by Brad Thor
O.M. was code for Harvath’s boss and mentor, Reed Carlton—someone he was very close to and someone whose health had been deteriorating. The news was not good. He kept his reply short and to the point:
Understood. Will be back in touch soon.
Once the message had sent, he powered down his sat phone, disconnected his cell, and headed back toward the cabin.
Halfway there, he encountered Jasinski. Harvath had taken his helmet off, revealing his short, sandy colored hair.
“What happened?” she asked. “I heard shots.”
It took him a moment to respond. He was still thinking about Carlton, trying to put pieces together several steps ahead. “One of them ran,” he finally said.
“Is he still alive?”
Harvath shook his head.
“Damn it. I tried to hail you over the radio. Why didn’t you answer?”
He pointed to the earpiece hanging over his shoulder.
“You could have waited,” she declared. “And by the way, who authorized you to carry a weapon?”
He wasn’t in the mood for an interrogation. “Not now,” he replied.
His response only made her angrier. This was her investigation, not his, yet for some unknown reason she’d been forced to accept him as a “consultant.” Something very strange was going on and she intended to get to the bottom of it. No matter what.
CHAPTER 4
* * *
RESTON, VIRGINIA
Lydia Ryan hadn’t wanted the enormous corner office, but Reed Carlton—the firm’s founder and namesake—had insisted. As The Carlton Group’s new director, it was only appropriate that she take it. Considering all of the job’s responsibilities, she was entitled to reap its benefits.
The view was amazing—even at night. The Carlton Group occupied the very top floor of a twenty-five-story glass office building, ten minutes from Dulles International.
They had their own private elevator, with access from the garage, which allowed them to secretly whisk people up without passing through the lobby—a must for a private intelligence agency, especially one now tasked with some of the CIA’s most sensitive assignments.
Because they handled classified information, the entire space had been constructed to the strictest TEMPEST requirements. Meant to safeguard against “compromising emanations” or CE, TEMPEST regulated the mechanical, electrical, and acoustic signals from all equipment used for receiving, transmitting, processing, analyzing, encrypting, and decrypting classified information. Every possible step had been taken to prevent both active and passive eavesdropping.
The firm had been just as diligent in protecting its IT, as well as all of its communications systems. In fact, wherever they could, they exceeded the standards. It put their facility years ahead of anything the government was doing.
It had cost a fortune, but it was an investment Reed Carlton had been willing to make. He was blazing an entirely new trail with his firm and being on the cutting edge of technology was sine qua non.
Carlton had a gift for recognizing threats before they ever appeared on the horizon. He also had the type of mind that was always steps ahead of everyone else.
During his three decades at the CIA, he had traveled the world, battling everything from communists to Islamic terrorists. His greatest achievement, though, was establishing the Agency’s now famed Counter Terrorism Center. There, he had dreamed up and carried out some of its most daring operations.
When the time had come to retire, he tried it, but it didn’t agree with him. He missed the “great game.” Part of him resented its going on without him. What’s more, the threats facing America hadn’t abated. They were growing. And as they grew, his beloved CIA was changing—and not for the better.
It was being overwhelmed and subverted by bureaucrats. Operations were being scaled back, or scuttled altogether. Management was obsessed with minimizing losses. An infamous maxim, pinned to the wall in one manager’s office, read Big ops, big problems. Small ops, small problems. No ops, no problems.
Like a terrible vine, the bureaucracy had wrapped itself around Langley’s throat and was choking it to death. No longer was it a vibrant, dynamic agency carrying out some of the nation’s most dangerous and necessary business. It had all but come to a halt.
The calcification had terrified Carlton. Without an effective intelligence service, the United States was in serious trouble. So Carlton had done the only thing he could do. He had come out of retirement and had founded his own private intelligence firm.
Unlike private military corporations, The Carlton Group offered more than just hired guns; it offered global intelligence gathering and analysis. For select clients, it went even further—offering full-blown covert operations.
In essence, he had created a smaller, faster version of the CIA. The United States government quickly became one of his biggest customers.
He had modeled his new company upon “Wild Bill” Donovan’s OSS—the precursor to the CIA. Their guiding principles were the same—if you fall, fall forward in service of the mission. Only the mission mattered.
To staff his operation, Carlton recruited the same type of individuals as Donovan. He wanted courageous, highly effective self-starters for whom success was the only option. He focused on the elite tiers of the military and intelligence worlds, people who had been proven, people who had been sent to the darkest corners of the world, tasked with absolutely impossible assignments, and had prevailed. He had an exceptional eye for talent.
Looking across the hall, Lydia Ryan could see Scot Harvath’s office. It was smaller than hers, but that had been his choice. He had turned down the Director position.
Carlton had been disappointed. His greatest asset, the foundation his company was built upon, was his wisdom, his hard-won experience, and his global network of intelligence contacts.
He had distilled his thirty-plus years of espionage experience and drilled it as deeply as he could into Harvath’s bones. He had forged him into one of the most cunning weapons the United States had in its arsenal.
