Foreign Influence_ A Thriller - Brad Thor [128]
De Roon yelled that they were losing the wall, but Harvath refused to let go of her. He had her now; they were moving. It was slow, inch by painful inch, as if she was dragging some sort of incredibly heavy weight.
“Hurry, damn it!” yelled de Roon. “Hurry!”
Harvath’s entire body burned from the strain, but they were almost free. He continued to slide back a foot and pull, slide back a foot and pull.
He had no idea how close he was to the end of the tunnel until he felt hands on his boots and then his legs, helping to pull him back. Then there were hands on his belt pulling him hard.
De Roon and his men grunted under the weight of the wall. They were yelling and cursing for the others to hurry. With Harvath out, there was only Rodriguez left. Already, the wall was beginning to fall.
Harvath rolled away from the rubble pile as Nikki’s teammates reached in to pull her out. As they did, he saw a sharp piece of metal that had embedded itself in her right side. The realization that the metal protruding from her chest had caused all the drag on her body as he struggled to extract her made him almost want to throw up. Then there was a shout from one of the Athena Team members of “Don’t drop the wall!” and he realized how wrong he had been and how incredible Nikki Rodriguez was.
While Harvath was pulling her out, she was pulling out someone else; a young woman who had been in the room next to her. Despite her injuries, and the high probability that the rest of the building could have collapsed, Rodriguez had never let go.
With his last half-ounce of adrenaline, Harvath leapt to his feet and helped de Roon’s team hold the wall. When the second woman was free, they attempted to lower the wall as gently as possible, but no one had the strength to see it all the way down.
It landed with a deafening crash, which hastened more structural failure and sent them all scrambling from the building. Casey and Cooper carried Rodriguez, while Ericsson and Rhodes helped the young prostitute from the room next door.
Out on the street, they began to administer first aid. Harvath’s hands, elbows, and knees were bleeding, but he was in much better shape than most of the people around him.
Someone offered him a bottle of water. After dousing his wounds he drained what was left and surveyed the devastation around him. All of it from a single bomber. Though it would be no consolation to the families and loved ones of the dead, it could have been, it was supposed to have been, much, much worse.
He resolved to himself that no matter what he had to do, he would not let this scene repeat itself in America.
Calling de Roon over, he said, “Give me your car keys.”
The intelligence officer looked at him. “You can’t drive like that.”
“I need to get back to al-Yaqoubi. I need to finish his interrogation.”
De Roon looked over Harvath’s shoulder, saw the first waves of Dutch rescue personnel arriving on the scene and said, “I’ll drive and we’ll finish it together.”
CHAPTER 62
Khalil al-Yaqoubi asked to speak to his family when Harvath entered the Sacleipea’s infirmary. He wanted assurances that they were still alive and that they had not been harmed.
The DST operative in Rabat was Casey’s contact, but Casey had gone to the hospital with Rodriguez while the other team members stayed at the scene to help treat the victims. Harvath couldn’t have called the man if he wanted to. Not that it mattered. Al-Yaqoubi was in no position to ask for anything.
“The deal is off, Khalil,” said Harvath.
The Moroccan didn’t understand. “But I did everything you asked. I told you the truth.”
“One of the bombs went off,” said de Roon as he instructed his men to leave the infirmary.
You could have heard a pin drop as the heavy steel door slammed shut.
Harvath unwound the bandage from the man’s left foot.
“What are you doing?” al-Yaqoubi demanded.
“I’m going to make you pay for all of the people who died tonight. Then I am going to make you