Act of War

by Brad Thor

  Nicholas had shown her the sensitive pocket of tissue on the dog’s paw, between the pads, and that’s where she placed the stone. Pinching the lips of the pocket together, careful not to get any on her fingers, she held everything in place as Chase covered it in Derma Bond. As they did that, Harvath tried to keep the big dog distracted.

  Argos looked over at Sloane and Chase once or twice, but didn’t seem to be terribly interested in what they were doing. He was more interested in the attention he was getting from Harvath.

  When it was done, Sloane nodded and then she and Chase closed the hatch and climbed into the SUV with the ranger. For the duration of the ride, Harvath’s job was to keep Argos’s mind on anything but that paw.

  CHAPTER 57

  * * *

  * * *

  The ride down from the ranger station took a half hour. As they neared the spot where Chase was going to be dropped off, they did a final radio check.

  When the ranger brought the SUV to a halt, he pointed to a stand of trees and said, “Fifty yards in is the creek. You’ll hear it before you see it. The path is on the east side. Can’t miss it.”

  “Got it,” Chase replied. Gathering up his ruck and his rifle, he opened the door. “See you all down there.”

  “Don’t get lost,” said Harvath.

  Chase smiled.

  Once he had closed the door, the ranger put his truck in gear and drove Harvath and Sloane to their drop-off point. Their approach would be a little more difficult.

  When they arrived at their spot, the ranger pulled over and cut his ignition. Coming around to the back of the vehicle, he waited for Sloane before opening the hatch.

  She checked the glue on Argos’s paw and then flashed Harvath the thumbs-up. “It’s all dry,” she said.

  Harvath told the dog to stay as he climbed out of the back. He didn’t want Argos jumping down onto that paw. It was going to be uncomfortable enough walking on it as it was. He didn’t want to compound it for him.

  With Sloane and the ranger helping, they lifted Argos out of the back and set him down. It only took him a few steps to realize there was something aggravating the bottom of his right front paw.

  “All right,” said Harvath. “Let’s get going before he decides he wants to sit down and start chewing on it.”

  The ranger headed toward the trees and they followed.

  The forest floor was soft and made it easier on Argos, but Harvath could already see he was starting to favor his paw.

  Soon enough, they arrived at the edge of the tree line. The ranger held up his hand for them to stop, and everyone listened for a moment. Except for the sounds of the forest, it was completely quiet.

  “This is as far as I go,” he said. “About three hundred yards down from here is where the property begins. There’s an old logging road. Follow it downhill and it’ll take you right to his front door.”

  Harvath and Sloane thanked the ranger and watched as he walked back up through the trees to his SUV.

  Removing the radio from his backpack, Harvath unfolded the antenna and established comms with the command center back at the airport. While Sloane kept Argos busy, Harvath gave the team at the airport a brief situation report. Once Chase radioed in that he was in place and the coast was clear, Harvath signed off and packed up the radio.

  After doing a final weapons check, he and Sloane headed for the logging road.

  About halfway to the ranch, Argos had gone from favoring his paw to a slight limp. By the time the ranch came into view, the limp was pronounced and unmistakable. Even though Harvath knew it wasn’t intense pain, he hated having to put the dog through it. Nevertheless, Argos was tough and kept moving.

  As they walked, Harvath scanned for cameras. He didn’t see any, but he could sense they were being watched, so he and Sloane played their act to maximum effect.

  Every fifty to a hundred yards they stopped, Harvath bent down to examine the dog’s leg, and then they would start up again. By the time they came in sight of Ho’s ranch house, Harvath was convinced the man had seen all of it.

  On cue, they saw a figure leave the house, climb into a Gator side-by-side utility vehicle, and strike off in their direction.

  The key to any successful con wasn’t getting people to put their faith in you. It was making them think that you had put your faith in them. The quickest way to do that was to ask for a favor.

