Use of Force

by Brad Thor

  Page opened the folder and skimmed the documents. There were copies of Harvath’s service records, his SF-86 Top Secret clearance questionnaire, the photo attached to the green badge he was issued to come and go at CIA headquarters, even prior tax returns showing the Carlton Group as his employer.

  Page was impressed. “You weren’t kidding. This is damn good stuff.”

  “It gets better. Click on the last file. The one marked Blue Door.”

  Page did. The first photo showed a small lockkeeper’s house along what looked to be the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal near D.C. “Is this what I think it is?”

  “Keep scrolling,” Jordan instructed.

  As he moved through the pictures, he saw shots of the Director of Central Intelligence, Bob McGee, arriving with his security detail. He was followed by Deputy DCI Lydia Ryan. Last but not least, Scot Harvath arrived.

  The best pictures, though, were the ones right at the end. In those, you could clearly see all three, standing together and chatting, followed by an extremely friendly good-bye.

  While Page had made mistakes years ago in Italy, he wasn’t a stupid man—not by a long shot. As he went back through everything Jordan had collected, he analyzed each piece.

  He knew Carlton. More important, he knew how Carlton’s mind worked. He knew that no matter what the situation appeared to be, Carlton was always ten steps ahead of everyone else.

  There would only be one chance to take him down. If he failed, Carlton would come after him with everything he had. Page, though, didn’t intend to fail.

  And he didn’t care whom he burned in the process. He wasn’t going to let anyone—not Bob McGee, not Lydia Ryan, not even whoever this Scot Harvath was, stand in his way.

  “So the CIA knew about a potential terrorist attack and didn’t inform the FBI?” he asked.

  “Not just the CIA,” replied Jordan. “The Carlton Group too. Harvath’s the linchpin in all of this. Imagine the lawsuits from the victims and their families if this was made public.”

  Page already was imagining it. It would be devastating for both organizations. “This has all got to be irrefutable. Are you going to be able to get me the rest of what I need?

  “I’m already working on it,” said Jordan. “Don’t worry. I’ll get it.”

  Raising his glass, Page saluted his colleague. “In that case, to revenge.”

  CHAPTER 17

  * * *

  * * *

  LIBYA

  The safe house was better than Harvath had expected. The property sat along the coastal road, en route to the Tunisian border. It had a motor court with a high wall, no neighbors, and an unobstructed, 360-degree view of the surrounding terrain.

  It was sparsely furnished. There was electricity and running water. A rooftop deck, surrounded by a lattice parapet made of concrete, provided decent concealment for use as a sniper or observation post.

  While Barton and Gage cleaned up and then secured the shopkeeper to a chair in one of the ground-floor bedrooms, Mike Haney drew up a roster for guard duty. Staelin and Morrison pulled first shift.

  Morrison grabbed his rifle and a bottle of water and headed to the roof. Staelin took his rifle and his Meltzer book and headed to the motor court. Harvath collected his backpack and the phones he had gathered up at the electronics shop and walked upstairs to the second floor.

  The home’s master bedroom faced the ocean and had a wraparound balcony. Stepping outside, he saw a small table and chairs. He dragged them over to where he could get the best signal and then removed a laptop and satellite phone from his pack.

  Once a connection was established, he attached his laptop to the SAT phone, removed the SIM cards from the cell phones, and uploaded their information back to the CIA. In particular, he wanted to know with whom the third militia member was talking when he walked into the shop and if any sort of alarm had been raised. With the help of the NSA, it wouldn’t take long.

  All of the phones had been locked. The lock on the shopkeeper’s phone was controlled via fingerprint. All Harvath had to do to open it was place the man’s finger on the sensor.

  The address book was full of contacts, but there was nothing, at least not by name, for the man they had come looking for—Umar Ali Halim.

  The smuggler could have been listed under an alias, or it was possible that the shopkeeper dealt with an intermediary. While it might have looked like a bust, Harvath’s search of the phone did turn up something—something he anticipated would be very useful.

