Path of the Assassin (9 page)

Scot Harvath had a lot of enviable talents, but the ability to kill time was not one of them. Patience in battle, he could handle; patience getting to battle was another thing entirely. This morning he had awakened, early and gone for a run. When he returned to his apartment he scrambled some eggs for breakfast and then set about some of the “to do” list of chores he had been putting off.

While organizing his desk, he came across a photo of Sam Harper, his mentor at the Secret Service, who had been killed during the president’s kidnapping that winter. There were also photos of Agents Maxwell, Ahern, and Houchins—all killed along with Harper trying to protect the president and his daughter. Not a day went by that Harvath didn’t remember the promise he had made to avenge the deaths of each and every American who had lost their lives protecting or trying to recover the president. Seeing the photos only reminded him more acutely of his promise.

During his extended leave of absence, tracking down the men responsible for those killings, something inside Scot had changed. He kept telling himself that soon it would all be over. He would go back to his new job at the White House, and things would eventually settle down and return to normal. He knew, though, that he was lying to himself. He couldn’t go back to that life. In fact, he was amazed that he had stayed in it as long as he had. Claudia had been the final straw. If it had worked out between them and she had wanted to settle down in D.C., maybe he would have felt differently. Maybe he could have ignored what had been chewing at the edge of his conscience for so long. He knew he was an excellent Secret Service agent, but he also knew that his talents were better suited to a different arena. His mind was made up. Actually, it had been made up for some time, but now he could finally see the decision for what it was. He was avoiding the White House, and the president, because he knew that after he completed this last assignment, it would be time for him to move on. He had no idea where; he just knew he couldn’t go back to doing what he had been doing for the Secret Service.

Old habits died hard, and Scot found himself trying to relax his mind and pass the time the way he and his SEAL teammates had in their mission ready room while they waited to be deployed. Though it seemed like a lifetime ago, in reality it had only been a few years, and Scot found the old routine comforting. From the footlocker in his closet, he removed a stack of videocassettes with his name handwritten across each sleeve. He had watched
Cool Hand Luke
and was halfway through
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
when his pager went off.

He grabbed the phone and dialed the number from the pager’s display.

Morrell answered on the first ring, “Name?”

“Harvath.”

“It looks like Hashim Nidal has come up for air.”

“Where?”

“Cairo.”

“What’s the scenario?”

“Hijacking. Lots of passengers.”

“When do we move?”

“In forty-five minutes out of Dulles. The rest of the team is already here.”

“Thanks for the short notice. I’ll be lucky if I can grab my toothbrush and still get there on time.”

“Don’t grab anything. Not even your passport. Everything will be provided en route. United Airlines is flying us in on identical equipment so we can know it inside out by the time we touch down. Come around through ‘general aviation.’ Tell them you’re with the Wright brothers party, and an agent will bring you to the maintenance hangar where the plane is.”

The Wright brothers? Classic,
thought Harvath. “Fine. I am on my way, but, Ricky?”

“What?” snapped Morrell, obviously eager to get off the phone.

“Don’t even think about leaving without me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Scot was ready to say, “Bullshit,” but Morrell hung up before he could.

Forty-five minutes to get to Dulles? It
was
bullshit. Obviously Morrell had timed it so it would be impossible for Scot to get there before they took off. It was also obvious that Morrell and the rest of his group had no intention of fully cooperating with him. They were going to do the bare minimum to cover their asses and to hell with Scot Harvath. Well, they had another thing coming.

Harvath dialed Gary Lawlor’s office at the J. Edgar Hoover Building in D.C. and crossed his fingers that the man was at his desk. He was and answered on the first ring, “Lawlor.”

“Gary, it’s Scot Harvath.”

“What’s up?”

“It looks like we’ve got a lead on Abu, Jr.”

“So, I heard. Where are you?”

“At my apartment.”

“Your apartment? Why the hell aren’t you scrambled and out at Dulles already?”

“I just got the call.”

“You what?”

