Brad Thor: Takedown

“Who are you?” demanded Mohammed. “What do you want?”

The dwarf signaled for the boy to rise from the lounge chair and step away from his host. Mohammed was surprised to see the young man so readily comply. His confusion evaporated as the young man approached the dwarf, stuck out his hand, and was given several large bills before quickly leaving the villa.

At the dwarf’s command, the dogs fell silent.

“Who are you?” repeated Mohammed. “What do you want?”

The Troll smiled. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

“Of course not. We’ve never met. I have absolutely no idea who you are.”

“You may not remember me, but surely you remember the Black Sea. There was a brothel near the town of Sochi.”

What little color remained in the al-Qaeda operative’s face now completely drained away. Could this be the same dwarf? If it was, then yes, he did remember him. He remembered the brothel too. Mohammed had wanted a very young boy, not a dwarf, but when the madam and her husband said that the dwarf was the best they were able to do, he had decided it was better than nothing and had had his way with him. Afterward, he had felt so disgusted with himself that he had beaten the little creature almost to death. If it hadn’t been for the quick thinking of one of the whores, who was able to give the dwarf the breath of life and compress his chest until his heart restarted, he would never have returned to the realm of the living.

“I paid dearly for that misunderstanding,” replied Mohammed. “The proprietors’ silence did not come cheap.”

“You might have paid them, but you never paid me,” answered the Troll. “I spent a good part of my life looking for you. When the Americans took you into custody, I was prepared to let you rot, but then you escaped. So tonight I will recoup what is owed me, with interest.”

“How did you know I was held by the Americans?”

“Because he was the one who turned you in,” said Abdul Ali as he stepped from the shadow of the villa.

As exceptional as the dogs were, they had never even detected the assassin’s approach. Now they began barking at both Mohammed bin Mohammed and Abdul Ali.

“Shut them up,” said the assassin as he pointed his silenced Beretta at the Troll. “And drop your weapon.”

When the Troll hesitated, Ali turned his weapon on the nearest Caucasian Ovcharka and pulled the trigger.

The Troll felt the round just as surely as if it had pierced his own heart. He wanted to cry out, but he retained his composure and signaled his remaining animal to be still. Then he dropped his weapon.

Even from where he remained hidden, Harvath could see enough of the newest party crasher to recognize him. He was the man from the CCTV footage at Libya House. The man who had not only helped Mohammed bin Mohammed escape, but who was responsible for the deaths of the NSA employees, the marines, and all the other victims of the terrible terrorist attacks on New York. Even more important to Harvath, it was this man, the one the CIA was calling Abdul Ali, who had armed Mohammed bin Mohammed and helped him to kill Bob Herrington.

Harvath had expected a long, hard hunt for Ali, but now the man had been delivered right to him. The promise he had made to Bob the night he was murdered was going to be easier to carry out than he had thought.

With a silencer already affixed to his own weapon, Harvath raised his H amp;K pistol and took aim at the most logical primary target-the only other man holding a gun. Though it wasn’t the long and painfully drawn-out death he would have wished on Ali, it was what the circumstances dictated. Taking a deep breath, he squeezed the trigger and watched as Ali’s brains exploded out the other side of his head. And with that shot, pandemonium instantly erupted.

Mohammed bin Mohammed threw his considerable bulk to the ground and began crawling for the villa as fast as he could. To help slow him down, Harvath put a round in the back of each of his legs.

As the al-Qaeda operative screamed in pain, Harvath swept his pistol from left to right, searching for the dwarf, who had suddenly disappeared. At the last minute, he found him.

With the bizarre weapon slung over his shoulder, the tiny man had leapt onto his gargantuan dog and, holding on to the beast’s harness, was riding him as if he were a thoroughbred.

The last glimpse Harvath had of them was as the amazingly agile animal leapt the high wall at the other end of the veranda and disappeared once more from sight. While he didn’t have any immediate reason to kill the man or his dog, there were a lot of questions he would have liked to have had answered-questions he was sure that Mohammed bin Mohammed wouldn’t be willing to answer. On the other hand, Harvath wasn’t really in the mood to ask. What he was in the mood for was payback.

Grabbing bin Mohammed by the back of the neck, Harvath dragged him inside and threw him against a large white column. As he removed two pairs of Flexicuffs and secured the man’s hands behind the pillar, Harvath said, “Ten days ago, you killed a very good friend of mine. I’m here to repay the favor.”

The man looked up at Harvath. “I am not afraid to die.”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” said Scot as he removed two glass vials from a pouch on his belt and showed them to Mohammed. “Each of these little things are known as Dermestes maculatus. Museums use them to strip flesh away from carcasses so the skeletons can be studied. Once they start eating, they just can’t seem to stop.”

Unscrewing the top of the first vial, Harvath grabbed Mohammed in a headlock and inserted the vial into his ear. Instantly, the man began screaming. Harvath removed a lighter from his pocket and heated the vial until the beetle ran, scurrying into Mohammed’s ear canal. Once he was sure the creature was in good and deep, he repeated the process on the other ear and stood back.

Like a rabbit trapped by a cave-in, beetles will dig furiously to try to extricate themselves. If they happen to be in someone’s ear, the resultant frenzy is enough to drive that person mad. Harvath had read about it in a book a long time ago, and though he wasn’t one to stay up late at night devising new means of torture, this had always been one of the things he thought would be exceptionally worth trying.

Stepping back, Harvath watched as the man writhed and shrieked, trying to shake the insects from his head. He was in the grip of sheer terror. Though it delivered a certain degree of satisfaction, it still wasn’t enough to make up for everything else the man had done.

Raising his pistol, Harvath pulled the trigger and sent one searing hot round into Mohammed’s stomach. It was considered one of the most painful ways a person could die, and victims could languish for many hours in unbearable agony until their bodies finally succumbed. As far as Harvath was concerned, it was still too good for Mohammed bin Mohammed.

He was contemplating kneecapping the al-Qaeda terrorist, when a noise from the veranda caught his attention.

Having affixed a makeshift pressure bandage to the wound in the dog’s chest, Harvath gently slung the enormous beast over his shoulders and stepped right over Mohammed’s twitching body as he carried it from the villa. Outside, he had the very real feeling that the only thing preventing a bullet from being fired at him from a rather bizarre weapon was that, hidden somewhere out in the dark night, the dying dog’s owner understood that Harvath was trying to save his animal.

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON, DC

And the dwarf?” asked Harvath as the meeting was drawing to a close. “What was his role in all of this?”