by Brad Thor
His athletic prowess and ironclad determination saw him excel. He graduated at the top of his class and was assigned to SEAL Team Two, also known as the Polar SEALs, where his proficiency in skiing was an exceptional asset.
As much as he enjoyed his Team Two colleagues, he wasn’t seeing enough action with them to keep him happy and so he applied for the storied SEAL Team Six.
Harvath had built a bit of a rep for himself, but even so, SEAL Team Six was very, very particular about whom they allowed to join their ranks. As much as the rest of the SEAL community was loath to admit it, SEAL Team Six was in a class all its own.
It was one of the most elite organizations in the world and one of the most difficult to be accepted into. You had to prove you not only deserved to be there, but also wanted it more than anything else. The members of SEAL Six didn’t make it easy. In fact, they did everything they could to discourage Harvath. None of it worked. In the middle of an endurance exercise designed so that there was no way anyone could complete it, they realized he was either going to join their ranks or die trying and they ended the audition. Scot Harvath had won his probationary place among their ranks.
Language proficiency was not something SEALs were particularly known for, but Harvath’s aptitude was quickly recognized and encouraged. He was sent to school for any language he showed talent for, or interest in, including Arabic and Russian.
His skill at SEAL Team Six won the attention of the Secret Service, who recruited him to the White House to help bolster their anti- and counterterrorism expertise. From there, the president at the time realized Harvath had a special set of skills that could better serve the nation in an offensive capacity. That was how Harvath wound up with a top-secret program hidden away at the Department of Homeland Security. It was one of the most forward-thinking and aggressive projects the United States had ever come up with. As long as the terrorists refused to play by any rules, Harvath wasn’t expected to, either. He was set loose upon them without mercy.
When the administration changed, Harvath’s program was discontinued and he was let go. That’s when the Old Man had picked him up and had taken his training to an entirely new level. The career intelligence officer had taught Harvath everything he knew. Then he sent Harvath out to train with the best shooters, hand-to-hand combat instructors, interrogators, and former spies, among other dark arts specialists. By the time Harvath was done, he was one of the most formidable counterterrorism and intelligence operatives to ever ply the trade. In short, he was an Apex predator — an animal at the top of the food chain who hunted, yet was so fearsome, he himself was not hunted.
Be that as it may, Harvath had spent the last couple of years in awe of the Old Man. No matter how much he had seen and done in his career, he felt he would never accomplish as much as what Carlton had done.
“So, are you going to keep me in suspense or are you going to tell me what we’re looking at?” the Old Man asked.
Harvath smiled.
“What’s so funny?” Carlton said.
“I just figured at a prestigious university like Brown with a catchall major like Western Civilization, you would have learned at least a little about the Stamp Act.”
CHAPTER 12
“The Stamp Act was a tax on any piece of paper printed in the colonies — newspapers, licenses, legal documents, anything and everything, even playing cards. The Brits claimed it was necessary in order to pay for the thousands of troops it had protecting the colonies’ back door near the Appalachian Mountains. The colonists, though, had a greater fear than invaders from the frontier. They were afraid that if this tax was allowed to pass unchallenged, there’d be a tidal wave of taxes to follow, and all without any colonial input,” said Harvath.
“Taxation without representation,” replied the Old Man.
“Precisely. In an act of defiance, the colonists refused it. Instead, they began drawing their own stamp on their printed materials. They used a skull and crossbones, and eventually some added a crown floating above it to represent tyrannical Britain.”
“Death to tyranny.”
Harvath nodded.
“What do you think the ‘S.O.L.’ stands for? Is it Latin or something?”
“I don’t think so,” he said, reaching for another book and flipping through its pages. “I think it has to do with the bloody streaks left on the sign by Claire Marcourt’s fingers.”
“Why do you think those two are connected? Maybe she grasped at the sign in her death throes.”
“It doesn’t make any sense to hang a sign around someone’s neck until they’re dead,” Harvath replied. “Why go to all the trouble of the sign, just to have the victim mess it up? If you’re going to kill somebody, you kill them and then hang it around their neck.”
“So the bloody streaks were put there on purpose? Just like the logs the body was put on?”
“If I can find the right picture, I’ll show you, and then you tell me what you think.”
The Old Man waited while Harvath flipped through two more books until he found it. When he did, he placed the police photo of the sign that had been hung around Marcourt’s neck beneath the image of a flag in his new book and spun them around to show him.
“What am I looking at here?” the Old Man asked.
“A flag with nine vertical stripes; five red and four white,” responded Harvath as he splayed the fingers of his right hand, placed them on the table, and slowly drew them toward himself like Claire Marcourt’s bloody fingers sliding down the sign.
“You think that woman’s bloody finger streaks look like that flag?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
Carlton studied both pictures for a few moments. The irritation was back in his voice again. “I think it’s a stretch.”
“Fair enough,” said Harvath as he removed the police photo in order to reveal the caption beneath the flag. “How about now?”
