Shadow of Doubt, page 26
When Maggie opened her eyes and she saw her boss sitting there, she ordered, “Don’t say it. Not a word.”
He ignored her issuance. “A handlebar hernia,” he remarked. “Never heard of that one before. It’s got to be an Agency first.”
“Don’t rub it in.”
“What have I been telling you about that bicycle?”
“You never liked it.”
“Correction,” said the DDO. “I hated it. And this is why. I always knew something like this was going to happen.”
Maggie winced as she struggled to get comfortable in the bed.
“Here,” Conroy said, handing her the remote.
After adjusting everything, Maggie relaxed. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. So, I thought we’d discuss your medical leave.”
She looked at him. “I haven’t requested any yet.”
“Well, don’t bother. I’ve already denied it. Preemptively. That place ceases to function without you. We can’t afford your absence right now.”
Maggie smiled. “It’s nice to be needed. That said, those handlebars made some pretty aggressive contact with my abdomen. The surgeon said I’m going to need at least two weeks of bed rest. I don’t know how I’m going to get into the office.”
“If you’re willing, the president has offered you full use of his suite at Walter Reed Medical Center. We’ll assign an around-the-clock security detail. You can have any materials you want from the office and any staff as well. There’s a secure conference room with encrypted communications where your people can work. There are also the executive living spaces, which will be made available to Paul. As soon as the doctors say you’re ready to be moved, we’ll transfer you via Marine Corps helicopter. All you have to do is agree.”
“You make it rather hard to say no.”
“Listen, Maggie. I’m sure you’d rather be recuperating at home. In any other situation, I’d prefer that for you too. Unfortunately, this isn’t any other situation. You’ve got President Porter’s ear and you also have the respect of his national security advisor. We need all hands on deck to thread this needle with Russia and Belarus. Nobody has the experience and insights that you do. Without you in the picture, I worry that some of the louder, less-informed voices will start taking up all the air in the room.”
“Like I said,” Maggie repeated. “It’s nice to be needed.”
“So, that’s a yes?”
“Of course I’ll want to speak with Paul first, but yes. Please tell the president that I appreciate his generosity.”
“Terrific,” Conroy said. “I’ll get everything in motion. As soon as you know what people and materials you want, we can get those balls rolling too. In the meantime, I need to ask you about a particular Russian diplomat.”
“Which one?”
“Russia’s military attaché to France.”
Maggie inhaled a sharp breath. “Colonel Vladimir Elovik. He’s a very nasty piece of work. Why are you interested in him?”
“Scot Harvath is about to make contact. And it isn’t going to be a polite social call.”
“Well, Elovik’s file speaks for itself. Like I said, he’s a nasty piece of work. His colleagues call him the ‘Porcupine’ because he surrounds himself with pricks. Seems to have an affinity for bad actors and people of low character. Feels right at home around them. Whatever business Harvath has with Elovik, tell him to be very, very careful.”
CHAPTER 52
PARIS
Something was eating at Harvath, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Something just felt off.
Perhaps it was having to rush another job. He knew all too well that just because the Tsybulsky op had been successful, it didn’t mean that this next one would.
Hits that were daisy-chained, where the intel gleaned from one operation led immediately to the next, required a tremendous amount of luck. There was a lot of room for error. No matter how much care you took, Murphy seemed to be waiting around not just one corner, but all of them.
Harvath was reminded of a friend who, years ago, had been killed right at the finish line. It was July Fourth weekend and they had been chasing a team of terrorists through New York City. At the very end, right when they had cornered the key figure they were after, Harvath’s buddy, Bob Horrigan, had been shot.
They had been running and gunning for hours. From one battle to the next, they kept pushing through their mental and physical exhaustion. Then, right when they could see light at the end of the tunnel, Bob had been hit by a figurative train.
It didn’t matter that Horrigan had been an elite Delta Force operator and that he had been on countless high-risk missions throughout his storied career. In the end, the world’s best training and hard-won experience hadn’t been enough to save him.
Harvath had always wondered if it was bad luck or simply the law of diminishing returns. Had Bob’s number just come up or had they pushed too hard for too long?
By the same token, night after night during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, teams had daisy-chained from dusk to dawn. It wasn’t the preferred method of doing business, but it produced results, which was why it was done. Sometimes, people got hurt. But when the clock was ticking, often there was no other choice. Which was where Harvath was now.
He tried to let the feeling roll off him. If there was nothing he could do about it, it was pointless to dwell on it. He needed to focus forward.
The Russians being the Russians, they observed a strict 5 p.m. end to their workday, meaning that many of them began leaving the embassy at 4:30. Harvath and his team would have to be in place well before that.
Having checked and rechecked their weapons, radios, and equipment, Harvath called for a brief break. It was important that everyone get a little pre-mission relaxation. A chance to breathe and decompress before going hot could reap substantial benefits if things got bad. If there was one truism in their business, it was that a rested operator was a resourceful operator.
While Powell had stocked the fridge in the break room with bottled water, there wasn’t much else. In one of the cabinets, there were bags of salty snacks—pretzels, chips, and peanuts—but that was it.
