Backlash

by Brad Thor

  Opening the flare gun case, he examined its contents. In keeping with similar setups from the Soviet days, the kit included the pistol itself and four flares, beneath which was a conversion tube. When inserted into the barrel, it allowed for firing of .45 or 410 ammunition. Two cardboard boxes with five rounds of each were also included.

  It was a clever piece of equipment, but not something Harvath anticipated needing. Thanks to the Spetsnaz operatives onboard, he had access to much more effective firearms.

  That said, the flare gun might come in handy, so he set it aside. Opening the aspirin container, he popped two in his mouth, picked his tea back up, and took a sip to wash them down.

  As he took another sip, he gazed at all of his supplies. They didn’t seem to be nearly enough, but they were much better than nothing. He was alive, and aside from the beatings he had suffered, he was walking away from a major plane crash unscathed. For all intents and purposes, he was ahead in this game. But for how long?

  It was the number-one question in his mind at this moment. Had the pilot’s Mayday been received? How long until the plane was missed? And after that, how long until a search was launched? That was the equation Harvath was most concerned with. How long should he stay with the wreckage, getting warm and assembling his escape kit, before fleeing?

  The light was completely gone now and the storm was howling outside. If he struck off before morning, he was as good as dead. The only thing he had going for him was that there was no way the Russians would launch a rescue operation in weather like this. They wouldn’t risk losing more aircraft. They would wait until the storm had passed.

  For the moment, Harvath was safe. But the sooner he got moving the better.

  After stoking the fire, he wrapped himself tighter in the blanket, his pistol in one hand, his flashlight in the other. Closing his eyes, he told himself he was only going to grab a few hours of sleep.

  He was exhausted and instantly drifted off.

  CHAPTER 12

  * * *

  * * *

  GOVERNORS ISLAND

  GILFORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE

  “Pause it,” Bob McGee said, pointing at the TV screen. “Right there.”

  They were at the house across the street, reviewing security footage.

  “Whose vehicle is that?” he asked.

  “The caretaker’s,” said Chief Tullis.

  “And he’s the one who found the bodies?” Militante asked.

  The police officer nodded. “The lease your man Harvath signed requires the owners to maintain the property. We’ve had a lot of weather up here, so he was bringing by extra salt for the driveway. According to his statement, he was checking the gutters around the house for ice damming when he saw the victims through one of the windows.”

  “Which is when he called 911?”

  Tullis nodded. “Six-eighteen this morning,” he stated, reading from his notebook.

  “Okay,” replied McGee. “Keep rewinding.”

  They watched footage from the past two days. Only a handful of cars passed the security camera. None of them drove into or out of Reed Carlton’s driveway.

  Then a silver four-door Chevrolet was seen leaving the property.

  “Stop,” said the CIA Director.

  The Police Chief complied, pressing the Pause button once again. Checking his notes, he read off a series of letters and numbers.

  McGee peered at the screen and studied the car leaving Carlton’s driveway. “I can’t make out the plate.”

  “Or the driver,” Militante added.

  Tullis rewound and advanced the footage, pausing at different spots, trying to get a good view. From the vantage point of this camera, shooting across the street, the image just wasn’t sharp enough. “Maybe they can enhance this at the lab in Concord. For now, though, what we can see is that the make, model, and color of the vehicle we’re looking at are a match for the one Harvath registered at the hotel.”

  “Keep going backward,” the CIA Director ordered. “Slowly.”

  Chief Tullis activated the remote. Based on the condition of the corpses, they were looking at footage from the day of the murders.

  “Stop!” McGee ordered.

  Onscreen, they could see that the driver’s window of the silver sedan had been rolled down and the driver’s arm was sticking out.

  “Roll it back a few more frames and then push Play.”

  Tullis did as he was asked.

  From across the street, they could make out only the bottom of Reed Carlton’s driveway. But it was enough.

  As the Police Chief hit Play, they all watched as the car appeared in view, the driver thrust his arm out the window, and then snapped it back in.

  “What side of the driveway did they find the cell phone on?” asked Militante as Tullis paused the feed again.

  The Chief walked up to the TV, rewound the video, and pressed Pause. Everyone could see the driver throwing something. Tullis put his finger on the object and drew a line from it into the trees.

  Leaning in, the CIA Director saw that the driver was wearing what appeared to be a chunky, rubber-strapped diver’s watch, similar to the one that Lara had given Harvath for his birthday. Sport watches were common among military types and fitness buffs, but Harvath’s was different. Made by Bell & Ross, it was square with a blue face and a thick blue strap. But at this distance, without magnification, it was impossible to be certain.

  Nevertheless, seeing Harvath’s cell phone being chucked out the window of Harvath’s rental car by a driver wearing the same kind of watch shook him. He tried to keep the exclamation to himself, but the word still escaped his lips. “Fuck.”

  Without needing to be asked, Tullis activated the DVR and scrolled back even further.

  When a black Lincoln Town Car was seen exiting the driveway, he pushed Pause and examined the time code. The vehicle had left the property just before Harvath’s car. There was less than an hour between them.

