it.

  She surrendered herself completely, infusing him with the greatest aphrodisiac of all (and the antidote to his greatest insecurity), power. A devotee of erotophonophilia, he twice pushed her right up to the very brink of death itself, only to bring her back at the last possible second. Holding her life in his hands was an incredible feeling. It made him feel like a god. Little did he know that she was slowly disarming him.

  When they weren’t having sex, they engaged in conversations of such intellectual depth that he felt he had finally met his equal. Though he knew he shouldn’t, he fantasized that their relationship might lead to something more. He knew it was foolish, but no woman had ever stirred such deep emotion inside him.

  He tried to remind himself that this was nothing more than a business relationship, but in his heart he still hoped. Gradually he was overcome. When he realized that there was little, if anything at all, this woman could ask of him that he wouldn’t do, he knew she had conquered him. And she knew it too.

  Her first request concerned his dogs, the same two dogs that were never away from his side, not even when he took her to his bed.

  There was no need for her to make up excuses as to why she wanted the dogs removed. The more rough their sex, the more agitated the dogs became. Even the dwarf had to admit that his dogs were ruining the mood, so into the hallway they went.

  With the dogs safely at bay, the woman didn’t attack; not right away. She was an artist and true artists never rush their craft. For her masterpiece to be complete she needed his total trust, and so, she led him on a bit longer.

  After two nights of making love without the dogs in the room, the time was finally right and the woman was ready. She had saved her most erotic, sexually charged game for last.

  The little man wore a neatly kept beard. He was fastidious about it and trimmed it with a pair of scissors daily. To maintain the beard at his neck and cheeks, he used an old-fashioned straight razor.

  It was highly polished with an ivory handle. She enjoyed watching him use it. It reminded her of being a little girl and watching her father, and she told him so. It was the only truth about herself that she ever revealed.

  This time, she held out her hand for the razor. He was hesitant. It only lasted a fraction of a second, but it was long enough for her to notice.

  “I want you to shave me,” she purred, opening the razor and handing it back to him as she stroked herself.

  As the dwarf obliged her, the woman writhed in ecstasy atop his crisp, white sheets. Despite the size of his hands, they were surprisingly strong, as was the rest of him. He performed the delicate act with surgical precision.

  When it became his turn, he propped two pillows against the headboard and leaned back. Unlike some of the more unusual games she had instigated, he had heard of this one before, but had never trusted anyone enough to do it. Of course the game could be played with a disposable razor, but that would have defeated the purpose. The excitement came from the danger.

  Withdrawing the polished blade from the bowl of warm water, she struck a coy smile as she began to hum the “Largo al factotum” aria from The Barber of Seville and ran the razor back and forth along a towel as if it were a strop.

  Sweeping her long, chestnut hair behind her neck, she bent down and kissed him on the mouth, allowing her heavy, bare breasts to briefly brush against his chest. Then she began to shave him.

  The pleasure was indescribable. His senses were on fire as waves of sexual electricity pulsed through his body.

  He licked his lips as he closed his eyes and arched his back. That was when she struck.

  CHAPTER 2

  ROME, ITALY

  TWO DAYS LATER

  Professor Tony Carafano smiled as the last of his students, two sophomores from the University of Texas, shuffled into the breakfast room of the two-star Hotel Romano and sat down.

  “Good morning, ladies,” he said as he removed his glasses and placed them next to his cappuccino.

  Carafano was a charming man in his early fifties. He had gray hair and a large, aquiline nose, a feature, he enjoyed pointing out, which was not only the Pre-Raphaelite ideal of male beauty, but which also placed him above the other summer abroad professors because he really had been born with a “nose for art.”

  From Assisi, Perugia, and Cortona to Orvieto, Siena, and the hilltop town of Coricano, Tony Carafano had used his sense of humor to baptize his students in Italian art history. He believed that when they were having a good time, they learned more. He also believed that if you were traveling throughout the country by bus with twenty strangers for six weeks, the quicker you could get them all laughing the more enjoyable the trip would be.

  He only had one rule: no matter how late the students stayed out the night before, they all had to be back by breakfast. They were good kids, sweet kids—the kind of kids that parents had a right to be proud of. None of them had broken his one and only rule. The fact that they hadn’t showed respect, and it was mutual. This was the best summer group he had ever had the pleasure of teaching. And as much as his colleagues complained about the “future of America,” these young men and women proved that America’s future was bright, quite bright indeed.

  Checking his watch, Carafano addressed the students. “I can see that some of you are moving a bit slower than normal this morning and I’m not going to inquire as to the reason. I think I know why.”

  A wave of polite laughter swept the breakfast room. When it died down, he continued. “You’ve got ten minutes to load up on caffeine, aspirin, whatever it is that helps make you human, and then I want to see everyone in the lobby, checked out, with their bags ready to go. Okay?”

