Takedown

“They used a drill,” he croaked.

Ali had no intention of making his colleague relive any more of the brutality. “Can you stand?” he asked as he helped Mohammed to his feet. “I have a safe place I can take you.”

Mohammed shook his head. “My pain is too great. They stopped my dialysis as a part of the torture. You’re too late. Soon I will follow Sayed.”

Ali shook his head. “I have a hotel room near here with a small dialysis machine. You are not going to die, my brother. Not today. But we must get to safety quickly.”

“I fear I won’t be able to walk very far. I have grown too weak.”

Ali thought about it for a moment and then told Mohammed not to move. Leaving him, Ali went back out into the hallway and made his way to the dialysis room.

After unfolding the wheelchair, he rifled through the cabinets until he found a pair of surgical scrubs big enough to fit Mohammed. He gathered a few additional supplies and was putting them all in a small bag, when he heard a voice from behind him say, “Don’t even think about moving.”

Ninety-Three

Though Abdul Ali had been meticulous about clearing the otherwise empty rooms, what he didn’t realize was that, as in many consulates and embassies around the world, hidden passageways as well as escape exits were often part of the architecture. It was just such a passageway that had allowed the surviving marine, Brad Harper, to create an advantage and assume the upper hand.

He had already been on his way back with the medical kit when the blast from the first explosion had knocked him to the ground. When the second, smaller explosion detonated, he wisely rushed back to the control room to see what was happening on the closed-circuit monitors.

Now, as Harper held his modified M16 Viper on the man who had just assassinated his entire team, he was very tempted to administer justice himself. All it would take was a simple pull of the trigger, and this entire nightmare would be brought to an end, but Harper knew better. He also knew the man he had in front of him was extremely dangerous and could have any one of a hundred possible tricks up his sleeve. “I’ve got every reason in the world to kill you right now. Try anything stupid and I will pull this trigger. Do you understand me?”

Ali had no idea how he had missed this man. His eyes darted around the room as his mind scrambled for a way out.

Harper shifted his sights a fraction of an inch to the right and he pulled the trigger, sending a quick burst of fire over the man’s shoulder and into the Sheetrock in front of him. “Do you understand?” he repeated.

Ali nodded his head.

“I want you to raise your hands, slowly. That’s it. Nice and easy. Now interlace your fingers behind your head.”

Once Ali had complied, Harper ordered him onto his stomach. With the man fully prone, the young marine cautiously leaned down to cuff him. It was at that moment that Mohammed bin Mohammed snuck up behind him and with the very last reserves of strength, hit the large marine not once but twice across the back of the head with a fire extinguisher, knocking him to the floor unconscious.

Ninety-Four

As Harvath and the rest of his team rapidly made their way to Libya House, things were begi

Such unprecedented cooperation in the war on terror might very well have been just the surface of a much deeper and much quieter deal. It was no wonder that even with his Polo Step clearance Harvath had not been able to learn which top al-Qaeda member the United States had taken into custody. Somewhere at State or the Department of Justice, somebody was walking a very thin legal line. The only way Harvath could figure they had pulled it off was to have brought M amp;M up to the edge of international waters on a private craft of some sort and flying him the rest of the way by chopper, then dropping him on the roof of Libya House, where the Libyans took over.

Though he was sure the American involvement was supposed to be nothing more than “observer” status, he knew who was really ru

When they arrived, the few people who were in the lobby were in an absolute panic. Harvath flashed his DHS credentials and was told by a man who identified himself as the mission receptionist that there had been an enormous explosion from somewhere within the building and that they couldn’t raise their ambassador, his assistant, or the ambassador’s security team.

After Harvath explained that they were there because terrorists had targeted the building and they believed that an attack was eminent, the receptionist assigned them the building’s only security guard and sped them into one of the lobby elevators for the ambassador’s office on the twenty-third floor.

The moment the doors opened, the guard showed them into the ambassador’s office, where they came upon the bodies of the assistant and the two bodyguards.

Borrowing the guard’s radio, Harvath called down to the receptionist to ask how long it had been since the man had last had contact with the ambassador, his assistant, or any members of the protective detail.

The man filled Harvath in on everything he knew, including the una

The entire staff of Libya House had been told that the twenty-fourth floor was absolutely off-limits, and even its existence shouldn’t be discussed with anyone. The receptionist had suspected it had something to do with the two stern-faced intelligence agents who had joined the mission from Tripoli. Faced with the very real fact that the building was under siege, the man shared the rest of what he knew.

Before the receptionist was even done speaking, Harvath and company. were rushing for the freight elevator. They were halfway there when the receptionist came back over the radio. Based on what he could see from his security panel, the freight elevator was no longer operational. What’s more, even though the rest of the building was supposedly empty, one of the main elevators had unexpectedly risen to the twenty-second floor and was now begi

Though he couldn’t put his finger on why, Harvath had a very bad feeling about who was inside that elevator.

Shrugging off the pain in his shoulder, he made for the stairway, but Bob Herrington and Tracy Hastings were already in front of him.

Relieving the lumbering security guard of his radio and with Rick Cates and his bad knees bringing up the rear, Harvath hit the stairwell and barreled down as fast as he could go.

The landings, which he normally would have taken by gripping the handrail with his right hand and swinging his body around, were nearly impossible because of his wounds, and so he took the tight turns as best he could, relying only on his feet. More than once, his excessive speed caused him to slam his left side up against the wall before he could regain his path and tackle the next set of stairs. Invariably, he lost sight of Bob and Tracy, who were making much better time than he and considerably better time than Cates, who was sucking up the pain and moving as fast as he could.