  “Any idea who that was?” Militante asked.

  The Chief shook his head. They shuttled back and forth through the immediate footage without luck. The vehicle had tinted rear windows and its license plate was blurry. It appeared to be a livery of sorts.

  McGee signaled to continue rewinding.

  They scrolled back far enough to see the Town Car arrive. It appeared to have been at the cottage for a few hours. The only other activity was Harvath’s car arriving, preceded by the vehicle Lydia Ryan had rented and registered at the hotel. Other than those, no one else entered or left the driveway.

  “What other footage do you have access to?” Militante asked. “What about red light cameras? Speed cameras? That sort of thing?”

  “In New Hampshire,” Tullis responded, “the government isn’t allowed to spy on citizens.”

  It was a good policy—the right policy in a free country. Nevertheless, in a world obsessed with surveillance, it seemed out of step.

  “There is one exception,” he clarified.

  “What’s that?”

  “Our EZ Pass tolls.”

  “Where, I’m assuming,” said McGee, “you capture a photo of the driver as well as the vehicle license plate as they pass through?”

  The Chief nodded.

  “Can you get us a copy of that footage?” asked Militante.

  The lead detective, who was standing near the fireplace, shook his head. “We don’t have access to it.”

  “Who does?”

  “It all goes through the State Police.”

  “Fine,” said the FBI Director. “Let’s put in a request. In the meantime,” he added, removing a thumb drive, “I want to download all of the footage of those vehicles coming and going from the property.”

  The detective looked at his boss, who was reading a text that had just come in on his phone. Looking up, Tullis nodded his approval on the footage. Then, turning to McGee, he motioned for the CIA Director to follow him back to the kitchen.

  Once there, he opened the sliding glass door and t
he two men stepped out onto the rear deck so that he could have a smoke.

  Tullis pulled out a pack of Marlboros and searched for his lighter. As he did, he noticed McGee looking at the cigarettes. Shaking one out of the pack, he offered it to him, but the CIA Director waved it away.

  “I don’t smoke,” he said.

  “Suit yourself,” Tullis replied. Removing a cigarette, he placed it between his lips and lit it.

  McGee watched as the Chief took a long drag and drew the smoke deep down into his lungs. He could almost see the stress leaving his body. He remembered the sensation.

  Even though he had gone cold turkey years ago, the cravings had never completely gone away. That said, he hadn’t wanted a cigarette this badly in a long time.

  Exhaling a cloud of smoke, Tullis stated, “The Major Crime Unit team is going to be here in forty-five minutes. The AG and the Investigative Services Bureau back in Concord will want to review the evidence, but a decision has already been made regarding Harvath.”

  “What kind of decision?”

  “They think he snapped.”

  “They what?”

  The Chief held up his hand. “They’re naming him as their lead suspect. A BOLO is going to go to law enforcement. An APB has already gone out on the vehicle.”

  “Damn it,” said McGee.

  “It gets worse,” Tullis went on. “There’s talk about a press conference. They want to share some of the details with the public in the hope of apprehending him as quickly as possible.”

  “I told you. He isn’t the guy. This is an unbelievable waste of resources. Not only that, but consider the damage you’ll be doing to this man’s good name. He has given everything to this country. And then some.”

  “It’s out of my hands. This is the AG and the State Police we’re talking about. And besides, you need to see it from their side.”

  “Actually,” the CIA Director countered, “I don’t. The only side that matters is the truth.”

  “That’s what they’re trying to get to.”

  “By outing this guy on TV? Claiming, without any proof, that he’s got some sort of PTSD? And that he went on a killing spree? That’s bullshit.”

  “So you keep telling me, but the evidence is what the evidence is,” said Tullis.

  “It’s not good. I’ll give you that. But right now it’s all circumstantial.”

  “But it places him at the scene at the time of the murders. And now we have footage of him leaving the scene and ditching his phone as he does.”

  “We can’t tell it’s Harvath in that vehicle,” McGee argued, defending his friend.

  “You think it’s somebody posing as Harvath?”

  “Maybe.”

  The Chief took another puff of his cigarette. “Let’s say you’re right. Why throw the phone into the trees?”

  “To set him up. To make it look like he had ditched the phone so he couldn’t be tracked.”

  “But what if that’s exactly what he did?”

  McGee shook his head. “That’s not Harvath. And it’s definitely not how he was trained.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “If he was worried about being tracked, he would have used the phone as a decoy to send you on a wild goose chase.”

  “How?” asked Tullis.

  “All he’d have to do is select a vehicle going in the opposite direction. He could have found one at any gas station or truck stop. While there, he might overhear a conversation, or start one up himself and discover a driver headed to Texas or California. It wouldn’t be hard to hide a phone so that its signal could continue to ping passing cell towers.”

  “And send law enforcement chasing a bogus trail of bread crumbs.”

  “Precisely,” replied McGee.

  The Chief took another drag of his cigarette. “Or . . .” he said, his voice trailing off.

  “Or what?”

