Foreign Influence_ A Thriller - Brad Thor [140]
“Are you looking for the trigger?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“There’s something in the small of my back. I think it’s a cell phone.”
Casey put her flashlight between her teeth, bent down, and very carefully slid one of her hands behind the police officer. “I feel it.”
“Can you disarm it?” Harvath asked.
“I won’t know till we get him out of the chair and I see it.” Straightening back up, she looked at Vaughan and said, “There’s something called a mercury switch. The way it works is—”
“I’m a Marine. I was in Iraq,” interrupted the policeman. “I know what a mercury switch is.”
“I’m trying to figure out if moving you will trigger this vest.”
“We got the crap jostled out of us in those crates. Trust me, there’s no mercury switch.”
“So all they did was tape you to the chairs?”
“Yes,” said Vaughan.
Casey took out her knife. “Let’s cut him loose.”
Once Vaughan was free, Harvath helped him stand, while Casey studied his vest. “It’s similar to the mechanism they used in London; probably how the vests in Amsterdam were set up.”
“Who are you?” asked Vaughan.
“That’s not important,” said Harvath.
“Don’t worry,” added Casey. “I know what I’m doing.”
“Thank God, because—”
“Done,” she replied, having disconnected the cell phone trigger.
“What?”
Casey raised her finger to her lips for him to be quiet as she studied the buckles on the vest. She then put the flashlight back in her mouth and carefully unfastened them.
“Now very slowly,” she ordered, nodding at Harvath to grab the opposite side of the vest, “we’re going to lift up and I want you to slide out of it. If you feel even the slightest tug, a snag, even if you think you’re imagining it, I want you to freeze. Okay?”
“Okay,” said Vaughan.
“Good. Now on three and remember, slowly. Here we go. One. Two. Three.”
The policeman slowly slid out of the vest and backed away from it. Harvath then took it from Casey and held it up for her to examine.
Her eyes narrowed as she moved in to look at something. “What the heck is this?”
“What did you find?” asked Harvath.
“I’ll tell you after we look at the other two vests. Let’s hurry up.”
CHAPTER 69
Everything went okay?” asked Jarrah when Rashid returned.
“No problems,” he replied. “Everything is in place.”
“And Mohammed Nasiri?”
“Mohammed is ready, as are the rest of our brothers. He told me to thank you and that he is sorry for any trouble he may have caused.”
Jarrah smiled and looked up at the two men behind Rashid. “You have done very well. Go and prepare yourselves. We will pray together shortly.”
When the two men had left, Marwan motioned for his protégé to sit with him. “Come and take tea with me.”
“I think caffeine is probably the last thing I need right now,” said Rashid as he sat down and dried his palms on his thighs. He looked at the empty tables where the suicide vests had been constructed and the reloading equipment he had used to build his special ammunition. “Did you think about what I asked?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“And how are your testicles, from where the woman kicked you?”
“For the tenth time, Marwan, I’m fine. And in case I didn’t make myself clear the other nine times I said it, if you ever want something that stupid done again, you can do it yourself.”
Jarrah pointed at the closed circuit television set near him. “We have it recorded on video, if you would like to watch.”
“Have you been replaying it for everyone? Is that what you’ve been doing? You think that’s funny?”
“She kicks hard, like a donkey,” the man said with a chuckle. It took him a minute to compose himself. When he had, he reached into his pocket and set a pill bottle on the table. “Here.”
Rashid picked it up and read the label. “Valium? You think I’ve got some sort of an anxiety disorder?”
“It has nothing to do with a disorder. It will help you to relax. Trust me, you need it.”
“The hell I do.”
“There’s two left. Take them.”
“No. And what do you mean there’s two left? What happened to the rest of them?”
“I gave them to the Shahid.”
“Without asking