Full Black - Brad Thor [57]
Harvath, though, had a couple of items in his bag of tricks that he never traveled without. As he debriefed Chase and cleaned up his wound, he unwrapped a tampon, cut off about an inch, and packed it into the hole. He then wrapped Chase’s arm with duct tape. It would do for now, but Chase was going to need professional medical help.
Riley had arranged to delay the flight until they could get there. It was a big enough aircraft and the three additional passengers would be posing as the security detail for the wealthy Arab patient. As long as Chase didn’t start bleeding, they should be okay. Just to be sure, Harvath wrapped a few more pieces of duct tape around his arm. It was going to be a pain in the ass to get off, but that was a problem for later.
Murphy sanitized the barn and the farmhouse as Harvath helped Chase put on his suit.
“He must have left the phone in there, knowing we’d be tracking it,” said Chase as he winced, sliding his arm into his jacket.
“Karami definitely knew something was up,” stated Harvath. “He reproduced your signal perfectly.”
Chase felt terrible. “I got those men killed.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“If I’d just found a way to look back out the window sooner, maybe I could have warned you.”
Harvath shook his head and the two men fell silent.
“You didn’t see Karami or Sabah leave the building?” asked Chase.
“No, but I wasn’t looking. If it wasn’t for the guy that came through the window, I never would have known there was a second apartment. I thought you were dead.”
Chase let that sink in for a moment before saying, “How about the Sheikh from Qatar? Any idea who he is?”
“No,” replied Harvath, “but that’ll be one of the first questions Mansoor is going to get asked.”
“I don’t know how we’ll get access to any of the forensics, but I’ll bet the Swedes find fried computer parts in at least one of those apartments that got blown up.”
Harvath nodded. “I agree.”
“They were getting ready to go operational,” Chase said. “I’m telling you. We need to hunt them down and we need to stop them.”
“First things first,” replied Harvath. “You need to get your arm taken care of.”
“Don’t worry about my arm,” Chase said as he tried to move it and failed. “As soon as we get this redneck bandage off and let a real doctor have a look, I’ll be fine.”
Harvath doubted it. Chase was going to be out of the game for months, if not longer. “Whatever you say, boss.”
“Don’t patronize me, Harvath,” he shot back. “I want you to promise me that you’ll wait.”
“For what?”
“For taking out Karami and Sabah,” said Chase. “I want to be there.”
Harvath understood the man’s desire for revenge. Harvath felt it just as intensely, if not more so. He had learned, though, to keep such things to himself. “Let’s figure out what kind of shape your arm’s in and then we’ll talk.”
Chase held up his left index finger and pointed at Harvath. “I want us to do it together.”
Harvath smiled. The kid was a liar. He just wanted to do it. It had nothing to do with Harvath. He just didn’t want to be left out. “I’m going to go make sure everything is ready. We shove off in five. Okay?”
“Roger that,” replied Chase as he turned to the mirror and tried, with one hand, to straighten the knot Harvath had tied in his tie. Staring at his reflection as he struggled, he couldn’t help but wonder if this was what so many of America’s disabled vets went through. He didn’t like needing somebody else’s help getting dressed.
In fact, it pissed him off and reminded him of the IED videos the jihadists had been laughing at back at their safe house. That only made him angrier.
The Swedish airport authorities stamped the group’s passports and waved them out toward the tarmac where they boarded their waiting aircraft.
Sentinel Medevac was a private company the Carlton Group hired jets from on occasion. Their normal clientele were humanitarian groups and international NGOs. Sentinel was viewed as something akin to the Red Cross, and that was why the Old Man liked working with them. Their planes