Act of War

by Brad Thor

  As Hoffman made it to the exit, he barely slowed down. Using the shoulder, he flew up the ramp, only feathered his brakes, and took a hard left into the intersection. Urda followed right behind.

  They crossed over the highway and headed toward the source of the explosion. Up ahead were multiple emergency vehicles making their way in the same direction. The sound of screaming klaxons filled the air.

  Hoffman blasted through two red lights and kept going. Suddenly, a blazing fire could be seen up ahead.

  Four squad cars were already on scene. Leaning against one of the vehicles was an injured Nashville PD officer who was pressing a bloody bandage against his head. From the looks of him, he must have been close when the blast detonated. That was the first person Harvath wanted to talk to.

  Urda pulled his car off the side of the road, just past the main entrance of the storage lot. He didn’t even have it in Park before Harvath had thrown open his door and jumped out.

  The bloody officer’s nameplate read Edmondson. “What happened?”

  The cop looked at Harvath and then over at Urda’s sedan with its flashing lights. Figuring Harvath was some sort of law enforcement, he said, “Sergeant Gerads was investigating a suspicious vehicle. When dispatch couldn’t raise him, they called for any nearby units to respond. I was about a mile away. I pulled up just as the explosion happened.”

  “What exploded?”

  “I don’t know,” the officer said.

  “Where’s Gerads?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How about the vehicle? The black Navigator he was investigating?” Harvath asked.

  “I didn’t see anything except the explosion.”

  The officer’s head, face, and upper body looked as if they had been raked with shrapnel. Behind them, fire trucks were now turning off the road and moving quickly into the lot.

  “Where were you when the explosion happened?”

  Officer Edmondson lifted his head and pointed to his patrol vehicle inside the lot. Even at this distance, Harvath could see that it had sustained some pretty serious damage. It looked like it had been hit by an IED. The man was lucky to be alive.

  As Urda approached, Harvath looked at him and said, “Get on the phone to Quantico. Tell them to scramble a forensics team and get them here as quickly as possible.”

  “Will do,” said Urda, as he pulled his cell phone from his pocket.

  Harvath walked up the drive to join Hoffman, who was standing at the keypad for the open gate. The facility resembled a trailer park that had been turned upside down and set on fire. There was furniture, personal effects, and all sorts of debris everywhere. It was going to take months to figure out what belonged to whom.

  “The Fire Department wants everyone to stay back,” the detective stated. “They don’t know what other explosive items may be stored in some of these units.”

  Over the chaos, Harvath heard the sound of rotors. Looking up, he saw a police helicopter. It was sweeping the area with its powerful Midnight Sun spotlight. Hoffman held up his handheld radio so that he and Harvath could listen. As the pilot held the helo in hover, the tactical flight officer ran the searchlight and also studied his FLIR to direct firemen to the hottest part of the fire.

  There were six rows of storage units, four of which were burning. Harvath pointed toward the business office at the edge of the sixth row and said, “Gather up as many officers as you can and meet me over there. If any of them have breaching tools, tell them to bring them.”

  “What are you doing? The fire chief said—” Hoffman began.

  “I know what the fire chief said,” Harvath replied. “Just do it.”

  Hoffman nodded and went to round up officers as Harvath ran toward the office. With every step, the temperature from the fire seemed to go up by ten degrees. By the time he reached the glass front doors, his face was flushed and the hair on his arms was beginning to singe.

  He tried the doors, but they were locked, so he looked on both sides to see if there was another way in that was open. There wasn’t. When he came back around to the front, Hoffman was there with four officers, none of whom had any breaching tools.

  Speaking to the nearest cop, Harvath said, “Give me your ASP.”

  The officer complied, and with a snap of his wrist Harvath extended the collapsible baton. Turning his head to the side, he swung hard and shattered the glass in the right front door.

  He reached inside, unlocked it, and pulling both doors wide open, kicked down their rubber-capped stops.

  Pointing at the handcarts arrayed on one wall of the lobby, he gave instructions. “I want every file cabinet out of here as quickly as possible.”

  As the cops rushed for the handcarts, Harvath said to Hoffman, “You and I will grab the computers and any DVRs they may be using to store security footage.”

  Hoffman nodded and the pair charged inside.

  Beyond the lobby with its front desk and packing supply area was the office. It was a mess. There were papers everywhere. None of the cops knew where to start. Harvath told them to take all of it. A suspicious black Navigator, a massive explosion, and a missing police officer. Deng had been here. And he had been here for a reason. Harvath wanted to know why, and he hoped that something in the paperwork would tell him.

  Despite the heat and the danger of the rapidly encroaching fire, the officers removed stacks of documents, file cabinets, and boxes filled with even more files. While Hoffman pulled out the computers and spirited them to safety, Harvath located the storage facility’s DVR.

  When everything that could be removed had been removed, Harvath took one last look inside. He sifted through desk drawers and cabinets looking for external drives, or any other items that they might have overlooked. Satisfied that he had gotten it all, he used his empty hands to carry out as many of the owners’ personal effects as possible. Despite the best efforts of the firemen, the fire was still spreading and the office wasn’t going to make it.

