Chapter 2
T he synchronized blasts shattered the vehicle’s windows, showering the interior with broken glass. Scot prayed to God that S?lvi hadn’t been injured.
“Are you okay?” he yelled over the ringing in his ears, fumbling with her seat belt.
She was dazed and it took a moment for her to respond. “I’m all right,” she finally answered, flashing him the thumbs-up.
The unmistakable odor of lit gasoline and burning rubber filled the air. They needed to move. There could be another explosion coming.
“We’re going to exit out your door,” he instructed, as he unbuckled her and reached for the handle. “In three, two—”
He stopped just as he got to the number one and was about to open the door. The sharp cracks of gunfire, even with the ringing in his ears, were unmistakable.
“Stay down!” he shouted.
With bullets flying, they were sitting ducks inside a thin-skinned vehicle. Movement was life. They needed to get off the X.
Rolling off his armrest, he popped the center console lid, handed the SIG Sauer pistol and two extra mags beneath it to S?lvi, and then opened the console vault underneath that and pulled out his most readily accessible “truck gun.”
It was a compact, highly maneuverable personal defense weapon, or PDW for short, known as a Raider 365.
“When I say go , I want you to get out and position yourself behind the engine block,” he said, springing the stock and making sure a round was chambered. “Understand?”
S?lvi nodded.
As she prepared to open her door and bail out, Harvath popped up in the driver’s seat and identified three more men in hooded sweatshirts, wearing face masks and sunglasses.
They were armed with short-barreled, automatic weapons.
But it wasn’t their rifles that sent a chill down his spine. It was their tactics.
While one of them fired into the crowd, the other two covered his flanks, engaging the surviving police officers. They fired in tight, controlled pairs—two shots in rapid succession—delivering their hits quickly and precisely. Whoever these men were, they were professionals.
Harvath seated the Raider’s stock against his shoulder and shouted “Go!” as he brought the weapon up and began firing.
With bodies dropping left and right, there was no time to develop a formal plan. As soon as he had a sight picture, he engaged the first target, pumping two rounds into his back, before moving quickly to the next shooter and repeating the process.
There was just one problem. Neither man went down.
Body armor , Harvath thought to himself. As soon as the thought entered his mind, he began adjusting his aim.
Center mass was the biggest and easiest part of the body to hit. The moment you panned down for shots in the leg or panned up for headshots, the degree of difficulty skyrocketed.
Not only were the shots he needed to make much harder, but he had also blown his element of surprise.
As the two men he had shot spun and began putting rounds on his Tahoe, he knew he was in big trouble.
“They’re wearing body armor!” he yelled to S?lvi. “I’m coming to you. Give me some cover fire.”
As she peeked above the hood of the SUV and began shooting at the attackers, Harvath scrambled out of the vehicle and joined her.
While their situation had improved by putting the heavy Chevy engine between them and their opponents, it hadn’t improved by much.
“Reloading!” S?lvi shouted as she crouched back down and inserted a fresh magazine into her pistol.
The Tahoe rocked back and forth as it was riddled with a withering barrage of bullets.
From the sound of the gunfire, Harvath could tell the shooters were getting closer.
They were crossing the street, walking their rounds in, determined to eliminate the threat.
He signaled to S?lvi what he wanted her to do.
The two flankers may have been bold enough to traverse the street, but that didn’t cancel out any of the other facts on the ground. They still needed to keep their heads on swivels and deal with anyone else who popped up and began shooting at them.
That was why Harvath had decided not to pop up—at least not immediately. Removing his left hand from his weapon, he squeezed S?lvi’s shoulder.
As he did, she dropped to her left side, pointed her pistol beneath the SUV, and began shooting at the boots of the approaching attackers. That was when Harvath leapt up and, leaning across the hood, began putting his own rounds on the men.
He was aiming for anything he could get—from the upper torso, above where the body armor stopped, all the way up the throat, into the facial area, including the forehead.
He nailed the first shooter with a shot to the suprasternal notch right between his clavicles and a second round through his lower jaw.
The second man had already been dropped to his knees by S?lvi. While she continued to pump rounds into his lower extremities, Harvath double-tapped him in the back of the head.
With the third shooter still firing at the protesters, there was no time to waste.
Coming out from behind the SUV, Harvath moved past the two shooters, giving them each a final headshot, just to be sure.
As he did, the third shooter spun, catching Harvath out in the open. But before he could fire, S?lvi, having once again swapped in a fresh mag, began painting a racing stripe of 9mm rounds right up his torso from her new position at the back of the Tahoe.
With the bullets bouncing off his body armor, the man jerked his rifle to the right and was just about to fire when Harvath let loose with his own volley of controlled pairs.
The first two rounds ripped open the side of the shooter’s neck, while the next bullet tore through the base of his skull, followed by a final shot through his left ear. He was dead before his body even hit the ground.
Nevertheless, Harvath gave him an additional shot to the head and kicked his weapon away.
Changing his own magazine, he was about to yell for S?lvi to grab the medical bag out of the back of his SUV so they could render aid to the injured protesters when he heard her begin to fire her pistol again.
Spinning to his right, he saw two more shooters.
They were the same men he had seen place the bomb-laden backpacks under the van.
S?lvi drilled one man in the lower abdomen beneath his body armor and then put a round through the other man’s hip, shattering his pelvis. As they staggered forward, Harvath shot each of them in the head.
Quickly, he scanned for more threats. Then he saw it.
A sixth, hooded man had his head down and was walking, not running like the rest of the civilians, away from the chaos. He wasn’t carrying a weapon that Harvath could see, but both of his hands were hidden in the pouch of his sweatshirt.
In the distance, police sirens could be heard approaching from all directions. He had no intention of letting this guy get away.
“You!” he shouted, raising his PDW. “Black sweatshirt. Stop where you are. Let me see your hands.”
The man ignored him and kept walking.
“Black sweatshirt!” Harvath repeated, picking up his pace. “Show me your hands! Do it now!”
The man began to move faster as well.
“Black sweatshirt! Last chance! Freeze!”
For a moment it looked like the man was about to break into a sprint, but instead he pulled a Glock from his sweatshirt pouch, turned, and fired three rounds in rapid succession.
Harvath dove for the pavement.
As he did, the man took off.
Getting up on one knee, Harvath reshouldered his weapon and took aim. Pressing his trigger, he let loose with two rounds low and two rounds high.
One caught the man in the back of his left leg. Another hit him in the back of his left shoulder. The moment the bullets found their targets, everything changed.
Harvath leapt to his feet as the man stumbled and almost went down.
But instead of continuing along the street, the man cut across the pavement and jumped the waist-high, wrought-iron fence of the Norwegian ambassador’s residence.
Landing in the grass on the other side, he quickly disappeared from view.
Seconds later, there was the sound of more gunfire, as well as glass being shattered. It only took Harvath a moment to figure out what was going on.
Unable to escape on foot, this guy was either looking for a vehicle he could steal, or he had breached the residence and was looking to take hostages.
Arriving at the fence, Harvath could see across the empty driveway and right up to the shattered glass and iron front door.
Inside the residence, two of the Ambassador’s security detail were down. There was only one thing Harvath could do.