Near Dark: A Thriller Read Online Free PDF Page B

pain. In fact, he was still very much alive.
    How was that possible? Had the assassin missed? Had his weapon malfunctioned? A fraction of a second later, Harvathhad his answer.
    Blood began to trickle from a hole in the would-be killer’s forehead.And as he collapsed to the ground, Harvath realized the man had been shot by someone else. But by whom?
    Suddenly, four men carrying suppressed weapons appeared out of nowhere. Their faces were obscured by balaclavas and night vision goggles. What the hell was going on?
    “Time to go,” one of them ordered. Harvathinstantly recognized the voice.
    Before he could reply, two of the men had grabbed him under the arms and were steering him toward a narrow gangway.
    Glancing over his shoulder, he caught a glimpse of the other men swiftly unfurling a body bag and placing the dead man inside.
    When they emerged from the gangway, a dark panel van was idling at the curb. As they approached it, the door slid openand he climbed in. The two men with him stood guard outside. It smelled like disinfectant.
    Seconds later, the other men arrived with the body bag. Once the corpse was loaded, everyone piled in, and the van took off. As it did, the occupants began removing their night vision goggles and balaclavas. One by one, the faces of his teammates were revealed.
    The first one belonged to the man whose voicehe had recognized—Mike Haney. With his square jaw and close-cropped hair, the six-foot-tall Force Recon Marine looked like he had stepped out of a recruiting ad.
    “What the hell just happened?” Harvath asked.
    “We saved your life,” Haney replied. “ Again .”
    The man was right of course. If it hadn’t been for them, Harvath wouldn’t have made it back to the United States from his last mission alive. But what were they doing here?
    Tyler Staelin, the team’s de facto medic, removed a penlight from his medical kit, clicked it on, and asked Harvath to follow it with his eyes. Once the five-foot-ten former Delta Force operative was satisfied with his colleague’s neurological function, he began running through a checklist of questions to assess other possible injuries.
    Harvath replied to aboutthree of them before growing frustrated. “I’m fine,” he said. “Answer my question.”
    Staelin cracked a pair of cold packs and handed them to him. “Place these wherever you need them.”
    Harvath slid them under his shirt and, with great discomfort, held them against his rib cage. “What the hell’s going on?” he repeated. “What are you doing here?”
    Their silence was unsettling. Gallows humor camewith the territory and ran deep with this crew. Normally, he couldn’t get them to shut up. The fact that nobody was answering could only mean one thing. They had bad news.
    It was Chase Palmer, the team’s other ex–Delta Force operative, who finally spoke up. In addition to looking like a younger version of Harvath, he had also been personally recruited by the Old Man. “We got a tip from the NorwegianIntelligence Service,” he stated.
    Harvath’s frustration was growing. “What kind of tip?”
    “Carl Pedersen was murdered.”

CHAPTER 5
    I t was like being hit by a truck. Carl Pedersen was not only Harvath’s best intelligence contact in Scandinavia, but he had also been a friend. The Old Man had introduced them and, despite their age difference, they had become close. Pedersen’s loss was devastating, especially on the heels of losing his wife and two dear friends.
    “When did it happen?”
    “Four days ago,” Chase replied.“Maybe more. His body wasn’t discovered until today. A neighbor found him. At his country house.”
    “How was he killed?”
    “From what the Norwegians say, it wasn’t pretty. He had been tied up and tortured. Then he was shot, once, in the chest. The round went straight through his heart.”
    Not one prone to showing his cards—particularly his emotional ones—Harvath blanched. That was a shitty way togo, especially for someone