Brad Thor - Blowback

The extra gear he had stowed in his parka did little to soften the blow. The precious bit of air Harvath had managed to get back into his lungs was forced back out, and his chest started heaving. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a faint voice told him to consider giving up. He was no match for Alomari. The man was much too strong for him. The voice was a sign of weakness, and Harvath despised weakness. Now, he not only slammed the iron door of his mind tight against it, he willed himself to suck in large gulps of air. He had to pull himself together. He had to rally his strength and his wits or he was going to die here, just like Ellyson, Bernard, and their Sherpa, Maurice.

As his lungs heaved for air, Harvath looked around him for anything that could be used as a weapon. He tried to remember what he had stuffed in his parka and whether any of those items could be used to his advantage. He rapidly sorted through the possibilities, but none of them seemed as if they would do the trick. Then it hit him, literally.

There was a jangle of metal on metal as Alomari delivered another searing kick to his ribs. If Harvath could only unbuckle the nylon webbing strung with pitons, carabiners, and other climbing accessories around his waist, he just might be able to use it as a weapon.

Harvath sucked up the pain and fumbled for his buckle. He suffered two more blows before it came free, but he put those blows on account, along with all the rest, determined to make Alomari pay in full. This time he had the right guy, and even if there had been cameras present, he was still going to beat him to within an eighth of an inch of his life. He wouldn’t stop until Alomari begged to die. Then he’d drag him back and turn him over to the United States to be interrogated and spend the rest of his life rotting in a jail somewhere while Harvath roasted a pig in his honor each weekend under his prison window.

As Alomari drew his foot back for yet another kick, the belt came free, and Harvath rolled away from his attacker, swinging it in a wide arc. He wanted to fell the man by nailing him right in the back of the legs, but first Harvath had to rid him of his weapon.

With a sharp crack, Harvath brought the equipment-laden piece of webbing around and hit Alomari’s hand so hard that his Steyr TMP was torn out of it and sent clattering across the floor. With the weapon out of the way, Harvath could go to work, and go to work he did. Springing to his feet, he swung the belt in a large figure eight above his head and then struck Alomari across the back. The metal pitons tore huge pieces of fabric away from the assassin’s parka. Harvath could only fantasize what they would do when he finally connected with flesh.

Whipping the belt around harder this time, he tore straight through Alomari’s parka. The man screamed as the last piece of metal hanging from the webbing split open a deep gash in his neck. Alomari could do nothing but recoil as Harvath kept coming at him. Blow after blow, Harvath swung the belt harder and harder. Backing the man up against one of the many tunnel entrances, Harvath beat the assassin mercilessly. Alomari’s screams filled the entire cavern as Harvath made good on his promise that the assassin would pay for every innocent life he had ever taken.

The killer’s parka hung from his body in bloody shreds as Harvath pulled the belt back for another devastating blow. But just as he was about to whip the belt forward, it went completely slack. It made no sense until he started hearing pitons, carabiners, and other pieces of climbing metal hitting the ceiling and raining down on the floor. The belt had broken.

It made no difference to Harvath. He was more than happy to turn his bare hands on the remorseless assassin, but before he could land the first punch, Alomari turned the tables on him. Harvath took two steps backward when he saw what the man had in his hands. In his absolute rage, Harvath had once again underestimated his opponent, and this time he knew he was going to pay the ultimate price.

“Now I am going to kill you,” spat Alomari. He had a double-action, hammerless.357 Ruger KSP revolver pointed right at Harvath’s chest.

Harvath dropped the broken belt to the ground, looked Khalid Alomari right in the eye, and said, “You just don’t get the point, do you?”

“What point?” he sneered as he steadied his hand and began applying pressure to the trigger.

“This one,” said a voice from behind as a twenty-four-hundred-year-old Celtic falcata was thrust through the assassin’s back.

The powerful sword erupted through his chest in an incredible spray of blood. With its curved blade, it kept climbing upward. Still alive, Alomari was able to see it come back at him and feel the tip of the blade thrust up from underneath his chin and impale his entire face.

As Alomari’s dying body fell twitching to the ground, Jillian released the falcata’s handle and stared at what she had done.

Jillian was unable to stop shaking. “He would have killed us both,” said Harvath as he tried to break the spell that had come over her.

“I know,” said Jillian quietly. “I know.”

As if her handling of the shelf collapse wasn’t enough, in killing Alomari, Jillian Alcott had proven that when she really needed to, she could make her fear work for her and not vice versa.

“Here,” said Harvath, handing her the Ruger. “This is yours. You earned it.”

“I don’t want a souvenir.”

“It’s not a souvenir. It might save your life. Do you know how to handle one of these?”

“I grew up on a farm. I’ve done my fair share of shooting.”

“Killing people is a lot different than killing rabbits,” said Harvath, who immediately regretted his words. It was definitely the wrong thing to say, and as if he needed any further convincing, Jillian turned away from him and vomited. He felt so stupid. The woman had just killed a man. Sometimes Harvath simply forgot the code civilians lived by. As they should, people who had never killed before found it reprehensible, even those who did so in defense of themselves or the people they cared about. What Jillian Alcott had just been through would probably haunt her for the rest of her life. Offering to let her keep the pistol was definitely a bad idea, no matter how well intentioned.

Harvath left Jillian alone while he combed through Alomari’s pockets. What he found he took-a car key, a high-end Benchmade tactical folding knife, and some spare ammunition. Al-Qaeda had trained him well. There was nothing on his person that could lead anyone anywhere. The U.S. intelligence community was going to be awfully upset at having lost a chance to interrogate him, but as far as Harvath was concerned, he and Jillian had been faced with no other choice.

They spent the next hour combing the tunnels for any clues they could find about Hannibal ’s mystery weapon. The quiet searching seemed to allow Jillian time to make a tentative peace with what she had been forced to do.

Jillian spent some time studying the intricately carved box they had examined earlier, trying to divine the meaning of its engraving. Finally, she spoke, and when she did, she was all business. She agreed with Harvath that the scenes were allegories but their exact message wasn’t clear. There was a depiction of some sort of magical book, which she thought might represent the Arthashastra, but paleopathology, not iconography, was her specialty.

Jillian did, though, concur with his assessment that what they had originally believed were wolves on the breastplates were actually dogs. The reason was that on the box, more than just snarling heads were depicted. These animals also had curved tails-a definite Canis familiaris trait and not something normally associated with Canis lupus.