The First Commandment

by Brad Thor

  Rutledge had worried things would go this way. “Scot, I can’t stress enough how important it is that you trust me on this.”

  “And I need you to trust me, Mr. President. Don’t sideline me. Whoever is on this team you’ve put together, I can help them.”

  “No you can’t,” said Rutledge as he rose from his chair. It was a clear signal that their meeting was over.

  Forced to stand, Harvath repeated, “Don’t shut me out of this, sir.”

  “I’m sorry,” replied the president, extending his hand.

  Reflexively, Harvath took it. Rutledge covered their clasped hands with his left and said, “The best thing you can do for Tracy right now is to be with her. We are going to get to the bottom of this, I promise you.”

  Harvath’s shock was slowly being shoved aside by a surge of anger. But before he could say anything, Gary Lawlor thanked the president and steered Harvath out of the Oval Office.

  As the door behind his visitors closed, the door to the president’s study opened and the tall, gray-haired, fifty-something director of the Central Intelligence Agency, James Vaile, stepped into the Oval Office.

  Rutledge looked at him. “What do you think? Will he cooperate?”

  Vaile fixed his eyes on the door Scot Harvath had just exited through and thought about the president’s question. Finally, he said, “If he doesn’t, we’re going to have a lot more trouble on our hands.”

  “Well, I just promised him that your people were going to handle this.”

  “And they will. They’ve got plenty of experience dealing with this kind of thing overseas. They know what they’re doing.”

  “They’d better,” replied the president as he readied himself for a briefing in the situation room. “We can’t afford to have Harvath involved in this. The stakes are just too damn high.”

  Chapter 7

  H arvath and Lawlor rode back to the hospital in silence. Harvath didn’t like being hamstrung, especially when they were facing a problem he was more than qualified to handle.

  Lawlor didn’t push him to talk. He’d known before they even got to the White House how the meeting was going to unfold. The president had made it absolutely clear that he didn’t want Harvath or anyone else poking around in this investigation. What he didn’t say was why.

  Though Lawlor wasn’t happy with the president’s decision either, he had to give Rutledge credit for telling Scot in person. He was right—it was the very least he owed him.

  At the hospital’s entrance, the driver pulled the car to the curb and Harvath climbed out. There were a million things Lawlor wanted to say to him, but none of them seemed appropriate at this point. Instead, it was Harvath who broke their silence. “He has put together a special team to hunt Tracy’s shooter, yet I can’t have anything to do with it? That doesn’t make any sense. There’s a lot more to this than he’s telling us, Gary, and it pisses me off.”

  Lawlor knew he was right, but there was nothing either of them could do about it. The president had given them a direct order. Though he was just as bewildered as Scot was, Lawlor only nodded and replied, “Let me know if anything changes with Tracy.”

  Disgusted, Harvath closed the car door and walked into the hospital.

  Upstairs in Tracy’s room, her parents were eating lunch. As he entered the room, Bill Hastings asked, “Any news on the investigation?”

  Harvath had no desire to burden Tracy’s parents with his problems, so told them a half truth. “They’re working it from all sides. The president has taken a personal interest in the investigation and is doing everything he can.”

  The ventilator continued its rhythmic hiss, pop, hiss, pop, and Harvath tried to ignore it. Pulling a chair up alongside the bed, he took Tracy’s hand and whispered in her ear that he was back.

  If only the president could see her like this, he might not be so quick to pull him off the investigation. All the way back to the hospital, Harvath had tried to figure out why Rutledge was doing this. No matter how many angles he came at it from, none of them made any sense.

  The president knew better than anyone else what an asset Scot could be in a case like this. For a moment, he thought maybe Rutledge was concerned about the task being too emotional for him, but Harvath had more than proven himself capable of separating his work from his emotions.

  The more Harvath thought about it, the more he realized he actually took everything about his job personally, and that was one of the things that made him so good at what he did.

  No, the fact that he had a personal stake in the outcome of this investigation didn’t have anything to do with why the president was boxing him out. It had to be something else.

  Harvath gently stroked his fingers up and down Tracy’s arm as his mind ran through yet more possibilities. The more scenarios he constructed, the further away he felt he was getting from the truth. He thought he knew the president pretty well, but this time he couldn’t figure him out.

  Harvath replayed the meeting in his mind’s eye. He’d been taught through vigorous Secret Service training how to spot microexpressions, the subtle subconscious clues a subject gives out when he is lying or preparing to do something dishonest. Even the best of Washington’s doublespeak politicians couldn’t hide their intentions or the truth from a seasoned Secret Service agent who knew what to look for. And Scot Harvath knew what to look for.

  For whatever reason, President Jack Rutledge had been lying to him. Harvath was certain of it.

  He was still deliberating this when his BlackBerry rang. He ignored the call and let it go to voicemail. Nothing was more important than being with Tracy right now.

  When the phone rang two more times, Harvath figured it might be urgent and pulled the device from the holster clipped at his hip. The Caller ID showed a Colorado area code.

  He depressed the button to answer the call, raised the device to his ear, and said, “Harvath.”