  With a plan beginning to form in his mind, he fired off a quick email to the CIA. In it, he included pictures of the Glocks that he had stripped from the dead militia members, serial-number side up.

  Then, repositioning his chair, he put his feet up and tilted his head back. He had been at this game long enough to know to grab rest whenever he could find it.

  The late afternoon sun was warm on his face. Below, waves from the southern Mediterranean Sea rolled onto the beach. Harvath tried not to think about the dead bodies, from sunken smuggler vessels, washed ashore here, or the dozens of Christians ISIS had beheaded up and down the coast. For the moment, all that mattered was that he could close his eyes without fear of someone putting a knife to his throat or taking a shot at him.

  As he listened to the waves, he breathed in the scent of the ocean—a mix of salt and seaweed and fish. He had spent most of his life around the water. No matter where he traveled, or how dangerous the assignment, he always found the smell familiar. It was a constant the world over.

  There weren’t many things that had been constant in his life. As a SEAL himself, his father had been gone more than he had been home.

  And until Lara, his track record in the relationship department had been anything but stellar. The relationships had been fun, but few had been serious, and fewer still had shown any promise of surviving long term.

  What he had with Lara and her little boy was the closest he’d ever come to creating a family of his own. Outside of his career, it was the thing he wanted most in his life. It was why he had rented a house and had moved almost everything he owned from Virginia to Boston.

  He had encouraged Lara to come to him, but then she’d been offered the promotion of a lifetime. She couldn’t replicate her position in Alexandria or D.C. He had encouraged her to take it. That left him with only one option if he wanted things to work—him going to her.

  With the Old Man’s blessing, that’s what he had done. He picked and chose which CIA assignments he wanted, went away and did them, and then came home. Langley cut a check to the Carlton Group and money appeared in one of his multiple bank accounts.

  He would have been happy to continue the arrangement in perpetuity, but based on what Lydia Ryan had told him, the Old Man had other plans.

  It pissed Harvath off and made him smile at the same time. Reed Carlton was inscrutable. No matter how sure you were that you had him figured out, he was always running multiple different angles you had never even considered. He was the spy master’s spy master. He had seen America through the Cold War and beyond.

  As technology boomed, life became easier. As life became easier, Americans grew softer. As Americans grew softer, the threats arrayed against the United States grew more deadly. Weakness encouraged aggression.

  And when the aggression arrived, America had turned to hard men like Reed Carlton to strap on their armor, climb into the arena, and run a sword through it. But now, Reed Carlton could no longer strap on his armor.

  That was a hard fact for Harvath to come to terms with. The Old Man had been one of those few constants in his life. He was also the epitome of the warrior. Warriors died in the arena, in battle, on their feet.

  Once again, Harvath was reminded of how cruel it was for a man as brilliant as Reed Carlton to lose his life to a disease known for robbing victims of their minds. Of everything he had given to his country—his courage, his patriotism, and his loyalty—it was his genius that had served America without equal.

 
Now, his mind was being stolen from him. But it wasn’t gone yet. His wife was in a nursing home, and before he joined her, he intended to not only set the chess board, but stack the bench of American chess players as deep as he could as well.

  To do it right, though, he needed Harvath onboard. That was why he had asked Lydia Ryan to intercede. It wasn’t hard to see.

  The Old Man loved him like a son, but Harvath knew he loved something more: his country.

  So now, here he was—a world away with the weight of the world where it shouldn’t be at this moment, on his shoulders. This was the last thing he should have been wrestling with. He couldn’t do anything for the Old Man if he returned in a flag-draped box.

  He needed a few minutes to decompress, to rest. And then he’d need to focus on his assignment.

  He adjusted himself in his chair, turning his face ever so slightly to track the sun as it began its descent toward the horizon. He slowed his breathing and synchronized himself with the ebb and flow of the waves below.

  He was about to drift off when he heard Mike Haney step onto the balcony.

  “The shopkeeper’s coming out of the K-hole.”