“Morrell just called me.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I am very serious. Listen, I need your help. It’s obvious these guys are not playing ball with us. Morrell called me at the very last minute, knowing I wouldn’t be able to make it to Dulles before they took off. He’ll say he called me as soon as he could, but you and I both know that’s BS. I need to be on that flight, Gary. If they’re going to take this guy down, I have to be there.”

“Hold on a second,” said Lawlor, who withdrew a chart from the credenza behind him. “Do you know Inova Hospital in Alexandria?”

“Yeah, it’s on Seminary about four blocks west of I-395. Why?”

“How long would it take you to get there?”

“I could probably be there within fifteen minutes.”

“Hold the line again,” said Lawlor as he put Scot on hold and made another call. When he came back on just over a minute later, he had good news. “I called Mitch Norberg at Quantico. They’re going to fly in a Sikorsky S-76 to the hospital helipad. It’s made up to look like a Life Flight bird. It’ll be waiting for you.”

“Thanks, Gary. I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything, just nail that bastard. And remember what I said before about getting along with Morrell? Forget it. We might all be on the same team, but that doesn’t seem to mean much to these people. Keep your eye on them. I wouldn’t trust Morrell or his boss further than I could bowl them.”

*  *  *

The look on Rick Morrell’s face when Harvath walked into the United Airlines maintenance hangar with ten minutes to spare was priceless.

“What the hell’s he doing here?” said one of the SAS men. “I thought he wasn’t supposed to make it.”

Harvath looked around at the assembled crew. “Well, the gang sure seems to be all here. Sleazy, Slimy, Drippy, Dopey, and even…hey, what’s up, Doc?”

The man who had been taking Harvath’s blood pressure on the plane back from Jerusalem and whose eye Scot had dotted was still sporting two butterfly bandages. Now, he simply gave Harvath the finger and walked away.

“Now that we’re all reacquainted,” Morrell broke in, “let’s get on with it.”

The United Airlines security, maintenance, and engineering staff, as well as several representatives from Boeing, finished touring the group, explaining everything they could about the specially modified 747-400. The aircraft was identical to the one that had been hijacked.

In an attempt to keep up with the growing competition from Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic Airways, United had decided to outfit their planes with numerous perks for business and first-class travelers. Besides the standards of video-on-demand, high-speed Internet access, massages, facials and manicures, there was an upper-deck lounge complete with a fully stocked bar and short-order kitchen, as well as a workout facility with showers on the lower-deck level. It seemed the hotter the competition, the more passenger friendly the “Friendly Skies” became.

When the tour was complete, Harvath, Morrell, and the rest of the team buckled into the overstuffed leather seats inside the lounge behind the flight deck, and the 747-400 was towed out of the hangar and onto the tarmac.

The engines growled to life, and minutes later the enormous craft was cleared and roaring down the runway. Harvath glanced at the 747-400 fact sheet he had been given when he arrived late on the tour and was awed by the statistics. The tail height of the 747-400 was six stories, each wing weighed 28,000 pounds and measured 5,600 square feet—an area large enough to park forty-five medium-sized cars. The “flexible” cabin layout allowed for changes in class and seating configuration in only eight hours and changes of lavatory and galley locations in forty-eight. The Wright brothers’ first flight at Kitty Hawk could have been performed within the 150-foot economy-class section.

After the aircraft had leveled off at its cruising altitude of 35,000 feet and the captain had turned off the Fasten Seat Belt sign, Rick Morrell called his twelve-man team to order.

“We’ve got a long way to go and we’ll be getting there in a short amount of time, so listen up. According to our flight plan, we should be touching down in Cairo at approximately oh three-thirty. We’ll be landing at the old airport and will be choppered to Mubarak International. Sunrise on site occurs at oh six-twelve. The U.S. has a Combat Applications Group team in country working with the Egyptians, and they are already on-site—”

“‘Combat Applications Group’?” broke in Harvath. “What is it with you and all the fancy terminology? Why don’t you just call them Delta Force like everybody else?”

“Gentlemen,” responded Morrell as he gestured toward Harvath, “I’m sure you all remember our docile charge from Jerusalem, Agent Scot Harvath of the U.S. Secret Service. As I mentioned to you before, by order of the president, he is now officially part of our operation. Let’s give him a warm welcome to the team, shall we?”

