Page 41 of Dead Fall

“In another life, I was in the military,” he stated.

“What was your specialty?”

“I broke things.”

“Like what?”

Harvath pulled out a chair at the opposite end of the table, set his rifle next to him, and sat down. “Usually very big, very expensive things.”

“You were a saboteur.”

“I prefer the termdeconstructionistorreverse engineer.”

She smiled. “You must have beenverygood at it. The GUR made you a captain and assigned you to the Special Services Group.”

“Is that good?” he asked, smiling back. “The Special Services Group? It sounds like it could be a lot of work.”

“I suppose that depends on what you’ll bedeconstructing. Any ideas?”

She was totally milking him for intel. Whoever this woman was, she was definitely not one of the good guys and definitely not on his side.

“Could be anything. Bridges. Tunnels. Ships. Aircraft. Maybe even the Sayano-Shushenskaya Dam.”

Harvath was enjoying screwing with her. Sayano-Shushenskaya was the largest power plant in Russia. The way her eyes widened confirmed that she was familiar with it.

“So, your expertise involves penetrating far into enemy territory.”

“They wouldn’t have made me a captain if all I was going to do was blow up stuff on this side.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” she agreed, then probed further. “I would imagine there’s a lot of reconnaissance that goes into your assignments.”

“Not really. Most of it I just do on my phone. Google Earth and some of the other sites. You know?”

In addition to being certain that she was playing for the bad guys, he was also certain that his team was not en route to the dacha.

Very soon, one of two things was going to happen. Either she was going to get wise that he was stringing her along, or she was going to conclude that under the present circumstances, he had reached the limit of what he was willing to reveal. Both situations would end badly for him. He needed to make sure that didn’t happen.

But first, he needed the answer to one crucial question—were they alone?

Immediately after the thought popped into his head, he received an answer in the form of a heavy thud from upstairs.

The woman turned to look over her shoulder and up the staircase.

“What was that?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied, turning back around. “A few of the beams upstairs are damaged. Something must have fallen. It’s nothing.”

Once again, she was lying.

“Who else is here?”

“No one,” she stated. “It’s just us.”

It was time to end this. With his left hand, Harvath began reaching for his rifle. “I’m going to have a look.”

“No, you’re not,” she said, drawing an RPC FORT-20 pistol and pointing it at him. “You’re going to stay where you are.”

Slowly, Harvath drew his hand back and abandoned his reach for the rifle.

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