Chapter 74

CHAPTER 74

They parked the SUVs as far away as possible. It would mean a good two-mile walk to the target, but they wouldn't have to worry about headlights or the sound of engines giving them away.

Harvath took point and led the team through the darkness. Every quarter mile, he would stop and transition to the extremely powerful night-vision binoculars to get the long-track view. Once he was satisfied that they weren't walking into a trap, he would transition back to his goggles and wave his teammates forward.

It made for a slow and laborious trek, but he didn't care. He didn't want anyone else getting injured. This wasn't an officially sanctioned operation. Yes, the powers that be back in Langley and Washington would be thrilled to deal the Russians and unit 29155 a deadly blow, but at its core, that wasn't what this was about. This was personal. This was about revenge. This was about Harvath.

Granted, his teammates had known and loved Lara. What they were doing for him, he would have gladly done for any one of them. Yet the sense of déjà vu wouldn't let him go. With each step, as they crept closer to the cabin, his sense of foreboding, his sense of danger increased. His intuition was trying to tell him something. He just didn't know what.

Half a mile from the target, he decided to scrap the mission.

"Are you joking?" Ashby asked, as quietly as she could.

Harvath shook his head. "Something's off. I'm calling it. End of mission."

"So, we're just going to turn around and walk back to the cars?" Palmer asked.

" You're going to turn around and walk back," Harvath clarified. "I'm going the rest of the way by myself."

"The hell you are," Gage objected. "Per our intel, there's six battle-tested Russians in there. What's the number one rule of a gunfight?"

"Bring all your guns," Harvath admitted.

"And number two?"

"Bring all of your friends with guns."

"Precisely," said Barton. "So stop screwing around and let's Charlie Mike."

Charlie Mike was militaryspeak for Continue Mission.

Harvath knew that Barton wasn't pushing back because he was angry. He was pushing back because he was determined. He wanted the Russians to suffer for what had happened to Lara. The alarm bells in Harvath's mind, however, were only getting louder.

"If you're going, we're going with you," Morrison asserted. "End of discussion."

Harvath shook his head. "I'm in charge of this team and if I say I'm going in alone, that's how it's going to be."

"Then I quit."

"Me too," Ashby replied.

"Me three," Palmer chimed in.

Gage flipped Harvath the middle finger as his official resignation and Barton joined him by making an even more obscene hand gesture.

"Maybe you're the one who should go back to the car," Morrison stated. "It looks like you've got a lot of pink slips to process."

Harvath loved these guys, but this was too much. Healthy loyalty was necessary for a unit to successfully function. Blind loyalty could get people killed.

Taking up the point position, Barton stated, "I guess we'll see you up there," as he signaled the team to move out and began walking toward the cabin.

"Fuck," Harvath mumbled under his breath. This was a hell of a bad time to have a sudden outbreak of democracy. There was no telling what he was marching all of them into.

But here they were, unwilling to abandon the mission. Unwilling to abandon him. They were going to Charlie Mike whether he liked it or not.

Harvath had been a leader long enough to know that loyalty was a two-way street. If they weren't going to let him go in alone, he wasn't going to let them go in alone either.

Taking back point, he led his team forward.

But with each step, the alarm bells continued to grow louder. He was actively ignoring his instincts, and knew that things would not end well.

Two yards later, something caught his eye. Halting their forward motion, he stared at a tree in the near distance, trying to make out what he was seeing, but it wasn't clear.

Flipping his goggles up, he transitioned back to his night-vision binoculars and suddenly knew exactly what he was looking at—the glow from an infrared trail camera. And where there was one, there were definitely more.

Calling up Gage, who was carrying the other pair of night-vision binoculars, he showed him what he had seen.

"Do you think the Russians put that there?" the man asked.

"Could be the Russians. Could be the people who own the cabin. Could be some nature club," Harvath replied. "Regardless, we don't want anyone to know we're coming."

Raising Nicholas over the radio, he described what they had found. Because the trailcam had an antenna, that likely meant it was designed to broadcast over a cellular network. With a log-in and password, you could access it the same way you would a remote CCTV camera. You could also set it up to push alerts to you, with either stills or video, when it detected movement.

