Backlash: A Thriller Read online

  Removing the oxygen mask, he looked around. The aircraft’s fuselage had been severed into three pieces. In some places, seats were missing. In others, entire rows had disappeared.

  He glanced to his right, but the soldier who had been next to him was gone, along with the seat he had been sitting in.

  A strong odor of jet fuel filled the air. It was mixed with the smell of smoke and melting plastic. Some part of the plane was on fire.

  Under normal circumstances, he would have moved slowly—assessing the damage and making sure that he didn’t have a spinal injury—but these weren’t normal circumstances. He needed to get out.

  Planting his feet, he stood. But when he tried to step into the aisle, he couldn’t. His Spetsnaz minder had locked his ankle chain to the leg of his chair.

  Sitting back down, he attempted to jerk himself free, first by kicking out his legs and then by reaching down and trying to pull the chain loose. It didn’t work.

  Searching around his seat, he looked for anything he could use to help him escape. There was nothing. Without a key, he was fucked.

  Though he had been sedated on and off over the last several days, images began to flood his mind. As they did, an unbearable pain began to build in his chest and his heart rate started to climb.

  Taking a deep breath, his training kicked in, and he forced himself to relax. There was no question that unspeakable things had happened. Worse things, though, were on the horizon if he didn’t get control of the situation.

  As one of America’s top intelligence operatives, he had been a prime target for the Russians. His knowledge of spy networks, covert operations, and classified programs was invaluable. But that wasn’t the only reason they wanted him.

  Year after year, he had been behind some of the most successful operations against the Russian military and Russian intelligence. As such, he had ranked very near the top of a little-known, clandestine kill list maintained in Moscow.

  But as badly as the Russians wanted him, and as much as they had risked to grab him, he knew the United States would risk even more to get him back. He just had to remain alive and one step ahead until then.

  Scanning the cabin, he saw one of the crew pinned beneath a nearby cargo container that had broken free. The legs of his uniform were stained with blood. Over the ringing in his ears, he could hear the man moaning.

  Harvath recognized him. It was the loadmaster who had insisted that he be allowed to brace for impact. When his hood had been removed to put his oxygen mask on, he had only caught a quick flash, but he remembered the man’s face. Without his help, Harvath might not have survived the crash.

  Pinned next to the loadmaster was the body of his missing Spetsnaz minder. He was neither moaning nor moving.

  From everything else he could see, he and the loadmaster were the only two survivors in this section of the plane. That was the good news. The bad news was that the temperature was rapidly dropping.

  Looking through one of the ruptures in the fuselage, he saw nothing but snow and ice outside. Wherever they were it was cold. Really cold.

  Harvath had no clue as to his location. He’d had a bag over his head since being taken in New Hampshire. He assumed, though, that they were somewhere in Russia.

  Nevertheless, he hadn’t made it into his forties and survived a plane crash only to turn around and freeze to death. If he and the loadmaster were going to make it, they were going to have to work together.

  Harvath called out to get his attention. “I can help you,” he said in his choppy Russian.

  For a moment, the airman stopped moaning and looked over at him. He then just shook his head.

  “Hey!” Harvath yelled. “Hey!”

  When the man turned his agony-stricken face back in his direction, Harvath sniffed the air around him in an exaggerated fashion.

  It took the loadmaster a moment, but he finally realized what the prisoner was trying to draw his attention to—fire.

  The man strained against the cargo container pinning his legs, but it was beyond his ability to move.

  “I can help you,” Harvath repeated.

  “You?” the man replied in Russian. “How?”

  Pointing at the Spetsnaz operative crushed by the container, Harvath searched for the word, then held up his shackles and said, “Klyuch.” Key.

  Toss me the key and I’ll help you. The loadmaster considered the offer. Of course, the prisoner could be lying, but the Russian airman didn’t have much choice.

  Patting down the soldier, he found the keys and, using what little of his strength remained, tossed them in the prisoner’s direction.

