by Brad Thor
Straight back from the living room she found another. Entry hall. What she was looking for now was one additional set of hardware, just off that axis. Moments later, she found it. Master bedroom.
Unlike the French, who turned their attics into tiny living spaces for their maids, many Eastern European buildings had unfinished attics. Thankfully, this was one of them. That meant Sølvi didn’t have to deal with pulling up a subfloor. She could go right to work on the plaster and lath between the two joists she had selected.
Using the chandelier hardware as her “zero,” which she figured would be centered over the master bedroom, she had kept going until she assumed she was over the bed. Then, with the tools she had gathered, she went to work making a hole.
Had she been overly ambitious, she could have jumped straight through, hoping for the best, but she knew that posh, top-floor luxury apartments could have ceilings up to fifteen feet high. Even with all her experience jumping out of airplanes, if she didn’t nail the landing, she could be looking at a broken ankle, broken leg, or worse.
It was like a punching through spring ice on a shallow pond. She made a little hole at first so she could see where she was. To her credit, she was right above the bed. Widening the hole a bit further, and peeling out the chunks of plaster and stucco, she could see that the master door was shut.
A few more whacks and she had enough space to slide between the joists. Taking one final look to make sure the room was empty, she slid into the hole, feet first, and dropped athletically onto the bed below.
She landed hard, concerned that the bed frame might give way and crash onto the floor. It didn’t.
Even so, it had still created some noise. If not for the door being closed, she would have given herself away.
Raising her weapon, she hopped off the bed and hurried across the room. As best she could tell, the voices were coming from what she assumed to be the dining room area—out the door, at the end of the hall, and to the right.
Pressing herself against the wall, she reached for the door and slowly depressed the handle. When she felt the lock release, she drew the door back. It glided soundlessly on well-oiled hinges.
She peered into the hall, weapon up and at the ready—first right and then left. There were no targets in sight.
Moving toward the living room, she kept her pistol in tight, yet ready to engage. The closer she got, the better she could discern the different voices.
There was her guy—the diplomat, as well as two other men. They were all three arguing in what she assumed was their native language.
At the end of the hall, she pulled up short. She still had the element of surprise. As soon as she stepped into the living room, though, it would be gone and all bets would be off.
She didn’t want to go in blind, but she didn’t have any alternative. She couldn’t see anyone from where she had taken her position. Best-case scenario, the men—whom she assumed were armed—didn’t have their weapons drawn.
Applying pressure to her trigger, she took a deep breath, and button-hooked into the living room.
As soon as she did, she could see everything. In the dining room, her diplomat had been bound, hands behind his back, to the thick pull handle of the swinging door into the kitchen. He was being assaulted by two very large men. She had to stop herself from firing. All of it was being played out in the reflection of a large mirror at the boundary between the two rooms.
Without her even being conscious of it, Sølvi’s mind did the calculations, reversing everything she was seeing, in order to tell where the bad guys actually were. Adjusting her pistol, she aimed as best she could and began firing through the wall.
The closest of the two men dropped instantly. She had drilled two rounds through his head. The second man had only been grazed and a fraction of a second later returned fire.
He seemed to be using the mirror too because as Sølvi dove for cover, he was able to pinpoint her location and fire three times.
Two of his shots went wide, but one found its target. It went through her abdomen, near her right hip, and out through her lower back.
The pain was sharper than anything she had ever felt, but she had to push it down, ignore it as she had been trained. Which is exactly what she did.
She tried to use the mirror again, but she could only see a sliver of her opponent. The man had scrambled under the dining room table and was barely visible. Nevertheless, she aimed for what she could see and let the rounds fly as she rushed for a better position.
The man cried out as she shot him in his right foot, the round going through the sole of his boot and out the top.
She looked down at her own wound and saw that she was bleeding. She needed to put pressure on the wound, but first she had to finish this guy off.
