“Copy that. Awaiting your ID,” responded one of the sniper teams.

Harvath crawled over so that he could lie right next to Meg. He was angry that they hadn’t been able to make it to the cover of the crates before the men began exiting the tent. “How’s the view?” he whispered into Meg’s ear.

Meg rocked her outstretched hand from side to side as if to say, So, so, and then pointed her thumb straight down. Her voice barely a whisper, she leaned toward Harvath and said, “I’m getting backs of heads and the occasional profile. This is no good. We’ve got to get behind those crates.”

Harvath didn’t like it. It was too risky. Though they were halfway there already, it still seemed a long way off. What’s more, they’d be that much further away from the oasis and the fire support the sniper teams could lend them if they were seen. But, Harvath knew they had no choice. Scot tapped Meg on the shoulder and indicated for her to quickly follow him, which she did.

Men were now filing out of the tent at a steady clip, and the eyes of the armed guards were busy surveying the entire area. With the night scope again pressed tight against her face, Meg peered out from behind the crates and focused on a tall man in a striped robe as he exited the tent and looked around. When the man unknowingly glanced in their direction, Meg could see his eyes. It was him! Hashim Nidal. As Meg was about to engage her throat mike and call in the target, she was struck hard with the butt of an assault rifle against the back of her head and everything went black.

46

When Harvath awoke with a throbbing headache, the first thing he noticed was the stifling heat. It made him feel as if he were in an oven. There was no telling how long he had been out, or where he was. He assumed that he was somewhere within the oasis town. The tiny room was completely black. The floor he was lying on was hard-packed sand and reaching out either arm he could touch the walls, which were some sort of stone. He did a quick inventory and wasn’t surprised that all of his weapons had been taken away, as well as his Rolex.

Something with way too many legs crawled across his thigh and he quickly brushed it off. He jumped up and, guessing at where the creature was, raised his foot to smash it. He brought his boot down and heard the satisfying squish of a direct hit.

Despite the good-night kiss he’d been given by one of Nidal’s men, physically, he was doing okay. He wished he could be sure of the same for Meg. There was no telling what they were doing to her. A woman like Meg was quite a trophy. Being captured as an enemy would all but guarantee the unthinkable.

Harvath stood for hours, leaning against the wall of his cell. He could hear the sound of gunfire and occasional explosions. Men shouted to each other in Arabic. He listened hard, but the voices were too muffled for him to discern exactly what was being said. At times, it was completely quiet and Harvath figured the men had either stopped for prayers, or had gone off somewhere to eat. Finally, from the other side of the rough wooden door securing his cell, there came the sound of metal scraping upon metal. The heavy bolt was drawn back, and the door was slowly opened.

The late afternoon sunlight exploded into the dark cell and burned so bright that Harvath had to shut his eyes. Several heavily armed men grabbed his arms, shackled his hands in front, and roughly shoved him outside.

Harvath had to hold up his hands to shield his eyes, but soon the sun dimmed, and he could see he was in a large shaded courtyard. When he looked up, he saw that he was not in a courtyard as much as a canyon the length of at least two football fields. An opaque woven fabric, the color of the surrounding steep rock walls, was stretched far overhead from end to end. That explains why this place has never shown up on any satellite photos, thought Harvath to himself.

The canyon floor was broken up into different training areas. There were firing ranges, makeshift shoot houses, the charred hulks of numerous types of automobiles, various ambush and attack scenarios…You name it and Hashim Nidal had it. It made the monkey-bar footage from Osama bin Laden’s training camps look like child’s play in comparison. This setup was extremely sophisticated, and though Harvath had no idea where he was, it was obvious he wasn’t in the oasis town anymore.

At the end of the canyon was an enormous stone edifice carved directly into the wall of rock. It reminded Harvath of Petra, the two thousand-year-old rock carved city in Jordan. The carvings were incredibly intricate, and the façade looked like the entrance of an enormous palace.

Abruptly, Harvath’s captors steered him toward a discolored section of the canyon wall. The pockmarks in the rocks told him all he needed to know. If he had any doubt about what lay in store for him, when one of the guards offered him a cigarette, the picture was perfectly clear.

Two of the guards fired rounds at Harvath’s feet to see if he would jump. He didn’t. Not even a flinch. If they were going to kill him, he didn’t intend to add to their pleasure by going soft.

The captain of the guard stepped away from his men and walked up to Harvath. He was carrying a Russian Makarov. He raised his robed arm and placed the pistol against Harvath’s forehead. As he did, Harvath could see that he was wearing his missing Rolex. The man smiled with a mouth full of yellowed teeth and then pulled the trigger.

Harvath harbored a strange feeling that he had not been brought all this way to be killed. These men were nothing but low-level peons amusing themselves at his expense until their boss called. Well, now it was Harvath’s turn.

His reaction undoubtedly surprised the captain and his men. Instead of blubbering for his life or pissing his pants, as many poor souls before him had probably done, Harvath just smiled. He smiled big and wide, then kneed the captain right in the pistachios.

“Now the camels in the village will be safe for the rest of the day,” said Harvath in Arabic.

A couple of the captain’s men could not help but chuckle. The captain, though, was enraged and, as soon as he caught his breath, dove for Harvath.

Shackling Harath’s hands in front had been a dumb idea. It didn’t take long for Scot to overpower the captain and lock him in a choke hold with the restraints. The man kicked like a mule as Harvath began to squeeze the life out of him. His men looked on stupidly, not knowing what to do. One of the captain’s kicks eventually connected with Harvath’s left thigh, and the two men fell to the ground and continued to wrestle.

Finally, a hail of bullets tore up the sand only millimeters from the men’s heads. Whoever was firing at them was either extremely lucky or extremely accurate. Harvath was tempted to crush the captain’s windpipe, but let up on the pressure and looked up to see who had fired the shots. Astride a beautiful black Arabian was a perfect match for the man Meg Cassidy had described as Hashim Nidal. With his kaffiyeh, flowing white robes, and the elaborate tassels on his mount, he looked more like someone out of Lawrence of Arabia than a cold-blooded terrorist.

“Enough!” shouted the man from atop his horse.

Harvath was loath to surrender his advantage. The man pointed his weapon down at him, and Harvath knew he had little choice in the matter. He let the captain free, and as the man rolled out of his prisoner’s grasp, he delivered a hard elbow to Harvath’s ribs.

“We’re not finished yet,” groaned Harvath.

Two other guards yanked him to his feet and pushed him painfully toward the stone façade at the rear of the canyon.

As Harvath was shoved along, he kept his eyes open and tried to take in everything that was going on around him. If he ever got out of this situation, he wanted to be able to report in the greatest detail possible what he had seen.