He had also taught him about leadership and running an organization—specifically The Carlton Group. But any time the subject of one day “taking over” had come up, Harvath had made it abundantly clear he wasn’t interested. He preferred being in the field. That’s what he was good at.
When Carlton was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, he pulled out all the stops. Harvath was too valuable to keep putting into the field. Scot was his protégé and he wanted him as his successor. And, like any good intelligence officer, Carlton was willing to use anything, even a personal tragedy, to get what he wanted.
He played upon Harvath’s emotions—particularly his sense of duty. He used guilt, leveraging their father-and-son-like bond. He even tried to shame Scot, suggesting that he owed it to the family he was starting to stay home and to limit going overseas.
That last attempt was particularly egregious. Harvath was dating a woman whom he was very much in love with and she had a little boy. It was the perfect, ready-made family, especially for a man who had spent the better part of his adult life kicking in doors and shooting bad guys in the head. To drag them into this discussion showed him how desperate and even how fearful Carlton was of the future. Not only the future of his business, but more important, the future of the country.
Out of his love for Carlton, or the “Old Man,” as Harvath affectionately referred to him, he agreed to a compromise. Harvath would keep one foot in the field and one foot in the office. To do that, though, he insisted Carlton hire a full-time Director.
After a lengthy meeting in the Oval Office with the President and the Director of Central Intelligence, approval was given to hire Lydia Ryan.
Up until that point, she had been Deputy Director at the CIA. The President had handpicked her, and her boss, to clear out the deadwood at the Agency, streamline it, and get it aggressively back in the fight.
It was a Herculean task—akin to cleaning out the Augean Stables—and the
y soon realized it would take far longer than any of them ever anticipated. Entrenched bureaucracy needed to be torn out, root and branch. The most difficult part of tearing it out was that it fought like hell every step of the way.
While the Director tried to rescue the CIA, Ryan came over to helm The Carlton Group. It would function as a lifeboat of sorts—a place where critical operations that couldn’t be handled by Langley, would quietly be carried out until the Agency could be rehabilitated.
A handsome New Englander with a prominent chin and silver hair, Carlton had been a legend in the intelligence business—the spymaster’s spymaster. He was brilliant. To have his mind taken from him was the cruelest twist of all.
It robbed the nation of one of its greatest treasures. He literally knew where all the bodies were buried—names, dates, accounts, passwords, places, times, who had screwed whom, who owed whom. . . . He was a walking encyclopedia of global espionage information and it was all slipping away—quickly.
Harvath and Ryan were in a race against time, harvesting what they could. They took turns visiting with him, never knowing when Carlton would have enough energy or lucidity.
Some days were better than others. Carlton would drop cognitively, then level off, and drop again. It tore both their hearts out, but especially Harvath’s.
Then one day, out of the blue, there’d been a dangerous lapse.
CHAPTER 5
* * *
Ryan had gone to Carlton’s home to sit and spend some time with him. If he felt up to talking, she was always prepared to take notes.
When she arrived, he was engaged in an animated discussion with one of his private, round-the-clock nurses. While it was wonderful to see him so talkative, he was regaling his caregiver with highly classified information about America’s relationship with the Saudis. Not good.
Pulling out her phone, she had called Harvath first. He was at the office and told her he’d get to the house as soon as he could. Next, she called her former boss at the CIA and suggested that the Office of the General Counsel get the nurses to sign national security nondisclosure agreements. It was a temporary fix, a stopgap, but it had to be done—immediately. There was no telling what he had already revealed.
Coming back into the den, Lydia offered to sit with Carlton so the nurse could work on preparing his lunch. The Old Man immediately began telling her how beautiful she was.
She was, indeed, a beautiful woman—tall, with long black hair, green eyes, full lips, and high cheekbones—the product of a Greek mother and an Irish father. He wasn’t paying her some passing, sweet compliment, though. His internal brakes were coming off. He was saying things people might think, but knew better than to give voice to.
The doctors had warned this might happen, but no one expected it so soon.
She tried to take advantage of the situation by pressing topics they needed information on; plumbing areas where his mind had gone dark too quickly.
By the time Harvath arrived, she had assembled several pages of notes. How reliable the information was, she couldn’t know. It would have to be checked out. Nevertheless, the visit had been somewhat productive.
“How’s he doing?” Harvath had asked.
“He’s doing fine,” Carlton answered, speaking for himself. There were moments where he appeared to have decent self-awareness. Unfortunately, if you pressed him on details, he often couldn’t access them. In essence, his high degree of intelligence allowed him to bluff his way through a lot of conversations.
As if on cue, the nurse poked her head in to check on her patient. Harvath handed the lunch tray back, vegetables uneaten. Thanking her, he asked politely for some privacy. Walking her to the door, he closed it behind her and returned to Ryan, who explained everything that had taken place since she had arrived.
Harvath smiled at Carlton. “I don’t know what else to call this. You’re like a loose nuke. You’ve got all of these secrets that we have to make sure don’t fall into the wrong hands.”
