Black List sh-11

by Brad Thor

The woman dropped the drunk with the broken nose first via a blow to the back of his right knee. When his friend spun to see who was behind them, she swung the baton and broke his right arm. As he howled in agony, she hit him in his left leg, sending him to the floor alongside his buddy.

  Without a word, the woman tore out both their wallets, studied their IDs, and then pocketed their business cards. Tossing their wallets back to them she said, “You’ve got five minutes to get the hell out of this hotel. If I ever see either of you again, I’m going to tell the world you tried to rape me, only to get your asses kicked by a man less than half your size. Now get the fuck out of here.”

  The woman emphasized her point by putting the boot to each of them until they began crawling toward the door.

  After they had regained their feet and limped away, she turned to Nicholas. “Punching a bit above your weight class there, weren’t you?”

  His head hurt like hell, but he smiled.

  “Let me help you up.”

  “Thank you,” he said as she led him over to the sink, wet a paper towel with cold water, and handed it to him. “My name’s Nicholas.”

  “I’m Caroline,” the woman replied. “Caroline Romero.”

  That had been more than twenty years ago, and since then, Caroline Romero had never asked anything more of Nicholas than friendship—at least not until now.

  There were multiple ways she could have contacted him, yet the method she chose had been very unorthodox, as was her warning.

  As the ranch vehicle approached and the crew started unloading his belongings from the plane, Nicholas was concerned about why Caroline would have ever drawn him out of seclusion and into the open.

  CHAPTER 5

  FAIRFAX COUNTY

  NORTHERN VIRGINIA

  TUESDAY

  Awakening to his room filling with smoke, Reed Carlton leapt from his bed and ran for the door. When he couldn’t get it open, he raced for the nearest window, only to find that the security shutters had been locked down.

  He snatched up his iPad, and scanned the electronic blueprints of his house. Each man on his protective detail wore a special bracelet that pinpointed his location on the property. The men who watched over his house and him while he slept were the most professional and loyal operatives he had ever worked with. None of them was moving, which could mean only one thing. They were dead and he was under attack.

  Whoever had set the fire had likely used accelerant in order to get it burning so hot and so fast. No matter how soon the firemen got there, they weren’t going to be able to save his house.

  He noticed as he rushed into the bathroom that the overhead sprinklers weren’t working and neither were the smoke alarms. He turned on all the taps, but there was no water pressure. Someone had locked him in and was trying to burn him and his house to the ground.

  How they had managed to pull it off was immaterial. Right now all that mattered was getting out.

  Though the entire bedroom was a hardened safe room, Carlton had always known that even the best security measures could be circumvented, or worse, turned against their owners, which was why he had brought in a team from another state to construct a clandestine escape route from his bedroom and the house. It was a feature no one else knew about, not even his security detail. The sixty-five-year-old was old-school in that respect, but his habit of trying to anticipate the worst had kept him alive through decades in one of the world’s most dangerous professions.

  For thirty years, he had been one of the Central Intelligence Agency’s most vaunted spies and had learned to compartmentalize everything. He took this characteristic with him when he left and implemented it across his own private intelligence organization, the Carlton Group. There were certain elements of tradecraft that never expired. And, like the flooding of a canal lock, many of them now came rushing back to mind.

  Fire could create severe panic, and the first thing he had to focus on was staying calm. It wasn’t easy. It was so hot that the hair on his arms was beginning to singe. All around the room was the roar of the fire like the breaking of an enormous wave. The thickening smoke was acrid and the fact that it had permeated the seals of his safe room meant that he didn’t have much time left. Unable to save his people, he did the only thing he could do, he saved himself.

  The passageway from his bedroom led to a tunnel beneath the house. When he had emerged into the cold night air some distance away, he turned to look back at the fire. He didn’t want to think about all the things he had lost inside, all the things that could never be replaced. He couldn’t afford to be preoccupied with what was gone. If he did, it would only make him angry. He needed to remain calm, detached.

  His was a world of three-dimensional chess. In order to succeed at it, one needed to remain clearheaded and be able to think steps ahead of the opponent. The last thing Carlton needed was to go off half-cocked. That would be a mistake, and he couldn’t afford any right now.

  By surviving the attack, he held the upper hand, at least for now. A fire this bad was going to take time to get under control and even more time for the authorities to get inside and begin investigating. They were going to have their work cut out for them identifying the bodies. That meant that right now, he had time on his side—what he did with it would make all the difference.

  The protocol for a situation like this was very clear. First, he needed to get someplace safe. Only then could he start trying to piece together what had happened and begin to plan his next move.

  CHAPTER 6

  BASQUE PYRENEES

  SPAIN

  With his brown hair and blue eyes, Scot Harvath didn’t exactly look like a local. In fact, despite the call sign Norseman, which he had picked up while dating a string of Scandinavian flight attendants earlier in his life, he looked more German than anything else.

