by Brad Thor
“I agree. That’s why I’d rather follow him and see where he leads us.”
“Understood,” Chase replied as he tried the action on Harvath’s Remington. “How long are we going to let him walk around before we grab him?”
It was a difficult question. Time was a double-edged sword. The longer they followed Deng, the more they might learn from him. The flip side was that the longer they followed him, the greater their odds of losing him. The biggest factor, though, was that every minute that they weren’t interrogating Deng was one minute the terrorists were closer to pulling off their attack. Usually, as the clock was winding down, you wanted to score as soon as you could. Putting up some Hail Mary right at the buzzer wasn’t an act of professionalism; it was an act of desperation. Sometimes, though, a Hail Mary was all you had.
Harvath didn’t intend to let it come to that. “We’re going to watch him for as long as we can. I’ll let you know when it’s time to roll him up.”
That answer seemed to satisfy Chase and the team went back to checking the equipment before restowing it in the load-out bag.
Because Sloane and Chase hadn’t had to share a plane back home with a pissy ambassador, they had slept a lot better than Harvath. Despite a little bit of jet lag, they announced they were ready to hit the ground running.
When the Longitude touched down, it taxied to the general aviation area of Nashville International and a local Signature Flight Support FBO. An impressive array of high-end jets was lined up outside. Nashville hosted a lot more than just country music. The city was booming in high tech, biotech, health care, publishing, and finance. Harvath knew more than a few Tier 1 military operators, as well as intel people, who had purchased homes and land in the Volunteer State.
Inside the Signature building, an envelope had been left at the desk under one of Harvath’s aliases. Opening it, he found a set of keys for a blue Ford Taurus sedan parked outside.
The team exited the building and Harvath popped the trunk. Inside were all the items he had requested. Pulling out his phone, he texted the Old Man that they had landed and that everything was a go.
Next, he called the FBI agent whose card had been left in the envelope. Special Agent Dennis Urda had been designated the team’s local liaison.
While the FBI’s main Tennessee field office was in Memphis, it operated satellite offices, referred to as “resident agencies,” in other cities, such as Clarksville, Cookeville, Columbia, and Nashville.
Urda was the number-two agent in the Nashville office, and he answered his phone on the second ring. “Special Agent Urda.” He spoke with a slight New York accent.
“Agent Urda, this is Scot Harvath.”
“Did you find the car?”
“Yes. We just arrived at the airport. Thank you. Can you give me a situation report?”
The Residence Inn by Marriott in Cool Springs was situated in a mixed-use office park. In addition to high-rise office buildings, there were single-story buildings that housed retail businesses, including bars, restaurants, and a yoga studio.
When Harvath had insisted the FBI pull back their surveillance, he had agreed that they could covertly set up in any of the office buildings, but he didn’t want them in the parking lot or the hotel itself. He had also insisted that none of the agents move around the area on foot. Experienced operatives could smell law enforcement from a mile away. Unfortunately, pulling back had limited what the FBI could see, especially at night.
“Lots of what we would consider normal hotel traffic,” said Urda. “No obvious signs of our guy.”
“What about his room?”
“The TV is on, the Do Not Disturb is still on the door, and the drapes are still pulled.”
“Okay,” Harvath replied. “You’ve got my cell number. Call me if anything changes. We’re headed your way now.”
Urda agreed to call Harvath if anything changed and they ended their call.
Turning to Sloane and Chase, Harvath said, “No matter what happens, we absolutely take this guy alive. Understood?”
His two operatives nodded and Harvath signaled for everyone to get in the car. As they did, a sense of foreboding swept over him. He silently hoped that they had made the right decision by coming to Nashville.
CHAPTER 34
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* * *
NORTH KOREA
Jimi Fordyce looked Billy Tang square in the face and said, “Are you crazy? Not only no, but hell no. There’s no way I’m authorizing that.”
“What if I told you I wasn’t asking for your authorization?”
“You’re going to get us all fucking killed,” Johnson stated.
Fordyce held up his hand to calm his teammate down and kept his attention focused on Tang. “I’m not letting you jeopardize this mission, Billy. The answer’s no.”
“But what if his sister does know something?” said Tang.
“What if she doesn’t?”
“Then we’ll know for sure. Isn’t that better than wondering what if?”
“Completing our mission is what’s better, period.”
Tang looked at him. “And our mission was to gather as much intel as possible. This is possible.”
“No,” Johnson said. “It’s insane.”
Fordyce waved him off again. “If you go down there and you get caught, you’re going to bring an army down on us. I won’t have that.”
“The key word here is if I get caught. They’re not going to catch me. Do you know how many times I have snuck in and out of the DPRK?”
“I don’t know if you have a huge set of balls, or you really are just crazy, but you’re talking about fences, armed guards, and prisoners who are conditioned to snitch. You know damn well if they see a strange face, they’re going to find the nearest guard and raise the alarm in the hope of getting an extra half-ration of cabbage soup.”
