by Brad Thor
Meanwhile, Johnson and Preisler had begun to build out the tactical side of the operation. Based on their experience, and the limited amount of time they had spent with Lara’s parents, the most likely place for an attack was either at the house or somewhere between the house and the playground. Thankfully, Marco wasn’t in school at the moment, so that took some of the logistical headaches out of the equation. Nevertheless, they still were going to have their hands full. Harvath had been right to send them to Boston.
And if it hadn’t been for Harvath, Lara’s parents never would have cooperated with such a plan. Left to their own devices, they would have retreated to the familiar.
They would have gathered up Marco and hopped a plane to Brazil. There, in Providência—the notorious Rio de Janeiro favela where they themselves grew up—they would have hoped to hide and ride out the storm.
But with a possible one-hundred-million-dollar bounty on Harvath’s head and Marco as an irresistible piece of bait, there would have been no place they’d ever be truly safe. This was the best way to handle it. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and keep Marco’s life as “normal” as possible.
Unlike many of their friends, they didn’t blame Scot for Lara’s death. Both their homicide detective daughter and their intelligence operative son-in-law had difficult, dangerous jobs. More importantly, they knew that Scot had loved Lara. They also knew that he still loved Marco. He would never intentionally do anything to compromise them.
Which was why, when Nicholas had reached out, they had agreed to go along with Scot’s request. Even with their daughter gone, Scot was still part of their family. They not only loved him, they trusted him.
They had put their lives in his hands and Harvath had treated that responsibility with the utmost seriousness. He knew Preisler, Johnson, and Kost would fight to the death to keep them safe. That was why he had asked Nicholas to send them. Marco was an obvious choice.
The men were also smart as hell. If something was afoot, not only would they pick it up quickly, but they’d put a knife in it so fast, lightning would be envious.
And that had been Harvath’s concern at Camp David—that an assassin might use a family member to flush him out. He had worried that whoever had killed Carl would either try to get to Marco, as well as Lara’s parents, or maybe even his own mother out in California.
Already, a team had moved her out of her senior community and over to Naval Base Coronado.
With such an alleged bounty in play, even a U.S. Navy base might not be perfectly safe, but Sloane Ashby and Chase Palmer, the two operatives Harvath had asked to watch over his mom, liked their odds. So too did the horde of U.S. Navy SEALs who had taken up residence around Mrs. Harvath. She was part of their family and there was no way they were going to let anything happen to her.
The remaining core of Harvath’s team—Haney and Staelin, along with former Force Recon Marine Matt Morrison, ex–Green Beret Jack Gage, and ex-SEAL Tim Barton—stood ready as a Quick Reaction Force, prepared to deploy from Joint Base Andrews to anywhere in the world he might need them.
In the meantime, back in Boston, the Ghost continued to study Lara’s neighborhood, developing a feel for its residents and rhythms.
In the apartment, Preisler and Johnson tried to stay in the background, out of the family’s hair—something easier said than done.
Not only was it uncomfortable having two intense, flinty, well-armed men constantly nearby, but then there were the logistics. Lara’s apartment was on the second floor and her parents lived above. The apartment on the ground floor was for rent, but currently vacant. The running up and down stairs, especially by Lara’s mother, was an ongoing problem. Every time she went to fetch something, one of the men needed to be with her. Finally, it was Preisler who made a command decision. He was tired of all the back-and-forth.
Grabbing three empty laundry baskets, he accompanied Lara’s mother upstairs, and told her to pack. Spices, books, clothes—he didn’t care. She could fill the baskets with whatever she wanted. They just couldn’t keep running up and down stairs. It was too dangerous. The only way Preisler and Johnson could really protect them was if they all stayed together.
Once Lara’s mother had complied, Preisler took a break while Johnson accompanied Lara’s father to gather three baskets’ worth of stuff. In typical “guy” fashion, the man did it all in one basket. He only wanted his books, his “Brazilian rum” aka Cachaça, and a few changes of clothes.
