by Brad Thor
They were fanatics who believed that they had been chosen to rule the earth. For that to happen, they had to subjugate America and her allies through jihad. Anything less than total commitment to this goal was an act of defiance against God himself.
The fundamentalism that drove them was a cancer. It infected almost everyone it touched. And yet the people best positioned to remove the cancer lacked the courage and the desire to do so. No matter how many atrocities were committed in the name of their religion and their God, the Muslim world was wholly incapable of combating the problem.
With so little cooperation, the President had been left with few choices. And those choices only narrowed as many of America’s allies were overwhelmed with resource shortages and tidal waves of radicals on their own soil.
While the President respected those American voices that disagreed with his position, he could already see over the horizon. He could see what was coming if the United States didn’t act.
Like Israelis, Americans would find themselves in a state of constant siege. Beaches, restaurants, trains, buses, night clubs, grocery stores, schools, playgrounds, dog parks, movie theaters, sporting events, parades, shopping malls, even the places where they worshipped, nothing would be off-limits.
And as the attacks mounted, a frightened population would demand that something be done. There would be armed guards and security checkpoints everywhere—and even that would not be enough to deter America’s enemies. The terrorists would strike as Americans dropped their children off at school or stood in line waiting to step through a body scanner at the latest Broadway show. It simply wasn’t possible to keep all of America safe all of the time.
The calls to do more, though, would only grow. Finally, the bureaucrats and politicians would step in and attempt to regulate terrorism away. At that point, America would take a very dangerous turn. As Ben Franklin was alleged to have said, those who would trade a little liberty for a little security deserve neither and will lose both.
That, in a nutshell, was the President’s greatest fear. So he decided to act.
Despite using much of his political capital to push through a dramatic increase to the FBI’s budget, the Bureau was drowning. It had active investigations in all fifty states, but still nowhere near the resources it needed to see each investigation through to its end. The terrorists were coming at them too quickly—from everywhere and every walk of life. There simply were too many cases, too many leads, and not nearly enough agents.
The President had been left with only one course of action. A course that, if made known, would very likely lead to his impeachment.
Looking at Harvath, McGee said, “Let’s talk about what happened at Burning Man.”
CHAPTER 8
* * *
* * *
Harvath was operating on a black contract. Technically, none of what he was doing should ever see the light of day. But in the age of hackers and leaked documents, he went to extraordinary lengths to make sure he put little, if anything, in writing.
Administrations changed, as did opinions on what the CIA should or should not be doing. What was justified in the weeks and months after the September 11 attacks might take on a different light when re-examined from some point in the future. As far as Harvath was concerned, the best way to avoid being judged by history was not to be a part of it to begin with.
Harvath understood the President’s position. He had deep feelings about individual liberty. He also cared about keeping Americans safe.
He had seen the utter barbarism of groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda up close. He had witnessed what they had done to their victims, including women and children.
One of the most painful moments of his career was rescuing the kidnapped son of an Iraqi policeman, only to have the little boy die in his arms. The torture the child had been subjected to was beyond horrific.
There were only so many dark corners in a person’s mind to hide such experiences. It was why, from time to time, Harvath needed to be alone with a couple of six-packs or a bottle of bourbon. Long runs and pushing heavy stacks of weights brought him only so much relief.
It wasn’t the healthiest way to deal with things, but unfortunately the human mind didn’t have a Delete button. Sometimes, if only for a little while, he just needed to forget.
It was a terrible burden to drag around, but it was part of the job. Without someone to hunt the wolves, the sheep would never be safe. The wolves were multiplying too quickly. The sheepdogs were being overrun. It was a matter of survival.
So when the President had decided to alter America’s rules of engagement, Harvath had agreed to go along.
Those new rules of engagement were what had placed him at Burning Man, operating without official sanction. There just weren’t enough fingers and toes at the FBI to plug all the leaks springing from the terrorism dike.
Whenever possible, the CIA shared its intelligence with the Bureau. Too often, though, that intelligence was placed on the back burner. It wasn’t their fault. They were being forced to drink from a fire hose.
With the President’s quiet encouragement, Langley had begun to develop, plan, and execute more operations on its own. Depending on your point of view, Burning Man had been either a spectacular success or a spectacular failure.
Listening to Harvath’s debriefing, McGee and Ryan both saw the op as a success. Had the other bombers been able to detonate, many more people would have been killed and injured.
No one, not even Harvath, had known it was an active plot until moments before it had gone off. Even if they had shared their mountain of intelligence with the FBI, it would have taken too long for them to assign a surveillance team to Hamza Rahim.
“Once the plane lifted off from Black Rock City Airport,” Harvath said, wrapping up his report, “I went to work on them. You know the rest.”
Yes, they did. Rahim had been extremely uncooperative. Harvath had quickly ratcheted up the pressure, playing on the would-be bomber’s fear of being returned to his native Egypt.
