Brad Thor - Path Of The Assassin

As the Libyan soldiers bolted for cover, Avigliano ran over to Harvath and began yanking things out of the vehicle. “We’re going to have to blow the FAV in place,” he said as he threw a small bag to Harvath. “Big John says uncle Mu’ammar’s got more men heading in our direction, and it looks like they’re scrambling jets out of Tripoli.”

“Super,” said Harvath. “What else could go wrong?”

“How about this? With all the heat, Big John can’t land in the wadi. They’re dropping a rope and we’re going out FRIES.”

“Ask a stupid question…” mumbled Harvath as he unzipped the bag, knowing full well what he’d find inside.

FRIES was a military acronym for Fast Rope Insertion/Extraction System. Harvath had learned the technique when he was in the SEALs, where it was called SPIE, short for Special Purpose Insertion and Extraction, but no matter what you called it, there was one thing Harvath knew for sure-Meg Cassidy was not going to like it.

Harvath pulled out two nylon FRIES harnesses from the bag and asked, “How about some Valium?”

“I thought you were a tough guy,” said Avigliano as he finished placing his explosive charges throughout the FAV.

“It’s not for me. It’s for our friend, Ms. Cassidy. She’s afraid of heights.”

“Then I suggest you don’t tell her until the very last possible moment. I’ll cover you with the 7.62. Get over there and get her geared up.”

Harvath flashed Avigliano a thumbs-up and took off toward the outcropping the minute he heard the heavy machine gun open up.

DeWolfe was feeling well enough to be taking shots at the Libyans with his Mod Zero and helped lay down enough cover fire for Harvath to get across to their end of the wadi. As soon as he got to Meg Cassidy, he handed her one of the FRIES rigs.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“A harness. Now watch how I put mine on, and do the same,” replied Harvath.

“What do I need a harness for?”

“Safety.”

“Safety for what?”

“Meg, I really don’t have time for this now. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s people up there trying to kill us.”

“Scot, what the hell is going on?”

So much for not telling her, he thought. “The helicopter can’t land in this area. They’re going to lower a rope for us. You clip your harness to it and it pulls you up.”-with everybody else, and we fly away beneath the helicopter like five fish on a stringer, but she’d realize that soon enough. That harness was their only ticket out of Libya.

“Like when the Coast Guard picks up somebody out of the water and reels them in?”

“More or less,” said Harvath. He hated not being completely truthful with her, but he knew it was the only way Meg would go along with things.

“Which one? More or less?” she demanded.

“Take your pick. Listen, we don’t have time for this. Our helicopter is going to be here in a matter of minutes and we both have to be ready to move, so watch me closely and do exactly as I do.”

Harvath finished tightening his FRIES harness and inspected it, then inspected Meg’s and DeWolfe’s. Everyone was good to go. He radioed Avigliano, who told him to stand by. Big John was less than a minute away.

It was amazing to Harvath that he could not yet hear the enormous Chinook, but that was part of the pilots’ M.O. If things went well, you had no idea they were there until they were right on top of you.

Soon enough, the roar of the big MH-47’s rotors was all you could hear. That, and the deafening fire from the Dillon Miniguns, manned by door gunners on both sides of the helicopter, who were throwing down deadly blankets of fire.

As Big John made repeated passes to strafe the Libyan soldiers, Carlson ran out into the wadi with pockets full of Chem-lights to mark their makeshift landing zone. Once Avigliano got the word from Big John that he was coming in to drop the rope, the team made their way toward the LZ.

There was a loud, blowing wind as the Chinook swept in, flared, and then hovered above the wadi. Sheets of sand hitting the rotors gave off sparks making them appear greenish white in the night sky.

One of the Chinook’s crew kicked the heavy FRIES rope out the door, and Harvath and the rest of the team let it hit the ground and stay there for several seconds. Because helicopters weren’t grounded, they generated a tremendous amount of static electricity, which made it necessary to allow the rope to discharge the current before touching it.

Loops were staggered along the thick rope, and Harvath took up the first position, where he rapidly locked his harness in with a heavy metal D ring. Out in the open, even with the heavy fire from the door gunners up above, they were all still sitting ducks. Next on the line came Meg, then Carlson, DeWolfe, and finally Avigliano. Once everyone was clipped in, Avigliano blew the FAV with a remote detonator. He then signaled the pilot with an infrared beam, and the Chinook began its quick ascent.

The key to a hot FRIES extraction was to keep one hand on the rope and the other on your weapon, so you could return fire at the enemy. Harvath, DeWolfe, and Avigliano, along with the gunners in the MH-47, gave the Libyans every single thing they had. With a broken collarbone, it was all Carlson could do to hold on, and it made him madder than hell that he wasn’t able to shoot anybody.

Meg Cassidy’s sheer terror of the FRIES extraction was rivaled only by her newfound hate for Scot Harvath. By the time they had crossed the Tunisian border, she had vowed to herself not only to never trust him again, but never to speak to him either.

The new United States Embassy in Tunisia’s capital, Tunis, was located at the intersection of the La Marsa Highway and the road to La Goulette -literally the gullet, which connected the Gulf of Tunis to Tunisia’s main seaport. The sprawling, intricately landscaped compound occupied approximately twenty-one acres and included a chancellery, guardhouses, motor pool, commissary, low-rise office building, warehouse, shops, Marine barracks, recreation center, and embassy staff town houses. All U.S. Embassy operations for Tunisia were headquartered there. Some might wonder why the U.S. needed such a large compound in Tunisia, but Harvath knew the answer.

The embassy served as a major intelligence-gathering center. Its off-limits areas, with raised floors and next-generation satellite listening-and-surveillance equipment, ran at a frenetic pace day and night as operatives tried to stay three steps ahead of everything that was happening in “their corner of the world.” From this forward outpost, the United States monitored, collected, and processed sensitive information regarding most of the Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Middle East. Almost the entire staff was on either the NSA’s or CIA’s payroll, and it was no surprise to Harvath that after their extraction from Libya, this was where they had been brought for debriefing.

It had been intense. Though Harvath tried to interject on his behalf, Gordon Avigliano took quite a verbal beating from Rick Morrell for coordinating the unapproved rescue operation. To Avigliano’s credit, he shielded his two fellow operatives from most of the heat and claimed sole responsibility for disobeying a direct order from his superior. Harvath was seeing, yet again, a different side to the CIA and, in particular, the Special Activities Staff. He was beginning to think that his earlier assumptions about the group as a whole might have been wrong.

The debriefing was an endless session of finger-pointing and shouting. Harvath was repeatedly blamed for screwing up the operation by going in too close and getting captured. Though Harvath claimed that they had acquired excellent intelligence, Morrell would hear nothing of it. Morrell was certain that even if Abu Nidal had a daughter, there was no way she would ever be put in charge of his organization. At best, the whole scenario, stated Morrell, was established to put Harvath off-guard to get information from him that would be useful to Hashim Nidal.