  “Are you alone?” came a voice from the other end.

  Harvath glanced at Bill Hastings, who was reading a copy of the New York Times as he ate his lunch. Turning his attention back to his phone he said, “Yeah, go ahead.”

  “Are you still interested in midget wrestling?”

  Harvath sat up straighter in his chair. “You’ve got something?”

  “Affirmative,” said the voice.

  “What is it?”

  “Not over the phone. I’ve got a plane waiting for you. Don’t bother packing a bag. You need to get out here ASAP.”

  Harvath looked at Tracy and was silent.

  “ASAP,” repeated the voice.

  Though Harvath was certain he must have imagined it, he thought for a moment he had felt Tracy return his grasp.

  “Are you still there?” asked the voice after several seconds of silence.

  Harvath snapped himself out of it. “Yeah, I’m still here,” he replied.

  “Reagan National, now,” ordered the voice. Then the line went dead.

  Chapter 8

  BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

  M ark Sheppard was a big fan of zombie movies. Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later—you name it and chances were that Sheppard had not only seen it, but owned it. There was something about death that had always fascinated him.

  It was a strange preoccupation, but one that had served the tall, sandy-haired twenty-seven-year-old reporter well. He had begun his career at the Baltimore Sun writing obituaries. It was a probationary assignment designed to allow editors to evaluate the writing and copyediting skills of their cub reporters. Most young journalists hated their time on the obit desk, but Sheppard had reveled in it.

  From there he moved to the crime beat. Legendary crime reporter Edna Buchanan had once said that the crime beat “has it all: greed, sex, violence, comedy, and tragedy,” and she was right. Though it was a high-turnover, sink-or-swim position where editors continued to test their journalists’ mettle before promoting them to more glamorous beats, Sheppard fell in love with it and made it known that he had no inten
tion of ever doing any other sort of reporting.

  To his credit, Sheppard was an exceptional crime reporter. He had an eye for detail and a propensity for sourcing, and he knew how to tell one hell of a story. Over his years on the beat he had developed a wide array of contacts—on both sides of the law. Both police captains and mob captains respected him for his integrity. His sources always knew that he never went to press unless he had gotten all of his facts straight.

  Because of his reputation for being a straight shooter and always protecting the anonymity of his sources, news tips flowed in Sheppard’s direction on a regular basis. They rarely proved newsworthy. The key was to know which ones were worth running down. Hemingway had once said that a writer needs to have a “shockproof bullshit detector,” and Sheppard couldn’t have agreed with him more. He found that the amount of energy he put into investigating a tip was often commensurate with how solid its source was. Of course, for every rule there was always an exception.

  For Sheppard, the more outrageous the claim, the more his interest was piqued. At the moment, his interest was quite high.

  Driving toward the Thomas J. Gosse funeral home on the outskirts of the city, headlines were already forming in his mind. There was no question he was putting the cart way before the horse, but Sheppard’s gut told him that if this story panned out, it was going to be huge.

  That meant the headline had to be huge as well. And it had to be sensational. This had the potential to be a front-page story. Hell, it might even be an explosive investigative series.

  As Sheppard pulled into the funeral home’s parking lot, he settled on his headline. It was campy, but once people began to read his reporting the title would take on a whole new meaning. It would be shocking—not only because of the crime itself, but because of its alleged perpetrators.

  Locking his car, Sheppard ran the headline through his mind one more time. Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

  It was one hell of an attention-grabber. He just hoped the man who’d called him with the tip wasn’t wasting his time.

  Chapter 9

  MONTROSE, COLORADO

  T hough it wasn’t yet fall, there was a chill in the night air as Harvath stepped onto the pavement outside the small, one-building airport.

  Leaning against a white Hummer H2 emblazoned with the logo of his Elk Mountain Resort was one of the biggest and toughest men Harvath had ever known in his life. Called the Warlord in his past career, Tim Finney had been the Pacific Division Shoot Fighting Champion. Adept at annihilating other men, most notably with his hands, head, knees, or elbows, Finney was one of the few people Harvath knew he probably couldn’t beat in an all-out street fight.

  Finney towered over him by at least seven inches, was nearly twice as wide, and rang in at an amazing 250 pounds of solid muscle. Not bad for a guy in his early fifties. He had intense green eyes and his head was completely shaved. Despite his size and his reputation as an absolutely ruthless, no-holds-barred fighter in the ring, Tim Finney was a happy-go-

  lucky guy. And he had a lot to be happy about.

  Nobody rode for free in the Finney family. Old man Finney, the family patriarch, was a tough SOB, and all of his kids had paid their own way through college. Tim had done it by bouncing at a string of nightclubs in Los Angeles, before his talents as a fighter were recognized and a private coach took him under his wing and steered Finney to the Pacific Division Championship of Shoot Fighting, the sport that would go on to give birth to the popular Ultimate Fighting series.

  Tim Finney always had his eyes on the next mountain he wanted to climb, and if the mountain proved too difficult, he had a backup plan and another way of tackling it. He was the consummate, always-prepared Boy Scout.

