Brad Thor - State Of The Union

“Or a high pitched fax machine on full volume?”

“Yes, but how’d you know?”

“I’m guessing Gary Lawlor placed a call to your computer in Georgetown. When I hit the redial button on his phone, I received those same tones. But you said the computer would have called him, not vice versa.”

“No, our records show that Gary did call back into the system to check on the status of the other team members. As the team leader, that would have been his responsibility-to know who had been contacted and activated.”

“Now I understand why Leighton called Gary’s house,” said Harvath. “If I had been activated after all these years, I would probably call my old team leader too before flying halfway around the world to nuke an old enemy we all thought was dead. But what about the other operatives? Does Gary know they’re dead?”

“No. They were all killed before they were activated. We put out the call to activate the team, but only Leighton and Gary were alive to receive it. Based on when Gary called back into the system, all he would have known was that the rest of the team hadn’t been reached yet.”

“And yet whoever killed them missed Gary and Frank Leighton,” mused Harvath.

Hilliman nodded his head. “Taking out ten highly trained American operatives, all of whom were scattered around the country, is no small feat. I don’t care if those men were retired. They were not easy marks. Whoever did this spent a lot of time planning.”

“But it still doesn’t explain why they didn’t take out Gary and Frank Leighton.”

“There’s a lot of this that doesn’t make sense, Agent Harvath, and at this point we can only focus on what we know. For the sake of the United States, this mission has to succeed.”

“I agree, but with ten out of twelve guys dead and Gary now missing, how can it?” asked Scot.

“That,” replied the president, “is where you come in.”

SOMEWHERE ABOVE THE ATLANTIC

STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS-7 DAYS

At six hundred miles per hour, the luxuriously appointed Cessna Citation X, secured for Harvath by an affiliate of the Capstone Corporation, lived up to its reputation of being the fastest business jet in the world. It quickly rose to an altitude of 51,000 feet where its fuel economy could be maximized and commercial airline traffic was nonexistent. With a top speed of Mach.92, they were flying at nearly the speed of sound, screaming across each mile of the 4100 that they needed to travel in less than six seconds apiece.

While the twin Rolls-Royce AE- 3007C engines hastened the plane across the Atlantic, Harvath tried to quiet the thoughts in his mind. He had been given only a few moments to call Meg. To each of her questions he could only answer, “I can’t talk about it.” That hadn’t sat well with her at all. When asked when he would be home, his answer followed right in the same vein, “I have no idea.” Her silence on the other end was deafening. This was the real test of their relationship. He could be called anywhere at any time to do anything, and Meg Cassidy would just have to deal with it. Right now, though, she wasn’t dealing well with it at all. Discretion dictated that he be careful how much he told her over the phone. He wished he could share with her the incredible importance of what he was embarking upon, but that would have served nothing more than to make her fear not only for his safety, but for hers as well.

She had remained quiet, and when Scot failed to add anything further, she said good-bye and hung up the phone. Halfway through the flight, he realized that when she had asked him when he would be home and he replied that he had no idea, what he should have said was simply, “Soon. Real soon.” But of course at this point, half an hour into his flight and over nine-and-a-half miles above the Atlantic, it was a little too late to be coming up with the right answer. He began to wonder if Meg Cassidy would be able to weather the storms that the demands of his career would undoubtedly visit upon their relationship.

Harvath took a deep breath and tried to focus on the matter at hand. The Citation X would make the journey in less than seven hours, and he needed to get his head in the game. As his breathing slowed, he slipped into a Zenlike state somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. His colleagues in the SEALs had always remarked at his uncanny ability to slip into this state of deep relaxation, especially before some of their most dangerous missions. For Harvath, it was relaxing after a mission that had always been the hardest part for him. His adrenaline seemed to continue to flow for several days as his mind replayed the events his body had undergone. Relaxing and even sleeping before a mission had never been a problem for him because he realized that a sharp, focused mind was the best weapon he could bring to bear in any situation. He took full advantage of the flight to rest both his mind and his body, as he had no idea what he was in for when he landed.

After clearing customs for General Aviation, Harvath passed two rather menacing-looking, machine gun-toting border guards and made his way outside to find his cab.

Leaning against a somewhat worse-for-wear Mercedes sedan with a taxi light atop and deeply tinted windows was Harvath’s old friend Herman Toffle, or “Herman the German” as he was more affectionately known. He stood at least six foot four and weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred-fifty pounds. He had dark hair, deep green eyes and a closely cropped beard that had begun to show smudges of gray. Scot had become friends with Herman during his SEAL days when they had conducted cross-training exercises together. Herman had been a member of Germany’s famed GSG9 counterterrorism unit and until a bullet injury to his leg forced him out had been legendary not only for his on the job bravado, but also for his sense of humor.

“Taxi, mister?” smiled Herman as he took Harvath’s bag and chucked it into the trunk. Harvath slid into the back as Herman got into the driver’s seat and with no ceremony whatsoever, started the vehicle, lurched out of the parking space, and pointed the Mercedes toward central Berlin.

Three blocks after leaving the airport and confident they weren’t being followed, Herman pulled the Mercedes into a parking garage, parked next to a large bakery van and came around to the rear passenger side door.

“Get out here where I can see you.”

Harvath obliged and Herman immediately wrapped him in an enormous bear hug. “You’ve gotten smaller.”

“No I haven’t,” said Harvath patting his friend’s stomach. “You’ve just gotten bigger. Your wife must be feeding you very well. How is she?”

“She’s doing very well, but you didn’t come to Berlin to talk about Diana.”

“Not this time, my friend,” said Harvath. “I’m here on a very serious operation.”

“And so you said on the phone. But you’re not working with the German government, at least not officially.”

“Correct.”

“Well, in that case,” said Herman as he banged his ham-sized fist against the large bakery van they had parked next to, “I’d like you to meet a few of my distant cousins.”

Harvath heard the van’s door slide open and then boots hitting the ground as, one by one, a group of eight men in plainclothes rounded the van and lined up in front of him. Herman informed his friend that he had used his contacts to round up an off-duty Berlin SWAT unit specializing in hostage situations and counterterrorism operations. It was known as theMobiles Einsatzkommando, or MEK for short.

“Funny, there doesn’t seem to be much of a family resemblance between you and your cousins,” said Harvath.

“Of course there is,” replied Herman who, with a smile, opened his jacket to reveal the butts of two large semi automatic pistols. “You just have to look closer.”