Blowback (22 page)

Call the woman back in here,” commanded Alomari as Jillian disappeared down one of the tunnels. “If I have to go looking for her, I assure you I will make her death as painful as I am going to make yours.”

“Kiss my ass.”

“Wrong answer,” replied the assassin as he stepped forward and struck Harvath across the face with his Steyr tactical machine pistol.

Harvath stumbled backward against the chest. It was all he could do to keep from losing his balance.

“We’ll try this again. Call the woman back in here, now.”

“Call her yourself, asshole,” replied Harvath, who could taste blood in his mouth.

The assassin waved Harvath away from the box with his weapon and said, “Have it your way. She won’t get far. “As Harvath complied, Alomari continued, “I’ve enjoyed watching you on television. It’s unfortunate that al-Jazeera was not able to address your good side.”

“What’s unfortunate,” replied Harvath, clenching his hand into a fist, “is that I wasn’t able to address your good side.”

“You had your chance, though, didn’t you?”

That was a fact Harvath was all too well aware of. “How the hell did you find this place?”

“I’ve been here before,” said Alomari as he raised his TMP and pointed it at Harvath’s chest. “I didn’t think I’d ever come back, but before our mutual friend at Sotheby’s died, she suggested I might want to make a return visit. I would have been here sooner, but it took me a while to find a doctor I could trust to pull your bullet out of my shoulder.”

Harvath hated him for his command of English, as well as all the other languages he used to move so effortlessly around the world carrying out the dirtiest of al-Qaeda’s dirty work. But in his anger, Harvath found some small measure of satisfaction and couldn’t help smiling. One of his bullets in Paris had definitely found its mark.

“You find my injury amusing,” replied the assassin. “I guarantee you it isn’t half as painful as what I intend to inflict upon you and your colleague. Now, take those ice axes from your belt and slowly drop them on the floor.”

Harvath had no intention of doing anything the man asked of him. “If you’re going to shoot me, go ahead and pull the trigger.”

“That would be too easy. I have something else in mind for you. Now drop those axes. I will not ask you again.”

“Fuck you,” Harvath responded.

Alomari stepped forward and struck him again with his weapon, this time twice as hard.

Harvath’s head spun and he saw stars, but he wasn’t going to go down without a fight. Trying to focus on the al-Qaeda operative, he gathered his strength and lunged at the man with all his might.

Despite his shoulder injury, Alomari easily sidestepped the attack and watched as, even with his crampons on, Harvath lost his footing and banged his head against the entrance to one of the tunnels.

Before Harvath could slide to the ground, Alomari was on him. The powerful killer pulled him up by the neck of his parka and then swung his machine pistol around hard into Harvath’s solar plexus, knocking the wind from him. As Harvath doubled over in pain, Alomari came up from below with a searing punch that connected with Harvath’s jaw and snapped his head straight back.

Harvath flailed his arms, trying to grab onto anything to break his fall, but got nothing but air. What finally broke his fall was the icy ground, and when it did, Harvath’s head hit it with such a loud smack it echoed throughout the cavern and into the tunnels. Once again, he saw stars, but this time there was something more, an overwhelming blackness that threatened to completely overcome him. Harvath fought it off. The only hope he had of staying alive was staying conscious. Alomari was playing with him, but the minute Harvath passed out, the assassin would finish him off. He knew it as sure as he knew he never should have left his gun in his backpack.

Rolling over onto his stomach, Harvath struggled to get up onto his knees. When he did, Alomari kicked him hard, right in the ribs and right in the same place he’d been kicked by the security guard at Sotheby’s two days before.

The extra gear he had stowed in his parka did little to soften the blow. The precious bit of air Harvath had managed to get back into his lungs was forced back out, and his chest started heaving. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a faint voice told him to consider giving up. He was no match for Alomari. The man was much too strong for him. The voice was a sign of weakness, and Harvath despised weakness. Now, he not only slammed the iron door of his mind tight against it, he willed himself to suck in large gulps of air. He had to pull himself together. He had to rally his strength and his wits or he was going to die here, just like Ellyson, Bernard, and their Sherpa, Maurice.

