Page 128 of Shadow of Doubt

A quarter mile out from the cabin, he stopped the team, transitioned to the binoculars, and conducted a final assessment.

He could make out the cabin and three cars parked in front. The chimney appeared warm, but not hot. The Russians had built a fire earlier, but it had been allowed to die down. Maybe they had gone to bed. Maybe they’d run out of wood. At this moment, there was no way of knowing.

As they closed the remaining distance, they stepped off the dirt road and melted into the trees.

He didn’t need to advise them on what to do or what to be on the lookout for. They were some of the best operatives he’d ever worked with. They were in their element now. Silently materializing, achieving their objective, and disappearing again was what they did best. Harvath was honored to be among them.

Fifteen yards into the trees, they encountered their first tripwire. Raising his right arm, Harvath held his clenched fist just above shoulder level. It was the command to halt. He then pointed out what he had discovered. Carefully, they all stepped over it. Ten yards later, they found another one. Someone was going to very extensive lengths not to be taken by surprise.

In almost any other scenario, extensive surveillance and thorough planning would have ruled the day. But as the last twenty-four hours had demonstrated, time was not always a commodity in abundant supply. If a window opens and you can hit the target, youhitthe target. Especially when you don’t know when you’ll get that chance again.

In a raid where a subject needed to be captured, speed, surprise, andoverwhelming violence of action were the keys. In an operation where none of the subjects were leaving alive, Harvath liked to slow things down. In his book, slow was smooth and smooth was fast. When you took your time, your precision spiked. And though he fully intended to maintain the element of surprise, while applying overwhelming violence of action, what mattered most to him right now was precision. Precision would get this job done effectively and allow the entire team to walk out of the cabin alive and unharmed.

After establishing the parameters of the takedown, the most important decision was where your entry point would be and how you intended to conduct the breach. In this case, there was no decision to be made. The safehouse, and Elovik, had done that for them.

Airbnb was the best thing to ever happen to intelligence agency budgets. In an era when more and more money was being diverted away from human operations and plowed into technology, the days of endless, Agency-owned and operated safehouses around the world were over. Short-term home rentals were where it was at. The fact that it could be done over the internet, with little to no notice, and zero in-person contact, was the icing on the covert cake.

With the information Elovik had provided, Nicholas had easily tracked down the listing. It provided not only photos of the home and the property, but also a floor plan, which greatly assisted in their planning. The most useful piece of intel, however, was which door they should use to make their entry.

Coming in through the main door was out of the question. It was big, heavy, and had both a ton of iron fixtures and was additionally secured from the inside with a wooden beam. Without an explosives kit, they weren’t getting in that way. The good news was that they didn’t need to.

Not wanting to mar the traditional appearance of their cabin, the owners had placed an electronic keypad for guests at the rear of the structure on the kitchen door. Nicholas had made short work of tracking down the home’s most recent email, which included the security code. Blowing the door off its hinges wouldn’t be necessary. All they had to do was punch in the string of numbers.

They took several moments to surveil the back of the cabin beforestepping out of the trees and approaching the kitchen door. They wanted to make sure there was no one keeping watch. As best they could tell, no one was.

With the guns of Barton and Morrison trained on the windows, Gage watching their six o’clock, and Ashby and Palmer covering their flanks, Harvath tapped the code into the keypad, the light switched from red to green, and the lock released.

Verifying that everyone was prepped for entry, he gave a silent countdown with his fingers, twisted the knob, and pushed the door open.

There was a slight, barely audible creak from the hinges. Nothing else. Crossing the threshold, Harvath stepped inside and led his team into the cabin.

It smelled like cigarette smoke and burnt garlic. He had no idea what the Russians had been up to, but he was fairly confident that they weren’t going to be getting their security deposit back.

Keeping their eyes and ears peeled, the team was the embodiment of stealth as they flowed soundlessly through the dining room. Crushed beer cans and empty liquor bottles were visible upon the table.

Sitting around a safehouse, waiting to be activated, was one of the most boring parts of the job. Getting hammered to help pass the time, however, was not just unprofessional, it was dangerous. It was also par for the course when it came to the Russians. They were a different breed.

Passing into the living room, they swept their suppressed weapons left to right and right to left, searching for targets. So far, everything was quiet, and they moved on to the sleeping area.

Based on what they knew about the cabin’s layout, there were three bedrooms with probably two men in each. Harvath’s plan was to split his team into three pairs, position them at the doorways, and launch their attack all at the same time.

He made it to the midpoint in the hallway when a board groaned beneath his foot. The entire team heard it, and everyone froze in place.

They stood there for what felt like a lifetime, listening for any indication that they’d been given away, before Harvath began moving again.

Two steps later, he hit another bad board—this one even louder. And just like before, he froze. With his grip tight on his weapon, he waited.

The shot came through the wall right behind him, missing his head by a fraction of an inch. The crack from the round was deafening. He didn’t need to see the hole in the wall to know it was probably from a .45.

Immediately after the first shot had been fired, a barrage of follow-up shots exploded around them.

Knowing how deadly hallways were, the team rapidly retreated to the living room, where they expertly took cover and, upon Harvath’s command, returned fire.

The team pumped round after deadly round through the walls and into the bedrooms.

When he signaled for them to cease firing, the team members took turns covering each other while they inserted fresh magazines into their weapons.

Grabbing Ashby and Palmer, Harvath headed back into the hall, in which hung a haze of sawdust and gunsmoke.

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