The Old Man leaned forward and peered at the writing. “Hold on,” he said, pulling his glasses from his suit pocket and putting them on. “The caption says this is the flag of the Sons of Liberty?” A fraction of a second later he put it together. “Sons of Liberty — S.O.L.”
Harvath sat back and took a long, satisfied sip of his beer.
“Who are they?”
Setting the bottle on the table, Harvath flipped forward a couple of pages in the book. “They were America’s first organized resistance,” he said. “A group of patriots, inspired by what they saw as the tyranny of the Stamp Act who banded together to fight British oppression. Their most famous operation was one of my favorites — the Boston Tea Party.”
The old spymaster sat for a moment appreciating one of America’s greatest historical moments and then replied, “You think whoever’s behind all of this is styling themselves as some sort of modern Sons of Liberty movement?”
“I do,” said Harvath as he reached for his last book and opened it. “Ever heard of the Pine Tree Riot?”
Carlton shook his head.
“One of the reasons the Brits were the most powerful empire in the world was because of their command of the high seas — via both their navy and their merchant vessels. They were building ships at an incredible clip and white pine trees were considered the best species from which to make soaring, single-stick masts. Because the British Isles had been stripped almost entirely clean of white pines, they passed a law in the colonies that made it illegal to cut down any white pine here more than twelve inches in diameter.
“This angered lots of colonial loggers, builders, and sawmill owners. Many of them just ignored the law. In fact, it became highly fashionable among the colonists to thumb their noses at Britain by installing floors made of white pine and showing off that their boards were at least a foot wide or wider.”
“What does that have to do with the logs Claire Marcourt was found on?”
Harvath pointed to the photo and the thickest log in the stack. “See the arrow chalked on this one?”
The Old Man peered at it a
nd nodded as Harvath paraphrased the accompanying text.
“When the crown sent its ‘Surveyors of the King’s Woods’ on inspections, any trees found to have been cut down in violation of the edict were marked with a big, thick arrow just like in that photo. Anyone found to be in possession of white pines, considered property of the crown, was heavily fined.
“In 1772, a surveyor for the crown uncovered a mill owner in Weare, New Hampshire, named Ebenezer Mudgett, who had been cutting down white pines that should have been reserved for the king. Mudgett was fined, but he refused to pay, so the county sheriff, along with his deputy, rode out and arrested him.
“Mudgett must have been a hell of a salesman, because he convinced the sheriff to release him that night with the promise that he’d show up in the morning to pay his bail.”
“He didn’t show up, did he?” said Carlton with a laugh.
“No, he showed up, all right,” Harvath replied, “but with somewhere between twenty to forty men. They arrived, their faces blackened with soot, just before dawn at Quimby’s Inn, where the sheriff and his deputy were staying.”
“I assume it didn’t end well. What happened?”
“They beat the sheriff and his deputy with tree switches, and then shaved the manes of their horses. And here’s the kicker: they cut off the horses’ ears to send a message and make them worthless.”
The Old Man screwed his face up in disgust. “That’s horrible.”
“I agree one hundred percent.”
“Were they ever caught?”
“You bet,” said Harvath, “and they were all prosecuted, but they only received a small fine. And because the punishment was so lenient, some think it encouraged more resistance and actually set the stage for the Boston Tea Party less than two years later.”
“So again, the message this group is sending now, is what? That the Federal Reserve is a tyrant like King George and they’re going to handle it by kidnapping and murdering people until it is shut down?”
“Or until they’re caught. But I think I may have an idea as to how we can catch them.”
CHAPTER 13
YORK COUNTY
VIRGINIA
Lydia Ryan remembered the first time she had ever seen Camp Peary, the nine-thousand-acre military base near Williamsburg, Virginia, referred to by CIA personnel as “the Farm.” She, along with twelve other recruits, had been transported there on a crisp fall morning in a white passenger van with blacked-out windows to begin their CIA training. Out of those twelve, only five would make it all the way through.
Much of the curriculum harkened back to the heyday of the CIA’s predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, and was heavy with paramilitary instruction. From weapons and explosives to parachuting and land navigation, there were times when the recruits questioned whether they had signed up for a career in intelligence, or the military. The tradecraft, which would form the bulk of what they’d be learning, wouldn’t come till later.
The first month at the Farm was all about what the recruits were made of and how badly they wanted to be there. It was a particularly sadistic version of boot camp and involved nothing but physical conditioning and hand-to-hand combat. Every exercise, whether it was a run, a timed rucksack march, accelerated PT, or even the obstacle course, was designed to get as many students to drop out as possible.
Instructors yelled, berated, and constantly got right up into their charges’ faces telling them that they didn’t belong at the Agency and should aim for something easier, like the FBI.
In preparation for the yearlong Basic Operations Course, Ryan had searched for any information she could find on what to expect and how to make it through. There was next to nothing available, so she read a stack of books on the rigorous selection processes for the Navy SEALs, the Army’s Special Forces, and the British SAS.
