State of the Union

by Brad Thor

  “But it still doesn’t explain why they didn’t take out Gary and Frank Leighton.”

  “There’s a lot of this that doesn’t make sense, Agent Harvath, and at this point we can only focus on what we know. For the sake of the United States, this mission has to succeed.”

  “I agree, but with ten out of twelve guys dead and Gary now missing, how can it?” asked Scot.

  “That,” replied the president, “is where you come in.”

  Chapter 17

  SOMEWHERE ABOVE THE ATLANTIC

  STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS—7 DAYS

  A t six hundred miles per hour, the luxuriously appointed Cessna Citation X, secured for Harvath by an affiliate of the Capstone Corporation, lived up to its reputation of being the fastest business jet in the world. It quickly rose to an altitude of 51,000 feet where its fuel economy could be maximized and commercial airline traffic was nonexistent. With a top speed of Mach .92, they were flying at nearly the speed of sound, screaming across each mile of the 4100 that they needed to travel in less than six seconds apiece.

  While the twin Rolls-Royce AE-3007C engines hastened the plane across the Atlantic, Harvath tried to quiet the thoughts in his mind. He had been given only a few moments to call Meg. To each of her questions he could only answer, “I can’t talk about it.” That hadn’t sat well with her at all. When asked when he would be home, his answer followed right in the same vein, “I have no idea.” Her silence on the other end was deafening. This was the real test of their relationship. He could be called anywhere at any time to do anything, and Meg Cassidy would just have to deal with it. Right now, though, she wasn’t dealing well with it at all. Discretion dictated that he be careful how much he told her over the phone. He wished he could share with her the incredible importance of what he was embarking upon, but that would have served nothing more than to make her fear not only for his safety, but for hers as well.

  She had remained quiet, and when Scot failed to add anything further, she said good-bye and hung up the phone. Halfway through the flight, he realized that when she had asked him when he would be home and he replied that he had no idea, what he should have said was simply, “Soon. Real soon.” But of course at this point, half an hour into his flight and over nine-and-a-half miles above the Atlantic, it was a little too late to be coming up with the right answer. He began to wonder if Meg Cassidy would be able to weather the storms that the demands of his career would undoubtedly visit upon their relationship.

  Harvath took a deep breath and tried to focus on the matter at hand. The Citation X would make the journey in less than seven hours, and he needed to get his head in the game. As his breathing slowed, he slipped into a Zenlike state somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. His colleagues in the SEALs had always remarked at his uncanny ability to slip into this state of deep relaxation, especially before some of their most dangerous missions. For Harvath, it was relaxing after a mission that had always been the hardest part for him. His adrenaline seemed to continue to flow for several days as his mind replayed the events his body had undergone. Relaxing and even sleeping before a mission had never been a problem for him because he realized that a sharp, focused mind was the best weapon he could bring to bear in any situation. He took full advantage of the flight to rest both his mind and his body, as he had no idea what he was in for when he landed.

  After clearing customs for General Aviation, Harvath passed two rather menacing-looking, machine gun–toting border guards and made his way outside to find his cab.

  Leaning against a somewhat worse-for-wear Mercedes sedan with a taxi light atop and deeply tinted windows was Harvath’s old friend Herman Toffle, or “Herman the German” as he was more affectionately known. He stood at least six foot four and weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred-fifty pounds. He had dark hair, deep green eyes and a closely cropped beard that had begun to show smudges of gray. Scot had become friends with Herman during his SEAL days when they had conducted cross-training exercises together. Herman had been a member of Germany’s famed GSG9 counterterrorism unit and until a bullet injury to his leg forced him out had been legendary not only for his on the job bravado, but also for his sense of humor.

  “Taxi, mister?” smiled Herman as he took Harvath’s bag and chucked it into the trunk. Harvath slid into the back as Herman got into the driver’s seat and with no ceremony whatsoever, started the vehicle, lurched out of the parking space, and pointed the Mercedes toward central Berlin.

