Full Black - Brad Thor [52]
The hose was covered in brightly colored braided silk. Chase placed the plastic tip between his lips and breathed in. The water inside the pipe gurgled as the smoke was cooled and fed into the hose.
Chase took a deep drag and allowed the smoke to completely fill his lungs. He held it for a moment and then, instead of allowing it to slowly escape through his mouth or nostrils, he encouraged his coughing response and began hacking.
The four jihadists roared with laughter. The newcomer was obviously a neophyte and had no experience with a hookah. Instead of telling the truth, he had lied to protect his manliness.
Still hacking, Chase struggled to stand. He continued coughing as he placed his hands on his thighs and fought to breathe. The cannon fodder laughed as if they were watching the funniest thing they’d ever seen.
Being the butt of the joke didn’t bother Chase. In fact, that’s exactly why he’d spurred on the coughing fit. Shuffling toward the window, he kept coughing as the men kept laughing. In fact, it wasn’t until he had his hand on the blinds that they realized what he was up to.
“Don’t,” said one of the men who could barely stop laughing long enough to get the word out.
“Karami will cut your hands off,” said another.
A third added, “He’ll cut all our hands off,” as the men began laughing even harder.
“I can’t breathe,” said Chase, who was pretending to be in between coughing fits. He knew the men were serious about his not opening the window and would probably try to physically restrain him if they had to. But he had no intention of opening it. He just wanted a peek outside and would then immediately abandon the window, appearing to heed his colleagues’ warnings.
As he pulled back the edge of the blinds, Chase’s cough immediately stopped. The moving van was already outside, but it wasn’t in the right place. Harvath and the assault team had made a mistake. They were hitting the building across the street.
And though it was difficult to tell for sure, it looked as if someone had adjusted the windows and blinds of an apartment across the street, exactly the way he had.
CHAPTER 25
As Harvath was envisioning the assault team entering the safe house, the entire third floor of the apartment complex exploded. The shock wave tilted the moving truck up onto two wheels and almost knocked it completely over onto its side. Shards of glass rained down on the street as columns of boiling fire leaped out of the third-story windows and rolled up into the sky.
Stunned, Harvath snatched up his radio and tried to hail the members of the team, but his ears were ringing so badly that, even with the volume all the way up, he wouldn’t have been able to hear anything. It was as if Yemen were replaying itself all over again. The terrorists must have had the whole third floor wired with explosives.
Pulling his plate carrier from the bag, he threw it over his head and then snatched up his MP7. Opening the door, Harvath leaped out of the truck and bolted into the building. It was exactly what he had been trained not to do. Even if the explosion was a booby-trap rigged to the front door, or had been set off by the terrorists inside when they realized they had been compromised, there could still be a secondary device, a device meant to kill any rescuers who then rushed into the building. That was all true, but Harvath didn’t care. Those were his men up there. If any of them were alive, he was going to get them out.
As Harvath charged up the stairs three at a time, the temperature soared and thick, black smoke filled the air. It was nearly impossible to breathe. Pulling his T-shirt up from beneath the vest and over his mouth and nose, he exposed the flesh of his midsection. It felt as if the surface of his skin was being blasted with a blowtorch. He was starting to burn, but he pushed it from his mind.
The deafening roar of the fire grew as he neared the third floor. Coming up to the last flight of stairs, he saw that the blast had blown the metal fire door completely off its hinges and it was