  The throw came up short. Harvath leaned out as far as he could into the aisle, the shackles tearing into his ankles, but he missed it and the keys landed on the floor several feet away.

  “Damn it,” he muttered under his breath.

  “Prahsteetyeh,” said the loadmaster. I’m sorry.

  Glancing around, Harvath saw a nylon tie-down strap with a heavy metal clamp. He couldn’t tell if was within reach or not.

  Getting down onto his stomach, he lengthened his body to its max, struggling to create every millimeter of reach possible, but the strap remained just inches beyond his grasp.

  He searched for something handy—a screwdriver, a pen or pencil, anything—even a rolled-up magazine. Then an idea hit him.

  Returning to his seat, he grabbed his oxygen mask and pulled out the hose. Tying it to his hood, he attached the two together. They weren’t long enough to reach the keys, but they might be long enough to reach the tie-down strap.

  Kneeling, he took aim and tossed the hood toward the buckle. It landed right on top of it. Slowly, he retracted the oxygen tube and pulled it in.

  With the buckle in hand, he began gathering up the strap, which turned out to be much longer than he needed.

  He had reeled most of it in when he noticed something else. The opposite end was stuck.

  “Damn it,” he repeated.

  When the strap went taut, he began yanking on it, twisting and pulling from every possible angle. When that didn’t work, he started flipping it like a whip.

  “Let loose, motherfucker,” he cursed as he cracked the strap, sending a ripple down its length, and then yanked it backward with all of his might.

  It turned out to be the right combination, as the buckle on the opposite end was freed from its entrapment and came screaming backward like a bullet. If Harvath hadn’t ducked, it would have hit him right in the face.

  Realigning himself, he pitched the strap into the aisle and pulled back the keys the loadmaster had thrown.

  Finding the one he needed, he unlocked his wrists and then bent down and unlocked his feet. He was almost free.

  Removing the remaining chains, he made his way over to where the loadmaster was pinned. But before he could even think about helping him, he needed to make sure the soldier lying next to him was dead.

  Harvath placed two fingers where the man’s jaw met his neck. There was no pulse.

  In his holster, the soldier carried a nine-millimeter Grach pistol. It now belonged to Harvath. After checking to make sure a round was chambered, he put his shoulder against the cargo container and pushed.

  The metal box barely budged. He was going to need a fulcrum and a lever of some sort to lift it. And judging by how much the loadmaster’s left leg was bleeding, he was going to need to find a tourniquet as well.

  But before he could help him, he had to sweep the rest of the wreckage. If there were any threats remaining, those would need to be dealt with first.

  Grabbing a thick rag, he folded it several times and pressed down on the wound. He was searching his mind for the correct words to say to the man in Russian about keeping the pressure on, when he saw a flash of movement outside.

  CHAPTER 5

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  * * *

  Harvath only had time to react. Bringing the pistol up, he applied pressure to the trigger and fired three shots, just as he had been tr
ained—two to the chest, one to the head. The Spetsnaz operative outside fell dead in the snow.

  Sliding behind the cargo container, Harvath took cover. The loadmaster stared at him, wide-eyed. Harvath didn’t know if it was from the shock of the gunfire or from the blood loss—probably both.

  Ejecting the Grach’s magazine, he looked to see how many more rounds he had. There were fifteen, plus one in the chamber.

  Leaning over, he pulled a spare magazine and a flashlight from the dead soldier next to the loadmaster. Dressed in hospital-style scrubs, he didn’t have any pockets, nor did he have a tight-enough waistband to tuck them into. He would have to carry them in his hand.

  If any of the other operatives had survived, and were even partially ambulatory, the sound of the gunshots was going to draw them in like a tractor beam. There was only one thing Russians liked more than drinking or fucking, and that was fighting.

  Harvath had gotten lucky. Seeing the operative outside first had been a gift. He didn’t expect to get another one. He needed to go on the offensive. But to be successful, he needed information.

