Act of War (30 page)

None of it mattered, though. Not with what was inside the storage unit. No one could be allowed to see that.

He listened as one of the vehicle’s doors was opened. He then waited for a second. It never came. Whoever was down there was alone. Cheng prepared to act.

He visualized the officer’s position by listening to his boots on the asphalt. The officer probably had a flashlight, maybe even one mounted to his weapon. He would have seen that the storage unit door was partially open, but he would check the Navigator first to make sure no one was inside.

Using his forearms, Cheng crept to the edge of the roof and peered over. It was indeed the police. He could see the officer, behind the SUV. He had a flashlight in one hand and his pistol in the other. He had been squatting, shining the light beneath the partially open roll-up door.

Straightening up, he now began to back away. When he reached for the microphone at his shoulder, that’s when Cheng fired.

He depressed the trigger twice in rapid succession. The pistol bucked in his hands, punctuated by two muffled spits. Each of the nine-millimeter hollowpoints found its mark, killing the officer instantly.

Hopping down from the roof, Cheng checked to confirm that the man was dead. He was. The back of his head was blown away and one of the rounds had exited his left eye.

Cheng needed to move quickly. When the officer failed to report back in, backup would be sent, if it wasn’t already on the way.

Climbing down from the roof, he stepped to the police cruiser and popped the trunk. It took him only a second to find what he needed. Returning to the officer, he removed his radio and threw it on the Navigator’s front passenger seat. He then dragged the corpse out of the way and reentered the storage locker.

There wasn’t enough time to load everything, so he made a beeline for the most important item, the one that absolutely could not be left behind.

Picking up the box, he carried it back to the SUV, opened the tailgate, and slid it into the cargo area.

Closing the tailgate, he started the Navigator and pulled it forward. After climbing out, he backed the patrol car into the storage unit, so that the bumper of the cruiser was pressed up against the boxes stacked upon the pallet.

Flipping open the cruiser’s gas tank cover, he unscrewed the cap and, taking the top off one of the flares he had retrieved from the trunk, wrapped it in a rag and shoved it into the opening. Next, he dragged the body of the dead cop into the unit and placed him behind the wheel.

With everything ready to go, he ignited his second flare, tossed it on the backseat of the squad car, and exited the storage locker.

Rolling down the steel door, he replaced the padlock, slid back into the Navigator, and drove away from the storage facility.

A
fter questioning Wazir Ibrahim’s neighbor, Vasquez, Harvath and Urda followed Hoffman toward his office downtown. Nashville PD had brought the Somali cab driver in for further questioning and Harvath had several of his own he wanted to ask.

They were halfway there when an explosion erupted in the distance behind them and a roiling fireball climbed into the night sky.

“What the hell was that?” Harvath exclaimed as he turned around to look.

Urda watched the blast in his rearview mirror. “I don’t know, but it was big. Gas leak?”

Harvath had no idea, but he didn’t like the timing.

Two minutes later, Hoffman flipped his lights and siren on in front of them.

“Now what?” said Harvath.

Urda shrugged just as his cell phone rang. It was Hoffman, and he put him on speaker: “Did you see that explosion?”

“Affirmative.”

“Radio says it came from a self-storage facility where a Nashville metro cop was investigating a suspicious black Lincoln Navigator.”

Harvath could feel his heart rate pick up. “What caused the explosion? Was the Navigator rigged?”

“No idea. Dispatch lost contact with the officer. Stay on my bumper. We’re going to turn around.”

The two cars took advantage of a break in the median, U-turned, and, with Urda now also under lights and siren, sped toward the fire. When Harvath looked over at the FBI agent’s speedometer, he saw that they were doing well over eighty miles an hour.

As Hoffman made it to the exit, he barely slowed down. Using the shoulder, he flew up the ramp, only feathered his brakes, and took a hard left into the intersection. Urda followed right behind.

They crossed over the highway and headed toward the source of the explosion. Up ahead were multiple emergency vehicles making their way in the same direction. The sound of screaming klaxons filled the air.