The only thing Nicholas needed to know was how Harvath wanted it handled. Even though trailcams were far less sophisticated technology than CCTV networks, their simplicity made them a bigger pain in the ass to loop video and spoof.

The easiest and most believable solution was to jam cell signals in the area. Not only would the trailcams not work, but neither would the Russians' cell phones. It was a win-win. Harvath instructed Nicholas to get on it.

Seven minutes later, the little man confirmed that the network was down, and the team could advance.

Harvath gave the signal once more to move out and the team continued its cautious journey forward. There were only the sounds of the darkened forest to accompany them.

In any other context, these sounds might have been soothing, but tonight, as they pushed deeper into the unknown, they remained ominous.

A quarter mile out from the cabin, he stopped the team, transitioned to the binoculars, and conducted a final assessment.

He could make out the cabin and three cars parked in front. The chimney appeared warm, but not hot. The Russians had built a fire earlier, but it had been allowed to die down. Maybe they had gone to bed. Maybe they'd run out of wood. At this moment, there was no way of knowing.

As they closed the remaining distance, they stepped off the dirt road and melted into the trees.

He didn't need to advise them on what to do or what to be on the lookout for. They were some of the best operatives he'd ever worked with. They were in their element now. Silently materializing, achieving their objective, and disappearing again was what they did best. Harvath was honored to be among them.

Fifteen yards into the trees, they encountered their first tripwire. Raising his right arm, Harvath held his clenched fist just above shoulder level. It was the command to halt. He then pointed out what he had discovered. Carefully, they all stepped over it. Ten yards later, they found another one. Someone was going to very extensive lengths not to be taken by surprise.

In almost any other scenario, extensive surveillance and thorough planning would have ruled the day. But as the last twenty-four hours had demonstrated, time was not always a commodity in abundant supply. If a window opens and you can hit the target, you hit the target. Especially when you don't know when you'll get that chance again.

In a raid where a subject needed to be captured, speed, surprise, and overwhelming violence of action were the keys. In an operation where none of the subjects were leaving alive, Harvath liked to slow things down. In his book, slow was smooth and smooth was fast. When you took your time, your precision spiked. And though he fully intended to maintain the element of surprise, while applying overwhelming violence of action, what mattered most to him right now was precision. Precision would get this job done effectively and allow the entire team to walk out of the cabin alive and unharmed.

After establishing the parameters of the takedown, the most important decision was where your entry point would be and how you intended to conduct the breach. In this case, there was no decision to be made. The safehouse, and Elovik, had done that for them.

Airbnb was the best thing to ever happen to intelligence agency budgets. In an era when more and more money was being diverted away from human operations and plowed into technology, the days of endless, Agency-owned and operated safehouses around the world were over. Short-term home rentals were where it was at. The fact that it could be done over the internet, with little to no notice, and zero in-person contact, was the icing on the covert cake.

With the information Elovik had provided, Nicholas had easily tracked down the listing. It provided not only photos of the home and the property, but also a floor plan, which greatly assisted in their planning. The most useful piece of intel, however, was which door they should use to make their entry.

Coming in through the main door was out of the question. It was big, heavy, and had both a ton of iron fixtures and was additionally secured from the inside with a wooden beam. Without an explosives kit, they weren't getting in that way. The good news was that they didn't need to.

Not wanting to mar the traditional appearance of their cabin, the owners had placed an electronic keypad for guests at the rear of the structure on the kitchen door. Nicholas had made short work of tracking down the home's most recent email, which included the security code. Blowing the door off its hinges wouldn't be necessary. All they had to do was punch in the string of numbers.

They took several moments to surveil the back of the cabin before stepping out of the trees and approaching the kitchen door. They wanted to make sure there was no one keeping watch. As best they could tell, no one was.

With the guns of Barton and Morrison trained on the windows, Gage watching their six o'clock, and Ashby and Palmer covering their flanks, Harvath tapped the code into the keypad, the light switched from red to green, and the lock released.

