Brad Thor - The Last Patriot

Outside the cottage, he cleaned the sand from his feet and then opened the screen door and stepped inside.

He stripped out of his swimsuit and rinsed off in a hot shower. With his hair slicked back and a towel wrapped around his waist, he retrieved his backpack, a glass, and walked out onto the wraparound veranda.

He placed everything on the table, sat down, and powered up his satellite phone. As it worked to establish a signal, Dodd opened one of the bottles of Arundel rum he’d bought at the airport in Tortola and poured three fingers into his glass. He and Lisa had gone through at least two bottles of it during their honeymoon.

The brown liquid burned as it went down and though it had been years since he had had a drink, the taste and the sensation were pleasant and familiar, like coming home.

His Koran should not have been sitting right there next to a bottle of alcohol. He knew that, just as he knew that he should not begin drinking again. Alcohol had only added to the darkness and despair of losing his wife and son, but here he and his Koran were anyway.

He had prayed relentlessly for guidance, but none had come. After retrieving the al-Jazari device, he had studied his heart and made his plans accordingly.

The assassin looked down at the glass in his hand and laughed. Though he was far from soft, he certainly wasn’t exhibiting much self-discipline at the moment.

Islam was the answer for America. He felt more certain of that than anything else. He was just without any idea of how to bring such a shift about.

Nevertheless, he knew that Omar with his hate-spewing mosques and Waleed with his laughably corrupt Foundation on American Islamic Relations were all standing in the way of the truly good work Islam could do in America. The two men were not part of the solution. They were abominations and unquestionably part of the problem.

Dodd poured himself another drink. He sipped slowly at it as he watched the minutes tick away on his watch.

At the appointed time, he picked up the satellite phone and dialed Sheik Omar’s private number.

Omar picked up on the first ring. “Is that you, Majd?” he asked.

“It is I,” said the assassin.

“Allah be praised. We have been so worried about you since your last call. We barely had any time to speak. Did you find it? The invention of al-Jazari?”

“I did.”

“Allahu Akbar, my brother. Allahu Akbar.” The sheik was overjoyed. “Allah’s work-our work is now secure. Allahu Akbar!”

“Are you at your desk?” asked Dodd.

“Of course I am. You’ve called me on my private line.”

“And Abdul is with you?”

“He is sitting right here,” replied Omar. “Just as you requested. When can you bring us the device?”

Dodd had no intention of staying on the phone any longer than he needed to. “Stay right there and don’t move,” he said. “I will call you back in thirty seconds.”

Omar, though frustrated, respected the need for security. What’s more, he was so happy with his assassin that at this point the man could have asked anything of him and he would have gladly obliged. “I understand,” he said. “We will be right here waiting. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar !”

Dodd hung up with the words Allahu Akbar , God Is Great, ringing in his ears.

A man of his word, the assassin began dialing the digits almost immediately, except they weren’t for the sheik’s private line. They belonged to a cell phone attached to an improvised explosive device that had been hidden behind Omar’s desk.

BITTER END YACHT CLUB

THE NEXT EVENING

As the last rays of daylight faded, Scot Harvath watched Matthew Dodd drain the final drops out of the bottle he was drinking and stumble inside his cottage.

Having watched the man drink himself into a stupor, Harvath liked his odds. It didn’t mean the assassin wasn’t still dangerous, but it did mean his reflexes and his situational awareness would be significantly dulled.

Harvath put away his binoculars and grabbed his dry bag, grateful to finally be going topside. Though he had rented a sizeable sailboat for the operation, being cooped up belowdecks with not much of a breeze for the better part of the afternoon was not his idea of the perfect Caribbean getaway.

Needless to say, he was here to work, not to play. But a luxury yacht beat any of the snake-, scorpion-, or bug-infested hide sites he’d been forced to endure over the course of his career. Life, especially an enjoyable one, was all about perspective and as Harvath checked the restraints in the cabin he had prepared for Matthew Dodd, he reminded himself of that.

Darkness was settling in as Harvath stepped outside and took a deep breath. The evening breeze felt great against his sweat-soaked body. Quickly, he wiped himself down with fresh water and then tossed his gear into the Zodiac RIB he’d kept moored on the opposite side of the sailboat.

After casting off, he started the engine and moved toward shore, the noise from the small outboard engine just one of several that would be making their way in from the deep water harbor to the Bitter End for cocktails and dinner.

Harvath pulled the boat onto the beach just out of sight of Dodd’s cottage and unloaded his dry bag and a small beach towel. The.40 caliber suppressed Glock 23 he had been issued for this assignment was meant to be a tool of last resort. Plan A was a new waterproof TASER that had been developed for the SEAL teams along with a potent drug cocktail that would keep Dodd sleeping like a baby until Harvath could get him back aboard the sailboat and out into the ocean where he’d be able to start his interrogation.

As Harvath got closer to the cottage, he stopped to listen for signs of what was going on. The last he had seen of Dodd, the rogue CIA operative had come back onto his veranda with another bottle and had round two of the drinking Olympics well underway.

Keep going, my friend , Harvath had thought to himself. You’re only making it easier .

The cottages were built on stilts with wooden staircases on each side of the verandas. Based on how Dodd had positioned himself to look out over the harbor, Harvath decided to come up the south set of stairs and hit him from behind.

Stopping once more at the bottom of Dodd’s staircase, Harvath listened. There was the sound of glass on glass as Dodd poured another drink and then silence.

With the beach towel over his arm and the Glock hidden beneath, Harvath crept soundlessly up the sun-bleached stairs of the cottage.

When he stepped onto the veranda he moved to the wall and kept himself pressed up against it as he continued forward.

He reached the first set of windows, their sheer curtains moving in and out with the breeze. Looking through the bedroom, Harvath could see Dodd’s outline through the open doors on the other side silhouetted by the faint glow of light from the harbor.

The assassin’s back was to him. It was time.

Harvath ducked beneath the windows and stood up on the other side. At the corner of the cottage, he listened and with nothing changed, he raised his weapon and stepped out directly behind Dodd.

As he did, Dodd shot out of his chair and leapt to his feet, but the reaction had nothing to do with Harvath.

Harvath was surprised to see one of the Defense Department’s highest-ranking officials, Imad Ramadan, standing at the other end of the veranda with a suppressed SIG Sauer pistol in his hand.

He was a balding, barrel-chested man of average height in his mid-fifties with a thick gray goatee and dark eyes.

“You’re a long way from D.C., Imad,” said Harvath, his Glock up and at the ready.