Black List (44 page)
Harvath knew that Casey didn’t want to sit outside in the SUV. She wanted to be inside, where the action was. He couldn’t blame her. The two were very much alike. Nevertheless, he had no idea how big Schroeder was or the size of the person he was meeting with inside. If it got rough, he had no doubt Casey could hold her own, but Rhodes was taller, with more upper body strength, and could handle a larger opponent if need be. To her credit, Casey didn’t complain. But she didn’t have to; Harvath could tell she was unhappy with him.
There was something odd about the way she was acting toward him that he couldn’t put his finger on. He didn’t know if it had to do with letting Bremmer live, whether she held him responsible for Riley’s death, or what it was. Frankly, he didn’t care. They had a high-value target inside that building, and all that mattered was getting him out alive.
After checking their weapons, Harvath took a deep breath. At his nod, they climbed out of the car.
“Remember—” he began to say, but Casey interrupted him.
“Signal if I see anything. Good suggestion. Thanks.”
Shaking his head, he closed the door and began walking up the block with Rhodes.
There were lights on inside the row house on both the first and second floors, the plantation shutters inside closed. “You think it’s going down yet?” she asked.
Harvath checked his watch again. “Probably. Let’s just keep our fingers crossed.”
A hedgerow ran in front of the house, bifurcated by a low iron gate. Three concrete steps led from the sidewalk to a narrow, pristine, landscaped walkway that stretched fifteen feet to the front door. “Classy,” Rhodes remarked, and Harvath held a finger to her lips to silence her.
At the front door, he removed the lockpick set Casey had brought with her from North Carolina and told Rhodes to stand so that any neighbors who might be looking couldn’t see what he was doing. Pressing his ear against the door, he listened for several seconds before going to work on the lock.
Used to working with a lockpick gun, he fumbled with the tiny pieces of metal. “Want some help?” Rhodes whispered, but Harvath shook his head.
A few seconds more and there was a click, followed by the bolt being drawn back. Harvath removed the picks, placed them back in their small leather case, and tucked it back into his pocket. Pressing his ear against the door again, he listened one last time.
When he was confident that they were good to go, he nodded at Rhodes, depressed the thumb latch on the handle, and slowly pushed the door inward.
It slid noiselessly back on its well-oiled hinges, and Harvath and Rhodes slipped inside. Drawing their weapons, they stood stock-still, taking in every sight, every sound, and even the smells of the home’s interior.
It had wood floors and exposed brick walls. There were electric baseboard heaters and instead of a fireplace, only a faux mantelpiece. The furniture was tasteful but nothing special. A few pieces of art hung along the walls, but there were no personal photos anywhere. In fact, there were no personal touches at all, no books, nothing. It looked more like some sort of impersonal corporate rental than anything else.
Moving as quietly as they could, they crept through the tiny dining room, past a bathroom, and into the galley-style kitchen, where they located the rear door to the patio beyond. Rhodes pointed at two half-empty wineglasses next to the sink.
Harvath pointed at a men’s belt on the opposite counter. Then, from the floor above, they could make out what sounded like an argument. A man attempted to speak but was instantly shouted down by a woman with a booming voice. Harvath gestured to Rhodes that they should go upstairs.
They passed back through the dining room and into the living room.
Harvath hated wooden stairs. No matter how quiet you tried to be, there was always that one squeaky board you didn’t know was there until too late. Focusing his weight on the very outside of each stair, he signaled Rhodes to do the same and carefully climbed toward the second floor.
As they neared the landing, the argument became louder, but it was muffled, most likely behind a closed door. Whoever the woman was, she was giving the man absolute hell. Suddenly there was the sound of someone or something being struck, and Harvath stopped. Turning to look at Rhodes, he flashed her the thumbs-up and continued to climb.
At the top of the stairs, a narrow hallway gave way to a door for the bedroom over the living room, a bathroom, and the rear bedroom over the kitchen area where all the shouting was coming from.
Slowly, Harvath crept down the hallway, his weapon up and at the ready. He didn’t need to look back to know that Rhodes was doing the exact same thing. Everything was going perfectly until, four feet away from the door, Harvath put his foot down on a warped floorboard that groaned beneath his weight.
Instantly, he froze. And just as quickly, the woman’s voice from inside the rear bedroom fell silent. There were a couple of muffled words of protest from the man, wondering what was going on, but those were cut off so fast, you would have thought the woman had clapped her hand over the man’s mouth.
Harvath didn’t move a muscle, but his brain was screaming,
Damn it!
He had to make up his mind. Would the man convince the woman it had been nothing? Maybe, but he doubted it. They’d lost the element of surprise. It was time to hit the bedroom.
T
aking two steps forward, Harvath raised his foot and kicked in the bedroom door. What he discovered was much less dungeon-like than he had expected.
It looked like some sort of a cell, the kind which would have been appropriate for the SuperMax prison or for holding Hannibal Lecter. The walls and ceiling were lined with sheets of stainless steel and studded with attachment points—for what, one could only imagine. The floor was concrete and had a drain in the center. The window was also covered with stainless steel, leaving only the width of an arrow slit covered in opaque Lucite and lit from behind by a dim fluorescent bulb. Another fluorescent bulb hung inside a fixture attached to the ceiling. In the corner was a cage so small that the only way you could get a human being inside was if he folded himself into the tightest fetal position possible.
The only thing that could have taken the freaky factor any higher were the room’s two occupants. Sitting on a rolling stool next to the stainless steel cot suspended from the opposite wall was a very tall woman in her late fifties. She was dressed in some sort of police or military uniform and next to her was a tray of bizarre and unmentionable
items. Harvath had no desire to know what any of them were or what any of them did.