Verifying that everyone was prepped for entry, he gave a silent countdown with his fingers, twisted the knob, and pushed the door open.

There was a slight, barely audible creak from the hinges. Nothing else. Crossing the threshold, Harvath stepped inside and led his team into the cabin.

It smelled like cigarette smoke and burnt garlic. He had no idea what the Russians had been up to, but he was fairly confident that they weren't going to be getting their security deposit back.

Keeping their eyes and ears peeled, the team was the embodiment of stealth as they flowed soundlessly through the dining room. Crushed beer cans and empty liquor bottles were visible upon the table.

Sitting around a safehouse, waiting to be activated, was one of the most boring parts of the job. Getting hammered to help pass the time, however, was not just unprofessional, it was dangerous. It was also par for the course when it came to the Russians. They were a different breed.

Passing into the living room, they swept their suppressed weapons left to right and right to left, searching for targets. So far, everything was quiet, and they moved on to the sleeping area.

Based on what they knew about the cabin's layout, there were three bedrooms with probably two men in each. Harvath's plan was to split his team into three pairs, position them at the doorways, and launch their attack all at the same time.

He made it to the midpoint in the hallway when a board groaned beneath his foot. The entire team heard it, and everyone froze in place.

They stood there for what felt like a lifetime, listening for any indication that they'd been given away, before Harvath began moving again.

Two steps later, he hit another bad board—this one even louder. And just like before, he froze. With his grip tight on his weapon, he waited.

The shot came through the wall right behind him, missing his head by a fraction of an inch. The crack from the round was deafening. He didn't need to see the hole in the wall to know it was probably from a .45.

Immediately after the first shot had been fired, a barrage of follow-up shots exploded around them.

Knowing how deadly hallways were, the team rapidly retreated to the living room, where they expertly took cover and, upon Harvath's command, returned fire.

The team pumped round after deadly round through the walls and into the bedrooms.

When he signaled for them to cease firing, the team members took turns covering each other while they inserted fresh magazines into their weapons.

Grabbing Ashby and Palmer, Harvath headed back into the hall, in which hung a haze of sawdust and gunsmoke.

He covered Palmer as he swept into the first room, firing two controlled pairs at the already injured and bloodied occupants. Without wasting a single moment, they moved to the second bedroom—the room from which the first shot had erupted.

It was Ashby's turn and, gun up and at the ready, she swung into the room as Palmer covered her and Harvath, despite having Morrison, Gage, and Barton securing any necessary retreat from the living room, kept an eye on their six o'clock.

A half-dressed man with a large handgun lay dead on the floor. His colleague lay dead in his bed. Ashby placed a shot in each of their heads, just to make sure.

Backing out of the room, Ashby joined her teammates and the trio proceeded to the end of the hall. Based on the floor plan, this was where the master bedroom was located and where they expected Kapralov to be. It was now Harvath's turn at bat.

With Ashby covering him, he swung into the room and drilled a bleary-eyed Russian fumbling with a Saiga automatic shotgun.

He traced the room with the front sight of his weapon, but there was no sign of Kapralov. Stepping fully inside, he checked the closet, under the bed, and then the bathroom, where the window was wide-open.

"Kapralov's on the run," he said, climbing out the window. "I'm going after him."

"Right behind you," Ashby announced, following him.

They spread out, each searching in a different direction.

Unable to pick up anything through his goggles, Harvath was about to flip them up and pull out the binoculars when Ashby radioed, "I've got him."

"Where?"

"Twenty-five meters east of the cabin. He may have a limp, but he's moving at a good clip. I'll stay on him until you can catch up."

It was the moment of truth. Harvath was finally going to scratch the last name off his list. His revenge would be complete, and he could allow Lara to rest in peace. But something inside him had shifted.

A leader who didn't believe his team was every bit as good as he was wasn't really a leader at all. Harvath's team wasn't just exceptional, they were even better than he was.

"Do you have the shot?" he asked.

"Affirmative."

"Take it."

"Are you sure?" Ashby replied.

Harvath had never been more certain about anything in his life. "Take the shot," he stated. "That's an order."