Brad Thor - State Of The Union

“Good,” replied Harvath, who then got up and signaled that he was going to take a look at the rest of the hallway.

Pipes of varying sizes were suspended from the ceiling and appeared to run the length of the tunnel. Like most of the bunkers and fallout shelters he had seen during his career, Harvath correctly assumed that the pipes were used to channel various utilities throughout the underground complex.

He came upon several more rooms, all more or less in varying states of neglect and disarray. It was hard to tell what sort of function they may have once served. All that mattered was that they were presently devoid of other human beings.

At the end of the hallway, Harvath was stopped dead in his tracks by another blast door with a red sign markedBetriebsraum, which was framed by two lightening bolts. Though Harvath had no idea what the word meant in German, he figured it was probably a mechanical room of some sort. Looking up, he saw that all of the utility pipes fed through the solid rock above the door and into whatever room lay on the other side. He tried spinning the large crank handle on the outside of the door, but it wouldn’t budge. Even when he tucked his H amp;K under his arm and ignored the searing pain in his side as he tried with both hands, nothing happened.

Harvath decided to forget the door and quickly made his way back up the tunnel to where Herman was still listening against the bulkhead door.

“Anything new?” he asked, taking up a position next to Toffle.

“I think there’s somebody else in the room with them.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because, they’re speaking English now.”

“Is it Gary?”

“I can only hear what sounds like questions. I thought I heard somebody responding, but now, there’s nothing. What do you want to do?” asked Herman, as he backed away from the door.

“You know what I want to do,” said Harvath, pulling two flashbang grenades from his coat pocket. “Are you ready?”

Herman Toffle patted his injured leg, the same leg that had forced him into early retirement from his beloved GSG9 position and responded, “I’ve been ready for this for a long time.”

The powerful man circled Gary Lawlor’s chair like a bull zeroing in on an injured matador. He hadn’t introduced himself when he entered the bunker, and he didn’t need to. Though very much the worse for wear, Lawlor was still with it enough to know who the man was. Someone from the Russian Military High Command, especially someone like General Sergei Stavropol, was a person whose reputation preceded him.

“You don’t seem surprised to see me,” said Stavropol.

“It was only a matter of time before someone from Mother Russia showed up,” mumbled Lawlor, his cracked and swollen lips revealing a mouth full of broken and damaged teeth. “I’m just surprised at the poor level of help you are hiring to do your dirty work these days.”

“Helmut took a personal interest in your case. He can be very persuasive, but he doesn’t seem to be having that effect on you. Not to worry, though, I’m here now and I’m sure the two of us are going to get along just fine.”

Lawlor laughed. It was a dry, hacking cackle, the best he was capable of, but he choked it out nonetheless.

“You’re laughing. You don’t think I’m serious?” asked Stavropol.

“You may be serious, but you won’t be successful,” spat Lawlor between his laughs, which turned into a fit of coughing.

“You don’t sound so good. You may have aspirated some of your own blood. Or maybe you have a punctured lung? Have they been a bit rough on you?”

The understatement caused Lawlor to begin laughing again, which in his condition invariably led to another coughing fit.

“You need to relax. You’ll cough yourself to death, and that wouldn’t be good. Not at least until we’ve had a chance to talk.”

“I’ve got a manicure in a half hour, so let’s get on with it,” rasped Lawlor.

“Very funny. You like to joke, don’t you?” asked the Stavropol. “You like to have a good time?”

“Is that a rhetorical question?”

“Judging by some of the photographs I have, I guess it is.”

Photographs, wondered Lawlor.What the hell is he talking about?

“I assume you’d like to see them?” said Stavropol.

“I already have naked pictures of your wife,” replied Lawlor.

“Actually, these are pictures of your wife. Though she’s not naked, I thought you would appreciate some of the final surveillance photos that were taken of you both before her tragic accident.”

“Accident,” repeated Lawlor, the bile rising in his throat. “Fuck you.”

“So that means,no? You don’t wish to see the photos? That’s a shame. We were actually quite proud of that operation. But, it’s all water under the bridge, I can understand that-”

“Not water under the bridge. Now that I know you were involved, I am going to kill you too.”

“Me?” asked Stavropol, feigning surprise. “Considering your current situation, that would really be something to see.”

“First Draegar and then you,” hissed Lawlor.

“All in due time.”

“I promise you it will come.”

“Be that as it may, I have other photos you might like to see,” said Stavropol as he produced another set.

“Paste yourself up a fucking scrapbook. I’m not interested.”

“Don’t be too sure. There’s some people in here you might recognize.”

Lawlor turned his face away and Stavropol nodded to Draegar and Überhof, who came over and grabbed hold of Lawlor’s head and forced him to look at the pictures.

“You’re quite an enigma, Mr. Lawlor. You and your wife never had children. You don’t have any other family to speak of. You’re not even particularly close with any of your coworkers, except,” said the man presenting a new photo, “for this one.”

The picture was of one of Gary Lawlor’s barbecues. From the angle it was taken, Lawlor figured the photographer must have been using a long lens somewhere in the woods behind his house. Two things about the photo disturbed him deeply. One was that the picture had to have been taken sometime in the fall, which meant that they had been watching him for several months and he had never noticed it. Two, and this was probably the worst thing, was the person singled out on the photo with a red circle drawn around his head complete with mock crosshairs. That person was like family to him.

“Your silence speaks for itself,” said Stavropol.

“I can guarantee you’ll never get to him,” replied Lawlor.

“Really? So he’s that good? Is he as good as the men on your Dark Night team?”

There was no point in pretending. Lawlor knew that they were on to the Dark Night operation. How, he had no idea, but the key was not to give them anything that they didn’t already have, anything that would aid them in shutting down the operation altogether.

“He’s even better,” said Gary.

“Well, that’s good for him, because from what my people tell me, your other operatives were some of the easiest kills they have ever made.”

Lawlor couldn’t believe his ears.It wasn’t true. Stavropol was lying. This was his way of breaking him down, trying to get him to talk.

“Would you like to see pictures?” asked Stavropol, as he ran through a series of photos that all but confirmed for Lawlor that his team was dead. Except for one, it seemed.

“So what?” said Gary.

“So if you don’t want to see what happened to them happen to this fellow,” responded Stavropol as he brought back out the picture of Harvath with the crosshairs through his head, “I suggest you tell me about your contingencies. What was the next step if your team failed? Certainly your pathetic operation wasn’t your country’s last hope.”