Getting one more look at the mirror to see where he was, she fired at it, and shattered its glass, so that he couldn’t track her. Moving to a new position, she ejected her nearly spent magazine and slammed home a fresh one.
Whoever this guy was, she didn’t want to give him time to regroup, much less to crawl over to the diplomat, grab on to him like a shield, and place his gun to his head in order to use him as a bargaining chip. It was time to act.
Reversing course, she returned to where she had previously been, dropped to the floor, and began firing low, through the wall, toward the base of the dining room table.
The room was already thick with gun smoke, and grew thicker still. Chips of paint, pieces of drywall, and splinters of wood went flying everywhere.
She heard the man cry out in pain twice more. He fired three rounds in her general direction, but then he and his weapon fell silent.
“Help me!” the diplomat yelled.
“Are they dead?” she shouted back, her ears ringing from the booming cracks of her opponents’ weapons.
“Yes,” he shouted.
“Both of them?”
“The one nearest me is definitely dead,” the diplomat replied. “The other crawled out from under the table and has collapsed in the corner of the room. Near the window. He isn’t moving.”
Sølvi swapped out her current magazine with a new one, struggled to the far side of the living room, and then slowly moved behind the furniture toward the side with the windows.
Once she was confident that she’d be able to get a good line of sight into the dining room, she readied her pistol and risked a look.
The man was propped up in the corner, right where the diplomat had said he was. His shirt and his trousers were covered with blood. There was also a trickle dripping from his mouth. His hand, still wrapped around the butt of his gun, lay in his lap. His eyes were wide open and he was staring right at her—as if he knew exactly where she was going to reappear.
Pressing her trigger, she fired in two controlled pairs—two shots to his head, two shots to his chest.
Blood, skull fragments, and bits of brain splattered on the wall behind him. The gun fell from his hand. Slowly, his heavy body, slick with blood, tilted to the left and slid along the wallpaper until he landed on the floor with a thud.
Getting cautiously to her feet, Sølvi scanned for additional threats. As the ringing in her ears started to recede, she thought she could hear the wail of police klaxons.
“Is there anyone else here?” she asked.
The diplomat shook his head. “Only them. Untie me. Please.”
Motioning for him to be quiet as she slipped into the dining room, she checked the assailants and kicked their weapons away. They were both dead.
Cutting the diplomat loose, she gestured for him to stay put and stay quiet. Opening the kitchen door, she made sure no one else was hiding nearby. She then did the same thing with the bathrooms, the closets, and the children’s room.
Returning to the diplomat, she asked. “Are you injured?”
The man shook his head. “No.”
“Can you move?”
He nodded and Sølvi helped get him to his feet.
“You’ve b
een shot,” he said, eyeballing the dark spread of crimson across her midsection.
“I’ll be okay. Do you have any bandages?”
The man nodded again.
“Go grab them. And then we need to get the hell out of here.”
As the man went to do as she had instructed, Sølvi patted down the corpses. There was nothing on them—no passports, no wallets, no cell phones. Nothing.
When the diplomat came back into the dining room, Sølvi had trouble standing up and he had to assist her. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”
“I’m fine,” she lied. “Let’s go.”
Buttoning her jacket to hide the blood, Sølvi checked the hallway first before signaling to the diplomat that it was safe to follow.
Taking the stairs down to the ground level in her condition was out of the question, so she, the diplomat, and the one suitcase she had told him he could bring when they had originally hatched their plan, all crammed into the little cage elevator and headed down.
She kept her weapon handy in case any more assailants might be waiting, but the lobby was empty. Plenty of neighbors had heard the gunfire and many could be seen peeking out of doorways and peering over the stairwell railing.
Outside on the street, she guided the diplomat to her vehicle and reluctantly agreed to let him drive. After getting her into the passenger seat, he threw his bag in back and they took off for the airport.
“Slow down,” she admonished, as she kept one eye on her side mirror while bandaging her wound. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
“Are you sure? It looks bad.”
