Brad Thor - The First Commandment

Though the trip was smooth and uneventful, Harvath couldn’t get any sleep. Tracy lay near death and his mother had been assaulted and tortured. He would have to live with the horrors of what had happened to them for the rest of his life. For a moment, he wondered if that was a part of the plan. The thought of it turned his stomach sour and once again he tasted the bile rising in his throat.

Harvath was coming unglued and he knew it. He was not one to let his emotions get the better of him, but this was different. The victims were people he knew and loved who were getting attacked. Would there be others? Probably. Would the attacker become more emboldened and potentially kill? That was a possibility-one so big that Harvath didn’t even like to think about it, but he had to count on it.

Everyone, no matter how good, left clues. This guy was dropping pretty obvious ones, but none that helped Harvath figure out who he was or how he could be stopped.

Harvath wracked his brain all the way through the plane’s touching down and the ride up into the mountains to the resort.

When he got there, Finney and Parker were waiting for him.

“Did you get any sleep on the way back?” asked Finney.

Harvath shook his head, no.

His friend handed him a key card in a small folder with a room number on it. “Why don’t you knock off for a bit?”

“What about the Boy from Ipanema down there in Brazil?”

“We heard from him right before a storm front moved in. His comms are down for the time being. We’ll keep an eye on things. When the weather starts to break, we’ll come get you.”

Harvath thanked his friends and headed for his room. At the door, he made a conscious decision to shut his mind off and try to leave all his problems outside. Sleep was a weapon. It kept you sharp, and right now Scot Harvath needed it badly.

Opening the door, he kicked his shoes off and fell onto the bed. The resort was famous for its insanely high-thread-count sheets, down duvets, and featherbeds, but Harvath didn’t care about any of that. All he wanted was sleep.

In a matter of moments his prayers were answered and he stepped off the cliff of consciousness into one of the deepest, darkest sleeps he had ever known.

It was midmorning when Ron Parker called Harvath and told him to meet him in the dining room.

Harvath grabbed a quick shower, throwing the temperature control all the way to cold at the end to help wake him up and shake off the remnants of the horrible nightmare that had visited him every night without fail since Tracy ’s shooting.

He dressed in the spare clothes Finney had arranged for him and then called both hospitals to check on how his mother and Tracy were doing.

In the restaurant, Parker already had breakfast waiting for them. Harvath poured himself a cup of coffee and asked, “Where’s Tim?”

“He’s glued to the markets this morning. There’s a stock in South America he has his eye on.”

Harvath got the picture and didn’t ask any more questions. Once he had gulped down his breakfast, Parker drove him out to Sargasso.

When they entered the conference room, Tim Finney and Tom Morgan were waiting for them.

“The weather’s almost cleared,” said Morgan as Harvath poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down. “We should be hearing from our friend shortly.”

“How’s your mom doing?” asked Finney as he took the chair next to Harvath.

“Awful.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. How about Tracy?”

“No change,” he replied. Wanting to steer the questions away from his series of misfortunes he posed one of his own. “Has that sawed-off little shit bag moved at all?”

“Nope,” replied Parker as he stood in front of his laptop and took a sip of coffee.

“Has anyone been out to the island to see him?”

“Negative.”

Harvath leaned back in his chair and massaged his face with his hands. “So we’re back to waiting.”

Finney tapped his pen against the conference table. “Yep.”

The screens around the room were all illuminated and showed the chat room with the last message from the Troll indicating that he had information for Harvath but that it would have to wait until the rain had passed.

“How’s Alison look?” asked Parker, breaking the silence that had fallen upon the room. “Good?”

Harvath smiled. No matter how luxurious the surroundings, lying in wait was still lying in wait, and cops as well as soldiers always talked about the same thing. “Yeah,” Harvath replied. “She looks very good.”

“If I could convince her to move here full-time, maybe we could have something.”

Finney snorted derisively. “And deprive all the resort’s female guests of your attention? Not on your life.”

Parker laughed. “It doesn’t matter. San Diego is where her career is. She’s not going to leave that. Not even for me.”

Harvath was going to respond when Tom Morgan snapped his fingers and pointed to one of the screens. The Troll was back.

It seemed an odd request at first, but Harvath wasn’t the world’s fastest typist either, and Morgan had assured him that they wouldn’t be putting themselves at risk.

With his headset on and a nod from Morgan that it was safe to proceed, Harvath said, “Okay, I’m here.”

“Agent Harvath, how nice to hear your voice,” replied the Troll over their encrypted voice-chat link.

“Yours, too. It’s a lot deeper than I expected.”

The Troll laughed. “All the better to prevent you from building an accurate voiceprint of me. That Echelon listening program your government has is quite good, you know.”

Harvath tried to place the man’s accent. He spoke the Queen’s English with an exceptional British accent, but there was something beneath it. Czech, maybe? Or was it Russian? Harvath spoke passable Russian and knew many native Russian speakers. This man sounded more like he came from outside mother Russia proper. Perhaps Georgia.

That fact notwithstanding, Harvath still had no desire to make small talk, so he got to the point. “Your last transmission said you had something for me. What is it?”

“Through a couple of sources I still have access to, I was able to secure a list of names. Four, to be exact,” lied the Troll. “All released en masse from the U. S. naval detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.”

“And why would I be interested in them?” asked Harvath.

The Troll paused for effect and then said, “Because one of those men is the person you’re looking for.”

Harvath looked at Finney, Parker, and Morgan, who were all quietly listening in on the exchange. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

The Troll laughed. “As it turns out, Agent Harvath, there is quite a bit your government is keeping from you. Quite a bit they do not wish for you, or anyone else, for that matter, to find out.”

“Like what?” asked Harvath.

“Like the fact that these four men released from Guantanamo were very nefarious characters. All of them bona-fide terrorists with multiple confirmed kills against American soldiers, as well as intelligence operatives and private contractors.”

A million questions raced through Harvath’s mind, not the least of which was why the hell four bona-fide terrorists would have been released. It didn’t make any sense. “Your information must be off.”

“I thought so too at first,” replied the Troll. “But there’s more. The four men had their blood tainted with a radioactive isotope shortly before they were released. It was part of a top-secret project your government uses occasionally to track operatives who are going into dangerous areas, as well as prisoners it wants to release back into the wild.”