As his lungs heaved for air, Harvath looked around him for anything that could be used as a weapon. He tried to remember what he had stuffed in his parka and whether any of those items could be used to his advantage. He rapidly sorted through the possibilities, but none of them seemed as if they would do the trick. Then it hit him, literally.

There was a jangle of metal on metal as Alomari delivered another searing kick to his ribs. If Harvath could only unbuckle the nylon webbing strung with pitons, carabiners, and other climbing accessories around his waist, he just might be able to use it as a weapon.

Harvath sucked up the pain and fumbled for his buckle. He suffered two more blows before it came free, but he put those blows on account, along with all the rest, determined to make Alomari pay in full. This time he had the right guy, and even if there had been cameras present, he was still going to beat him to within an eighth of an inch of his life. He wouldn’t stop until Alomari begged to die. Then he’d drag him back and turn him over to the United States to be interrogated and spend the rest of his life rotting in a jail somewhere while Harvath roasted a pig in his honor each weekend under his prison window.

As Alomari drew his foot back for yet another kick, the belt came free, and Harvath rolled away from his attacker, swinging it in a wide arc. He wanted to fell the man by nailing him right in the back of the legs, but first Harvath had to rid him of his weapon.

With a sharp crack, Harvath brought the equipment-laden piece of webbing around and hit Alomari’s hand so hard that his Steyr TMP was torn out of it and sent clattering across the floor. With the weapon out of the way, Harvath could go to work, and go to work he did. Springing to his feet, he swung the belt in a large figure eight above his head and then struck Alomari across the back. The metal pitons tore huge pieces of fabric away from the assassin’s parka. Harvath could only fantasize what they would do when he finally connected with flesh.

Whipping the belt around harder this time, he tore straight through Alomari’s parka. The man screamed as the last piece of metal hanging from the webbing split open a deep gash in his neck. Alomari could do nothing but recoil as Harvath kept coming at him. Blow after blow, Harvath swung the belt harder and harder. Backing the man up against one of the many tunnel entrances, Harvath beat the assassin mercilessly. Alomari’s screams filled the entire cavern as Harvath made good on his promise that the assassin would pay for every innocent life he had ever taken.

The killer’s parka hung from his body in bloody shreds as Harvath pulled the belt back for another devastating blow. But just as he was about to whip the belt forward, it went completely slack. It made no sense until he started hearing pitons, carabiners, and other pieces of climbing metal hitting the ceiling and raining down on the floor. The belt had broken.

It made no difference to Harvath. He was more than happy to turn his bare hands on the remorseless assassin, but before he could land the first punch, Alomari turned the tables on him. Harvath took two steps backward when he saw what the man had in his hands. In his absolute rage, Harvath had once again underestimated his opponent, and this time he knew he was going to pay the ultimate price.

“Now I am going to kill you,” spat Alomari. He had a double-action, hammerless.357 Ruger KSP revolver pointed right at Harvath’s chest.

Harvath dropped the broken belt to the ground, looked Khalid Alomari right in the eye, and said, “You just don’t get the point, do you?”

“What point?” he sneered as he steadied his hand and began applying pressure to the trigger.

“This one,” said a voice from behind as a twenty-four-hundred-year-old Celtic falcata was thrust through the assassin’s back.

The powerful sword erupted through his chest in an incredible spray of blood. With its curved blade, it kept climbing upward. Still alive, Alomari was able to see it come back at him and feel the tip of the blade thrust up from underneath his chin and impale his entire face.

As Alomari’s dying body fell twitching to the ground, Jillian released the falcata’s handle and stared at what she had done.

Jillian was unable to stop shaking. “He would have killed us both,” said Harvath as he tried to break the spell that had come over her.

“I know,” said Jillian quietly. “I know.”

