Full Black - Brad Thor [40]
To communicate to Chase that they had pinpointed his location, Harvath’s car would be parked on the street outside with a book left on the dashboard. This was where Harvath was upset to have lost Riley. If they couldn’t get a parking space, they were going to have to create one. Riley could have been used as a diversion, perhaps dropping her purse as her companion, Harvath, got into the car they needed to move. While she was gathering up the contents to place back in her bag, Harvath would work on starting the car. To anyone watching, it would simply appear as if he was waiting for her before starting the vehicle. If he needed extra time, or was having some sort of trouble hotwiring, they could even stage an argument. With Harvath’s hands working beneath the dashboard, no one would be able to see what he was really doing.
That option, though, was now off the table.
If Chase didn’t see the car with the book on its dash by midnight, he had been told to assume that they hadn’t been able to pinpoint his location and that the cavalry wasn’t coming. He would be on his own. He was to gather as much intelligence as he could and somehow get himself out. Once out, he was to contact Harvath with details and keep the safe house under surveillance from an optimum distance.
The good news was that they had caught a break. The satellite team back in the United States had been able to track the mobile phone of the cell member Chase had spoken with. Now all Harvath had to do was position his vehicle with the book near the safe house where Chase could see it and wait for him to signal.
Southwest of Uppsala, in the low-income suburb of Gottsunda, Scot Harvath began to believe the fates were smiling on him. On a dirty street flanked by rows of drab apartment complexes, he found the perfect parking space.
With the book on the dash, he got out of the car, removed two sacks of groceries from the trunk, armed the alarm, and walked away.
The area was so rough, thanks in part to rampant lawlessness by Muslim youths, that even Swedes hired to pilot Google’s “Street View” cars had refused to drive through and map the area. It was yet another in a long and growing list of Europe’s sensitive “no go” areas. While Swedish police still responded to calls, they only did so in great numbers because bricks and Molotov cocktails normally greeted them upon their arrival.
There were still ethnic Swedes to be found in the area, though many of the housing complexes were now filled with a mixture of Arab and Somali faces.
As with most of Uppsala’s poorer suburbs and neighborhoods, the residents had been co-opted by the hard left political parties. It was one of the few tidbits about Gottsunda that Harvath had found helpful. To help him blend in, he had donned a dirty pair of jeans, tennis shoes, a worn jacket, and a T-shirt with an antiestablishment slogan one of the assault team members had found near the university.
From what they had been told, the immigrants tended to stay away from the ethnic Swedes, who blamed a lot of their problems on the “Muslim invaders.” Unless he encountered a group of youths looking to start a fight, Harvath expected to be given a wide berth. His Swedish was limited. The only words he knew were those he had picked up in the SEALs when he had dated a string of SAS flight attendants and earned his call sign, Norseman.
As many people do with foreign languages, he’d learned the bad words first. If anyone did come up to engage him, he could act the part of the surly drunk, toss out a few choice phrases, and keep going. He hoped he wouldn’t even need to do that.
Right in front of the safe house and right on cue, the rip Harvath had placed in the bottom