“I’ve seen worse. Just get us to the airport in one piece and you’ll be back with your family before you know it.”
Once the bandage was in place, she took out her cell phone and sent Pedersen an encrypted message. She had been shot and had lost a lot of blood. She was now traveling with the diplomat and they were on the way to the private aviation side of the airport. She needed a doctor.
Pedersen had only one thing to say in response—I’ll take care of it.
And that’s exactly what he had done. It wasn’t until days later, recuperating in a private hospital in Oslo, that she learned how he had made it happen.
Carl had reached out to his number one contact in Lithuanian Intelligence—Filip Landsbergis of the VSD.
It was Landsbergis who had rushed a trauma physician to the jet Carl had chartered for her to fly home on. Without that doctor’s expert care, she wouldn’t have survived. She owed Landsbergis her life.
But based on what Holidae Hayes had told her, specifically that Harvath and Carl had been recently involved in an operation in Lithuania, that made Landsbergis a suspect in her book.
If he had compromised Carl, or had played any role whatsoever in his murder—she didn’t give a damn if the man had helped save her life. He was going to die. That’s why she had come back to Lithuania, all these years later.
According to Hayes, Carl had helped pave the way for two aircraft to secretly land at an air base in Lithuania. One was a private jet from Scot Harvath’s company, The Carlton Group. The other, which arrived shortly thereafter, belonged to the U.S. military. Whatever they had been up to, the entire mission had been highly classified.
Sølvi knew that there was only one person Carl would have trusted enough to put something like that together—Filip Landsbergis.
She needed to see him, to look him in the eye and put the question directly to him about Carl’s murder. Only then would she be satisfied. Only then could she know what her next move would be.
CHAPTER 22
SOMEWHERE OVER THE ATLANTIC
Age hadn’t softened Gary Lawlor. In fact, if anything, it had made him more of a pain in the ass.
He had hated Harvath’s plan—had hated it with a passion. The symphony of profanity he had composed upon hearing it would have shamed the hardest of hard-core sailors. The more Lawlor had raged against it, though, the more Harvath knew he was right on the money.
Nicholas, on the other hand, liked it, but wasn’t convinced it could be pulled off in time. There were a ton of hurdles that would need to be surmounted, all of them by him. It was a technological nightmare and would take days, if not weeks, to pull together.
Similar to the military’s use of chaff to distract radar-guided missiles, Harvath wanted to flood the zone with disinformation. Using deepfake technology, he wanted to be “seen” on CCTV cameras at multiple airports and train stations around the world.
To make it look like the same person traveling under different identities, he also wanted Nicholas to insert his legit biometric information into each corresponding port of entry computer system, but always attached to a different, fake passport.
Any professional worth their salt would eventually uncover the breadcrumb trail. And, if The Carlton Group played their cards right, they could funnel one, if not more, of the assassins into a trap. Meanwhile, Harvath would be freed up to pursue his own, parallel agenda.
The plan was classic Harvath—audacious, difficult to implement, and likely to change a million times once under way. He had an undeniable talent for getting out ahead of the curve, though. Often, his genius didn’t fully reveal itself until the battle was on and the chess pieces had begun to fall. The big question now was—could he stay ahead of the curve?
Like Nicholas, Lawlor appreciated Harvath’s capabilities. But he also knew that, right now, Harvath was far from being one hundred percent. He was physically, emotionally, and mentally ground down. And on top of that, he had developed one hell of a drinking problem. In short, the guy was a mess.
Only a fool would have sent him out into the field. Only a fool like Lawlor.
He knew that at 65 or even as low as 45 percent, Harvath was still better than almost any other operative on the planet. It didn’t mean, however, that he didn’t have his reservations. Lawlor had plenty of them. Harvath was a nuclear reactor of rage. He could see it just by looking at him. The clenching of his hands into and out of fists, the tightening and releasing of his jaw, the grinding of his teeth—Harvath was a hate-filled wreck and his intentions were clear.
