Near Dark

by Brad Thor

  She used predetermined online auction sites, placing obscure items up for bid, which would trigger alerts to the client in question. It was the modern equivalent of old-school tradecraft, back when coded messages used to be placed in the classified sections of newspapers around the world. Even today, in the age of modern technology, the simplest solutions were often still the best.

  That didn’t change Harvath’s problem, though. How could they know that she wasn’t holding out on them? That she didn’t have another way to reach the client? That she might send out a warning?

  In short, there was no way they could know. Their only option was to lock her up—physically or professionally.

  Physically meant exactly what it sounded like—they could tie her up, put a bag over her head, and stash her away until they nailed her client.

  Professionally it meant offering her something so valuable that she wouldn’t dare jeopardize it by sending out an alert.

  Needless to say, Nicholas was an instant fan of operation “bag-over-the-head.”

  Harvath, though, didn’t want to wait around for an extraction team to show up in order to move her to a safe house and sit on her. Depending on where they came from, that could take a while—even if they used The Carlton Group’s Quick Reaction Force.

  As soon as the information on the Contessa’s client provided a lead, he wanted to be wheels up. Thankfully, back in the United States, Lawlor had agreed with him.

  In fact, Lawlor had gone so far as to suggest calling in a favor from the Italians and to have them ready to raid her villa with a terrorism, espionage, or sex-trafficking warrant—anything that would allow Italy to cut her off and throw her in a hole for the next seventy-two hours.

  With that said, nothing was supposed to happen until Harvath gave the green light. Which was why it was so startling to suddenly have four plainclothes gunmen in the hallway.

  “Contact right!” Sølvi yelled as they began firing at her. “They’re coming up from the cellar!”

  One of the alarm codes had been a distress code. Cops or a security company would have come in through the front door, not up from the basement. In fact, he hadn’t even seen an entrance down there. There had to have been some hidden door, which only reinforced that she had double-crossed them.

  He was about to ask Nicholas if he knew what the hell was going on, when he saw the Contessa lunge for something. That something was yet another hidden pistol.

  Harvath pulled his Sig and shot her twice.

  “What are we going to do here?” Sølvi shouted from the door.

  “Engage!” Harvath yelled back.

  As he rushed to join her, he grabbed a flashbang from his pack, pulled the pin, and tossed it into the hall.

  “Flashbang!” he yelled, as he and Sølvi pulled back to be protected from the flash, as well as the concussion wave.

  Once the device detonated, they swung around the door frame and laid down fire—Sølvi high and Harvath low.

  They drilled all four men, filling them with rounds.

  Ducking back into the room, they dropped their mags. Harvath slammed home a fresh one, while Sølvi did the same after grabbing one from the pack.

  Over his earbud, Nicholas was demanding to know what had just happened. Harvath told him to stand by.

  First, they checked the Contessa. She was dead and already headed toward room temperature.

  Cautiously, they swung into the hall and approached each of the gunmen. Harvath checked them for pulses, but they were dead too.

  Studying them, it was obvious that these weren’t cops or security guards sent by an alarm company. They were relatively well dressed, with expensive shoes and gold jewelry. They looked more like mafia, pulled from a party at a local nightclub. And based on Montecalvo’s Sicilian roots, it wouldn’t have surprised Harvath to learn that she had recruited her own militia—even if she’d had to import them from Sicily.

  He gave Nicholas a quick SITREP and then repeated to Sølvi the words that had been said to him in Key West only days ago when his teammates had rescued him, “Time to go.”

  “Wait!” Nicholas said, over his earbud. “Check her computer screen. Is she still logged in?”

  Harvath looked at it. “Yes.”

  “Okay, before you leave, I need you to do something.”

  CHAPTER 43

  With five bodies stacked up at the Contessa’s, Harvath wanted to put as much distance between them and Sirmione as quickly as possible. Sølvi concurred.

  After setting Nicholas up so he could remotely delete the footage from the CCTV cameras, they picked up all of their brass, wiped down anything they may have touched, and returned to their hotel.

  There, they packed their things, left a tip for the housekeeper, and, using the back stairs, disappeared.

  They lingered in town only long enough for Sølvi to pilot the boat back to the marina, tie it up, and drop the keys in the mailbox of the charter office.

  The return journey to Aviano was going to be a little over two and a half hours. And while it would have been a safe idea to go someplace new and unpredictable, the air base was the most secure. Sølvi offered to drive so that Harvath could work his phone.

  His first call was to Admiral Proctor to arrange discreet access back onto the base, a place to hole up, and an aircraft once they knew where they were headed next. Proctor told him he would get it taken care of and ping him back as soon as he had everything set.

  Harvath then reached out to Lawlor, who had asked for a debrief once he was on the road. Though they were using secure, encrypted communications, he was wiped out and kept it short. Lawlor understood and didn’t give him any pushback.

  After their call ended, he traded texts with Nicholas. While he was certain his colleague was taking total advantage of being inside the Contessa’s system, grabbing everything he could find, he wanted to make sure he was focused on the big picture—identifying the assassin who had murdered Carl.