  He had worked in the family hotel business for several years and then set out to conquer another dream—establishing his own exclusive five-star resort nestled on more than five hundred extremely private acres in Colorado’s San Juan mountains a half hour outside Telluride. But his dream didn’t end there.

  At the resort, Finney created a cutting-edge tactical training facility like no other in the world. It was called Valhalla, after the warrior heaven of Norse mythology.

  Finney brought in the best set, sound, and lighting designers from Hollywood to create the most realistic threat scenario mock-ups ever seen. And then he did something extremely revolutionary; he opened it up not only to high-end military and law enforcement units, but also to civilians. He even advertised in the Robb Report, and that advertising, as well as the incredible word of mouth from his customers, had paid off, big time. His closely guarded guest registry read like a Who’s Who of corporate America, and of the sports and entertainment worlds to boot.

  The success allowed Finney to take Valhalla to a completely different level—a level that was only whispered about in the most secure conference rooms of places like the Central Intelligence Agency, the Delta Force compound at Fort Bragg, and many off-the-books, black ops intelligence units throughout northern Virginia and places further afield.

  Those in the know referred to Valhalla’s spin-off as the dark side of the moon. Hidden well beyond the boundaries of Elk Mountain and Valhalla proper, the spin-off was benignly referred to as Site Six.

  It had been called Hogan’s Alley on crack—a reference to the FBI’s mock town at their training academy in Quantico where they staged everything from bank robberies to high-stakes hostage standoffs.

  Finney kept a small army of carpenters and engineers on staff around the clock year round. Many of them were ex-Hollywood people looking to get out of show business and put their skills to use somewhere else. The legend was that if you could get Tim Finney satellite imagery of your target, he could have a working mock-up built to train on within forty-eight hours, fourteen if time was absolutely crucial and nobody cared about wet paint.

  In a low valley secluded by mountains on all sides, Finney’s Site Six team had replicated everything from Iraqi villages to foreign airports, embassies, and terrorist training camps. The detail and scope were limited only by a client’s budget and depth of intelligence regarding the target. And to Finney’s credit, he never allowed budget to dictate the training experience his client’s people would gain at Site Six. Finney was a true patriot and did everything in his power to make sure American military and intelligence personnel had the most detailed and realistic training experiences possible before they went to take down the real thing.

  At the end of the day, Finney wasn’t in business to make more money. He already had plenty of it. He was in business to make sure his clients—whether they be guests at his Elk Mountain Resort, shooters who came to sharpen their skills at his Valhalla Training Facility, or real-life warriors who came to practice taking down mocked-up targets at Site Six before going overseas to do the real thing—got the best experience possible.

  It was in that last capacity that Harvath had come to be acquainted with Timothy Finney and Valhalla’s Site Six.

  Based on a series of aerial photographs taken by a Predator drone aircraft, as well as some covert video shot from the ground, Finney and his team had mocked up a chemical weapons facility in Afghanistan that Harvath had been put in charge of taking out.

  Every single member of Harvath’s team credited the training they engaged in at Valhalla and Site Six as having given them the edge that allowed their mission to be successful.

  That training, along with Finney’s irreverent sense of humor, had cemented a friendship between them that had garnered Harvath not only a standing invitation to join the Valhalla/Site Six instructor team, but also a standing invitation to stay at the resort if he ever needed to get away from D. C. and his life as an overworked counterterrorism operative for the U. S. government.

  Though Harvath probably could have used a five-star vacation right now, that was not the reason he was standing on the sidewalk outside the Montrose, Colorado, airport. He was here because in Timothy Finney’s never-ending quest to create more thorough experiences for the warr
iors who trained at Valhalla and Site Six, he’d recently developed an entirely new program that was once again making him the talk of the American intelligence community.

  Chapter 10

  A s he drove, Finney reached behind his seat, pulled a cold beer from a cooler in back, and offered it to his guest.

  Harvath shook his head no.

  “I guess I’ll cancel the dancing girls too, then,” said Finney as he put the beer back.

  Harvath didn’t respond. His mind was a million miles away as he pulled his BlackBerry from its holster and checked it again for messages. He’d given Tracy’s father and her nurses his number in case anything changed. He’d also explained to Bill Hastings, as best he could, why he had to leave.

  Remembering that cell phone reception at the resort was notoriously spotty, Harvath was wondering if he should have given them that number too when Finney asked, “Do you want to eat when we get in, or do you want to get right down to business?”

  “Let’s eat after,” said Harvath as he tucked his BlackBerry away. “Then nobody will have to stay late on my account.”

  Finney chuckled. His laugh, like his voice, was in keeping with the rest of his massive stature—a rich basso profundo. “We work the Sargasso staff in three shifts around the clock.”

  “Business is that good, huh?”

  Finney laughed again. “I keep saying heaven forbid peace should break out any time soon.”

  “Don’t worry,” Harvath replied as he stared at the reflection of himself cast against the passenger window and the ever-darkening sky. “It won’t.”

  They made small talk the rest of the way to the resort. Finney knew Harvath well enough to know that if he wanted to talk about what had happened to Tracy he’d be the one to bring it up.