The First Commandment

Harvath relieved the operative of all his weapons, which included a 9mm Beretta pistol, a stiletto knife, and a razor in his left shoe.

He stripped him all the way down to his shorts and duct-taped him to one of the dining-room chairs. He wasn’t going to repeat any of the mistakes he had made with Palmera.

After spending several moments peering through the curtains to make sure there was no one outside waiting for Najib, Harvath headed into the kitchen where he located a bucket and filled it with cold water.

Back in the dining room, he hit Najib in the face with the water full force. The man came to almost instantly.

He began coughing as his head instinctively swung from side to side to get away from the water. When his eyes popped open, it took his brain a moment to process everything that had happened, but he soon put it together.

Working his jaw back and forth to see if it was broken, Najib looked up at the masked man standing in front of him and spat a gob of blood at his feet.

Harvath smiled. Spitting to Middle Easterners was like giving someone the finger in the West. It was a macho show of bravado meant to exhibit a person’s fearlessness.

Harvath didn’t move a muscle. He stood there like a statue as Najib’s eyes sca

The body of Tammam’s bodyguard lay on top of the dining room table-just to Najib’s right. It had been laid out as if part of some horrific banquet. Horrible things had been done to it. Skin had been flayed off the arms and legs, the chest cavity was wide open and gaping, black holes were the only remnants of where vital human organs used to be.

Najib was a hard man, but he was clearly shaken by what he saw.

“Let’s talk about your release from Guantanamo,” said Harvath, breaking the silence.

Najib spat at him again and cursed him in Arabic, “Khara beek!”

Al-Tal had told Harvath that Najib was one of the best operatives he had ever had, better even than Asef Khashan. He promised that Harvath would have a very hard time breaking him. As far as Al-Tal knew, the man wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone. He had been sent into Iraq to assist in coordinating the insurgency. His reputation was known far and wide. Those who resisted his commands or, worse yet, failed him in their assignments, were dealt unspeakable punishments that Najib carried out personally.

He was one of the most feared men in Iraq. His skill on the battlefield was rivaled only by his skill in a torture chamber. It was said that the use of short knives, purposely dulled, for videotaped beheadings of Westerners was his idea. To him, the scimitar was too efficient a tool. Victims needed to be shown being slaughtered like animals. One or two whacks with a long sword weren’t enough. They needed to suffer righteous agony at the hands of the brave warriors of the Prophet, and Najib was a master of agony.

Harvath knew his type all too well. The only way to get a psychological advantage over him was to shock him so hard that he was thrown completely off balance. The body on the table was a good start, but Harvath knew it wouldn’t be enough.

Still, he asked his question again, and this time more specifically in Arabic. “The night you were freed from Guantanamo you boarded an airplane. Tell me about it.”

“Fuck you,” Najib replied in English. “I will tell you nothing.” His voice was even more unsettling in person.

The man was well over six feet tall and twice as wide as Harvath. His arms were enormous and he looked like one of those people who was naturally muscular and didn’t need to work out in a gym. He had dark hair, dark eyes, and a thin scar ru

All and all, Najib was a very nasty character and Harvath was glad to have gotten the jump on him. No matter how good a fighter you were, this was not somebody you would ever want to meet on an equal footing.

Harvath stepped to the table and withdrew a cordless drill from his duffel bag. He fitted it with a thick, Carbide-tipped masonry bit and gave the drill’s trigger a squeeze to make sure the bit rotated properly.

Next, Harvath took a gauze pad he had found in the nurse’s supply and coated it with Betadine antiseptic solution. Knowing that having an area prepped for injection was often more frightening to most people than the actual injection, Harvath bent and took his time in cleaning Najib’s right kneecap.

Harvath didn’t need to take the man’s pulse to know that his heart was racing. He had only to look at his throbbing carotid artery and the sweat forming on his forehead and upper lip to see that he was scared shitless.

But being scared didn’t mean he was going to cooperate. Harvath decided to give him one last chance. “Tell me about the plane. Who was on it with you?”

Najib focused his eyes on an object across the room and began reciting verses from the Koran. Harvath had his answer.

He shoved a gag in the man’s mouth to prevent his screams from being heard outside the apartment and then snugged his chair sideways up against the wall and pi

Harvath wrapped his arm around the inside of Najib’s thigh, placed the masonry bit at the side of his kneecap and squeezed the drill’s trigger.

The operative’s entire body went stiff. Tears welled in his eyes and as the fluted bit tore into his flesh he began to scream from behind his gag.

He writhed against his restraints, but the duct tape and Harvath’s weight pi

Harvath continued, slowly. When he hit bone, the drill bit created a sickening cloud of smoke, which poured forth from the bloody entrance wound. Najib’s body juddered, every fiber in his being straining to escape the madman whose drill bit was laying waste to his knee.

Suddenly, there was a pop as Najib’s kneecap exploded in a mass of shattered bone and the man finally passed out from the pain.

Chapter 58

Harvath opened an ammonia inhalant and waved the pad beneath the man’s nose. In a matter of seconds, Najib was coughing and rearing his head.

Harvath held up a syringe and tried to get the operative to focus on it. “This is morphine,” he said. “All you have to do is talk to me and you can have all you want.”

His head spi

“Stay with me,” ordered Harvath as he grabbed Najib’s face and forced another ammonia inhalant pad under his nose.

The man’s head reared backward once more and he shook it back and forth to escape the fumes irritating the membranes of his nose and lungs.

Harvath knew that the fumes also triggered a reflex, causing the muscles that control breathing to work faster, and he waited a moment for the operative to catch his breath.

Holding up the syringe again he said, “It’s up to you.”

With pain etched across his battered, furious face, Najib slowly nodded, yes.

Harvath inserted the needle into the man’s thigh. He depressed the plunger, but stopped before all the drug had been injected. “When you tell me everything I want to know, I’ll give you the rest.”

He reached for the gag and added, “If you stall me or try to call out, I will go to work on your other knee. Then I will do your elbows and then I will move on to the individual vertebrae in your back and your neck. Are we clear?”