Foreign Influence_ A Thriller - Brad Thor [147]
Harvath spun back around the entrance and, making sure to control his muzzle rise, focused on one particular area he had been tearing through the counter. He emptied the magazine as his rounds went clean through.
Ducking back behind the entrance, he dropped the MP7 and pulled out his Glock. He had fifteen rounds in the magazine, one in the chamber. It was make-or-break time. He needed to get to those children.
Crouching, he ran to the platform entrance nearest to where they were still paralyzed and crying on the concourse. Taking a deep breath, he counted to three, raised his Glock, and sped out from behind the door.
The shooter was already waiting for him. As Harvath appeared, he locked his sights on him and pulled his trigger.
The explosive round detonated inside the terrorist’s chamber and blew up right in his face, just as Chase had planned.
As the man’s scream filled the concourse, Harvath put two rounds into his head and killed him.
EPILOGUE
YEMEN
ONE MONTH LATER
The end of August was not a good time to be in Yemen. In fact, as far as Harvath was concerned, there was never a good time to be in Yemen or anywhere else on the Arabian Peninsula.
He sat at one of the city’s few halfway decent cafés, his chair propped up against the wall, an awning shielding him from the afternoon sun. As he took a sip of his chai, he thought about everything that had happened.
With visible tactical teams in plate armor at Chicago’s Millennium and Van Buren stations, the shooters who had come there to cause maximum carnage had immediately switched out their magazines for the ones loaded with Chase’s “armor-piercing” rounds.
As their weapons exploded in their faces and civilians scattered, both men were gunned down. Credit was given to the quick-thinking CPD tac teams. The fallen Metra office at the Ogilvie Transportation Center was rightly billed as a hero without whose actions many more innocent lives, including those of a small group of six-year-olds, would have been lost.
The slaughter at Union Station had been worse than Ogilvie because it had started three minutes before Gretchen Casey got there. Positioned behind the shooter, she took a shot from over seventy yards and killed him instantly with one round through the back of his head. She then secreted her weapon and quietly left the station. While the police in general were given credit for fast action, no single officer or department had yet officially been credited for killing the shooter. A rumor that it had been done by an undercover U.S. marshal on his way to work had gained wide traction in the press.
All of the would-be suicide bombers were apprehended exactly where Sean Chase had said they would be. Neither Harvath nor any of the Athena Team members had seen him again after he had chosen to take the La Salle Street station.
According to Carlton’s contacts at the CIA, Chase had been tasked with hunting down Aazim Aleem. Based on chatter the Agency had intercepted, Aleem was convinced that his entire network had been compromised and had fled the country for somewhere in the Middle East. Authorities so far had been unable to uncover any evidence of plots or Jarrah-Aleem cells in Los Angeles or New York. Their investigations were ongoing.
Once stabilized, Nikki Rodriguez was transferred stateside and was expected to make a full recovery. Julie Ericsson had been treated for her gunshot wound at Stroger Hospital in Chicago and released. She traveled back to Ft. Bragg with her teammates, Megan Rhodes, Alex Cooper, and Gretchen Casey. Casey had been keeping Harvath up to date on their progress and in her last e-mail informed him that, upon reflection, Rodriguez was convinced that he had been looking at her ass in Amsterdam. She wanted him to call her to discuss the matter further. In other words, they all sent their best wishes and looked forward to seeing him again soon.
Josh Levy, the owner of Surety Private Investigations, had been discharged from the hospital after being held overnight for observation and was expected to make a full recovery.