With the crazy upstairs-downstairs portion of their program complete, they could refocus on simply being a heavily guarded family and trying to create some semblance of everyday, little-boy-life for Marco.
That meant that Marco needed to be allowed outside to run around and do all the crazy things a precocious four-year-old did. And the best place for a precocious four-year-old to be a precocious four-year-old was the playground down the street.
Protecting a little boy—especially when he was the primary—was a weird gig for Preisler and Johnson. Their previous protection details had been for diplomats in war zones, or in highly dangerous, cartel-controlled areas like Mexico, Central or South America. Guarding the life of a preschooler in Boston was a bit surreal.
Nevertheless, they were professionals and took it every bit as seriously as they did any of their previous assignments. There was no way they were going to let anything happen to Marco. The hardest part about the assignment, though, was that they weren’t allowed to hunt. Only the Ghost, roaming free somewhere out there in the neighborhood, was authorized.
As sheepdogs, Preisler and Johnson instinctively knew their job—to protect Marco, and Lara’s parents, at all costs. Per their training, they operated under the assumption that somewhere, unseen, a wolf was stalking their protectees. That wolf could be around the next corner or even standing right next to them. No matter where he was, he was always watching. They could take nothing for granted.
Because the wolf would decide when and where to attack, the wolf had the advantage. All the men could do was be ready to react. And when they did react, they reserved the right to visit overwhelming violence on the wolf.
Harvath had agreed and had insisted that they be kitted out with the best weapons and equipment available. If anyone came after Lara’s parents or her son, he wanted the response to be “biblical.”
Nicholas had arranged everything. The men were packing serious firepower, but moving in a civilian environment, especially a city like Boston, it had to be kept concealed.
They were all carrying short-barrel rifles. Preisler and Johnson had Kriss Vectors in custom messenger bags, while Kost sported a suppressed Honey Badger in a modified camera equipment bag.
For pistols, Preisler and Johnson had 1911s and Kost carried a Sig. They were all exceptionally proficient shooters with thousands of hours under their belts. It was not only their commitment to training, but in the cases of Preisler and Johnson, their years of active military experience that made them the best. Preisler had been with 7th Special Forces Group, and Johnson with 10th Group. Kost had entered the CIA immediately after college and had trained with multiple top tier military units—as well as with the DEA, who were some of the best gunfighters on the planet.
Harvath had handpicked the team for this mission. The only question was whether a wolf would show. Then, suddenly, one did.
Via his new relationship with the grocery store owner, the Ghost had learned of an overly ambitious apartment renovation that had run out of money. All work had stopped, the bank was moving to foreclose, and the owners had walked away. The situation couldn’t have been better for the team, nor could the view.
It was on the building’s top floor and provided not only an excellent overwatch of the playground, but also the surrounding streets. Getting in had been a piece of cake. Setting up his cameras was even easier.
He was using a telephoto lens, which allowed him to capture excellent details. That was how he had spotted the wolf. It was the same man he had bumped into t
he day before at the grocery store.
Kost had been on his way in as the man had been exiting. He was a Caucasian male in his early fifties and had been dressed similarly to how he was now—jeans, tee-shirt, gold chain, and white basketball shoes. The shopkeeper hadn’t liked him.
“Shanty Irish,” she had said. “That’s what my grandmother used to call them.”
Shanty, versus “lace curtain” Irish, was meant to catalogue an Irish person as being of low class.
When pressed, she explained that he had spoken with an Irish accent and had been gruff and rude. He had complained about her prices, before finally giving in and paying for the large energy drink he had pulled from the cooler. Asking if he wanted a receipt, he had ignored her and walked out.
He had brushed past Kost, who had held the door open for him, without saying anything. In addition to the man’s poor manners, Kost got a really bad vibe off the guy.
