Act of War

by Brad Thor

  In the ultimate twist, Ambassador Conrad’s fold-out bed was right next to the main lavatory. Every time his assistant or one of his security team passed by to go to the bathroom, it woke him up and Conrad shot them angry looks.

  Harvath had no idea if the man thought he deserved to have the bathroom all to himself and everyone else should use the crew lav up front, or if he just resented people traipsing through “his space.” He figured it was probably a little bit of both and took a perverse pleasure in seeing the ambassador being awakened each time nature called.

  Listening to how he talked to his people, Harvath could see the guy was a bully. He had always hated bullies. He was glad he didn’t have to work for the ambassador.

  Conrad, though, didn’t seem to realize or care that Harvath didn’t work for him. When Harvath got up to use the restroom, the ambassador stopped him and proceeded to dress him down. “You’re a pretty smug guy, aren’t you?”

  “Excuse me, sir?” Harvath replied.

  “You heard me,” the ambassador snapped. “You’re a pretty smug SOB, aren’t you? Who do you think you are?”

  Harvath didn’t care for the man’s tone, but he kept his temper in check. “Mr. Ambassador,” he said politely, “if you prefer I use the forward crew lav, I don’t think they’ll mind.”

  “If you prefer I use the forward crew lav,” the man mocked. “This isn’t about the fucking lavatory. This is about you coming into my country and operating completely unauthorized.”

  “I wasn’t aware that the UAE was your country, or that you were the only one allowed to authorize operations there.”

  “Don’t get cute with me. You know what I’m talking about. You violated protocol.”

  Protocol. Harvath shook his head. “I’m just catching a ride back to the States, Mr. Ambassador. That’s all.”

  “Bullshit,” Conrad spat. “I want to know what you’ve been up to.”

  “Shopping, sir.”

  “Shopping, my ass. You think I don’t know people? You think I can’t make your piece-of-shit life difficult?”

  “I am sure you could, sir,” Harvath replied.

  “Who are you to have me dragged out of bed in the middle of the night?” he demanded.

  As he moved to the side a bit, Harvath noticed the drink caddy next to his bed. Someone had been getting into the bourbon.

  “I’m no one, Mr. Ambassador,” Harvath said as he proceeded to the lavatory.

  As he reached for the knob, the ambassador grabbed his wrist. Bad move.

  “I want some straight answers,” Conrad ordered. “Do you understand me?”

  Harvath’s eyes flicked to the nearest member of the ambassador’s security team. The man was pretending to be asleep, but he was watching the whole thing. Harvath shook his head as if to say stay out of this. The man acknowledged by rolling over in his seat to face the window.

  In a flash, Harvath had slipped the ambassador’s boozy grasp and now had him in a wristlock. Applying pressure, Harvath sat down on the edge of the bed and looked him square in the eye.

  The ambassador grimaced in pain.

  “Let me make one thing perfectly clear,” said Harvath. “I don’t work for you. If I show up in your country unannounced, it’s because someone a lot more important than you is very worried about something. Does that make sense?”

  Conrad was about to sneer at him until Harvath applied more pressure to the man’s wrist. The ambassador started nodding like his head was on a spring. “It does. It does,” he repeated.

  Harvath eased up on the pressure. “Now, I know you’ve already been told this, but I’m going to repeat it. What I was doing in the UAE is none of your business. Do you understand that?”

  The ambassador glared at him until Harvath made ready to press his wrist again.

  “I understand,” said Conrad. “Totally.”

  “Good,” Harvath replied. “One more thing. You are an insult to the people you are supposed to be leading. In fact, you’re an insult to anyone who has ever chosen a career of service to the United States. There are a lot of people out there risking a hell of a lot more than you to keep our country safe. When you insult the people working for you, you’re insulting all of us.