As if her handling of the shelf collapse wasn’t enough, in killing Alomari, Jillian Alcott had proven that when she really needed to, she could make her fear work for her and not vice versa.

“Here,” said Harvath, handing her the Ruger. “This is yours. You earned it.”

“I don’t want a souvenir.”

“It’s not a souvenir. It might save your life. Do you know how to handle one of these?”

“I grew up on a farm. I’ve done my fair share of shooting.”

“Killing people is a lot different than killing rabbits,” said Harvath, who immediately regretted his words. It was definitely the wrong thing to say, and as if he needed any further convincing, Jillian turned away from him and vomited. He felt so stupid. The woman had just killed a man. Sometimes Harvath simply forgot the code civilians lived by. As they should, people who had never killed before found it reprehensible, even those who did so in defense of themselves or the people they cared about. What Jillian Alcott had just been through would probably haunt her for the rest of her life. Offering to let her keep the pistol was definitely a bad idea, no matter how well intentioned.

Harvath left Jillian alone while he combed through Alomari’s pockets. What he found he took-a car key, a high-end Benchmade tactical folding knife, and some spare ammunition. Al-Qaeda had trained him well. There was nothing on his person that could lead anyone anywhere. The U.S. intelligence community was going to be awfully upset at having lost a chance to interrogate him, but as far as Harvath was concerned, he and Jillian had been faced with no other choice.

They spent the next hour combing the tunnels for any clues they could find about Hannibal ’s mystery weapon. The quiet searching seemed to allow Jillian time to make a tentative peace with what she had been forced to do.

Jillian spent some time studying the intricately carved box they had examined earlier, trying to divine the meaning of its engraving. Finally, she spoke, and when she did, she was all business. She agreed with Harvath that the scenes were allegories but their exact message wasn’t clear. There was a depiction of some sort of magical book, which she thought might represent the Arthashastra, but paleopathology, not iconography, was her specialty.

Jillian did, though, concur with his assessment that what they had originally believed were wolves on the breastplates were actually dogs. The reason was that on the box, more than just snarling heads were depicted. These animals also had curved tails-a definite Canis familiaris trait and not something normally associated with Canis lupus.

While Harvath was glad to have her agree with his opinion, it still didn’t explain why Hannibal had wanted to use the image of dogs to scare his enemies.

“Did Hannibal use dogs in battle?” he asked as they continued to explore the box together.

“A lot of ancient armies did, but I can’t say one way or another if Hannibal used them. If he did, it would not have been unusual.”

“And not particularly scary.”

“Nope. Besides, if these troops were using dogs, where are they? I don’t see any evidence of them down here. Not one leash, not one muzzle, nothing.”

Harvath nodded his head in agreement. “So what’s the connection?”

“I have no idea,” said Jillian as she turned away from the box and ran her hand through her hair. “There are too many pieces missing. It could take months, if not years, of excavating down here with a full team before we could uncover the answers we’re looking for.”

“We don’t have that kind of time.”

“What are we going to do then?”

Harvath looked at his watch. Without blankets and a way to make a fire, there was no way they could survive through the night. “We have to go back.”

“I wish I had brought a camera,” said Jillian.

“Maybe in one of the expedition cases,” began Harvath, who stopped when he saw her shaking her head.

“I already checked all of those. There’s nothing. Even if we found one, the batteries would long be dead.”

She was right. Harvath hadn’t thought of that.

“There’s one other thing we can do,” said Jillian. “Give me your axe.”

Harvath handed her the one he’d been using to chop chunks of ice out of the wall to hold against his face. “What are you going to do?”

“Collect samples.”

“Samples of what?”

As she headed off toward one of the tunnels, Alcott looked over her shoulder and replied, “Human tissue.”

