Brad Thor - The Lions Of Lucerne

Scot’s first shot went off just as he was hitting the floor and missed the man’s head by a fraction of a centimeter. His next shot was dead-on, right between the eyes, and the man went down. Scot’s pistol was empty, and he let it fall where he lay.

The man had been sitting at a small wooden desk across the hall from a large metal door. On the desk was a ring of keys. Harvath stepped over the man to grab the keys and almost had to pinch his nose from the stench of body odor. Fucking Middle Easterners. Why hadn’t some of them ever heard of showers?

Scot had been convinced that neither Abu Nidal, nor his FRC was involved with this whole mess, but now it looked as though he might have been wrong. Or had he? Harvath reached down and yanked off the headdress. Underneath was the head of a man with blue eyes and blond hair who looked more Swiss than Heidi of the mountains herself. Scot glanced at Claudia, whose face was registering the same bewilderment as his own. Why pose as a Middle Easterner? What’s the point?

With the keys in his hand, Scot motioned to Claudia to pick up the Skorpion.

“Cover me,” he said.

Claudia nodded and looked both ways up and down the hallway.

Approaching the door, he noticed a shelf had been built directly to the left and on it sat a box. Wires ran from the box up the wall and above the door. Booby trap? Very gently, Harvath opened the box and looked inside. What he saw made absolutely no sense at all-a tape recorder. He pushed the play button and he heard a faint wailing sound coming from the unit’s built-in speaker. It was a Muslim call to worship. Even more bizarre.

Above the door, was another box with some sort of fan unit pointing toward whatever lay on the other side. Scot dragged the creaky wooden desk chair around the body and beneath the box so he could check out this other mysterious item.

Once again, he eased off the lid. Immediately he was sorry. It was like being punched in the face. The stench was horrible. There was only one thing in the world that smelled like that-camel shit.

The two boxes were not booby traps. They were meant to annoy the hell out of whoever was on the other side of that door, and Scot was finally sure of one thing. He knew exactly whom he’d find inside.

He gave the door a last once-over and also checked beneath the desk for any hidden wiring or switches. There were none. Claudia stood ready with the machine pistol as Scot found the correct key and turned it in the lock.

As the door opened, Harvath was greeted with a hot gust of air and the terrible smell of camel feces. The temperature had to be at least thirty degrees higher than in the hallway. The room was dark, and it took his eyes a moment to adjust. The walls had been treated to look like sandstone, the floor was covered with straw, and there, sitting in the corner, his hand in a dirty bandage, was the president.

He was dressed in the simple robes Harvath had seen on so many Arab peasants during missions in the Mideast. The same type of robes the members of operation Rapid Return had been wearing when they were all killed. The light from the open door hurt the president’s eyes, and Scot maneuvered himself in front of it to help shield the glare.

“What do you want? If you’ve got my food, then leave it. If you’re going to take another finger, then get it over with!” said the president. His voice reflected how drained he was.

“Nobody’s going to hurt you anymore, Mr. President,” said Scot.

Rutledge lifted his hand to his forehead and tried to peer into the light. “Who is it? Who’s there?” he asked feebly, too forlorn to even hope that a rescue had been achieved.

“It’s Secret Service Agent Harvath, sir. You’re going home.”

“I seriously doubt that,” said a voice as Claudia was struck in the back of the head and thrown in a heap across the floor, landing next to the president.

Scot spun just in time to see Gerhard Miner bring the machine pistol down hard across the top of his head.

Harvath’s knees buckled and gave out. He fell to the ground and before he could catch his breath, Miner kicked him hard in the jaw, sending him reeling backward.

“Do you know how many of my men you have killed? Do you have any idea what an incredible inconvenience you have been?”

While he ranted, Miner kicked Harvath repeatedly in the ribs. “Some of the finest men I assembled for this mission are dead. I worked tirelessly, thinking of everything, and then you come along and ruin it all.”

The blows fell again and again. Scot was unable to breathe. The man was going to kill him, and then Claudia, even Rutledge. Scot was seeing stars, the blow to his head had been incredibly painful. He needed to do something now, or it would be too late.

As Miner drew his foot back and came forward for the next kick, Scot was ready for him and grabbed at his ankle in mid-strike.

“Do you honestly think I am that stupid, Agent Harvath?” said Miner, who’d anticipated the move, avoided it, and now pointed the Skorpion right at him. “You seem to have more lives than a cat, yet this is how it is going to end for you, and your president will be able to watch you fail him yet again. I would like to say it has been nice knowing you, but it hasn’t. As I said last time, I hope never to see you again. Now I will make sure that happens.”

Harvath started laughing.

“What’s so funny, Agent Harvath?”

“Ah, Gerry. If you only knew how much I hate having things pointed at me.”

Miner’s smug look of satisfaction was quickly replaced by fear as he was barreled sideways into the wall of the makeshift cell. Claudia had taken advantage of the fact that Miner was distracted and thought her unconscious to surprise him. He fell to the floor with the machine pistol in his hand, rolled, and struck Claudia full across the face. Once again, she fell in a heap along the floor, and this time Harvath knew she wasn’t faking.

Without wasting a moment more, Harvath fought back his dizziness to pounce on Miner. As Scot fought to subdue him, Miner struck him repeatedly with the gun. Harvath returned the favor with a knee to Miner’s groin, an elbow to his face, and an uppercut to his jaw. Harvath hammered at the man’s shoulder and reached for the hand that held the gun, which was once again swinging dangerously toward him.

Scot caught Miner by the wrist and drove it with incredible force into the area where the wall met the floor. He heard a snap as Miner let out a scream and his finger squeezed the trigger. The twenty-round magazine emptied in the blink of an eye. Bullets showered the room. Scot could only pray that neither Claudia nor the president had been hit. As he continued his assault Miner began to weaken, and Scot knew he had hurt him…badly.

He pounded the man relentlessly, the blows falling faster and with more ferocity. He pounded him for Agents Maxwell and Ahern and Houchins. He pounded him for the betrayal he had suffered at the hands of William Shaw and for the lives of his friend Natalie Sperando and her friend André Martin. He pounded Gerhard Miner for all of the innocent lives that had been lost, especially that of his best friend, Sam Harper. Miner was going to die, and Harvath was going to send him to hell an on express train, all expenses paid.

Scot’s hands were covered in blood. He heard bone shatter as he landed his blows. His rage, guilt, and remorse drove him on like a madman. In the middle of it all, something called out to him, urged him back toward the shores of sanity. There was a hand on his shoulder, the president’s. He was speaking to him.

“Agent Harvath, that’s enough,” he rasped. “We need him alive. Come on now. He can’t hurt us anymore. Let up on him.”

The president was right. Scot slowly rolled off Miner and looked at the badly beaten body lying before him. He couldn’t tell if the man was breathing or not, and frankly, he didn’t care.