“What is it you are buying, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“It is none of your concern,” responded Ali.

The Troll smiled. He knew exactly what they were buying. There were very few things al-Qaeda would be willing to pay so much to get their lead negotiator back for. “If you’re successful, the Americans will throw open the gates of hell itself to find you-all of you.”

Abdul Ali wasn’t quite sure if the dwarf was referring to their rescue of Mohammed bin Mohammed, or what they intended to do once Mohammed’s transaction was complete. Either way, it didn’t matter. “You have our offer. Take it or leave it.”

Considering that the Troll had dreamed about this exact opportunity for years, how could he do anything other than accept?

As Abdul Ali left the manor house, he couldn’t help smiling. That the Troll would accept the assignment and help them in their task was a foregone conclusion. What amused the assassin more was that the little man had no idea that al-Qaeda knew that it was he who had betrayed Mohammed bin Mohammed to the Americans. Their network of contacts might not have been as vast, but it could be incredibly efficient.

Soon, the Troll’s usefulness would run its course, and when it did, Abdul Ali would take particular pleasure in bringing the man’s parasitic existence to an extremely painful end.

MONTREAL, CANADA

JULY 3

When Sayed Jamal entered the bedroom of his government-subsidized apartment, Scot Harvath slammed the butt of his H amp;K right into the bridge of his nose, knocking the terrorist to the floor and causing him to bleed profusely.

“Don’t you know that Allah prefers playing to a full house?” said Harvath as he Flexicuffed the man’s wrists behind his back. “He doesn’t like it when you skip out of morning prayers early. And neither do I.”

As Harvath stood up, he gave Jamal a sharp kick to his ribs to emphasize his unhappiness with the man’s premature return to the apartment.

Like Ahmed Ressam-the Algerian-born terrorist who had been caught at the Canadian-U.S. border with over 120 pounds of explosives and a plan to blow up Los Angeles International Airport on New Year’s Eve 1999-Sayed Jamal was yet another Algerian national who had taken advantage of Canada’s liberal asylum policy to hide out just north of the border and plan attacks against the United States.

With its quaint cobblestone streets and European architecture, Montreal was a city that made many people forget they were only twenty-nine miles from New York State. Scot Harvath, though, was no longer one of those people.

Finding a Canadian penny mixed in with his U.S. change once or twice a year, Harvath used to joke that Canada was the most patient invading force in the world-one penny at a time, one pop singer at a time, one actor at a time… It might take them ten thousand years to conquer the United States, but they were on the move, and the American people needed to wake up. But when Canada started to become an operational staging ground for Middle Eastern terrorists bent on destroying the United States, the joke was no longer funny.

Upon reaching Canada or its territorial waters, all that these “asylum-seekers” had to do was claim status as political refugees, and they would be granted Canadian protection under the UN Convention. That was it. The screening process was so poorly managed that nearly one hundred percent of them were granted a formal hearing complete with free legal advice, money, and a place to stay while they often waited more than two years to appear in front of a Canadian magistrate-if they even bothered showing up at all for their hearing.

With laughable screening procedures and nonexistent enforcement, significant numbers of these fake asylum-seekers found their way to Montreal where they joined Muslim terrorist organizations with strong ties to al-Qaeda. One such organization was known as the Algerian Armed Islamic Group, or GIA, and it was the GIA that had brought Agent Scot Harvath to Canada.

The United States had been trying unsuccessfully to convince the Canadian Government to extradite Sayed Jamal to stand trial in the United States. Jamal was a former chemistry professor who somewhere along the line found religion-radical Islam, to be specific-joined the GIA, and followed several of his GIA counterparts to Iraq, where he took up arms against the Western imperial crusaders, aka the American military.

Interestingly enough, of all the foreign fighters in Iraq, the majority-over twenty percent-came from Algeria. And while several Syrian terrorist groups were known for producing exceptional snipers, it was the Algerians-the GIA in particular-who were known for being the best bombmakers in the business. In fact, the most horrific roadside bombs-the ones that scared the hell out of even the most experienced EOD, or Explosive Ordnance Disposal techs, were the ones produced by the GIA’s most proficient bombmaker in Iraq, Sayed Jamal.

With over two hundred American servicemen and women killed and wounded as a result of Jamal’s specialty IEDs known as EFPs, or explosively formed projectiles, which could penetrate up to four inches of armor from over 300 feet away, the United States had pulled out all the stops to track him down. When the heat got too intense in Iraq, he fled to Canada. There, he spun an elaborate cover story and was granted full refugee status. But while you can take the jihadi out of the jihad, you can never really take the jihad out of the jihadi. NSA intercepts revealed a dramatic increase in terrorist chatter suggesting that Jamal was coordinating future attacks within the United States.

Once the United States had pinpointed the terrorist’s location, they began extradition requests. Despite a mountain of evidence in favor of the extradition, the Canadians refused. The liberal prime minister wasn’t convinced that Jamal was who the Americans said he was. Even so, the PM made it clear he wouldn’t even begin considering extradition unless the United States promised to waive the death penalty in the case. As far as the United States was concerned, there was no way in hell that was ever going to happen.

Soon after talks broke down, a copy of Jamal’s Canadian Intelligence dossier magically appeared on the president’s desk. Jack Rutledge didn’t need to ask where it came from. He knew how back channels worked, and he also knew that there were several high-ranking members of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service who were sick of seeing their country’s benevolence exploited by Muslim extremists. Considering the sensitivity of the assignment, he knew there was only one person he could call.

With Jamal now zip-tied and under control, Harvath turned his attention back to the most dangerous part of the assignment-securing Jamal’s laptop.

He’d been briefed that the United States had recently lost two very experienced operators when they attempted to retrieve a high-ranking al-Qaeda member’s PowerBook. Harvath didn’t know what spooked him more-the fact that the United States had taken down an al-Qaeda operative so high-ranking that even with his above-top-secret Polo Step clearance he couldn’t find out who it was, or that as the two members of the assault team had gone for the terrorist’s laptop, it had detonated, killing them instantly.

All Harvath knew was that Jamal’s computer was believed to contain a veritable treasure trove of information and that because of some association with the aforementioned high-ranking al-Qaeda member, his laptop most likely had been rigged with similar explosives and a mercury tilt switch.

It was at times like this that Harvath would have given a year’s pay to have had a good EOD tech along for the ride. But he didn’t have a good EOD tech; he didn’t even have a bad one. All he had were two empty aerosol cans and a Styrofoam cooler packed with dry ice.