  Three blocks after leaving the airport and confident they weren’t being followed, Herman pulled the Mercedes into a parking garage, parked next to a large bakery van and came around to the rear passenger side door.

  “Get out here where I can see you.”

  Harvath obliged and Herman immediately wrapped him in an enormous bear hug. “You’ve gotten smaller.”

  “No I haven’t,” said Harvath patting his friend’s stomach. “You’ve just gotten bigger. Your wife must be feeding you very well. How is she?”

  “She’s doing very well, but you didn’t come to Berlin to talk about Diana.”

  “Not this time, my friend,” said Harvath. “I’m here on a very serious operation.”

  “And so you said on the phone. But you’re not working with the German government, at least not officially.”

  “Correct.”

  “Well, in that case,” said Herman as he banged his ham-sized fist against the large bakery van they had parked next to, “I’d like you to meet a few of my distant cousins.”

  Harvath heard the van’s door slide open and then boots hitting the ground as, one by one, a group of eight men in plainclothes rounded the van and lined up in front of him. Herman informed his friend that he had used his contacts to round up an off-duty Berlin SWAT unit specializing in hostage situations and counterterrorism operations. It was known as theMobiles Einsatzkommando , or MEK for short.

  “Funny, there doesn’t seem to be much of a family resemblance between you and your cousins,” said Harvath.

  “Of course there is,” replied Herman who, with a smile, opened his jacket to reveal the butts of two large semi automatic pistols. “You just have to look closer.”

  In unison, the men then all drew back their winter coats as well to reveal a startling array of weaponry. Harvath had always thought that the Secret Service was good at hiding their gear, but these MEK guys were in a class all by themselves. He saw everything from Heckler & Koch MP5s and MP7s to G36-Cs, modified tactical shotguns, and even street sweepers. One thing was for certain; not only did these boys come to play, they came to win.

  Scot shook hands with the men as Herman introduced them. Once the introductions were complete, the men climbed back into the van and Herman led Harvath to the trunk of his Mercedes where he popped the lid to reveal a mini-arsenal.

  “I am assuming that as you are not here with the full knowledge and blessing of the German government, you didn’t come armed. Would that be a reasonable assumption?”

  “Very,” replied Harvath.

  “I figured as much. Take your pick,” said Herman with a wide sweep of his hand. “We can’t have you running around the streets of Berlin naked.”

  “You’re all heart, Herman,” said Harvath as he removed a .45-caliber H&K USP Tactical pistol from the trunk and pulled back the slide. “Does this model come with any upgrades?”

  “Nothing but the best,” answered Herman as he opened a black plastic Storm case and stood back so Harvath could choose. Scot had brought his filtered SureFire flashlight with him from home, along with his Benchmade Auto AXIS folding knife, and so bypassed Herman’s selection of tactical lights, choosing instead a LaserLyte laser sighting system which could be mounted on the rail system beneath the USP’s threaded barrel. He selected a silencer; grabbed a handful of empty clips, a box of ammunition, a brand new BlackHawk Industries tactical holster, and a couple of flashbang grenades; and stuffed the whole lot into his pockets.

  As he began walking back around the
car, Herman said, “I’ve got body armor too.”

  “I don’t plan on getting shot,” answered Harvath.

  “No one ever does. I didn’t, and now everywhere I go, I’m followed by one leg that just can’t keep up with the rest of me.”

  Scot knew his friend was right and returned to the trunk where Herman handed him a bulletproof vest from an American company called First Choice, the best body armor manufacturers in the world. The vest was made of an ultra–high molecular weight polyethylene fiber material known as Spectra. It was considered to be far superior to Kevlar because it was much lighter and with its nicely tapered edges, was much more comfortable to wear. When properly fitted, Spectra was virtually invisible under clothing. Harvath had had a lot of experience with First Choice, as it was what both the Secret Service and the president always wore.