  CHAPTER 18

  * * *

  * * *

  Haney was one of the most squared-away Marines Harvath had ever worked with. Handing him a cup of fresh-brewed coffee, he offered to monitor the laptop for message traffic from Langley while Harvath went downstairs. It was the best offer he’d had all day.

  Grabbing the shopkeeper’s phone, he stepped back into the house and descended the stairs.

  Down the hall was the bedroom where the shopkeeper was being held. Jack Gage sat in a chair outside the door. In his hand was the cup he’d been spitting tobacco juice into.

  “Everything good?”

  “Livin’ the dream,” the large man deadpanned, raising his dip cup in a toast. He was known for his dry sense of humor, as well as being stone cold under pressure. The saying in the Special Operations community was that the difference between Gage and a walk-in freezer wasn’t the temperature, it was the beard.

  “Is that coffee?” he asked, eyeballing Harvath’s cup.

  “Libyan style.”

  “Hot, tasteless, and totally fucked up?”

  Harvath grinned. “I was going to say Kareem, no sugar, but never mind. It’s in the kitchen. Go grab some.”

  Gage got up from his chair and Harvath stood aside to let him pass. Then he knocked on the bedroom door and let himself in.

  Barton was sitting on one of the beds. He had a towel in front of him and was cleaning his Sig Sauer pistol.

  In the center of the room, the shopkeeper was bound to a chair with a hood over his head.

  Harvath dragged Gage’s chair in from the hall and shut the door. Walking over to a small dresser, he set up his iPhone to record the interrogation.

  After positioning himself in front of the shopkeeper, he motioned for Barton to go stand behind the man.

  Once he was there, Harvath started recording and nodded for Barton to remove the man’s hood.

  The shopkeeper was groggy. His head rolled and he blinked his eyes as he tried to adjust to the light and figure out where he was.

  Harvath slapped him a little bit to help him come around.

  “Come on, Fayez,” he ordered. “Wake up. Let’s go.”

  He had learned the man’s name from accessing the social media accounts on his phone.

  Slowly, the shopkeeper began to emerge from his stupor.

  “Fayez, look at me,” Harvath commanded. “Look at me.”

  When he didn’t obey, Harvath slapped him a few more times on each cheek. Finally, the man made eye contact with him.

  “Where is Umar Ali Halim?”

  As his mind returned from wherever it had been, and he realized what was happening, the man began to thrash in his chair.

  “Laa. Laa,” he sputtered in Arabic. No. No.

  “Look at me, Fayez.”

  When he didn’t comply, Harvath grabbed the shopkeeper’s lower jaw and twisted his face toward him.

  “I offered you a lot of money. You could have cooperated. So now here we are. This can be easy, or it can be very painful. Where do I find Umar Ali Halim?”

  “I don’t know who—”

  Before the man could finish his lie, Harvath drew his hand back and delivered a cupped slap to the side of his head.

  Instantly, the shopkeeper saw stars and his ear began to ring.

  “Where do I find Umar Ali Halim?”

  When he didn’t answer, Harvath nodded and Barton hit him the exact same way on the other side, from behind.

  The shopkeeper tried to turn around, but Barton grabbed the back of his head and forced him to face forward.

  “Who’s this, Fayez?” Harvath asked, holding up the man’s cell phone so he could see. On it was a picture of him with a young woman and two little boys. “That’s your wife, isn’t it? Those are your sons?”

  The man tried to look away, but the flash of recognition, followed by fear, was enough to confirm Harvath’s assumption.

  “Have you ever called her from this phone?” Harvath asked. “That’s all I need to find her.”

  The shopkeeper didn’t answer, but the same flicker of fear raced across his face once more.

  Turning the phone back around, Harvath began scrolling through the call logs. “Fayez, let me explain something to you,” he said. “When we left your store, I set it on fire. It’s completely burned to the ground. And if you don’t tell me where I can find Umar Ali Halim, I’m going to go after your family. I’m going to kill them and then I’m going to burn your house to the ground.”

