Foreign Agent (31 page)

CHAPTER 69

H
arvath’s original plan had been to get to Baseyev, interrogate Baseyev, and identify the location of the meeting honoring Baseyev. From there, he would call in a drone strike. Then he and Nicholas would embellish.

Nicholas would rework the drone footage to make it look like the Russians had carried out the strike. He would get it out to anti-Russian jihadist websites, forums, and chat rooms. The Islamists in all the places Russia was worried about would go berserk.

For his part, as ISIS fighters rushed to the scene of the attack to look for survivors and help dig people out of the rubble, Harvath would lie in wait with the sniper rifle. He would pick off as many as possible and then flee.

Near the edge of town, the Hadids would have staged an accident. Baseyev would be trapped, unconscious, in a rolled-over vehicle. Harvath would plant the rifle, as well as a few other pieces of incriminating Russian evidence, and they’d all be off. When ISIS found Baseyev, they would tear him limb from limb. Harvath was a sucker for happy endings.

But as things often did in the field, something changed. Baseyev revealed a piece of bombshell information.

Inside the house glowing with monitors, the one with all the extra generators and air conditioning, was the social media mastermind for ISIS—the creative force behind not only their Internet recruiting but all of their propaganda, including their horrific videos.

There was one additional factor that made him special in Harvath’s eyes—he was the HVT Salah had identified. Because of him, the CIA SAD team and their pilots had been killed in Anbar. Because of him, three American women from the U.S. embassy in Amman had been brutally raped and killed. And because of him, Harvath was willing to take a huge risk. The man was too valuable a target to pass up.

At this point, the only question normally on Harvath’s mind was
kill or capture?
But while killing had always provided a certain satisfaction, it no longer felt like it was enough—not after so many lives had already been lost. He wanted more than blood.

He wanted substantive revenge—against both ISIS and the Russians. That meant the social media mastermind and Baseyev were actually worth more to him alive. And so, he had made up his mind.

• • •

“Wait. You’re asking permission to do what exactly?” Ryan replied from Langley.

“I’m not asking permission,” Harvath clarified. “Now, can you get it done or not?”

She knew better than to argue with him. His ability to adapt under high-stress situations and prevail was why they had hired him. He was his own man, especially when he was in the field. With or without them, he was going to do it. His mind was made up.

After a quick discussion with the Pentagon, she came back online. “DoD has a Reaper in Western Iraq. It’ll take them at least forty-five minutes, though, until they can get it on station over you.”

“What’s it carrying?”

“Four Hellfires, plus two five-hundred-pound GBU-38s.”

JDAMs
. Harvath knew the munition well. It was a bolt-on guidance package that turned “dumb,” unguided gravity bombs into smart, precision-guided game-changers.

The DoD drone represented a massive amount of ordnance. Harvath liked that. He was a big fan of overkill. If a little was good, then a ton was even better—and it sent a hell of a message.

“The meeting starts in half an hour,” he replied. “Tell them to step on it.”

As Ryan signed off, Harvath’s mind turned to how they were going to pull off snatching the social media guru.

According to Baseyev, there were two guards inside the house—one on the first floor and another up on the second, as Yusuf had seen.

The house also contained three racks of servers. If Harvath could grab their hard drives, in addition to the media mastermind, it would be a huge coup for the United States.

Everyone in the house, though, had explicit instructions to destroy everything if they came under attack. That left Harvath with a serious problem.

The downstairs had been converted into an open area where the social media people worked.

Besides the guru, there were six key players—two video editors, plus four operatives who monitored all the ISIS social media channels and fed ISIS propaganda to a series of sympathizers around the globe who acted as “repeater” stations.

The servers were kept in a locked room upstairs, and Baseyev gave Harvath a complete rundown of how the home was laid out.

If it was all accurate, and considering that Baseyev’s life hung in the balance, and he had no reason to believe it wasn’t, Harvath had the advantage. He would have the element of surprise. What he didn’t have, though, was a plan.

He had beaten Baseyev so badly, the man couldn’t be used as a ruse to get him inside. And while there were only two guards, the rest of the social-media people, though admittedly geeks to greater or lesser degrees, all had AK-47s. They carried them to look tough, but none of them were killers.

