Page 118 of Dead Fall

They drove in silence, the men keeping their own counsel as they thought about the serious operation that lay ahead.

Before leaving the mill, Harvath had offered them, for the third and final time, one last chance to bow out. No one had taken him up on the offer. They all intended to see this through with him. They were good and decent men. True warriors.

As the Novator, its headlights off, sliced through the darkness, Harvath was preoccupied with a very particular piece of the night’s puzzle. After being attacked in the village, what was the Ravens’ tactical posture? Were they all hopped up, expecting to get hit again? Had they doubled down on their defense of the fortress? Had they hung around long enough for the flames to die down in the jeep, only to see there were no bodies inside? And if they had figured that out, did they suspect that their teammates had been taken prisoner and might have given up their location?

The Colonel had exhibited enough tactical fluency to expect that the answer to most of those questions would be yes. Even if the Ravens had fled before knowing if there were any bodies inside the burning jeep, they would have been jumpy and on edge. That energy was best channeled into fortifying their defenses. They would have been foolish not to assume something else could be headed their way.

For his part, Harvath was most concerned with getting through the gate and into the tunnels. According to the prisoners, the gate, of course, was locked.

Harvath and his team didn’t have any breaching tools, they didn’t have any C4, they didn’t have any of the standard items an operator might use to make entry. If they couldn’t get through that gate, he didn’t know what their next move would be. There was no Plan B. But as an old SEAL pal used to say, they’d have to burn that bridge once they got to it.

When they neared the fortress, the men prepped their weapons and double-checked all their equipment. Things were about to go next level.

“Any special rules we need to be aware of here?” asked Hookah, flipping down his night-vision goggles and powering them up.

Harvath shook his head. “Our American woman and the two little girls are all that matter. Anyone else you see is a legitimate target. Weapons free.”

“Roger that.”

They pulled the Novator off the road and into the trees, southwest of the property. This was where the footpath was supposed to be.

Yanking the prisoner out of the truck, Harvath placed a piece of duct tape across the man’s mouth to keep him quiet and then tied a long piece of rope to the flex-cuffs binding his wrists behind his back. He then handed the rope to Biscuit. “If he does anything stupid, kill him. But do it quietly.”

“Where are you going?”

“We need to find the trailhead,” he replied, activating his night-vision goggles. “We’ll be back as soon as we’ve ID’d it.”

After twenty minutes of careful searching, it was Krueger who finally found the footpath.

Returning to the Novator, Harvath donned a lightweight, collapsible medevac rescue stretcher that could be worn like a backpack.

Then, taking the rope from Biscuit, he instructed their Raven prisoner to walk toward the fortress. If the Russian was lying about mines on the path, he’d end up being the one who paid the ultimate price.

Per their training, and out of an abundance of caution, Harvath and each of his men stayed directly in the footsteps of the man in front of him.

He wasn’t crazy about having to hold his rifleanda rope, but at this point, Harvath didn’t have a choice. Things could have been a lot worse and he took a moment to remind himself how fortunate they were that there were no cameras or other electronic sensors on the property.

Up ahead, he could see the hulking shadow of the old, abandoned fortress. According to Nicholas, who had been able to pull up some information online, it had been built in the 1600s and starting in the 1800s had steadily fallen into a state of disrepair. It had been revived as a military academy in the early 1900s but left to rot after World War II.

Other than a quick stint as a folk museum in the 1970s, there had been no money to do anything with it and it had been completely surrendered to nature. Drug addicts, teenagers, and the occasional outlaw or ghost-hunting YouTuber were the only human life the place had seen in decades, until the Ravens had come along.

From what the prisoners had said, the Colonel had recognized the strategic value of the property instantly upon seeing it. There was no electricity or running water, but it checked so many other important boxes, he had decided to make it their home.

To illuminate their nights, the Ravens were dependent upon lanterns, candles, and flashlights. In many respects, they were as backward as the Taliban. Harvath loved that. He had killed a lot of Taliban, especially at night, and especially in the darkness of their own homes. What he loved even more was that, unlike the Taliban, the Ravens didn’t have dogs. Nothing could screw up an operation faster.

Arriving at the gate, he handed the rope off to Biscuit and stepped forward. With Jacks, Krueger, and Hookah scanning for threats, he let his rifle hang from its sling and gave the gate a tug.

Nothing happened.

He pushed in on it, but still nothing happened.Fuck.

Running his hand along the contours of the entrance, he felt the gate, its hinges, and the stone surrounding it. These people didn’t have proper medicine or flush toilets in their day, but they could design a lock that would survive hundreds of years.

Frustrated, Harvath grabbed the gate with both hands and jerked it back and forth. As he did, he heard the metal groan and noticed some of the mortar around the hinges begin to chip off.

Leaving Krueger to stand guard, he called Hookah and Jacks over to help. Together they used brute force to rock the iron gate, pushing and pulling until the first hinge snapped, then the second, and then finally the third.

Carrying the gate inside, they gently set it against the wall. But before they could go any farther, something had to be done about their prisoner.

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