Full Black sh-10

by Brad Thor

  On the floor, and also restrained with duct tape, was a man about Hank’s age with greasy black hair and a pug face.

  “Sorry we’re late,” said Harvath as he let go of Sarhan.

  “Another pinata,” replied Ralston. “Now things are getting interesting.”

  “If you gentlemen want to use the kitchen to talk,” said Hank, “I’ll keep an eye on these two.”

  Harvath thanked him and followed Ralston and Salomon out. As he was leaving, he reminded the old SEAL not to abuse his prisoner. Hank picked up a ball-peen hammer from the workbench and told him he wouldn’t dream of it. Shaking his head, Harvath joined the other men in the kitchen.

  Ralston introduced himself and then Salomon.

  “I’m a big fan,” Harvath said to the producer.

  “Thank you. We appreciate your coming.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on,” said Harvath as he motioned at the kitchen table for the men to sit. He saw that Hank had a pot of coffee made and helped himself. He offered to pour for the other two men, but they politely refused.

  Sitting down at the table he listened as Luke laid out what had happened and Salomon filled in some of the details.

  Twenty minutes and an additional cup of coffee later, Ralston finished by saying, “That’s when Hank called you and here we are.”

  It was an amazing story. Harvath leaned back in his chair, processing what he had heard. “For what it’s worth, you were smart not to kill Yatsko.”

  “I gave my word,” replied Ralston. “That said, I probably ruptured his eardrum, discharging the weapon so close to his head.”

  “He deserves to pay,” said Salomon.

  Harvath nodded in agreement. “You both did the right thing, though.” Changing gears, he asked, “What happened to the homeless guy in his trunk?”

  “After I dumped Yatsko here, I drove the car back up to L.A., wiped all of my prints off it, and left it in his garage.”

  “Where’s the hard drive?”

  Ralston reached under the table where it had been taped, removed it, and handed it across to Harvath. He then gave him the code the Russian had revealed out in the desert.

  “You haven’t tried to open it, have you?”

  Ralston shook his head. “He was bargaining for his life, so I think he was being straight with me. But I’ve dealt with this stuff enough to know that he could have given me a kill code. I didn’t want to type in that password only to have it fry the entire drive.”

  “Smart,” replied Harvath. “We’ve got somebody back east that should be able to get into it and see what’s there. What about Project Green Ramp? You said it was a plan to weaken the United States and then collapse it via a black swan event? Do you have any idea what kind of black swan? Could that be what’s behind all of these terrorist attacks?”

  “You probably shouldn’t rule anything out,” Ralston replied with a shrug, “but I don’t see Standing as the terrorism type. He’s a financial guy who buys influence and messes with currencies and economies.”

  “Who may have used an active MI5 operative as a cutout to hire a Russian wet work team to kill Mr. Salomon.”

  “I guess when you put it that way, anything is possible.”

  It was definitely possible. In fact, having the unrestricted warfare piece of the puzzle, Harvath now saw Standing as highly likely to be behind the entire thing. He had the financial means. He also, from what Harvath knew, had the ideology and hadn’t been shy in his public calls for the American system to be replaced with something else.

  “If Ashford is dirty,” asked Salomon, “will you be able to link him to Standing?”

  “We’ll definitely try. But it would be helpful to have copies of the material you were working on. Did you back it up offsite or does the LAPD have all of it now as part of their investigation?”

  “Everything was in my home office at the time of the attack.”

  “So, no backup, then.”

  “No,” said Salomon. “There’s a backup. I just don’t know how you can get to it.”

  “Let me worry about that,” replied Harvath, figuring the Old Man could put together a team to take care of the job. “Where is it?”

  “Back at the house. I have a stack of high-capacity portable drives in a locked cage hidden in the basement. My entire life is backed up on those things, including the rough cut, or at least as far as we had gotten on it, of the Well Endowed documentary. If you can get someone past the police and into the house, I can tell them how to find the cage and access the drives.”

