The First Commandment: A Thriller

by Brad Thor

  For Sheppard, the more outrageous the claim, the more his interest was piqued. At the moment, his interest was quite high.

  Driving toward the Thomas J. Gosse funeral home on the outskirts of the city, headlines were already forming in his mind. There was no question he was putting the cart way before the horse, but Sheppard’s gut told him that if this story panned out, it was going to be huge.

  That meant the headline had to be huge as well. And it had to be sensational. This had the potential to be a front-page story. Hell, it might even be an explosive investigative series.

  As Sheppard pulled into the funeral home’s parking lot, he settled on his headline. It was campy, but once people began to read his reporting the title would take on a whole new meaning. It would be shocking—not only because of the crime itself, but because of its alleged perpetrators.

  Locking his car, Sheppard ran the headline through his mind one more time. Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

  It was one hell of an attention-grabber. He just hoped the man who’d called him with the tip wasn’t wasting his time.

  CHAPTER 9

  MONTROSE, COLORADO

  Though it wasn’t yet fall, there was a chill in the night air as Harvath stepped onto the pavement outside the small, one-building airport.

  Leaning against a white Hummer H2 emblazoned with the logo of his Elk Mountain Resort was one of the biggest and toughest men Harvath had ever known in his life. Called the Warlord in his past career, Tim Finney had been the Pacific Division Shoot Fighting Champion. Adept at annihilating other men, most notably with his hands, head, knees, or elbows, Finney was one of the few people Harvath knew he probably couldn’t beat in an all-out street fight.

  Finney towered over him by at least seven inches, was nearly twice as wide, and rang in at an amazing 250 pounds of solid muscle. Not bad for a guy in his early fifties. He had intense green eyes and his head was completely shaved. Despite his size and his reputation as an absolutely ruthless, no-holds-barred fighter in the ring, Tim Finney was a happy-go-lucky guy. And he had a lot to be happy about.

  Nobody rode for free in the Finney family. Old man Finney, the family patriarch, was a tough SOB, and all of his kids had paid their own way through college. Tim had done it by bouncing at a string of nightclubs in Los Angeles, before his talents as a fighter were recognized and a private coach took him under his wing and steered Finney to the Pacific Division Championship of Shoot Fighting, the sport that would go on to give birth to the popular Ultimate Fighting series.

  Tim Finney always had his eyes on the next mountain he wanted to climb, and if the mountain proved too difficult, he had a backup plan and another way of tackling it. He was the consummate, always-prepared Boy Scout.

  He had worked in the family hotel business for several years and then set out to conquer another dream—establishing his own exclusive five-star resort nestled on more than five hundred extremely private acres in Colorado’s San Juan mountains a half hour outside Telluride. But his dream didn’t end there.

  At the resort, Finney created a cutting-edge tactical training facility like no other in the world. It was called Valhalla, after the warrior heaven of Norse mythology.

  Finney brought in the best set, sound, and lighting designers from Hollywood to create the most realistic threat scenario mock-ups ever seen. And then he did something extremely revolutionary; he opened it up not only to high-end military and law enforcement units, but also to civilians. He even advertised in the Robb Report, and that advertising, as well as the incredible word of mouth from his customers, had paid off, big time. His closely guarded guest registry read like a Who’s Who of corporate America, and of the sports and entertainment worlds to boot.

  The success allowed Finney to take Valhalla to a completely different level—a level that was only whispered about in the most secure conference rooms of places like the Central Intelligence Agency, the Delta Force compound at Fort Bragg, and many off-the-books, black ops intelligence units throughout northern Virginia and places farther afield.

  Those in the know referred to Valhalla’s spin-off as the dark side of the moon. Hidden well beyond the boundaries of Elk Mountain and Valhalla proper, the spin-off was benignly referred to as Site Six.

  It had been called Hogan’s Alley on crack—a reference to the FBI’s mock town at their training academy in Quantico where they staged everything from bank robberies to high-stakes hostage standoffs.

