James Patterson - Thriller - Stories to Keep You Up All Night

"You're the only operator on this assignment," replied the voice from Washington. "Can you ID the target?"

Harvath stared through his scope at the man lying in the driveway. "Negative. A positive ID is impossible from my position."

Moments later the voice responded. "Norseman, you're going to need to change your position ASAP and get that ID."

"The subject's facedown in the gravel."

"Then get down there and lift him up."

Harvath tried to keep his anger in check. "We've got an active shooter. I need you to pinpoint him for me first."

"Negative, Norseman," said the voice from the Situation Room. "No can do. All the infrared satellite is showing is you and the subject adjacent to the vehicle."

"No heat signature from a recently discharged weapon?" asked Harvath, though he knew if they could see it, they'd tell him.

"That's a negative. No heat signature."

Whoever that shooter was, he was very good and being very careful.

Harvath was truly up against it. There was no way he could move to the driveway, not when the other sniper could be out there waiting for someone to approach the body.

Though he was trained to expect the unexpected, an additional shooter was something Harvath hadn't banked on. Nevertheless, the idea that somebody else might be after the Achilles device was perfectly reasonable, but none of that mattered now. Harvath needed to identify the guy in the driveway and make his way into the villa where the device was supposedly being kept, and to do that, he was going to need a distraction.

Waiting for him two hundred meters offshore was the Amalia, a weather-beaten Greek trawler manned by the only two people in Greece Harvath could trust, Ben and Yannis Metaxas. Harvath had met Ben while his SEAL team was training in the Aegean with the Greek navy. The two had become fast friends, and to this day Harvath still spent a good amount of his vacation time every year kicking back at Ben's beach bar on the island of An-tiparos.

Changing his radio frequency, Harvath raised Ben out on the Amalia and told him what had happened and what he needed him to do. When Ben's flare broke over the water four and a half minutes later, Harvath was already up and running.

He never bothered ID'ing the body-it would have been suicide. Instead, Harvath grabbed the man by the collar, kicked open the villa's double doors and dragged him inside the courtyard. It was only then that Harvath rolled the body over. There was no mistaking the man whose photo he had seen during his briefing in Washington, Constantine Nomikos. What the hell was he doing here? Harvath examined him. Head wounds always bled profusely and he looked like he had lost a lot of blood. Harvath doubted he would make it.

"Goddammit," he mumbled under his breath. Nomikos had picked a hell of a time to come visit his old pal. Changing freqs, Harvath clued the Situation Room in on the development.

With no other vehicles inbound, Harvath was told to shift to locating the Achilles device. Easy for them to say, he thought. Somewhere, very nearby, was a killer who was most probably sent to Papandreou's villa with the same orders as he was.

With the Metaxas brothers offshore on the Amalia, Harvath had no direct backup. He could only rely on himself. He was in the process of rigging a booby trap when the landscaping lights illuminating the neat rows of olive trees throughout the courtyard dimmed and went dark. Harvath had been in this game long enough to know there was no such thing as coincidence. The other sniper had just cut the power. That could only mean one thing-he was about to breach the villa. Harvath needed to move.

Finding the front door unlocked, Harvath quickly made his way inside and searched for the study. Five minutes later, he had uncovered Papandreou's safe. While he knew more than most about safecracking, tonight it made no difference. Secreted behind a false panel was an American-made Safari-brand safe. Safaris were the best and Harvath knew he had no choice but to blow it. The only question was whether or not he'd brought along enough C4.

Considering Safari's impregnable reputation, Harvath prepared to use everything he had. If he overestimated and it resulted in him damaging the Achilles device inside, then so be it. He knew Washington would be glad just to know the device was out of commission.

Taking cover behind Papandreou's desk, Harvath blew the door off its hinges in an enormous explosion. Once the smoke had cleared, he rushed forward only to discover that it was totally empty.

The CIA was positive the device was being kept at the villa- most likely in Papandreou's safe, but apparently that location had seemed too obvious.

Knowing that blowing the safe had drawn the attention of the other sniper, Harvath quickly exited the room and began making his way down the hallway, his SR25 up and at the ready.

He passed several rooms, and was about to pass the kitchen when something caught his eye and caused him to back up. In the middle of the kitchen floor was a trapdoor standing wide open. After double-checking the SureFire flashlight mounted to his rifle, Harvath swept into the kitchen and made his way down the stone steps beneath the trapdoor.

The steps led him into a low-ceilinged, rough-hewn corridor illuminated by a string of bare bulbs. From what he could tell, a generator somewhere at the end of the corridor was powering the lights.

Harvath hated tunnels. They provided little cover and had a rather undesirable propensity for funneling enemy fire right at you.

Hugging the wall, he made his way toward a fissure of some sort at the end of the corridor. He was now well beyond the grounds of the villa above and could smell saltwater from somewhere off in the distance.

He entered the fissure and had to crouch to make it through, but when he emerged thirty-five meters later he found himself in a brightly illuminated grotto with a narrow strip of sandy beach. Upon it were parked two heavily armed, high-end Faral-lon DPVs, or Diver Propulsion Vehicles. The lingering doubts Harvath had harbored about Papandreou's innocence were beginning to melt away.

From the far end of the beach, a flash of sparks and a high-pitched, grinding whine caught Harvath's attention. A figure dressed in black was using what appeared to be a circular saw to carve into a metal canister propped between two large rocks. Har-vath's instinct was to call in what he was seeing to Washington, but he had lost all radio contact the minute he had entered the first subterranean passage.

A million questions raced through his mind, the answers to which appeared to be on the beach.

Harvath found a narrow footpath and carefully picked his way down, never once taking his eyes off the figure so intent upon opening the metal canister wedged between the rocks. When his feet hit the sand, Harvath moved forward as silently as a shadow.

With sparks flying and the grinding of metal upon metal, the black-clad figure never noticed Harvath's approach. When the suppressor of Harvath's SR25 was pressed up against the back of the man's wet suit, he let the saw fall to the ground.

Harvath told the man to turn around slowly, and when he did, Harvath was rendered nearly speechless. "Ambassador Avery," he stated. "I don't understand. I thought you were dead."

An aura of shock was replaced by one of dignity and power as the silver-haired ambassador replied, "Obviously I'm not. Who the hell are you?"

"My name's Harvath. I was tasked by the Pentagon to find your killers."

"The Pentagon? They couldn't find their ass with both hands. I suppose you've also been tasked with retrieving the device."

There was something about looking into the eyes of a dead man that caused Harvath to mentally pull back and play it dumb until he could get a handle on what was going on. "The device, sir?"