by Brad Thor
With his hold broken, Julia forced the car into gear, revved the engine, and released the brake.
Immediately, there was a deafening chorus of gunfire as the Nissan’s tires were flattened and the chassis dropped onto the rims. Now, Julia was in real trouble.
She let go of the scalpel and held up both of her hands. With two soldiers covering him, the captain extricated her from the vehicle and slammed her up against its side.
She saw a flash of skin as the back of his hand came forward and cracked into the bone of her cheek just beneath her left eye.
The force of the blow caused Julia’s vision to dim. Her knees shook and she felt she was about to lose consciousness.
The captain stepped away while his men kept her pinned against the SUV.
As Julia’s senses returned, she had the distinct impression that they were about to do something very bad. She felt certain that she was going to be raped. But these men had something much worse in mind.
The captain squatted and began slapping Sayed’s face to bring him around. It took several minutes to revive him, but when he finally came to, the captain called over additional men to pick him up. They held him until he could stand on his own and then they stepped away.
Without saying a word, the captain drew his pistol from his holster and Julia’s stomach dropped. She opened her mouth to plead for the interpreter’s life, but as she did, a soldier drove his fist into her midsection and knocked the wind from her body.
As she gasped for air, she saw the captain place his weapon against the side of Sayed’s head and watched in horror as he pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER 5
MCLEAN, VIRGINIA
WEDNESDAY (TWO DAYS LATER)
The bright spring day stood in sharp contrast to the new president’s mood. Robert Alden had suggested a walk outside as a way to allow things to cool down between himself and the woman he was with. So far, it wasn’t working.
“You and I both know,” said the president’s guest, “that the CIA is so risk-averse that even if you showed them where their asses were, they’d be afraid to grab on with both hands.”
Stephanie Gallo was perhaps one of the biggest reasons forty-eight-year-old Robert Alden now occupied the highest office in the world. Gallo had not only helped orchestrate the Alden campaign for president and been one of its biggest donors and best fund-raisers, she had delivered the mainstream media to him on a silver platter.
She was an entertainment titan who, upon the death of her husband in the early 1970s, had spun a “midmarket newspaper and two shitty AM radio stations” into a series of conglomerates that owned newspapers, movie studios, and television stations around the world. She was the person who had convinced Alden not only to run for president, but that he would win.
Would. It was an interesting choice of words. She had not said could win, but would win. She was that confident. And she was right. The election had been a blowout. Alden’s mild-mannered opponent never stood a chance.
To secure this incredible win, Gallo had insisted that her media strategy be at the very center of the campaign. It was the hub that everything else radiated out from. They had worked tirelessly and it had paid off with overwhelming dividends. Alden owed Gallo a tremendous debt, which made the discussion they were having that much more difficult.
“If we can’t remain calm about this, Stephanie, there’s no way we’ll be able to think clearly.”
“Remain calm?” Gallo shot back. “How calm would you be if it was your daughter those animals had kidnapped?”
If Robert Alden hadn’t already been married, he and Stephanie Gallo would have made a stunning couple. The new president was athletic and handsome. He stood six-foot-two with dark hair and hazel eyes and had a magnetic personality that drew people instantly to him.
At fifty-five, Stephanie Gallo was seven years his senior, but didn’t look a day over forty. She was an incredibly attractive woman with auburn hair, blue eyes, and a large, sumptuous mouth. She was tall, five-foot-ten when not in heels, and had a very alluring physique.
An international celebrity in her own right, Gallo competed successfully in a largely male world and made no apologies for doing it as a woman. Women around the world adored her not only for her sense of style, which retained just a hint of sex appeal, but also for her frank belief that God had blessed women with curves and that any woman who tried to exercise her body into a replica of a teen-aged boy’s was a fool.
But despite everything she had going for her, all of the notoriety, money, and power, right now she needed a man: this man. Only Robert Alden could effect her daughter’s release, and Stephanie Gallo was determined to make that happen—no matter what it took.
Alden put his hand on her shoulder. “I understand how you must feel.”
Gallo didn’t like being patronized. “Really? Then why aren’t you doing anything? We own that fucking country, for God’s sake. Agree to the terms!”
And here they were again, back at the beginning of the argument. Alden tried to explain his position once more. “Stephanie, I agree with the CIA’s assessment. These people kidnapped Julia for this very reason. They knew you would come to me and ask me to intervene.
“The terrorist imprisoned in Kabul, the one they want for Julia, is an al-Qaeda operative—a very bad one. Do you know how many high-level Afghan government officials he has helped kill? For the Afghan government, this is like capturing Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinkley, and John Wilkes Booth all at once. We can’t say that we want Afghanistan to obey the rule of law only when it serves our interests. Besides, I ran on a platform of being tough on terrorists and not repeating any of the mistakes of my predecessors.”
“Screw your platform and screw your predecessors,” snapped Gallo. “We’re talking about Julia’s life, for Christ’s sake.”
