Foreign Influence_ A Thriller - Brad Thor [22]
It didn’t take Harvath long to find them. The young man from the men’s room was politely ransacking the Opel, looking for a nonexistent bottle of pills while the two men in the Peugeot watched in silence, trying to figure out what was going on.
The Peugeot was three rows back and they never saw Harvath coming. Using the butt of his Glock, he smashed the rear passenger window. Popping the lock, he opened the door and sat down upon the spill of broken glass.
“Nobody move,” he said, holding his pistol so that both of the startled men could see it.
Next to Eyebrows was the driver, an equally beefy and thick-necked mouth breather with a thin scar on his right cheek. Whoever these two were, they were not operators. They were muscle. And poorly dressed muscle at that.
“Why have you been following me?” asked Harvath.
“No hablamos ingles,” said Eyebrows.
“Bullshit. Why have you been following me?”
“No hablam—”
“Shut up. Do you have any weapons on you?”
“Qué?”
“Dónde estan las armas?” he said, pulling Eyebrows’ shirt up so he could check his waistband. “Las pistolas? Dónde estan?”
“No pistolas. No armas.”
Harvath put the gun against Scarface’s temple and patted him down. He was clean.
He used his pack to brush off some of the glass on the seat and settled back. These two needed to be dealt with, but not here. “Vamonos,” he said.
“A dónde vamos?” replied Scarface nervously.
Leaning forward Harvath put his Glock against the man’s head and slowly repeated, “Va-mo-nos. Got it? Now quit jerking around and get moving.”
The Spaniard started the engine, put the car in gear, and pulled out of the rest area and onto the motorway. Two exits later, Harvath signaled for him to turn off.
They followed a small country road and he instructed Scarface to pull behind a thick copse of trees. He then told him to turn off the engine.
Climbing out, he instructed them to exit the vehicle one at a time. “Afuera.” His Spanish was lousy, but the pistol was a wonderful interpretive aid that seemed to help get his points across.
He motioned for the men to put their hands on their heads and get down on their knees. It was obvious from their faces that they believed he was going to execute them.
He walked around to the back of the vehicle and popped the trunk. Pulling back an old blanket, he discovered two sawed-off shotguns. “No pistolas. No armas, huh?”
Eyebrows began to speak, but Harvath cut him off. “Shut up.”
He searched the rest of the trunk, but didn’t find much. There was an empty gas can, some road flares, snow chains, a spare, and a jack. What he really would have loved was some duct tape, but there wasn’t any. The plastic Tuff Ties from his kit would have to do.
Walking around to the front of the car, he tucked his Glock in the back of his jeans and after making sure it was loaded, set one of the sawed-off shotguns on the hood of the car. With his eyes on Scarface and Eyebrows, he fished through his backpack and removed the plastic ties.
He walked over to Eyebrows and demonstrated how he wanted him to secure his friend. When Scarface was zipped up, Harvath had Eyebrows lie facedown in the dirt and he returned the favor.
With their ankles zipped together and wrists bound behind their backs, Harvath had them hop over to the car and helped load them in the trunk facedown. Once they were in, he chained a couple more Tuff Ties together so he could hog-tie the men. It was cramped quarters in the trunk and neither of them was going to be able to move until they were cut loose.
After gagging the men, he slammed the lid shut and climbed into the driver’s seat. He removed the GPS unit, fired it back up, and once it had acquired the satellites, planned an alternate route to the destination, which he quickly memorized.
The reason he had been able to ID Eyebrows and Scarface coming out of Bilbao was that they had been following close enough to be seen. If the GPS unit or