Even so, all it took was one lucky shot. An armed combatant was an armed combatant. Geeks or not, they were committed jihadists and Harvath wasn’t going to show any of them an ounce of mercy. The only person he cared about in that house was their head of social media.

Baseyev said his name was Rafael—a twenty-seven-year-old British national of Pakistani descent. He was short and fat with a scraggly beard,
greasy hair, and glasses. And while he professed to hate the West for its decadence, he could always be found wearing a vintage Western rock band T-shirt, such as The Clash or Elvis Costello. He was also known for living on huge amounts of strawberry licorice and tall cans of sugary energy drinks.

Reflecting on the details, Harvath thought,
Who the fuck lives on strawberry licorice and energy drinks in the middle of a war zone
?

Then, like a bolt from the blue, a brilliant and elegantly simple plan crystallized in his mind.

CHAPTER 70

H
arvath and Mathan left twenty minutes before everyone else. With the help of the CIA’s Reaper, they had pinpointed the perfect spot.

The half-finished building had never been occupied. From the roof, it provided a perfect view of the street in front of Rafael’s house.

They filled the pillowcase from Baseyev’s with sand, and once Harvath was all set up, Mathan melted away into the neighborhood to conduct a final round of reconnaissance.

Using the Reaper’s onboard equipment, Ryan confirmed back in Langley both shots Harvath would be taking. Based on how the rifle had performed out in the dunes, he adjusted for a little Kentucky windage and settled in.

He was lying on an old pallet that had been left up on the roof and was using the pillowcase as a rest for the rifle. He’d already urinated twice—once before leaving Baseyev’s and again when arriving at the building. He had slugged back almost an entire bottle of water and wouldn’t be able to move until his job was done.

Ryan continued to feed him a play-by-play from Langley of what they were seeing from the drone. “Pitchfork is rolling,” she said. “Repeat, Pitchfork is rolling.”

That meant Baseyev’s Land Cruiser was on the move. Thoman would be at the wheel, Baseyev in the captain’s chair behind him, and Qabbani and Yusuf in the third row.

Thoman was the most important. Harvath was counting on him to both mind Baseyev and to be immediately ready to go hot if things went kinetic. It was a tall order, but he had no doubt he was up to it.

Peering through his night scope, Harvath settled in behind the weapon and got ready to take his shots.

“Inbound,” Ryan relayed. “Pitchfork. Ninety seconds. Make ready.”

Harvath studied the leaves on the trees down on the street. There was a slight hint of a breeze. He adjusted his scope accordingly.

“Pitchfork. Sixty seconds to target,” came Ryan’s voice from northern Virginia. “Players are cleared hot. Repeat—players are cleared hot.”

That was a good sign. It meant that Langley wasn’t seeing any noncombatants nearby. They were free to engage anyone inside the house.

A sudden burst of air moved through. Harvath went to adjust his rifle, but the leaves settled down. Slowing his heart rate, he took long, deep breaths and placed the pad of his finger on the PSL’s trigger.

“Pitchfork. Thirty seconds to target. Repeat. Thirty seconds to target.”

Harvath waited for the next update from CIA headquarters. It came seconds later. “Pitchfork cellular engaged.”

Focusing on the upper window across the street, he got ready to take his shot.

Ryan read the text messages as they moved back and forth between Baseyev’s and Rafael’s phones.

Strawberry licorice?

& Monster
.

U r awesome!

Got them in duty free on my way back.

I owe you! When can I pick them up?

On way to meeting. Near ur house. Can drop them now.

Srsly?

Srsly.

U rock!

C u soon.

Ok,

Ryan then said, “All players. Fifteen seconds, Pitchfork on target. Repeat. Pitchfork on target, fifteen seconds.”

Harvath watched the upstairs window and began to apply pressure to his trigger.

The biggest rule in a gunfight was that if you weren’t shooting, you’d better be moving or reloading. But in his case, as soon as he got his shots off, he was going to have to haul ass.

They were beyond short-handed. The only reason he was on the roof was because neither of the Hadids was even halfway decent with a long gun. Once he took his shots, he’d have to move fast.

