Brad Thor - Full Black

Fishing the car keys from his pocket, he said to Nicholas, “You let the TOC handle the other cars. I want you personally tracking Sarhan for me. Got it?”

“I got it,” said the little man as he began clicking once again at his keyboard back in Virginia. “What are you going to do?”

There were only two things Harvath could do. He could break into Tariq Sarhan’s house, tear it apart, turn it upside down, and see what he found, or he could go after the man himself.

As far as Harvath was concerned, there was only one move that made any sense.

“Come on, Nicholas,” Harvath said over his phone. “That car has to be somewhere. It didn’t just vanish.”

Harvath had stepped out of the house and looked down the street just as Tariq Sarhan had applied his turn indicator and made a right turn. As soon as the car had disappeared from sight, Harvath had taken off running. He reached his rental car about a minute and a half later.

Jumping inside, he started it up and pulled out into the street. At the end of the block, he came to a four-way stop. Nicholas had yet to pick up the blue Sentra on any of the traffic cams.

“I’m still searching,” said Nicholas.

Having grown up in Southern California, Harvath knew its freeway systems intimately. Right now, he was inside a sort of rectangle made up of four different freeways-the San Bernardino to his north, the Pomona to his south, the Long Beach Freeway to his west, and the San Gabriel River Freeway to the east. Sarhan could be headed toward any of them.

“How about the other four vehicles?” he asked, trying to figure out what was going on. “Do we know anything yet about where they’re headed?”

“Negative,” said Nicholas. “The TOC is tracking them, but they’re all headed in different directions.”

The longer Harvath sat at the stop sign, the more rapidly his heart began to beat. He tightened his hands around the steering wheel. “Come on, Nicholas,” he said again. “Where is he?”

There were several agonizing moments of silence before the little man responded, “Got him. He just made a left turn four blocks in front of you.”

“Good job,” said Harvath as he stepped on the gas. “Don’t lose him.”

Sarhan looped around, doubled back, and changed direction multiple times. He even stopped twice for gas. There was absolutely no question that he was trying to figure out if he was being followed. This went on for more than forty-five minutes before it appeared he had finally committed to wherever it was that he was going.

He followed the Pomona to the Santa Monica Freeway and continued west toward the ocean. As Harvath saw signs indicating the intersection for the 405, or the San Diego Freeway as it was known, he wondered if Sarhan would alter his course or keep going toward the ocean. He was staying as far behind the blue Sentra as possible and was forced to endure long stretches where he couldn’t even see the vehicle. Fortunately, he hadn’t exited and Nicholas had been able to keep relatively good track of him.

The same couldn’t be said for the other vehicles. They had lost two out of the four and were scrambling to find them.

“He’s changing lanes,” Nicholas said over Harvath’s cell phone.

They were coming up on a series of choices. Sarhan could remain on the Santa Monica Freeway, or the 10 as it was known, or he could head north or south on the 405. The first ramp was for the 405 south toward San Diego.

“He’s in the far left-hand lane now. He’s not getting on the 405. At least not southbound.”

“Are you sure?” asked Harvath.

“So far. Stand by.”

Harvath watched as the exit for the 405 interchange got closer. “What’s he doing?”

“He’s still in the far left lane. No change. Stand by.”

“Standing by.”

“It looks like we can safely say-” began Nicholas, who then stopped midsentence and shouted, “South! He just swung across four lanes of traffic. He’s taking the 405 south.”

“Son of a-” Harvath cursed beneath his breath as he tried to maneuver. He was boxed in and had to slow down dramatically in order to find a gap and change lanes. The traffic was so tight that he almost missed the exit.

Once he had fully merged onto the 405, Sarhan parked himself in the far right-hand lane, and despite how fast the other cars were going, he kept his vehicle at fifty miles an hour.

Harvath was about to ask what the hell the guy was up to, when Nicholas reported that Sarhan was apparently preparing to exit for the Howard Hughes Parkway. Harvath continued to follow at a safe distance.

Moments later, Nicholas said, “The TOC has relocated the two missing vehicles.”

“Good,” replied Harvath. “Where?”

“Surface streets fifteen and twenty-two miles away, respectively.”

“What about the other two?”

“One of them is on the Century Freeway headed west and the other one looks set to join it. It’s merging onto the Century from the Harbor Freeway.”

Harvath could picture the entire map in his mind’s eye and he now knew where they were headed. “Get the Old Man on the line right now.”

It was only a matter of seconds, but it felt like minutes to Harvath. Finally Carlton clicked in and said, “What do you have?”

“I know where they’re headed.”

“Where?”

“LAX,” replied Harvath.

The Old Man snapped his fingers at someone, probably indicating he wanted a map of some sort, and said, “Los Angeles International? Are you sure?”

“Unless they’re all meeting up for a fishing charter out of Marina Del Rey, that’s where they’re headed. Sarhan has already gotten off the 405 and any moment is going to start doing his final SDRs on the surface streets that lead to the airport.”

“We’ve got vehicle descriptions, plates, even eyes on. Do you want to alert LAPD and have them stopped before they can get too close to the airport?”

It was a very tough call and one Harvath didn’t completely want the responsibility of making. If LAX was a target, the sooner they were stopped, the better. But if it wasn’t, if these men were doing nothing more than returning to their cities of operation, then pulling them over would ruin everything. They would know they’d been blown and the one and only lead Harvath and his team had would be lost.

“Scot,” the Old Man repeated. “It’s up to you. If you want to pull the trigger on these guys, I’ll make the call to the LAPD myself.”

Harvath knew what they had to do. “No,” he replied. “We need to let them go.”

“And if the airport is the target?”

“Then they need to be ready. Call DHS and tell them they need to conduct an immediate shift change.”

The Old Man understood what Harvath was calling for. When credible threats to U.S. airports were raised, the Department of Homeland Security swapped out regular TSA employees with specially trained, former military Special Operations personnel. They would be dressed exactly the same as the TSA agents, but that’s where any similarities ended.

Realizing that air marshals should only handle planes and not airports, a highly secretive and secure training facility had been established near Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. There, counterterrorism exercises were run against a host of realistic airport structures-terminals, baggage claim areas, even an airport hotel. In addition to operators posing as uniformed TSA agents, there was also a highly lethal plainclothes contingent dressed to look like passengers.

When the government wanted to be ready for a threat, but not to broadcast it to the public, and especially not to the bad guys, this was how it was handled. The only problem in this case, though, was the timing.