The First Commandment (27 page)

“That dog was an innocent, an absolute innocent!” growled the Troll angrily as he slid off the couch and walked to the bar to refill his glass.

Attributing his increasing loquaciousness to the alcohol, Harvath had no intention of stopping him.

“There’s a reason I haven’t been in touch with Philippe,” said the Troll as he refilled his glass. “He had always been a very disturbed young man.”

“How disturbed?” asked Harvath.

“Extremely,” he replied as he crossed back over to the couch and climbed up. “There even came a point where the Roussards refused to care for him any longer. Adara had to put him into a very expensive boarding school. But there his problems only got worse.”

“What kind of problems?”

“In the beginning, his behavior was marked by a lack of empathy or conscience. He had poor impulse control and exhibited an array of manipulative behaviors. A psychologist the Roussards consulted could not make a specific diagnosis. The boy exhibited both antisocial and narcissistic personality disorders-neither of which was good news.

“To paraphrase the renowned criminal psychiatrist Robert D. Hare, Philippe was a predator who used charm, manipulation, intimidation, and violence to control others and to satisfy his own selfish needs. Lacking in conscience and feeling for others, he cold-bloodedly took whatever he wanted and did whatever he pleased, violating social norms and expectations without the slightest sense of guilt or regret.”

Philippe sounded just like his mother, and Harvath wondered if such an abhorrent psychological condition could be inherited.

“The Roussards tried to medicate the boy,” continued the Troll, studying the bit of brandy in his snifter, “but he refused to take his pills. When he attacked their youngest daughter with a knife, the Roussards gave Adara an ultimatum.”

“Which was?”

“Either she show up within the next twenty-four hours to collect him, or they were going to put him on the next plane to Palestine.

“It was the first in a perceived series of abandonments that undoubtedly contributed to his already precarious mental condition. The boy had always been very conflicted about his Palestinian-Israeli parentage. The use of the plagues, and in reverse order, may be some twisted nod to his father’s Jewish heritage.”

Now that Harvath’s worst fears about the man stalking the people closest to him had been confirmed, he had to focus on how to stop him. “Do you have a way to contact him?”

The Troll shook his head and took another sip of his drink. “Philippe and I had an incident. We never spoke again after that.”

“What kind of
incident?
”

“It’s not something I like to talk about.”

Harvath squinted over the sights of his pistol and began to apply pressure to the trigger. The Troll got the message.

“We had a disagreement. It was over something entirely inconsequential. Any normal person would have forgotten it and moved on, but Phillipe wasn’t normal, he was sick.

“He abducted me and held me hostage for two days, during which time I was subjected to torture. It was Adara who finally found me and came to my rescue. She nursed me back to health.”

“So why the hell would you want to show any loyalty to a man like that?” inquired Harvath.

“My loyalty wasn’t to him,” said the Troll, a sad smile playing out on his lips, “but to his mother.”

“I want to know something,” said Harvath. “I was there the night she died.”

“Yes.”

“Do you hold me responsible for what happened?”

The Troll was silent. “Does it really matter?” he finally asked.

“Yes, it does.”

“I don’t know who to blame. Hashim martyred himself and blew up the van, but he did it to save his sister from an ignoble fate at the hands of Schoen.”

“But what about me?” said Harvath.

“You were there. How could I not blame you?” asked the Troll. “I loved her and now she is gone. You were a part of that night, so yes, in part I do blame you.”

Harvath watched for any sign that the Troll was not telling him the truth. “Enough to want me dead?”

There was a long pause. Finally the man said, “At one point, I wanted you dead. I wanted everyone involved dead. But I realized that what happened was more of Adara’s making than anything else. She was the one ultimately responsible-she and her crazy brother, Hashim. The entire family was destined for tragedy.”

“Including Philippe?” probed Harvath.

The Troll’s eyes drifted toward the water. There was an odd sound coming from the bay. It sounded like a quickly moving watercraft rhythmically crashing against the waves. The only problem was the bay was perfectly calm. There were no waves tonight.

Harvath noticed it too and looked up just as a blacked-out Bell JetRanger helicopter came into view and began firing into the open living room.

The roar of the large helicopter hovering just above the water outside was eclipsed by the deafening thunder of heavy machine guns emptying themselves into the house.

Harvath grabbed the Troll by the back of his thick neck and forced him to the tile floor as all around them the walls, the furniture, and the fixtures were chewed to a pulp.

