Brad Thor - Blowback

Jillian was right. “Maybe Rayburn followed them, or maybe he hired somebody else to do it. Whoever it was didn’t want these men talking about what they had found.”

“You mean Hannibal ’s weapon,” said Jillian as she watched Harvath bend down toward Bernard’s corpse. “What are you doing?”

Gently, he removed a gold chain with a small medallion from around the man’s neck. “Ironic, “He said as he held the medallion up for her to see. “Saint Bernard, patron saint of mountain climbers, Alpinists, and skiers.”

Jillian sadly shook her head.

“I think Marie would want to have this,” said Harvath.

“I think you’re right,” she replied as she walked away from the bodies. She didn’t want to look at them anymore, and there was something half buried in ice on the other side of the small room that had caught her eye.

Harvath placed the chain in his pocket and then went through Bernard’s pockets, where he found a pair of ancient wrist cuffs made from gold and set with amethysts and small pieces of creamy white marble. It bore the same wolf’s head with intertwined vipers as the breastplates. They were definitely something special, and he could see why Bernard had singled them out to bring back. There was something, though, about the way the snarling wolf looked that bothered him.

“Scot, come over here,” said Jillian, interrupting his thoughts. “You need to see this.”

Harvath tucked the wrist cuffs into his jacket pocket and joined Jillian on the other side of the room, where she was staring at a large wooden chest, its lower half frozen in a solid block of ice.

“Look at these,” she said as she pointed to a series of carved figures along the lid.

“The wolf and intertwined vipers,” replied Harvath. “The same as on the breastplates.”

“Exactly. And these panels along the side seem to tell some sort of story.”

Harvath studied the carvings.

“Somebody melted away this ice on purpose,” continued Jillian, “to get into the box.”

The carvings reminded Harvath of images he had seen in books of the Ark of the Covenant being carried into battle. “Do you think this was used to transport Hannibal ’s weapon?”

“There’s only one way to find out,” she said as she carefully raised the lid.

Together, they both looked inside. The long box was intricately partitioned, but other than that was completely empty.

“Damn it,” said Jillian. She spent a few more minutes studying the box and then moved on to investigate something else near the mouth of one of the tunnels.

Harvath stayed with the crate, trying to decipher its story. It was an allegory, but its meaning was difficult to understand. “You know what?” he yelled over his shoulder as he continued to stare at the intricately carved relief. “I’m not so sure that these are actually supposed to be wolves.”

“No?” replied Jillian, engrossed in something inside the tunnel. “What are they then?”

“I think they’re supposed to be dogs.”

“You may have missed your calling in life,” came a man’s voice from behind.

It was a voice he recognized-a voice he knew almost as well as his own. It belonged to the man he had been chasing for months, the man who had set him up in Baghdad and had tried to kill him in Cairo, London, and Paris-Khalid Sheik Alomari.

Harvath wanted it to be a figment of his imagination, but he knew it wasn’t. As he turned and saw the al-Qaeda assassin standing there with a fully automatic machine pistol in his hand, Harvath began to reach for his gun. The problem, though, was that he had left it in his pack to help weigh it down. Defenseless, Harvath did the only other thing he could think of. He yelled for Jillian to run.

Call the woman back in here,” commanded Alomari as Jillian disappeared down one of the tunnels. “If I have to go looking for her, I assure you I will make her death as painful as I am going to make yours.”

“Kiss my ass.”

“Wrong answer,” replied the assassin as he stepped forward and struck Harvath across the face with his Steyr tactical machine pistol.

Harvath stumbled backward against the chest. It was all he could do to keep from losing his balance.

“We’ll try this again. Call the woman back in here, now.”

“Call her yourself, asshole,” replied Harvath, who could taste blood in his mouth.

The assassin waved Harvath away from the box with his weapon and said, “Have it your way. She won’t get far. “As Harvath complied, Alomari continued, “I’ve enjoyed watching you on television. It’s unfortunate that al-Jazeera was not able to address your good side.”

“What’s unfortunate,” replied Harvath, clenching his hand into a fist, “is that I wasn’t able to address your good side.”

“You had your chance, though, didn’t you?”

That was a fact Harvath was all too well aware of. “How the hell did you find this place?”

“I’ve been here before,” said Alomari as he raised his TMP and pointed it at Harvath’s chest. “I didn’t think I’d ever come back, but before our mutual friend at Sotheby’s died, she suggested I might want to make a return visit. I would have been here sooner, but it took me a while to find a doctor I could trust to pull your bullet out of my shoulder.”

Harvath hated him for his command of English, as well as all the other languages he used to move so effortlessly around the world carrying out the dirtiest of al-Qaeda’s dirty work. But in his anger, Harvath found some small measure of satisfaction and couldn’t help smiling. One of his bullets in Paris had definitely found its mark.

“You find my injury amusing,” replied the assassin. “I guarantee you it isn’t half as painful as what I intend to inflict upon you and your colleague. Now, take those ice axes from your belt and slowly drop them on the floor.”

Harvath had no intention of doing anything the man asked of him. “If you’re going to shoot me, go ahead and pull the trigger.”

“That would be too easy. I have something else in mind for you. Now drop those axes. I will not ask you again.”

“Fuck you,” Harvath responded.

Alomari stepped forward and struck him again with his weapon, this time twice as hard.

Harvath’s head spun and he saw stars, but he wasn’t going to go down without a fight. Trying to focus on the al-Qaeda operative, he gathered his strength and lunged at the man with all his might.

Despite his shoulder injury, Alomari easily sidestepped the attack and watched as, even with his crampons on, Harvath lost his footing and banged his head against the entrance to one of the tunnels.

Before Harvath could slide to the ground, Alomari was on him. The powerful killer pulled him up by the neck of his parka and then swung his machine pistol around hard into Harvath’s solar plexus, knocking the wind from him. As Harvath doubled over in pain, Alomari came up from below with a searing punch that connected with Harvath’s jaw and snapped his head straight back.

Harvath flailed his arms, trying to grab onto anything to break his fall, but got nothing but air. What finally broke his fall was the icy ground, and when it did, Harvath’s head hit it with such a loud smack it echoed throughout the cavern and into the tunnels. Once again, he saw stars, but this time there was something more, an overwhelming blackness that threatened to completely overcome him. Harvath fought it off. The only hope he had of staying alive was staying conscious. Alomari was playing with him, but the minute Harvath passed out, the assassin would finish him off. He knew it as sure as he knew he never should have left his gun in his backpack.

Rolling over onto his stomach, Harvath struggled to get up onto his knees. When he did, Alomari kicked him hard, right in the ribs and right in the same place he’d been kicked by the security guard at Sotheby’s two days before.