  Finney kept a small army of carpenters and engineers on staff around the clock year-round. Many of them were ex-Hollywood people looking to get out of show business and put their skills to use somewhere else. The legend was that if you could get Tim Finney satellite imagery of your target, he could have a working mock-up built to train on within forty-eight hours, fourteen if time was absolutely crucial and nobody cared about wet paint.

  In a low valley secluded by mountains on all sides, Finney’s Site Six team had replicated everything from Iraqi villages to foreign airports, embassies, and terrorist training camps. The detail and scope were limited only by a client’s budget and depth of intelligence regarding the target. And to Finney’s credit, he never allowed budget to dictate the training experience his client’s people would gain at Site Six. Finney was a true patriot and did everything in his power to make sure American military and intelligence personnel had the most detailed and realistic training experiences possible before they went to take down the real thing.

  At the end of the day, Finney wasn’t in business to make more money. He already had plenty of it. He was in business to make sure his clients—whether they be guests at his Elk Mountain Resort, shooters who came to sharpen their skills at his Valhalla Training Facility, or real-life warriors who came to practice taking down mocked-up targets at Site Six before going overseas to do the real thing—got the best experience possible.

  It was in that last capacity that Harvath had come to be acquainted with Timothy Finney and Valhalla’s Site Six.

  Based on a series of aerial photographs taken by a Predator drone aircraft, as well as some covert video shot from the ground, Finney and his team had mocked up a chemical weapons facility in Afghanistan that Harvath had been put in charge of taking out.

  Every single member of Harvath’s team credited the training they engaged in at Valhalla and Site Six as having given them the edge that allowed their mission to be successful.

  That training, along with Finney’s irreverent sense of humor, had cemented a friendship between them that had garnered Harvath not only a standing invitation to join the Valhalla/Site Six instructor team, but also a standing invitation to stay at the resort if he ever needed to get away from D.C. and his life as an overworked counterterrorism operative for the U.S. government.

  Though Harvath probably could have used a five-star vacation right now, that was not the reason he was standing on the sidewalk outside the Montrose, Colorado, airport. He was here because in Timothy Finney’s never-ending quest to create more thorough experiences for the warriors who trained at Valhalla and Site Six, he’d recently developed an entirely new program that was once again making him the talk of the American intelligence community.

  CHAPTER 10

  As he drove, Finney reached behind his seat, pulled a cold beer from a cooler in back, and offered it to his guest.

  Harvath shook his head no.

  “I guess I’ll cancel the dancing girls too, then,” said Finney as he put the beer back.

  Harvath didn’t respond. His mind was a million miles away as he pulled his BlackBerry from its holster and checked it again for messages. He’d given Tracy’s father and her nurses his number in case anything changed. He’d also explained to Bill Hastings, as best he could, why he had to leave.

  Remembering that cell phone reception at the resort was notoriously spotty, Harvath was wondering if he should have given them that number too when Finney asked, “Do you want to eat when we get in, or do you want to get right down to business?”

  “Let�
�s eat after,” said Harvath as he tucked his BlackBerry away. “Then nobody will have to stay late on my account.”

  Finney chuckled. His laugh, like his voice, was in keeping with the rest of his massive stature—a rich basso profundo. “We work the Sargasso staff in three shifts around the clock.”

  “Business is that good, huh?”

  Finney laughed again. “I keep saying heaven forbid peace should break out any time soon.”

  “Don’t worry,” Harvath replied as he stared at the reflection of himself cast against the passenger window and the ever-darkening sky. “It won’t.”

  They made small talk the rest of the way to the resort. Finney knew Harvath well enough to know that if he wanted to talk about what had happened to Tracy he’d be the one to bring it up.

  Harvath didn’t, so they talked about everything else but.

  Approaching the main gates for Elk Mountain, Finney radioed ahead to the guardhouse that he was coming in “plus one.”