In her hands was a pair of medical shears, which she had used to cut through the clothing of the man shackled to the cot in front of her. She had just begun cutting off Kurt Schroeder’s underwear when Harvath kicked open the door.
“What the hell is this?” the woman demanded as Harvath and Rhodes burst into the room with their weapons drawn. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Shut up,” said Harvath as he snatched the shears from her and kicked her tray over.
“You’d better have a fucking warrant because my lawyer loves going after dumbshit cops.”
“Elizabeth, do what the man says,” Schroeder stated.
The woman was taken aback and, for a moment, didn’t know how to reply. “What?”
“These aren’t cops.”
“How would you know?”
“Number one, they’re carrying suppressed weapons, and number two, I know one of them. Or more accurately, I should say I know who he is.”
“This is because of you, then?” the woman asked, her indignation growing. “People break into my place of business, kick in doors, and wave guns in my face and I’m supposed to go along with it? I don’t think so. In fact,
I
think somebody better tell me what the fuck is going on here or I’m going to call the police myself.”
Harvath looked at Rhodes. “Get her out of here.”
“Like hell you will,” the woman declared as Rhodes tucked her pistol away and approached.
“Easy way or the hard way,” said Rhodes. “It’s up to you.”
The woman scoffed. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“Wrong answer,” Rhodes replied, knocking the woman off her stool with a lightning-fast jab to the face.
The blow was meant to stun more than injure, and before the dominatrix
had even hit the floor, Rhodes was on top of her and had her Flex-Cuffed.
“Make sure she stays quiet,” Harvath said as he kicked over a rubber ball-gag that had spilled from the tray.
Rhodes secured it around the woman’s mouth, picked her up, and led her toward the door.
As they reached it, Harvath added, “Find out if she has a CCTV system in here. If so, I want to know where the DVR is.”
Rhodes nodded as she exited. Harvath and Schroeder were now alone.
Walking to the overturned tray, Harvath set it upright and tucked his pistol into his waistband at the small of his back. He then began emptying out the contents of his coat pockets and methodically arranging them on the tray. The contents included a knife, a pair of pliers, two road flares, and a hickory-handled Ball Pein hammer. To these, he added the woman’s medical shears.
The young man tried to appear calm. “Those won’t be necessary.”
Harvath ignored him.
“I said those won’t be necessary.”
Taking off his coat, Harvath tossed it into the corner and rolled up his sleeves.
The young man’s calm was beginning to crack. “I’m serious, you don’t need those.”
Harvath checked the young man’s restraints and then drew the stool and tray table alongside him and sat down.
“Can you not hear me?” Schroeder pleaded as Harvath gave his tools a final once-over. “You don’t need those!”
“Really?” Harvath responded, still focused on his instruments. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because I don’t want to be tortured.”
Glancing slowly around the room, Harvath looked back at him and said, “I thought you liked it.”
The irony wasn’t lost on Schroeder. “Something tells me you and I aren’t going to have a safe word.”
“No, we’re not.”
“Then I can do us both a favor. There’s nothing in my head you need
to torture me for. Whatever you want, I’ll give it to you. Just please don’t hurt me.”
Harvath was so used to dealing with ideologically hardened jihadists that he’d almost forgotten what it was like to interrogate a man who was only out for himself. Could he trust him? That was yet to be seen.
“What’s your name?”
“Kurt Schroeder,” the young man replied.
“Do you know who I am?”
“Yes. Scot Harvath.”
“Who do you work for?”
“I work for a company called Advance Technology Solutions.”
“Who specifically?”
“The chief executive officer, Craig Middleton.”
Harvath was studying his face, looking for any sign that he was being lied to. Thus far, everything indicated that the young man was telling the truth. Even so, Harvath wanted to make sure he remained incentivized. And with someone whose whole identity was defined via a keyboard, there was one very direct route for doing so.
Picking up the Ball Pein hammer, he spoke very slowly. “There are twenty-seven bones in the human hand. On the first lie, I’ll break all of the bones of your right hand. On the second lie, I’ll break all the bones in your left. If you lie to me again, I’ll either cut off your fingers or I’ll go for your eyes.”
Schroeder was terrified and his voice shook with fear. “But I’m not lying. I’m telling you the truth.”
“Tell me why the Carlton Group was targeted.”
“Because of the attack you’re planning.”
“What attack?”
“I don’t know,” Schroeder insisted. “I wasn’t given the details.”
“You just took it on face value that we were behind a terrorist attack on the United States?”
“That’s what I was told. I was only following orders.”
Un-fucking-believable
. It was the one rationalization that had been used to justify the murder of more people throughout human history than any other. “And what exactly is your role in all of it?” Harvath demanded.
“Nothing. I really didn’t do—” he began, but his protestation was cut short as the Ball Pein hammer came crashing down on his right hand.
Schroeder screamed in excruciating pain and his body went rigid. He tried to pull his hand away, but the shackles held it in place.
“Keep lying to me,” Harvath said into his ear, “and I’ll keep swinging until every bone in that hand is broken, and then I’ll move on to the other.”
He waited for a full two minutes for Schroeder to stop crying. It took slapping him to get him to stop blubbering and focus.
Harvath asked him again, “What’s your role?”
This time, Schroeder answered with the truth. “M-M-M-Middleton had me compile d-d-d-dossiers on all the targets,” he sputtered.
“Which were given to the kill teams.”
“Yes. B-b-but, I was only doing my job. We-we-we track people. We f-f-f-find people. It’s wh-wh-wh-what we do.”
Harvath wanted to crush the man’s skull like an overripe melon. “What you
did,
you son of a bitch, was help kill a ton of innocent people; people with more character and integrity at the bottom of their coffee cups than you’ll ever have in your pathetic body. How many Carlton Group personnel dossiers did you do?”