Chapter 3
L eaping the fence, Harvath ran across the driveway and, gun at the ready, stepped over the bodies and into the residence.
He didn’t need anyone to tell him which way to go. The man he was after had left a bright red trail of blood for him to follow.
It stretched across the polished marble floor of the entry foyer and up a sweeping staircase.
The security agents wore earpieces, which would have connected to radios beneath their suitcoats. Had they had enough time to radio colleagues for help? The embassy was only just behind the residence. Or had it gone into a full lockdown?
There was no way of knowing. And waiting wasn’t an option. The shooter couldn’t be allowed to get away. He also couldn’t be allowed to hurt anyone else.
It was at that moment that Harvath heard another gunshot, followed by a scream from somewhere on the floor above.
Mounting the stairs, he took them two at a time as he kept his back to the curved wall and his gun pointed up.
When he hit the second-floor landing, he followed the blood spatter straight ahead into a large, empty reception space.
It wasn’t a surprise to find it empty. According to S?lvi, the Midsummer party, which would already have been in full swing, was taking place outside, in the embassy’s grass courtyard.
His own head on a swivel, he quickly passed through the reception space into an elegantly appointed, formal dining room.
The blood trailed off to the far corner and what appeared to be a service door of some sort, likely leading to a kitchen.
Harvath quickly crossed the room and paused at the door, listening.
A woman’s voice could be heard from the other side.
She spoke with the same accented English as S?lvi and, for a moment, his heart stopped cold in his chest. But there was no way she could have beaten him here and gotten all the way upstairs. It was either a member of the staff or…
Harvath didn’t want to go where his mind was leading, and he pushed the thought from his head.
Admittedly, however, there was one big thing in the plus column right now. Whoever the woman was, she was alive. It was his job to make sure that she stayed that way.
Taking a step back, he rapidly scanned the door. It had double-action hinges, allowing it to swing open and closed in both directions. Gently, he leaned against it with his shoulder, opening it just enough to peer into the next room.
It was a commercial-grade kitchen, lined with stainless-steel appliances. On the floor, just past the center island, a man in a white chef’s coat was bleeding out. Crouched next to him was the one person, after S?lvi, he had hoped not to see—the Norwegian ambassador.
As she applied pressure to the chef’s wound and tried to stop the bleeding, she was attempting to negotiate with the shooter to let them go.
Why she and the chef were in the residence while the Midsummer party was happening next door was beyond him.
An event of this size would have been catered and staged out of the embassy.
None of that, however, mattered now. What mattered was eliminating the threat just inside the kitchen—a threat Harvath couldn’t yet see.
The crack in the door offered a limited field of view. If he was going to get a bead on the shooter, he was going to have to open it farther. But as soon as he did that, he would be running an even greater risk of exposure. He didn’t need to dwell on it. There was no other option.
Using the Ambassador as his guide, he tracked where she looked when she spoke to the shooter and edged the door, millimeter by millimeter until he could see the edge of the killer’s sweatshirt. The man was partially obscured by a set of metal shelving.
Blessed with the element of surprise, Harvath would easily be able to get a shot off, but it would have to avoid both the shelving and the man’s body armor, and even then, might not do any good.
Without a flash-bang or some other means to create a distraction, surprise was all he had going for him.
That said, the shooter knew Harvath had been on his tail.
He had to be expecting someone to burst through the kitchen door at any moment.
By bleeding all over the place, he had drawn Harvath right to him.
Hopefully, the man had lost enough blood to slow down his reaction time.
Any advantage would help. And as Harvath knew, action beat reaction every time.
Taking a deep breath, he prayed that would be true right now.
Adjusting his weapon, he applied pressure to his trigger and exhaled as he pushed open the door the rest of the way and rushed into the kitchen.
He got off four shots, unsure of where they’d struck, before the man raised his own weapon and returned fire. Harvath dove for the floor and used the island for concealment.
As soon as he hit the tiles, he began moving. Crawling forward, he made his way toward the Ambassador and the chef. He could see the latter’s leather clogs only a couple of feet ahead. That was when he heard the Ambassador scream again.
“I’m going to shoot her!” the killer bellowed. By the sound of his voice, he was in a lot of pain and was having trouble breathing. “Toss your gun where I can see it. Then stand up. Slowly. If you don’t, I swear I’ll kill her.”
He had no doubt the man was telling him the truth.
With no time to come up with a better plan, he transitioned his weapon to his left hand and snatched a Norwegian cooking device he had seen S?lvi’s family use, called a krumkake iron, from the bottom shelf of the island.
Cocking his right arm back, he threw the cast-iron device as far as he could toward the other side of the kitchen.
The moment he let go of it, he shoved himself forward on the floor and, with his weapon gripped in both hands, snapped around the corner of the island.
Though it seemed like everything was happening in slow motion, it all took place in a matter of seconds.
The killer had grabbed the Ambassador by her hair, yanked her to her feet, and had his gun to her temple, using her as a human shield.
When the krumkake iron hit a shelf loaded with pots and pans, the man took his pistol off the Ambassador and fired multiple rounds toward the back of the kitchen. It wasn’t a flash-bang, but it had done a good enough job.
There was only one shot available to Harvath, and as dangerous as it was, he took it.
Pressing his trigger, there was a crack when the round sizzling out of his weapon broke the sound barrier and caught the killer right between the eyes as he began to turn back around.
His head snapped backward as blood, bone, and pieces of brain matter covered the kitchen wall behind him.
Getting to his feet, Harvath peeled off his jacket, folded it into a makeshift pressure bandage, and, kneeling, applied it to the chef’s chest.
The Ambassador joined him and was about to say something when two new Norwegian security agents burst into the kitchen and, with their weapons pointed at him, yelled for Harvath to put his hands in the air.