Chapter 40

CHAPTER 40

With each stroke, Harvath was reminded of the pain he felt throughout his body. This is what you get, he thought to himself. This is what happens when you're the first to volunteer for everything.

He didn't need to be doing this part of the operation. Technically, he could have "volunteered" Barton, or any of the other guys, for it. But that wasn't who he was. And maybe that was his problem.

It was one thing to not ask the members of your team to do anything you yourself wouldn't do. That was called leadership. It was something else entirely to never ask them to do the hard things because you were too busy doing them yourself.

Not allowing people to undertake difficult tasks was not only selfish, but also robbed them of the opportunity to better themselves. Trusting people to perform to the best of their ability, and then letting them do so, was likewise part of leadership. As he swam, he wondered if that was a lesson he should more tightly embrace. It certainly couldn't hurt to explore.

Pushing the pain and ruminations from his mind, he focused on his objective and, kicking his flippers even harder, picked up the pace.

The harbor stretched for over forty acres and had enough berths for seven hundred vessels. Had Barton not gotten him as close as he had to Tsybulsky's boat, he would have been swimming for a good ten or fifteen minutes longer.

Moving silently past the hulls of the enormous yachts was like threading his way through a pod of giant steel beasts, sleeping in the cold, dark water. As they groaned against their moorings, he could feel the vibrations ripple across his body. There was an otherworldliness, an eeriness to it all.

The quiet, black stillness of the harbor, however, soon receded as he closed in on Tsybulsky's vessel.

Gathered along the pier, groups of people gawked and took pictures, making enough noise to echo off the neighboring boats. They added a layer of audible camouflage to Harvath's approach. They also helped keep the crew distracted—something absolutely critical to his mission as the LED hull lights had been activated and were illuminating the water around the yacht's stern. The stern area was where he needed to zip-tie the HEL-STARs.

The Tecnomar for Lamborghini 63 was designed with an open tail and a series of steps that ended right above the water level. The final step was its widest and functioned as the swim platform. Beneath it, at both the port and starboard edges, was another design element—a trio of narrow carbon-fiber tubes. Painted red, white, and green to honor the car manufacturer's Italian heritage, they resembled pool railings. They were the only attachment points he could access from the water.

Knowing Tsybulsky could be back at any moment, he worked fast. After three deep breaths to saturate his lungs with oxygen, he took a final breath and soundlessly slipped beneath the surface.

The LED hull lights pushed illumination from the stern outward, so he ducked under the middle of the boat and swam aft. The lights were so bright, he didn't even need his headlamp.

While being careful not to be illuminated or to cast a shadow, he pulled one marker light at a time from the mesh bag at his waist and zip-tied them in place to the outermost tube on the port side. After activating them in IR mode, he swam back to where he had started, quietly broke the surface, and filled his lungs once more with air.

Once he was ready, he slipped back underwater and repeated the process, this time on the starboard side.

Satisfied with the job that he had done and confident that the HEL-STARs were securely in place, he swam away from Tsybulsky's boat and out toward the middle of the harbor, where Barton would be picking him up.

Using his pain as motivation, he leaned into it and propelled himself with as much speed as his legs and his flippers would muster.

Several minutes later, when he arrived at the rendezvous point, he activated his own HEL-STAR and waited for the team to detect his IR beam through their night vision. It didn't take long. Soon enough, he could hear the rumble of the big V-8s as the brABUS Shadow approached.

As they slowly moved past, one of the commandos tossed him a line. Harvath grabbed hold and pulled himself up close against the hull as Barton piloted the craft toward the mouth of the harbor.

Even though his muscles were tired and he was dipping into his reserves to maintain his grip, it felt good to no longer have to be kicking. All he had to do was hang on a little longer.

The moment they cleared the final dock, Barton put the brABUS in neutral and they pulled Harvath aboard. As he pulled off his mask and fins, one of the Ukrainians tossed him a towel. He was halfway out of his wet suit when Barton put the boat back in gear and headed for the open ocean. They needed to be in place and all set up before Tsybulsky passed.

Because of the contours of the coast, the most direct route back to Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat was a straight line that resembled traveling from two o'clock to seven o'clock across a watch face.

Charting this course, Tsybulsky would exit the harbor, point his yacht southwest, and move parallel to Monaco's shoreline before being taken out into deeper water as he crossed the Golfe de Saint-Hospice. It was Harvath's job to make sure he didn't get that far.

Out of the wet suit and back in dry clothes, he joined Barton at the helm where he focused on the touchscreens—particularly the digital navigation features. He wanted a precise picture of the boat's exact location at all times.

Activating the brABUS's electronic chart plotter, he pulled up the port at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat and activated it as their destination. Tsybulsky's captain had likely done the same and it would allow them to better anticipate his movements.

Harvath watched as Max and Petro assembled their equipment. He recognized the Accuracy International AX50 ELR from having seen it at the caretaker's cottage. It was a .50 BMG (Browning Machine Gun), extremely long-range antimatériel rifle. Weighing in at almost twenty-eight pounds, the weapon boasted impressively low recoil and incredible accuracy. It was capable of taking out targets at an effective range of 2,500 meters, or more than twenty-seven football fields away.

The fact that it fired the high-explosive incendiary/armor-piercing projectile known as the Raufoss Mk 211 only further endeared the weapon to his heart. The round was manufactured by a Finnish-Norwegian company called Nammo, and the word raufoss was Norwegian for "red waterfall." A pretty good omen in his book.

Topping it all off, the rifle had been outfitted with an AWC Thor Turbodyne titanium suppressor, a Schmidt & Bender scope, and a HISS-XLR ThermoSight. The entire package probably cost more than most people's cars.

As the commandos continued to ready their gear, Harvath scrolled through the digital navigation system.

Pointing to a spot up ahead, he drew Barton's attention to the map and said, "X marks the spot. This is where we're going to do it."