Black List

by Brad Thor

  The little boy had been panicked. Carlton could still remember how he had cried, certain that he had damaged some priceless antique and was in a mountain of trouble.

  In fact, he hadn’t stopped crying until Carlton had assured him that not only could the boat be repaired but that they would do it together and that it would be their secret—no one else needed to know. The two were inseparable for the rest of the boy’s visit. Such was the power of a secret.

  Secrets could isolate people from one another, but when shared, they could also draw people together. One had to choose very carefully, though, with whom to share and exactly what to share. Of Benjamin Franklin’s many witticisms, few seemed as relevant to Carlton as the warning from Poor Richard’s Almanac that three people may keep a secret only if two of them are dead.

  That was the kind of world he lived in. Its very currency was secrets, and it was populated with lies, deceptions, and half-truths. For some in that world, trust was impossible, but those incapable of trust didn’t last long. You needed to be on guard, but you also needed to be able to let your guard down. No one could be at code red twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. At some point, you had to let people get close.

  Carlton returned the sailboat to the mantel, its secret still intact, and his mind was drawn back to what Franklin had said.

  Even though he didn’t know what it was, Carlton was party to a secret, and someone was trying to make sure the secret remained kept, by having him and his people killed. The secret involved treason somehow, which made him think about the charge itself.

  If accused of the right kind of treason, whereby there were pressing national security concerns, review of the case could be done in complete secrecy. The people who passed sentence could remain anonymous, and very few details, if any, would ever be made public.

  Pressing national security concerns could also get a subject placed on a kill list. The speed with which the sentence was carried out would be pegged to how immediate the threat was believed to be. This was the point around which Carlton’s thoughts began to crystallize. Whoever was after him had used the treason charge as a means of expediting his execution, as well as that of his operators.

  But whoever had wanted him dead had to have known that he and his people wouldn’t be easy to kill. To pull off the night of the long knives, someone would have needed personnel with exceptional training and access to very closely guarded intelligence.

  That brought Carlton to the question of why? Why did someone want him and his people dead?

  Murder, and the motivations for committing murder, had existed since Cain and Abel. The first answer that had come into his mind was that he and his people knew something they shouldn’t and someone had ordained that they be silenced. But he had dismissed the thought as quickly as it had come to him. He purposefully kept all of his people compartmentalized. Try as he might, he couldn’t come up with one specific piece of intelligence or operational detail that he and his men all shared in common and that could make them a threat.

  Is there a different motivation? Was Tommy Banks right? Was this about revenge? Carlton turned the possibility over in his mind once more.

  Yes, his group had been good at what they did, exceedingly so, but as bad as the blood had been between them and the CIA, this wasn’t the Agency’s style. If they had wanted to get rid of him, they would have done it through incessant and damaging leaks to the media and by pushing for congressional hearings. They would have trumpeted the Carlton Group as a rogue organization that answered to no one and made up their own rules as they went along. The powers that be at Langley would have targeted the group’s contacts at the Defense Department and would have publically embarrassed them into severing the relationship.

  That’s how the CIA would have handled it. But what if it wasn’t the Agency? What if it’s someone else?

  Returning to the kitchen and to his stack of notes, with a fresh cup of coffee, Carlton found his thoughts getting complicated again. If it wasn’t an intelligence organization trying to take out his group for stepping on its turf, he wasn’t left with many alternatives.

  Carlton and his people had targeted only enemies of the United States. Most of those enemies had been Islamic terrorists. It was almost impossible to believe that somewhere a Muslim sphere of influence so powerful existed that it both knew about the Carlton Group and could also strong-arm the United States into wiping it out. Was there a cog in the wheel missing?

  His group had recently dismembered two major terrorist rings—one in Europe and one in the United States—but not before the terrorists had succeeded in killing scores of Americans. It had been very bloody.

  The attacks, though, were rumored to have only been a precursor to a much more sophisticated wave to follow. Someone had likened it to water draining from a bay before a tsunami came rushing in.

  All of the attacks, Carlton’s people had discovered, were part of a master plan, a blueprint entitled “Unrestricted Warfare.” Suicide bombers and Mumbai-style shooters were meant to soften America up. The attacks that followed were to be even grander in scale and meant to cause such havoc that Americans would beg for any semblance of order, and would surrender much, if not all, of their freedom in exchange.

  The man who had orchestrated the plot had been dealt with and his remaining coconspirators swept up and sentenced. For all intents and purposes, it had appeared that the cancer had been completely cut out. But what if it wasn’t? Could what was happening now be some sort of payback? With all of the people they had rolled up, could they have missed one?

  Carlton didn’t think so. The number two man in the operation, the person who controlled all the moving parts, had been extensively interrogated. The man had broken and had given them every detail. Although Carlton knew better than to shut his mind off to any possibility, he needed to keep searching for the right answer.

  This brought him to his most recent theory, admittedly his weakest: somewhere, another plot was under way, and the Carlton Group somehow stood in the plotter’s way.

