Brad Thor - The First Commandment

The DCI was silent as he composed his response.

“With that many cops and state troopers on the lookout, we might get lucky and thwart any potential attack,” added Rutledge.

“We might,” said Vaile, conceding the point. “We might also get a lot of questions, and I guarantee you someone is going to connect it to what happened in Charleston.”

“You don’t know that for sure.”

“Mr. President, cops talk to each other, and they’re very good at connecting dots. Lots of them are going to draw the same conclusion. And the press is going to pick up the thread eventually too. Once word starts circulating about this alert, we won’t be able to put the genie back in the bottle.”

“So your plan is to do nothing?”

“Absolutely, if for no other reason than if the terrorists get wind of the alert, they could take it as an admission of guilt on our part. If they saw us girding for the exact type of attack that they had threatened, they’d know we were behind Palmera’s death.”

That was an angle Rutledge hadn’t considered. “But what if they do attack and we did nothing to prevent it? Could you live with the consequences-especially in this case? I know I couldn’t.”

“I probably couldn’t either,” replied the DCI. “But, we’re not at that point yet. This is about one man out of five. A man who, I might add, had a lot of enemies and who probably would have died a violent death sooner rather than later.”

Vaile’s reasoning made sense. Though the president’s gut was telling him not to go along with the DCI’s plan, he decided to trust his intellect. “What about Harvath, though? He’s the wild card in this that could push everything into all-out chaos.”

“That’s where we have some good news,” Vaile assured the president. “We’ve already got a line on him. If he doesn’t turn himself in by your deadline, we’ll have him in custody soon after.”

“Good,” said Rutledge as he prepared to leave for his run. “I just hope we get him before he puts the nation any further at risk.”

AMMAN, JORDAN

Harvath had spent the next hour and a half interrogating Tammam Al-Tal, allowing only an occasional small dose of morphine to be pumped into the man’s cancer-ridden body.

As good as Harvath was, Al-Tal was a tough read. Undoubtedly, the man had a lot of experience in interrogation, as well as counter-interrogation, and that made Harvath question everything he was able to extract from him.

Harvath kept the questions coming-doubling and tripling back to try to snag the man in a lie, but it never happened. Al-Tal appeared to be telling the truth. He had no idea who had targeted Tracy or Scot’s mother or the ski team.

Harvath was preparing to go at Al-Tal again when, his body wracked with fatigue and the mind-numbing pain that even morphine couldn’t assuage, the man drifted off into unconsciousness.

Al-Tal was beyond the point of any usefulness.

It was now time to focus on Najib.

The distance from Damascus to Amman as the crow flies was about 110 miles. With only light traffic and a speedy entrance at the border crossing from Syria into Jordan, Harvath had at least another hour before Najib showed up at the apartment. It would be more than enough time for him to get ready.

Harvath used Al-Tal’s wife to answer the intercom downstairs, and when Abdel Salam Najib entered the apartment, he was greeted by the butt of Harvath’s Taurus 24/7 OSS pistol as it slammed into the bridge of his nose.

The man was taken completely by surprise. There was a spray of blood as he collapsed to his knees. Harvath drew the pistol back and swung again hard. It connected with a sickening crack alongside Najib’s jaw. His head snapped back and he fell the rest of the way to the floor unconscious.

Harvath relieved the operative of all his weapons, which included a 9mm Beretta pistol, a stiletto knife, and a razor in his left shoe.

He stripped him all the way down to his shorts and duct-taped him to one of the dining-room chairs. He wasn’t going to repeat any of the mistakes he had made with Palmera.

After spending several moments peering through the curtains to make sure there was no one outside waiting for Najib, Harvath headed into the kitchen where he located a bucket and filled it with cold water.

Back in the dining room, he hit Najib in the face with the water full force. The man came to almost instantly.

He began coughing as his head instinctively swung from side to side to get away from the water. When his eyes popped open, it took his brain a moment to process everything that had happened, but he soon put it together.

Working his jaw back and forth to see if it was broken, Najib looked up at the masked man standing in front of him and spat a gob of blood at his feet.

Harvath smiled. Spitting to Middle Easterners was like giving someone the finger in the West. It was a macho show of bravado meant to exhibit a person’s fearlessness.

Harvath didn’t move a muscle. He stood there like a statue as Najib’s eyes scanned the room. Harvath counted silently to himself, one one-thousand, two one-thousand… and then Najib saw it.

The body of Tammam’s bodyguard lay on top of the dining room table-just to Najib’s right. It had been laid out as if part of some horrific banquet. Horrible things had been done to it. Skin had been flayed off the arms and legs, the chest cavity was wide open and gaping, black holes were the only remnants of where vital human organs used to be.

Najib was a hard man, but he was clearly shaken by what he saw.

“Let’s talk about your release from Guantanamo,” said Harvath, breaking the silence.

Najib spat at him again and cursed him in Arabic, “ Khara beek! ”

Al-Tal had told Harvath that Najib was one of the best operatives he had ever had, better even than Asef Khashan. He promised that Harvath would have a very hard time breaking him. As far as Al-Tal knew, the man wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone. He had been sent into Iraq to assist in coordinating the insurgency. His reputation was known far and wide. Those who resisted his commands or, worse yet, failed him in their assignments, were dealt unspeakable punishments that Najib carried out personally.

He was one of the most feared men in Iraq. His skill on the battlefield was rivaled only by his skill in a torture chamber. It was said that the use of short knives, purposely dulled, for videotaped beheadings of Westerners was his idea. To him, the scimitar was too efficient a tool. Victims needed to be shown being slaughtered like animals. One or two whacks with a long sword weren’t enough. They needed to suffer righteous agony at the hands of the brave warriors of the Prophet, and Najib was a master of agony.

Harvath knew his type all too well. The only way to get a psychological advantage over him was to shock him so hard that he was thrown completely off balance. The body on the table was a good start, but Harvath knew it wouldn’t be enough.

Still, he asked his question again, and this time more specifically in Arabic. “The night you were freed from Guantanamo you boarded an airplane. Tell me about it.”

“Fuck you,” Najib replied in English. “I will tell you nothing.” His voice was even more unsettling in person.

The man was well over six feet tall and twice as wide as Harvath. His arms were enormous and he looked like one of those people who was naturally muscular and didn’t need to work out in a gym. He had dark hair, dark eyes, and a thin scar running beneath his chin from one ear to another, which Harvath figured he didn’t get from tying his neckties too tight.

All and all, Najib was a very nasty character and Harvath was glad to have gotten the jump on him. No matter how good a fighter you were, this was not somebody you would ever want to meet on an equal footing.