Brad Thor - The First Commandment

“Where the hell are you?” demanded Lawlor. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you for hours.”

“I’m at Tim Finney’s place in Colorado.”

“ Colorado ? Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving town?”

“It all happened kind of last-minute,” said Harvath. “What’s going on back there?”

“Don’t bullshit me,” replied Lawlor. “You’ve got him working Tracy ’s shooting, don’t you? You’re using his Sargasso group. Were you not listening to the president when he specifically told you to stay out of it?”

“Finney’s people got a lead and I came out here to check up on it. Period. Now what’s going on back in D. C. that’s so important you left an urgent message with Tracy ’s nurse?”

Lawlor was quiet for a moment as he tried to decide how to break the news. The minute Harvath heard what he had to say, there’d be absolutely no controlling him. Realizing there was no good way to say it, Lawlor just came out with it. “Your mother was attacked in Coronado tonight.”

Harvath felt like throwing up as he listened to the details of his mother’s assault. When the police arrived at her home on Encino Lane they could hear her screaming.

They kicked in the front door and followed the sound of her voice to the bathroom at the back of the house. It took two officers several minutes to break down the door, which had been screwed shut.

They found her in her bathtub, naked and covered with locusts. The insects, most of them several inches in length, appeared to have been feeding off her. One of the forensics people at the scene later identified the substance Maureen Harvath had been covered with as “bug grub,” a product available in many pet stores for feeding locusts.

She had no idea what the objects swarming over her body were, because she couldn’t see them. She had been blinded. Her eyes had been painted over with black ink, and the doctors at the hospital still were not sure if she would ever fully regain her eyesight. She had been incredibly traumatized and was under heavy sedation.

With the last piece of information from the crime scene, Harvath’s feelings of anguish turned to rage. A note had been found scribbled in red on the bottom of one of the buckets they believed the attacker had used to carry the locusts into the house. The note read: That which has been taken in blood, can only be answered in blood.

From watching Harvath’s face and hearing only his side of the conversation, Finney and Parker assumed Tracy had taken a turn for the worst. When they heard that Harvath’s mother had been attacked, they said the only thing that good friends can and should say in such a situation, “What do you need?”

What Harvath needed was the resort’s jet, and Finney was on his radio arranging it before he even finished asking.

Parker had friends in the San Diego Police Department who could liaise with the Coronado cops, so he headed for Sargasso to get the intel ball rolling.

They had every reason to believe that the man who had attacked Maureen Harvath was the same person who had shot Tracy.

Harvath had been right. This was personal.

Something the Troll had said during their chat room session kept replaying in Harvath’s mind as the Elk Mountain Cessna Citation X raced toward Coronado.

He had pointed out that the lamb’s blood above Harvath’s door was very “biblical.” Harvath didn’t disagree, but ever since it had happened, he couldn’t connect it to anything-at least in a way that made sense. Now his mother had been attacked and subjected to a veritable “plague” of locusts. Also biblical.

Harvath fired up Finney’s onboard laptop and accessed the internet. He entered lamb’s blood and locusts as his search terms. Over half a million results came back. The first was from Wikipedia, and the summary line said it all. The lamb’s blood and locusts were from the ten plagues of Egypt. Harvath opened the link.

The plagues were recounted in the book of Exodus. They were the ten calamities visited upon Egypt by God in order to convince Pharaoh to release the Israelite slaves.

The first plague was the rivers of Egypt and other water sources turning to blood. It was followed by reptiles, or more specifically frogs, overrunning the land. Then there were lice, flies, and a disease on livestock. Next came a plague of unhealable boils, followed by hail mixed with fire. There were locusts, then darkness, and finally the death of every first-born male, except those of Israelites whose doorposts were painted with the blood of the Paschal lamb.

Whoever had shot Tracy and attacked his mother was definitely using the ten plagues as a bizarre kind of playbook, but in reverse order.

The tenth plague was the killing of all the first-born males in Egypt. Only the Israelite houses with the blood of a sacrificial lamb smeared on their lintels and doorposts were spared. God literally “passed over” their houses, and from this the festival of Passover had been born. It marked the release of the Israelites from their bondage under Pharaoh and the birth of the Jewish Nation. How it applied to Harvath and the shooting of Tracy Hastings was beginning to seem a little clearer.

The shooter apparently saw himself as the angel of death. He had passed over Harvath’s house and spared him, but had tried to take Tracy instead.

The ninth plague dealt with darkness, hence the deliberate blinding of his mother. God had instructed Moses to stretch his hand over Egypt, and it brought about a plague of “complete and utter” darkness lasting for three days.

The eighth plague, meant to “harden Pharaoh’s heart,” was the plague of locusts. Neither Harvath’s heart nor his resolve needed any further hardening at this point. Targeting both Tracy and his mother was enough. Regardless of what the president or anyone else said, his mind was made up. Whoever was behind these attacks had to not only be stopped, but killed, and that was exactly what he was going to do.

Harvath continued reading. The rest of the plagues were equally unpalatable, and he had no desire to imagine what their modern-day equivalents would look like. His only hope was to stop whoever was behind them before he could strike again.

That led Harvath to an even worse thought. Whom would this nut bag target next? First it was Tracy. Then it was his mother. Was this guy only targeting women who were close to him, or would he target men too? Should Harvath warn all of his friends? Even if he wanted to, what would he say? There’s a plague of biblical proportions with your name on it? No, the key here was to stop this guy before he could strike again. But to do that, they were going to need a break-a big one.

When Harvath walked into the hospital room and saw his mother lying there he was overcome with rage. Her face was badly battered and bruised. Who the hell would do something like this?

Though he wanted to go to his mother, he couldn’t. The emotion of it all-the guilt he felt for being the reason she’d been targeted and the primal anger he felt in reaction to such an audacious violation-was crushing. Harvath found himself choking up. When the tears came, he did nothing to wipe them away.

Finally, he forced himself to walk over to the side of her bed. As he stared at his mother’s swollen face, Harvath gently took one of her hands in his and said, “Mom, I’m so sorry.”

He stood there like that for several minutes and finally pulled a chair alongside the bed and sat down. As he smoothed his mother’s hair, an unwelcome twinge of déjà vu surged through him. It was almost like being in Tracy ’s hospital room.