Page 117 of Edge of Honor

Then, sitting him upright, he said, “Now you and I are going to have a talk.”

“Fuck you,” the man replied.

Harvath smiled. “You sound a lot like my friend Paul Jordan. I am going to make you a similar offer to the one I made him. If you cooperate, I won’t hurt you any further. If you make this difficult, though, I’m going to make this the most painful experience you’ve ever had.”

The man spat right at him, making his decision crystal clear.

“Option B,” Harvath replied, smiling even wider. “Just like Paul.”

Standing up, he walked into the cage and stepped over the body of the man who had been wielding the shotgun. It only took him a moment to find what he was looking for.

Exiting the cage with his Glock having been returned to its holster and a new set of tools in hand, he asked, “What are you planning and how do I stop it?”

“Fuck you,” the man repeated.

Taking the screwdriver from one of the toolboxes he’d found inside the cage, Harvath jammed it into the open wound in the man’s left thigh.

As he screamed in pain, Harvath repeated his question. And each time the man refused to answer, Harvath used the hammer he had found to drive the screwdriver even farther into the man’s leg. Soon enough, Harvath had his answer.

Racing toward the nearest stairwell, he ran up the stairs to the main level. According to the guy he had just interrogated, Kennedy was in the exhibition hall. And according to the last text he’d received from Sølvi, so was she, along with the Norwegian Prime Minister and all the other delegations. This was where the attack was to happen.

Bursting into the crowded public area, he found Carolan and Fields already heading toward him, alerted by his text.

He gave them a description of what Kennedy was allegedly wearing and they all split up. They needed to find Kennedy and neutralize him before he could trigger the devices. Any attempt to pull the fire alarm or otherwise cause a migration toward the exits would only accelerate Kennedy’s plan.

With the help of the Iron Tree union members, multiple sarin gas dispersal devices had been hidden in the displays of various defense contractors at the NATO Summit. All Kennedy had to do was walk by the specific booths, near enough to establish a low-level Bluetooth connection, and hit a button on his phone. The needle would puncture the container and the sarin vapor would slowly begin to drift outward.

Taking out his phone, he called Sølvi. Set to “Do Not Disturb,” it instantly went to voicemail. Hanging up, he called right back, knowing that she had preapproved his calls to break through if he called a second time within three minutes.

“What’s going on?” she asked, getting right to business when she saw it was him and accepted the call.

“Where are you?”

Sølvi glanced overhead and read the aisle indicator aloud.

“The east exit is your closest way out. Start calmly moving the PM and the rest of the delegation that way now.”

“What should I tell Secret Service?”

“Don’t tell them anything,” Harvath replied. “We can’t trust them.Go. Now. I’ll meet you at the exit.”

Sølvi hung up the phone and then quietly informed her PST colleagues that there was a possible threat, but that they had to evacuate slowly so as not to create a panic and potentially trigger the attacker.

The Norwegian security team closed ranks around Prime MinisterStang, and once Sølvi had whispered in her ear, the woman nodded and was completely compliant.

As they prepared to move her to the exit, the Secret Service agents augmenting their team asked what was happening. A skilled intelligence operative, Sølvi knew that the bigger the lie the better, and told them that the Russians had just invaded Norway.

Before the Secret Service team could even process what they had heard, Sølvi and her colleagues were moving Stang toward the exit.

They had almost made it to the doors when an enormous plainclothes law enforcement officer stepped out of nowhere and yelled, “Kennedy! Get on the ground! It’s over!”

Another man, tall and slim, with a wispy beard and wearing a janitor’s uniform, pulled an FN P90 submachine gun from the supply cart he was pushing and began firing into the crowd.

With people screaming and running in all directions, Sølvi covered the Prime Minister’s body with her own and, unable to move her toward the exit, guided her backward, toward the nearest exhibition booth.

As she retreated, she saw Scot come racing past her, his Glock exploding in his hand. Every round he fired into the janitor was joined by the rounds of two other shooters: the tall plainclothes law enforcement officer who had yelled “Kennedy! Get on the ground!” and another plainclothes officer, a Black woman who, despite running directly into the shooter’s line of fire, was absolutely fearless and an incredible markswoman as she pounded headshot after headshot into the man’s face.

CHAPTER 59

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