Brad Thor - Blowback

“So you’re just giving me up?” replied Harvath in disbelief.

“We’re not giving you up.”

“What the hell would you call it then? Carmichael has nothing at this point. From what I’ve heard, the Iraqis rolled up that al-Jazeera crew before they could get a shot of my face. All they’ve got is the back of my head. Seems to me that’d be pretty hard for the senator to build a case on.”

“Do you think we’d be having this conversation if all Carmichael had was the back of your head? She’s got you dead to right as the person doing the takedown.”

“How? How could she possibly have me?”

“She’s been talking to a lot of people.”

Harvath’s temper was starting to get the better of him. “People like who?”

“Like everybody. She’s on the Intelligence Committee, for Christ’s sake. She has contacts all over the community.”

“Just because she’s connected doesn’t mean she’s figured out I’m the guy in that footage.”

“She has.”

“How do you know?”

Anderson took a deep breath and tried to calm everything down. “I got a call this morning.”

“ Carmichael called you?”

“No, someone else did. It was an old contact of mine-someone who’s in a position to hear things. He told me Carmichael has been asking a lot of questions about you.”

“What kind of questions?”

“She wanted to know about your time at the White House, why you left the Secret Service, and what you’ve been doing over at DHS. She even asked what the Apex Project was.”

This last revelation was too stunning for Harvath to even believe. The Apex Project was the code name for everything he did at the Department of Homeland Security. Only a handful of people even knew of its existence. Its secret budget was buried so deep and drawn from so many places it was supposed to be untraceable. How the hell had Senator Carmichael gotten her hands on it, or on any of this information? Harvath wondered. Somewhere they had a leak-a human leak who needed to be plugged, literally.

“Don’t you see what she’s trying to do?” continued Anderson. “She wants to burn the president, and she’s going to start the fire by torching you with the biggest flamethrower she can get her hands on.”

“Maybe she’s just trying to see what she can smoke out.”

“Come on, Scot. Face facts here. Out of all the people in this town she could possibly name, she names you? You’ve been made.”

Harvath wasn’t ready to give in so easily. “Chuck, until we’re absolutely certain, I don’t think we should-”

“We are absolutely certain,” responded the chief of staff, cutting Harvath short. “Your subpoena is going to be ready by three o’clock. She’s already made some vague statements to the press this morning that something big is coming down from the Hill. We need to put as much distance between you and the president as possible. Your desk at DHS has already been cleared out.”

“You don’t waste any time, do you?”

“We’ve got to focus on the big picture.”

“So what exactly am I supposed to do?”

“First, I’d like you to sign this letter of resignation.”

“And second?” asked Harvath, mad as hell that no one seemed to be considering what he had done for this administration.

Anderson looked at him and replied, “You might want to start thinking about a new career.”

GREENBELTPARK

LATER THAT AFTERNOON

Do you want to explain to me why we had to meet all the way out here?” demanded Harvath, whose temper had only gotten worse since his meeting with the chief of staff.

“Because right now,” replied Gary Lawlor, as he walked past his thirty-five-year-old protégé and headed for one of the park’s paved jogging trails, “you have the unfortunate distinction of being politically toxic.”

“Politically toxic,” mused Harvath as he fell in step with the man who was not only his boss, but also a long-standing friend of his family and someone who had become like a second father to him. “This isn’t exactly how I had imagined my career coming to an end, “He continued. “It’s not only a bit undistinguished, but the timing’s off by about a good twenty years. Jesus Christ, Gary, how the hell did I become the bad guy in all of this? If Carmichael goes public with my identity, that’s it. I’ve screwed the pooch. It’s all over. What the hell am I supposed to do?”

“For starters, stop feeling sorry for yourself,” suggested Lawlor.

“I don’t feel sorry for myself. I feel sorry for my country. You know I wasn’t exactly in this for the paycheck. I was in it because I believed in defending what America stands for.”

“And what? You’ve stopped believing? You don’t want to defend those things anymore?”

“Were you not listening when I told you Charles Anderson had me sign a letter of resignation?” asked Harvath.

Lawlor stopped and turned to face him. “What did you expect? He’s the president’s chief of staff. His job is to protect Jack Rutledge, not Scot Harvath.”

“In pursuit of which it’s okay to throw me to the wolves on the Hill?”

“If necessary, you bet,” replied Lawlor.

“But why me? Why make me the sacrificial lamb?”

“Why not you?”

“Because I do a very dangerous job for my country and I’ve never asked for anything in return.”

“Now you’ve hit upon the right word,” said Lawlor. “Dangerous. Your job is extremely dangerous. Not only for you, but for this administration as well.”

“You still don’t get it, do you?” Harvath asked. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t care if that guy in Baghdad was some jackass fruit vendor. He got paid to be a decoy. He knew he was doing something he shouldn’t, and as a result, he got the beating I was intending on handing Khalid Alomari. Maybe he’ll stick to selling fruit from now on.”

“I think you’ve guaranteed that the man’s decoy days are well behind him, but that’s not what we’re talking about.”

“Really?” inquired Harvath. “Then what is?”

“Senator Carmichael. She isn’t after you for what you got caught doing by al-Jazeera.”

“The hell she isn’t.”

“Scot, I know you’re angry, but shut up a second and listen to me. The whole al-Jazeera thing is only a pretense. Does it make us look bad in the Muslim world? Yes, it does. Can we repair that damage? Of course we can. It might take some time and a lot of PR, but we can definitely do it.

“You need to remember that Senator Carmichael didn’t get to be where she is by being stupid. She’s a savvy woman and an extremely adept politician. Would I have liked it if you had never popped up on her radar screen? Of course, but now that you’re there, she’s using lots of little crumbs of information to bake a very big cake-one which she hopes to cover with candles and use to celebrate the Democrats taking back the White House.”

“But how do we know she can even prove anything?”

“She doesn’t have to prove anything. This is Washington. All she has to do is have enough to suggest that the president may have been sanctioning off-the-books black ops, and it’ll hurt him in the election. It doesn’t matter that Jack Rutledge has been proactive as hell and has had the balls to do whatever necessary to keep this country safe, there’s a good percentage of the voting public out there who don’t like the idea of their president operating outside the scope of his power and not having to answer to anyone.”

“But that’s not how he works, and you know it,” replied Harvath.

“Of course I know, but what I say isn’t going to make a bit of difference. Carmichael is going to make him look like an egomaniacal despot waging his own war via his own private assassin. It’ll decimate the public’s trust in him.”