Foreign Influence_ A Thriller - Brad Thor [139]
He took a deep breath, then nodded, and Casey quietly pulled the door open. Harvath swept into the kitchen searching for hostile targets. Despite the drapes on the window being drawn, a certain amount of ambient light from the buildings on the other side of the alley illuminated the room. It also smelled like someone had forgotten to take out the garbage.
With Casey behind him, he moved past a card table to the other side of the small kitchen. Across a narrow hallway, he could see through an open door into a bedroom. Next to that was a closed door, which he assumed led to the bathroom. To see any further, he needed to stick his head into the hallway, but suddenly the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
Harvath hated hallways. They had a bad habit of funneling the gunfire of even the worst shooter right at you. But that wasn’t it; not completely at least.
His sixth sense was trying to tell him something. Someone else was in the apartment. He could feel it now. He didn’t know if they were in the bedroom closet, behind the closed door to the bathroom, or at the end of the hallway where he couldn’t see. Wherever it was, there was danger in this apartment and his body was tensing up in anticipation of engaging it.
He signaled Casey that he would cover the hallway while she crossed to clear the bedroom. When he was ready, he nodded and swung out into the hallway, and that’s when he saw it.
In the eerie half-light of the living room was the outline of a hooded figure sitting in a chair. Harvath lit up the scene with a flash from his weapon light and saw that it wasn’t just one figure, but three.
He held his position as Casey quickly exited the bedroom and cleared the bathroom, which was jammed with the shipping crates they had seen being carried upstairs.
Together they moved into the living room and secured it, making sure no one was lurking beyond the apartment’s front door. Then and only then did they tend to the hostages.
Their chairs had been duct-taped in a sort of circle and the men to them. Harvath removed their hoods and the hostages wildly gestured with their chins at their chests.
He opened the shirt of the man nearest him and instantly understood. He didn’t need to see vests on the other two to know that they had them as well.
“Everyone relax. We’re going to get you out of here.”
Instead of calming down, the man who Harvath was standing in front of became even more agitated. He was gesturing even more urgently, but not at the vest anymore. He seemed to be nodding toward the corner of the room. Harvath turned and looked behind, but couldn’t understand what the man was trying to tell him.
When Harvath couldn’t figure it out, the man became even more impatient. His eyes were wide and he was yelling from behind the layers of duct tape that had been wrapped around his head and over his mouth.
“Don’t move,” Harvath said as he pulled out his knife. The man didn’t listen and Harvath had to sling his weapon and grab the man’s face as he carefully made an incision along the left side of the tape.
Peeling enough of it away to get a good grip, he then pulled back—hard.
“The camera!” John Vaughan shouted as the tape came free. “There’s a camera between the books! The vests are triggered to remote detonate!”
It took Harvath a second but he found the camera and spun it so it faced the wall.
When he turned back around, Casey had opened the shirts of the other men, revealing their explosive vests.
“Get out of here, before they detonate!” said Vaughan.
“Easy,” replied Harvath. “The men who brought you here drove off in their truck. That’s a wireless camera with a limited range. If somebody was watching us, they would have already detonated.”
“I’m Sergeant John Vaughan with the Chicago Police. There’s going to be a terrorist attack.”
“We know,” said Casey as she examined the man’s vest with her flashlight, “but I need you to be still for a minute. Don’t talk, okay?”
Vaughan fell