  Nicholas assured him that was indeed the case and that they had already begun processing the information from the file. He promised to get back to him as soon as he had something. And with that, Harvath was officially in a holding pattern.

  “I’m happy to take over driving if you’d like,” he said.

  “That’s okay,” she replied. “I’m good. Why don’t you get some sleep? This may be your only chance for a bit.”

  A part of him wanted to chat and get to know her even better, but he really was exhausted—his jet lag still weighing on him. She was offering him a gift. He decided to take it. Leaning the seat back, he closed his eyes.

  * * *

  When he awoke to the sound of his phone, he thought he had been out for only a few minutes. Looking at the clock, he saw that he had been asleep for well over an hour.

  It was Admiral Proctor, calling to give him the details of who would be meeting them and where, as well as what their aircraft options were and how best to lock that in once they knew their destination.

  After everything had been explained, Harvath thanked him and disconnected the call.

  Proctor would have a team meet them in the nearby town of Sacile, take care of the Jeep, and handle getting them onto the base.

  With more than fifty nuclear weapons housed at Aviano, security was incredibly tight. But there was a reason Proctor had been so good at helming both SOCOM and CENTCOM. He had an excellent mind for clandestine operations.

  Harvath plugged the new destination into his GPS and filled Sølvi in on the change of plan.

  She had no problem with the detour. In fact, it made a lot of sense. This was a NATO air base they were headed to, but it was under Italian jurisdiction. The Carabinieri, who were one of Italy’s main law enforcement agencies, fell under Italy’s Ministry of Defense. They had a wide purview and could cause a lot of trouble if police in Sirmione put out an alert and somehow their vehicle was reported as having been seen at Aviano.

  There was no telling how long they’d have to be on the base. Th
e best course of action was to adopt a low profile and not give the Carabinieri, or any other Italian authorities, a reason to come looking for them there.

  Proctor’s team met them in Sacile with a row of three SUVs. The team leader introduced himself and explained that Harvath and Sølvi had been cleared onto the base by Brigadier General Sandra Collins, commander of the 31st Fighter Wing. He explained their cover story, and asked for their passports, as well as the keys to the Jeep.

  Like Harvath, Sølvi was also traveling under an assumed identity—one of the many Carl had created for her.

  She and Harvath handed over their passports and, after transferring their gear into their SUV, the column got rolling.

  They moved with the tight precision of a team that had repeatedly driven in combat. Even in their tiny cars, no Italian was going to be able to slide in between any of their vehicles.

  It took just under fifteen minutes to make the drive from Sacile to Aviano. Bollards, chain link fencing, and razor wire surrounded the entire base. At the gate, they swung, en masse, into a lane reserved for VIPs.

  The team leader handed over the passports for Harvath and Sølvi, while all the other team members presented their Installation Access Control System passes and ID cards.

  While one guard used a handheld scanner to verify all the IACS documentation, another approached the center SUV with a clipboard to compare the names on it to the passports and faces of the two VIPs about to enter.

  As the verification was being conducted, more guards, including two canine units, swept the vehicles, including their cargo areas.

  Harvath knew that this was standard operating procedure. The dogs were searching for high-grade explosives, not small arms. He and Sølvi were being escorted by a protective detail. If the dogs were looking for guns, they’d be going crazy over this team. Every one of them was armed.

  Almost as soon as the security screening had begun, the passports were handed back, and the gate guards were waving the column through.

  They drove to an admin building with holding rooms similar to the one Harvath had been placed in at Chièvres Air Base, though nicer and much more modern.

  The team helped unload their gear and get them checked in. The team leader provided them with his cell number and told them to reach out if they needed anything else. Harvath thanked everyone and said good night.

  Sølvi had been assigned the room next to Harvath’s. They agreed to try to get a few hours of sleep and then find breakfast.

  After chugging a bottle of water and downing a couple of small packages of almonds, Harvath lay down on the couch in his room. He thought about brushing his teeth, but found he didn’t even have the energy to get back up. All he cared about was getting some sleep.

  Kicking off his boots, he adjusted the cushion under his head and closed his eyes. His thoughts, though, wouldn’t let him rest.

  He had heard it referred to as “monkey mind”—the way everything kept jumping around.

  Normally when he closed his eyes, he saw Lara. That happened this time too, but then his mind switched to Marco and what the little boy had been through. Not only had his father died just before he was born, but he had also lost his mom and had been caught up in some sort of failed, violent attempted kidnapping, accompanied by plenty of gunfire.

  Harvath couldn’t even to begin to imagine what all the long-term impacts would be. How do you even begin to have a “normal” childhood, much less grow into a healthy, fully functioning adult with that kind of stuff in your past?

  What worried Harvath even more was what was to come. Lara’s parents were wonderful people, but they were much older. What would happen if one or, God forbid, both of them passed before Marco was old enough to be on his own? How much pain could a child take? Just thinking about it threatened to shatter his heart into a thousand more pieces.

