Brad Thor - The First Commandment

Smoke was pouring from the engine compartment. Harvath cut the engines and the wildly spinning props soon fell silent. Stumbling from the boat, he looked for Morrell and found him lying near a rock wall over thirty feet away. He was barely conscious, and Harvath knew better than to move him. He told Morrell to stay still and that he’d be back with help soon.

What he didn’t share with him was that he had something else he had to do first.

Off the end of the Harvard Club boat pier, Harvath could see the two halves of Roussard’s boat upturned and bobbing just above the water line. Ignoring the splitting pain from his head, Harvath took off running down the pier, launching himself at the end of it in a flying leap over the water.

When he plunged beneath the surface, he opened his eyes and began looking for Roussard. He stayed down as long as he could, until he had no choice but to come up again for air. Circling the wreckage in search of the terrorist, he ignored the burning sensation of spilled gasoline that was pouring into his wound.

He was about to submerge himself again when he heard coughing from about seventy-five yards away. It had come from a fleet of moored sailboats. Swimming as quietly as he could, Harvath made for the sound.

From Fontana, the village air raid siren was calling the police, volunteer fire, and rescue workers to duty.

Unobserved, he moved closer to the sailboat, and then, taking a deep breath, Harvath slipped once more beneath the surface of the water.

When he got beneath the sailboat’s heavy, fixed keel he looked up and saw a pair of legs feebly treading water. Sliding his Benchmade from where it was clipped in his pocket, Harvath depressed its lone button and the blade swung up and locked into place.

Like a great white shark circling its prey, Harvath made a loop beneath Roussard and headed upward, quietly breaking the surface behind him.

The man must have sensed Harvath’s presence, because all of a sudden he spun, his eyes wide with fear. Blood was running from his nose as well as both of his ears. When he coughed, great gobs of it came out, and as Harvath positioned himself for the kill, he noticed that one of Roussard’s eyeballs must have become detached, as it remained stationary and didn’t track the way the other one did.

There was no mercy in Harvath’s heart for this terrorist, this killer of innocent men and women. Roussard was beyond rehabilitation, and Harvath knew the greatest gift he could give the American taxpayers was to prevent Roussard from ever standing trial and living out the next twenty years on appeal after appeal in some prison somewhere.

Harvath swung the knife with one fluid slash, and its blade tore through the soft flesh of Roussard’s throat. That which has been taken in blood, can only be answered in blood, he thought to himself.

Watching him die, Harvath began to realize that he’d made a mistake. The blade was so razor-sharp that Roussard probably hadn’t even felt it. Bleeding to death was too good for him. Harvath wanted him to be filled with terror as he died, just as so many of his victims had.

Quickly swimming around behind him, Harvath placed both of his hands upon Roussard’s shoulders and pushed him beneath the surface of the water.

The man struggled violently for almost a minute. Then his body fell quiet and Harvath knew he was dead.

Harvath remained at the scene with Rick Morrell until an ambulance arrived. Though the CIA operative insisted he’d be fine, the EMTs put him in a cervical collar, placed him on a backboard, and transported him to the hospital for evaluation. Once Morrell was gone, Harvath made his way back down to the water.

The Polaris had docked at the end of the Abbey Springs boat pier, and when Todd Kirkland saw Harvath making his way to where all the passengers were gathered, he thought for sure he was coming for him. But he wasn’t. Nor was he coming for Meg. Instead he spoke briefly with Meg’s two Secret Service agents and then took Jean Stevens by the hand and led her away.

After walking back along the lake path to her cottage to pick up extra clothes and her car, Jean drove Harvath to the Abbey Resort. Still soaking wet, he walked straight past the gaping-mouthed stares of the front desk staff to his room.

He called the pilots and told them to be ready to move in five minutes, then quickly changed into the clothes Jean Stevens had given him. As she drove them to the airport, Harvath informed Zucker and Burdic that they were flying to D. C. His one hope was that he would make it there before Tracy ’s parents could remove her from life support.

When the plane touched down it was raining. Through the rain-soaked windows of his cab, he could see by the light of the D. C. streetlights that the leaves were already beginning to turn color. Summer was officially over.

Tracy ’s night nurse, Laverna, was the first one to notice him when he stepped into the ICU. “I tried to call you. Didn’t you get any of my messages?” she asked.

Harvath shook his head. “I’ve been out of pocket for a few days. How’s Tracy?”

The nurse gripped his arm. “Her parents took her off the ventilator this afternoon.”

The tide of emotion that welled up inside him was overwhelming, and he was too exhausted to try to fight it. He could not believe that Bill and Barbara Hastings had done it. They could have at least waited for him to return. Tears formed at the corners of his eyes and he did nothing to try to hide them.

“She’s strong,” stated the nurse, “she’s a fighter.”

Harvath couldn’t understand what she was saying. He was too exhausted. He just stared at her blankly.

“She’s still alive.”

Harvath turned and moved quickly away from the nurse’s station.

When he entered Tracy ’s room, her parents looked up from where they were sitting. Neither of them knew what to say.

Ignoring them, Harvath walked to the other side of the bed and picked up Tracy ’s hand. He gave it a squeeze and said, “It’s me, honey. It’s Scot. I’m here now.”

There was a movement, and at first Harvath thought he was imagining it. Then it happened again. It was weak, but Tracy had squeezed his hand. She knew he was there.

At that moment, everything came flooding out of him. He buried his head in her hair and as she squeezed his hand again he began to cry.

JERUSALEM

Tracking down the puppeteer pulling Philippe Roussard’s strings began with a visit to Dei Glicini e Ulivella, the exclusive private hospital in Florence where payments from Roussard’s mother’s Wegelin amp; Company account had been made.

Harvath didn’t know what to expect. Part of him thought he might find a badly burned Adara Nidal sitting up in her hospital bed waiting for him, her silver eyes unmistakable behind a mask of charred flesh.

What he discovered was that the payments weren’t for Adara Nidal. Instead, they were for a male patient with a name Harvath had never heard before and who had recently up and left.

All Harvath’s suppositions had been wrong. Adara was not the person behind Roussard’s release from Gitmo and his subsequent attacks within the United States. It was somebody else-a man with a false name who had simply vanished.

The first person who entered Harvath’s mind was Hashim, Adara’s brother and Philippe’s uncle. But when the hospital administrator finished touring Harvath through the patient’s abandoned room and showed him into his office, Harvath realized how wrong he’d been in assuming Adara or her brother were behind the monster that had been Philippe Roussard. Sitting on the credenza behind the administrator’s desk was something that pointed to another person-someone far more complex, far more twisted, who had a reach long enough to fake his own death, even for a second time.