Brad Thor: The Last Patriot

Nevertheless, Tracy was right. What they had just seen didn’t make sense. It could, of course, be nothing, but Harvath doubted it. “The next phone we see, we’ll call it in,” he said.

In front of them, the door of a small bookshop opened and a man in his early fifties with a gray beard, wavy salt-and-pepper hair, and a blue blazer hurriedly stepped outside. Nearly bumping into Harvath and Tracy, the man excused himself in French and continued off in the direction of the café.

Normally, Harvath wouldn’t have given it another thought, but then he caught sight of the driver of the Mercedes standing near the corner. He watched as the man appeared to study a photograph and then raised a cell phone to his ear.

The Arab spoke no more than two words. When he nodded and hung up the phone, Harvath suddenly realized what was going on.

Letting go of Tracy ’s arm, he spun and took off after the man in the blazer, praying he could reach him in time.

Harvath landed on top of the man just as the Mercedes in front of the café exploded.

Acrid, black smoke blotted out the sky as red-hot shrapnel rained down upon the street.

The violence of the explosion made Harvath’s entire body feel as if it had been crushed in a vise. The air was forced from his lungs and his ears rang with such piercing intensity he felt for sure they had to be bleeding.

Reaching to the side of his head, he touched one and then the other. Thankfully, there was no blood. He did a quick assessment of the rest of himself and when he was certain he was okay, he turned his attention to the man in the blue blazer.

Supporting his head, Harvath carefully rolled him onto his back, making sure not to move his neck. He was bleeding from a laceration near his scalp. Removing the man’s handkerchief from his breast pocket, Harvath used it to apply light pressure to the wound. He knew he needed to be careful not to exacerbate any spinal injury.

“Stay still,” Harvath said in French. “Don’t move. Are you hurt anywhere else?”

The man stared at him blankly.

Harvath was about to repeat the question when Tracy raced over to him. “Are you okay?” she asked, out of breath.

“I’m not hurt,” replied Harvath, who then motioned at the man in the blazer and said, “We need to immobilize his neck.”

Tracy knew he was right, but her EOD training had kicked in. “There could be a secondary device. We need to get away from this area before first responders arrive.”

Harvath was well aware of terrorists waiting for help to arrive at the scene of a bombing before setting off another, even deadlier explosion. “He needs an ambulance, though.”

“No,” replied the man suddenly in English. “No ambulance. No hospital.” He was trying to get to his feet.

“Stay still,” ordered Harvath.

“Scot, we need to get out of here, now,” insisted Tracy.

Harvath looked down at the man in the blue blazer and made a decision. Grabbing his upper arm, he helped him stand.

No sooner was he up than his knees buckled. Harvath caught him around the waist and with Tracy ’s help, kept him upright and began to move him away from the flaming café toward the corner. All the while, Harvath kept his eyes open for any of the Arabs who’d been involved in the bombing. If they were smart, they’d be long gone, but Harvath had a very bad feeling there was more to all of this than met the eye.

There were numerous dead and wounded scattered along the sidewalk, as well as inside what was left of the café. Though Harvath and Tracy both wanted to help the others, they knew they couldn’t stop.

Making it to the end of the street, they turned the corner and could hear the wail of klaxons as first responders raced toward the scene.

Harvath and Tracy made their way halfway up the block and found a place to set the injured man down. He was shell-shocked with his eyes semi-glazed over and still bleeding from the gash above his forehead.

After easing him onto a set of weathered stone steps and making sure he wasn’t going to tip over, Harvath and Tracy left him staring into the street as they moved far enough away so they could talk without being overheard.

“How’d you know that bomb was about to go off?” asked Tracy.

“The Arab who dropped the Mercedes was standing across the street. When the guy in the blue blazer passed us, the Arab looked at some sort of photo and then dialed his cell phone.”

“So it wasn’t a random attack. They had him under surveillance. He was the target.”

Harvath nodded.

“But why? Who is he?”

“That’s what I want to know,” replied Harvath as he produced the wallet he had taken from the man.

“You picked his pocket?”

“Call it professional curiosity,” he said as he withdrew the man’s driver’s license. “Evidently, our bombing target is fifty-three-year-old Anthony Nichols of Charlottesville, Virginia.”

Tracy looked over her shoulder to make sure Nichols couldn’t see what they were doing. “ Virginia ? What is he, CIA?”

“According to his business card he is Professor Emeritus and Resident Scholar in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia.”

“Which could mean anything.”

Harvath kept looking through the man’s wallet. It contained everything one would expect it to-credit cards, various membership cards, a small paper envelope with a hotel key card and room number written on it, as well as a smattering of other people’s battered business cards.

Harvath was just about to give up when he recognized something about the last card. Removing it from the stack, he studied it once more. It was for an insurance agent with an address in Washington, D.C., but that wasn’t the important part. What had caught Harvath’s attention was the phone number.

He had seen those ten digits before. In fact, he had them committed to memory. “I know this phone number,” he said.

“What’s it for?” asked Tracy.

“A private voice mail box belonging to the president of the United States.”

And with that Harvath knew that whoever Anthony Nichols was, he was a lot more than a professor of history at UVA.

He was about to say as much to Tracy when she looked over at where Nichols had been sitting and said, “He’s gone.”

WASHINGTON, D.C.

At just over six feet tall with dark hair, dark eyes, and a strong jaw-line, thirty-five-year-old Aydin Ozbek looked more like someone from the pages of Esquire magazine than one of the Central Intelligence Agency’s most proficient field operatives.

A second generation American of Turkish descent, Ozbek had grown up in a tony suburb of Chicago, where he was a high school wrestler of considerable note. With an intense intellect and outstanding SAT scores, he attended the University of Iowa on a full academic scholarship and wrestled all four years; attaining repeated all-American status as his team took three Big Ten titles.

Wanting to serve his country after college, Ozbek, or “Oz” as his friends called him, joined the United States Army with his sights set on the Fifth Special Forces Group. He excelled at everything the Army threw at him and broke several records in Ranger School.

Then came the Special Forces Selection and Qualification courses, which were some of the most physically grueling and mentally demanding experiences he had ever undertaken. Being awarded the Green Beret was one of the greatest accomplishments of Ozbek’s life.

Prior to 9/11, he had served as a medical sergeant, known as an 18 Delta, under a president and national defense strategy that didn’t allow the Special Forces community to carry out the kinds of missions they had been trained for. In short, they didn’t see much action.