Foreign Influence (43 page)

Rodriguez said nothing. It didn’t matter. Harvath knew what he had to do. With his hands beneath her arms, he inched his way back as far as he could without losing purchase and then, counting to three, he pulled.

There was a wrenching sound and then a snap, which he prayed was the crack of dried wood from somewhere behind her in the rubble and not bone.

De Roon yelled that they were losing the wall, but Harvath refused to let go of her. He had her now; they were moving. It was slow, inch by painful inch, as if she was dragging some sort of incredibly heavy weight.

“Hurry, damn it!” yelled de Roon. “Hurry!”

Harvath’s entire body burned from the strain, but they were almost free. He continued to slide back a foot and pull, slide back a foot and pull.

He had no idea how close he was to the end of the tunnel until he felt hands on his boots and then his legs, helping to pull him back. Then there were hands on his belt pulling him hard.

De Roon and his men grunted under the weight of the wall. They were yelling and cursing for the others to hurry. With Harvath out, there was only Rodriguez left. Already, the wall was beginning to fall.

Harvath rolled away from the rubble pile as Nikki’s teammates reached in to pull her out. As they did, he saw a sharp piece of metal that had embedded itself in her right side. The realization that the metal protruding from her chest had caused all the drag on her body as he struggled to extract her made him almost want to throw up. Then there was a shout from one of the Athena Team members of “Don’t drop the wall!” and he realized how wrong he had been and how incredible Nikki Rodriguez was.

While Harvath was pulling her out, she was pulling out someone else; a young woman who had been in the room next to her. Despite her injuries, and the high probability that the rest of the building could have collapsed, Rodriguez had never let go.

With his last half-ounce of adrenaline, Harvath leapt to his feet and helped de Roon’s team hold the wall. When the second woman was free, they attempted to lower the wall as gently as possible, but no one had the strength to see it all the way down.

It landed with a deafening crash, which hastened more structural failure and sent them all scrambling from the building. Casey and Cooper carried Rodriguez, while Ericsson and Rhodes helped the young prostitute from the room next door.

Out on the street, they began to administer first aid. Harvath’s hands, elbows, and knees were bleeding, but he was in much better shape than most of the people around him.

Someone offered him a bottle of water. After dousing his wounds he drained what was left and surveyed the devastation around him. All of it from a single bomber. Though it would be no consolation to the families and loved ones of the dead, it could have been,
it was supposed to have been
, much, much worse.

He resolved to himself that no matter what he had to do, he would not let this scene repeat itself in America.

Calling de Roon over, he said, “Give me your car keys.”

The intelligence officer looked at him. “You can’t drive like that.”

“I need to get back to al-Yaqoubi. I need to finish his interrogation.”

De Roon looked over Harvath’s shoulder, saw the first waves of Dutch rescue personnel arriving on the scene and said, “I’ll drive and we’ll finish it together.”

CHAPTER 62
 

Khalil al-Yaqoubi asked to speak to his family when Harvath entered the
Sacleipea
’s infirmary. He wanted assurances that they were still alive and that they had not been harmed.

The DST operative in Rabat was Casey’s contact, but Casey had gone to the hospital with Rodriguez while the other team members stayed at the scene to help treat the victims. Harvath couldn’t have called the man if he wanted to. Not that it mattered. Al-Yaqoubi was in no position to ask for anything.

“The deal is off, Khalil,” said Harvath.

The Moroccan didn’t understand. “But I did everything you asked. I told you the truth.”

“One of the bombs went off,” said de Roon as he instructed his men to leave the infirmary.

You could have heard a pin drop as the heavy steel door slammed shut.

Harvath unwound the bandage from the man’s left foot.

“What are you doing?” al-Yaqoubi demanded.

“I’m going to make you pay for all of the people who died tonight. Then I am going to make you pay for all the people who died in Paris. Then I am going to make you pay for Rome.”

Picking up a forceps and scalpel, he told de Roon, “Hold down his legs,” and began probing for the sural nerve. It didn’t take long to find it.

The terrorist screamed from the white-hot intensity of the pain.

“After I’m done making you pay, then we’ll call your family and I’ll let you listen to them pay.”

“No!” al-Yaqoubi shouted. “I did everything you asked. I will continue to do everything you ask.”

Harvath dug the forceps in again. “It’s too late, Khalil,” he shouted so he could be heard above the man’s screaming. “I warned you what would happen if even one of those bombs went off.”

The man was crying and begged Harvath to stop. “I will do anything. Anything. Please.”

De Roon looked at Harvath and he backed off. “I want to know who you’re working for.”

“I don’t know,” he stammered and Harvath shoved the forceps back in.

Al-Yaqoubi’s body went rigid and he arched his back so high it looked like his spine was about to snap. Tears were rolling down his face.

“Stop lying to me, Khalil.”

The man was hyperventilating. Harvath drew back the forceps and waited for him to catch his breath. “Last chance, Khalil. Who are you working for?”

“I’m telling you the truth. I do not know.”

Harvath moved the forceps closer.

“Al-Qaeda!” the man yelled. “Al-Qaeda. We swore our oath to Sheik Osama.”

“You only say that because that’s what you think I want to hear,” said Harvath as he studied the man’s face to discern whether or not he was telling the truth.

“It’s true. I swear to you.”

“Tell me about site 243.”

“What?” replied al-Yaqoubi.

“Site 243.”

“I don’t know what that is. I have never heard of it.”

“What about the Chinese?”

“I don’t know any Chinese.”