Hoffman blasted through two red lights and kept going. Suddenly, a blazing fire could be seen up ahead.

Four squad cars were already on scene. Leaning against one of the vehicles was an injured Nashville PD officer who was pressing a bloody bandage against his head. From the looks of him, he must have been close when the blast detonated. That was the first person Harvath wanted to talk to.

Urda pulled his car off the side of the road, just past the main entrance of the storage lot. He didn’t even have it in Park before Harvath had thrown open his door and jumped out.

The bloody officer’s nameplate read
Edmondson.
“What happened?”

The cop looked at Harvath and then over at Urda’s sedan with its flashing lights. Figuring Harvath was some sort of law enforcement, he said, “Sergeant Gerads was investigating a suspicious vehicle. When dispatch couldn’t raise him, they called for any nearby units to respond. I was about a mile away. I pulled up just as the explosion happened.”

“What exploded?”

“I don’t know,” the officer said.

“Where’s Gerads?”

“I don’t know.”

“How about the vehicle? The black Navigator he was investigating?” Harvath asked.

“I didn’t see anything except the explosion.”

The officer’s head, face, and upper body looked as if they had been
raked with shrapnel. Behind them, fire trucks were now turning off the road and moving quickly into the lot.

“Where were you when the explosion happened?”

Officer Edmondson lifted his head and pointed to his patrol vehicle inside the lot. Even at this distance, Harvath could see that it had sustained some pretty serious damage. It looked like it had been hit by an IED. The man was lucky to be alive.

As Urda approached, Harvath looked at him and said, “Get on the phone to Quantico. Tell them to scramble a forensics team and get them here as quickly as possible.”

“Will do,” said Urda, as he pulled his cell phone from his pocket.

Harvath walked up the drive to join Hoffman, who was standing at the keypad for the open gate. The facility resembled a trailer park that had been turned upside down and set on fire. There was furniture, personal effects, and all sorts of debris everywhere. It was going to take months to figure out what belonged to whom.

“The Fire Department wants everyone to stay back,” the detective stated. “They don’t know what other explosive items may be stored in some of these units.”

Over the chaos, Harvath heard the sound of rotors. Looking up, he saw a police helicopter. It was sweeping the area with its powerful Midnight Sun spotlight. Hoffman held up his handheld radio so that he and Harvath could listen. As the pilot held the helo in hover, the tactical flight officer ran the searchlight and also studied his FLIR to direct firemen to the hottest part of the fire.

There were six rows of storage units, four of which were burning. Harvath pointed toward the business office at the edge of the sixth row and said, “Gather up as many officers as you can and meet me over there. If any of them have breaching tools, tell them to bring them.”

“What are you doing? The fire chief said—” Hoffman began.

“I know what the fire chief said,” Harvath replied. “Just do it.”

Hoffman nodded and went to round up officers as Harvath ran toward the office. With every step, the temperature from the fire seemed to go up by ten degrees. By the time he reached the glass front doors, his face was flushed and the hair on his arms was beginning to singe.

He tried the doors, but they were locked, so he looked on both sides to see if there was another way in that was open. There wasn’t. When he came back around to the front, Hoffman was there with four officers, none of whom had any breaching tools.

Speaking to the nearest cop, Harvath said, “Give me your ASP.”

The officer complied, and with a snap of his wrist Harvath extended the collapsible baton. Turning his head to the side, he swung hard and shattered the glass in the right front door.

He reached inside, unlocked it, and pulling both doors wide open, kicked down their rubber-capped stops.

Pointing at the handcarts arrayed on one wall of the lobby, he gave instructions. “I want every file cabinet out of here as quickly as possible.”

As the cops rushed for the handcarts, Harvath said to Hoffman, “You and I will grab the computers and any DVRs they may be using to store security footage.”

Hoffman nodded and the pair charged inside.

Beyond the lobby with its front desk and packing supply area was the office. It was a mess. There were papers everywhere. None of the cops knew where to start. Harvath told them to take all of it. A suspicious black Navigator, a massive explosion, and a missing police officer. Deng had been here. And he had been here for a reason. Harvath wanted to know why, and he hoped that something in the paperwork would tell him.

