Out of the blue, he lunged for his purse and that’s when Harvath raised his pistol and fired.

The glass of the window erupted and people began screaming and running in every direction.

Harvath took the steps up to the little private room two at a time and kicked the door open. The figure with the scarf around its neck lay dead, a pool of blood rolling across the sloped wooden floor toward the front of the room.

Behind the man’s left ear, Harvath saw a thick, ropey white scar. “Take them down,” Harvath said over his radio. “Take all of the bombers down now.”

He looked up to locate de Roon and as he did, a burst of traffic came over the radio. Less than a second later, an enormous detonation shook the entire red-light district as a roiling fireball exploded into the night sky.

CHAPTER 61

Leaving de Roon’s men to process the corpse and secure the scene, Harvath raced in the direction of the explosion.

“What the hell happened?” he screamed over his radio.

“One bomber detonated before we could take a shot,” a voice replied.

“What about the others?”

“All neutralized.”

Harvath ran against a sea of people who were all fleeing the bombing. Klaxons wailed in the distance and a heavy pall of dust and smoke hung in the air. It was like 9/11 in miniature. The force of the blast had shattered every window he passed. Shards of broken glass blanketed the street. As he got closer, he began to develop a sense of how bad the attack had been.

The walking wounded stumbled past him, unsure of where to go, knowing only that they had to get away, they had to get out of the area.

Then came the people who couldn’t move. They sat or lay near walls, and despite the bravery of a few Good Samaritans, there weren’t enough hands to administer aid, so the wounded stayed where they were, waiting for help. Many were crying and in extreme pain. There was blood everywhere. Then came the bodies.

Harvath had no idea how much explosive the bomber had been carrying, but its impact was unbelievable. It was one of the worst scenes of carnage Harvath had ever witnessed. The dead and dying were scattered everywhere. Some had even been tossed into the air and were hanging from signs or out of second- and third-story windows.

The buildings were charred and the stench of burnt human flesh was overwhelming. It took Harvath a moment to get his bearings and when he did, he was overcome with a sense of dread. The bombing had happened almost directly in front of the window Nikki Rodriguez had been in.

He attempted to hail her over the radio as he rushed into what remained of the building. Its entire facade had been sheared away.

Planting his feet, he tried to raise a section of collapsed wall, but it was too heavy. He radioed de Roon and told him to bring jacks and any earthmoving equipment he could get his hands on. Then, he began to dig.

There were severed electrical wires and the scent of gas from ruptured lines. Harvath ignored all of it.

He lifted piece after piece of heavy stone. Shrapnel and twisted metal tore at his hands until they began to bleed, but Harvath kept on.

At some point, Casey arrived; then Ericsson, Rhodes, and Cooper. De Roon and three of his men materialized with a long, iron pry bar. They used a piece of rubble for a fulcrum and managed to raise part of the wall.

Underneath, Harvath saw skin; Nikki’s skin. Hitting the ground, he slid beneath the wall and crawled toward her. In the darkness, he couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead. He had a flashlight in his pocket, but the space was so tight, he didn’t have enough room to pull it out. The claustrophobic darkness reminded him of the pit full of children he had crawled into nine days ago in Iraq.

Behind him, Harvath could hear de Roon and his men grunting under the weight of the wall and yelling for Casey and her operators to find something to help prop it up before it fell.

As he got closer, Harvath tried to talk to Rodriguez, but she didn’t reply. “I need some light down here,” he shouted.

Someone cast a flashlight into the narrow confines. Harvath’s body blocked most of the light, but he could just make out the side of Nikki’s head. Her hair was matted and covered with blood. He strained his eyes to see if she was breathing, but he couldn’t tell.

As he inched forward, the crawl space became smaller and smaller. His legs and arms burned and he realized that it wasn’t from the exertion, but that he was worming his way across broken glass.

When he reached Rodriguez, he tried once more to get her to respond. “Nikki?” he said. “Can you hear me?”

She still didn’t reply, and Harvath silenced his own breathing to listen for hers. De Roon yelled for him to get out, but Harvath told him to be quiet. He thought he’d heard something.

When the voices behind him fell silent, he cocked his head and didn’t make a sound. That’s when he heard her breathe. Rodriguez was still alive.

Ignoring the instability of the pile of debris he was crawling through, he muscled his way forward. When he got close enough, he reached out and touched the side of her face. He heard her groan in response.

“We need to get you out of here, Nikki. Can you move?”

Rodriguez didn’t respond.

“Scot,” de Roon yelled. “You need to get out now. We cannot hold the wall any longer. Leave her. We’ll try again.”

“You hold that goddamn wall,” Harvath ordered as he reached for Nikki’s shoulders. He had no idea what the extent of her injuries were, and moving her went against all rescue protocols except for one, saving someone’s life.

Inching backward, he gave a tug and pulled her toward him. Rodriguez screamed in pain and the sound tore right through him.

He tried not to think about it as he backed up and gave her another tug forward. She screamed again, but this time she didn’t move.

Please, no, thought Harvath. She’s pinned.

They were close enough now that he could tell she was having trouble breathing. Her breath came in short, shallow gasps and was becoming more rapid.

“Nikki?” he said. “Can you move your legs?”

The woman was unable to respond.

“Nikki, listen to me. I know it hurts, but we need to get you out of here. I’m going to count to three and when I do, I’m going to pull as hard as I can. If you have any ability to help me; if you can push with your legs, or twist your body in any way to get free, you need to do it. Do you understand me?”

Rodriguez said nothing. It didn’t matter. Harvath knew what he had to do. With his hands beneath her arms, he inched his way back as far as he could without losing purchase and then, counting to three, he pulled.

There was a wrenching sound and then a snap, which he prayed was the crack of dried wood from somewhere behind her in the rubble and not bone.

De Roon yelled that they were losing the wall, but Harvath refused to let go of her. He had her now; they were moving. It was slow, inch by painful inch, as if she was dragging some sort of incredibly heavy weight.

“Hurry, damn it!” yelled de Roon. “Hurry!”

Harvath’s entire body burned from the strain, but they were almost free. He continued to slide back a foot and pull, slide back a foot and pull.

He had no idea how close he was to the end of the tunnel until he felt hands on his boots and then his legs, helping to pull him back. Then there were hands on his belt pulling him hard.

De Roon and his men grunted under the weight of the wall. They were yelling and cursing for the others to hurry. With Harvath out, there was only Rodriguez left. Already, the wall was beginning to fall.

Harvath rolled away from the rubble pile as Nikki’s teammates reached in to pull her out. As they did, he saw a sharp piece of metal that had embedded itself in her right side. The realization that the metal protruding from her chest had caused all the drag on her body as he struggled to extract her made him almost want to throw up. Then there was a shout from one of the Athena Team members of “Don’t drop the wall!” and he realized how wrong he had been and how incredible Nikki Rodriguez was.