Johnson offered to run out for food, but couldn’t find any takers. No one was really hungry. Not now.
As Preisler put on coffee, Harvath kicked off his boots and closed his eyes for a few minutes. Being able to quiet his mind and block out his thoughts before an assignment had always been one of his greatest skills. Even if only for a few minutes, he always came away feeling refreshed and much sharper.
He sat in that meditative state for a good fifteen minutes before the smell of the coffee became too tempting to ignore any longer. Getting up, he grabbed a mug and then sat down next to Staelin, who was studying the satellite imagery at the table.
“See anything interesting?” he asked.
Staelin, who would be driving one of the vehicles, shook his head. “Just running the routes. Do we have any clue how busy the Bois de Boulogne is going to be?”
Harvath shrugged. “It’ll be rush hour, so expect it to be busier. Other than that, I don’t have any additional intel.”
“At least we’re not trying to grab the guy in the center of downtown Paris. That’d be a nightmare.”
Harvath agreed. He had done a handful of operations like that. They were incredibly complicated and took a long time to orchestrate. Crowds and chaos could work to your advantage, but only if you retained control over all the other elements in the operation. If not, you very quickly became a rat being chased through an increasingly dangerous maze. He had no desire to get anywhere near that sort of scenario.
When the time neared, he gave his teammates a fifteen-minute warning. It had been agreed that all weapons and police gear would be kept out of sight until Elovik had been spotted and they were ready to begin their pursuit. There was absolutely no reason to risk drawing any attention before that.
He sent Nicholas a text, letting him know that they were ready to roll. The little man, who had hacked himself deep into the CIA’s security system, confirmed receipt and began streaming bogus feeds from the safehouse cameras to the Agency’s cloud. No one in the Paris station or back at Langley would have any record of what Harvath and his team were about to do.
Opening the garage bay doors, they backed the two navy blue Renaults into the small parking lot area and paused as they awaited Nicholas’s next move.
Each of the vehicles was outfitted with a tracking device so that Nicholas could not only monitor their progress, but also cover their movements. The less evidence available to anyone—be it the CIA, the Russians, or the French—the better.
While the little man couldn’t wipe every single, individually operated camera the team passed, he could interrupt the feeds from those controlled by the French authorities, particularly their traffic cameras. It would be next to impossible to fully grasp what had happened, if they couldn’t pick up any trace of the vehicles.
As soon as word came back that Nicholas was ready, Harvath gave the order for the team to roll.
They crossed the Seine via the Pont de Puteaux, cut through the Bois de Boulogne, and popped out a few blocks from the Russian Embassy near the Porte de la Muette.
Passing the Embassy of Bangladesh, they hung a left on Boulevard Flandrin and found places to park right before Rue Dufrenoy. Now it was simply a waiting game. The moment Powell saw Elovik’s car, he would let them know.
* * *
At 4:55, they received word. The Russian military attaché was on the move. His car had turned right onto Boulevard Lannes and was headed south.
Elovik, however, wasn’t alone. An additional embassy security vehicle—carrying two men—was trailing right behind him.
As Harvath had feared, Murphy had now arrived on scene.
CHAPTER 53
“Nothing has changed,” Harvath radioed his teammates as they began their pursuit and donned their raid vests and police armbands. “We stick with the plan. Keep following and wait for my command.”
After the team in the van confirmed Harvath’s order, Staelin, who was driving the sedan, looked at him. “Why the extra security all of a sudden?”
“Our operation in Monaco may have had a bigger impact than we anticipated.”
“And now we’ve got double the Russian vehicles and double the Russian personnel to contend with,” Staelin said. “The plan is going to have to change. Preisler and Johnson can’t cover down on four guys across two cars.”
“They won’t have to,” Harvath replied. “You and I will be responsible for the embassy security vehicle. Like I said, nothing has changed.”
Technically, that was a change—a big one. Harvath and Staelin were supposed to remain with the sedan, prepared to handle any additional problems or threats that might roll up during the takedown of Elovik. But that was no longer an option.
As a former Delta Force operator, Staelin both appreciated the situation and the role that improvisation would need to play in its successful outcome. Nodding his head, he responded, “Roger that.”
Up ahead, the two embassy cars turned right again and headed toward the Bois de Boulogne. Harvath and his team kept them in sight as they stayed a safe distance behind.
At the last red light before the park, Harvath instructed the team to ready their weapons and balaclavas.
When the light turned green, Elovik’s vehicle and its security escort entered the Bois de Boulogne.
It was a good thing that Harvath and his team had given the Russians plenty of space. They were actually being professional and had run multiple surveillance detection routes—going all the way north to skirt the park’s large lake and then doubling back at the Pavillon Royal. Despite their precautions, they appeared to have no clue that they were being followed.
With the element of surprise on his side, Harvath could pick any spot and any moment he wanted to spring his trap.
As the Russians crossed the Allée de Longchamp and headed into a densely wooded section of the park, they were sixty seconds away from one of the best ambush spots. Harvath alerted the team. That’s where they would take Elovik.