They picked five soldiers at random. The ones buried behind the thickest pieces of ice were Harvath’s responsibility, as was the most gruesome task of all-lopping off the top of each skull so that Jillian could collect samples of brain matter. As the mystery illness involved such a serious encephalitis component, she had insisted that in addition to the other tissue samples they were collecting, samples of brain tissue were absolutely imperative. Though Harvath and Alcott were each armed with only an ice ax, they went at their task as if chipping away at a priceless diamond while wielding the most precision cutting instruments in the world.

Jillian’s care came out of respect for ancient history. In Harvath’s case it was out of his respect for fellow soldiers. Though outside daylight was fading, neither hacked away at their subjects. They carved carefully into the ice until they were able to access the frozen flesh. While Alcott wasn’t sure if Alan Whitcomb would be able to learn anything from the samples, she certainly wanted to give him a chance. Lying within these frozen bodies could be the key they were looking for. Hannibal never would have sent his men into battle without protecting them against their own weapons. Maybe these soldiers, the members of his elite guard, had been inoculated, and maybe their DNA could tell the modern world something about the great weapon they were carrying.

Once the samples had been collected, they hurried back to their climbing equipment; Harvath unfastened his rope and watched as the weight of his pack up above pulled it through his secondary set of anchors. The rope zipped across the empty space above them and landed with a soft thwack on the correct side of the cavern, right next to Jillian’s.

Attaching their ascenders, Harvath demonstrated how the devices were used to climb back up the rope. He worked with Jillian until she got the hang of it, and then, after he connected the leash between them once more, they began their ascent. Twenty feet from the top, Harvath detached his pack from the line and managed to get it over both his shoulders. After changing ropes at the remnant of the ice shelf, they made it back up onto the narrow Col de la Traversette, packed up their gear, and began the difficult hike back to the Carré de l’Ours with only their headlamps to light their way through the dark.

A thick curtain of heavily falling snow was well under way by the time they arrived at the rear of the hotel’s property. During their trek, not much in the way of conversation passed between them. Jillian was wrestling with the psychological and emotional trauma of having killed Khalid Alomari while Harvath was trying to figure out how the assassin was tied to Timothy Rayburn in the first place. Rayburn had organized the expedition to recover Hannibal ’s mystery weapon, and Alomari seemed to be killing anyone who had any knowledge of it whatsoever. Yet there was one person Alomari hadn’t been able to kill, and that was Emir Tokay, but only because Rayburn had gotten to him first and kidnapped him. It didn’t make any sense. Rayburn and Alomari seemed to be working the same project but from two different angles. Rayburn helped put it together while Alomari worked on taking it apart.

Killing the scientists once their work was complete, as well as silencing anyone with any knowledge of it made sense, but what didn’t make sense was kidnapping Tokay. Why wasn’t he killed as well? Why kidnap him?

As they approached the hotel, Harvath tried to quiet his thoughts. At this point, he no longer wanted to struggle for answers. All he wanted was a long hot shower, followed by several Advils and a good night’s sleep. The minute they stepped through the hotel’s back door and into the kitchen, though, he realized that wasn’t going to happen.

“Putain, bougez pas! Bougez pas!” yelled one of two provincial police officers startled by Harvath and Alcott’s entrance. Based on their uniforms, they looked to be motorcycle cops, but that still didn’t explain what they were doing in Marie Lavoine’s kitchen.

Before Harvath could react, the men had drawn their sidearms and had both him and Jillian covered. The last thing he wanted to do was provoke a shootout with police officers, so he just raised his hands above his head and left all of the guns he was carrying where they were for the time being.

Seeing Harvath with his hands above his head, Jillian did the same and asked, “What’s going on?”

“Ta gueule!” barked one of the motorcycle cops, while his partner turned and yelled into the other room for their captain. Moments later, a heavyset man in his mid-fifties with thinning hair and bags under his eyes entered the kitchen. At first he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, but he quickly recovered and began giving orders to his men.