  Hoffman looked at the pile of everything they had managed to save. “What do you want to do with all of this?”

  What Harvath wanted to do was to stick his hand into it and pull out exactly what he was looking for, but he knew he’d have a better chance of getting hit by lightning or winning the lottery.

  Sorting through massive amounts of data, searching for patterns, wasn’t his forte. But he knew someone who was excellent at it.

  Harvath looked at his watch. “I’m going to bring in a specialist.”

  CHAPTER 41

  * * *

  * * *

  The man who stepped out of the Gulfstream G450 suffered from a condition known as Primordial Dwarfism. It was an extremely rare affliction, affecting fewer than one hundred people worldwide. What the man lacked in physical stature, though, he more than made up for in intelligence.

  He was a genius when it came to algorithms, and he was a computer hacker par excellence. His friends called him Nicholas. His enemies, which included most of the international intelligence community, referred to him as the Troll.

  Sold to a brothel by his soulless parents, he had been subjected to a monstrous upbringing. No child, much less one who wasn’t expected to reach three feet tall or live past thirty, should have to endure the inhuman cruelty he had experienced.

  But Nicholas had survived. And what’s more, he had learned to thrive. His sharp mind was his greatest asset, and he had wielded it like a scalpel. Keeping his ears open and his mouth shut, he had picked up all sorts of information from the rich and powerful men who passed through the brothel. Once he understood that it wasn’t knowledge that was power, but the application of it, his life had completely changed.

  Some called what he did blackmail. He, though, liked to think of it simply as leverage. As his power had grown, so had his bank account. He became a master at the purchase, sale, and theft of black market intelligence. Intelligence agencies hated him and the powerful feared him. He had come a long way from the brothel in Sochi along the Black
Sea.

  He had also come a long way from his cutthroat days of intelligence theft. He still plied the dark digital arts, but with his thirtieth birthday a decade behind him, he had longed for something more. A perpetual outcast his entire life, he had wanted to become part of something bigger and more important than himself. Scot Harvath had provided him with that opportunity.

  Descending the airstairs, Nicholas was accompanied by two enormous white dogs—Argos and Draco. Weighing more than two hundred pounds each, the twin beasts stood over three and a half feet tall at the shoulder. They were Caucasian sheepdogs, better known as Russian Ovcharkas, a favorite of the East German border patrol, as well as the Russian military. Fast, fiercely loyal, and ferocious when threatened, they were the perfect guardians for a man who counted among his enemies some of the most powerful and dangerous people in the world.

  The dogs were as wary as their owner. Like a pair of devout sentinels, their eyes scanned everything and everyone in the private hangar. When they lighted on Harvath, they trotted over to him and placed a head beneath each of his hands.

  As a sign of trust and affection, they leaned against him. It was like being pressed between two pickup trucks. He patted both of them until Nicholas clucked with his tongue against the roof of his mouth for them to return to him. Immediately, the dogs obeyed his command.

  Harvath took in the sight of the little man. He looked healthy. He was tan and though he had spent the summer letting his hair grow longer, his beard was still neatly trimmed. It was a sign of his virility and something he was very proud of. Sufferers of Primordial Dwarfism were not known for being able to grow beards. He had spent a small fortune attempting to beat his ailment, trying all sorts of remedies and scientific treatments. He liked to think that the facts that he had outlived his life expectancy and had managed to grow a beard were signs that he was actually winning the battle.

  Harvath had never seen Nicholas as engaged and as positive as he had been since coming to work for the Carlton Group. In addition, Nicholas now had a woman in his life. Something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to. The man had discovered the three keys to happiness. Harvath was happy for him.

  The large, private hangar the jet had taxied into had been converted into a gargantuan war room. The filing cabinets from the office were all lined up, boxes and piles of paper sat on folding tables, and desks had been brought in with power strips connected to long extension cords that ran across the floor of the hangar to various outlets.

  Nicholas’s eyes focused on all of it. Taking in a deep breath, he sighed and said, “Paper. How provincial.”

  Harvath understood. Nicholas preferred to work in the digital realm. He did, too. Even so, if there were answers in those files or on the computers, between the two of them, they would find them.

  “Are those my research assistants?” he asked, pointing to an older couple sitting in the glassed-in hangar office.

  Harvath nodded. “Mr. and Mrs. Logan. They own the self-storage company. I’ll be helping out, too.”

  The little man shook his head. “It’s going to be a long night.”

  • • •

  While Nicholas had been in flight, Harvath had interrogated the Somali cab driver. Bao Deng had indeed been his customer, there was no question about it. But other than what he had already told the police, the Somali didn’t know anything else. He was a dead end, so Harvath had decided to focus on the storage facility. Now that Nicholas had arrived, they were able to get to work.

  Where Nicholas was mathematical, Harvath was visual. Thus, they came at the problem from two different directions. Like two teams tunneling through a mountain from opposite sides, they hoped to meet in the middle and find their answer there. Mrs. Logan worked with Nicholas and her husband worked with Harvath.