  Posing as hikers who had lost their way was a lame con. But add an injured dog to the scenario and suddenly things became a lot more believable, especially in a heavily rural area. Farmers and ranchers understood animals. They also lived by the code that compelled them to assist others in need. The favor in this case was obvious.

  “Here he comes,” Harvath said.

  Sloane had noticed him, too, and nodded in response.

  Because their radios were hidden in their backpacks, they had to trust that Chase, dug in where no one could see him, was also watching everything unfold through the Schmidt & Bender scope atop his .50 caliber Barrett M107A1. If they came under attack, he was their first line of defense. In fact, they were counting on Chase disrupting any potential attack before it happened. According to the drone footage, though, there was only one person at the ranch.

  Harvath wasn’t willing to bet everything on a drone, but its camera and infrared imaging had been very clear. In any case, they would have their answer soon enough.

  As the Gator drew closer, Sloane raised her arm and waved. Harvath stopped walking. This was as good a place as any to make their stand. Argos leaned against him, taking his weight off his sore paw.

  “Good boy,” Harvath said, giving him a pat. “You’re almost done.”

  If Ren Ho had been expecting trouble, he certainly didn’t act like it. The unassuming Chinese man was dressed in jeans, a denim shirt, and a pair of work boots. His Ruger Mini-14 Ranch Rifle wasn’t on the seat next to him, but rather in the Gator’s overhead rack.

  As he neared the two hikers and their dog, he slowed to get a good look at them, before pulling alongside and bringing the side-by-side to a stop.

  “You’re trespassing,” he said. There was no greeting, no preamble. “My signs are all clearly posted.”

  “Our dog went after a moose,” Harvath replied. “It took us two hours to find him. We didn’t know where we were until we saw your signs.”

  “Well, now you do,” he said curtly. “This isn’t a rest area.”

  “Something’s wrong with our dog,” Sloane interjected. “We’re sorry to be on your property, but we need to get him to a vet. Can you help us, please?”

  Climbing out of his Gator, Ho asked, “What’s wrong?”

  Sloane smiled at him. “Thank you so much. It’s his right leg.”

  “What kind of dog is he?”

  “Russian sheepdog,” Harvath said, stepping away so the man didn’t feel too crowded or threatened.

  “Is he friendly?” Ho inquired, bending down to examine Argos’s leg. “He’s not going to bite me, is he?”

  “He’s a pussycat,” Sloane said, getting closer. “My boyfriend, on the other hand, is the one you need to worry about.”

  Boyfriend was the go code she and Harvath had settled on. Noticing a pistol under Ho’s shirt, she had decided it was time to act.

  Sloane brought her boot back and kicked Ho in his left side so hard she broke three of his ribs. As the man fell over, away from the dog, he gasped for breath and went for his gun. Harvath, though, was faster.

  Whipping out his Taser, he made sure Ho was not in contact with Argos or Sloane and then let him ride the lightning. He pressed the trigger and the barbed probes deployed, hitting him in the chest, followed by a surge of electricity that interrupted his neuromuscular system.

  As soon as he was down, Harvath tossed the Taser to Sloane and subdued Ho. He relieved the man of his 9mm Keltec PF9 pistol, FlexiCuffed his hands behind his back, and then patted him down.

  Satisfied that he didn’t have any other weapons on him, Har
vath placed a piece of duct tape over his mouth and a hood over his head. Then, breaking out his radio, he gave the rest of the team the code to move in.

  “Swing Arm,” Harvath said over the radio. “Repeat. Swing Arm.”

  CHAPTER 58

  * * *

  * * *

  With Ho trussed up in the bed of the Gator, Harvath and Sloane watched as the big Bell 412EP helicopter disgorged the HRT team. They cleared the ranch house first, then the barn, and then the rest of the support buildings. One of the buildings was a long metal structure stacked high with pallets of food, medicine, clothing, and assorted supplies. The head of the HRT team called it the mother of all doomsday caches.