What she learned was that they were all very similar. The idea was to stress trainees to such a degree that no matter what they encountered in the real world, they’d be able to adapt and overcome. While the SEAL, Green Beret, SAS soldier, or CIA operative unquestionably plied a physical trade, success or failure would always come down to their mental mettle. If you steadfastly refused to quit, you rapidly narrowed your options to only winning. That was the type of personality a sovereign nation could put millions of training dollars into and then drop into the field, confident that those operatives would see their assignment through.
Ryan’s intelligence, determination, and physical abilities were quickly realized. Her beauty was simply icing on the cake. Even without makeup, she was a striking woman, not someone who naturally blended in and was easily forgotten. That fact, though, could be dealt with. Ryan could be taught how to mask her good looks. On the other hand, taking a less appealing woman and trying to make her as attractive as Ryan was next to impossible without plastic surgery.
There was also an intangible aura about her, a magnetism that couldn’t be taught. In short, she was a one-in-a-million recruit whose gifts weren’t fully apparent until she began the Basic Operations Course. Once her talents were on display, it was up to one man to make sure they were noted and leveraged to their maximum potential. It was that man that Ryan had now returned to the Farm to see.
In addition to being a lead instructor for the Basic Operations Course, Bob McGee was also a spotter. Before she arrived, he had read Ryan’s file cover to cover, just as he did the files of every other recruit being considered for eventual placement in the CIA’s National Clandestine Service.
The NCS was charged with a myriad of missions, including the collection of foreign intelligence and the development of clandestine human intelligence assets. But it was the planning and execution of covert operations that most interested McGee.
A former Delta Force operative who had joined the CIA after leaving the Army, McGee was tasked with flagging prospective candidates for a secretive branch of the Clandestine Service called the Special Activities Division (SAD). Based on her jacket, Ryan had looked pretty good on paper, but it wasn’t until he saw her in action that he appreciated how good she really was.
There was no way, though, that he was going to put his stamp of approval on her without making sure she was completely up to the task. So he had made it his personal mission to push her harder than all the others.
As recruits were prohibited from sharing personal information with each other, they were left with little to talk about other than their training. McGee’s treatment of Ryan quickly became the hottest topic of conversation in the short window they had for R&R each night.
Most of the students believed McGee was a woman-hater. The prevailing wisdom was that somewhere in his past some woman had crushed him so badly that he now reveled in torturing female recruits. Ryan was an obvious choice, as she was the best-looking in class and either reminded McGee of the woman who had jilted him, or she somehow made him feel inferior.
A couple of other recruits, one an undergrad psychology major, had a different take and likened McGee’s behavior to that of kindergarten boys who pull the hair of the girls they secretly like. None of them, though, suspected that Ryan was being tested for something bigger than a junior NCS officer, not even after she was removed from their ranks and the Basic Operations Course altogether.
She was moved into the CIA’s Special Activities Division, which handled tactical paramilitary operations and covert political action, as well as destabilization efforts, psychological and economic warfare.
While the paramilitary side of SAD drew primarily from Tier One operators such as the SEALs and Delta, there was a tremendous amount of danger on the political action side and its members needed to be highly skilled. Once McGee was convinced that Ryan had the right stuff for SAD, he had her approved and transferred into a tailored training program, which he personally oversaw. As such, he became her mentor at the Agency and the person she had always been able to count on for good advice, as well as less-than-stellar career counseling.
During her pro
blems with Phil Durkin, it had been McGee who suggested saving a lot of time and trouble by just putting a bullet in his head and dumping him in a quarry somewhere. Ryan didn’t doubt for a moment that McGee was serious. He had never liked Durkin and he liked him even less for preying on his star student. In fact, though she couldn’t prove it, Ryan suspected that it was McGee who had made Durkin’s wife, Brenda, aware of her husband’s sordid advances.
Stopping now just outside her mentor’s office, Ryan raised her hand to knock on the door, when McGee’s voice boomed from the other side. “It’s open.”
CHAPTER 14
Bob McGee was a tall man in his late fifties who ran four days a week and spent the other three in the gym. He sported a thick mustache, which, like his wavy hair, had somehow managed to escape the ravages of time. There were some who said that the only thing stronger than the forces of aging was McGee’s vanity, along with a bottle of hair color he kept hidden away somewhere.
When the door opened, he looked up from his desk and saw Lydia Ryan standing in his doorway. “So this is how it ends,” he said with a smile. “Well, at least they didn’t send a stranger. I don’t suppose it would make any difference if I offered you half the money, would it?”
Ryan shook her head and smiled back. “You should have disappeared when you had the chance, Bob.”
“And give up all of this?” he asked, sweeping his arms out and taking in his tiny office. “Not a chance.”
She laughed and they met in the center of the room, where he gave her a big hug. Once they were done saying hello, he offered her one of the chairs in front of his desk while he took the other. “What’s so top secret that we couldn’t discuss it over a secure phone? This isn’t about that jackass Durkin again, is it? I told you, you should have shot him and dumped him in a shallow grave.”
“Technically, you said I should’ve dumped him in a quarry.”
McGee grinned. “Even better. No, wait. Shoot him, plant pocket litter on him from a gay bar, and then dump him. The Agency hates that kind of stuff and would never dig too deep. You’d get off scot-free.”