State Of The Union

A loud cracking sound drew his attention toward the entrance of the café. The etched doors shuddered on their hinges, and Harvath spun just in time to see the bloody body of the MEK operative who had been trailing Überhof slide down the glass. The small group of patrons inside began screaming and several of them rushed toward the windows in the front of the café to see what was happening.

Harvath bolted outside with his H amp;K drawn, but couldn’t see Überhof anywhere. The fog was too thick. He could barely see his hand in front of his face. He pulled the fallen operative away from the door and turned him over. “Man down. Man down,” he repeated over his radio, but it was too late. The man’s throat had been sliced from ear to ear. How could Überhof have known he had a tail? For a moment, a tidal wave of images threatened to flood Harvath’s mind-the faces of men that he had lost in previous operations, men whose safety he had been responsible for. All of a sudden, he felt a large hand grab his shoulder. Harvath spun, his H amp;K raised and ready to fire.

“Come on,” said the voice of Herman Toffle. “Überhof’s getting away.”

“Wait,” said Harvath, as he turned back to the dead operative. “There’s something not right here.”

“I know,” replied Herman, “He’s dead. Let’s go. I’ll radio Sebastian to come get him.”

The radio! That was it.“No,” said Harvath. “His radio’s gone. Überhof took it. He’ll know every move we make.”

“Then we’ll figure something else out, but we need to move.”

“How are we going to follow him in this?”

Herman held up a long black tube about the size of a tennis ball can, which Harvath immediately recognized. It was a SpecterIR portable thermal infrared imaging weapon sight. Weighing only three pounds, the SpecterIR used next generation hybrid uncooled FPA heat imaging detector technology, which offered true “see in the dark” infrared capability. Darkness, smoke, dust, rain and most importantly fog, were all rendered virtually transparent to the simple to operate scope.

“Where’d you get that?” asked Harvath.

“I borrowed it from one of the sniper rifles in the back of Sebastian’s van,” replied Herman, “but none of this is going to matter if we don’t get behind this guy and see where he’s going.”

“Okay. Let’s go. You lead.”

“No, you lead. You’ll be my eyes. I’ll track him with the scope and you walk in front of me,” said the much larger Toffle as he put his beefy paw on Harvath’s shoulder and shoved him towards the edge of the square. “Move out.”

As Harvath led the way up Unter den Linden, Herman kept one hand on Harvath’s shoulder for balance while his attention was focused on their target, who was almost a full block ahead of them. Using the BlackHot thermal imaging option, every item seen through the Specter’s lens with a high heat signature was rendered black. Herman preferred it to the White Hot option, as it was easier on his eye during such prolonged use.

Überhof knew what he was doing and was proving himself to be quite a pro. Though he moved at a good clip, he still stopped repeatedly to check and see if he was being followed. In the fog, though, the best he could do was listen. Without his own thermal imaging device, he could see only what was right in front of him. For all intents and purposes, the man was completely blind, but when one sense is taken away, others become heightened, and both Harvath and Herman knew they had to be careful.

They quickly developed their own unspoken language. A slight squeeze of his shoulder told Harvath to slow down. A harder squeeze called for an all-out stop as it indicated Überhof had halted somewhere up ahead and was trying to detect if anyone was behind him.

At Friedrichstrasse, Überhof made an abrupt turn and Harvath and Herman were forced to cautiously hightail it up to the corner out of fear of losing him. When they caught sight of him again, he was making his way toward the entrance of one of the stations for Berlin’s subway system known as the U-Bahn. Herman pocketed the SpecterIR scope and suggested they approach the station from different directions. Harvath agreed and crossed the street.

Entering the station, Harvath did a quick look around without breaking stride toward the brightly colored automated ticket machines, but so far, there was no sign of Überhof. He peeled a note off of the thick wad of Euros he had been given before leaving the United States and bought a three-zone, all-day ticket, not knowing where this little chase might lead them. He was just about to validate his ticket and make his way down the escalator to the platform, when Herman quietly whistled to get his attention.

“So much for us not being together,” mumbled Harvath as he joined Herman in front of the station manager’s glassed-in control booth.

Herman grabbed a system map and pretended to search for their destination as he said, “Look at the station master’s closed-circuit cameras. What do you see?”

“I see our guy standing towards the end of the platform,” replied Harvath.

“What else?”