  Once everything had been deemed safe and HRT had given the all clear, a string of SUVs sped onto the ranch. First out was the NEST team, who conducted an extensive search of the property for any radiological or nuclear materials. As they did, Harvath went into the house and conducted his own search. He wanted to learn as much as he could, as quickly as he could, about the man he was about to interrogate.

  The home’s décor was pretty much what Harvath assumed it would be—bland and middle-of-the-road. It was a mixture of Ho’s life in China and his life in Idaho. There was a calendar on the wall in the kitchen featuring Chinese cities and a painting above the worn couch in the living room depicting two American Indians, a father and son, hunting deer. There were no posters of Chairman Mao in the den, no Communist Manifesto on the bedroom nightstand. The house was remarkably unremarkable. Which was exactly what the home of a deep-cover operative working in a foreign nation should be. But there were interesting touches that spoke to Ho the man.

  The kitchen, while drab and out of date, had gourmet cookbooks and expensive small appliances, like a high-end KitchenAid mixer and a top-of-the-line Cuisinart food processor. His spices were from Dean & DeLuca and he appeared very fond of expensive Bordeaux wines. In the living room, he had an impressive collection of French jazz and Brazilian bossa nova records. Ho appeared to be a man of taste.

  He also appeared to be a family man who loved his son very much. There were many pictures of him throughout the house, several taken right at the ranch. Some of the photos were from vacations he had taken with the young man over the years. There were photos of them at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the Space Needle in Seattle, the Willis Tower in Chicago, the Empire State Building in New York City, and the Alamo in San Antonio. Ho could be seen with his arm around his son or the two high-fiving and laughing. It was a completely different face from the one the man had shown outside to the two hikers who had stumbled upon his private property.

  It was also the only leverage Harvath would need. He radioed for the Agency’s China expert, Stephanie Esposito, to be sent into the house.

  After explaining what he wanted Esposito to do, he set up the video camera and radioed Sloane and Chase to bring Ho inside.

  They sat him on the couch and removed his hood as well as the duct tape from across his mouth.

  “What’s going on here?” Ho demanded. “I’m an American citizen. Who are you? What do you think you’re doing?”

  Harvath introduced himself by one of his aliases. “Mr. Ho, my name is Tim Rudd. I represent the United States government. I am going to save us both a lot of time. As a spy, you were taught to deny everything and launch counteraccusations. But I expect your immediate and full cooperation. You will answer all of my questions honestly and you will answer them the first time I ask. If you do not follow these rules to the letter, let me show you what’s going to happen.”

  Harvath snapped his fingers and Esposito stepped out of the kitchen with her cell phone. She dialed a number in China and put the call on speaker. When a man answered, Esposito spoke to him in fluent Mandarin.

  “You have the boy in your sights?” she asked.

  “Yes,” the man replied.

  “Describe him.”

  Using her camera phone, Esposito had taken pictures of the photographs Ho had around the house of his son. She had then emailed them to a colleague in Beijing.

  The man not only gave a detailed description of what the boy looked like, but invented what he was wearing and described that as well. He then asked for permission to “take the shot.”

  Esposito looked at Harvath and translated.

  Harvath shook his head.

  Esposito relayed the message, told the man she would call back, and disconnected the call.

  “Mr. Ho,” said Harvath. “I’m only going to make this offer once, so please listen very carefully. We have everything. We have the storage units. We have the devices. We have the weather balloons. We have the engineering students recruited by Khuram Hanjour from the UAE. We have the Somalis, too. Of course, we need to discount what happened in Nashville, but you know all of that. We have all the locations you used to monitor the cell members’ Facebook accounts. We even have the Xerox machine in Boise you used to photocopy your fake IDs. So here’s my offer. Are you listening?”

  Ho nodded.

  “Good. We want you to come to work for us.”

  “And if I say no to you, will you kill my son?”

  “Yes, but that’s only the beginning.”

  “Then you’ll kill me?”

  Harvath shook his head.

  “Of course not,” Ho replied. “This is America. I’ll get a trial first and then you’ll execute me.”

