Foreign Influence (49 page)

Harvath then raised one finger.

“The good news is that the Millennium and Van Buren stations are near Cooper and Rhodes. They’re the ones with tac teams who can make it, so they’ll tackle those. Ogilvie and Union Station are pretty close to the river, but La Salle Street station is a few blocks inland.”

“I’ll take La Salle,” said Chase, who was still panting.

“What’s our first drop point?” asked Harvath as he tried to steady his breathing. Casey consulted the officer piloting the boat and then said, “Ogilvie. Drop off at Madison Street and it’s a block and a half west.”

Harvath raised himself to standing. “I’ll take that one.”

“Like hell you will,” replied Casey. “I’m more rested. I’ll take it. You take Union Station. It’s the next drop and it’s right at the river. I’m not taking no for an answer.”

Harvath bowed his head and kept sucking in air.

“It’s going to be this bridge,” said the police officer as they approached. “Starboard side. Coming up fast.”

As the boat slammed up against the landing, Harvath looked at Casey and said, “Mine.” Before she could respond, he had jumped out of the boat and was running up the stairs.

She yelled out,
“Klootzak,”
but had no idea if he heard.

CHAPTER 74
 

Despite being winded, Harvath was ready to run when he got up to the street level. Then he realized how much attention he would be calling to himself and, instead, walked as quickly as he could toward the station.

Across the street, he waited for the light, sucked in as many deep breaths as he could, and fought to get his heartbeat under control.

Of all the places to try to apprehend a lone gunman, a crowded train station had to be one of the worst.

The Northeast Illinois Regional Commuter Railroad Corporation, known as Metra, served Chicago and six counties in a surrounding radius. The station was overflowing with commuters.

Harvath followed the signs and made his way to the escalators that led to the upper level where the train platforms were. He was only halfway up when the shooting began.

The people in front of him turned and began running down the up escalator. He tried to push through them, but they were panicked. Hopping over the rail onto the stairs, he fought through the masses of people and began running. The shooter was firing on full auto.

As he neared the top of the stairs, it suddenly stopped.
Magazine change
,
thought Harvath, and he was right. Just as quickly as the shooting had stopped, it had started again.

The platforms fed out into a cavernous retail area several stories tall. With people running and screaming, it was hard to get an exact fix on where the shooter was. All he could tell was that the shooting was coming from the other side, away from where he now stood. He pulled out two spare mags for his MP7, tucked them in his waistband, and tossed away his bag.

Seconds later, the sounds of fully automatic fire were joined by the sound of something else—single-shot fire. There was another shooter and he was close.

Through the sea of people, Harvath caught a glimpse of a Metra police officer who had taken a knee out in the open and was engaging the attacker.

Passengers were running everywhere including back out on to the platforms and down onto the tracks. Harvath couldn’t tell why the Metra officer hadn’t sought cover. He was a sitting duck where he was. Then Harvath locked eyes on the attacker and saw what he was focused on. Pinned near one of the retail stores was a group of children. The Metra cop was not only engaging the shooter, he was trying to draw his fire—away from the children. They were very young, approximately six or seven years old, and were all sobbing. Two adults in matching T-shirts lay in pools of blood on the granite floor in front of them.

Harvath raised his MP7 to fire at the shooter, but as he did, he saw the Metra cop get shot in the chest and the throat. As he fell forward, his weapon clattered to the floor, its slide locked back, the pistol out of ammo.

With the cop out of the picture, the terrorist sprayed a bunch of fleeing passengers who had been running in the other direction. It caused a reverse stampede and any clear shot he could have had was now blocked. He needed to get to those children, but the only path available to him was through the shooter’s wall of fire.

Running out onto the platform area, Harvath ran past three sets of tracks and then, using the closest entrance for cover, risked a peek back into the concourse. He was much closer and had a very good view
of the shooter, a muscular Middle Easterner with a mustache and short hair.

The man was hyperalert and caught sight of Harvath immediately. He turned his weapon toward him and began firing.

Harvath ducked back behind the entrance as masonry, metal, and glass exploded all around him. When the firing stopped, he rolled back out to engage, but the man had disappeared.

In the concourse, the floor was slick with blood and covered with bodies that had been ripped to shreds.

It took Harvath a moment to realize where the shooter had disappeared to. He had leapt behind a concession-store counter. Harvath had no idea how thick it was, whether it was solid, or what was stacked behind it, but he knew there wasn’t much a 4.6 mm round couldn’t chew through. He also knew he had to keep the man’s attention off those children, so he began firing.

His rounds tore good pieces out of the counter, but he spent his magazine quickly and had to roll back to his cover and reload. By the time he did, the shooter was up and firing again. He was firing at Harvath’s position, which meant he wasn’t targeting the children. That was good. The man, though, had also switched to three-round bursts, which meant he was not only being much more careful, but he also knew what he was doing.

The thing that didn’t make any sense, though, was why he hadn’t transitioned to the special armor-piercing ammunition Chase had fabricated and which he had explained to Harvath that all the shooters were carrying.

Harvath waited for another volley and when it subsided, he swung back out and did an entire magazine dump on the counter before ducking back. Through the smoke, he had seen that he had broken through in multiple places. It looked like metal canisters of some sort were stored underneath the counter. Nevertheless, the shooter had to know that Harvath was getting closer. What he didn’t know was that Harvath only had one magazine for the MP7 left and had no idea if it would it be enough.