The Old Man brushed it off with a dismissive wave. “Don’t be melodramatic. I’m fine.”
He wasn’t fine. He had become a security risk.
To his credit, Harvath hadn’t wasted time. He already had a contingency plan.
On a beautiful lake in New Hampshire was a small island with a cluster of old vacation homes—one of them built by Carlton’s grandfather—where he had spent summers as a boy. As his strongest memories were his earliest, Harvath thought it would be a comfortable, familiar place to put him.
He had arranged an open-ended lease from the current owners and with permission from the Department of Defense, assembled a contingent of Navy Corpsmen to see to the Old Man’s care and security. No one wanted a loose nuke to become a broken arrow. If the wrong people got their hands on Carlton, there was no telling what kind of intelligence they could extract from him. It was worth every penny and every ounce of effort to keep him safe and out of sight.
Under the cover of darkness, he was moved. Harvath went along to help keep him calm and had stayed for a couple of days just to make sure everything was running smoothly.
Carlton was delighted at being at the house he recognized from his youth. He didn’t like that the décor had been changed, but he blamed his grandmother, who never seemed to be happy unless she was redecorating.
He didn’t understand who the Corpsmen were or why they needed to be there. Harvath eventually gave up trying to explain.
It seemed to be enough for him. Though he couldn’t afford to, Harvath stayed for one additional night. They grilled steaks, smoked cigars, and drank more bourbon than was healthy for either of them.
Not knowing how long his upcoming assignment would keep him overseas, Harvath wanted to squeeze every good moment out of the visit that he could.
The next morning, when it came time to leave, he embraced his mentor and held him for longer than he ever had. The Old Man seemed to know something serious was going on—that one of them might not be seeing the other again—and he, in return, held the embrace.
When they released, Carlton placed his hands atop Harvath’s shoulders, looked him in the eyes, and said, “You’ve been a good son.”
Then, the Old Man turned and walked back into the cottage. Had one of the Corpsmen not been close by to witness it, Ryan would likely never have heard that part of the story. It wasn’t the kind of thing she could imagine Harvath sharing.
Having ducked college for a career as a freestyle skier, Harvath had barely been on speaking terms with his actual father. If not for his mother, they wouldn’t have communicated at all. The death of his father, a Navy SEAL instructor, brought Harvath’s world crashing down.
From what Ryan had gleaned from the people who knew Harvath best, something inside him at that moment had either clicked, or snapped.
Scot had lost his appetite for professional athletics. Quitting the U.S. Ski Team, he attended college and then followed in his father’s footsteps by joining the Navy and becoming an even more accomplished SEAL than his dad had been.
It was almost two months ago that Harvath and the Old Man had embraced outside the New Hampshire cottage, and much had happened since. People were asking questions. Carlton’s name was coming up in more and more conversations. It wasn’t safe for him. So Ryan had made the decision to put the next phase of Harvath’s plan into action.
CHAPTER 6
* * *
VÆRNES AIR STATION
STJØRDAL, NORWAY
Even if they could have gotten a fire crew into the woods and to the cabin, it was a lost cause. A forensics team would be left to sift through the ashes. There wasn’t much hope of finding anything.
Harvath and Jasinski returned to the injured Norwegians and did what they could for them.
When reinforcements arrived, Harvath slipped away. He had several loose ends to tie up before he took off. A car was waiting for him just beyond the first-responder vehicles. It was a half hour before Jasinki realized he was gone. It was an additional fo
rty-five minutes before she was able to get her own ride back to Værnes.
Værnes Air Station belonged to the Norwegian Royal Air Force. One of its biggest users, though, was the United States Marine Corps.
As part of the Marines’ Preposition Program, massive amounts of U.S. military equipment entered Norway via Værnes. From there, it was stashed in top-secret caves throughout the region in case a NATO member was ever invaded and the organization was called to war. Preventing an attack on those caves was what tonight’s raid on the cabin had all been about. The equipment inside was a highly strategic stockpile. Had it been destroyed, it would have been a critical blow to an alliance that had come so far and had been so successful.
Created in the aftermath of World War II, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had originally comprised Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
It then went on to add Greece, Turkey, Germany, Spain, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Albania, Slovenia, Croatia, and Montenegro.
It had been formed as a means of collective defense in the hope of discouraging war. Article 5 of its treaty stated that an attack on one member was an attack on all. No matter who the aggressor, member nations were obligated to come to the aid of their fellows.
Only once in NATO’s history had Article 5 ever been invoked. In the wake of 9/11, the nations of NATO had joined together and gone to war in Afghanistan.
But while the September 11 attacks had demonstrated the asymmetric threat of Islamic terrorism, another threat—one far greater and far more powerful—was looming on the horizon.
As it had done in Crimea, Russia planned to take back all of its former territory. It was going to continue with the Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. There was only one thing standing in Russia’s way—the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But ever the tacticians, Moscow had already formulated a plan to break NATO.