Harvath convinced Rahim that not only did their jet have the capacity to make the flight, but also that the Egyptians would gladly accept him and help get the information he wanted out of him.
Rahim knew all too well how the Egyptians operated. He had been viciously tortured by their secret police before. He had no desire to experience it again. No matter what the Americans had in store for him, it couldn’t be worse than going back to Egypt.
So, he had slowly begun to cooperate—revealing how the attack had been planned, financed, and why he had returned to the RV.
To avoid detection, the materials for the suicide vests had been smuggled in separately and assembled on site. The bomb maker, though, had become nervous. Rahim was concerned that he might be having second thoughts and was worried he’d be captured after the attack.
It was a business decision—no more, no less. The bomb maker was a loose end that had needed tying up.
Rahim and the other cell members had been transferred to a secret facility in Colorado for further interrogation. As soon as the handoff was complete, the jet had flown Harvath and his team to D.C., where they had gone their separate ways.
Though Harvath was renting a place in Boston, to be closer to his girlfriend and her family, he hadn’t officially given up his house in Virginia. It was along the Potomac River, close to George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate. Most of the furniture was gone, but he’d left just enough behind to make it livable.
If nothing else, it was good to be “home” and to shower off the playa dust and toss all of his clothes in the washer.
He’d been in the midst of arranging to return to Boston when he had gotten the call about a meeting at the blue lockhouse. He figured the main point would be deciding what to do next about the ISIS plotters who had tasked Rahim with the attack.
“So what’s next?” Harvath asked. “The refugee camp where the cell members were recruited?”
McGee shook his head. “We’re putting
somebody else on that.”
“Somebody else? Why?”
“This is why,” the Director replied, as he opened a file, removed a photograph and handed it to him.
Harvath studied the photo.
“His name is Mustapha Marzouk,” said Ryan, taking over the briefing. “He was a graduate student in chemistry from Tunisia.
“Three years ago, during a raid on an ISIS compound by a CIA-backed rebel group in Syria, a laptop was found. At first, no one thought anything of it. It wasn’t password protected and all the drives were empty. But then we started drilling down on it and discovered over 146 gigabytes of hidden material.
“Among the more than thirty-five thousand files were all the usual things you’d expect to find on a laptop at an ISIS stronghold—justifications for jihad, military manuals, terror videos, et cetera. Then came the interesting stuff—document after document showing that the laptop’s owner was researching weapons of mass destruction.”
From the minute she had mentioned chemistry, Harvath had begun to develop a bad feeling. “Let me guess. The laptop’s owner is Mustapha Marzouk.”
Ryan nodded. “Correct. For three years we have been looking for him. Syria. Iraq. Libya. Tunisia. We even followed an alleged sighting in Somalia. Everything, though, has turned up empty.”
“So why are we talking about him now?”
“Over the last several months, we’ve been picking up chatter about an impending series of attacks, culminating in something very big, somewhere in Europe.”
“Any clue as to what that something very big is?”
“The laptop contained a thirty-page fatwa from an obscure, jailed Saudi cleric justifying the use of chemical and biological weapons.”
Harvath felt a chill sweep over him.
Ryan opened the folder in front of her and read from the Islamic ruling. “If Muslims cannot defeat the unbelievers in a different way, it is permissible to use weapons of mass destruction. Even if it kills all of them and wipes them and their descendants off the face of the Earth.”
For a moment, Harvath was at a loss for words. “I’m guessing the Saudis didn’t pick him up for unpaid parking tickets.”
“No, they didn’t. He was turning into a problem. They decided to act before he developed any more of a following. The damage, though, has already been done. Mixed within the chatter have been references to the same fatwa, from the same obscure cleric.”
“So you want me to find this Mustapha Marzouk. Is that it?”
“Not exactly,” replied McGee as he removed another photo and handed it to him. It showed a bloated corpse with chunks of flesh ripped away.
“Mustapha Marzouk is dead. The Italian Navy fished his body out of the Mediterranean yesterday. Near the island of Lampedusa. They’re not sure if he drowned before or after the sharks got to him. Not that it makes much difference.
“We had his fingerprints from the laptop. Despite his having spent several days in the water, they were still able to ID him. He was on a smuggler’s boat, packed with migrants, headed toward Sicily. The boat went down in a storm Tuesday night.”
Harvath handed the photo back. “For three years, this guy has been a ghost bouncing around the Middle East, North Africa, and Somalia—then he suddenly hops on a boat to Italy? Why?”
“That’s what we need you to find out. We think whatever he was planning, it’s ready to go operational.”
“When do you want me to launch?”
“ASAP,” McGee replied. “We’ve got a plane standing by. All you need to do is tell it where to go.”
“Let’s start with whatever intel you’ve compiled.”
The Director slid a stack of files toward him. “These don’t leave this room.”
“Understood.”
“What else do you need?”
