Brad Thor - Foreign Influence

The woman was unable to respond.

“Nikki, listen to me. I know it hurts, but we need to get you out of here. I’m going to count to three and when I do, I’m going to pull as hard as I can. If you have any ability to help me; if you can push with your legs, or twist your body in any way to get free, you need to do it. Do you understand me?”

Rodriguez said nothing. It didn’t matter. Harvath knew what he had to do. With his hands beneath her arms, he inched his way back as far as he could without losing purchase and then, counting to three, he pulled.

There was a wrenching sound and then a snap, which he prayed was the crack of dried wood from somewhere behind her in the rubble and not bone.

De Roon yelled that they were losing the wall, but Harvath refused to let go of her. He had her now; they were moving. It was slow, inch by painful inch, as if she was dragging some sort of incredibly heavy weight.

“Hurry, damn it!” yelled de Roon. “Hurry!”

Harvath’s entire body burned from the strain, but they were almost free. He continued to slide back a foot and pull, slide back a foot and pull.

He had no idea how close he was to the end of the tunnel until he felt hands on his boots and then his legs, helping to pull him back. Then there were hands on his belt pulling him hard.

De Roon and his men grunted under the weight of the wall. They were yelling and cursing for the others to hurry. With Harvath out, there was only Rodriguez left. Already, the wall was beginning to fall.

Harvath rolled away from the rubble pile as Nikki’s teammates reached in to pull her out. As they did, he saw a sharp piece of metal that had embedded itself in her right side. The realization that the metal protruding from her chest had caused all the drag on her body as he struggled to extract her made him almost want to throw up. Then there was a shout from one of the Athena Team members of “Don’t drop the wall!” and he realized how wrong he had been and how incredible Nikki Rodriguez was.

While Harvath was pulling her out, she was pulling out someone else; a young woman who had been in the room next to her. Despite her injuries, and the high probability that the rest of the building could have collapsed, Rodriguez had never let go.

With his last half-ounce of adrenaline, Harvath leapt to his feet and helped de Roon’s team hold the wall. When the second woman was free, they attempted to lower the wall as gently as possible, but no one had the strength to see it all the way down.

It landed with a deafening crash, which hastened more structural failure and sent them all scrambling from the building. Casey and Cooper carried Rodriguez, while Ericsson and Rhodes helped the young prostitute from the room next door.

Out on the street, they began to administer first aid. Harvath’s hands, elbows, and knees were bleeding, but he was in much better shape than most of the people around him.

Someone offered him a bottle of water. After dousing his wounds he drained what was left and surveyed the devastation around him. All of it from a single bomber. Though it would be no consolation to the families and loved ones of the dead, it could have been, it was supposed to have been, much, much worse.

He resolved to himself that no matter what he had to do, he would not let this scene repeat itself in America.

Calling de Roon over, he said, “Give me your car keys.”

The intelligence officer looked at him. “You can’t drive like that.”

“I need to get back to al-Yaqoubi. I need to finish his interrogation.”

De Roon looked over Harvath’s shoulder, saw the first waves of Dutch rescue personnel arriving on the scene and said, “I’ll drive and we’ll finish it together.”

Khalil al-Yaqoubi asked to speak to his family when Harvath entered the Sacleipea’s infirmary. He wanted assurances that they were still alive and that they had not been harmed.

The DST operative in Rabat was Casey’s contact, but Casey had gone to the hospital with Rodriguez while the other team members stayed at the scene to help treat the victims. Harvath couldn’t have called the man if he wanted to. Not that it mattered. Al-Yaqoubi was in no position to ask for anything.

“The deal is off, Khalil,” said Harvath.

The Moroccan didn’t understand. “But I did everything you asked. I told you the truth.”

“One of the bombs went off,” said de Roon as he instructed his men to leave the infirmary.

You could have heard a pin drop as the heavy steel door slammed shut.

Harvath unwound the bandage from the man’s left foot.

“What are you doing?” al-Yaqoubi demanded.

“I’m going to make you pay for all of the people who died tonight. Then I am going to make you pay for all the people who died in Paris. Then I am going to make you pay for Rome.”

Picking up a forceps and scalpel, he told de Roon, “Hold down his legs,” and began probing for the sural nerve. It didn’t take long to find it.

The terrorist screamed from the white-hot intensity of the pain.

“After I’m done making you pay, then we’ll call your family and I’ll let you listen to them pay.”

“No!” al-Yaqoubi shouted. “I did everything you asked. I will continue to do everything you ask.”

Harvath dug the forceps in again. “It’s too late, Khalil,” he shouted so he could be heard above the man’s screaming. “I warned you what would happen if even one of those bombs went off.”

The man was crying and begged Harvath to stop. “I will do anything. Anything. Please.”

De Roon looked at Harvath and he backed off. “I want to know who you’re working for.”

“I don’t know,” he stammered and Harvath shoved the forceps back in.

Al-Yaqoubi’s body went rigid and he arched his back so high it looked like his spine was about to snap. Tears were rolling down his face.

“Stop lying to me, Khalil.”

The man was hyperventilating. Harvath drew back the forceps and waited for him to catch his breath. “Last chance, Khalil. Who are you working for?”

“I’m telling you the truth. I do not know.”

Harvath moved the forceps closer.

“Al-Qaeda!” the man yelled. “Al-Qaeda. We swore our oath to Sheik Osama.”

“You only say that because that’s what you think I want to hear,” said Harvath as he studied the man’s face to discern whether or not he was telling the truth.

“It’s true. I swear to you.”

“Tell me about site 243.”

“What?” replied al-Yaqoubi.

“Site 243.”

“I don’t know what that is. I have never heard of it.”

“What about the Chinese?”

“I don’t know any Chinese.”

Harvath sensed he was telling the truth. Whoever had put this network together, especially if it was the Chinese, would have used third-party nationals from top to bottom. Al-Yaqoubi probably believed he really was working for al-Qaeda. The idea that his network had been assembled by China only to be hijacked by someone else would have been utterly incomprehensible to him.

Harvath switched his line of questioning. “Where did you train?”

“Yemen and Pakistan.”

“Who do you report to? Who gives you your orders?”

“I don’t know his real name.”

Harvath noticed a slight change in the man’s expression and rammed the forceps back into his foot. Once again, al-Yaqoubi’s body rose off the bed and writhed as he tried to escape the pain.

“Aleem,” he yelled, “Aazim Aleem.”

“I’ve never heard of him,” said Harvath as he twisted the tool inside the man’s foot like a fork into a plate of spaghetti.