Full Black - Brad Thor [1]
Grasping the terrorist’s head, Harvath gave a sharp twist and broke his neck. Gently, he guided the dead driver’s chin down to his chest.
The final passenger was a young Muslim man seated in the back of the car who was screaming. As Riley Turner opened his door she could see he had wet himself. Painting his chest with the integrated laser sight of her Taser, she pulled the trigger.
The compressed nitrogen propulsion system ejected two barbed probes and embedded them in the young man’s flesh. The insulated wires leading back to the weapon delivered a crackling pulse of electricity that incapacitated his neuromuscular capability.
Yanking open the opposite door, Harvath carefully avoided the probes as he pulled the man from the vehicle and laid him on the ground. Once the man’s hands were FlexCuff’d behind his back, Harvath removed a roll of duct tape and slapped a piece over his mouth. Producing a pair of pliers, he yanked out the probes. The man winced and emitted a cry of pain from behind his gag. As he did, Harvath looked up and saw a familiar pearl-gray Opel minivan approaching.
The van pulled parallel with the crash scene and slowed to a stop. The sliding door opened and a man in his midtwenties, holding a shopping bag, stepped out into a puddle of radiator fluid and broken glass.
The young operative’s name was Sean Chase, and while he wasn’t a perfect match, he was the best they had.
Chase was the product of an American father and an Egyptian mother. His features were such that Arabs saw him as Arab and Westerners often took him for one of their own. The question was, would the members of the Uppsala cell accept him?
He was intended to be Harvath’s ultimate listening device and was going to switch places with the young Muslim from the backseat of the Škoda, Mansoor Aleem.
Mansoor and the Uppsala cell were the only link the United States had to a string of terrorist attacks that had targeted Americans in Europe and the United States. And as bloody as those attacks had been, they were supposedly nothing, compared to what intelligence reported the plotters were about to unleash.
Subbing Chase for Mansoor was the most crucial and the most dangerous part of the assignment. According to their limited intelligence, only two Uppsala cell members had ever met Mansoor before and actually knew what he looked like. The men were friends of his uncle, a terrorist commander by the name of Aazim Aleem.
The men had been dispatched to Arlanda airport in Stockholm to collect Mansoor and return him to the cell’s safe house two hours north. Thanks to Harvath, they were now both dead.
The team had had the men under surveillance since they had arrived at the airport. The driver had made only one phone call after they had picked up Mansoor and left the airport. Harvath felt confident the call had been to the cell in Uppsala confirming the pickup.
Harvath now pulled the young Muslim to his feet and pushed him up against the van. Drawing his Glock pistol, he placed it under the man’s chin and pulled the tape from over his mouth. “You saw what I did to your friends?”
Mansoor Aleem was trembling. Slowly, he nodded.
While his uncle was a very, very bad guy, as were the two dead men slumped in the Škoda, Mansoor was on the cyber side of the jihad and hadn’t experienced violence or dead bodies firsthand. That didn’t mean he wasn’t just as guilty as jihadis who pulled triggers, planted bombs, or blew themselves up. He was guilty as hell. He was also a potential treasure trove of information, having run a lot of his uncle’s cyber operations. Harvath had no doubt the United States would be able to extract a ton from him. But first, he wanted to be as sure as he could be that he wasn’t sending Chase into a trap.
“We know all about the Uppsala cell,” said Harvath. “We want you to take us to them.”
Mansoor stammered, trying to find his words. “I, I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?” Harvath demanded.