Chapter 55

CHAPTER 55

Right now, Harvath was wishing he had the rest of the team with him. At the very least, having Ashby or Palmer, especially if one of them had brought the drone, would have been a game changer. As it stood, he didn't even have so much as a smoke grenade to help mask his movements.

What he did have, however, was the extremely thick tree cover. The same tree cover that the sniper was using so effectively to his advantage. All Harvath had to do was find the sniper before the sniper found him.

On his command, Preisler, who had both his and Johnson's UMPs, and Staelin, who had picked up Haney's 417, would begin shooting to help cover his mad dash into the woods. Once past the tree line, he would be on his own.

Keying his radio, he made sure everybody was ready. When both men confirmed they were in position, he counted down from three, and the moment Staelin started firing, Harvath took off running.

It was everything S?lvi wouldn't have wanted him doing—sprinting across an open piece of ground, into an unknown environment, which was under the control of an opponent he could neither identify nor pinpoint. Other than that, she would have assured him, it sounded like a terrific plan.

For the brief moment that he had weighed his options, he had consoled himself with the fact that there really was no other choice. Somebody had to do it and, Harvath being Harvath, the thought of asking anyone else to step up hadn't even occurred to him. You had to send the best man for the job, and in his mind, that was always him—regardless of how beaten his body, exhausted his mind, or difficult the assignment.

With Haney having directed Staelin and Preisler on where to focus their fire, Harvath managed to make it into the trees without being shot.

His lungs burned and he took the briefest of seconds to catch his breath and steady his heart rate. Everything from this moment forward would depend on him being absolutely silent and completely in control. The first task on his list was to gain the upper hand over the sniper. Removing the satellite imagery, he identified his position and then his first waypoint. He felt fairly confident that the shooter had probably made one very serious mistake. If he was right, the balance of power was about to shift substantially.

Pushing into the now-silent woods, he carefully chose his steps, making sure not to put weight on anything that would snap, crack, or otherwise give him away. It was bad enough that he didn't know where the sniper was. Drawing audible attention to himself could only make the situation worse and possibly even get him killed.

With his weapon up and ready to engage, he swept back and forth as he moved, as well as up and down. There was no telling where the sniper might have established his hide site.

Harvath made it all the way to the next break in the trees without making any contact. But the moment he stared out into the clearing, he saw exactly what he had hoped to see.

Judging by the imagery, there was supposed to be a trailhead with a small parking area, which was exactly what he found. And in that parking area was a lone SUV, which he was willing to bet belonged to the sniper.

From here the sniper could have easily unloaded his gear, disappeared into the trees, and hiked the likely short distance to his hide. All Harvath had to do now was pick up his trail.

Based on where Haney believed the shots had been coming from, Harvath began his search. Luckily, it was in the opposite direction of the established trails, which were so well traveled that it would have been all but impossible to pick up the sniper's figurative scent.

It took Harvath a few moments, but soon enough he saw it. There was a mound covered in tall grasses, a narrow band of which had been bent and recently broken. It was all that he needed to see.

Figuring that he had the element of surprise on his side and would be long gone before anyone investigated, the sniper hadn't tried very hard to cover his tracks. His path, while not exactly a piece of cake, had been easy enough for Harvath to follow.

Closer and closer he crept until finally, he didn't dare move another muscle. At this point, he could begin to make out the ambush site through the trees. The outlines of the shot-up vehicles were definitely visible. It was time to force the sniper to reveal himself.

To do that, someone other than Harvath was going to have to take a pretty big risk. As Staelin had already stabilized Haney and was closest to the dead Russians, he had offered to do it.

With Preisler laying down a volley of cover fire, which was aimed well into the tree canopy so as not to accidentally hit Harvath, Staelin ran back to Elovik's vehicle.

Using it for cover, he peeled off his balaclava and put it over the head of the dead driver. Then came the hard part.