  It was a concept he had trouble completely wrapping his mind around. With the extensive capabilities of America’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies, it would seem that anyone intending to do the nation harm would have much more to worry about than Carlton’s burgeoning organization. One thing bothered him about that, though. The ability to frame him and his people for treason, unleash kill teams, and highlight him in a nationwide law enforcement bulletin suggested that this was coming from somewhere within the government itself. If that was the case, it could only mean one thing—a coup of some type was brewing. It also explained why his organization would be perceived as a threat.

  In a coup scenario, chaos reigned. Depending on what kind of influence the plotters had over agencies like the FBI and CIA, they could easily keep those groups tied up in bureaucratic knots, while the plot unfolded and they got the ball across the goal line. In that kind of situation, the Carlton Group would definitely be a wild card. It operated outside the law and could do things no other group could. One call from the DoD was all it would take, if even that. Carlton could task his own organization without a DoD request. The bottom line was that Carlton could move swiftly and effectively, but he would only move against an enemy of the United States.

  The more he mulled that scenario, the more believable it became. He knew it was a possibility. Stripping the United States of its sovereignty was the ultimate goal of the last plot they had foiled. Simply put, there were many in the world who saw the U.S. not as a force for good but as a roadblock, an impediment that had to be crushed and bulldozed out of the way. Though he didn’t have all of the pieces yet, the ones he did have were starting to click into place.

  His operational hypothesis, until he developed any information to the contrary, had to be that there was a very serious threat against the nation, that it was being coordinated from within the government, and that team or no team, Carlton had to do everything he could to identify and stop it. />
  He’d had a growing feeling that it was going to come down to something like this. Now he was certain. It was time to develop and launch his own attack. Looking at his watch, he hoped Tommy Banks was up to the challenge.

  CHAPTER 51

  MARYLAND

  Ha, ha! See?” Middleton exclaimed as he reread the e-mail. “I told you Banks was the guy we needed to watch.”

  Schroeder was impressed. “How’d you know Carlton would reach out to him?”

  “Because. If there’s one thing I know from years of studying data, it’s people.”

  “This is a pretty obscure e-mail account,” the younger man said, tapping his screen. “Are we sure it belongs to Carlton?”

  “It’s his all right.” Middleton elbowed him out of the way, took control of his mouse, and three clicks later brought up a diagram tracing the e-mails that had been sent to and from the account. “It’s one of those Runbox.com e-mail addresses out of Norway that people think we can’t crack. It hasn’t been used that many times, but look at the interaction; all accounts tied to people on Carlton’s relationship tree.”

  “But his message to Banks doesn’t make any sense.”

  Middleton rolled his eyes. “You’ve got a lot to learn. He’s requesting a meeting. He’s got something for Banks.”

  Schroeder’s eyes went wide. “You don’t think he’s talking about the flash drive, do you?”

  “I don’t have a fucking clue, but whatever he’s got, we want it.”

  “What if what he’s got is Harvath? Do we want that?”

  Middleton drew his hand back as if he was going to strike him, but then got control of himself. Though Chuck Bremmer wasn’t ready to concede the Texas operation, none of his operators had been heard from in more than twelve hours. It was obvious what had happened. It was a disaster. Three times, Bremmer had sent teams to kill Harvath, and three times his teams had failed. Middleton had torn the Colonel a new asshole and the two had almost come to blows inside the SCIF at the Pentagon.

  Schroeder had a point, though. What if it was Harvath that Carlton had, or information as to his whereabouts? Even more important, what if Carlton had been passed Caroline Romero’s flash drive? What if Carlton was using Banks to take everything public in order to help clear his name?

  Any of those scenarios was more than plausible. Middleton’s biggest challenge was deciding how they should handle the meeting between Banks and Carlton. The cloak-and-dagger stuff wasn’t Middleton’s forte. That said, it didn’t appear to be Bremmer’s either. Somehow Harvath had been able to smell those kill teams coming from a mile away. They’d have to take care of this in-house.

  “If Harvath’s a part of this,” Middleton replied, “I’ll take care of it. Do we know where Banks is right now?”

  Schroeder nodded at his mouse and when his boss let go of it, he used it to pull up another screen. “It looks like he’s at home.”

  “Good. I’ll assign some of our security people for surveillance. Keep monitoring his communications. The minute Carlton sets a time or a place for their meeting, I want to know about it.”

  When Middleton returned to his office, Martin Vignon, his chief of security, was already waiting in one of the chairs. Even from across the room, Middleton could see the man’s blue veins beneath his pale, nearly transparent skin.

  Crossing the office and sitting down at his desk, Middleton summoned up a fake smile for Vignon. He didn’t like the fact that the man had made himself right at home.

  Vignon’s pale lips curled into what should have been a smile but looked more like a sneer. It all but vanished when Middleton tilted his head toward the door he’d purposely left open and said, “Close it.”

  It was a petty power play. The security chief stared at Middleton for a moment before rising from his seat to carry out the command.

  Middleton noticed that Vignon didn’t use his hands to push himself up and out of the chair. Even in his fifties, the security man was quite fit.