At the top of his list, he needed to call Lara. He wouldn’t be back to Boston anytime soon. He was also hungry. Looking at his watch, he said, “Let’s order some food. We’re going to be here awhile.”
CHAPTER 9
* * *
* * *
Always prepared, McGee and Ryan had brought their encrypted laptops. Whatever information Harvath needed beyond the files, they were able to retrieve via a secure link back to Langley.
Slowly, he developed three different plans. The first two were immediately shot down. They weren’t crazy about the third one either. As capable as Harvath was, it put him in very hostile territory, without backup. It was, though, their only viable option. Reluctantly, McGee agreed, but with one condition. He wasn’t sending Harvath into that hellhole alone.
Removing his cell phone, he stepped into the other room to get the ball rolling on all of the things Harvath had asked for. Ryan was left sitting at the table. She cleared her throat.
Harvath looked up from the folder he was studying.
“I was hoping for a better time to tell you this,” she said. “I’m leaving the Agency.”
He didn’t believe it. “You’re kidding.”
“No. I’m serious.”
“Does the President know?”
She nodded.
“McGee?”
She nodded again. “It was their idea.”
He closed the folder and set it on the table. “I don’t understand. You were tapped to help fix it. How do you walk away from that responsibility?”
“I’m going to head the Carlton Group.”
Harvath was stunned. “My organization?”
Ryan raised an eyebrow in response.
The Carlton Group had been Harvath’s organization, or more appropriately, it had been the organization he had spent the last several years working for. It was a private intelligence organization, founded by one of the founders of the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center.
Reed Carlton, a legendary spymaster with more than thirty years in the business, had gotten fed up with all of the bureaucratic red tape at Langley and had left to start his own company.
When a previous president had cut Harvath loose, Carlton had recruited him. He had become Harvath’s mentor, teaching him everything he knew. And then, he took the collar off and unleashed him on America’s enemies.
Theirs was a formidable pairing. Harvath was an apex predator and Carlton was one of the greatest strategic thinkers the intelligence world had ever known. Together, they were unstoppable.
The Old Man, as Harvath referred to him, had always envisioned Scot as his successor and had groomed him to one day take over the Carlton Group. The only problem was that Harvath wasn’t interested in that job.
He loved being in the field. If the truth be told, he was addicted to the action. He had also met someone.
With Lara and her little boy, Marco, he had a real chance for a family—something he had always wanted.
When Lara received a major promotion, cementing her need to remain in Boston, he had had a choice to make. And choose he did. He chose to walk away from D.C.
The Old Man had encouraged him to go, but had also refused his resignation. “Let’s see what happens,” he had said.
Harvath continued to take contract work from the Agency—the best part being that he could say no.
As far as he was concerned, he had the three necessary ingredients to happiness: something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to.
With the revelation that Ryan had taken the position meant for him, he felt a ripple of guilt. He knew he had let the Old Man down.
Nevertheless, he had made the right decision for himself and his own future. He was sure of that.
“Congratulations,” he offered.
“Thanks.”
“But why now? And why the push from McGee and President Porter?”
Ryan leaned back in her chair. “It’s complicated.”
“It’s always complicated.”
“I don’t know that I should go into it.”
“Go into what?”
She took a deep breath and exhaled. “He’s not well.”
&nbs
p; “Wait. The Old Man isn’t well? What’s wrong?”
“It’s being kept quiet, but he’s starting to forget things.”
Harvath looked at her. “As in dementia?”
She nodded. “He has Alzheimer’s.”
It was like getting hit in the chest with a hammer. “How long has he known?”
“What difference does it make?”
“Lydia, how long?” he repeated.
“The diagnosis came right before you decided to go to Boston.”
Harvath’s ripple of guilt turned into a wave. “He never told me.”
She managed half a smile. “He didn’t want it to influence your decision.”
“How bad is it?”
“He’s having trouble retaining new information, but all the old stuff is right at his fingertips.”
“Will it get worse?”
She nodded again. “It typically starts with difficultly retaining new information. Then, as it moves through the brain, symptoms get more severe. Confusion about times, dates, places, and events are common, along with disorientation, and deepening suspicion of friends and family. Behavior changes are often seen, and eventually there’s more serious memory loss, which can be followed by the inability to speak, swallow, or walk. None of it’s pretty.”
Smiling, Ryan added, “He’s a tough son of a bitch, though. He doesn’t want anybody feeling sorry for him.”
“Why you, though?” Harvath asked. “Why would McGee and President Porter want to lose you at CIA?”
“Because the reforms at the Agency aren’t going as well as we’d hoped.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, it’s like turning a battleship around.”
“But you knew it would take time,” he stated. “McGee has already fired a ton of deadweight.”
“Which is a good start, but it’s not enough,” she said. “Not with how quickly the threats are mounting. There are some absolutely terrific people at CIA, but nowhere near the numbers needed to reverse the broken culture. That’s still years off.”