  As Ralston and Salomon began to sketch out a map of the house and the surrounding property in Coldwater Canyon, Harvath stepped outside to make a phone call.

  He needed to bring the Old Man up to speed on what he had learned, but more important, he needed to lay the groundwork for what they had to do next. Reed wasn’t going to like it, but they were going to have to go after Robert Ashford.

  CHAPTER 58

  A civilian Lockheed L-100 Hercules was waiting for Harvath at the Los Alamitos Joint Forces Training Center, forty-five minutes south of Hank McBride’s home in Hermosa Beach.

  Also waiting was a SEAL team contingent who had been choppered up from Naval Amphibious Base Coronado. As Harvath was transferring both Sarhan and Yatsko back to the East Coast, the Old Man wanted to make sure he had all the additional manpower he might need.

  The guards at the base gate were expecting Harvath and waved him through. The L-100 was parked on the tarmac outside Hangar Three with its rear cargo ramp down.

  Upon seeing Harvath, one of the young SEALs at the base of the ramp shouted into the plane. Moments later, Harvath and his vehicle were guided right up into the belly of the enormous aircraft.

  As this was a black flight with no records, the SEALs were dressed in civilian clothes. Only first names were used. Harvath introduced himself as Bob. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust them. On the contrary, these were his brothers. He knew that it was better for them if they knew zero about him.

  Once his vehicle was secured, the cargo ramp was closed and the crew instructed everyone to prepare for takeoff. The men took their seats as the four massive turboprop engines were started.

  Slowly, the enormous bird began to roll forward and taxi out to the runway. Harvath was exhausted and allowed himself a few minutes to lean back and close his eyes. This was not going to be a relaxing flight. There were still dots all over Nicholas’s map in Reston representing further terrorist attacks. Back at LAX he had wanted Sarhan to tell him what he knew about that immediate attack. Now, he wanted to know about everything else. He figured the man wasn’t going to be any more cooperative than he had been at LAX.

  When the plane leveled out, Harvath opened his eyes and nodded to the SEAL in charge. He in turn signaled his men, who all produced black balaclavas and rolled them down over their faces.

  Harvath opened the trunk and three of the SEALs shined bright flashlights into the faces of the two captives. Two other SEALs reached down and yanked out Tariq Sarhan, after which Harvath slammed the lid back down. Yatsko would get his turn, but for the time being, Harvath wanted him as disoriented and as frightened as possible.

  A heavy steel cable, complete with a metal hook, had been thrown over one of the cargo area’s upper supports. It ran to a winch covered with chipped yellow paint.

  The two SEALs held Sarhan upright under his arms as Harvath removed his knife and cut through the tape and FlexCuffs binding his wrists. The sense of relief the terrorist felt at having his hands cut free was short-lived as one of the other SEALs forced his wrists together in front of his body and resecured them again with tape.

  The hook was then slipped beneath the tape, and the SEAL manning the winch was instructed to take up the slack. The cable grew taut and Sarhan’s arms were lifted above his head. The winch kept cranking until the terrorist was forced to stand on tiptoe and Harvath signaled for it to stop.

  Reaching up for the piece of duct tape he had place
d across Sarhan’s mouth, Harvath ripped it away along with the crust of dried blood that had formed around his badly burned and blistered upper lip. His scream was so loud it could be heard well above the roar of the aircraft noise.

  The man was cursing in Arabic, and Harvath gave him an open-handed slap to the side of the face to get him to shut up.

  “Tariq, you’re in a lot of trouble, my friend,” said Harvath. “Do you know where we’re going?”

  Sarhan didn’t answer, and Harvath hadn’t expected him to.

  “We’re on our way to visit some friends of mine in Cairo,” he told his prisoner. “The Mukhabarat are very interested in your visit.”

  The terrorist looked at him with contempt. “You lie,” he hissed. “There is no more Mukhabarat. The Egyptian secret police were thrown out after the revolution.”

