Arriving at the door, he took a deep breath and tried to steady his heart rate. Breathe, he reminded himself. So he did.
Reaching out for the cold, stainless steel handle, he opened the door and stepped inside.
The room was dark, its blinds closed. One of the things the man tied up back at the apartment had said was that upon entering, his job was to prep the room for the morning. So, that was exactly what Harvath did.
Opening the blinds, to allow the early rays of the sun to shine in, he heard something behind him. The patient was awake.
Turning, he smiled and said in English, “Good morning, Josef.”
CHAPTER 80
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Before the man could cry out, Harvath was on him.
Josef had been admitted to Moscow City Hospital Number 67 for a complicated spinal surgery due to injuries had had suffered in the crash. He was paralyzed from the waist down and could only move his upper body.
Stunning him with a blow to the head, Harvath disconnected his patient call button, slapped a piece of duct tape over his mouth, and then removed a syringe.
Reaching for Josef’s IV, he injected it with succinylcholine and then, grabbing him by the throat, he pulled the piece of tape from his mouth.
“I told you back in New Hampshire I’d find you,” said Harvath, “and that when I did, I’d kill you. So now, guess what?”
“Fuck you,” gasped Josef.
“Don’t talk,” Harvath instructed. “Just listen. You killed my wife and you also killed two of the most important people in the world to me. You dragged me all the way over here to your shithole country to interrogate and then kill me. It didn’t work, though. You want to know why? Because you’re a failure. You have always been a failure. And now you will die a failure.”
“Fuck you, you—” Josef began again, but Harvath choked him quiet once more.
“I just injected you with suxamethonium chloride. Also known as sux. Right now, all of your muscles are starting to give up. In about sixty seconds you will be fully paralyzed and unable to breathe, but you’ll still be fully conscious and aware of what’s going on. Two minutes from now, when the nurses rush in to give you CPR, it’ll be a lost cause. Before that happens, though, I’m going to make sure you die as painful a death as possible.”
Withdrawing his hand from around the man’s throat, he straightened up and struck the Russian brutally and repeatedly in and around his chest.
Josef tried to raise his arms to defend himself, but he could not. He tried to call out for help, but he was equally unable. He could do nothing but lie helplessly and watch it all happen, much the way Harvath had been forced to witness the murders of Lara, Lydia Ryan, and the Old Man.
When Harvath had finished pounding on him, he stood back. There was no doubt he had broken multiple ribs.
Josef was not only going to die of suffocation, but as the well-meaning medical staff pushed down on his chest in an effort to revive him, they were going to be exacerbating the pain of his broken ribs and helping to puncture his lungs.
It wasn’t the slow death Harvath wanted to give him. That kind of pain would have taken weeks or months. But all things considered, it was a very nasty death he was all too happy to deliver.
Placing a bag-valve mask over the man’s face, he pushed the emergency call button and shouted out instructions in perfect Russian, just as Christina had instructed him, for the local equivalent of a Code Blue.
Within moments, the room filled with medical personnel, all of whom were exclusively focused on the patient.
As they fought to revive Josef, Harvath slipped out the door, walked downstairs, and left the building without anyone noticing.
By the time he made it to the corner, Alexandra was already there, in the car, waiting for him. One down, two to go.
Their next target wouldn’t be available for several hours. To her credit, Alexandra had taken that into consideration and had planned accordingly.
In an empty office across the street, she had placed a couple of cots, food, water, and even medical supplies in case the first hit had gone sideways.
Harvath had to hand it to her, she was very good at her job.
They passed the day and into the early evening in relative silence. Had he taken her up on