Rolling his balaclava down over his face, he pushed the button to extend the retractable brace of his Flux Raider X PDW and made sure a round was chambered.
Looking at Staelin, he said, “There’s a cutout in the shoulder up ahead.”
“I remember it from the satellite imagery,” the man replied.
Harvath nodded. “Let’s get close, but not too close to the second car’s rear bumper. We’ll get out at the same time. I’m going to do a passenger-side approach. You’ll be taking the driver.”
“Good copy,” Staelin replied as he rolled down his own balaclava.
Reaching into the bag at his feet, Harvath removed Staelin’s MP5 SD, verified that it was charged and ready to fire, and then balanced it on his lap.
Studying the maps feature on his phone, he counted down over the radio, “One hundred and fifty meters… One hundred meters… Fifty meters… Now!”
Smoke from burning rubber filled the air as Haney slammed the van into the opposite lane, lights strobing and Klaxons blaring. As soon as he passed the Russians, he crossed back into their lane to box them in.
Staelin accelerated and Harvath watched the speedometer needle climb, willing the Renault to close the distance. Attaching the gumball to the roof, Harvath lit it up and activated the sedan’s Klaxons. He could practically hear the Russians cursing in their cramped embassy vehicles as Haney and Staelin bullied them off the road, and forced them into the cutout.
Before the van had even come to a full stop, Preisler and Johnson had leapt out. They were both armed with suppressed Heckler & Koch UMPs.
Quickly they surrounded Elovik’s vehicle, pointing their weapons at the security agents in the front seat.
As Staelin brought the Renault sedan to a stop and jammed it into park, Harvath handed him his weapon, opened his door, and rushed the security vehicle.
Speed, surprise, and overwhelming force of action was the intent. No matter what happened, they didn’t want to give the Russians a single moment to think, much less react.
Closing in on the passenger in the front seat, Harvath trained his Trijicon red-dot sight on the back of the man’s head.
“Hands!” he yelled in French, as Preisler and Johnson did the same at the vehicle in front. “Raise your hands!”
Suddenly, the world exploded. A spray of bullets erupted from the tree line, ripping through the air all around him.
“Contact right!” Harvath yelled, returning fire and diving behind the embassy security vehicle.
A sickening thud came from up front. Preisler’s voice crackled over the radio, laced with panic. “Man down. Johnson’s hit.”
Harvath whipped around, his heart hammering his ribs. He struggled to see Johnson and gauge the severity of his injury.
As he did, figures poured out of the embassy vehicles, their Kalashnikov PPK-20 submachine guns spitting fire.
He and his team weren’t ambushing the Russians. The Russians were ambushing them. They had walked right into a trap.
CHAPTER 54
Heavy rounds chewed through the thin metal skin of the van as Haney lunged for his suppressed HK417. Ignoring the danger, he aimed through the passenger-side window and unleashed his own withering barrage of gunfire into the tree line.
In the cutout behind him, Harvath and Staelin were a blur of controlled chaos. Retreating behind their bullet-riddled Renault, they returned fire with deadly precision, allowing Preisler the ability to drag Johnson to safety as, one by one, they picked off their attackers.
A young Russian, barely in his mid-twenties, was the first to fall. Taking a bullet to his throat, he crumpled to the ground, his Kalashnikov clattering uselessly beside him.
Next was a grizzled man in his forties, his skin like cracked leather. Receiving two shots to the chest, he collapsed like a cheap lawn chair behind the embassy security vehicle.
Having neutralized the closest threats, they immediately engaged the Russians in the lead car. An enormous man with a shaved head and a thick black beard leaned out of the passenger seat and fired his weapon on full auto, tearing up the hood of their Renault and splintering its windshield.
Harvath waited for the onslaught to pause and then, risking a peek around the side of the sedan, caught the man as he was reloading his weapon. He double-tapped him through the bridge of his nose and his left eye, killing him instantly, and painting the inside of his vehicle with bits of brain and bloody bone.
Moving to take out the driver, Staelin rolled away from the Renault just as a volley of bullets tore up the position he’d been occupying a millisecond earlier.
The driver—a thin man with a tight crew cut—quickly took cover behind his engine block and changed magazines. It wasn’t, however, enough to protect him.
Lying in the dirt, Staelin fired at the man’s boots, ripping apart both of his feet. The driver dropped to the ground, screaming, and made himself an even bigger target.
From the Russian’s abdomen to his lower jaw, the ex–Delta Force operative opened up on him and painted a lethal racing stripe right along the driver’s upper body.
The round that went through the driver’s jaw—shattering his face—kept going through the roof of his mouth and into his brain, killing him and bringing his screaming to an end.
That left only one more possible combatant—the Russian military attaché.
“Where’s Elovik?” Harvath demanded.
No one knew. He hadn’t been seen since the shooting started.
“Probably hugging the floorboards in the back seat of that lead vehicle,” said Staelin, rejoining him behind the Renault.
“No way,” Harvath replied. “He’s a decorated combat vet. We need to get up to that car and figure out what’s going on. Ready?”
The man nodded.
