Foreign Influence_ A Thriller - Brad Thor [7]
Three days later, Harvath landed in Baghdad with his new boss’s blessing, an expense account, and permission to do whatever necessary to bring the al-Qaeda cell to justice.
It took Harvath, Dent, and the team of contractors they had assembled $20,000 in bribes and ten days to find the location of the terrorists.
Pure hate for what they had done fueled Harvath as he cobbled together the operation. Like Dent, since hearing the little boy’s story, he had been living for this very moment. Each of the men would be the first through his respective entry point.
They moved quickly and quietly across the cracked, brown earth of the courtyard. Harvath’s team went to the front door while Dent took the other half of the men to the back.
Harvath’s team put on their night vision goggles and when they all flashed him the thumbs-up, he signaled for the battering ram to come forward.
With his team in place, he “clicked” Dent’s team in back and gave them the go-ahead. Moments later, there was the sound of splintering wood as the rear door was battered open and the remaining sentry was taken out.
Harvath counted down from fifteen. He could hear the shouts of the al-Qaeda operatives in the front room as they leapt from their beds and scrambled into the hallway that led to the back door.
Harvath reached the end of his countdown and motioned for the assaulter with the ram to hit the front door.
The entry tool knocked the door completely off its hinges and Harvath charged through, followed by the rest of his team.
Bottlenecked in the hallway, the AQ operatives were mown down with bullets from both sides.
The air was thick with the smell of blood and gun smoke. When Harvath called cease fire, Dent’s team moved up from the back of the house to secure the hallway while Harvath and his team cleared the rest of the house.
They found the entrance to the “spider hole” beneath a stained rug in the main room. One of the men said it reminded him of the hole Delta Force operatives had pulled Saddam out of.
Harvath looked down into the pit. It smelled atrocious. Six sets of hollow, half-dead eyes stared up at him. “Everything is okay,” he said in Arabic as he removed his night vision goggles. “We’re Americans. We’re going to take you home to your families.”
In the beam of his flashlight, he could see a shaft six feet deep that opened into a pit five feet square by three feet high. For their bodily functions, the al-Qaeda animals had left their child hostages only a rusted coffee can. Disgusting didn’t even begin to describe the scene.
Harvath sent one of his men outside to find a ladder and when he returned, they lowered it into the pit.
The children were all male, between four and eleven years old, and were all sons of Iraqi police officers in Fallujah.
They had another thing in common. All of them had been brutally tortured. The oldest boy took charge and sent the others slowly up the ladder. As they emerged, they were assessed by the men of the team, medically treated as necessary, and wrapped in blankets.
As the oldest boy came into view, he was quite upset and explained that there was still one child left behind, badly in need of help.
“Is it Khidir?” Harvath asked hopefully.
The boy nodded.
Gently moving him away from the shaft, Harvath climbed down into the pit. What he discovered wrenched his heart out.
Khidir was now eight years old and severely malnourished. His eyes were set deep in their sockets and surrounded by black circles. His once thick head of black hair had fallen out in clumps and he looked as if he had probably soiled himself repeatedly.
As Harvath triaged the little boy, he discerned that both his arms and legs were broken. His left knee had a large iron nail driven through it, and all the teeth in his mouth had been pulled out, leaving behind infected gum tissue.
His breathing was shallow and came in rapid gasps. Harvath