As they bounced Harvath up against the wall and searched him, they found not only Alomari’s tactical machine pistol and.357 revolver, but also the folding knife, Harvath’s Sam Guerin identification, and the stacks of U.S. dollars, British pounds, and EU euros that Harvath had been given by his boss, Gary Lawlor, to help finance his assignment. After patting down Jillian, they searched both the packs and found Jillian’s tissue samples and yet another weapon, Harvath’s.40-caliber H amp;K USP Compact.

“At least they are all of different calibers,” said the captain, in English, as he examined the guns. “That should help speed up the ballistics process.”

“What ballistics process?” replied Harvath. “What is this all about?”

“Monsieur Guerin, Madame Alcott, my name is Captain Marcel Broussard of the provincial gendarmerie, and it is my duty to inform you that you are under arrest, pending an investigation of your involvement in the murders of London police officer Donald Mills and two civilians at the Harvey Nichols department store, as well as Dr. Molly Davidson, who had been working for Sotheby’s Paris office, and tonight’s murder of Marie Lavoine.”

Harvath was about to protest their innocence and ask what evidence the authorities had against them, when he realized the French police and Interpol would already have more than enough. Security camera footage from Harvey Nichols, though it wouldn’t have revealed much of Harvath’s identity, would have perfectly captured Jillian Alcott’s. Then he and Alcott had been asked to show IDs and have their pictures taken for security badges at Sotheby’s. Having been thrown out for an altercation with Davidson the same day she was killed, he and Jillian were the perfect suspects. Now, they had been caught returning to the scene of yet another murder. While not conclusive, there was more than enough circumstantial evidence to hold them indefinitely. He couldn’t blame the French police; they were one hundred percent correct in what they were doing, but he also couldn’t let them hold him.

As one of the two motorcycle cops stepped up from behind to handcuff him, Harvath swung his head back as hard as he could, shattering the officer’s nose. He followed it up with a right-handed chop to the side of Broussard’s neck, which dropped him like a trash bag full of mud right onto the linoleum floor. As the other motorcycle cop wrapped his arms around Harvath’s waist and tried to tackle him, Harvath laced his fingers together and brought both of his hands down in a lightning-fast snap at the base of the man’s skull. Subduing all three gendarmes had taken only a matter of seconds.

Harvath looked at Jillian, who was completely amazed by the speed at which he had moved. Sliding the Ruger into the pocket of his climbing pants, he started giving orders. “Guns, cash, passports, all of it. Gather it up and put it in the small backpack.”

Jillian nodded her head as Harvath grabbed the car keys, then bent down and cleaned out the pockets of the unconscious French police officers. Relieving them of their handcuffs, he shackled them in a convoluted wrist-to-ankle, ankle-to-wrist Twister pose that would make it impossible for them to move once they came to. After that, he dumped the chambered rounds and magazines from all of their weapons into the garbage, placed their pistols in the oven, and set it to bake.

When Jillian held up Harvath’s KIVA pack, indicating that everything was ready to go, he held his finger to his lips and signaled for her to follow.

If there had been other policemen in the small hotel, they would have come running at the first sounds of a struggle in the kitchen. As none had, Harvath felt it was a safe bet they were all alone. That didn’t mean, though, that more weren’t on the way. Small towns like Ristolas didn’t usually get much action, so a murder was likely to attract a lot of attention. The minute Marie Lavoine’s body had been discovered, word would have gone out far and wide.

The first thing Harvath noticed as they approached the reception area was the blood. It covered half the hardwood floor. Before he even saw the body, he noticed that most of the pictures had been knocked from the wall and their frames lay shattered in pieces. Harvath wanted to believe that the end had come quickly for Marie, but obviously it hadn’t. There had been a struggle, and knowing Alomari, Harvath figured he had taken pleasure in making the poor woman suffer.

When they finally came upon her body behind the small reception desk, Jillian gasped in horror. Marie’s throat had been cut, much in the same way as Ellyson’s, and her face was bruised and horribly swollen. Alomari had beaten her before he killed her, most likely in the process of trying to extract information. Everyone caves under torture eventually, and if Marie had told Alomari where he and Jillian had gone, Harvath couldn’t blame her.