  “Or maybe he wasn’t willing to go to all that trouble. Maybe he thought he already had enough of a head start. Or, after he snapped, realizing what he had done, he just ran.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “What I think doesn’t matter,” Tullis remarked, exhaling another cloud of smoke. “What matters is what the AG’s team thinks. And I guarantee you, this is high on their list.”

  Tullis was right. He wasn’t the person McGee needed to convince. If he wanted to help Harvath by heading off a news conference or anything else, he was going to have to deal with the AG. Or, more specifically, he was going to have to convince Militante and the FBI to deal with the AG. Absent the Federal nexus, though, it was going to be a very difficult, if not impossible, case to make.

  Thanking the Chief, he stepped back inside to brief Militante. As he passed through the kitchen, his mind was going at full speed. There had to be something they could use as leverage.

  Then, just as he set foot in the living room, it came to him.

  CHAPTER 13

  * * *

  * * *

  RUSSIAN MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

  MOSCOW

  Konstantin Minayev glared at his deputy for a solid ten seconds without responding. He was a terrifying man, given to fits of anger and extreme violence. Delivering bad news to him was never pleasant. Doing so any time after midmorning, when he began his drinking, was a nightmare.

  The deputy stood uncomfortably on the worn carpet in front of his boss’s scarred wooden desk. The large office smelled like stale cigarettes, cheap counterfeit American cologne, and dog shit. Of course it wasn’t really dog shit, it was worse. It was a dog shit sandwich.

  Minayev was an old-school Russian, proud of his peasant lineage and how he had risen through the ranks. He prided himself on his work ethic and was famous for eating at his desk, never once having set foot in the GRU cafeteria.

  Each day he arrived at headquarters with a sack lunch consisting of two thick slabs of farmer’s bread and one of the worst-smelling cheeses ever produced.

  The scent fell somewhere between rotting human flesh and roadkill. It was so bad that it was banned on all public transport in Russia.

  Though none would ever have had the courage to say so to his face, being summoned to Minayev’s office was referred to as paying a visit to the “devil’s asshole.”

  The joke had been around for so long, no one could say whether it was in reference to the odor or to the General’s temperament.

  “What do you mean the plane fucking vanished?” he bellowed.

  His deputy had learned early on to stick to facts. He wasn’t paid to give analysis. “It disappeared from radar somewhere over Murmansk Oblast.”

  “Where exactly?”

  The deputy removed a printout from his briefing folder, stepped forward, and placed it upon his boss’s desk.

  Minayev reviewed the report. “Is this a mistake?” he asked, pointing to the attached map—a large portion of which was covered with a thick red circle.

  “No, sir.”

  “This is the fucking search area?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The General rubbed his meaty face with his even meatier hand. “Are you kidding me?”

  It was a rhetorical question. The deputy knew better than to respond.

  “Wasn’t the aircraft outfitted with an emergency locator transmitter?”

  The young man checked his notes. “Yes, a portable version that must be manually activated by survivors.”

  “And?”

  “And there has been no activation.”

  Minayev was not happy. “What about search planes?”

  “They can’t take off until the weather improves.”

  “Fine. How about one of our satellites with infrared?”

  The deputy drew in a sharp breath of air between his teeth.

  The General cocked a bushy eyebrow. “What’s wrong with satellites?”

  “Nothing. But the Air Force would have to request it. Technically, that flight never happened. And, as far as anyone is concerned, our people had nothin
g to do with it.”

  His deputy was correct. It was a black flight. There was no record of it, or of its passengers. The Kremlin had been crystal clear.

  They wanted all knowledge of the operation kept to as few people and as few agencies as possible. Plausible deniability for Russia was paramount.

  As head of the GRU’s special missions group, Minayev had had the idea to snatch Scot Harvath in New Hampshire, smuggle him out of the United States, and render him to Russia.

  A festering, debilitating thorn in their side for years, he had interrupted countless critical operations and had been responsible for the deaths and suspected disappearances of untold numbers of operators.

  The plan was to wring as much intelligence out of him as they could and then kill him.

  The order had come from the Russian President himself. In fact, it was he who wanted the honor of doing the killing. That was why Minayev had told Josef to leave Harvath’s face unmarred.

  He could abuse his body, break his bones—pretty much whatever he wanted—but when the GRU handed him over to the President, he had to be recognizable.

  The General wanted there to be no mistake in what he had accomplished and whom he had delivered to the President. This would be a high point in his career, and he was going to take it all the way to the bank.

  When pleased, the President could make men’s wildest dreams come true. Minayev had watched lesser men deliver lesser achievements and be handsomely rewarded.

  Having just turned sixty, he had spent more than forty years in the Russian military. No one could argue that he hadn’t served his country. Now, he wanted it to serve him.

  He needed investors and government approval to launch a timber company, which would exploit the rich forests of Siberia. This was a dream that the President could make a reality, if he was so moved. The General had every intention of “moving” him. This news about the plane vanishing from radar, though, threatened everything.

  Everything on the aircraft was replaceable: its crew, the Spetsnaz team, even Josef—one of the absolute best operatives the General had ever trained and put in the field. They were all replaceable. The only person on that plane who wasn’t replaceable was the American—Harvath.