  When Vignon retook his seat, Middleton spoke, “If I ask you to follow an eighty-eight-year-old man and not fuck it up, do you think you can handle it?”

  “Which part? Following an octogenarian, or being asked if I can do it without fucking it up?”

  Middleton smiled. This time it was genuine. While he didn’t care very much for Vignon, at least the pasty-faced man retained a modicum of self-respect. “Both.”

  “What is it specifically you want?”

  Middleton removed two folders and handed them to him as he spoke. One was for Thomas Banks, the other for Reed Carlton. Vignon flipped through them as Middleton went into everything in detail.

  When he was done speaking, he looked at his security chief and asked, “How do we keep this quiet?”

  “Obviously, we involve as few people as possible.”

  “Obviously. How many men are we talking about?”

  Vignon did the math in his head. “For right now, we keep it very low-key. Two men in a car ready to follow him if he drives and another two men a block away who can follow on foot if he goes that way.”

  “Why can’t you use the men in the car to follow on foot?”

  “If the subject walks a block away and then has another vehicle parked or he hails a cab, you’ll want the team in the car immediately able to roll.”

  Middleton didn’t like being reminded that he didn’t have the kind of mind for this sort of thing. “Fine. Two teams. But no more than that. And I want to make sure the men you use can be trusted.”

  Vignon had been around long enough to understand Middleton’s meaning by the way he pronounced the word trusted. “I’ll see to it,” he said, before changing the subject. “If we can get Banks and Carlton together, what do you want—”

  “If?” Middleton repeated, cutting him off.

  “When we get Banks and Carlton, where do you want the interrogation to take place?”

  The question didn’t require a lot of thought. There was no sense reinventing the wheel. “Do you still have the location set up that you were going to use for Romero?”

  “We cleaned the gear out, but we still have access to it, yes.”

  “Then use it,” replied Middleton as he rose from his chair, indicating the meeting was over. “We’ll keep gathering intelligence on this side and feed you anything relevant.”

  Vignon gathered the files from his lap and stood. “One last question.”

  “What is it?”

  “If this Scot Harvath does show up, what do you want us to do?”

  Middleton didn’t waste a moment of thought. There was a perceptible tensing of his jaw as his teeth ground together and he said, “Don’t wait. Kill him.”

  CHAPTER 52

  VIRGINIA

  MONDAY

  Harry P. Davis Field in Manassas was a small, regional airport about thirty miles from D.C. It was easy to get into and out of and had a much smaller surveillance apparatus than Dulles or Reagan National. Mike Strieber used it whenever he had business in Washington. His aircraft’s tail number, or N-number as it’s called, appearing in their logs wouldn’t be unusual.

  He arranged to have his plane refueled and then went over to Hertz to select a rental car. He surveyed what was available, then filled out the paperwork in his name and drove off in a black Chevy Suburban.

  After picking up Harvath, Casey, and Rhodes, Strieber parked out of sight of the rental car offices and the private aviation building known as the Fixed-Base Operator or FBO, so Harvath could remove the SUV’s license plates. Five minutes later, he returned and attached the plates from another black Suburban on the small, unattended Hertz lot. It was a short-term fix, but if Mike’s name was being put through PROMIS, TIP, or any of the other database screening systems, they’d have the plates tied to the rental contract, not the plates that were actually on the vehicle at the moment. If the police, for any reason, ran a check, it would come back as a black Suburban owned by Hertz. Harvath had yet to see a cop ever verify a vehicle identification number
.

  They dropped Strieber in downtown Manassas, where he planned to kill a few hours before returning to the airport by cab and flying his plane back to Texas.

  Harvath, along with Casey and Rhodes, had spent the prior afternoon and well into the evening doing research on Colonel Charles Bremmer. Using DoD resources was out of the question. Harvath had no doubt that his name was flagged throughout their systems. That meant Casey or Rhodes would have to do the dirty work, and any search they did would trace right back to them. Harvath wasn’t willing to risk it. They’d have to limit themselves to open source information.

  As they began their search, it became apparent that Bremmer wasn’t a total fool when it came to protecting his personal data. Neither his phone number nor his address was listed in any phone books, and it didn’t appear that he had ever been mentioned in any news articles. Harvath thought about using ZabaSearch but decided against it, knowing that individuals could set up e-mail alerts on Zaba to notify them when someone ran their name.

  They continued digging, hitting every popular military site and went as far as checking the business-networking site, LinkedIn. None of them turned up even a shred of information on Bremmer.

  Harvath was beginning to get discouraged when Casey came up with a very promising lead. It was a list of benefactors who had donated to a small, private school in Virginia called Fredericksburg Academy. Among those thanked for their contributions in the $5,000 to $10,000 range, were “Mr. and Mrs. C. Bremmer.”

  Was it their “Charles” Bremmer? Possibly, but despite the somewhat uncommon name, it could have been any of the C. Bremmers in the world. Harvath hadn’t known Bremmer very well. He had no idea if the man was an alumnus of Fredericksburg Academy or if he even had a child, or children, who attended the school. Their big break came when they began skimming the school’s website.