  He fastened the Velcro straps firmly around his body, and then put his three-quarter-length black leather jacket back on.

  Herman took the taxi light off the top of his Mercedes and after securing everything in his trunk, pulled out of the garage with the bakery van trailing four car lengths behind.

  Even though Harvath had left DC at six in the morning, with the time difference, he hadn’t arrived in Berlin until just before seven p.m. local time. The weather was very much the same as in DC—overcast and cold. The temperature gauge on Herman’s dash read minus nine degrees Celsius. Harvath did the math and even though he had begun his SEAL career with their cold weather detachment known as the Polar SEALs, the thought of sixteen degrees Fahrenheit still made him shiver. He found the button for his seat warmer and set it on high.

  Herman laughed, “I don’t like the weather here either, that’s why I live in the south. The winters in Berlin are terrible. Too damp. It’s less than two hundred kilometers to the Baltic. You’re lucky there was no fog. Your flight could have been delayed indefinitely. That’s the problem with Berlin. You never know what the weather is going to do.”

  As they drove into Berlin, Scot loaded his empty magazines with .45-caliber rounds while Herman explained that he and his men had been watching Harvath from the moment he had entered the General Aviation terminal at Tempelhof Airport and had not seen anyone following him. Harvath knew that if he had had a tail, his exchange with Herman at the snack bar, establishing what was referred to in tradecraft as their respectivebona fides , would have revolved around a different subject and Harvath would have left his friend there and taken a bus into the city center where they would have met at an alternate location. Such was the way fieldwork was conducted. When it came to the location of clandestine meetings, all operatives held to the acronym PACE. It stood for: primary, alternate, contingency, and emergency. There was always a backup to the backup.

  Herman spoke over the radio to the MEK operatives behind them in the van as they neared the Schöneberg neighborhood where the Capstone safe house was located. One of their men had been sitting in the café up the street from the apartment building entrance and was giving the word that no one had been in or out so far this evening.

  Harvath and Herman drove slowly up Goltzstrasse, while the MEK van dropped men off on adjacent streets to make their way to their respective entry points. They found a parking space on Pallasstrasse, checked their weapons, and then got out and locked the car.

  The temperature had dropped at least another five degrees, and Harvath turned up the collar of his coat and tucked his head down.

  As he and Herman made their way towards the safe house, Harvath’s warm breath rose into the night air, moisture clinging to his eyebrows and coating them with ice.

  Harvath’s pulse began to quicken as they neared the front of the building. He slid his hand inside his coat and touched the butt of the H&K USP. He had no idea if they would find Gary Lawlor inside or not, but at least it was a place to start. He took one last look across the street where the blood red color of a neon bank logo above two ATMs, caught his eye. He hoped it wasn’t a harbinger of things to come.

  Refocusing his mind on the task at hand, Harvath walked up to the front door of the building with Herman, who appeared to be coughing, but was discretely radioing commands over the throat mike hidden by his heavy scarf. Harvath found the nondescript keypad in the entryway and entered the five digit code that the Defense Secretary had given him back in DC. The heavy door clicked open and Harvath and Herman entered.

  The lobby was prewar Berlin with a vintage, cage-style elevator surrounded by a twisting staircase with wrought iron railings. The yellow plaster walls were cracked and peeling, and the black and white tiled floor was badly in need of polishing. The marble stairs were worn from generations of use. Battered bicycles with old, shabby locks leaned against each other in a haphazard array along an alcove at the far end of the lobby. A row of tarnished mailboxes was punctuated by what appeared to be a secondhand baby carriage that its owner most likely couldn’t fit into the small European elevator and had no desire to lug up God only knew how many flights of stairs.

  An overpowering scent of cheap disinfectant hung in the air, and the smell reminded Harvath of some sort of third-world hospital. It was not a good thing to be reminded of before going into a potentially hostile situation.

