Brad Thor - The Apostle

The XREP raced from the barrel of his Mossberg, only to clank off the cell door as the man let loose with a burst of fire from his barely level rifle.

As the room erupted in strobes of muzzle flash and a deafening barrage of rifle fire, the rounds ricocheted off the concrete walls.

There was a loud slap when one of them slammed into Harvath’s back as he dove to the ground.

It felt as if someone had walked up behind him and cracked him with a heavy metal shovel. And while the air hadn’t been completely knocked out of his lungs, it had come real close.

Rolling onto his side, Harvath ignored the pain and jacked his final XREP into the chamber. He brought his Mossberg up to fire, but stopped as Gallagher, who had closed on the soldier, bravely stepped around the cell door and fired.

Harvath couldn’t tell if it was one of the dumbest or most courageous things he had ever seen, and he didn’t have time to figure it out. Even though in general the XREPs packed a lot more punch than the conventional, pistol-style TASER and subjects tended to remain out of it for a lot longer, there were always exceptions where the effect could be short-lived.

He sucked in a deep breath and pushed himself up off the floor. Everything still worked, which meant he wasn’t paralyzed, and as best he could tell, he wasn’t bleeding-all good signs.

Gallagher had seen Harvath get hit and wanted to check the extent of the damage. Harvath waved him off. They had too much work to do.

The center cell door was locked up tight, and after they had divested the soldiers of their weapons, hogtied them with EZ cuffs, and covered their mouths with duct tape, they searched for the keys.

When Harvath found them, he opened Khan’s cell. Despite everything that had just taken place in the room, the al-Qaeda operative sat smugly on the edge of his bed in the dark as if he had expected this all along. Harvath hated the arrogance of the Muslim fanatics, and laying eyes on this one in the eerie green of his night vision goggles, he immediately despised him.

“Stand up and turn around,” Harvath ordered.

“Who are you?” demanded Khan.

“The Tooth Fairy,” replied Harvath as he drew back his hand and struck Khan in the face. “Now get up.”

Harvath had to yank the man to his feet. Once he was up, Harvath spun him around, secured his hands behind his back, and slapped a piece of duct tape over his mouth.

Gallagher had reloaded both of the shotguns, and he handed Harvath’s to him as he exited the cell guiding Khan.

They moved quickly to the hallway where already they could hear the sound of pounding coming from the other side of the stairwell doorway. Harvath knew it wouldn’t be long before the Special Forces soldiers retreated upstairs and dropped a grenade down in an effort to blow the door open. He didn’t want to be anywhere near when that happened.

Once they were all in the mechanical room, Harvath sent Pamir and Marjan up and over the crates while Gallagher used his second chain to secure the door. When that was done, he scrambled over the crates and waited on the other side to assist Khan.

After Harvath climbed into the tunnel and snapped the locks shut behind him, he could see Pamir and Marjan standing in the green glow of their Streamlights. Reassuming control of the prisoner, he told Gallagher to take point and for Marjan and Pamir to follow. Harvath and Khan would bring up the rear.

“Are you okay?” Gallagher asked.

“I’ll be okay,” replied Harvath. “Go.”

Gallagher nodded, and as he and the NDS operatives disappeared into the darkness, Harvath nudged Khan forward. The man refused to move.

Harvath’s back was throbbing and he was in no mood to play around with this asshole. He slid his arm underneath Khan’s, grabbed his trapezius muscle in a vise grip, and lifted up on Khan’s arms.

Pain shot through the terrorist’s body and he stutter-stepped forward to get away from it. Reluctantly, he began walking.

The hardest part of Harvath’s assignment was almost complete. He had Khan. Now all he had to do was get him someplace safe and then coordinate the exchange for Julia Gallo.

His injury notwithstanding, he should have felt much better than he did. But having laid eyes on Khan, Harvath knew that he wouldn’t be able to trade him for Julia Gallo. He couldn’t let an animal like this just return to terrorism. He was going to have to come up with another way, and that meant this thing wasn’t over, not by a long shot.

Harvath peeled off his soft armor and dropped it to the bathroom floor. Pulling up his T-shirt, he turned and looked into the mirror at the softball-sized bruise growing on his lower back. The ricochet had missed his plate entirely and had slammed right into his soft armor. Though the bullet had been flattened out and its impact had been somewhat blunted from having skipped off the wall, his injury still hurt like hell.

Opening up Gallagher’s med kit, he fished out a one-thousand-milligram horse-pill-sized Motrin, affectionately referred to by SEALs as Vitamin M, and chased it down with a long swig from the can of Red Bull he’d brought into the bathroom with him.

Transporting Khan, from the hospital to the safe house Gallagher had arranged for them, had gone exactly as they had planned. After donning their white doctors’ coats, they wrapped the terrorist’s head with gauze, strapped him to the gurney, threw the blanket over him, and wheeled him right out the front doors to their van. Pamir and Marjan had followed, pushing the hand truck loaded down with all the gear. After helping load Khan and the equipment into the back of the van, they had left the grounds the same way they had come in. The hospital had remained quiet the entire time. Never once did they see another soul.

The safe house was in Kabul’s Shahr-e Naw district-home to many of Afghanistan’s opium kingpins and corrupt politicians. The neighborhood was full of newly constructed mansions, impressive even by American standards. Many of Shahr-e Naw’s dubious landowners had built more than one residence and made sizable, not to mention quasi-legitimate flows of income by renting out their additional homes to Westerners. It was exactly such a property that Gallagher had secured for them.

Taking Khan back to ISS’s Kabul compound was out of the question. Not only was it not set up to hold a prisoner, there were too many people who would ask too many questions. Here, nobody asked any questions and the neighbors kept to themselves. Even better, the cops had been paid off by the opium lords to stay out of the neighborhood and anyone who could afford to live here had private security, which meant it wasn’t unusual to see men with guns coming and going at all hours of the day and night.

Only four people knew about the safe house-Flower, Harvath, Hoyt, and Gallagher. Inspector Rashid had offered to act as an escort on their way back, just in case there were any checkpoints, but Harvath had turned him down. Instead, once they were free of the hospital, he had Flower sit with Rashid and monitor his radio. Flower knew the route Gallagher and Harvath were driving and could warn them in time of any potential problems. As it was, things went off without a hitch.

Harvath and Gallagher stashed Khan in a cleverly constructed panic room the safe house’s owner had constructed in his basement. The room was perfect for holding their prisoner. There was a hole in the floor that functioned as a Turkish-style toilet, there were no windows, and the walls and ceilings were solid concrete. Mustafa Khan could make as much noise as he wanted and no one would ever hear him.

Gathering up his gear, Harvath stepped out of the bathroom and walked down the marble-floored hallway into the living room. Gallagher was sitting on one of the leather sofas with a bottle of Heineken in his hand, watching the large plasma TV. “Want one?” he asked, holding it up.