  “We do what we do because we believe in something outside ourselves; something bigger. If you’re lucky enough to stay in the Foreign Service, and you ever get asked again to help a fellow American, your only answer is going to be yes. Do you understand me? Because that’s your fucking job. Not throwing parties, not riding camels, not rubbing elbows with oil-soaked sheiks just so you have some cool pictures to show off. Your job is about serving the nation, our nation. Got it?”

  Harvath cranked down on his wrist to drive the point home and the ambassador nodded even faster as tears formed at the corners of his eyes from the pain.

  Standing up from the bed, Harvath prepared to let go of the man’s wrist, but stopped. “By the way,” he added. “If I ever hear of you bullying any of your staff ever again, Leslie, I’m going to come find you and I’m going to tear both of your arms out of their sockets. Are we clear?”

  The man kept nodding until Harvath let go of his wrist.

  After using the lavatory, Harvath returned to his seat. When he passed by the ambassador, the man was pretending to be asleep. He didn’t look at Harvath for the rest of the flight.

  • • •

  When the G650 finally landed at Andrews Air Force Base, Harvath remained seated as the ambassador and his people deplaned. Bringing up the rear was the security agent who had pretended to be asleep while Harvath had dressed down the ambassador. He paused next to Harvath’s seat and both men locked eyes. Harvath wondered if the Diplomatic Security Service agent was going to admonish him for his less-than-professional behavior.

  Instead, the agent smiled and held out his fist. Harvath gave him a bump and the man deplaned. Nothing else needed to be said. Probably everyone at the embassy in Abu Dhabi had wanted to do what Harvath had done on this flight. Very few things are as uplifting as seeing a bully get punched in the nose.

  Once the ambassador’s team had deplaned, Lydia Ryan boarded. “Nice plane,” she said. “How was your flight?”

  “Center seat. Crying baby,” Harvath replied as he got up and started passing the bags forward. “Give me some good news. Where do we stand on everything?”

  Ryan moved aside as members of her crash team came aboard and accepted the luggage. “So far, we’re a bust on the six engineering students. We don’t have any record of them leaving the country, so we assume they’re still here. The FBI is interviewing everyone who had any contact with them via the internship program.”

  “What about the phones? They were each given one and told to turn it on when they arrived.”

  “Lots of people turn on their phones when they land, especially at a busy international airport like Houston’s. The NSA has compiled a list of all the phones turned on, in and around the airport, on that day. They’re trying to winnow it down now.”

  “So other than that,” Harvath replied, “we don’t have anything. Nothing at all.”

  Until recently, Ryan had known Harvath only by reputation. Then she had worked with him. Bureaucrats and politicians were afraid of him precisely because of the traits that made him successful. He couldn’t be put in a box and told what to do. He operated outside the box and wouldn’t stop until he had achieved whatever task had been set for him. She had zeroed in on his fear of failure almost immediately. He was one of the most driven people she had ever met.

  Ryan was about to say something when a member of the crash team poked his head back in the cabin and said, “We’re good to go.”

  Ryan thanked him and turned back to Harvath. “You did a good job. A really good job.”

  Praise normally made him uncomfortable, and he brushed it aside. “Who’s lead on everything now? Where’s the investigation being coordinated from?”

  “Your ride will fill you in.”

  “My ride?�
��

  Ryan pointed out the window at a black Chevy Suburban. “Reed is here to pick you up. I’m going back to Langley. I want to turn our geek squad loose on the laptops and hard drives right away.”

  “Will you keep me in the loop?”

  Ryan smiled. “Absolutely. In the meantime, get some rest. You look like shit.”

  Harvath smiled back and followed her out of the plane. Standing at the top of the airstairs, he watched as she descended. Her team had loaded the bags into a Sikorsky S-76 helicopter and its rotors were already churning the humid late-summer air. As soon as she had climbed inside and put her headset and seat belt on, the helo lifted off, its landing gear retracted, and the bird banked northwest for the short hop to Langley.

  Walking down the airstairs, he thought about the intel Ryan was carrying with her. Tracking down Hanjour had been a success, but he wondered whether it would be the string that would unravel the entire plot. Nothing was ever easy in their business, and no one knew that better than Reed Carlton.