  “I won’t lie to you, Mr. Ho. There are those in my government who want to see you executed. In fact, there are those who would pin a medal on me if I shot you right now.”

  “So why don’t you?”

  Harvath changed the subject. He wanted to establish rapport with his prisoner, but he also needed to establish a baseline for his interrogation in order to discern if Ho was lying. “I noticed your albums.”

  “What about them?”

  “My mother was a big Charlie Byrd fan. Do you have any of his records?”

  “I do,” Ho said reservedly. “A record he did with Stan Getz.”

  Harvath nodded his head for a moment, seemingly transported. “I remember Getz. My mother’s favorite song was ‘The Girl from Ipanema.’ She used to play it over and over. All the time.”

  “Why are you asking me about records?”

  “Because, Mr. Ho, you strike me as a refined man. I also assume that you’re a good father and that you care about your son. Whatever choices you have made, he doesn’t deserve to die.”

  Ho shook his head. “No, he doesn’t. He’s a good boy.”

  “Like I said, if you don’t cooperate, they’re going to kill your son. You, though, will not be executed. You’ll be sent to a top-secret detention facility in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where the only thing worse than the unbearably cold winters are the unbearable, mosquito-infested summers. You’ll be subjected to extremely hard outdoor labor every day, as well as solitary confinement.

  “Within your first week, you’ll wish you had been executed. Within your first month, you’ll start trying to figure out ways to escape. Within your first year, you’ll realize that the only escape you’ll ever achieve is through death.

  “And on a side note, I’ve seen your kitchen. You know what good food is. The dogs at this facility eat better than the prisoners. You can’t even call what they serve food. The men they send there are animals. They don’t possess your level of refinement. The utter absence of any comforts whatsoever will make life there harder, bleaker. There are no Amnesty International or Red Cross visits there. They aren’t even aware the facility exists.

  “It is designed to impose a punishment worse than death. And to top it all off, you’ll be alone with your thoughts and the knowledge that all of it, including the death of your son, could have been prevented.”

  Ho stared at him blankly—completely unsure of what to do.

  Harvath let the silence linger for several moments before asking, “Wouldn’t you do anything to save your son?”

  The man nodded.

  “Then a
ccept the offer, Mr. Ho. Come work for us.”

  “If I work for you, I’m as good as dead.”

  “If you work for us,” said Harvath, “we can protect you. I give you my personal guarantee.”

  “Can you protect my son? Can you get him out of China?”

  Harvath looked at Stephanie Esposito, who nodded. He then turned back to Ren Ho. “Yes, we can. But first, you and I are going to have a very in-depth conversation. If at any point you lie to me, our deal is off. Is that understood?”

  “I understand,” Ho replied.

  Harvath began with questions he already knew the answers to. “What is the codename for your operation?”

  “In Chinese, it is called Xuĕ Lóng. Snow Dragon.”

  “How many cells are there?”

  “Six.”

  “How many members in each cell?”

  “Two,” Ho replied.

  “Where are the cells located?”

  “Seattle, Las Vegas, Des Moines, Dallas, Nashville, and Baltimore.”

  Harvath kept his eyes locked on the man’s face and asked, “How did you enlist the cell members?”

  “We used recruiters. One in Dubai and one in Mogadishu.”

  “Who is Tommy Wong?”

  “He’s a triad member in Los Angeles.”

  “Which triad?”

  “14K,” said Ho.

  So far, all of his answers had been correct and truthful. Harvath had not noticed any microexpressions that would suggest the man was lying.

  “The engineering students from the UAE all arrived in the United States by which city?”

  “Houston.”

  “What was the cover used to secure their visas?”

  “An internship with NASA for Muslim students,” Ho replied.

  “Each of them carried a cell phone. Where did these phones come from?”

  “Tommy Wong bought the phones and shipped them to me. I got them to the recruiter in Dubai, who then gave them to the students before they left for the U.S.”