Despite the heat and the danger of the rapidly encroaching fire, the officers removed stacks of documents, file cabinets, and boxes filled with even more files. While Hoffman pulled out the computers and spirited them to safety, Harvath located the storage facility’s DVR.

When everything that could be removed had been removed, Harvath took one last look inside. He sifted through desk drawers and cabinets looking for external drives, or any other items that they might have overlooked. Satisfied that he had gotten it all, he used his empty hands to carry out as many of the owners’ personal effects as possible. Despite the best efforts of the firemen, the fire was still spreading and the office wasn’t going to make it.

Hoffman looked at the pile of everything they had managed to save. “What do you want to do with all of this?”

What Harvath wanted to do was to stick his hand into it and pull out exactly what he was looking for, but he knew he’d have a better chance of getting hit by lightning or winning the lottery.

Sorting through massive amounts of data, searching for patterns, wasn’t his forte. But he knew someone who was excellent at it.

Harvath looked at his watch. “I’m going to bring in a specialist.”

T
he man who stepped out of the Gulfstream G450 suffered from a condition known as Primordial Dwarfism. It was an extremely rare affliction, affecting fewer than one hundred people worldwide. What the man lacked in physical stature, though, he more than made up for in intelligence.

He was a genius when it came to algorithms, and he was a computer hacker par excellence. His friends called him Nicholas. His enemies, which included most of the international intelligence community, referred to him as the Troll.

Sold to a brothel by his soulless parents, he had been subjected to a monstrous upbringing. No child, much less one who wasn’t expected to reach three feet tall or live past thirty, should have to endure the inhuman cruelty he had experienced.

But Nicholas had survived. And what’s more, he had learned to thrive. His sharp mind was his greatest asset, and he had wielded it like a scalpel. Keeping his ears open and his mouth shut, he had picked up all sorts of information from the rich and powerful men who passed through the brothel. Once he understood that it wasn’t knowledge that was power, but the application of it, his life had completely changed.

Some called what he did blackmail. He, though, liked to think of it simply as leverage. As his power had grown, so had his bank account. He became a master at the purchase, sale, and theft of black market intelligence. Intelligence agencies hated him and the powerful feared
him. He had come a long way from the brothel in Sochi along the Black Sea.

He had also come a long way from his cutthroat days of intelligence theft. He still plied the dark digital arts, but with his thirtieth birthday a decade behind him, he had longed for something more. A perpetual outcast his entire life, he had wanted to become part of something bigger and more important than himself. Scot Harvath had provided him with that opportunity.

Descending the airstairs, Nicholas was accompanied by two enormous white dogs—Argos and Draco. Weighing more than two hundred pounds each, the twin beasts stood over three and a half feet tall at the shoulder. They were Caucasian sheepdogs, better known as Russian Ovcharkas, a favorite of the East German border patrol, as well as the Russian military. Fast, fiercely loyal, and ferocious when threatened, they were the perfect guardians for a man who counted among his enemies some of the most powerful and dangerous people in the world.

The dogs were as wary as their owner. Like a pair of devout sentinels, their eyes scanned everything and everyone in the private hangar. When they lighted on Harvath, they trotted over to him and placed a head beneath each of his hands.

As a sign of trust and affection, they leaned against him. It was like being pressed between two pickup trucks. He patted both of them until Nicholas clucked with his tongue against the roof of his mouth for them to return to him. Immediately, the dogs obeyed his command.

Harvath took in the sight of the little man. He looked healthy. He was tan and though he had spent the summer letting his hair grow longer, his beard was still neatly trimmed. It was a sign of his virility and something he was very proud of. Sufferers of Primordial Dwarfism were not known for being able to grow beards. He had spent a small fortune attempting to beat his ailment, trying all sorts of remedies and scientific treatments. He liked to think that the facts that he had outlived his life expectancy
and
had managed to grow a beard were signs that he was actually winning the battle.