  Looking down at the loadmaster, he asked, “How many men?”

  The man’s condition was worsening. “Four crew,” he replied weakly in Russian. “Six passengers.”

  That sounded right. A pilot, a copilot, the loadmaster, and maybe a navigator or flight officer of some sort would have composed the crew. As for the six passengers, Harvath had been traveling with the same group since being taken. There were four Special Forces soldiers accompanying him, plus one intelligence officer—Josef.

  At the thought of the man’s name, his rage again began to build. It was like acid eating away at him. He wanted to let it loose, to vomit it out in every direction and kill every Russian in sight. But instead, he warned himself, Not now. Keep your shit together.

  Laboring to remain calm, he focused on the situation and ran a count. Two of the soldiers were down—one had died in the crash and the other he had just shot outside. The loadmaster was pinned beneath the container. That meant six potential threats remained. Each had to be accounted for and, if necessary, neutralized. Raising his pistol, he slipped out from behind the container.

  The fuselage was difficult to traverse. It was on its side and strewn with debris. There were sharp, jagged pieces of metal everywhere.

  As he picked his way through, he kept his eyes peeled for survivors, as well as warm pieces of clothing. He found neither.

  At the front of the tail section, he had to step outside to get to the next portion of the plane. Carefully, he leaped down onto the ground.

  Immediately, he was hit with a blast of razor-sharp snow. It was driven by one of the coldest, bitterest winds he had ever felt.

  As the crystals raked his exposed skin, he knew he would have only minutes in this temperature—five tops—before numbness would commence and the cold would begin to overtake him.

  In the fading light, the crash wreckage was scattered as far as the eye could see. It looked to Harvath as if they were in the middle of a snow-covered field, surrounded by forest. He could make out where the plane had torn through the trees. A long scar of burning debris and snapped pines led back into the woods.

  Hip-deep in the snow, he crossed to the next section of fuselage and climbed inside. Because this section faced upwind, the freezing air blew through with a vengeance.

  With the spare magazine clenched between his teeth, he held the flashlight away from his body in case anyone saw the beam and wanted to take a shot at him. A few moments later, he found another Spetsnaz operative.

  The motionless man was still strapped into his seat. His head hung at an obscene angle, his neck probably broken. Harvath grabbed him by the hair and lifted up his head so he could look into his face.

  He didn’t know the soldiers’ names. They had only used call signs around him—words in Russian he didn’t understand. What he did understand, though, was what they had done.

  After handcuffing him at the house on Governors Island, this Spetsnaz operative had delivered a searing blow to his kidney. Harvath’s knees had buckled. No sooner had he hit the floor than the Russian had grabbed a fistful of hair. Yanking his head up, he had forced him to watch as Josef had murdered Lara, Lydia, Reed, and the Navy Corpsman.

  Harvath had thought they were going to kill him, too. And for a moment, he had wanted to die—right there with Lara, whom he loved more than anything in the world. But then he had been jabbed with a needle and everything went black.

  When they brought him back around, it was obvious that he had been moved. They were in a dank, cold basement someplace. He didn’t know where, or how long he had been out.

  He had a splitting headache, his clothes had been removed, and he had been tied to a chair. A video camera had been set up. Half an hour later, Josef had come down the stairs and the interrogation had begun.

  Whenever he hesitated, whenever he refused to answer a question, it was the man with the broken neck who had struck him. In the beginning, Josef was playing good cop; trying to build rapport. It wasn’t until they boarded a private jet that things had gotten really ugly.

  Letting the dead man’s head drop, Harvath placed his fingers against his neck, just in case there was a pulse. There wasn’t. “You got off easy,” he said, sizing up the Russian.

  The other two soldiers had been monsters—barrel-chested thugs, well over six feet tall. This one was closer to his height and build of a muscular five feet ten.

  Wearing nothing but scrubs and the equivalent of prison slippers, Harvath had already begun shaking from the cold. He needed to conserve whatever heat he had left and quickly stripped off the Russian’s uniform.