The upper deck lounge of the 747-400 was completely silent.

“Good,” said Morrell. “Now that we have that out of the way, we can continue. As I was saying, there’s already a Combat Applications Group team in country and on-site. As far as the Egyptians are concerned, we are CAG members also and will be there to assist the current CAG team. There are duffels with your names on them in the overhead compartments. You’ll find your uniforms in there.

“Here’s the scenario. As United Airlines flight 7755 was taxiing to its gate at Mubarak International Airport at approximately fourteen hundred hours local Cairo time, an armed group of hijackers took control of the plane. This was United’s first nonstop flight from Chicago to Cairo and carried a host of dignitaries and VIPs including United’s CEO and the mayor of Chicago.”

“The mayor? You mean James Fellinger?” asked Harvath.

“You know him?” queried Morrell.

“I met him once with the president when we passed through Chicago for a fund-raiser. He’s a decent guy. They say he’s a shoo-in for Illinois governor in the next race and will probably make a serious bid for the White House eventually.”

“In other words, this guy could one day be your boss. Better not fuck up, Harvath,” said one of the operatives.

“I don’t know who you think you work for,” replied Scot, “but we all work for the president. That includes the CIA, though you guys think you’re above everything.”

“All right, all right,” said Morrell. “That’s enough. Let’s get back to business. Now, three male passengers have already been killed. Their bodies were dumped from a forward exit door onto the tarmac. We believe two of the men were the sky marshals working the flight. Preliminary reports seem to indicate that the third man was a guy named Lund, one of Mayor Fellinger’s bodyguards. No one has been able to get close enough to the plane to retrieve the bodies, but from what the CAG team can tell, all three were probably dead before they hit the ground.

“The flight manifest indicates that it took off full with three hundred twenty passengers and twenty-three crew members, including the pilots. Upon landing, the captain was able to get off a message that the plane was undergoing a hijacking and that the hijackers had threatened to blow the cockpit door with C4 if it wasn’t opened. That was the last that was heard of the captain. He had no idea how many hijackers there were. From that moment on, one of the hijackers took over communication with the tower. He threatened to begin killing passengers if anyone came near. There was some chatter in the cockpit and someone named Ghazi was addressed before a second man took over the radio and relayed the major demands. We know ‘Ghazi’ to be the code name for Hashim Nidal and believe it was him speaking. First, he demanded the unfreezing of all Abu Nidal assets being held by Egypt, and then demanded ten million dollars in cash, apiece, for Mayor Fellinger and United’s CEO, Bob Lawrence.”

“What makes you so sure it was Hashim?” asked Harvath.

“With twenty plus million dollars in cash on the line, I don’t care how loyal Nidal might think his men are, even the pope wouldn’t trust Mother Teresa with that much money. This is the kind of job you suit up for yourself. Now, there was also an additional instruction relayed to the Egyptians that they were not to connect any external power sources or the air-conditioning.”

“It’s got to be over a hundred degrees on the tarmac. How are they going to survive without AC?” asked one of Morrell’s operatives.

“Simple,” answered Harvath. “There’s an auxiliary power unit mounted in the rear fuselage that allows the aircraft to remain self-sufficient in both the power and air-conditioning arenas.”

“How the hell would you know?” asked the operative.

“Your mother told me,” said Harvath. “Where do you think I learned it?” He picked up the blue Boeing folder and tapped it with his index finger. “Regardless of what you may think, reading really is fundamental.”

The operative fumed and Morrell stepped back in to avoid further confrontation. “We’re wasting time here.”

“So, is the ransom going to be paid?” asked Harvath.

“Not if we can help it,” answered Morrell, who walked over to the lounge’s audiovisual cabinet, pressed a button to lower the flat-panel monitors, and inserted a DVD into the player. “This footage was taken at O’Hare International Airport yesterday as United Airlines flight 7755 was boarding. Somewhere in here we believe we have Hashim Nidal himself, as well as all of his men. With an aircraft of this size and almost three hundred fifty passengers and crew, he’s going to need a lot of help to keep things under control.”