Foreign Influence_ A Thriller - Brad Thor [81]
The light was taken out of his eyes and, for a moment, he thought he was going to be let go, until he felt his Glock being removed from his holster and saw the man he had punched out gather himself off the pavement and come forward. The man was Middle Eastern. This wasn’t good.
Walking over to him, the man drew his fist back and struck him right in the gut. Vaughan doubled over.
The man grabbed him by the hair and jerked his head up. Vaughan had been in plenty of fistfights in his time and he readied himself either for a knee to the face or for the man to punch down at his head. Either way, he knew it was going to hurt.
Suddenly, he heard a voice from behind his attackers. “This isn’t even a fair fight. You assholes didn’t bring enough guys.”
Vaughan looked past the man with the gun to see Davidson right behind him with his own gun pressed up against the back of the man’s head.
The man holding him by his hair let go and Vaughan straightened himself up. His relief at seeing Davidson was short-lived. Four other men were now standing behind him with weapons pointed right at him.
“Well, it looks like maybe you did bring enough guys,” said Davidson. “Why don’t we put our guns down and settle this like men?”
One of the men stepped forward and struck him in the kidneys with the butt of a rifle. Davidson’s knees buckled from the pain and he collapsed to the ground.
As his gun was taken away from him, Davidson looked up and said, “That’s it. You’re all under arrest.”
The man who had broken Vaughan’s wrist smiled and punched Davidson in the mouth.
Someone gave a series of orders in rapid Arabic and the two police officers were dragged from the alley and into the building.
As the heavy metal door clanged shut, Vaughan wondered what was going to happen, but part of him already knew. All of the bad feelings he’d had since going after Nasiri came flooding back. This was no longer Chicago, and he was no longer a cop or a lawyer working for the family of a young woman who’d been struck by a fleeing taxi. He was a Marine and he was being dragged into a terrorist hellhole worse than anything he had ever seen.
CHAPTER 38
GENEVA
The speed with which Reed Carlton worked was a testament to the efficiency of the private sector. Within hours, he had not only helped plug the holes in Harvath’s plan, he had gotten the train on the tracks and out of the station.
It was agreed that Michael Lee had seen and heard too much to be let go. For the time being, he was going to have to be held on to. And while Peio was a decent field medic, he wasn’t a trauma doc. Lee was stable, but he needed a professional to look at his wounds. There was an American surgeon based in Paris who was being flown in. She had some sort of relationship with the Department of Defense, but other than that, Carlton didn’t elaborate. All he added was that she was equipped to keep an eye on Lee until they decided what to do with him. Harvath had trouble imagining what a surgeon could do, short of keeping Lee drugged up, but he figured Carlton knew best and let it go. There were several more pressing items that needed to be worked out anyway.
As the attempted murder of the Troll had been orchestrated from within Switzerland, the United States didn’t have any jurisdiction. They also didn’t have any jurisdiction over the alleged murder of Lars Jagland. Not that anyone in the United States cared very much about either. All they cared about were the Rome and Paris attacks. That and Sterk’s material support of terrorism and how it had resulted in the deaths of hundreds of American citizens.
Harvath was a big believer in the merits of enhanced interrogation. He also had no problem with torture when the situation called for it, which this one definitely did. There were very likely more attacks on the horizon, and Sterk possessed information that could help stop them. The key lay in applying as much pressure as was necessary to get her to play ball. Once she began cooperating, the pressure could be dialed back, but the threat of it ramping back up needed to hover