Tang shook his head. “It’s a labor camp. Those people are being worked to death. You think they sit up all night playing Mah-Jongg? By the time I slip in there, they’ll all be asleep.”
“Except for the guards,” Fordyce replied.
“You saw the map Jin-Sang drew. The part of the fence he sneaks through is less than a hundred meters from the infirmary. He says the guards don’t patrol that area as often.”
“And ‘the check is in the mail’ and ‘I’ll still respect you in the morning,’ ” Johnson snarked.
Tang ignored him. “If it’s too hairy, I’ll pull the plug. Believe me, I have no desire to spend the rest of my life in a place like that.”
“No,” Fordyce repeated.
“Damn it, Jimi. That girl may hold the key to unlocking the entire thing. When conditions on the ground change, the op parameters have to change.”
“We get in, we get what we can, and we get out. Those are our parameters. Nothing has changed.”
“If I got up right now,” said Tang, “and began to walk down into that valley, what would you do? Shoot me?”
“No,” Fordyce replied. “Tuck would.”
Looking up from his rifle, Tucker smiled.
“And then I’d shoot you again,” said Johnson. “Just to make sure.”
“Bullshit. I don’t think any of you would shoot me.”
Johnson shouldered his rifle. “Let’s find out. Start walking.”
“Nobody’s walking and nobody’s shooting,” Fordyce ordered. “At 2100, just as planned, we ruck up and retreat back over that ridgeline. We work our way down the other side, meet up with our ride, and head back to the coast.”
Tang looked over at Jin-Sang. “What about him?”
“We’re going to feed him one last time before we go, give him some pain meds, and then gag him and tie him up. I’ve got a signal mirror in my kit. We’ll tape it to him. By the time there’s enough sun in the valley, we’ll be long gone.”
“They’ll torture every last piece of information out of him.”
“Which is why you’re going to ask him some questions about the terrain
northwest of here and if there are any rail lines. Make them think that’s the direction we’re going.”
“You don’t think they’ll double their coastal patrols and put everything they have in the air?” Tang asked. “They’ll look northwest, all right, but they’ll look in every other direction, too. Talk about kicking the hornets’ nest.”
“What are we supposed to do?” Johnson asked. “We know this kid. We know his whole life story. Now you want to kill him?”
“No, I don’t want to kill him,” Tang asserted. “We can bring him with us.”
“You are fucking crazy.”
“Why? If we can get him to the rally point and into the truck, Hyun Su can get him into South Korea. There are special organizations there that will take him in.”
Fordyce shook his head. “One minute you want to sneak into a DPRK labor camp, the next you want to carry a kid with a tib/fib over a mountain.”
“Wrong. I want you to carry him over the mountain,” said Tang. “I still plan on talking to his sister.”
“Tuck should have shot you last night when he had the chance,” said Johnson.
“Enough,” ordered Fordyce. Looking at Tang, he said, “Billy, we’re not taking this kid and you’re not going to talk to his sister. I can’t be clearer than that. Start packing up your shit. That’s an order.”
“You can’t leave him here,” said Tang.
“Watch me.”
“Jimi, they’ll torture him and they may even decide to make an example out of him for sneaking out of the camp. They could execute him.”
“He should have thought about that before he snuck out.”
“Look at him,” Tang insisted. “He’s a fucking kid and he’s starving. What would you do?”
“It’s not my fight,” Fordyce replied.
“Not your fight? You’re a Navy SEAL, for Christ’s sake. You’re a good man. All three of you are. I know that. I also know that we’re different than the North Koreans. Life means something to us. Freedom means something to us. We can save this boy. We have to save him. And as far as his sister is concerned, if she has even one piece of intel that can help protect our country, I’m willing to do what it takes to get it.”
Fordyce began to interrupt, but Tang motioned to be allowed to finish. Fordyce allowed him to speak.
“I have enough red herrings, fake backstories, and outright deceptions planned that if I got captured, and that’s a big if, I could keep the North Koreans chasing their tails for months. By the time they untangled everything and figured out that I was American and not South Korean, you’d all be long gone,” said Tang. “I wouldn’t compromise this operation.”
“Not at first,” replied Fordyce. “But they’d torture you, too, and eventually, you’d tell them everything.”
“Of course. No one can hold out forever.”
Lieutenant Jimi Fordyce looked long and hard at both of his SEALs, but he didn’t need to ask Johnson or Tucker what they thought. They were his brothers. He could read their minds.
Looking back at Tang he said, “I’d better not regret this. Okay, let’s map out how we’re going to make it happen.”
CHAPTER 35
* * *
* * *
BEIJING, CHINA
Colonel Shi studied the report on his screen. He was not happy with what Cheng had discovered in Nashville.
Ren Ho had personally approved each of the Somalis for the operation. He should have been able to anticipate that Wazir Ibrahim would be a problem. Cheng had done the right thing by eliminating him. Ibrahim was a disaster waiting to happen. On the other hand, Mirsab, the engineering student who had been paired with him, was a different problem.