When the man popped up this time to fire, he managed only two
rounds before his magazine was empty and he was forced to drop back down and reload.

Harvath spun back around the entrance and, making sure to control his muzzle rise, focused on one particular area he had been tearing through the counter. He emptied the magazine as his rounds went clean through.

Ducking back behind the entrance, he dropped the MP7 and pulled out his Glock. He had fifteen rounds in the magazine, one in the chamber. It was make-or-break time. He needed to get to those children.

Crouching, he ran to the platform entrance nearest to where they were still paralyzed and crying on the concourse. Taking a deep breath, he counted to three, raised his Glock, and sped out from behind the door.

The shooter was already waiting for him. As Harvath appeared, he locked his sights on him and pulled his trigger.

The explosive round detonated inside the terrorist’s chamber and blew up right in his face, just as Chase had planned.

As the man’s scream filled the concourse, Harvath put two rounds into his head and killed him.

EPILOGUE
 

Y
EMEN
O
NE MONTH LATER

The end of August was not a good time to be in Yemen. In fact, as far as Harvath was concerned, there was never a good time to be in Yemen or anywhere else on the Arabian Peninsula.

He sat at one of the city’s few halfway decent cafés, his chair propped up against the wall, an awning shielding him from the afternoon sun. As he took a sip of his chai, he thought about everything that had happened.

With visible tactical teams in plate armor at Chicago’s Millennium and Van Buren stations, the shooters who had come there to cause maximum carnage had immediately switched out their magazines for the ones loaded with Chase’s “armor-piercing” rounds.

As their weapons exploded in their faces and civilians scattered, both men were gunned down. Credit was given to the quick-thinking CPD tac teams. The fallen Metra office at the Ogilvie Transportation Center was rightly billed as a hero without whose actions many more innocent lives, including those of a small group of six-year-olds, would have been lost.

The slaughter at Union Station had been worse than Ogilvie because it had started three minutes before Gretchen Casey got there. Positioned
behind the shooter, she took a shot from over seventy yards and killed him instantly with one round through the back of his head. She then secreted her weapon and quietly left the station. While the police in general were given credit for fast action, no single officer or department had yet officially been credited for killing the shooter. A rumor that it had been done by an undercover U.S. marshal on his way to work had gained wide traction in the press.

All of the would-be suicide bombers were apprehended exactly where Sean Chase had said they would be. Neither Harvath nor any of the Athena Team members had seen him again after he had chosen to take the La Salle Street station.

According to Carlton’s contacts at the CIA, Chase had been tasked with hunting down Aazim Aleem. Based on chatter the Agency had intercepted, Aleem was convinced that his entire network had been compromised and had fled the country for somewhere in the Middle East. Authorities so far had been unable to uncover any evidence of plots or Jarrah-Aleem cells in Los Angeles or New York. Their investigations were ongoing.

Once stabilized, Nikki Rodriguez was transferred stateside and was expected to make a full recovery. Julie Ericsson had been treated for her gunshot wound at Stroger Hospital in Chicago and released. She traveled back to Ft. Bragg with her teammates, Megan Rhodes, Alex Cooper, and Gretchen Casey. Casey had been keeping Harvath up to date on their progress and in her last e-mail informed him that, upon reflection, Rodriguez was convinced that he
had
been looking at her ass in Amsterdam. She wanted him to call her to discuss the matter further. In other words, they all sent their best wishes and looked forward to seeing him again soon.

Josh Levy, the owner of Surety Private Investigations, had been discharged from the hospital after being held overnight for observation and was expected to make a full recovery. Based on a couple of calls from Washington, John Vaughan and Paul Davidson both received commendations and promotions. While Davidson was happy where he was, Vaughan gladly accepted a newly created position with the Chicago Police Department’s Intelligence unit. Davidson recruited the Pakistani mechanic,
Javed Miraj, into his network and was using him to help build a case against the three stooges at the Crescent Garage.

Alison Taylor had begun making progress, and her family couldn’t have been happier. Mr. Taylor had paid Vaughan the balance of his monies owed and realized that with all of the federal charges against Mohammed Nasiri, Alison would probably never get her day in court. Even so, knowing that she was getting better and that Nasiri would never walk free was justice enough for him.

In Switzerland, Adda Sterk had been remanded to a DOD black site for further interrogation, and Michael Lee was given immunity from prosecution, along with a small payment from the Carlton Group to guarantee his silence. He was reunited with his dog and also tracked down Sterk’s contact, who had accepted the two decoy dogs that supposedly belonged to Nicholas. The Old Man had made it known to Harvath that he wanted the settlement money to Michael Lee to be reimbursed to the Carlton Group by the Troll, in person. Harvath had no idea where he was, but he assumed that he and Padre Peio had returned to the Basque country.

After Chicago, Harvath had intended to return to Virginia, but instead he had gone to Maine. He knew it wasn’t going to be easy telling Tracy things were over. She was a beautiful woman and he loved her very much, more than he had ever loved anyone else. He wanted a family, though. He had come to the conclusion that he wanted that more than anything else, even more than his career. He had thought he could have both with her. He believed that at one point it had been possible, but not the way things were now.