Shards of broken glass blanketed the ground, and a fire began in the kitchen. With its wooden construction and thatched roof, Harvath knew the place was going to go up faster than a box of kindling.

Drawing his pistol, he marked in his mind’s eye where the chopper had been hovering and readied himself to return fire. But the opportunity never came.

At a pause in the machine-gun rampage, Harvath popped up from the floor with his Beretta poised, only to see the skis of the helicopter as it disappeared overhead.

Despite the ringing in his ears, he could hear the helicopter as it flew over the roof and had a bad feeling about where it was headed-the landing pad.

The JetRanger could carry anywhere from five to seven passengers, which meant that there was no telling how many men were aboard. Harvath had already expended two rounds of ammunition and had only one spare clip remaining. He didn’t like the odds if they got into a protracted firefight. His only hope was to get the drop on whoever was aboard that helicopter.

When Harvath reached down to help the Troll off the floor, he was no longer there. Harvath spun to see the man running for the front door. Harvath caught him right at the reading nook. “We have to get out of here,” he shouted as he grabbed the dwarf by his collar.

“Not without the dogs!” he returned.

“There’s no time. We have to go now.”

“I won’t leave them!”

Harvath couldn’t believe the Troll would put his life on the line for his dogs. “Now,” he said as he spun him in the direction of the dining room and gave him a shove to get going.

Passing the couch, Harvath grabbed his dry bag and slung it over his shoulder.

At the dining-room table the Troll stopped again, this time for his laptop. Frantically, he began pulling the cables from its ports. Before Harvath could say anything, he stated, “We’ll want this. Trust me.”

Harvath didn’t argue. Grabbing the device by its handle, he jerked it off the table, stripping it from its remaining cables, which went whipping off in different directions.

With his other hand, Harvath took hold of the Troll’s arm and propelled him forward. They ran to the front of the structure, where the dining room and living room met. Beneath them was the glass floor. Many of its panes had been shattered. Others were pockmarked and splintered from the waves of machine-gun fire that had torn up the house.

As Harvath approached the wall of open windows that led out over the water, the Troll stopped dead in his tracks. “What are you doing?”

“I’m getting us the hell out of here. Get moving.”

The Troll twisted free of his grasp and retreated backward into the house.

“You’re going to get us killed. What the hell is wrong with you?”

The Troll glanced at the fire engulfing the kitchen, its flames now high enough to lick at the roof. As he turned back to Harvath he said, “I can’t swim.”

Harvath was about to tell him he had no choice, when all the lights in the house went out. He knew that whoever had started the job with that helicopter was about to storm the house to make sure it was finished.

Hoping the sound of the idling helicopter would cover their entry into the water, Harvath wrapped his arm around the dwarf’s waist and jumped.

They swam for as long as Harvath could beneath the water before coming up for air. The Troll was terrified and sucked in rapid gasps of air when they broke the surface. Harvath spun him onto his back to help keep his head above water and dragged him in a swimmer’s carry through the bay.

They swam parallel to the shore as the Troll kept an iron two-handed grip on his waterproof laptop. He was incredibly strong for his size. Had he put up any more of a struggle, Harvath very likely would have had to head butt the man to keep him from drowning them both.

Once they were a safe distance from the house, Harvath changed direction and brought them in to shore. As his feet touched the beach the Troll fell over onto his hands and knees and began retching up the cups of seawater he had swallowed during their short swim.

Harvath ignored him. Removing his dry bag, he pulled out his night vision goggles and powered them up.

As he finished heaving, the Troll wiped his mouth on his soaked shirtsleeve and said, “Where are you going?”

Harvath double-checked his pistol and said, “Back to the house.”

“But I’ve got a speedboat at the dock on the end of the island.”

“And they’ve got a helicopter. Helicopter beats boat every time.”

The Troll knew he was right. “So what do we do?” he asked.

Ever since they had escaped from the house, Harvath’s mind had been preoccupied with who was behind the attack. Were they here for him or had they come for the Troll?

It seemed highly unlikely that Morrell and his Omega Team had tracked him all the way to Brazil. But even if they had, this kind of assault was complete overkill, even by Morrell’s standards.

The more Harvath thought about it, the more he realized that whoever these people were, they had most likely come for the Troll. The little man’s list of enemies was long and distinguished. There were any number of governments that would have gladly seen him killed, including America ’s. And on top of that, the dwarf had worked both for and against some the world’s most powerful people and organizations.