  Heads nodded and with the scrape of chair legs across the tile floor, the students rose to get more coffee and return to their rooms to finish packing.

  Depending on traffic, the professor knew that the drive south from Rome to Pompei would take a little over two and a half hours. Halfway there was a church with amazing mosaics that he wanted them to have plenty of time to study and sketch. After that, they had reservations for lunch at one of his favorite trattorias overlooking the Bay of Naples.

  Half an hour later, the tiny hotel lobby was awash in a sea of suitcases and backpacks. As a handful of students made one last dash to the breakfast room for coffee, others helped the program’s bus driver, Angelo, load the bags into the belly of the bright yellow motor coach. In the chaos of everyone checking out, none of them noticed that one of the bags didn’t belong to their group.

>   After a final head count to make sure everyone was on board, Tony Carafano gave Angelo the okay to depart.

  As the Italian maneuvered the coach through Roman traffic, the professor distributed the day’s itinerary. Walking down the aisle, he found his students engaged in their morning ritual of texting friends back home, checking e-mail, and listening to their iPods. Few were bothering to take in their last glimpses of one of the most beautiful and historically significant cities in the world.

  With one of Rome’s most popular landmarks drawing near, Carafano called his students’ attention to it. “If anyone’s interested, we’re about to pass the Colosseum on our left.”

  Some of them looked up. Many, though, were too busy. It was a shame that even though they had all seen it before, a thing of such wondrous beauty should go ignored. Especially considering what was about to happen.

  As the bus pulled even with the ancient arena, a spotter on a rooftop half a mile away removed a cell phone from his pocket and dialed the number he had been given.

  Six seconds later, an enormous explosion rocked the city as the motor coach erupted in a billowing fireball.

  CHAPTER 3

  FALLUJAH, IRAQ

  THE NEXT DAY

  As his Russian GAZ sped down the dusty road, Omar-Hakim was fuming. The local Iraqi National Guard commander had been engaged in plenty of blackmail schemes, but always as the perpetrator—never the victim.

  Next to him sat the man who had ensnared him and who had broken his hand when he had gone for his gun. He never should have agreed to meet with him. In fact, he should have shot him on sight. But now it was too late. He was trapped and there was nothing he could do.

  The man in question was a forty-year-old American who spoke Arabic as well as Omar-Hakim spoke English. He was five-foot-ten with light brown hair, blue eyes, and a well-built physique. A Navy SEAL who had been recruited to the White House to help bolster the Secret Service’s counterterrorism expertise, the man had become a previous president’s favorite weapon in the war on terror. But when that president had left office, the man’s tenure had expired. Now, he was working for a private organization.

  His employer was a legend in the intelligence world and had spent the last year polishing and honing the skills of the man who, always deadly serious about his work, now approached his life with a renewed sense of vigor.

  He had a sense that somewhere a clock was ticking down. It was due, in part, to a realization that his own time on the playing field was winding down, but there was something more to it. There was a sense of foreboding; a sense that a storm was gathering and picking up strength as it sped toward shore—his shore—America.

  There wasn’t a specific act or event he could pin his sense of foreboding on. It was everything; the movements and chatter and unending determination by America’s enemies to hit again and again and again. He and others like him believed that something else, something different was on the way, and they constantly reminded each other to keep their “powder dry.”

  There were only two things any of them could do about it—hunker down and wait for it to happen, or get out there, locate the threat, and take the fight to the enemy head-on. Scot Harvath wasn’t the hunker-down-and-wait-for-it-to-happen type.

  Looking at his GPS device, he activated his radio and said, “Two minutes. Stand by.”

  “Roger that,” replied a voice from the neighborhood up ahead. “Standing by.” The snipers had been in place for hours. It was now nearing four a.m.

  Even though he couldn’t see it, he knew the drone was still above them on station. Via the Combined Air and Space Operations Center, he radioed for a final situation report from the drone pilots back at Creech Air Force base northwest of Las Vegas. “Press box, are we still good to go?”

  “That is affirmative,” came the reply. “Tangos one through four are still in place. Thermals show that the heat signatures inside the target have not changed.”

  Harvath didn’t bother asking about the hostages. He knew why there were no longer any heat signatures from them.

  As they turned the corner, the outline of their target could be seen silhouetted against the night sky. It was time to go to the next phase of their operation. “This is it,” he said over his radio as he set the GPS down on the seat next to him and adjusted his beret. “We’re going to sterile comms,” which meant from this point forward they would communicate only via a series of prearranged clicks.

  In the two trucks following his, the rest of the team made ready. After checking their weapons, they straightened the uniforms Omar-Hakim had provided and donned their Iraqi helmets.