One of the greatest difficulties of dealing with educated people was that they made educated guesses. It had been assumed that the engineering students would ask questions, and Ho, posing as their handler, “Henry Lee,” had been instructed what to tell them.
The devices they would be assembling had been smuggled into the United States in pieces. In their training, they had been given a wiring diagram, several innocuous components, and a battery. There was no way that they could figure out what they were being asked to build. When the students did ask what it was, Ho delivered his prepared response.
Because of all the secrecy, the students naturally assumed they were participating in something illegal. They each came from a very poor family and the money being sent home was more than they would earn in a lifetime. That alone should have cut off any questions, but the Second Department had wanted the engineers to be told what to think, rather than trying to figure things out on their own.
What Ho had conveyed was that they were creating a “temporary Internet” that would act like a network of nationwide cell towers. With it, a series of incursions into corporate computer systems would be conducted and never be traced. The fact that the targets were corporations, the item to be stolen was data, and that the network was untraceable had satisfied all of the students. All, it appeared, except for one.
When it came time to practice launching the attack, Ho provided dummy containers for the devices and stressed the importance that they all launch at the same time. If they didn’t, he warned that the network would not be fully functional, and their plan would collapse. That’s why the students had been issued partners. The Somali men were there not only as an extra set of hands to help transport and assemble the equipment, but also to handle any problems that might arise en route to or during the launch.
Once their task was complete they would all rendezvous with Ho in Boise, receive their final payments, and be provided with routes to return home.
It was a solid, plausible explanation, but somehow their Nashville student, Mirsab, had discovered the real purpose of the devices. What Shi put down to an educated guess may have been just that, or it may have just been wildly lucky. Either way, the colonel wanted to know how Mirsab had arrived at his conclusion and, more important, if he had shared it with anyone. It was bad enough he had shared it with Wazir Ibrahim, but if he had been foolish enough to reveal it to the other engineering students or, heaven forbid, someone outside the operation, drastic measures would need to be taken.
Based on the seriousness of Cheng’s report, Shi had some difficult decisions to make.
As he pored over maps of the United States, as well as the most recent weather reports, he transmitted a message to the PLA’s hacking unit in Shanghai with instructions. They were already standing by and he wanted to make sure they had the latest information, as well as his precise instructions. It was important that every participant be on the same page.
The biggest question plaguing Shi was, Was Nashville salvageable? What they were planning had never been done before. Like the mythical Snow Dragon itself, the attack was designed to stretch from tip to tail across the United States. The efforts of each cell were designed to overlap, and they had run contingency scenarios to account for losing up to half of the cells, but no one knew for sure how successful the attack would be if even one of the cells was taken offline. If the dragon was incomplete, would its fire still burn as hot?
There was, of course, no way to know for sure. They were in the realm of the hypothetical. Formulas, diagrams, charts, and assumptions were of no use now. Their time had passed. Shi had made a command decision and Tai Cheng had been given his orders. At this point, all Colonel Jiang Shi could do was wait. It was all in Cheng’s hands now.
CHAPTER 36
* * *
* * *
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
Cheng sat outside and watched. He had no idea who Mirsab was fraternizing with in his apartment. The engineering student had been instructed to keep to himself and mind his own business. It was apparent, though, that he had ignored those orders. It made Cheng wonder what other orders Mirsab had chosen to ignore. Cheng had no choice but to sit and wait until Mirsab’s guests had departed.
When the procession of four men filed out an hour later, Cheng stayed where he was
until they had driven away. Then, he got out of his vehicle and entered the building.
The hallway smelled heavily of mildew and the carpeting was stained. He approached Mirsab’s door and knocked.
Thinking one of his guests must have left something behind, the man opened his door with a smile while saying something in Arabic. Then he saw Cheng.
“May I help you?” he asked, switching to English.
“Henry Lee sent me,” Cheng replied.
The look on Mirsab’s face went from carefree to concerned in a fraction of a second. Slowly, he stepped back and said, “Come in.”
As Cheng entered, he swept the room with his eyes. It was spartanly furnished and what furnishings there were looked as if they had been there for decades.
Mirsab kept a clean home. There were no dishes in the sink or on the counter in the small, open kitchen. It didn’t smell of garbage or spoiled food. In fact, it smelled much better than the hall.
In terms of personal effects, there weren’t many Cheng could see. There were some Arabic-language magazines on the coffee table, along with a laptop and a Qur’an. A prayer rug had been rolled up and tucked away in the corner of the living room.
“Who were those men?” Cheng asked.
“What men?”
“The men who just left. The ones you thought had come back when you answered your door in Arabic.”
Mirsab cast his eyes toward the floor. “I met them at a mosque. I am part of their prayer group.”
Cheng snapped his fingers to get the engineering student to look him in the eyes. “You are not being paid to go to a mosque and there is only one group you are allowed to belong to. That’s our group. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sit down,” Cheng said, pointing at the small dining table. When Mirsab was seated, Cheng took the chair across from him and set his briefcase under the table.