Brad Thor - The First Commandment

Checking first for any signs of Morrell’s men on the ground below, Harvath hopped up onto the stone balustrade and pulled himself onto the steeply sloped roof.

The slate tiles were almost impossible to get traction on. Harvath’s feet kept slipping as he moved his way down the roofline. His goal was to drop onto the garage and from there to the ground where he could make his way back into the woods. However, it didn’t turn out exactly the way he had planned.

Ten feet away from the garage, Harvath’s foot caught a loose tile and he lost his balance-this time for good.

He went down hard, hitting the edge of the roof before being launched into the open air. Harvath tried to right himself, but he was traveling at too great a rate of speed.

He landed hard on his left side, the force of the impact crushing the air from his lungs. Despite the thick bed of landscaping mulch, had he landed on his head, his neck would have snapped like a matchstick. Though Harvath didn’t feel very lucky at the moment he was, extremely.

Even though his brain was scrambled from the fall and he couldn’t breathe, he knew on a primal level that he needed to get moving or he was going to be dead.

He sucked in huge gulps of air, trying to saturate his lungs with oxygen. As his chest heaved, he caught sight of his pistol lying in the dirt several feet away.

He scrambled toward it, and as his fingers closed around the slide, he felt the air returning to his lungs.

Getting to his feet, Harvath made sure to remain below the window line as he ran toward the garage. When he got there, he pulled up short, flattening his back against the cool stone wall.

Raising his H amp;K to chest height, he risked a quick peek around the corner.

Two of Morrell’s men were already on the ground looking for him, and one was headed his way. In a word, Harvath was fucked.

The only chance Harvath had of escape was to draw Morrell and his men off his trail, and to do that, he was going to need to take one of them out of commission.

Planting his feet, Harvath crouched and gripped his pistol by the barrel, turning the butt outward. All of this would be so much easier if he were willing to kill Morrell and his team, but that was still off the table.

He quieted his breathing and listened. He knew the man was just around the corner, no more than a few feet away, yet he couldn’t hear anything.

Harvath’s legs burned and sweat was breaking out on his forehead. He was like a coiled spring that had been wound too tight. He wasn’t going to be able to hold this position much longer.

Suddenly, there was a flash of color as one of Morrell’s men did a hasty peek around the corner of the garage. That was when Harvath sprang.

Grabbing the man’s submachine gun with his left hand and pulling him off-balance, Harvath slammed the butt of his pistol into the man’s temple hard enough to make him see stars, lots of them.

Instantly, his knees buckled, and Harvath yanked him the rest of the way around the corner to his side of the house.

Keeping his own pistol trained on him, Harvath took the man’s MP5, as well as a spare magazine, and slung it over his shoulder. The man carried a.40 caliber Glock in a paddle holster at his hip, and Harvath helped himself to that too.

In the man’s ear was a Secret Service-style ear bud. Harvath checked his collar and found a microphone, which was connected to a small, Midland walkie-talkie on his belt.

“I’m going to give you one chance,” whispered Harvath. “Tell your team I’m in the woods, north of the house headed for the road. Got it?”

“Fuck you,” spat the man, his head still reeling.

Transitioning to the silenced MP5, Harvath jammed the weapon into the man’s groin. “He’s in the woods, north of the house and headed for the road,” repeated Harvath. “Do it, or I’ll blow your balls off.”

With his eyes glaring at Harvath, the man nodded.

Harvath reached over and activated the microphone.

Wincing in pain, the man stammered, “This is McCourt. Harvath’s in the woods north of the house. He’s headed for the road.”

Releasing the transmit button, Harvath pulled the submachine gun out of the man’s crotch and cracked him across the side of the head, knocking him unconscious.

He waited until he heard Morrell’s people go crashing through the brush at the north end of the property and then made his break for the waterfront.

As he ran, his mind replayed what Jean Stevens had said about the rehearsal dinner. We’re getting picked up on the dock at five-thirty for a cocktail cruise and then it’s off to the club for dinner.

Harvath looked at his Kobold. It was already five-thirty-three.

No longer caring that his cell phone could allow the CIA to pinpoint his location, Harvath pulled his BlackBerry from his pocket and turned it on. As soon as it registered a signal, he dialed Meg’s cell phone. He was immediately dumped into her voicemail and realized that the phone must have been turned off.

The only other person he knew on the boat was Jean Stevens, but he had no idea if she even carried a cell phone, much less what her number was.

Harvath contemplated calling the Secret Service, so they could alert the agents on Meg’s detail, but working his way through the chain of command would take too much time.

He was the only person who could possibly stop Roussard, but to do that, he needed a way to get to the other side of the lake.

Arriving at the shore path, Harvath stopped. He could go either right or left, but whichever direction he chose it needed to have a pier in close proximity with a fast boat. If he chose wrong, Meg Cassidy, as well as her Secret Service detail and all of her guests, were going to die.

Harvath ran out to the end of Roussard’s dock to get a better view. East of his location for at least a thousand yards was nothing but shoreline, while less than two hundred yards to the west were a handful of short piers like the one he was standing on. Several of them had boats, and one even had a family that was loading theirs with food and wine as they prepared to go out for an evening cruise.

Harvath pulled his creds from his pocket and spun, ready to ID himself to the boat’s owners as he ran for their dock, but was instead greeted by the sight of Rick Morrell’s silenced MP5 pointed right at his head.

“You were always too smart for your own good,” said Morrell, his gun trained on Harvath. “Where’s McCourt?”

“Sleeping it off behind the garage,” replied Harvath. “Listen, Rick-”

Morrell held up his hand. “My guys wanted to grab you in downtown Lake Geneva when you were heading for your car, but I said no. It was too public. Now I’ve got one man down and the rest of my team on a wild goose chase. This is going to end right here before anybody else gets hurt.”

Harvath started walking toward him. “We don’t have time for this.”

Morrell responded by painting a racing stripe with his MP5 right up the dock, stopping only inches from Harvath’s feet. “Stop right there and drop all your weapons, right now,” he commanded.

“Roussard is on his way to kill Meg Cassidy.”

“Roussard’s not my problem. Now drop your weapons.”

“He killed Vaile’s nephew, for Christ’s sake. You’ll be a hero at the Agency for bagging him. Jesus, Rick. You know Meg. You know better than anybody else what she risked when she agreed to come on that assignment with us. I don’t care what anybody has told you, you can’t let some shitbag terrorist kill her.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m not authorized to-”

“Fuck authorized. This is about us-all of us who were part of that operation to hunt down Abu Nidal’s kids. Do you know who Roussard is?”