Brad Thor - Full Black

These were good questions and went to the core of who he was and why he did what he did.

Harvath had become a SEAL after his father had died in part because he felt guilty about how rocky their relationship had been at the end. But making your dead father somehow happy, or proud of you, wasn’t enough fuel to have propelled a career like Harvath’s. There had to be something deeper, and there was.

Harvath had no brothers or sisters. Because of his career, his father had spent a lot of time on assignments in places he couldn’t talk about. He often left without even being able to say good-bye. Though his mother tried to compensate for his father’s lengthy absences, he carried an emptiness that he had never been able to fill. He always wanted to feel needed, that he was worth coming home to, or better yet, was worth never leaving.

Growing up on Coronado Island, his best friend had been his nextdoor neighbor, a developmentally delayed boy with an enlarged head, named Fred. Other children taunted him mercilessly and called him “egghead.” Though not particularly big, Harvath stood toe to toe with all comers to defend his best friend. Without his father around to teach him to fight and his father’s pals stopping by only occasionally to take him fishing and check up on his mom, he had to learn how to defend himself and Fred. He became street-tough real fast, often fighting several other children at the same time. Never once was he afraid to do what had to be done to defend his friend. He was the boy’s ever-present protector, a role nobody played in his own life.

It was a void Harvath wouldn’t have filled until he joined the SEALs and had teammates, comrades in arms, to whom he would entrust his life on a regular basis and who always had his back.

Was there a need in Harvath to take risks and would that need have been there regardless of the amount of time his father spent deployed? Most likely. That need to take risks in order to feel alive, to do the impossible, to face one’s fears and not back down, was present in every single warrior he’d ever met. They also shared a sense of honor in being chosen to stand and defend the country and people they held dear. Protecting them and protecting America, making sure no harm came to either, meant they were defending that which they cherished more than their very lives.

Harvath willingly defended those he didn’t agree with, even those who loathed the very existence of men like him, because as Americans or allies, he believed passionately in their rights as individuals to think and do what they wished. It didn’t matter how he might disagree with them or vice versa. He felt it made him stronger to defend their rights-without any expectation, any recognition, or any reward.

In part, he and other warriors like him did it for themselves, to have a better sense of self-worth. It was who they were and what they did best. They did it for the man next to them, the men who had come before them, and the men who had been taken from them on dangerous missions in dirty little places no one would ever hear about. It was simple and it was complicated all at the same time, much like Harvath himself.

Harvath lived by the adage that the measure of a man was what he did when no one else was looking. He also knew, having learned it with Fred, that very few people will stand up and put themselves in harm’s way to protect those who cannot protect themselves. At its root, protecting people was his calling in life. It was something he couldn’t ignore. His honor wouldn’t let him. And in a sense, it was because he had devoted himself to protecting the American dream for others, that he had never been able to fully enjoy it for himself.

Harvath couldn’t stop thinking about the assaulters who had been killed. He wondered how many of them had families. Most likely several of them. Maybe even all of them. How many wives were they leaving behind? How many children? What kind of impact would losing their fathers have on them? The stories that would never be read. The hugs that would never be given. The right piece of fatherly advice at the right time that now wouldn’t be offered. The impact was incalculable.

Opening his eyes, Harvath lifted his head and looked toward the rear of the aircraft. Riley was trying to remove the hillbilly Band-Aid from around Chase’s arm. It wasn’t going well. Almost as if she knew he was watching her, she glanced up, shook her head, and went back to what she was doing.

Harvath had no idea what that was supposed to mean and at this moment, he didn’t care. He tried to focus his mind on rolling up the rest of Aazim’s network before they could carry out any further attacks.

To stop them, though, Harvath was going to have to predict where lightning was going to strike. He was going to have to be in the right place at the right time, or as the father of hockey great Wayne Gretsky taught his son, skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.

The puck had been in Sweden. Was it still there, or had it moved someplace else? If it had moved, where would it be next? Those questions were still at the forefront of Harvath’s mind as he closed his eyes once more and his exhausted body slipped off into the regenerative unconsciousness of a deep, black sleep.

The flight from Stockholm to the former United States Naval Air Station in Keflavik, Iceland, took just more than three hours. Harvath was still asleep when the wheels of the private jet touched down and jolted him awake.

Though on paper the Naval Air Station had been turned over to the Icelandic Defense Agency in 2008, there was still a heavy American presence at the facility.

The aircraft taxied into a large hangar where an ambulance was waiting to take Mansoor to the base’s hospital. Riley had insisted that Chase, his arm in a sling, come along as well so that they could take a better look at him.

Chase could have hopped a flight back home if he had wanted to and gotten patched up back there. Riley had already irrigated the wound, redressed it, and started him on a course of antibiotics. It hurt like hell, though, and he figured the sooner he knew the extent of the damage the sooner he’d know how soon he could get back in the fight.

He also didn’t want to go anywhere until he knew what Mansoor’s prognosis was. If the guy was going to be ready for interrogation again soon, Chase wanted to be there for it. He knew the most about the network and he wanted to help guide some of the questions, if not do a portion of the interrogation himself. Riley was going to stick around and wait for the prognosis as well. Even though she’d be handing him over to a new doctor, she still felt responsible for him.

Harvath was the only one without a reason to stay in Iceland. The only thing he could think of was that if Karami or Sabah popped up somewhere in Europe, he’d be a lot closer and get to them a lot faster from Iceland than he would from D.C.

Something told him that Europe was where the puck had been. America was where he needed to skate to now. That’s where the puck was going to be. He couldn’t help but think that if Aazim Aleem had come to Chicago in advance of those attacks, and had planned on sending Chase to New York while he went to L.A. to oversee additional strikes, the Uppsala cell leader would have to do the same thing. He had nothing to back that up, though. It was just a gut feeling.

His gut also told him that despite what she had said in the barn back in Sweden, he shouldn’t give up on Riley Turner. It could take days for them to run the battery of tests on Mansoor. This could turn out to be the perfect window he’d been looking for to get to know her better and for her to get to know him.

Coming off the deaths of the assault team, though, the timing wasn’t right. Men had died on their operation. She hadn’t been at the scene, but she was part of the team. It was a loss for all of them.