Blowback

“I think they’re supposed to be dogs.”

“You may have missed your calling in life,” came a man’s voice from behind.

It was a voice he recognized-a voice he knew almost as well as his own. It belonged to the man he had been chasing for months, the man who had set him up in Baghdad and had tried to kill him in Cairo, London, and Paris-Khalid Sheik Alomari.

Harvath wanted it to be a figment of his imagination, but he knew it wasn’t. As he turned and saw the al-Qaeda assassin standing there with a fully automatic machine pistol in his hand, Harvath began to reach for his gun. The problem, though, was that he had left it in his pack to help weigh it down. Defenseless, Harvath did the only other thing he could think of. He yelled for Jillian to run.

FORTY-SEVEN

Call the woman back in here,” commanded Alomari as Jillian disappeared down one of the tunnels. “If I have to go looking for her, I assure you I will make her death as painful as I am going to make yours.”

“Kiss my ass.”

“Wrong answer,” replied the assassin as he stepped forward and struck Harvath across the face with his Steyr tactical machine pistol.

Harvath stumbled backward against the chest. It was all he could do to keep from losing his balance.

“We’ll try this again. Call the woman back in here, now.”

“Call her yourself, asshole,” replied Harvath, who could taste blood in his mouth.

The assassin waved Harvath away from the box with his weapon and said, “Have it your way. She won’t get far. “As Harvath complied, Alomari continued, “I’ve enjoyed watching you on television. It’s unfortunate that al-Jazeera was not able to address your good side.”

“What’s unfortunate,” replied Harvath, clenching his hand into a fist, “is that I wasn’t able to address your good side.”

“You had your chance, though, didn’t you?”

That was a fact Harvath was all too well aware of. “How the hell did you find this place?”

“I’ve been here before,” said Alomari as he raised his TMP and pointed it at Harvath’s chest. “I didn’t think I’d ever come back, but before our mutual friend at Sotheby’s died, she suggested I might want to make a return visit. I would have been here sooner, but it took me a while to find a doctor I could trust to pull your bullet out of my shoulder.”

Harvath hated him for his command of English, as well as all the other languages he used to move so effortlessly around the world carrying out the dirtiest of al-Qaeda’s dirty work. But in his anger, Harvath found some small measure of satisfaction and couldn’t help smiling. One of his bullets in Paris had definitely found its mark.

“You find my injury amusing,” replied the assassin. “I guarantee you it isn’t half as painful as what I intend to inflict upon you and your colleague. Now, take those ice axes from your belt and slowly drop them on the floor.”

Harvath had no intention of doing anything the man asked of him. “If you’re going to shoot me, go ahead and pull the trigger.”

“That would be too easy. I have something else in mind for you. Now drop those axes. I will not ask you again.”

“Fuck you,” Harvath responded.

Alomari stepped forward and struck him again with his weapon, this time twice as hard.

Harvath’s head spun and he saw stars, but he wasn’t going to go down without a fight. Trying to focus on the al-Qaeda operative, he gathered his strength and lunged at the man with all his might.

Despite his shoulder injury, Alomari easily sidestepped the attack and watched as, even with his crampons on, Harvath lost his footing and banged his head against the entrance to one of the tunnels.

Before Harvath could slide to the ground, Alomari was on him. The powerful killer pulled him up by the neck of his parka and then swung his machine pistol around hard into Harvath’s solar plexus, knocking the wind from him. As Harvath doubled over in pain, Alomari came up from below with a searing punch that connected with Harvath’s jaw and snapped his head straight back.

Harvath flailed his arms, trying to grab onto anything to break his fall, but got nothing but air. What finally broke his fall was the icy ground, and when it did, Harvath’s head hit it with such a loud smack it echoed throughout the cavern and into the tunnels. Once again, he saw stars, but this time there was something more, an overwhelming blackness that threatened to completely overcome him. Harvath fought it off. The only hope he had of staying alive was staying conscious. Alomari was playing with him, but the minute Harvath passed out, the assassin would finish him off. He knew it as sure as he knew he never should have left his gun in his backpack.

Rolling over onto his stomach, Harvath struggled to get up onto his knees. When he did, Alomari kicked him hard, right in the ribs and right in the same place he’d been kicked by the security guard at Sotheby’s two days before.