“I’m sorry, Stephanie. I—”
“What do you mean, you’re sorry? Are you telling me that we can’t convince the Afghans to give us this Mustafa Khan for twenty-four hours, forty-eight tops, so that we can get my daughter back?”
“And if we lose him?” asked Alden.
“Then flood the skies with Predators and retask all of our satellites over Afghanistan. I don’t care. I just want her back.”
“I know you do. I do too. I also care about what happens in Afghanistan. You’ve got to know that this is not easy for me.”
Gallo scowled at the president. “This is your first chance to really exercise your power, and you’re afraid to use it. That’s what I think.”
Alden could feel his blood pressure rising, and he fought to keep it under control. “I warned you both about this. Julia knew the risks when she took that job over there.”
“That doesn’t change anything.”
“Stephanie, I’ve explained to you how this works. The Afghans take the lead in kidnapping investigations within their own country—even those of American citizens. The CIA, everyone at our embassy in Kabul, and our entire military apparatus in theater are doing everything they can to get Julia back.”
“Except giving her kidnappers the one thing they’ve asked for.”
Alden shook his head sadly.
“You’re the president of the United States. You’re telling me you can’t tell the Afghans that Khan is part of a larger investigation we are running and that we need to interrogate him in our facility at Bagram? Once we trade him for Julia and get her back, we can hunt him down ourselves. If the Afghans caught Khan once, we should be able to catch him a second time with no problem.”
“First of all, the Afghans got lucky because someone tipped them off. Second, what you’re asking me to do is dishonest, and that’s not how I operate.”
Gallo stared at Alden and let the president’s statement hover between them like a lit stick of dynamite.
It didn’t take Alden long to get uncomfortable. His guest didn’t have to say a word. He knew what she was thinking. “Listen, Stephanie, we’re going to get Julia back. I promise.”
“Or what?”
Gallo’s eyes bore right into Alden’s. “Or your presidency is going to be one of the shortest in U.S. history.”
“Are you threatening me?” he asked.
“You’re damn right I’m threatening you. We’ve lost two days. It’s time for you to get her back.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then,” said Gallo, choosing her next words carefully, “the world is going to quickly find out that the new American president was not only an accessory to the deaths of four innocent people, but actively conspired to cover it up.”
* * *
Fifteen yards away, in the thick blanket of trees that bordered Stephanie Gallo’s equestrian estate, a young Secret Service agent froze dead in her tracks.
CHAPTER 6
ROCKWOOD, MAINE
THURSDAY
Scot Harvath pounded down the abandoned logging road with his enormous white Caucasian Ovcharka right by his side.
A former Navy SEAL who, until recently, had been the nation’s top counterterrorism operative, Harvath was in his late thirties, five-foot-ten, with a handsome, rugged face, sandy brown hair, and bright blue eyes.
His dog, Bullet, stood nearly forty inches at the shoulder and weighed almost two hundred pounds. Caucasian Ovcharkas, or Caucasian Sheepdogs, as their name translates to, had been the breed of choice for the Russian military and the former East German border patrol. They were exceedingly fast, fiercely loyal, and absolutely vicious when it came to guarding their territory and those closest to them. If ever a dog and its owner resembled each other, it was these two.
Harvath and his girlfriend, Tracy, had spent their winter in Maine this year. Tracy’s grandfather, a former Navy man himself, had a winterized cottage on Moosehead Lake and was glad to see it used.
The peace and quiet had agreed with both of them. The snowshoeing, skiing, hunting, and chopping wood had taken Harvath to an entirely new level of physical fitness. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt this good.
Now, spring had come early and summer appeared to be right on its heels. The snow and ice disappeared almost overnight and the temperature for two weeks straight had been downright balmy.
Harvath had been torn about the upcoming summer. On the one hand, he was excited to be getting back to work. The new president had been very aggressive with his first hundred days. Campaigning on a platform of “change,” he had done just that the minute he stepped into the Oval Office—and not necessarily for the better. Robert Alden had singlehandedly eviscerated the nation’s intelligence apparatus.
Granted, much of it, especially at the CIA, needed to be ripped out and rebuilt, but for every smart move the man made, he made two more that were downright dangerous for the nation’s security. The elimination of the top-secret program where Harvath had been working under the previous administration was a prime example.
Dubbed the “Apex Project,” it was buried in a little-known branch of DHS called the Office of International Investigative Assistance, or OIIA for short. The OIIA’s overt mission was to assist foreign police, military, and intelligence agencies in helping to prevent terrorist attacks. In that sense, Harvath’s mission was in step with the official OIIA mandate. In reality, he was a very secretive dog of war enlisted post 9/11 to be unleashed by the president upon the enemies of the United States anywhere, any time, and with anything he needed to get the job done.
His sole mandate had been to help protect Americans and American interests at home and abroad by leveling the playing field with the world’s terrorists. And since they chose not to play by any rules, Harvath wasn’t expected to either.
He took the tactics from his enemies that worked and turned those tactics right back on them. He had also invented several of his own along the way. Harvath took no pleasure in the killing he was required to do for his country, but he understood that to keep America from harm, violent men often had to be met with violence. The men Harvath killed were beyond diplomacy; beyond being reasoned with. Violence was the only language they understood.
