Chase didn’t like how intently he was studying them. After a moment, he retracted the cord, closed the windows, lowered and shut the blinds.
Turning back to Chase, he said, “The rules were not explained to you, so you will be forgiven your transgression. This time.” Gesturing to Sabah, he signaled for him to follow. At the doorway, he beckoned the Palestinian to lower his head and spoke so that only Sabah could hear.
He removed a pen and a small pad from his pocket. Whether what he did next was to sketch or write something down, Chase couldn’t tell.
When Karami was finished, he tore off the piece of paper and handed it to the Palestinian, who glared at Chase for a moment and left the room.
Karami then said, “I do not wish for any more problems. Is that understood?”
“I just opened the window-” Chase began, but the cell leader silenced him.
“No more problems. None.”
At that moment, Chase heard Sabah bark at one of the other cell members in the hallway. Seconds later, the front door opened and the giant stomped out, slamming the door shut behind.
Chase had no idea if they were on to him or not, but before backing out of the room, Karami forced a smile. It reminded him of the mouth of a shark curling back and revealing its teeth. Every fiber of his being was telling him that he was blown, that he needed to get the hell out of there-now. But he refused to let the fear take hold of him.
Instead, he tried to relax. Everything’s cool, he told himself. Everything’s cool. It was a lie of course, and he knew it, but he kept repeating it anyway. Either way, it was all going to be over soon. He just prayed to God that Harvath had seen his signal.
CHAPTER 22
The apartment buildings up and down both sides of the street were nearly identical. It was only by tracking the signal of the phone Chase had called right after the accident that they were able to pinpoint the exact location of the safe house.
Harvath had spaced the trips past it as far apart as he could. They had rotated half of Schiller’s men through over the last two hours. They were debating whether they should send the car down the street on the next pass, when one of the assaulters came back to the moving truck and said, “We got it.”
Every man who had gone down the street had been carrying the hidden video camera system Riley would have carried in a ruse they had concocted for her had she been able to accompany them. Removing the memory card, Harvath slid it into his computer, pulled up the file, and scrolled through the footage till he got to what they had all been looking for. The resolution of the video of the outside of the safe house was excellent. Freezing the shot he wanted, he zoomed in. There was Chase’s signal. No doubt about it.
They were all gathered in the back of the moving truck and Harvath proceeded to decode his fenestral semaphore for the team.
“So, nine tangos total,” said Schiller, referring to the number of men Chase had signaled were in the apartment. “Plus, no traps, explosives, or weapons.”
“None that we know of,” replied Harvath.
Schiller thought about it for a moment and then began sketching out a plan with his assaulters. There had been a lot of talk in the run-up to the operation about use of force. The CIA wanted as many of the cell members taken alive as possible. Though this technically wasn’t an Agency assignment and they’d deny any knowledge of it if it became public, both Harvath and the Old Man had been inclined to agree with them. There was no telling who was inside, what they knew, or how valuable any of them could be. Having been on the inside, Chase would have a rough idea of the structural hierarchy and would be able to help interrogators separate the wheat from the chaff pretty quickly, which reminded Harvath of something.
He pulled up two photos of Chase on his computer. He didn’t like telling people how to do their job, but he was in charge, and the ultimate responsibility for how things went down rested with him. He showed the photos to the team one last time. They had been taken that morning and showed both a full-length and a tight head-and- shoulders shot of Chase. “Everybody got him committed to memory?”
The team all nodded. “He may still be dressed like this,” continued Harvath, “or they might have made him change clothes. Just remember his face.”
Once again the team nodded as Harvath added, “And don’t forget, you take him down just as hard as you do the others. If you have to Tase him, Tase him. He’s a big boy. He can handle it. The other cell members have to believe he’s one of them. Got it?”
A chorus of “Roger that” swept through the truck and Harvath turned his computer back around and powered it down.
The team went over their satellite footage of the area once more. They discussed points of ingress and egress, as well as plans B, C, and D.
When they had finished, Schiller opened one of the cardboard boxes. He lifted out what looked like two thin plastic briefcases with a shiny, metal scorpion logo in the middle, and handed them to Harvath.
“What are these?” Harvath asked, opening one of them up.
“Stinger Spike Systems.”
It looked like a collapsible metal wall bracket for a makeup mirror, except that it was studded with very sharp, stainless-steel spikes. Harvath had seen law enforcement agencies lay them down across roadways to take out the tires of vehicles in high-speed chases.
“Just in case we need to buy a little more time,” Schiller added.
It was a good idea and Harvath was glad the assault team leader had thought to bring them along.
All that was left to do was to launch the assault. Harvath and Schiller had briefly gone back and forth on the timing. They had debated hitting the safe house just after sunset in hopes of catching the cell members in their Maghrib prayers, but it was a very limited five-to-ten-minute window, and there was no telling exactly when they would start their prayers.
There was also the issue of when a moving truck would legitimately show up to unload. Late afternoon was believable, and though early-evening moves did happen from time to time, they were out of the ordinary and would therefore attract attention. Schiller’s assaulters were already amped up and pulling on the leash. Harvath decided that the team would move now.
First in would be the assaulter Schiller had assigned to cover the back of the building, a former Green Beret named Pat Murphy. Murphy grabbed a small backpack and hopped out of the truck. He would repark the other car and approach through the wooded area behind the apartment complex where he would take up his position.
As he climbed out of the truck, one of the other assaulters leaned out the window and said, “God help us if there’s an Irish bar between here and there.”
Murphy flipped the man the finger, shouldered his pack, and began walking. Harvath watched as he crossed the parking area and disappeared around the corner.
Reaching down into the gym bag, Harvath turned on his radio. Twenty-two minutes later, they heard from Murphy. “Phoenix Seven, in place,” he stated. “Bang a gong.”
That was the all-clear they had been waiting for. It was time to take down the safe house.
CHAPTER 23
Deserted streets always made Harvath nervous. Over his career, he’d been ambushed a handful of times and the scene had always looked the same. People and even animals seemed to be able to sense when something bad was about to happen. More often than not, either the bad guys had told the people to hide inside or the people had noticed the bad guys were up to something and therefore quickly made themselves scarce. Whatever the reason for this block being devoid of any activity, Harvath didn’t care. It just gave him a bad feeling.