  Though the guards knew their boss and his vehicle by sight, they still stopped the Hummer, recorded its arrival, checked it over thoroughly, and then waved it on through. Harvath had always been impressed with the level of security at Elk Mountain.

  At the main lodge, Finney stopped to pick up his director of operations, Ron Parker. He was a lean man with a goatee, in his late thirties, who stood about five-foot-ten.

  Climbing into the backseat, Parker removed a Coors from the cooler, reached around, and punched Harvath in the left arm. “Good to see you,” he said.

  Looking up, he could see Finney’s raised eyebrows in the rearview mirror. “What?” he asked.

  “Do you think that behavior is appropriate?” replied Finney.

  Parker leaned between the front seats as he popped the top from his beer and asked, “It’s your other shoulder that got messed up, right?”

  Harvath nodded. “My left’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

  Parker smiled, sat back, and took a long pull from his beer.

  “You know that’s not what I’m talking about,” replied Finney. “Right?”

  “Listen,” said Parker, “as of ten minutes ago I’m off-duty. And what I do on my personal time is my business.”

  “Then you’re fired. I’ll have the pink slip on your desk in the morning.”

  Parker took another swig of beer. “Super, I’ll place it on the spike with all the rest of them.”

  Both Finney and Parker were notorious for their professionalism, but as Harvath had gotten to know them he realized that they made an important distinction. They took their careers and what they did at Elk Mountain very seriously, but they never took themselves too seriously, especially when in the quiet company of good friends.

  Finney looked over and saw Harvath smile. “It’s good to have you back.”

  “Not much has changed, has it?” said Harvath.

  Finney thrust his beefy hand into the backseat and motioned to Parker to hand him a beer. “We doubled all the locks on the wine cellar after your last visit, but other than that, no.”

  Parker and Finney limited themselves to one beer each. Finney had his finished in two swallows, just as they arrived at yet another checkpoint. This time, they were all required to present photo identification. The guards were dressed in Blackhawk tactical gear, like the ones at the main gate, but in addition, these guards had been issued body armor and were openly carrying weapons.

  Harvath knew that the men at the front gate were also strapped; they just kept their iron out of sight. Here, though, Finney’s people were making a very clear show of force. Two men carried H&K 416s, while a third held a highly modified Benelli twelve-gauge and never once took his eyes off the passengers in the Hummer. Harvath had no idea where Finney was getting his guards, but he seemed to be doing a damn good job.

  As they pulled away from the checkpoint and drove toward the Sargasso facility, Harvath asked, “Ex SWAT?”

  “Special Forces, actually,” replied Parker.

  Harvath laughed dismissively. “C’mon.”

  “He’s one hundred percent serious,” said Finney.

  “Doing guard duty?”

  “Guard duty is only one of the things they do here,” answered Parker. “They’re on a rotation, so it’s a shift everyone has to pull each month.”

  “I know what those guys make in the private sector. You’ve got some very expensive gatekeepers.”

  Finney smiled. “And worth every penny of it.”

  “But make no mistake,” added Parker. “They’ve got it pretty good here. We’ve got an excellent bonus and compensation package that far outpaces what these guys would be pulling in anywhere else.”

  Harvath looked at Finney, who added, “We don’t even advertise for them anymore. They come to us.”

  The SUV came to a stop in front of the poorly lit entrance of what looked like an old mineshaft.

  Harvath was about to ask where they were when he saw a faded sign hanging over the opening that proclaimed Sargasso Mining Company. He was looking at the understated entrance to Finney’s hot new intelligence venture.

  CHAPTER 11

  One hundred feet down the sloping tunnel that led into the Sargasso shaft, Harvath half-expected a tour guide with an authentic miner’s headlamp or a bearded, dust-covered, suspender-wearing actor to appear and regale them with stories of the Old Lucky Seven Mine. At 101 feet, Harvath’s attitude changed.