The shopkeeper said he was definitely not from the neighborhood. She mused that he probably worked in construction and explained that there were lots of Irish who came to places like Boston and New York, overstayed their tourist visas, and illegally worked for cash.
While that might have been true, the man hadn’t looked like a laborer to him—at least not one on his way to or from a job site. His jeans were clean; pressed even. He was wearing an expensive chain and his shoes were also pricey. The guy looked more like a middle-aged drug dealer than a construction worker.
Seeing him again had set off Kost’s alarm bells. After taking a few more photos of him, he scanned the area. It appeared that Shanty might not be alone.
A block away, two similarly dressed men had just gotten out of a blue Hyundai Sonata. The driver had remained with the vehicle, and was slowly following them. It was time to officially raise the alarm.
“Heads up,” he said over their comms link. “Possible hostile. Inbound on foot from the north. One block out. Fifties. Light hair. Jeans. Tee-shirt. Two more, same costumes, on foot, from the south. Two blocks out. Being trailed by a late-model blue Sonata. All headed toward you. Stay frosty.”
“Roger that,” Preisler and Johnson both replied.
With two entrances to the fenced playground, they had taken up opposite positions at each. They had unobstructed lines of sight, could react quickly if they needed to, and it allowed the family some breathing room.
Lara’s father, who was a solid guy, always kept his eyes peeled while his wife played with Marco. When Preisler signaled to him that it was time to go, he immediately went over to his wife and calmly told her in Portuguese. She then informed their grandson that they were leaving. Preisler appreciated how seriously they took this. It made his role easier.
In the end, he had been sent to Boston with only two jobs. Number one, protect Marco and his grandparents at all costs. Number two, make sure Johnson didn’t kill a metric shit ton of people. At this moment, though, all that mattered was job number one.
Adjusting his messenger bag, he moved to the family, making sure to smile as he did so as to not unnecessarily upset the boy. This could, after all, turn out to be nothing.
Johnson joined them as they approached the east gate of the playground. In studying the neighborhood, he and Preisler had developed multiple exfil plans.
One of the things they had agreed upon from the start, was that if there was an assault involving a vehicle, they’d use one of Boston’s biggest pains-in-the-ass to their advantage—its one-way streets.
Exiting the playground, they turned to the right and walked toward the building Kost was in.
At the corner, they turned right again heading west. The traffic on the street was going in the opposite direction, which meant the Sonata couldn’t follow them. The men on foot, though, could and did.
There was an alley coming up. That was their destination. Marco’s grandfather encouraged him to move a little faster. He didn’t know what was going on, but he could sense the tension in the adults. Coupled with the abrupt departure from the playground, he was starting to get frightened.
Preisler scooped the boy up and hurried their party forward while Johnson kept an eye on their six.
Once they ducked into the alley, Preisler found them cover and stayed with them while Johnson took up a concealed position out on the street from which to engage.
“Gun,” said Kost, over the radio. “The pair of tangos coming up your side of the street. Looks like pistols.”
“You’re sure?” asked Preisler.
“Positive.”
“Splash them,” Johnson interjected. “I have my eye on the third tango coming up the other side of the street. Do it now.”
“I can’t see the third tango,” said Kost. “He’s under my window.”
“Don’t worry about him,” said Preisler. “Get the two you’ve got in your sights. You’re cleared hot.”
“Roger that.”
Moments later, there were two muffled cracks from outside on the street followed by a SITREP. “Tangos down,” said Kost. “I repeat, tangos down.”
“Blue Sonata inbound hot,” Johnson warned from his vantage point out on the street. The driver had already looped around and was trying to get to their location. “Fifty meters out.”
“Good copy,” said Kost, as he leaned out the window and looked for Shanty Irish, as well as the vehicle. “Blue Sonata. I see it.”
There was suddenly the sound of gunfire from down on the street.
“Tango down,” said Johnson, who had killed the third man on foot.
