Full Black - Brad Thor [129]
He was less than ten feet away when the door of the Town Car was thrown open. Dropping his wallet, Harvath raised his pistol in both hands.
The driver swung out one leg and then the other. Harvath shot him in each knee and raced forward. The driver raised a pistol and began firing wildly.
Harvath dropped to the ground and returned fire. He put round after round on target, ripping through the open driver’s-side door.
In one fluid motion, he depressed his pistol’s magazine release and flicked the empty magazine out of the butt of the weapon. Before it had even clattered onto the pavement several yards away, he had inserted a fresh mag, snapped the slide back to chamber his first round, and was firing yet again.
As he did, he came up on his feet and rushed the Town Car. The driver didn’t return fire.
Coming up on the open door, Harvath saw the man’s legs first. Then he saw the rest of him, slumped over the armrest, half onto the passenger side.
“Hands!” Harvath yelled. “Let me see your hands!”
Moving more to his left, Harvath got a better view into the car. The driver’s empty pistol, with its slide locked back, lay on the floor. But there was something else in the driver’s hand and seeing it, Harvath’s blood turned to ice.
Harvath’s first shot blew the man’s thumb completely off. He put the next four into the driver’s head. Even then, he still wasn’t sure and shot the man five more times.
Tentatively, Harvath crawled into the Town Car and retrieved the cell phone the driver had been fumbling with. There was a number on the screen that Harvath was certain corresponded to a cell phone detonator somewhere inside the Town Car. Had the man been able to hit Send, the car would have exploded.
Harvath carefully removed the battery from the phone, set both pieces on the dash, and crawled back out of the car.
Popping the trunk of one of the patrol cars, he extracted a medical kit and rushed to the fallen law enforcement officers. Two of them were already dead and several more were badly injured. Gunfire continued to rage across the airport. It was like being in a war zone.
“You, you, and you!” shouted Harvath to a group of onlookers who had taken cover nearby. “These men need your help.”
The civilians came over as he ripped open multiple vacuum-sealed packets. He rapidly applied pressure dressings and Israeli bandages, as well as two tourniquets, and sent an additional onlooker to the other patrol car for more medical supplies.
Explaining how to keep the officers stable, he left the onlookers in charge and called in “Officers down” over one of the police radios, giving the location and range of injuries.
That was all he could do for them. He needed to get back in the fight. Running back to the Escalade, he picked up his wallet, got inside, and quickly drove away.
CHAPTER 56
As Harvath raced toward the Tom Bradley Terminal, Nicholas informed him that the fight was over. The LAPD and DHS operators had been able to neutralize the other VBIEDs. All of the terrorists were dead. All, that is, except for Tariq Sarhan, who was still unconscious in the Escalade’s backseat.
The word had also already gone out to airports across the country to expect similar attacks. Two had already been uncovered and prevented. Nicholas had been right when he had stated that the attacks they had stopped only months before were just the precursor to a tidal wave set to crash down on the United States. Every time they faced down an attack, more popped up. Where would it end?
Harvath returned to the parking structure and located his rental car. After wrapping Sarhan’s knee in a hillbilly bandage, he dumped him in the trunk. As he got into his car, he told Nicholas to make sure to erase any of the airport’s CCTV footage of him.
As he drove out of the airport, a tidal wave of emergency vehicles rushed past him going in the opposite direction. They served