  He had to give Tim Finney credit. They weren’t greeted by a stainless-steel, pneumatically sealed, hi-tech, James Bond–style door. Instead, it was a door composed of five aged wooden planks with splintered crosspieces that looked ready to fall off its hinges.

  A rather unremarkable sign was nailed to it that stated Danger. Keep Out.

  Finney produced a set of keys and unlocked a rusted padlock that kept a heavy iron chain in place across the door. He continued to lead down a wide, rough-hewn passageway. The trio followed a set of tracks that Harvath figured must have once been used to haul supplies in and gold out.

  The large tunnel continued sloping gently downward. After another hundred feet the tunnel widened and a series of lights could be seen up ahead.

  When they got there they were greeted by another brace of guards. Though they looked just as serious as the last set of guards, these men simply waved them along.

  “They get a couple hundred feet below ground and your guys start to slack off, don’t they?” Harvath joked.

  Finney and Parker both smiled. “You have no idea how many passive security checks you have gone through on the way down here,” said Parker. “Not only have your body temperature and heart rate been monitored since entering the mine, but we know if you’re carrying any sort of weapon, explosives, powders, liquids, or gels on your person as well.”

  “Everything except whether I’m wearing boxers or briefs,” stated Harvath.

  “We’ve got that too,” replied Finney as he pretended to consult the earpiece attached to his radio. “Apparently, it’s a blue thong with the words Go Navy embroidered in sequins.”

  Harvath grinned and gave him the finger. They kept walking until they arrived at a miners-style elevator. Finney raised the grate and they all stepped inside. Removing a keycard from his pocket, Finney swept it through a magnetic reader and then presented his right thumb and pupil for biometric verification. Once he had been approved, the elevator began to descend.

  It came to a stop at the bottom of the shaft, where they were met by a low-exhaust Dodge Ram pickup specifically designed for subterranean driving.

  As the truck’s driver took them deeper into the mine, Finney explained the purpose of the Sargasso program. “We’ve had teams visit us from Fort Bragg, Camp Perry with the CIA, as well as Fort Story with the SEALs, and they all love the training here, but at the end of the day, no matter how good their people are, their success or failure comes down to one critical component—intelligence.

  “That gave me an idea, and I started making a few phone calls to peo
ple I know back east. We hear a lot about the high attrition rates in the special operations community as operators leave the armed forces and go to work for groups like Blackwater or Triple Canopy where they can make a hell of a lot more money. What you don’t hear about are the attrition rates in the intelligence community.

  “I never had any desire to run a private military company, per se. But a private intelligence company, now that’s something completely different, and it seemed to dovetail well with what we were already doing here.”

  Harvath held on to the headrest in front of him as they hit a series of potholes. Once the surface had smoothed out, he asked, “I understand how Valhalla and Site Six make money for you, but how do you make money with your own intelligence company?”

  “We do it in two ways,” replied Finney. “First, I don’t have to focus on the entire world. I focus solely on the sweet spots where the most action is happening. All the terrorism and terrorist-related intelligence that we gather and analyze is from areas where the U.S. government is backlogged and overloaded.

  “Second, there’s no congressional oversight of what we do. We have a lot more latitude in our operations. There are agencies willing to pay a lot of money for us to gather intel for them. As far as our ops tempo is concerned, we’re double the volume of where Ron and I projected we’d be by this time. We can’t get guys out of the CIA, NSA, FBI, and the like fast enough to come work here.”

  Harvath shook his head. Finney was amazing.

  The truck came to a stop before a final checkpoint in front of what looked like a pair of heavy blast doors. Once they had been waved through, Finney led the way into the heart of the Sargasso Program’s Operations Center.

  It wasn’t at all what Harvath had expected. The minute they stepped inside, they left the feeling of being in a mine hundreds of feet beneath the surface behind them. If Harvath hadn’t known better, he would have sworn he was in some cutting-edge development think tank on the Microsoft campus.