Brad Thor - Takedown

“The terrorists may be hitting a fifth location not far from where you are right now.”

Hearing that, Harvath sat up straight. “What location? Where? Wait a second. How do you know this?”

“Do you remember all the reports that bin Laden was on dialysis?”

“Of course, it was a rumor based on the Pakistani president claiming al-Qaeda had smuggled two dialysis machines into Afghanistan, right?”

“Exactly. Then one of our Delta Force teams discovered a sterile facility used for dialysis treatments at bin Laden’s Tora Bora base near Jalalabad.”

“So?”

“So they also found a patient log and discovered it wasn’t bin Laden getting treatment, it was Mohammed bin Mohammed, aka Abu Khabab al-Fari.”

“Wait a second,” said Harvath. “M amp;M? Al-Qaeda’s master bombmaker? He was the head of their entire weapons of mass destruction committee until he disappeared a couple of days before 9/11. Nobody has seen him since.”

“The DIA has,” said Lawlor.

Harvath was floored, and smoke was nearly coming out of his ears as his mind raced to put all of the pieces together. “What’s this have to do with them grabbing Sayed Jamal from us?”

“Apparently, they’re related-as in family. The DIA wanted to use Jamal as leverage in their interrogation of Mohammed.”

“The DIA has Mohammed?” Harvath couldn’t believe it. “Who told you this?”

“Stan Caldwell,” replied Lawlor.

“How does the deputy director of the FBI have that information?”

“According to Caldwell, it was DIA’s chief of staff who coordinated the Joint Terrorism Task Force ruse and then swore the Bureau to secrecy.”

“Based on what? What kind of sway does the DIA have over the Bureau?”

“I don’t know,” said Gary. “That’s all he would tell me. In fact I was surprised to get that much from him.”

Harvath thought back and replied, “That high-level al-Qaeda operative the U.S. took down-the one with the exploding laptop. Do you think that was Mohammed?”

“The timing on it would be right.”

“Then that intercept about the U.S. grabbing a bombmaker and bringing him into America against his will and in violation of international law wasn’t about Jamal after all. It was about Mohammed.”

“I think so,” said Lawlor.

“And you believe he’s here, in New York?”

“I’m almost certain of it.”

“But what’s the connection with the NSA’s deep black intelligence sites?” replied Harvath. “I don’t get it.”

“I don’t get it either. The only one who might have been able to explain it to us is Joseph Stanton, and he’s dead.”

“So how do you know there’s a fifth location and that it’s here in New York?”

“It all comes back to the dialysis machines. We interrogated one of Stanton’s analysts-a young man who worked closely with him on the Athena Program, and he told us that Stanton was very interested in recent sales of high-end units sold by a company called Nova Medical Systems. The name sounded familiar to me, but I couldn’t remember why. When I got back to my office, I did some checking.”

“And?”

“The machines found in the treatment room at the Tora Bora complex were the exact same kind Stanton had his analyst searching for.”

“And did he find any?”

“Yup, and that’s where I think the fifth location is.”

Though some of the dots still needed to be connected, there were enough of them lining up at this point to make Harvath believe that Lawlor really might be on to something. “We’re on it. Where is it?”

“That’s the problem. We can’t touch it.”

“What do you mean, we can’t touch it?”

“It’s recognized as the foreign soil of a sovereign nation. We’re not allowed in unless they invite us in.”

More bureaucratic bullshit, thought Harvath. All he wanted was an address. He’d let the hacks back in Washington mop up the fallout. “ Gary, if that’s where these terrorists are headed, trust me, whatever sovereign nation we’re talking about, they’re going to be begging us to come inside and help them.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. The Libyans can be incredibly stubborn when they want to.”

LIBYA HOUSE

309 EAST 48TH STREET

Mike Jaffe bent down in front of his prisoner and whispered, “You are one heartless bastard, aren’t you?”

Mohammed bin Mohammed looked over at the bloody, slumped body of his nephew but said nothing.

Jaffe stood up and said, “That’s okay, though, because I’m a heartless bastard too. This is a battle of the wills, Mohammed-a clash of the Titans. But I’ve got to tell you, I don’t know if you’ve got what it takes to go the distance. Lately, you haven’t been looking so good.”

Mohammed tried to stifle it, but a chuckle escaped his lips.

Jaffe smiled at him. “The man’s got a sense of humor. How about that? Tell me, Mohammed. All those little boys you’ve buggered over the years, how do you think their senses of humor have fared? Do you think they’re pretty happy-go-lucky? Think they look back on having your flabby, sweaty body hovering over them, pumping away as a character-building experience?”

The smile vanished from Mohammed’s face.

“We found a lot of interesting souvenirs in that house of yours in Somalia,” said Jaffe, “and that got me to thinking. I’ve been going at this the wrong way, haven’t I? Like we say in Arabic, I want you to hold me close to your heart. But how do I get there?”

Walking over to the table near the door, Jaffe reached into a two-pocket olive-drab pouch and removed a small canister with a long piece of clear, flexible tubing attached to the nozzle. Holding it up so his prisoner could see it, he said, “You’ve seen one of these before, right? It’s pepper spray. It’s been around a long time, but it took a very clever man in New Jersey to realize that we’d been limiting ourselves in how we used it.”

Mohammed shifted nervously in his chair.

Unraveling the tubing, Jaffe continued, “Suppose you’re in your hotel room and somebody-a bad guy, let’s say-comes knocking on your door at three in the morning. We know he’s a bad guy, because what nice guy pounds on a door at that hour, right?

“Anyway, you’ve got your pepper spray in this hand, you unravel the hose with the other, slide it under the door, hit the button, and presto! All of a sudden the hallway is uninhabitable. Pretty neat, huh? But wait, there’s more.

“I know the guy who makes these things. He’s sold tons to our government. One night we’re sitting down having a beer and we’re talking about all the different tricks his stuff can do and suddenly it dawns on me. Pepper spray is biodegradable. If it enters your body, eventually it’ll be flushed out with no trace left behind.

“Now, if I’m close to your heart, I figure you’ll tell me what I want to know. The problem is, though, that we’re running out of time. So what’s the quickest way to a man’s heart? Well, in America we say it’s through his stomach, but in your case, I think it’s just a bit lower.”

Mohammed’s gaze dropped to his groin.

I haven’t tried this yet,” said Jaffe as he stuck the tube into his mouth to moisten the tip, “but I gotta believe it’s going to hurt like hell.”

Removing a pair of EMT shears from his pocket, he threw them to Brad Harper and said, “Prep him. I want him as naked as the day Allah made him.”

Even if the two Libyan intelligence officers Rashid and Hassan were called back in to do the actual procedure, Harper knew prepping Mohammed for this made him a direct accessory to the man’s torture.