  As Harvath crossed the tarmac to the black SUV, he hoped the Old Man would have good news for him.

  CHAPTER 24

  * * *

  * * *

  VIRGINIA

  Well aware that his protégé would be wiped out from the long flight, Carlton had stopped and picked up coffee—black with two shots of espresso. He’d seen Harvath order it enough times to know that’s how he took it when he needed a lift. As they drove off the base, he handed it to him.

  “I’ve heard Ambassador Conrad is a real piece of work,” he said.

  Harvath peeled the lid off his cup and blew on the surface of his coffee. “He’s a real piece of something.”

  The Old Man chuckled. “Well, you’ll be happy to know that he isn’t headed straight to the Four Seasons.”

  “No?”

  “No. He’s been ordered to Foggy Bottom. Whatever ass-chewing he got over the phone in Abu Dhabi, the Sec State wants to repeat in person.”

  Harvath took a sip of coffee before replying. “I think the Sec State is going to find the ambassador has a much improved attitude.”

  Carlton took his eyes off the road for a moment to look at him. “Why? What’d you do?”

  “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

  The Old Man doubted that, but he let it go. There were more important things to discuss. He needed to debrief Harvath and be walked all the way through the Karachi and Dubai operations.

  For his part, Harvath wanted to know what they were going to do next. He was exhausted. He didn’t want to rehash Karachi and Dubai, not now. Besides, the Old Man would expect written reports on everything anyway.

  Nevertheless, Harvath understood this was how things worked. If they didn’t do it while it was fresh in his mind, they might miss something. So as they drove, Harvath provided the Old Man with an extensive accounting of everything that had happened.

  They discussed what had gone wrong and what had gone right. Occasionally, Carlton injected some Monday morning quarterbacking about how Harvath could have done things differently. The goal was to make him a better operative and Harvath understood that, but it didn’t mean he agreed with everything the Old Man said. It had been a long time since Carlton had been in the field.

  At the end of the day, Harvath had gotten the jobs done in Karachi and Dubai. That’s all that mattered. He wasn’t in the mood for advice on how he could make improvements. Right now, what he wanted to focus on was how to move forward.

  Mercifully, they had just turned onto his road and were nearing his house. Not that the Old Man would have let him change the subject just because they had arrived at their destination. He and Harvath had a lot in common—neither of them stopped until he had everything he wanted.

  Harvath saw the entrance to his driveway up ahead. Normally when he returned home, he was happy to be back. It meant that whatever job he had gone off to do was completed and he could relax. Those times when he couldn’t relax, when he had seen terrible things he couldn’t get out of his mind, he would engage in what he referred to as “Potomac therapy.”

  Grabbing a six-pack, or sometimes something stronger, he would head down to his dock. Watching the boats pass by, he would drink until whatever was bothering him no longer bothered him. Once it was locked in an iron box and shoved into the darkest corner of his mind, he would reengage the civilized world, ready for the next challenge its uncivilized inhabitants were preparing to throw at him.

  Today, though, felt different. He’d been successful, but the task was far from over. Worse still, he had no idea what, if any, role he was going to have going forward. His trip had technically been a success, but it felt a lot like failure. There had to be more he could do.

  As they rolled up to the gate, Carlton fished out his set of keys from his pocket and handed them to Harvath. The Old Man was one of the few people Harvath trusted with keys to his property.

  Hopping out of the air-conditioned Suburban, Harvath was greeted with all of the sights, sounds, and smells that he associated with being home.

  Home was a small, renovated eighteenth-century stone church known as Bishop’s Gate. It stood on several acres of land overlooking the Potomac River, just south of George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate, and technically belonged to the United States Navy.

  The mothballed property had been contracted to Harvath on a ninety-nine-year lease for one dollar per year. It was a prior president’s way of thanking him for his service to the nation. The Secretary of the Navy had agreed, finding it fitting that the house would be occupied by a U.S. Navy SEAL.