  The man’s gaze intensified and his body tensed as he pushed against his restraints. Harvath had seen the behavior enough times to know that this was when they swore and spat at you, and he made ready to dodge any projectile saliva.

  Instead, the shopkeeper leaned forward and challenged him. “I don’t believe you,” he hissed.

  Harvath smiled and nodded to Barton, who put the hood back over the man’s head.

  Harvath then stood and left the room.

  CHAPTER 19

  * * *

  * * *

  Forty-five minutes later, Harvath walked back into the room, carrying his laptop and satellite phone. Crossing over to the window, he opened it up and then placed everything atop the dresser and slid it over.

  Once he had a strong signal and a clear picture established, he grabbed the shopkeeper’s chair and dragged him over, so that he could watch what was about to unfold.

  Harvath didn’t need to signal Barton to remove the man’s hood. He snatched it off himself.

  The shopkeeper shut his eyes against the light. Harvath grasped him by the back of the neck and pushed his face forward toward the screen. “Open your eyes,” he demanded. “Watch.”

  Slowly the man’s eyes adjusted and he focused on the screen in front of him.

  Through Facebook’s facial recognition program, the NSA had identified the shopkeeper’s wife in record time. From there, they were able to pinpoint her cell phone and to leaf out her entire relationship tree.

  Placing a headset on, Harvath gave the order to begin. The animated globe spinning on the screen was replaced by a live feed from a Reaper drone already in flight.

  The drone had been launched from a covert U.S. base just across the border in Tunisia.

  Harvath wanted to bring the drone in over the port city of Zuwara. As soon as the shopkeeper realized what he was looking at, he’d know exactly where the drone was headed.

  Despite the Reaper’s amazing speed, the minutes would pass like hours as a sense of dread built within him. As he watched familiar buildings and landmarks pass by underneath, he’d agonize that his family was that much closer to death.

  But, because of its airport, the CIA wanted to avoid Zuwara entirely. Instead, they decided to fly the drone in via the desert. Harvath wasn’t happy.

  The desert offered nothing but sand a
nd rocks. The shopkeeper could only guess what he was looking at.

  As the drone neared the edge of Al Jmail, though, he began to pay closer attention. There was a soccer field, a gas station, a bank. Harvath watched the shopkeeper. He recognized all of it.

  Near Al Jmail’s center, the drone slowed and went into a wide elliptical orbit overhead. The ruins of the burned-out electronics shop were not hard to discern. Harvath instructed the drone operator to zoom in on the scene.

  If the shopkeeper thought Harvath had been lying to him, he was now fully disabused of that notion.

  The detail captured by the drone’s camera was astounding. After scanning across the smoldering rubble of the electronics shop, its roof having fully caved in, the drone’s camera switched to the faces and license plates of those gathered outside. It was an incredible piece of technology.

  Just as incredible, though for different reasons, was the shopkeeper’s cell phone. Harvath had disabled the fingerprint sensor and was able to dip in and out of it at will.

  Opening up the call log, he held it up for the shopkeeper to see. “Your wife has called you multiple times. Do you think she has heard about the fire?”

  The man’s jaw tightened.

  “Speaking of your wife,” Harvath continued. “Let’s go see what she’s doing.”

  Activating the microphone, he instructed the drone operator to proceed to “Target Bravo.”

  Like a telescope being collapsed, the camera lens zoomed back out and the drone took on a new heading.

  The NSA had pinpointed the shopkeeper’s wife to a property outside Al Jmail. Harvath knew they had the right spot just by the shopkeeper’s reaction once the drone had arrived overhead and began to circle.

  “Zoom in,” Harvath instructed.

  The operator did, and the home could be seen as clearly as if they were floating fifteen feet above it.

  Financially, the shopkeeper appeared to be doing well. There was evidence of recent construction on the house. There was a healthy garden, much greener than his neighbors’. There was even a large play set, the kind you saw in suburban backyards across the United States, for his children.