  Power outages were a common occurrence in Iraq. Per Harvath’s request, the power to this neighborhood had been cut earlier in the evening. The streets were completely dark. At this hour, even families with their own generators were sleeping.

  “Remember what we discussed,” Harvath said to Omar-Hakim when the vehicles pulled up in front of the target.

  “I remember,” said the man.

  Harvath then motioned for him to get out.

  In front of them was a house surrounded by a thick mud wall. Its entrance was a set of wide double doors fabricated from sheet metal and scrap wood. A fist-sized hole had been punched through each side. A heavy chain padlocked from the inside kept them securely closed.

  There wasn’t a sound to be heard.

  Omar-Hakim sucked in his gut and attempted to ignore the throbbing pain from his broken hand. Harvath had warned him to leave it by his side and not draw attention to it.

  The commander walked up to the gate and whispering, so as not to awaken anyone, addressed the sentry inside. “Abdullah. Open up.”

  “Who is it?” replied a voice in Arabic.

  The Iraqi bent his face down to the hole and spoke over the chain. “Commander Hakim, you idiot.”

  “What do you want?”

  Omar-Hakim came from a large, powerful Fallujah family. He was accustomed to being respected. The insolence of the al-Qaeda sentry grated on him. “Open these doors right now or I’ll tell Assad you’re the one who betrayed him to the Americans.”

  “The Americans?”

  “Yes, you idiot. The Americans. They know you’re here. Now open up so I can speak with Assad before they arrive.”

  The sentry bent down and looked through the hole. He studied the Iraqi National Guard vehicles.

  “I’ve brought extra uniforms and men to help you,” added the Iraqi. “Hurry up.”

  Slowly, the sentry removed a key from his pocket and placed it in the lock. As he removed the chain, Harvath toggled the transmit button of his radio and sent two distinct clicks.

  When the al-Qaeda man designated as “Tango One” pulled back the gate, the snipers engaged their targets.

  Muffled spits raced through the air. The sentry on the roof was killed instantly, as was the covert sentry positioned a block away. A burst of radio clicks over the team’s earpieces served as confirmation.

  With his suppressed Russian Makarov, Harvath stepped from behind Omar-Hakim and placed two rounds into the gatekeeper’s head.

  The corrupt Iraqi commander was no stranger to killing, but the suddenness and violence of the act froze him in place. He had no idea that this was part of the plan, though he should have expected a raid on an al-Qaeda safe house to result in a bit more than hurt feelings.

  While Omar-Hakim was staring at the dead man, Harvath struck him in the head with the butt of his weapon. The overweight Iraqi collapsed to the ground as the rest of the team exited their trucks.

  Two men from the lead vehicle bound the commander with zip ties, gagged him, and threw him in the back. They then took up lookout positions.

  The rest of the team fanned out into the compound.

  Based on their intelligence, there was only one obstacle remaining. He was inside the rear of the house near the back door.

  Harvath had conducted raids like this so many times before that he could picture exactly what was going
on inside.

  All of the men, save the remaining sentry, would be gathered in the large room at the front of the house. They would be sleeping on heavy fleece blankets purchased at the local market. One or two might be up having tea. If the power had been on, a few more might have been watching jihadi videos. More than likely, a couple of them were having sex with each other. Homosexuality was so rampant among the jihadists that catching them in the act had stopped surprising Harvath a long time ago. As a matter of fact, very little surprised him anymore; even less shocked him.

  A colleague of his in Fallujah named Mike Dent had told him the story of a six-year-old boy named Khidir. Khidir was the son of a local police officer. Two years ago while his father was at work, members of an Iraqi al-Qaeda cell had burst into his home and savagely torn him from where he was hiding behind his grandmother, desperately clinging to her skirt.

  The kidnappers wanted Khidir’s father, Shafi, to help free several al-Qaeda members being held in his jail. Shafi knew how dangerous the prisoners were and refused to set them loose upon the citizens of Fallujah. He knew full well they would conduct more killings and put more families through the same horror he was experiencing. The kidnappers promised to slit his little boy’s throat if he didn’t comply, but Shafi refused to give in to their demands. Khidir had not been seen since.

  Dent had been so moved by Khidir’s story that he had made it his goal to help find out what had happened to the little boy. As a civilian trainer for the Fallujah police, he spent a lot of time building a network of informants. After a while, he started to wonder if it had all been a waste of time when one day a contact passed along a rumor that a group of al-Qaeda members was holding several children hostage on a small farm outside the city. With no funds to pay for any more intelligence, Dent had reached out to Harvath. He knew how Harvath felt about children, and to cement his assistance had e-mailed him a picture of a bright-eyed, smiling Khidir taken before the little boy’s nightmare had begun.