  Every move they made threatened to echo off of the lobby walls, so they took pains to move as quietly as possible. While Herman crept off to the service entrance to let in the other team members, Harvath remained in the lobby watching the front door and the stairs. He removed the sound suppressor from his coat pocket and screwed it onto the threaded barrel at the front of his pistol. He pulled the slide back and chambered a round, then activated the LaserLyte sighting system and pointed the gun towards the floor, sweeping the beam in a wide arc across the tiles.

  Herman soon returned with several of the MEK members.

  “We left one man at the service entrance and we have two more on the roof, ready to rappel down,” said Herman. “If anyone approaches the front door, our operative, Max, who’s in the café, will let us know. Are you ready?”

  “For what, I don’t know, but I’m ready,” replied Harvath.

  “If they’re holding him in there, we’ll get him.”

  Harvath nodded his assent and Herman gave a series rapid orders over his throat mike. One of the men disabled the elevator, and then the team made their way up to the third floor.

  By the time he reached the final landing, Herman was breathing heavily, but it was obvious from the look in his eyes that he was thrilled to be back in the game. Harvath wished he could share the same level of enthusiasm. He hadn’t told his old friend the full story of why he had come to Berlin. He couldn’t. All he was able to tell Herman Toffle, former GSG9 counterterrorism operative, was that he needed his help and that he would have to trust him, which he did. A combination of Herman’s word and the reputation of Scot Harvath in the international Special Operations community was all that was needed to get the MEK men onboard. If the truth be told, German Spec Ops operatives were no different from their American counterparts—if there was an opportunity for a little excitement, they were all over it.

  The lead MEK agent, a very muscular man of medium height named Sebastian, waved over one of his operatives and instructed him to feed their snake—a long fiber optic camera, underneath the door and into the apartment to give them an idea of what might be waiting for them on the other side. The operative slid the snake slowly into the apartment and spent several moments looking into the monocle viewfinder before raising his head and giving Sebastian theall clear .

  Sebastian tested the doorknob to see if it was locked and then motioned to Herman, who radioed the men on the roof to get ready. The plan was that they would rappel down and smash through two windows in the rear of the apartment at precisely the same moment as the rest of the team came through the front door. After a final check with their man, Max in the café, Herman began counting backwards from five in German, “Fünf, vier, drei, zwei, eins, null!”

  At the zero mark, the team sprang. One o
f Sebastian’s men had a mini–battering ram and with one blow, shattered the lock and flung the door wide open. With their weapons drawn, the men charged into the apartment, right as their teammates from the roof came crashing through the rear windows. Everything had been orchestrated with absolute perfection. The team fanned out, clearing the rooms in a matter of seconds, but there was no sign of Gary Lawlor.

  Harvath began moving from room to room, looking for any clue that Gary had been there or might have left some indication as to where he was going or where he might be, but there was nothing.

  Several of the men sat down in the small living room and began disassembling their weapons. As Harvath entered, he noticed Sebastian, the team leader, standing next to a bookcase near the front windows. As Sebastian removed one of the books from the shelf, Harvath noticed a red dot trace along the wall.

  “Get down!” he roared, as he leapt across the room.

  The pinpoint targeting device came to rest square in the center of Sebastian’s chest and the chance that it had come from the laser site of one of his team members was all but impossible. They were professionals through and through, and would not have played games like that.

  As he knocked into Sebastian, Harvath’s highly attuned senses heard the crack of glass, followed by the sensation of being pounded in the chest three times in quick succession by a sledgehammer.

  Before he and Sebastian had completely rolled to the safety and cover of a nearby sofa, the room was awash in a sea of splintering wood and crumbling plaster.

  “Where is the shooter?” Harvath heard one of the MEK operatives yell in German as he quickly reassembled his weapon.

  “Across the street,” responded another who had powered up his night vision goggles and was sneaking a peek out the window. “On top of the roof.”