When his next communications window opened, Harvath downloaded Lydia Ryan’s message. To her credit, she had kept it short, sweet, and to the point.
Per his request, the pickup location and the time had been changed. All they needed to do was to stay out of sight until then.
That was going to be no problem. With Sloane covering him once more, he took down the antenna and brought everything back inside the car wash.
Staelin, who served as the team’s de facto medic, had been examining Tretyakov. “I think you’re right,” he said when Harvath came back in. “I think his jaw is broken. He’s not going to be able to exfil with a broken jaw.”
“Don’t worry about the exfil,” said Harvath. “I’ve got it all taken care of. Everything’s going to be fine.”
As team leader, it was his job to reassure and to instill confidence in his troops. Privately, though, his concern was growing. Twice in the last two hours, a police vehicle had done a sweep through the truck stop.
The first time it was just a slow roll. The second time, they stopped, got out and looked in the Dumpsters.
For their protection, Tretyakov had been carefully duct-taped at the mouth and bound even tighter. They couldn’t risk his giving them away.
Harvath decided to double the guard, posting someone at each end of the car wash, even though only one of the roll-up doors had a gap big enough to see through. They might be blind at one of their entry points, but they didn’t have to be deaf.
As he had expected, the alert appeared to have gone out. Since their vehicles had been spotted barreling west out of the city, it wasn’t a surprise that the authorities were checking this truck stop. They were likely checking all truck stops, as well as rest stops, bus depots, and train stations, in addition to countless other locations.
All Harvath and his team could do right now was to sit tight. Though it felt like an eternity, very soon they’d be on their way and one step closer to home.
When the appointed time neared, Harvath went back and forth about whom to put outside. Sloane was the obvious choice, as a good-looking woman was probably not what the cops were looking for. But a good-looking woman loitering at a truck stop created a whole different sort of potential trouble for the team.
That wasn’t to say she couldn’t handle herself — she absolutely could — but it might very quickly turn into a problem. Instead, Harvath decided to send out Chase.
He didn’t need to be told to make himself scarce. He was functioning as a lookout. If he could do so from a concealed position, all the better.
He found an excellent position behind a stack of discarded pallets. From there, he could see most of the eastern side of the truck stop. That was where the pickup was supposed to occur.
The only problem with his position, besides its limited field of sight, was that it afforded no avenues of escape.
When the police came back through a third time and decided to do an even more aggressive search, Chase realized it wasn’t just him who was in trouble, but his whole team.
It didn’t take the cops long to find him. Yelling in Russian, they told him to step out from behind the pallets.
He obliged them, but just partly, stepping out from behind the stack of pallets only enough to reveal the left side of his body.
When the first cop moved to call it in over his radio, the second cop, standing next to him, went for his gun. That was when Chase fired.
His suppressed Glock had been in his right hand the entire time. Firing through the open space in the pallets, he killed both of the Russians instantly.
Harvath was the first one out of the car wash to help him scrub the scene.
“I’ll handle the bodies,” he said. “You figure out how we get one more vehicle inside.”
It was the kind of puzzle the Army gave to its Green Beret recruits — like Jeeps with only three wheels that need to be moved right away to a life-or-death location.
Rushing back inside the car wash, Chase surveyed the scene and quickly realized that if they slanted the vehicles, they could squeeze one more in, which is exactly what they did.
By the time Harvath had put the bodies in the back of the police car and had driven it up to the car wash, a space was ready and waiting for him. Once again, Chase was proving how capable he was.
The vehicle secure and no one the wiser, Harvath sent Chase back out to resume his post.
Inserting a fresh magazine into his weapon, he did as he was told and headed back outside.
Twenty minutes later, their ride arrived. He had backed in, along the east side, so as to make it as easy as possible for Harvath and his team to climb up into his trailer without being seen.
“You, too,” the Lithuanian truck driver from earlier that morning said.
Harvath shook his head. “Nope. I’m riding with you. Let’s go.”
It wasn’t a request. The driver shook his head and, after closing the trailer doors, came back around front and hopped up into the cab. Harvath joined him on the passenger side.
“I was almost home,” he said, putting his rig in gear and pulling out of the truck stop. “Then I get a message that I must turn around and come to get you.”
“We appreciate it,” said Harvath. “Thank you.”
“Tell me the Russians will be unhappy.”
Harvath smiled. “I think the Russians will be very unhappy.”
The old man smiled back.
They rode together without speaking. As the Lithuanian listened to his radio, Harvath put his head back and closed his eyes. He needed to rest up. Their exfil was going to suck.
When he felt the truck slow, he opened his eyes and looked at his watch. He had been out for well over an hour. “Where are we?” he asked.
The driver pointed to the sign. “Ten kilometers from the Polish border. This is as far as I go.”
Harvath thanked him and, climbing down from the cab, accompanied him around back to let his teammates out.
The driver had several cases of bottled water and encouraged them to take as much as they needed.
Staelin made a point to take the driver aside and thank him personally. “You come from a family of warriors. It is an honor to know you. Thank you for helping us.”
Normally in a situation like this, Staelin would have handed the man one of his military challenge coins. This was a covert operation, though, and they weren’t carrying anything that could identify them as Americans.
But in his boot was a small backup knife designed for Delta operators called the Sgian Dubh. Bending down, he removed it and handed it to the man.
The Lithuanian was touched and tried to refuse it, but Staelin insisted.
Reaching into his pocket, the man pulled out an aged pocketknife. It had been hand-painted with some sort of a religious icon, probably a saint.
It was apparent that he had owned it for a long time.
Staelin tried to refuse the gift, but the man insisted, so he relented, accepting it graciously.
“Ready to roll?” Harvath asked, interrupting the moment between Staelin and the descendant of the Forest Brothers.
“Yup,” said the Delta Force operative. “Good to go.”
One by one, the team all shook the truck driver’s hand, thanking him. Then he climbed into his cab and drove off while they disappeared into the woods and got ready for the most dangerous part of their mission yet.
CHAPTER 72
On behalf of Lithuanian Intelligence, Filip Landsbergis had done an exceptional job. The cow pasture drop zone notwithstanding, everything else had been perfect. He had provided a critical part of the operation, getting Harvath and his team into and out of enemy territory.