President Robert Alden, though, was of a different mind. The winds of change had blown him into office and because of that he believed he had been given a mandate. The hawks had flown high above the American political landscape for eight years; now the doves had taken flight. The American people had spoken. That was democracy and Harvath both understood and respected it, but America wouldn’t make its enemies disappear just by putting someone new in the Oval Office. The republic would always need its sheepdogs, no matter which way the political winds blew.
Maybe Alden would get lucky and actually bring about true reform in the American intelligence community, but if what he had done so far was any indication of what was to come, things were not going to get any better any time soon.
Bureaucrats at the CIA and elsewhere were too risk-averse and too concerned with getting promoted to focus on beating America’s enemies. The men and women in the field were not getting the resources they needed, nor were they getting even halfway decent management or leadership. The nation spent billions of dollars to find solutions to intelligence problems that shouldn’t even exist. Americans slept soundly in their beds at night believing their country had countless James Bonds around the world infiltrating terrorist networks and rogue regimes in order to keep them safe and prevent the next attack. If they only knew the real truth, they’d be marching on D.C. with torches and pitchforks. How nineteen goatherds could do what they did on 9/11 to the most powerful nation on the face of the earth was still beyond Harvath. What puzzled him more was that heads had not rolled at the CIA over the attacks.
Accountability, as well as personal responsibility, had been chucked out the window of American government. It also had been abdicated by the American voter. As long as most Americans could have their McDonald’s drive-throughs, listen to their iPods, and watch American Idol, they didn’t seem to care how negligently the nation’s national security apparatus was being run.
Bread and circuses. The Romans had it right. As long as people had food and fun, they didn’t care much about the erosion of their nation.
That said, a small and growing number of Americans did care, and as their voices grew, Harvath hoped they would attract more attention to themselves and more attention to what needed to be done. Time was running out for the ineffective “business as usual” system in Washington. One day soon, the American citizenry was going to wake up. Harvath only hoped it wouldn’t take another catastrophic attack to make that happen.
For his part, Harvath was glad to have cast off the bureaucratic shackles of Washington. As of June 1, he would start a new position in the private sector with a private intelligence-gathering company. Not only would he continue to use his full skill set in the service of his country, he’d also be increasing his income several times over. It looked like the perfect win-win situation, and no matter what Harvath did, he was always about winning.
He hit the seven-mile mark on his run and clicked the button on his Kobold chronograph to halt the stopwatch. He slowed to a walk and used the bottom of his shirt to wipe the sweat from his face. When he looked down at his dog, he noticed something was wrong. The hair on Bullet’s back was standing straight up.
They were deep in moose territory and there was always the possibility of an encounter with a black bear or a bobcat, but they tended to shy away from humans, unless they had young with them and you got too close.
Harvath stopped walking and tried to discern what was bothering Bullet. As he did, the dog began growling. They were less than fifty yards from where Harvath had left his SUV, and that was the direction Bullet’s attention seemed drawn to.
Something told him he’d better get control of his dog, but when he reached for his collar, Bullet took off.
Harvath yelled for him to stop, but the dog kept going. For a fraction of a second, Harvath stood tr
ansfixed. It was like watching a lion charge across the savanna.
The beauty of the moment was short-lived. The dog was likely headed for danger, and Harvath took off after him.
He soon disappeared into the trees near where Harvath had parked his truck and began barking. It wasn’t his normal bark, and Harvath was now certain that something was very wrong.
Running at a full-out sprint, he came around a stand of trees and noticed the front door of his Trailblazer was wide open, and parked right behind the SUV, blocking it in, with its engine still running, was a blacked-out Chevy Tahoe.
Bullet stood on his hind legs with his huge front paws pressed against the Tahoe’s driver’s-side window. He was barking even louder and more angrily than before, his long, sharp teeth gnashing together.
Harvath drew the Taurus TCP .380 he jogged with and approached the Tahoe. As he got closer, he saw that it had government plates. He didn’t know what it was doing here, but he didn’t like it.
Leaving Bullet to distract whoever was inside, Harvath kept his gun out of sight and approached the passenger-side window. Sitting in front were two men of medium build with short hair and dark suits. They looked like Feds, Secret Service or maybe FBI, but that still didn’t explain what they were doing in the middle of nowhere parked behind his SUV and why one of his doors had been opened.
Harvath had always lived by the maxim have a smile for everyone you meet and a plan to kill them. It was what had kept him alive in his particularly dangerous line of work. The key was in striking the right balance between healthy suspicion and crippling paranoia; not an easy feat with the number of enemies Harvath had made over the years. Part of the appeal of Maine had been that nobody knew him here and he could relax. It was a plan that had been working right up until just a few moments ago.
Tightening his grip on his weapon, Harvath tapped the glass with his free hand and caught the men inside by surprise.
The suit in the passenger seat lowered his window, but only partway. “Jesus Christ,” he exclaimed. “Is that your dog?”