The only thing Harvath could count on was that underestimating the attacker would be done at his own peril. “We need to split them up so we can thin them out,” he said.

“Split them up how?” asked the Troll.

“Where are the keys to the boat?”

“In a cup holder next to the front passenger seat.”

Harvath quickly explained what he wanted him to do. When the Troll nodded, Harvath turned and headed back toward the house.

As he moved, he prayed to God his plan would work.

Harvath ran up the beach to the point where the Troll’s house jutted out over the water. It was much closer than Harvath wanted to come, but he had very little choice.

Sliding into the water, he glanced at his Kobold and made a note of how much time he had left.

Pulling the cups of his night vision goggles over his eyes, Harvath swam until he was right beneath the glass floor of the living room. He could hear a chorus of orders being shouted by men’s voices up above, but none of them were in English. Every word was in Arabic.

Whoever these men were, they were not here for Harvath. They were here for the Troll. Unfortunately for them, today was going to prove to be a very unlucky day.

Positioning himself with a clear line of fire through several of the broken panes of glass above, Harvath raised his Beretta and waited. When one of the men came into view, it took all of his training not to pull the trigger. Once a second man joined his comrade, Harvath squeezed off two rounds in rapid succession and dropped them both.

He didn’t wait to see what the reaction would be. Diving beneath the water’s surface, Harvath swam twice as far as he had with the Troll and didn’t come up for air until his lungs were seared by a burning thirst for oxygen.

Slowly bringing his head above the waterline, Harvath reappeared a safe distance away and took in deep breaths of air. He watched as the burning house was illuminated by even brighter flashes of gunfire delivered by the two dead men’s colleagues through the glass floor at an opponent who had already fled.

Harvath swam for the beach on the far side of the house. Hitting the sand, he wrung the water out of his clothes and made his way toward the main building. The Blackhawk Warrior Wear boots he was wearing had been designed by a former Navy SEAL and were almost completely dry within the first several yards. It was a good thing, as he was going to have to move quickly and the last thing he needed was to be dragging two water-logged cinder blocks around his feet.

Traversing the beach, Harvath made it to the narrow strip of vegetation near the entryway to the house. Lying on his stomach, he used his elbows to pull himself forward. The first thing he noticed when he got within range of the house were the dogs.

They had taken shelter in a culvert beneath a nearby raised out-building. Judging from the signs of forced entry, the interior most likely contained the generator used to power the main house.

As Harvath crept forward, he heard the dogs begin to growl. He knew they were in no shape to attack, but the sound was enough to raise the hairs on the back of his neck.

He judged the distance from the main house, which was going to burn the rest of the way to the ground in less than an hour, and decided the dogs would be safe. A large water storage tank with a hose stood nearby.

Leaving the cover of the vegetation, Harvath shot out and quickly unwound the hose. He turned the spigot ever so slightly and then placed the hose near the dogs so they could have access to additional fresh water.

He thought briefly about restarting the generator as a distraction, but all that would have done was call attention to his position. Any psychological advantage would have been very short-lived, and there was not much time left.

Harvath swung around, flanking the house, and got himself into position halfway to the helipad.

He looked down at his watch and observed the final seconds tick away.

Once they did, there was a roar from the other end of the island as the Troll fired up the speedboat and cast away from the dock

Immediately, Harvath saw two men race out of the burning house. They pounded down the footpath, and when they hit the blind curve two meters from his position, he took a breath and pulled the trigger of his weapon twice in rapid succession.

Two cracks erupted from his Beretta and the men were felled, each by a perfect head shot.

Harvath scrambled from his hiding spot and pulled their bodies off the trail into the underbrush. They were carrying 9mm silenced Ukrainian Goblin submachine guns.

Harvath pulled a Goblin from one of the dead men, along with two spare magazines, and rushed toward the house. He had no idea whether the others could have heard his shots over the roar of the fire, but when the helicopter failed to lift off, the remaining men on the ground were going to get suspicious.

Taking up a position directly opposite the front door, Harvath waited. And waited. The house was almost completely engulfed in flames.
Had there only been four men in the assault team and had he killed them all?

It didn’t seem likely, but neither did it seem as if anyone would have remained in the burning house. The heat had to be unbearable. All told, there weren’t that many rooms to search.

Harvath held his position, the Goblin chambered and ready to fire. Minutes passed.

He was about to creep closer to the house to have a look inside when he heard movement behind him. He spun just in time to see two guns shoved into his face.