Harvath and Alcott needed to get as far away from the gendarmes and Ristolas as possible. Leaning down, he removed the gold chain with the medallion of Saint Bernard from his pocket and placed it in Marie Lavoine’s hand. At least now she and Bernard were together, he thought as he straightened himself up and stepped from behind the reception desk.

Walking to the windows near the front door, he peered out from behind the curtains and was not happy with what he saw. The tiny driveway in front of the Carré de l’Ours was crammed with provincial police cars. Apparently, Broussard had entered the hotel with the first officers on the scene, the motorcycle cops, and had told the rest of the police to remain outside. From an investigative standpoint it was a smart move. The less people tramping through the hotel, the less chance of evidence being damaged. But from an escapee’s standpoint, Harvath and Jillian were screwed-doubly so, as he noticed teams of officers moving around to secure the back of the property.

“Shit,” said Harvath as he pulled his head back in from the window.

“What’s going on?” asked Jillian.

“It’s crawling with police outside.”

Jillian came up and looked out the window for herself. “What are we going to do?”

“As far as the authorities are concerned, you and I have been on a three-day killing spree. They’re not about to let us just walk out of here, and I’m not about to draw them into any sort of fight.”

“So what do you suggest?”

After thinking for several moments, Harvath looked out the window again and focused on something at the end of the driveway. “Do you know how to ride a motorcycle?”

“No, why?”

“Because I only have one idea on how to get us out of here, and we’ve probably only got a million-to-one shot at making it work.”

Five minutes later, wearing the visored helmets and uniforms of the two unconscious motorcycle cops from the kitchen, Harvath and Jillian exited the hotel and began quickly walking past the officers waiting outside.

When the gendarmes began asking what had happened inside, Harvath held up a plastic evidence bag containing Khalid Alomari’s tactical machine pistol and continued walking. The officers seemed to understand. They knew a murder had been committed, and the presence of such an exotic weapon confirmed what they all secretly believed-that the scene inside was particularly gruesome. Obviously, the captain had dispatched the two motorcycle officers on some important assignment involving the weapon, and they had no time to talk. That was fine with most of them. Hopefully, they would soon be allowed inside and would be able to see the crime scene for themselves. There wasn’t a man among them who had ever had the opportunity to see a murder scene before.

They went back to talking among themselves, but when Jillian climbed onto one of the motorcycles at the bottom of the driveway behind Harvath, and with a backpack no less, several of the gendarmes began to suspect something might be going on.

Please let it start on the first try, thought Harvath. It did, and they were half a block away before the first of the cops had run inside the hotel, discovered his colleagues in the kitchen, and come back outside to send the other officers to apprehend the wayward police motorcycle and its two fugitive riders.

Instantly, sirens started echoing off the stone structures of the small village. As Harvath drove the high-powered motorbike up both streets and sidewalks, he was thankful it was evening and most people were inside.

While he drove, Alcott stuck to her part of the plan. With their rented Mercedes surrounded by police cars in the Carré de l’Ours’s driveway, their only hoping of getting away was in whatever car Khalid Alomari had left behind. All they had to do was find it.

Harvath knew that Alomari was professional enough not to have parked right in front of a murder scene, but needing immediate access to the only route to the Col de la Traversette, he wouldn’t have parked too far away either.

As they drove up and down each of the village’s narrow streets, Alcott repeatedly pressed the remote panic feature on the car key Harvath had found in Alomari’s pocket.

The police were less than two blocks behind when Alcott finally got a hit, and the headlights, taillights, and horn of a black BMW 7-series sedan started going crazy. Immediately, Alcott pushed the panic button again and shut down the alarm.

Having seen the proficient way she drove her MG, Harvath had little doubt Jillian could handle the big BMW. Skidding to a halt beside it, he helped her slide off the motorbike and then told her to meet him on the other side of the bridge outside the village

Once she was in the car with her head down, Harvath took off, the police just turning the corner behind him.