  Snatching an American, especially one of Harvath’s stature, was an act of war—particularly when carried out on U.S. soil. It would have been a completely black operation.

  If Harvath had to guess, everything they needed—civilian clothing, fake IDs, credit cards, even weapons—had been arranged via Russian mafia contacts in the United States.

  Once the private jet had touched down, the soldiers had changed out of their American street clothes and into cold-weather military uniforms. The man with the broken neck was wearing long underwear, wool socks—the works. Harvath took all of it.

  The only thing the Spetsnaz operative wasn’t wearing was a coat. They had boarded with them, though, so there had to be at least one somewhere.

  Buttoning up the clothes with stiffening fingers, he pulled on the man’s boots and laced them up. Then he continued his search.

  Picking his way through the wreckage, he came upon a small crew closet.

  It had been jammed shut by one of the rows of seats that had come loose during the crash. Harvath had to burn precious calories to shove the seats out of the way, but it was worth it.

  Inside was a thinly insulated Russian Air Force jacket with a faux fur collar. He pulled it on and zipped it up. There were no gloves in the pockets, but there was a beret. It wouldn’t keep his ears warm, but it would help retain some heat and was better than nothing.

  He was about to close the closet when he heard a noise from the other side. Without hesitating, he put two rounds through the door. The plane’s flight officer fell down dead on the other side.

  Closing the door, Harvath saw what he had done. He hadn’t intended to kill any of the flight crew unless absolutely necessary. Though Russian military, they weren’t directly responsible for what had happened. That responsibility lay with Josef, his Spetsnaz operatives, and whoever had tasked them with kidnapping Harvath and murdering the people he cared about.

  But after everything that had happened, he had zero capacity for remorse. Russia, and every Russian in it, was his enemy now.

  Pushing forward into the wind, he cleared the rest of this section of the fuselage. There were no additional survivors.

  Trudging through the snow, he arrived at the final section of the plane—the nose. It included the badly damaged cockpit, which was consumed by flame
s. From what he could see, the pilot and copilot were both dead and still strapped into their seats. The fire was too hot, though, for him to get any closer. Getting his hands on a map, a radio, or some sort of flight plan was out of the question.

  Staying in this part of the plane was also out of the question. As much as he needed the warmth, the thickening toxic smoke forced him out.

  Stepping into the snow, he pushed back toward the tail section, making sure to keep his eyes open for Josef and the remaining Spetsnaz operative.

  He had no idea where they were. For all he knew, they had been torn from the plane during the crash.

  Sweeping back through the center segment of the aircraft, he hurriedly gathered up anything he could safely burn to keep warm, including a heavy aircraft manual the size of a phonebook and two wooden pallets.

  When he returned to the tail section, he checked on the loadmaster. The Russian’s pulse was thready. His eyes were glassy and his skin was ashen. He had lost far too much blood. Nevertheless, Harvath was determined to do what he could to save him.

  Dragging over a sheet of metal, he set it as close to the loadmaster as he dared and used it to build a fire on. There was a shovel clamped to the wall. After breaking down the pallets, he found a small piece of flaming wreckage outside, scooped it up, and brought it in to get the wood burning.

  Tearing the dry pages out of the technical manual, he crumpled them into balls and tossed them in to stoke the fire higher. As soon as it was burning good and hot, he set his attention to helping the man who had saved his life. He had to stop the bleeding.

  None of the soldiers had been carrying tourniquets, so Harvath was forced to improvise. Grabbing two carabiners from the vest of the Spetsnaz corpse nearby, he collected several strips of cargo netting. It was a spit and baling wire solution, but it was all he had.

  Using one of the carabiners as a windlass, he applied the improvised tourniquet to the man’s left leg, cinched it down, and employed a length of wire and the other carabiner to hold everything in place. Then, adding even more fuel to the fire, he moved in closer to warm up.