When the blue Sonata was in range of his Honey Badger, Kost fired multiple rounds into the windshield. The vehicle swerved wildly, bashing into parked cars on both sides of the narrow street.
Johnson drilled a racing stripe down the side as it passed. The heavy 45 ACP rounds from his Kriss Vector tore through both the door and the driver.
The Sonata, its driver dead, began to slow, but didn’t stop. Rolling through the red light at the intersection, it was T-boned by a Chevy Suburban, ironically plastered with Boston Celtics and “Luck of the Irish” stickers.
After helping Lara’s parents to their feet, Preisler once again scooped Marco into his arms. “Time to go,” he said.
CHAPTER 37
LOMBARDY REGION
NORTHERN ITALY
The transport plane, per Admiral Proctor’s promise, had been fueled and waiting for them when they arrived at Šiauliai.
After swinging by Sølvi’s vehicle to grab her gear, they had hit the road in Harvath’s Land Cruiser. With all of the texts and emails that he had to deal with, she had graciously offered to drive. There was no classic rock and Rolling Stones for him on this return leg.
Nicholas had been quick to get to two pieces of bad news. The first was a rundown of what had happened in Boston.
They didn’t know who was responsible, although they had plenty of photos of the perpetrators. One of the men was apparently off-the-boat Irish, and two others had extensive police records tied to Irish organized crime in Boston. The fourth perpetrator, the team’s driver, had an Irish surname and a rap sheet filled with petty crimes. The working theory was that he was either a low-level initiate or had been hired just for this job.
The fact that the attack had been foiled, and all of the offenders were dead, was a testament to the skill of the team that Harvath had sent in. They had done exactly what he had assigned them to do. Marco and Lara’s parents were safe. And now that they had been confirmed as active targets, he was having them moved to a new location.
While there were four fewer bad guys in the world, the flip side of all of the offenders being dead was that there was nobody to interrogate. It was a price he was willing to pay.
After filling in a couple more details, Nicholas then moved on to his second piece of bad news.
The deepfake software was turning out to be impossible to work with. Unless you had a subject sitting still and speaking directly to the camera, the superimposing of another face just wasn’t convincin
g. You couldn’t yet take a random person walking through an airport, bus, or train station and make it look like somebody else. They had thought they could do it, but it just didn’t work.
The little man did have an alternative suggestion. Despite their age difference, Chase was a close enough match to Harvath that they could send him through the ports of entry and then reverse hack the customs and immigrations systems, replacing his passport with the fake identities Harvath had wanted to spread along his route. If Chase was careful not to look directly into one of the CCTV cameras and if he kept his head down—the way a smart fugitive would—it might be believable.
This meant, of course, that they would have to pull Chase off the protective detail for Harvath’s mom. Nicholas didn’t think it unreasonable, especially considering the highly secure bubble she’d been placed in. Harvath didn’t agree.
Boston proved that they needed to be on their toes. His remaining loved ones were all potential targets. The teams stayed as they were, where they were. Politics, as well as one-hundred-million-dollar bounties, could make for strange bedfellows. There was no knowing who was hiring whom to do what.
At least they had a lead—Tatiana Montecalvo, or as Nicholas had called her, the “Contessa.”
She wasn’t a Contessa at all, but that had never stopped her from calling herself one. Born in Sicily to a Russian mother and an Italian father, her family moved to Rome, where she barely finished high school. Possessed of a voluptuous body, she worked as an artist’s model at several of the city’s art schools. Tired of taking her clothes off for such meager wages, she soon found other ways to do it for lots more money.
But as the youth that had made her so alluring began to disappear, so too did the men willing to pay to be with her. There was only one truly marketable skill she had left—her languages.
The Russian embassy had lost three members of its secretarial pool in the space of a week. One had left to have a baby, one had fallen off a table drunk while dancing in a bar and had broken both wrists, and another had fallen in love with a local and refused to come back. The embassy was in desperate straits.