  Harvath had a lot of questions, starting with the CCTV footage. According to the Logans, they used an inexpensive, wireless camera system. It came with an Internet app that allowed them to remotely check in on their facility from home. From time to time it was known to drop offline and could be fixed only by someone in the office rebooting it manually. Despite those facts, Harvath had doubted it was a coincidence that it had picked tonight to go down again.

  His next question had to do with the specific layout of the self-storage facility. Mr. Logan located an old survey of the property in one of the file cabinets, brought it over, and laid it on the table he and Harvath were using.

  Based on the blast damage, the Fire Department had approximated the general vicinity of the blast. Harvath circled that cluster of storage units as his ground zero and started there.

  “What information do you have on these?” he asked. “Twenty-six, twenty-seven, thirty-six, and thirty-seven.”

  Mr. Logan walked back to his file cabinets and began searching for the paperwork. Though he and his wife kept some things on computer, he preferred pen and paper. Every rental agreement required a signature and he had kept copies of everything.

  “Are there any unusual customers that stand out in your mind?” Harvath asked as the man conducted his search.

  “You see all sorts of people in the storage business. ‘Unusual’ is kind of a loose term.”

  “How about suspicious?”

  “We get our share of those, too,” said Logan, a pair of reading glasses perched on the end of his nose as he combed the files. “We always have to watch out for people using the units for illegal activities. Sometimes, people will take one of these deeper units to hide a stolen car until it can be chopped up. Sometimes they even do the chopping inside, late at night. That’s why we make sure the police have the gate code, so they can patrol any time they want.”

  Harvath remembered seeing the keypad. “Does everyone use the same code?”

  “No. Each customer gets their own unique code. That way, if they don’t pay their bill, we can freeze them out. We put an additional lock on their unit, too.”

  “Do you keep a record of when the gate is accessed?”

  “We do. It feeds to our computer system.”

  Harvath looked at Nicholas, who was sitting across one of the desks from Mrs. Logan. “I’m on it,” the little man said.

  “The other thing we have to watch out for is people trying to cook meth,” Logan added. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what caused the explosion. Chemicals stored in one of the units.”

  Harvath doubted it. It would take a lot of chemicals to cause an explosion that size, but anything was possible.

  After locating the agreements for the four units, Logan returned to the table and handed them over.

  Harvath placed them in a grid and looked at the names on the top sheets. “Ring any bells for you?”

  Logan turned each of the rental agreements to the last page and laid them in a row. Each contained a photocopy of the customer’s driver’s license. As he studied them, Harvath asked Mrs. Logan to come over and look at them, too.

  “Nothing?” Harvath asked after several minutes.

  Both of the Logans shook their heads.

  Harvath looked at the third photo in their impromptu lineup. He could barely make the guy, Todd Thomas, out. “Why is this one such poor quality? It looks like a copy of a copy.”

  Mr. Logan picked it up and examined it more closely. “I don’t know, but it wasn’t done with our Xerox machine.”

  “How do you know?”

  He picked up the other applications, looked at their dates, and said, “Because our machine’s in excellent condition. We bought it new and barely use it. Besides, look at the other copies. They’re fine.”

  Harvath looked for himself. Logan was right. The two agreements that had been processed before the blurry Thomas photo were crystal clear, as was the one that came after.

  “I’ve never heard of a Xerox machine just having a bad day.”

  Mrs. Logan drew her husband’s attention to something on the Thomas agreement by tapping the bottom of the page.

  “What is it?” Harvath
asked.

  “We didn’t take this application,” Mrs. Logan said. “Donald did.”

  “Who’s Donald?”

  “Don is our manager,” replied Mr. Logan, shaking his head. “He’s a nice young man, but he doesn’t always have the greatest eye for detail.”

  “My husband is being generous,” Mrs. Logan interjected. “He means Donald is lazy. Half the time I lose sleep at night wondering if he remembered to lock up, or if he left all of the lights burning.”

  “Do you know where he is now?” said Harvath.

  “Probably at home asleep.”

  “Do you have his number? I’d like to talk to him.”

  Mr. Logan nodded and fished a worn address book from his breast pocket. As he searched for the number, Harvath waved Urda over and asked him to run the names and driver’s license numbers of the clients on the four storage unit agreements.

  Urda wrote them all down and then stepped to the front of the hangar to make his call. When Mr. Logan had found the page with his manager’s phone number, he held it up for Harvath to see.

  Pulling out his cell phone, Harvath punched in the number.

  “When Donald answers, just tell him that there was a fire and we’re trying to locate one of the customers whose unit was damaged.”

  Mr. Logan nodded and Harvath handed him the phone.

  CHAPTER 42

  * * *

  * * *

  The call with Donald lasted about fifteen minutes. Did he remember the customer who had rented unit 26, Mr. Todd Thomas? He did.

  “Why?” asked Harvath.

  “I’ve got cousins in Kentucky named Thomas,” said the manager. “I joked that maybe we were related. He didn’t think that was funny.”

  “Why didn’t he think that was funny?”