Brad Thor - State Of The Union

“Okay, time’s up,” said Harvath as he drew his H amp;K from the small of his back and pointed it at Stavropol’s forehead. “I want names, descriptions, everything on all of your sleepers. I want to know where they are, how you contact them and where their nuclear devices are being hidden.”

“You’re very brave, Agent Harvath, but also very stupid,” replied Stavropol. “Do you actually think my men are going to let you just take over?”

Now it was Harvath’s turn to smile. “These aren’t your men,” he answered with a jerk of his head towards Morrell and Avigliano, who then removed their balaclavas and trained their weapons on him.

Stavropol’s smile never faltered. “Those aren’t the men I’m talking about.” With a snap of his fingers, scores of soldiers wearing plain clothes, who had been mixed in with the technicians, stood and pointed their guns at Harvath and his party. They were overwhelmingly outgunned and knew they were beaten.

Stavropol raised a walkie-talkie to his mouth and barked a series of orders before turning back to Harvath and saying, “We received the pictures your government sent of several man-portable nuclear devices placed around our country. I can only assume you were part of that effort?”

Harvath didn’t respond.

“I had heard that you were a highly skilled operative, but frankly I am disappointed.”

“I wouldn’t get too bent out of shape over it. I still might prove you wrong.”

“We’ll see about that,” said Stavropol as the elevator doors opened and two technicians wheeled out a dolly carrying Harvath’s supposed man-portable nuke. It had been dismantled and lay in pieces.

“You Americans still underestimate us. Did you think our pilot wouldn’t find some way to get a message to us?”

“Shit,” said Morrell.

“But I heard everything he said,” countered Alexandra. “There was nothing that-”

“It wasn’t what he said,” interrupted Stavropol. “It was what he didn’t. When he failed to give the proper approach codes, we knew something was wrong. For a moment, I briefly debated just shooting your helicopter right out of the sky, but now I’m glad that I didn’t.

“As far as the device itself is concerned, the Americans seem to have forgotten that we already have all but one of them from their Dark Night program. It does take a certain amount of care to dismantle them, but it soon became obvious that care was not necessary with this one. It’s a fake. Until we were sure that this was not going to turn into some suicide mission and that your nuclear device had been placed in a fail-safe mode, there was little else we could do but play along.

“I am going to assume then that the devices in the photos are also fakes, which means that only Frank Leighton and his device are still at large. Our teams will soon find him. In the meantime, I understand from our deck crew that there were two other men with you who came aboard with you and are still at large. I’m confident that they will be joining you shortly.”

“None of this going to work,” said Harvath. “America isn’t going to just roll over for you.”

The General smiled once again. “I never expected them to. In fact, had they not resisted I would have been most disappointed.”

With that, Stavropol waved over a group of soldiers to take control of the prisoners and transport them below decks for safekeeping. As he did, Harvath saw beneath the general’s jacket the finely engraved butt of a Tokarev TT- 30, a weapon chambered to fire the 7.62mm Soviet M30 round.

Something told Harvath he was looking at the weapon that had helped put Gary Lawlor into the hospital, clinging to life itself.

As Carlson and DeWolfe were tossed into the narrow holding cell along with Harvath, Morrell, and Avigliano, the first thing they noticed was the absence of Alexandra.

It was the question all of them were asking themselves, but which none of them really wanted to know the answer to. “She’s being held someplace else,” offered Harvath.

“She’s a big girl and can handle herself. Right now we’ve got other things to worry about,” said Morrell, focusing the team’s attention on the matter at hand. Though he doubted the makeshift brig was wired for sound, there was no sense in taking any chances. Stavropol and his team were proving to be very accomplished adversaries, and so he lowered his voice as he turned to Carlson and asked, “Did they get the detonator?”

“The charges were already placed, but they got everything else that was left in my bag,” responded the demolitions expert, “including the detonator.”

“Fuck,” responded Morrell who then turned to DeWolfe. “How about you? Were you able to sabotage the air defense system?”

DeWolfe crossed his fingers and held them up for Morrell to see.

“That’s it then,” said Harvath. “Now we wait.”

“Screw that,” whispered Carlson as he began scanning the room. It looked like it had been some kind of refrigeration unit at one point. “We’re going to find a way out of here.”

“We’ve already looked. That door is it,” replied Avigliano.

“So, what? We just give up?”

“No,” said Morrell. “We continue to try and find a way out of here.”

Carlson looked at his watch. “Well, whatever we do, we’ve got six minutes to get it together. I targeted their main power supply, as well as their auxiliary. I had no idea we’d end up in a room that depended on a mechanical ventilation system for its air.”

“Okay,” said Morrell, taking control of the situation, “so we’ve got six minutes and counting. We can do this. Everybody put your thinking caps on and I don’t want to hear a single word unless it has to do with how we can get ourselves out of here.”

The room was completely silent as the men went over it again inch by inch. The ventilation system itself was too small for any of them to squeeze through so they spent their time probing for loose ceiling panels or a way to trigger the locking mechanism from their side of the door. Their efforts, though, were all in vain.

Carlson’s eyes were glued to his watch as the final seconds of electricity ticked away before the main power shut down. The backup system momentarily came to life, and then it too went down. DeWolfe tried to comfort his colleagues by explaining that from what he had been able to gather, the air defense system, like the fire alarm system, had a battery backup and so his part of the operation would still be successful. The response to his revelation was lackluster at best, as the men took pains to conserve their oxygen.

The first thing they noticed was the suffocating heat. The amount of warmth that could be generated by five men in such a small, enclosed space was amazing. Condensation amassed upon the ceiling and either slowly dripped on top of them or trickled down the walls in thin rivulets.

As they began breathing in short gasps, DeWolfe wondered if maybe their captors had no idea that they were running out of oxygen. He pounded on the steel door until he lost the feeling in both of hands and then he kicked at it until he was so dizzy from hypoxia that he had to sit back down.

As time wore on, Harvath developed a pounding headache accompanied by severe dizziness, but what frightened him the most was the sense of euphoria beginning to overtake him. He heard a voice somewhere within the recesses of his mind warn him that after euphoria came the fourth and final stage of hypoxia wherein victims lost consciousness and quickly succumbed to death. He tried to fight his fatigue and rally against another voice that was quickly gathering strength in his mind. It told him that there was nothing he could do and that he should relax and let it happen. He had nothing to fear.