  “Unfortunately for you, that isn’t the case. You see, the new government needs the Mukhabarat even more than the old government. And let’s face it, what would Egypt be without its secret police?

  “Maybe the name will change, but their methods will still be the same. By the way, they wanted me to ask you if you had any family members you’d like them to contact for you. Actually, don’t bother answering that. I’m sure they’re already busy tracking them down.”

  If Sarhan was troubled by the threat, he didn’t show it.

  “Here’s the thing, though, Tariq. I don’t want to go to Cairo. That’s too long for me to wait to get the answers I need. Too many Americans have died for me to risk a single life more. So you and I are going to have a very intimate conversation. Right here. And you’re going to tell me every single thing, no matter how small or unimportant you think it may be, and you’re going to tell me right now.”

  Tariq Sarhan had his answer ready. Once again he attempted to spit at Harvath and missed.

  “Bad choice,” said Harvath as he nodded to the SEAL operating the winch to tighten the cable up even further.

  For the next three hours, Harvath worked on Sarhan. After the third time the terrorist passed out, Harvath had him taken down. Sarhan knew very little beyond his own operation. There were bits and pieces that Harvath would include with his debrief, but he doubted they’d be of much help. This network had been very careful to keep things as compartmentalized as possible. Sarhan had no idea how many other attacks were planned, who was involved, when they would happen, or how to stop them.

  Harvath was beginning to believe that it would take a major mistake by the terrorists before they could be completely taken down. He hoped that mistake, though, had already been made and that it was Robert Ashford.

  No sooner had Harvath gotten Yaroslav Yatsko out of the trunk and prepped for his interrogation than one of the Marines informed him that the crew, who, per orders, had remained in the cockpit for the duration of the flight, was ready to make their approach into Dulles.

  Harvath and the SEALs quickly outfitted the two prisoners with black goggles, sensory deprivation headsets, surgical masks to prevent them from picking up olfactory cues, and blackout hoods, then shackled their wrists and ankles and covered their hands with heavy canvas mittens.

  They were then laid back in the trunk of Harvath’s car on their stomachs and had their ankle shackles connected to their wrist shackles via a short chain.

  When the L-100 landed it taxied to the cargo services area of the airport, where Reed Carlton had two teams waiting.

  When the cargo ramp was lowered, one of the teams boarded the plane and traded keys with Harvath. The car with the two trunked prisoners was backed down the ramp and was met on the tarmac by a heavily armored black Suburban. The Carlton Group kept a fortified safe house in Maryland. As the two vehicles disappeared from the airport, Harvath figured that was where they were most likely headed.

  After thanking the SEALs, he walked down the ramp and disappeared himself. He found the car that had been left for him and climbed in. He wanted to get Yatsko’s hard drive to the office as quickly as possible so the IT team could get to work on it. He also wanted to go over his plans with the Old Man in person. Carlton had been friends with Robert Ashford for many years, but Harvath had to know if Ashford had been the one who had compromised the Yemen operation. He needed to look the Old Man in the face and see for himself that he was all in and willing to do whatever needed to be done.

  Starting the car, he rolled down the windows and shifted into drive. America was reeling from yet another attack. People across the nation were mad as hell, but they were also terrified. They had no idea where or when the next attack would come. All they knew was that they wanted it stopped.

  After it was stopped, they would want revenge. Harvath was already one step ahead.

  CHAPTER 59

  Across the country, families, friends, and neighbors huddled around television sets. They watched over and over the repeated horrors of the last two days. Many asked Why? Many more asked Could it have been prevented? Even more asked Would it happen again? For all its strength, for all its greatness, much of America was paralyzed. Much, but not all.

  As Harvath passed through security and into the Carlton Group offices, they were alive with an activity he had never seen before. Shifts and hours had been tossed out the window. All hands were on deck. The entire twenty-fifth floor was teeming with activity.

  Harvath made his way to Digital Ops, punched his code into the door that guarded Nicholas’s domain, and when the lock released, slid the door open and stepped in.