  He needed to put his thoughts about Marco and Lara in that iron box, weld it shut again, and shove it as far back into his mental attic as it would go. The pain only served to drain his energy and exhaust him further.

  An unhealthy part of him suggested a nightcap would be worth getting up for and would quiet his mind. He knew, though, that it wouldn’t end well. He shoved that thought down too.

  Looking for anything else he could lose himself in, he allowed his mind to drift. It landed on the woman next door.

  As he thought about Sølvi, their lunch on the boat, and how her smile had dazzled him, everything else slipped away and he slowly began to unwind.

  Not long after, he drifted off, sleep having locked him firmly in its grasp.

  It was dark and dreamless, like tumbling off a cliff into a bottomless, midnight pit. He slept hard and deep.

  At some point, the brain needed to power down—if only for a little while. Shock, trauma, and constant threats created an environment where the central nervous system—without periods of rest—could begin to deteriorate. Sleep was the key to remaining sharp. And his ability to remain sharp—to function at his absolute optimal limit—was what gave him his edge.

  Unlike in the Jeep, this time he was able to get several hours of shut-eye. But when he awoke, he thought he had overslept. It sounded like Sølvi was knocking on his door.

  After a few moments, he realized that the sound he was hearing wasn’t someone knocking at his door, but rather his cell phone vibrating atop the wooden coffee table next to him.

  Reaching over, he picked it up and squinted at the caller ID. It was Nicholas. He couldn’t imagine what time it was back in the States.

  Activating the call, he said, “You must have something.”

  “I absolutely do,” the little man replied.

  “What is it?”

  “I think I know who the assassin is.”

  Harvath sat up on the couch. “Talk to me.”

  “In order to catch Carl’s killer, I thought maybe we should set loose the most terrifying organization the United States has ever created.”

  “Which is?” he replied, eyeing the coffee machine.

  “The Internal Revenue Service.”

  He smiled. They certainly were disliked by a lot of people in the United States. That said, Harvath would have guessed that Nicholas would have taken a shot like that at his old nemesis, the National Security Agency.

  Nevertheless, maybe the IRS did make sense. After all, the most relevant data in the Contessa’s file had to do with financial transactions.

  “So, lay it out for me. What’s the connection?”

  “Remember OAKSTAR?” Nicholas asked.

  “The NSA’s internet surveillance program that Snowden revealed?”

  “Precisely. While everyone was freaking out about their Facebook posts, emails, and private messages being gobbled up by the government, there was a whole other vein the U.S. government was mining. Uncle Sam was tracking all senders and receivers of bitcoin—around the world.

  “According to the documents Snowden released, it went deeper than just the records contained in the blockchain—the ledger where users are designated via ‘anonymous’ identifiers. The NSA had actually collected passwords, years’ worth of internet activity, IP addresses, and unique device identification numbers also referred to as MAC addresses. In short, if you ever even googled the word bitcoin, chances were the NSA had targeted your computer and had sucked up all the data they could pull from it.”

  Harvath had dealt with the NSA on multiple occasions. They had always been super people to work with. That said, there were more than a few high-level executives there who gave him pause.

  “Snowden’s revelation,” Nicholas continued, “spooked a lot of users and sent them scrambling for added layers of encryption and protection. That’s where the IRS comes in.

  “They had been working on something, a software program capable of tracking financial transactions that was light-years ahead of OAKSTAR. They just needed a partner with enough computing muscle and a network with an all-powerful, global reach.”

  “Enter the NSA.”
/>
  “You got it,” the little man replied. “It’s a brilliant joint venture. Together, they can outthink, outsmart, and outreach even the best criminals.”

  “Which is how you got our assassin?”

  “Sending you his picture now,” said Nicholas, transmitting the photo. “Meet Paul Vincent Aubertin.”

  Harvath watched as the photo appeared on his phone.

  “His financial transactions were super murky and very convoluted,” the little man admitted. “But the IRS program loves those kinds of challenges. Eats them for breakfast. As soon as we fed it the information we got from the Contessa, it began to unspool every transaction.

  “He was good. Really good. He used a combination of anonymous bank and cryptocurrency accounts, particularly bitcoin, to move money around and make payments. But deep in his banking history, he set up an account with a one-time transfer from another, rather interesting account.”

  “What made it so interesting?” Harvath asked.

  “The account received a pension payment from the French Foreign Legion before the payment was directed somewhere else.”

  That wasn’t something Harvath had seen coming. First, Irish mobsters in Boston and now the French Foreign Legion? What the hell was going on?

  “That’s how you sourced the name Paul Aubertin?”

  “Correct,” Nicholas replied. “I may have accessed a certain French military database, which is where I got the photo. But that’s just the start. When I searched for a facial match to any photos online, I discovered a private, password-protected Foreign Legion website. In a group photo, you can see Aubertin. But three people to his left is someone else I think you might recognize. I’m sending it now.”

  Harvath waited for it to come through and when it did, he said, “The assassin who tried to kill me in Key West.”

  “His name is Didier Defraigne. He’s Belgian. He and Aubertin served in the Foreign Legion at the same time.”