  He was a handsome man in his early forties and carried himself with an unmistakable bearing that, to the uninitiated, simply appeared to reflect relaxed self-confidence. The initiated, on the other hand, noticed how he took in his surroundings, how he was aware of everything and everyone without appearing to be paying particular attention to anything. In the parlance of an operator, they could see he was “switched on,” and this heightened awareness could be attributed only to high-end military or law enforcement training.

  Indeed, Harvath had received the best training both the military and law enforcement had developed. Leaving a career as an amateur athlete to follow in his deceased father’s footsteps, he had undergone the grueling training and selection process to become a United States Navy SEAL. Always searching for a bigger challenge, he had gone from SEAL Team Two to the Navy’s storied SEAL Team Six, where, among his many exploits, he assisted on a maritime presidential detail and caught the eye of the Secret Service.

  The Secret Service invited him to help bolster their counterterrorism expertise at the White House. While it was an incredible honor, playing defense after years of being on offense and taking the fight to the bad guys didn’t sit well with Harvath. It didn’t take long for the President to realize that the young man’s talents weren’t being fully utilized.

  Having long desired to level the playing field with the terrorists who threatened America’s citizens and interests, the President set up a top-secret program for Harvath called the Apex Project. In essence, Harvath had only one rule of engagement—don’t get caught.

  The program was incredibly successful, but when the President left office after his second term, his successor had a different view of the world. Instead of killing America’s enemies, he wanted to sit down and talk with them. The Apex Project was shut down and its funding directed elsewhere. Harvath had been downsized and was out of work.

  He had then taken a job with a company in the mountains of Colorado that specialized in intelligence gathering and highly advanced special operations training. Soon after, the company was purchased by the Carlton Group—an obscure, private organization funded completely from Department of Defense black budge
ts.

  In the post-9/11 world, quality, timely intelligence, and the ability to act on that intelligence were paramount. Deeply concerned with the entrenched bureaucracy at the CIA and the hobbling of the nation’s defense apparatus, the Carlton Group had been established to boldly do what the nation’s politically correct, vote-chasing politicians and cowering cover-your-ass bureaucrats were too timid and too inept to attempt.

  It was based on the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, the wartime intelligence agency that had preceded the CIA, and the modus operandi of the Apex Project was quite similar. In addition to the group’s intelligence-gathering mandate, Carlton, or the Old Man, as he was known, had assembled a small group of operatives with specialized military and intelligence experience to carry out “direct action” assignments.

  Operating under the simple charter of “Find, fix, and finish,” Carlton had offered Harvath a position identifying terrorist leadership, tracking or luring them to a specific location and then capturing or killing as many of them as possible. Harvath would then be expected to use any intelligence gleaned to plan and execute the next assignment. The goal was to apply constant pressure to the terrorist networks and pound them so hard that they were forever rocked back on their heels, unable to even take a step forward. Harvath had accepted the job on the spot.

  Carlton spent the next year personally training him, putting Harvath through the most comprehensive intelligence training he had ever experienced. In essence, Carlton distilled what he had learned throughout his career in the espionage world and drilled it into Harvath.

  On top of the intelligence training, Harvath was expected to keep his counterterrorism skills razor sharp. He took classes in Israeli and Russian hand-to-hand combat, and continually updated his training in firearms, driving, and foreign languages.

  He made excellent progress and despite having leapt the fence from his thirties into his forties, was in the best shape of his life. All his training had been to prepare him for any eventuality, but what happened in Paris had stunned him to the core.

  Riley Turner had been an incredible operative. She was one of the first recruits the U.S. Army had approached for its elite, all-female Delta Force unit, code-named the Athena Project. He had worked with her on a handful of occasions and respected her skill and expertise. He had also been attracted to her but tried to keep things professional between them.

  Years ago, he had resigned himself to the fact that in order for the American dream to exist, someone had to protect it. He understood that he was one of those people and that by protecting the American dream for others, he had to forgo a certain portion of it for himself, namely his personal life. He had been okay with that. The world was made up of good people who needed sheepdogs to keep the wolves at bay. Harvath had been a sheepdog ever since he was in grade school and had defended the developmentally impaired boy next door from the neighborhood bullies. Being a sheepdog was what he was good at. It gave him a sense of purpose. But he still wanted purpose beyond simply being a sheepdog. He wanted a family.

  Even though he dragged a string of unsuccessful relationships behind him like cans strung to a bumper, he hadn’t given up looking for the right person; someone who understood who he was, why he did what he did, and who could live with all of it. He had wondered if Riley Turner might be that person and had decided that the next time he saw her, he was going to begin to find out. With a heavy heart, he realized that opportunity now would never come.

  Disembarking from the train in the seaside resort town of Hendaye, Harvath tried to put those thoughts out of his mind and focus on his next step.

  If it were evening, he might have stolen a car from one of the hotel parking lots, relatively secure that the theft wouldn’t be reported until the next morning, if not days later, when the hotel guest finally asked for it. But it was 7:30 a.m., and he needed a better plan.

  Walking to an adjacent station, he bought coffee and something to eat before boarding a Basque commuter train that carried him across the border into Spain.

