When Harvath looked closer, he realized that what he was seeing weren’t wolves at all, but rather two extremely large dogs. They resembled the type of animal he’d seen the Russian army use. They also appeared to both be wearing harnesses of some sort. And where there were dogs, Harvath knew there was normally a handler, though for the moment he couldn’t see one.
He watched as the animals silently crept forward-obviously taking great pains so as not to be detected. Harvath was marveling at their discipline, when he finally saw the handler. It was only a glimpse at first and then, as one of the animals turned, he could make the figure out in its entirely. It was amazing. From Harvath’s vantage point the man couldn’t have been more than two-and-a-half to three-feet tall, max. The dogs towered over him.
Harvath focused on the bizarre weapon the man was carrying. It looked like it was crafted of plastic-style polymers and some kind of alloy. Obviously, it had been custom-made to accommodate the dwarf’s small size. But who the hell was he and what did he want with Mohammed bin Mohammed? Were the people Mohammed was doing the nuke deal with trying to double-cross him?
Leaping the small wall at the far end of the veranda, Harvath took cover just as Mohammed bin Mohammed stepped outside with a drink in each hand, oblivious to the threat quickly advancing on him from within the villa.
Handing one of the cocktails to his guest, Mohammed prepared to lie down alongside him on the chaise, when suddenly he heard a terrible growling from behind. Spinning around, he saw a hideous little dwarf flanked by two of the most vicious-looking dogs he’d ever encountered in his life. The sight was such a shock that the man’s large glass slipped from his hand and shattered on the flagstone terrace.
“Who are you?” demanded Mohammed. “What do you want?”
The dwarf signaled for the boy to rise from the lounge chair and step away from his host. Mohammed was surprised to see the young man so readily comply. His confusion evaporated as the young man approached the dwarf, stuck out his hand, and was given several large bills before quickly leaving the villa.
At the dwarf’s command, the dogs fell silent.
“Who are you?” repeated Mohammed. “What do you want?”
The Troll smiled. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
“Of course not. We’ve never met. I have absolutely no idea who you are.”
“You may not remember me, but surely you remember the Black Sea. There was a brothel near the town of Sochi.”
What little color remained in the al-Qaeda operative’s face now completely drained away. Could this be the same dwarf? If it was, then yes, he did remember him. He remembered the brothel too. Mohammed had wanted a very young boy, not a dwarf, but when the madam and her husband said that the dwarf was the best they were able to do, he had decided it was better than nothing and had had his way with him. Afterward, he had felt so disgusted with himself that he had beaten the little creature almost to death. If it hadn’t been for the quick thinking of one of the whores, who was able to give the dwarf the breath of life and compress his chest until his heart restarted, he would never have returned to the realm of the living.
“I paid dearly for that misunderstanding,” replied Mohammed. “The proprietors’ silence did not come cheap.”
“You might have paid them, but you never paid me,” answered the Troll. “I spent a good part of my life looking for you. When the Americans took you into custody, I was prepared to let you rot, but then you escaped. So tonight I will recoup what is owed me, with interest.”
“How did you know I was held by the Americans?”
“Because he was the one who turned you in,” said Abdul Ali as he stepped from the shadow of the villa.
As exceptional as the dogs were, they had never even detected the assassin’s approach. Now they began barking at both Mohammed bin Mohammed and Abdul Ali.
“Shut them up,” said the assassin as he pointed his silenced Beretta at the Troll. “And drop your weapon.”
When the Troll hesitated, Ali turned his weapon on the nearest Caucasian Ovcharka and pulled the trigger.
The Troll felt the round just as surely as if it had pierced his own heart. He wanted to cry out, but he retained his composure and signaled his remaining animal to be still. Then he dropped his weapon.
Even from where he remained hidden, Harvath could see enough of the newest party crasher to recognize him. He was the man from the CCTV footage at Libya House. The man who had not only helped Mohammed bin Mohammed escape, but who was responsible for the deaths of the NSA employees, the marines, and all the other victims of the terrible terrorist attacks on New York. Even more important to Harvath, it was this man, the one the CIA was calling Abdul Ali, who had armed Mohammed bin Mohammed and helped him to kill Bob Herrington.
Harvath had expected a long, hard hunt for Ali, but now the man had been delivered right to him. The promise he had made to Bob the night he was murdered was going to be easier to carry out than he had thought.
With a silencer already affixed to his own weapon, Harvath raised his H amp;K pistol and took aim at the most logical primary target-the only other man holding a gun. Though it wasn’t the long and painfully drawn-out death he would have wished on Ali, it was what the circumstances dictated. Taking a deep breath, he squeezed the trigger and watched as Ali’s brains exploded out the other side of his head. And with that shot, pandemonium instantly erupted.
Mohammed bin Mohammed threw his considerable bulk to the ground and began crawling for the villa as fast as he could. To help slow him down, Harvath put a round in the back of each of his legs.
As the al-Qaeda operative screamed in pain, Harvath swept his pistol from left to right, searching for the dwarf, who had suddenly disappeared. At the last minute, he found him.
With the bizarre weapon slung over his shoulder, the tiny man had leapt onto his gargantuan dog and, holding on to the beast’s harness, was riding him as if he were a thoroughbred.
The last glimpse Harvath had of them was as the amazingly agile animal leapt the high wall at the other end of the veranda and disappeared once more from sight. While he didn’t have any immediate reason to kill the man or his dog, there were a lot of questions he would have liked to have had answered-questions he was sure that Mohammed bin Mohammed wouldn’t be willing to answer. On the other hand, Harvath wasn’t really in the mood to ask. What he was in the mood for was payback.