  In typical Harvath fashion, he had been reluctant to accept such a generous gift. It didn’t matter that the President made the case that he’d be doing the Navy a favor by living in and maintaining the property. When Harvath politely refused, the President said, “Just go look at it and then make up your mind.”

  Harvath had driven out to Bishop’s Gate with anything but an open mind. There was no way he could imagine himself accepting such largess. It didn’t seem right. Then he drove up the long drive and his mind began to change. It was an incredible property.

  Despite the fact that it needed lots of work, he began to envision himself living there. When he discovered the sign with the motto of the Anglican missionaries—I go overseas to give help—he knew he was home.

  Even though this time he returned with the weight of the world on his shoulders, it still felt good to be home. Unlocking the gate, he swung it open and climbed back in the SUV.

  Carlton parked at the top of the drive and the two men went inside. After turning off the alarm, Harvath fired up the air-conditioning and led Carlton back to the kitchen.

  He opened up the windows to pull a cross breeze, and then looked to see what he had in his fridge. “Are you hungry?”

  “I ate before I picked you up.”

  “How about something to drink?”

  Carlton looked at his watch. He knew he wasn’t being offered a soft drink. “A bit early, don’t you think?”

  “I’m still on Karachi time and I’ve been dying for a beer all week.”

  “Is that all you have? Beer?”

  “Beer and debutante heroin,” said Harvath as he pulled a six-pack and a bottle of chardonnay from the fridge.

  Carlton gave him a look and asked, “When did you start drinking white wine?”

  “It’s not mine. Lara and Marco were here for a visit before I left. I’ve got juice boxes, too, if you want one.”

  The Old Man smiled. Harvath had dated some terrific women, but he really liked Lara and her little boy. It was a shame they lived all the way up in Boston. “Is that Lone Star beer?” he asked.

  Harvath nodded, grabbed one for each of them, and put everything else back in the fridge. He opened the bottles, flicked the caps into the sink, and joined Carlton at the kitchen table. “Cheers.”

  The Old Man took his beer, clinked it against Harvath’s, and returned the toast.

  Harvath took a long swallo
w. There was nothing like a cold beer on a hot day. Scratch that. There was nothing like a cold beer on a hot day when you have been overseas dreaming of nothing but.

  Carlton settled back in his chair. “I’m guessing you’ve got fifteen, maybe twenty minutes tops before you fall asleep on me. What do you want to know?”

  Finally, thought Harvath, answers. “Everything. Let’s start with who’s in charge?”

  “Our piece fell under CIA with DoD support. The Gold Dust op is DoD with CIA support. Everything in the United States is FBI and is being overseen by the Director of National Intelligence and coordinated out of the National Counter Terrorism Center.”

  “Where are they in hunting the six engineering students down?”

  “From what I understand, they haven’t reached out to state and local law enforcement because they don’t want it leaked to the press. They’re afraid that could accelerate the attack.”

  “Has anyone ID’d the mosque these guys might have attended while they were in Houston?”

  “The FBI is working on it,” said Carlton, “but they haven’t found one.”

  “Do we know how pious they actually were? Did they frequent strip clubs? Did they drink alcohol? Did they drink alcohol at a strip club and say something to one of the strippers that could be useful?”

  “Once again, that’d be the FBI. This is priority number one for them. They’ve been pulling agents from across the country and sending them down to Houston to conduct interviews.”

  “You and I both know that interviews may not be enough,” said Harvath.

  The Old Man nodded. “The President knows that, too.”

  “What’s he prepared to do?”

  “On the record? Everything that is necessary to prevent this attack from happening.”

  “And off the record?” Harvath asked.

  “Off the record, he actually means it. Which means he’s ready to use us.”

  “What about Sloane and Chase? Where are they?”

  “On their way back from Karachi,” said Carlton. “They’ll be in tonight.”