Brad Thor - The Lions Of Lucerne

Half an hour gave Harvath plenty of time to become cozy with the members of the tour group sitting around him. A healthy dose of charm made him the darling of the conversation while the train slowly descended from the Jungfraujoch.

As the overhead speaker began announcing the stop for Wengen, Scot could feel the train slowing down. Timing would be everything.

He looked at his watch and then out the window to judge how much distance was left.

“…It’d be great to have you. We’ll take you out on the boat and show you nothing but whales, seals, and beautiful Washington State scenery. Camano Island is like no other vacation you’ve ever taken,” Scot said as he wrote down a fictional address with a pen he borrowed from one of the group members. On vacation, people were so willing to give strangers personal information that they never would at home: names, addresses, phone numbers…it was a phenomenon unique to traveling.

As Scot was about to hand the ballpoint pen back to the man he’d borrowed it from, he made it appear as if he had accidentally dropped it.

“What butterfingers I’ve got. Sorry about that,” he said, bending down to pick it up. The train came to a stop in the Wengen station, and Harvath kicked his plan into action.

From where he was fishing beneath the seats for the dropped pen, he screamed, “Oh, my God! There’s a bomb underneath the seats! Everybody out!”

A murmur of shock floated across the train compartment, but only a couple of people moved. He didn’t have time for this. They were getting out whether they liked it or not. A little added influence was needed. Scot drew the fake Glock from his waistband and began yelling once again as he waved the pistol in the air where everyone could see it, “A bomb! A bomb! A bomb! We’re all going to die! Everybody get out! Run for your lives!”

Whether it was the added urgency in his voice or the gun he would never know, but it didn’t matter. Passengers were screaming and trampling each other to get out of the compartment and as far away from the train as possible. This only helped Harvath as passengers began streaming out of the other compartments, shouting for help and running for their lives. It was sheer chaos.

Using the fleeing passengers for concealment, Harvath hopped out of the train and began running with the herd’s forward direction. Tentatively, he shot a glance backward and his stomach immediately cramped at what he saw-three very large, broad-shouldered men standing alongside the train scanning the crowd and not moving. Trouble in paradise.

Harvath turned around, but not quickly enough to see that a woman in front of him had stumbled, and he fell right down on top of her. She was panicked, hyperventilating, and clawing at the snow-covered ground to get back up and away from the soon-to-be-exploding train. Next, a man ran straight over the top of Harvath, unknowingly digging the toe of his boot into the small of his back. Scot let out a groan of pain. Maybe his ruse had been a little too effective.

Knowing he had to move fast, he saw a break in the people running to his right and rolled off the woman, who was up and away in an instant. Scrambling to his feet, Harvath dug his boots in and shot forward out of his crouch, just in time to see two explosions in the snow where he had been lying. The killers had seen him too and were now firing. Harvath took off as fast as his legs would carry him.

There wasn’t enough time to try to do another quick change to throw the men off his path. His only hope was to outrun them, or lose them somehow in the village.

Wengen played host every year to the world’s longest downhill ski race, the Lauberhorn. Although downhill had not been Scot’s area of expertise, he had come to Wengen to see the race twice and cheer on the American team, as well as competitors he knew from other countries.

The village hadn’t changed much since he’d last been here. Completely devoid of cars, it seemed frozen in time. Were Goethe to come back to revisit the nine-hundred-foot-high Staubach waterfall, only the fashions would seem out of place.

Harvath’s breath came in quick, short gasps as he ran uphill deeper into the village. Dodging the brightly attired skiers that crowded the narrow lanes, he didn’t dare venture a look back. He knew his pursuers were right on his tail.

He took a quick right turn, and wood splintered as an ornate balustrade on a low-lying balcony exploded just above his head. Running hard, Harvath removed his purple cap and threw it to his left into a narrow alley between two chalets. He then dove right, behind a wall of hay stacked only a few feet high.

Focusing on his breathing, he willed his body to calm down or at least to quiet down. He strained his ears for sounds of the men coming down the small street. Fifteen feet in front of him, a herd of mountain goats, realizing Harvath was not here to distribute any of the hay he was hiding behind, went back to rubbing their heads against the rough posts of the tiny paddock, their bells ringing in a disjointed chorus.

Scot continued to listen, and slowly, he began to hear the telltale sounds of heavy boots crunching upon the snow. The shooters were close, but they weren’t stupid. Taking their time, they moved cautiously down the street, ever watchful for an ambush.

When they were almost even with the bales of hay, Harvath held his breath, his hands tight around the toy Glock, for all the good it would do him. He heard one of the men speak. “Look. On the ground. Ten o’clock. That’s the hat he was wearing. He went this way.”

“We’ll check it out. You go the other way and radio if you see anything. We don’t want any more screwups. Get moving, and remember, he has a gun,” said another voice. This one was obviously in charge.

These men were speaking English…American English. They weren’t the same voices he had heard in the Ice Palace. They were different, but the second man sounded familiar. He knew that voice. It was the same one Harvath had heard yell the word gun days before outside his bank. These were the men in the ghettomobile with the automatic weapons who had tried to kill him. What were they doing here? How could they possibly have followed him all this way? Harvath was sure that his trail stopped dead in Zurich, even if someone had been sharp enough to have been looking for Hans Brauner. Switzerland was a small country, but not that small. He couldn’t figure out how in the world they had tracked him.

He quickly did the math-the woman and at least two men at the Ice Palace and now these three here. What was the connection? Were they all working together? Were the woman and the two men from the Ice Palace also searching for him in the village? There wasn’t any time to figure things out; he needed to get moving again.

Peering over the bales of hay, he saw that two of the men had taken the bait and had headed off down the passage between the two chalets, back toward the village. The other man continued down the street in the direction his group had been heading before they split up. There was only one option open to Harvath, and that was to go through the paddock.

It would allow him to put a lot of distance between him and his pursuers quickly, and that was all that mattered. Taking one more look over the bale of hay, he decided to make his move. Tucking the Glock back into his waistband, he covered the fifteen feet to the paddock in seconds. In hindsight, he probably should have brought some of the hay with him.

The minute he jumped into the enclosure, the animals started going crazy. The neighing and jangling of their bells grew as the animals converged on Harvath. Some of their horns were long and sharp, and undoubtedly could do a lot of damage. The goats didn’t look happy, and Scot didn’t want to hang around and see if they were friendly. This wasn’t a day at the petting zoo.