If the Russians were allowed to sit at the global table without adhering to any international norms, why would the totalitarian regimes of the Middle East, Africa, or Asia bother to comply? It was much easier to amass wealth and hold on to power by subverting rather than by respecting the rule of law.
But bad behavior, be it by an Osama bin Laden, a Saddam Hussein, or a Muammar Gaddafi, couldn’t simply be wished away. There was no moral equivalence among systems of government, their leaders, or cultures. Any society that did not respect human rights or the rule of law could not consider itself the equal of those that did. Cancer was cancer. Only by tackling it head-on could you hope to beat it.
And in a sense, that had always been Harvath’s job—going after cancer. When everything else failed, he was called in to kill it, by any means necessary.
Sometimes he was given a strict set of rules by which to operate. Other times, things were so bad that his superiors agreed to look the other way, as long as he got the job done. And he always got the job done, just as he would get this job done.
With his strength returning, he reached down and unsheathed the man’s knife. Then, leaning forward, he grabbed him by the hair and began slicing.
When rescuers eventually showed up, Harvath wanted it to be clear what had happened here. The Russians were not only superstitious but also congenital gossips. The tale would make its way through their military and intelligence services. By the time it was done being told, he would be credited not only with killing some of their most elite operators but with bringing down the plane as well. If nothing else, they would think twice about ever coming for an American like him again.
After swapping out the magazine in his pistol, he checked the man’s wrist. This was the asshole who, on top of everything else, had also stolen his watch.
Sure enough, there it was—his Bell & Ross Diver. Removing it, Harvath put it in his pocket and finished patting down the dead soldier, helping himself to anything of value, including his rifle. Gathering up the blanket, he then returned to the loadmaster.
Though he hadn’t been gone long, he found the man worse than when he had left him.
In his hand, the loadmaster held a tattered picture of his family. Even if Harvath had found something to use as a lever, he wasn’t going to make it. All he could do at this point was make him comfortable.
Draping the blanket over him, he stoked the fire and sat down next to him. It was bad enough he was going to die; he shouldn’t have to die alone. His to-do list could wait.
As he listened to the wind howling outside, he kept one hand on his pistol, one hand on his flashlight, and both eyes on the ruptures in the fuselage. There was one last passenger still unaccounted for: the one in charge of the operation, the man who had given everyone else their orders, the most important passenger of all: Josef.
As he sat there, all the horrific images from New Hampshire began to flood back into his mind, but he didn’t have the energy for them. His focus needed to be on staying alive. The biggest part of that strategy depended on information.
Reaching over to the loadmaster, he gently put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said to him in Russian, and he meant it.
The man opened his eyes halfway and looked at him. “Spasiba,” he responded. Thank you. He knew the prisoner had done all he could for him.
“Where are we?” Harvath asked in Russian.
In response, the loadmaster simply shrugged. He had no idea.
Harvath held out his hand and pantomimed an airplane taking off. Pointing at the imaginary ground beneath it, he asked “Where? What city?”
“Murmansk,” the man mumbled. Fortunately, it was loud enough for Harvath to understand.
Pointing his pretend airplane down, he repeated his question. “Where? What city?”
“Loukhi.”
Harvath had a basic grasp of Russian geography, but didn’t know Loukhi.
He repeated the name to make sure he was pronouncing it correctly. The loadmaster nodded in response.
Resetting his airplane, Harvath pantomimed taking off and then crashing. Once again, he asked the same question. “Where? What city?”
The Russian shrugged, his eyes shutting.
Harvath gently squeezed his shoulder to get his attention. “Where?” he repeated. “What city?”
“Ja ne znaju,” the loadmaster replied, struggling to open his eyes. I don’t know.
“Direction?” Harvath asked, pantomiming the plane taking off and landing. “Murmansk to Loukhi. Which direction?”
“Yug,” the man whispered. South.
Pantomiming the plane’s takeoff to its crash, he bracketed the distance with his fingers and said, “Distance. How many?”
The man’s eyes had closed again.
Harvath was losing him. “Time,” he stated. “How many?”
There was no response.
Applying pressure to his shoulder, Harvath tried to rouse him once more, but without any luck. He tapped him lightly on the cheek. Nothing. The loadmaster had lost consciousness.
Opening each of the man’s eyelids, Harvath used his flashlight to test his pupils. Neither constricted. His brain was shutting down.
“You’re going to be okay,” Harvath lied. “Don’t fight it. Just relax.”
He had no idea if the man could hear him, much less understand what he was saying. It didn’t matter. Harvath kept talking, watching as the Russian’s breaths became shallower and farther apart. He didn’t have much longer.
Unable to do anything but await the inevitable, Harvath’s mind turned to a checklist of things he needed to accomplish in order to survive.
In the SEALs, he had undergone extensive SERE training. SERE was an acronym for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. If you were caught behind enemy lines, the goal was to keep you alive and help you get to safety. If Harvath hoped to survive and get back home, he was going to have to remember every single thing he had ever been taught in SERE school. And even then, there were no guarantees.
At the moment, his primary focus was survival. Having eliminated the immediate human threats, his most pressing environmental threat was the cold.
Even with the fire, the temperature inside the cabin was continuing to drop. He needed to find a way to seal it off from the outside.
Using his flashlight, he did a quick scan of his surroundings, but nothing presented itself. Heavy tarps or plastic sheeting of some sort were what the situation called for. But unless some were hiding in one of the remaining lockers he hadn’t opened in the tail, he was screwed.
He could stack wreckage until his strength gave out, but it would never act as an effective barrier. Like water flooding a leaky boat, the cold would exploit every single opening until it overwhelmed him. He had to come up with a better plan.
Looking down at the loadmaster, he watched him exhale, and then waited for him to take another breath. It never came. He had expired. And with him, so had any moral responsibilities Harvath had left.
Taking the blanket from the man, Harvath wrapped it around himself and got busy trying to survive.
CHAPTER 9
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It turned out that the solution to his most critical problem had been staring Harvath right in the face. He didn’t need to seal the cabin off from the cold. He only needed to seal himself off from it. The cargo container that had crushed the loadmaster’s legs would provide the perfect shelter.