  His tiny friend looked like hell, but before Harvath could even comment, he was preempted. “There’s some body spray around here somewhere,” he said. “If I need it, let me know. Other than that, I don’t want to hear about how I look, okay? I haven’t been out of the SCIF much in the last seventy-two hours. Carlton has had someone walking the dogs for me.”

  There were times when Harvath was stunned by the man’s ability to practically read his mind. Bending over to quickly scratch both of the dogs behind the ears, he replied, “Everyone’s stretched to the max.”

  “True,” said Nicholas, who snapped his fingers and held out his hand. “Drive.”

  Harvath removed the device from his pocket and handed it to him.

  Nicholas studied it for several minutes and then connected one of the many hydra-headed cables near his work station to it.

  “What did the Russian say the password was?” he asked.

  Harvath repeated it to him and Nicholas rolled his chair over to another keyboard and punched it in.

  “Do you mind?” asked Harvath, gesturing at the minifridge.

  “Help yourself.”

  Opening the door, he reached inside and withdrew an energy drink. Popping the top, he grabbed a chair and sat down. “How many other airport attacks were there?”

  “Based on LAX, they were able to prevent attacks at Denver, Miami, JFK, DFW, Boston, and San Francisco. The FAA and the White House have shut down the entire commercial air system. United, Delta, Southwest, American, none of the airlines will be flying tomorrow. Not until a new set of security procedures is developed.”

  Harvath had long been worried about how vulnerable Americans were in airports. They were incredibly soft targets. It was only a matter of time before the terrorists zeroed in on them. In fact, they already had, and the one thing everyone in the antiterrorism communities knew was that today’s terrorists learned from yesterday’s mistakes. No one responsible for airport security could claim they didn’t see this coming. There had been more than enough warnings.

  The 1972 attack by the Japanese Red Army at the airport in Tel Aviv had killed two dozen people and wounded seventy-eight others. That should have been the wakeup call. The only people who woke up were the Israelis. The rest of the world stayed asleep.

  Then came the Rome and Vienna airport attacks by Muslim terrorists in 1985. In 2002, an Egyptian-born, green-card-carrying gunman, employed as a limousine driver, and living in the United States for ten years, opened fire at the El Al ticket counter at LAX. In 2007
, a Muslim doctor and a Muslim engineer tried to drive a bomb-laden Jeep Cherokee into one of the terminals at Glasgow International Airport. Would America wake up now?

  Harvath had no idea. What he did know was that when Muslim doctors, Muslim engineers, as well as Muslim green card holders in the most prosperous nation in the history of the world committed acts of terrorism, it wasn’t because of economics. It was because of ideology.

  What Harvath also knew was that airline travel was going to become even more of an aggravation than it already was. With each terrorist attack on U.S. soil, Americans gave up more of their rights. Harvath was reminded of the line, paraphrasing Benjamin Franklin, that those who trade some of their liberty for a little temporary security deserve neither and will lose both. The wisdom of the founders never ceased to amaze him.

  Nicholas pointed to a stack of reports on the foiled attacks and Harvath wheeled himself over to them.

  As he sifted through them, he asked, “Any progress with Mansoor in Iceland yet?”

  Nicholas shook his head. “He’s not bouncing back as fast as they would have liked. Riley’s last report says they’re afraid that they may have to take him back into surgery, or that he does have some low-level brain damage that they can’t nail down. It’s been very slow going.”

  “We’re also going to need to look into James Standing, the hedge fund guy. When you’re done with the drive, put him in that TIP program along with Ashford and see what you can find, okay?”

  “I’ll add it to my list,” the little man replied, without looking up from what he was doing.

  Harvath could tell he was distracting his friend, so he stopped talking and paged through the rest of the reports. DHS, TSA, and law enforcement at every airport across the country had gone on high alert. Based on the information they had been supplied from the attack at LAX, they had known what to look for and had been able to move quickly to take the terrorists down. It was a win for the United States, one it desperately needed. It had also saved thousands of lives.