Everyone at The Carlton Group wanted Carl Pedersen’s killer to get what was coming to him. But could Harvath be depended upon to get the job done? Lawlor was having his doubts.
No matter what he said, though, Harvath was going to do what he wanted to do. If Lawlor knew nothing about him, he knew that much, which was why—in the end—he had agreed to set him loose.
Harvath thrived on adversity. The worse his circumstances, the deeper he drew from himself and the greater his performance. He would turn everything that had happened into fuel, boosting his chances for success. Lawlor was certain of it.
In any other organization, a man that damaged would have been sent home, checked into a hospital, or nailed to a desk. But not at The Carlton Group. Their entire raison d’être was risk-taking. Calculated risk-taking, but risk-taking nonetheless.
Putting Harvath in the field was like dropping a malfunctioning nuclear weapon over an enemy city—depending on how the stars were aligned, it could all go stunningly right or spectacularly wrong. And until you had your answer, the wait would be excruciating.
Harvath’s plan involved leap-frogging his way into Europe and killing three birds with one stone. A Black Hawk would return him to Andrews where he’d hop a private jet from the U.S. Air Force fleet. The jet would fly him to Chièvres Air Base in Belgium—a short drive from NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe.
There’d he’d meet privately with Admiral David Proctor as well as Monika Jasinski—just to reassure himself, as well as everyone back at The Carlton Group, that neither of them had sold out Carl Pedersen.
Then, he’d climb aboard an 86th Airlift Wing flight for Šiauliai International Airport in Lithuania and NATO’s Baltic Air Policing mission—pick up a car, and make the two-and-a-half-hour drive into Vilnius to accost Landsbergis.
He’d be travelin
g under an assumed name with fake documents. By using NATO-supported air bases, he would avoid normal ports of entry with their CCTV cameras and biometric scanners. The only people in Europe who would know that he was there would be Proctor and Jasinski, and for them, not until he showed up. It was a risk Harvath, Lawlor, and Nicholas were all willing to take.
In addition, there was also a backup plan he wanted to run—an insurance policy of sorts. If someone was willing to murder Carl to get to him, they’d likely be willing to go after other people close to Harvath. He wanted to make sure certain people were protected.
Once everything was settled, Lance Corporal Garcia picked him up and drove him down to the helipad to meet his ride.
The Black Hawk made the trip from Camp David in just over a half hour. By the time Harvath touched down at Andrews, everything he had asked for was waiting for him. All of it, including the fake documents, were handed over to him in person by CIA Director Bob McGee.
A modified Gulfstream 550 jet—owned and operated by the U.S. Air Force and referred to as a C-37B—was fueled and standing by to make the trip to Belgium. On board were the pilot, copilot, crew chief, and a flight attendant.
The C-37B’s primary function was to provide worldwide airlift for senior American leadership and dignitaries. It was an all-weather, long-range aircraft capable of high-speed, nonstop flights. Its elegant interior was designed with comfort in mind and its crew was extensively trained in catering to VIP passengers.
After spending forty-five minutes in the hangar reviewing everything and getting a briefing from McGee, Harvath had boarded the aircraft, kicked off his shoes, and asked for a drink.
The flight attendant brought him a bourbon, handed over a printed menu card, and asked what his preferences were and when he would like his meals to be served. When she spoke, she addressed Scot as “Mr. Brenner.” “Donovan Reed Brenner” was the name that had been created for him on his fake documents. McGee had chosen it himself.
Donovan was a nod to Wild Bill Donovan, founder of the CIA’s precursor, the OSS. Brenner was a reference to the Brenner assignment—the most daring spy mission undertaken in World War II. McGee knew that the book by the same name was one of Harvath’s favorites. And also because he was one of Harvath’s favorite people, the name Reed had been chosen as a homage to the Old Man.