  In Irún, he caught the bus to Bilbao, a city he knew from having been there over the summer. He found a small hotel in the city’s medieval Casco Viejo neighborhood and, after presenting his Italian passport for identification, paid in cash for two nights. He had no idea if he would need the room that long, but at least he had it.

  After showering and changing into new clothes he had bought en route, he left to surveil his target.

  It was warmer in Bilbao than it had been in Paris, too warm to be wearing a jacket. Harvath was grateful to have Riley’s backpack. Not only could he carry all of his possessions with him at all times but he didn’t have to worry about having to walk around with an untucked shirt, beneath which his weapon might print through.

  Designed by Camelbak for the Special Operations community, the pack had a hidden handgun compartment at the small of the wearer’s back. It was an ingenious design that allowed him quick access to his weapon while he looked like just another tourist and blended right in.

  To round out his look, he picked up a guidebook in Italian and a map of the city, both of which he consulted repeatedly as he strolled the neighborhood’s popular Siete Calles, or Seven Streets, conducting his SDR.

  Behind the cathedral on the Calle de la Tendería he walked into a small Basque restaurant and chose the same table he had taken on his previous trip, two back from the window, and sat down.

  Making himself comfortable, he glanced over the menu and ordered some food. There was no telling how long it was going to be before, or if, the tobacconist would make his move.

  CHAPTER 7

  Because of the tobacconist’s age, Harvath had counted on his being a traditional Spaniard who still observed the siesta. The man didn’t disappoint.

  Harvath watched as he closed up his shop, tucked a newspaper under his arm, lit a cigarette, and began walking.

  At this time of day, there were plenty of people about, and he didn’t need to work hard to avoid being seen. He hung far enough behind that if the man should happen to glance back, he wouldn’t notice him among the throngs of people up and down the narrow street.

  Having dealt very briefly with the man before, Harvath had pegged him as a very low level operative, and even that might have been entirely too generous a characterization.

  He watched as the tobacconist continued on his way, passing up opportunity after opportunity to ascertain whether he was being followed. He was definitely not a professional.

  He hoped that the man lived within walking distance of his place of business. If he took public transportation or had a car parked somewhere that he intended to drive home for siesta, it was going to put Harvath in a difficult situation.

  Two blocks later, the man turned left and a block after that, Harvath realized he had been given a gift. Leaning out a second-story window was a buxom woman with flaming red hair. She looked half the tobacconist’s age. Seductively, she blew him a kiss as he approached. Harvath had a pretty good feeling she wasn’t the man’s wife.

  Slowing his pace, he removed his city map and pretended to study it as the tobacconist entered the building and disappeared. Ten minutes later, Harvath went in after him.

  The locks were easy enough for him to pick, and once inside the small apartment, he quietly made his way toward the sounds of lovemaking from the bedroom.

  He stood in the doorway for a moment waiting to be noticed, and then finally cleared his throat.

  Looking over and seeing Harvath, the woman shrieked and clutched the sheet to her chin as she rolled off her partner, leaving the tobacconist completely naked.

  Before he could find something to cover himself with, he saw Harvath’s pistol and his look of anger shifted to fear. He told the woman in Spanish to shut up. “Callate. Cierra la boca!”

  The man gestured at the bedspread, asking if he could cover himself and the woman. Harvath nodded and said, “Go ahead. Slowly.”

  “Englishman? American?” the tobacconist asked in h
eavily accented English.

  Harvath ignored his question. “You don’t remember me?”

  The tobacconist studied him for a moment. “No.”

  “I bought some cigarettes from you over the summer.”

  The man smiled. “Señor, I sell cigarettes to tourists all day long.”

  “These were ETA cigarettes,” he said, referring to the Basque separatist organization. “I was told to ask for your Argos and Draco brand.”

  Whether the man recognized the pass phrase or not, he couldn’t be quite sure, but there was an unmistakable microexpression that flashed across the man’s face. It was a subtle “tell” that Harvath had been taught to look for in the Secret Service. It indicated when a person was under duress because they were not telling the truth or intended to do harm.

  “I don’t sell any ETA cigarettes and certainly none with that name. I think you have made a mistake.”

  Harvath saw the tell again. “I don’t think so. I was told to see you and only you. When I asked for that brand, you sold me a pack of cigarettes. Inside was a car key and an address to a garage not far from here.”

  The woman, who had been staring at Harvath, must have understood enough English to figure out what was being said as she turned to him and asked, “Eso cierto?”

  The tobacconist ignored her and motioned with his head toward his cigarettes on the nightstand. Harvath nodded that it was okay.

  He removed a cigarette from the pack, lit it up, and adjusted the pillows behind him with his elbow before sitting up and taking a deep drag. “I do favors sometimes.”

  “I know you do. And now I need a favor.”

  The man shrugged. “How can I possibly do you a favor?”

  “After you sold me the cigarettes and I left your shop, two men followed me.”

  “Two men? What two men?”

  Harvath described the pair and their very distinct features.