Planting his feet, he grabbed hold of the body from behind and keyed his radio to let Harvath know he was in position. A bona fide CrossFit fanatic, Staelin credited the program with helping him to maintain his edge. But even in spite of all the dead lifts he'd done in the gym, he never thought he would actually do one in the field, much less that his life and the life of his teammates would depend on it.

Out in the trees, Harvath crouched down, his senses on fire, ready to take out the sniper. He then keyed his radio two times in quick succession, transmitting the signal for Staelin to act.

Upon hearing the clicks over his earpiece, Staelin tightened his core, pushed hard with his legs, and drove the corpse upward so that its masked head peeked above the hood of the vehicle, offering the sniper an irresistible target.

No one moved. No one spoke. No one dared even breathe. The entire team remained quiet. Seconds passed. The sniper refused to take the bait.

How the hell could that be? Perhaps he had already fled and was no longer in the trees. Maybe the vehicle Harvath had seen in the parking area wasn't actually his.

A dozen possible scenarios were racing through Harvath's mind when, suddenly, he heard the pop of a twig snapping directly behind him.

Faking to his left, he applied pressure to his trigger and began firing as he lunged right and spun 180 degrees.

The sniper's bullet missed his head by a millimeter, but Harvath's rounds found their target, slicing through the man's groin and lower abdomen.

Before the sniper could bring his weapon back to bear, Harvath fired again and again—driving three rounds center-mass through his heart, and two more, just for good measure, directly into his forehead.

The man fell to the ground, his rifle discharging one final time as he landed. Thankfully, Harvath wasn't in the path of the bullet.

"Target neutralized," he said over the radio. Patting down the sniper, he found the man's car fob, cell phone, and a Russian diplomatic passport. "Be prepared to roll," he added. "I'm heading your way. Black Dacia Duster. Don't let Johnson shoot me."

"Fuck you," Johnson replied through gritted teeth, the pain evident in his voice.

Having dropped the Russian corpse and gone back to tend his wounded comrades, Staelin radioed, "We're going to need additional medical. What's the plan?"

"I'm working on it," said Harvath, who could already hear the wail of Klaxons off in the distance.

As he rushed back to the sniper's vehicle, he pulled out his phone and sent Nicholas a text: Haney & Johnson shot. Need medical. Also need new safehouse. DO NOT contact COS Powell. DO NOT contact CIA. REPEAT do not contact Powell/CIA.

With that, he hopped into the SUV, started the engine, and sped out of the trailhead parking lot.

Moments later, he came flying into the cutout and skidded to a halt next to the van. "Did you guys check the bodies?" he asked as he helped Staelin load an extremely pale Haney, tourniquet around his right arm, into the back seat of the Duster.

"Negative."

Once Haney was safely in the SUV and Staelin had gone to help with Johnson, Harvath hurried over to search the dead Russians, starting with the pair from the embassy security vehicle.

Just like the sniper, they were also carrying diplomatic passports. After matching the photos to their faces, he put the passports in his pocket and ignored their phones. The devices would only serve as homing beacons for a subsequent Russian reprisal.

Moving quickly to the lead vehicle, he checked the photos against the two dead security agents, peeling the balaclava off the corpse Staelin had propped up, and then pocketed their passports as well.

But when he went to roll the deceased military attaché over, he got a huge surprise. It wasn't Elovik at all.

Taking out his phone, he pulled up the photo he'd been given, just to confirm that he wasn't mistaken. He wasn't. It definitely wasn't the attaché.

Grabbing the man's passport, Harvath gathered up the team's gear from the two Renaults and hustled back to the Duster. Johnson had just been placed inside and the cops were almost on the scene.

As he tossed the gear in back, climbed into the SUV, and put the vehicle in drive, he had two priorities. The first was to get his injured teammates medical attention ASAP. The second was to settle the score with the person who had set them up.

The fact that Elovik hadn't been part of that embassy convoy was the final piece of the puzzle. He knew exactly who he needed to go after and was already formulating a plan for how he was going to make Ray Powell pay.