“Look sharp, Norseman,” Ryan then said. “Pitchfork on target in five, four, three, two, one.”

Opening his other eye, Harvath watched as Baseyev’s Land Cruiser rolled to a stop on the street below. Three strips of duct tape on the roof formed a large N so that the vehicle could be identified from above. The same had been done to the roof of Yusuf’s pickup.

“Am outside,” Ryan said, relaying Baseyev’s text message to Rafael.

Harvath watched as a figure appeared moments later at the upper window. “Tango, second story,” he said.

“Coming out,” Ryan said as the ground floor door opened. “On your mark, Norseman.”

“Roger that,” Harvath replied. “Stand by.”

Adjusting his rifle, he focused on the door and watched as Rafael emerged. Harvath recognized him both by his physical appearance and by his T-shirt, featuring one of Harvath’s favorite funk musicians, George Clinton.

Leading the way was the ground-floor security operative, who walked about two feet in front of him toward Baseyev’s SUV.

“Boardwalk,” Thoman said from the driver’s seat of the Land Cruiser. He was using Harvath’s code word to signal that the two men had cleared the building and Harvath could fire when ready.

“Roger that,” Harvath replied, refocusing on the figure in the upper window. “Boardwalk,” he repeated, pressing his trigger.

No sooner had the round left the barrel of his weapon than he refocused on the guard on the ground and fired again.

When the ground-floor guard’s head evaporated in a sea of pink mist, Harvath ordered, “Go, go, go!”

Thoman had already partially opened the Land Cruiser’s door. Upon hearing the command, he leapt out, raised Harvath’s Taser, and fired at Rafael.

Simultaneously, Mathan kicked in the back door of the house, charged inside, and fired his AK above the heads of the social media jihadists.

While all this was happening, Harvath had abandoned his rifle, picked up his AK, and was racing down the stairs of the abandoned building.

Taking them three at a time, he yelled over his earpiece to Thoman, “Get inside now! Move, move, move!”

The second-row passenger-side captain’s chair had been removed so that as Thoman Tasered Rafael, Yusuf could leap out, run around the back of the SUV, and restrain him.

The cancer-stricken Syrian wasn’t the fastest man any of them had ever seen, but he was diligent. As Thoman dropped the Taser and ran for the house, Yusuf landed on Rafael, drove his knee into his back, and pulled out the roll of duct tape he had been given for restraining him.

Harvath caught it out the corner of his eye as he tore across the street. He watched as Yusuf, who was no fan of ISIS, landed a series of vicious body blows on the fat social-media operative.

In any other situation, he would have stopped to cheer him on, but there was something much more important happening.

When Harvath hit the door, both Hadids were already inside. “Talk to me,” he yelled.

Several rounds of automatic weapons fire answered back and Harvath immediately took cover behind one of the house’s columns.

Two minutes later, Thoman yelled out, “Clear!”

“Mathan?” Harvath shouted.

“Clear!” the other Hadid brother yelled.

Slowly, Harvath peered around the column and into the large, open room. It was a sea of blood, punctuated by islands of dead bodies. The Hadids had killed them all and, in their defense, Harvath couldn’t see a single jihadist who didn’t look as if he had been reaching for his weapon. Thoman and Mathan had done the right thing.

“Let’s go,” he ordered, pointing toward the second floor.

Leading the charge, Harvath raced up the stairs, stopping only long
enough to check the hallway before sweeping into the room where he had shot the ISIS operative through the window.

The man lay dead in a pool of blood. Harvath’s round had entered just above his right eye, gone straight through his brain and out the back of his head.

Catching up with the Hadids, he helped them pull the rest of the hard drives and then called down to Yusuf. “Coming out. Get ready.”

As they exited the house with three pillowcases filled with hard drives, Yusuf was waiting behind the wheel of the Land Cruiser.

The three men leapt inside, Harvath checked to make sure Baseyev and Rafael were present, and then ordered, “Go, go, go!”

They raced to where Mathan had left Yusuf’s pickup and divided up. Once they were free of the town, Harvath hailed Ryan and said, “We’re clear. Light ’em up! Do it now. All of them.”