Harvath sensed he was telling the truth. Whoever had put this network together, especially if it was the Chinese, would have used third-party nationals from top to bottom. Al-Yaqoubi probably believed he really was working for al-Qaeda. The idea that his network had been assembled by China only to be hijacked by someone else would have been utterly incomprehensible to him.

Harvath switched his line of questioning. “Where did you train?”

“Yemen and Pakistan.”

“Who do you report to? Who gives you your orders?”

“I don’t know his real name.”

Harvath noticed a slight change in the man’s expression and rammed the forceps back into his foot. Once again, al-Yaqoubi’s body rose off the bed and writhed as he tried to escape the pain.

“Aleem,” he yelled, “Aazim Aleem.”

“I’ve never heard of him,” said Harvath as he twisted the tool inside the man’s foot like a fork into a plate of spaghetti.

Al-Yaqoubi howled and had trouble catching his breath. “He, he, he preaches on the Internet and on CDs and cassette tapes. They call him the Mufti …” his voice trailed off.

“The
what
?” Harvath demanded.

“The Mufti of Jihad.”

That was a name Harvath had heard of. The man was a rock star to jihadists around the world. He kept a very low profile and as far as Harvath knew, no one had ever been able to identify him.

Harvath disengaged the forceps and slid them out of the man’s foot. “The Mufti of Jihad is a ghost,” he said. “No one knows who he is. Why would he make his identity known to you?”

It took a moment for al-Yaqoubi to respond. “Because he and I were in the camps together. He was my instructor. He recruited me.”

“Describe him to me.”

The accountant strained at the wrists and remembered that he was tied down. He was breathing heavily. “Hands. He has no hands. Only hooks.”

“Why?”

“Jihad, Afghanistan.”

The man was slipping away again.

“Focus, Khalil,” Harvath ordered. “Where is he from?”

“Don’t know.”

“Saudi Arabia? Egypt? What languages does he speak?”

“Arabic and …” he said, his voice trailing off.

“And
what
?”

When he didn’t answer, Harvath slapped him. “What other language does he speak?”

“English. Very good English. Like an Englishman.”

“Does he live in England? Is that where he’s based? Who else is involved?” Harvath demanded. “Tell me about America. Who is in charge of the attacks in America?”

The accountant didn’t answer, and Harvath knew he was on the verge of blacking out again. He grabbed a package of smelling salts and looked at de Roon.

The intelligence officer nodded. He had no intention of getting in Harvath’s way this time.

Harvath opened the salts and waved them under the terrorist’s nose.

Al-Yaqoubi began coughing and his eyes started to normalize as he shook his head back and forth. Harvath tossed the salts aside and asked his question again. “Who is in charge of the American attacks?”

“There is an Iraqi,” sputtered al-Yaqoubi. “He is in charge of American operations.”

“What’s his name? How do I find him?”

“I don’t know his name. Aleem was the only one I knew by name. The rest of us used code names.”

Harvath doubted Aleem was his real name. He would have used a pseudonym as well.

“The man in America,” said Harvath as he raised the forceps again and hovered over the accountant’s foot, “what’s his code name?”

“Yusuf. We called him Yusuf.”

“What else do you know about him?”

“He is a businessman of some sort.”

“What kind of business?”

“I don’t know.”

Harvath debated shoving the forceps back inside the man’s foot, but held back. “You said he was an Iraqi. How long has he been in the United States?”

“I don’t know.”

“I am losing my patience, Khalil. You don’t seem to know much at all. Where in Iraq is the man from?”

“Fallujah. He comes from a large family there.”

“How do you know?”

“Iraqis like to brag about their families. He had a cousin who was the local commander of the National Guard. He talked about him a lot. He said that was how he was introduced to al-Qaeda.”

Harvath lowered the forceps. “What was his cousin’s name?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Try harder!” Harvath shouted. “Your family’s life depends on it.”

Al-Yaqoubi’s pulse was pounding as he searched his brain for the name. “Hadi? Halef? I can’t remember.”

Harvath looked at de Roon. “Call Rabat. Tell the DST that Khalil has been uncooperative and that they should begin.”

“Hakim!” the accountant yelled, the name rushing back to him. “His cousin’s name was Omar-Hakim.”

Omar-Hakim was the Iraqi National Guard commander Harvath had forced into helping him take down the al-Qaeda safe house outside Fallujah; the same safe house where the child hostages had been kept. Stunned, Harvath dropped the surgical instrument he was holding and ran from the infirmary.

Bursting through one of the exterior bulkheads, he began dialing the number for his contact in Fallujah before he even had a full-strength signal.

The call failed. Harvath cursed and dialed again. A few moments later, Mike Dent answered his phone.

“Mike, it’s Scot,” said Harvath. “Is Omar-Hakim still alive?”

“No,” replied the man from Fallujah. “He was tortured to death a
couple of days after you dropped him off. Are you having an attack of conscience or something?”

The Iraqi had gotten what he deserved. In fact, he probably deserved much worse, but that didn’t matter now. “Do you know any of his family members in Fallujah?”

“I don’t know any of them, but everyone knows of them. Why?”

“He has a cousin. A businessman in America. I need you to find out everything you can about him.”

“How soon do you need it?” asked Dent.

“I need it immediately and I don’t care what you have to do to get it. Do you understand?”

“Can I use local talent?”

“Use whoever you have to and agree to pay them whatever they want,” said Harvath, “but you get me that information and you get it for me ASAP.”

CHAPTER 63