Brad Thor - Path Of The Assassin

“They want you to be a real eat-glass-and-drink-gasoline kind of gal. They don’t want you falling apart crying on the battlefield if things get tough.”

“So are you telling me you support this?”

“Absolutely not,” said Harvath in all seriousness. “No one but you has a right to decide what goes into your body.”

“You’re goddamn right,” said Meg. “What is it with you men?”

“Hey don’t lump me in there again.”

“Oh, who cares? You’re all the same, always trying to control women’s bodies!”

Meg was reaching critical mass, and just as Harvath was attempting to calm her down, Rick Morrell entered the lodge. He was fuming, obviously intent on a heated confrontation over the pranks that had been played on him the night before. Little did he know that Meg was even hotter under the collar than he was. Before Harvath could stop her, she jumped from the table and made a beeline straight for him.

“Get out of my way,” said Morrell as Meg approached him. “My beef’s not with you, it’s with Harvath.”

“You’d better think again, mister. Your beef is most definitely with me. Just who the hell do you think you are?”

Morrell had obviously never been confronted by an extremely angry woman before. He had no idea how to handle the situation. If Meg Cassidy had been a man, it would have been easy, but she wasn’t. So, Morrell did what most men normally did in a situation like this and just stood there with his mouth agape and a stupid what’d I do? expression on his face.

“Do you get off on controlling people? Is that what this is all about? Is it?” railed Meg. “You have got to be the ultimate micromanager, you know that? I’ll have you know that I am NOT one of your operatives, and I will not-”

Morrell, having recovered some of his sense of dignity interjected, “Why don’t you just calm down?” BIG mistake number one.

“Calm down? Calm down?” screamed Meg, even angrier now. “Of all the arrogant, chauvinistic…You just snap your fingers and expect little ole me, the woman, to just do as you say. Is that it?”

“Ms. Cassidy, I don’t know what the problem is-”

“The problem appears to be that I’m not aggressive enough for you. Is that it correct? Is that what the problem is here, Mr. Morrell?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Whatever this is, you are obviously overreacting.” BIG mistake number two.

Out of nowhere, Meg Cassidy hit the enormous CIA operative with a very well placed right hook. While it didn’t send Morrell slumping to the floor, he’s knees did buckle, and he was sure everyone in the room had seen it.

“Now that’s overreacting! I hope it was aggressive enough for you,” said Meg as she sidestepped Morrell and left the building.

Harvath was right behind her. On his way out the door, he couldn’t help but take a shot at a dazed Morrell. “You’ve got a hell of a way with the ladies, Ricky. A hell of a way.”

The lone assassin entered Saudi Arabia just as before, via a series of intermediaries and paid conspirators along the Yemeni border. As with the previous mission in Medina, the objective was the same-wreak maximum terror and maximum devastation. This time it would be at Mecca, the very heart of the Muslim world.

The silver-eyed terrorist carried neither identity papers nor documents that could be linked to the Hand of God organization. Saudi Arabia would know the Hand of God had been on their soil only if the mission was successful. Should the assassin be killed or captured along the way, the authorities would never comprehend the full picture. Neither the most vigorous of interrogations nor the most thorough of background checks would reveal anything. In essence, the highly skilled operative was nothing short of a ghost-a wraith borne straight out of the Saudi royal family’s worst nightmare.

It was widely known that King Fahd had abandoned the title of “His Majesty” for “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques,” a reference to the mosques of Medina and Mecca. Tying himself to the holy sites and his people’s faith was a desperate attempt to tighten a slipping grasp on the legitimacy of his monarchy. As the importance of Muslim clerics grew in the daily lives of the Saudi people, less reliance was placed upon the king. The less the people relied upon their king, the greater the threat that one day they would wake up and decide they did not need a king anymore. Fahd and the royal family could easily wake up one morning and find themselves on the outside looking in, exactly as the Shah of Iran had. It might take more work to get rid of the Saudi royal family, but it was amazing what a populace, especially one infused with religious fervor, could do when their minds were set to a task. This was the ever-present reality the Saudi monarchy lived with and feared, day in and day out.

As guardian of two of the holiest sites in the Muslim world, King Fahd took his responsibilities very seriously and had beefed up security at pilgrimage sites around the country. For Fahd, it wasn’t a question of if the Al-Haram Mosque at Mecca, the holiest place on earth to Muslims, akin to what the Vatican was for Catholics, would be attacked, but when. It was the final jewel in the triple crown of terror that he knew the Jewish Hand of God organization had planned. They had made the battle personal by murdering his son, Prince Khalil, in Paris and he was bound and determined not to let them succeed in any further efforts to harm any part of the Muslim world under his protection.

The king had dispatched increased numbers of police, as well as members of the Saudi National Guard, the Special Security Force, and even members of the elite Special Warfare Unit to watch over the great mosque at Mecca, as well as other holy sites along the great pilgrimage trail. His efforts though, were all for naught.

After murdering Prince Khalil in Paris, the assassin had traveled to Montpellier by train. There, it was a short car ride to the seaside home of Jacques Thevenin. Thevenin had been a member of France’s fabled counterterrorism team known as the GIGN. In 1979, the Saudis had called in the GIGN to help dislodge several hundred armed Muslim extremists who had taken over the sacred mosque at Mecca and who were holding thousands of pilgrims hostage in the sixty square kilometers of tunnels and passageways beneath the mosque.

Through a thoroughly detestable little man, known as the Troll, who dealt in the purchase and sale of highly classified information, the assassin discovered that against strict operational policy, Thevenin had kept the plans of the 1979 takedown of the mosque, as well as detailed blueprints of the tunnels beneath, as a souvenir.

Thevenin was still a relatively young man, only in his mid-fifties, but he had gotten soft and careless. To his credit, he did put up some resistance, but only a token amount. The assassin had only begun to fillet his left foot, with a long fishing knife from the kitchen, when Thevenin gave up the location of the plans for the takedown and the schematics of the tunnels. The man also provided the assassin with updated security measures being employed by the Saudis, to which he was privy, having been hired by their government in the last several years as a security consultant.

This last bit of information was an unanticipated bonus. Thevenin had proffered it in the hope that he would be able to save his own life. The hovering specter of death had a way of encouraging dramatic confessions and efforts at bargaining. This was precisely why, whenever possible, the assassin didn’t kill instantly. So much more could be gained by taking one’s time.

When the skin up to Thevenin’s knees was peeled back and most of the flesh had been cut away, the assassin realized the man had nothing more to give. It wasn’t that Thevenin hadn’t tried. He had offered a wealth of information, but none of it was useful to his inquisitor. The assassin removed a long garrote wire from the backpack resting against the chair to which Thevenin had been duct-taped, and wrapped it quickly around the man’s throat. The razor-sharp wire cut into the former counterterrorism operative’s neck as if it were nothing more than a wheel of soft Camembert cheese.