Brad Thor - The First Commandment

“ Che bella donna, ” he said, as he approached, and he meant it. The ladies were both very attractive; much more so than in their surveillance photos.

Italian, Carolyn Leonard thought to herself. I knew it.

While she didn’t normally engage strangers, she’d had a little wine with lunch, and today, after all, was her day off. Besides, how much trouble could the guy be? He worked for Macy’s. She could see the bottle of perfume and sample strips in his hand. Sure, he was trying to get them to buy something, but he was so gorgeous. Whatever he was selling, Carolyn Leonard was in the mood to buy.

The off-duty head of the American president’s Secret Service detail smiled. She was tall, about five-foot-ten, and very lean. Her red hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and she looked like a very fit woman.

Roussard bowed his head and smiled at them both. The other agent, Kate Palmer, was shorter, about five-seven, but just as attractive, with a hard, lithe body, long brown hair, and deep green eyes.

“You are easily the most beautiful women I have seen come through the store all day,” he said in heavily accented English.

Carolyn Leonard chuckled. “It must be a very slow day.”

Roussard smiled. “I am telling you the truth.”

“Where are you from?” asked Palmer.

“ Italy.”

“You don’t say,” she teased. “ Where in Italy?”

“San Benedetto del Tronto. It’s in the central Marche region on the Adriatic. Do you know it?”

“No,” replied Leonard. “But I think I’d like to.”

Roussard held up his perfume bottle as if he were demonstrating the newest marvel of technology. “I have to look like I am trying to sell you something. My supervisor has been watching me very closely. He says I flirt too much.”

Carolyn laughed again. “ Puh-lease, that’s all part of sales, isn’t it?”

“Not when you mean it,” replied Roussard.

“Oh, this guy’s good,” stated Palmer with a smile. “Real good.”

“Well, I hate to break it to you,” said Carolyn, “But I don’t think either of us is in the market for any new perfume, are we?”

Palmer shook her head. “Maybe next time.”

Roussard’s lips spread into a boyish grin. “At least please try it. It’s quite nice and my supervisor won’t be able to say I’m not doing my job.”

Carolyn looked at Kate Palmer, shrugged her shoulders, and said, “Why not?”

Roussard handed them the bottle and politely stepped back. The women sprayed the perfume on their wrists, rubbed their necks, and Palmer even sprayed some onto her hair.

“It doesn’t have much of a scent,” commented Carolyn Leonard.

“That’s because it works with your body’s own chemistry. Give it a little time and you’ll see. It is quite remarkable.”

Leonard gave the bottle back as Roussard handed her and Palmer a sample card with the name of the product and a phrase that looked to be Italian.

As the ladies headed out to the parking lot, neither of them had any idea of the horror they had just invited into their lives.

CIA SAFE HOUSE

COLTONS POINT, MARYLAND

The small, unremarkable home sat at the verdant end of Graves Road on St. Patrick’s Creek-a small inlet of the Potomac River, less than fifty kilometers from where the Potomac emptied into the Chesapeake.

The cars parked in the home’s driveway were equally unremarkable-a smattering of SUVs and pickups, the kind of cars one would expect to see at the weekend home of a general contractor from Baltimore.

Had the neighbors seen any of the men getting out of their vehicles and entering the house, none would have given them a second look. They were trim and of varying heights, their faces bronzed from being in the sun, signs that they were all undoubtedly engaged in the same profession as the home’s owner. Had anyone taken any notice of them they would have assumed the men had all come down for the fishing.

The fishing was one of the many reasons that the area around Coltons Point was known as one of the best-kept secrets in southern Maryland. The chamber of commerce slogan made for a wink-wink, nod-nod insider sort of joke among the select few at the CIA who knew about the Coltons Point safe house. If there was anything that the spooks at Langley loved, it was irony.

The six highly skilled men assembled inside the home were known in CIA parlance as an Omega Team. The word Omega was taken from the Greek, which referred to the last and final letter of the Greek alphabet. It also referred to the literal end of something. Omega Teams had not been given their name by accident. Theirs was very, very dirty work. Sometimes their missions were overt, but more often than not they were extremely covert and required surgical delicacy.

The team leader unbuckled his leather briefcase and tossed five dossiers onto the dining room table. He didn’t need one for himself. He’d already memorized the contents. “I know many of you are currently standing up other operations,” he said, “but effective immediately, this assignment is your one and only concern.”

Like most CIA field groups, Omega Teams were composed of highly intelligent and extremely patriotic individuals. One of the team members looked up from the dossier and said, “Are you sure about this?”

“Not that any of you are allowed to repeat this, but this came from DCI Vaile himself.”

“But this guy’s practically a national hero,” said another operative. “It’s like asking us to shoot fucking Lassie.”

The team leader didn’t care for what he was hearing. “What is this, a book club meeting all of a sudden? Nobody asked for your opinions. The subject is a significant threat to national security.

“He was asked repeatedly by the president to stand down and refused. He was then given a timetable within which to turn himself in and he refused again.”

“Wait a second. How’s President Rutledge involved in this? What’s this guy wanted for anyway?” asked another.

“That’s none of your business. All you need to know is that, by not complying with the president’s orders, he’s putting innocent American lives in jeopardy.”

“Bullshit,” claimed yet another member. “We’ve all read his jacket. This guy is one serious tack-driving pipe-hitter. If we’re going to go after somebody this experienced, this dangerous, I think we deserve to know what he’s really up to. Why won’t he comply with the president’s order?”

The team leader was in no mood to explain the motivations of their target, or those of the director of Central Intelligence, or those of the president of the United States to his men. “I’m going to say this once and only once, so shut up and listen. All I am going to tell you, and all you need to know, is that both DCI Vaile and the president of the United States have okayed us to take down this target. Our job is to stop Scot Harvath by any means necessary. End of story.”

Physically and emotionally, Harvath was wrung out. His nerves had been grated down to stubs and he probably shouldn’t have even been in the field. Nonetheless, all he could think about was the Troll. The man had lied to him. There weren’t four terrorists who had been released from Gitmo; there had been five. Harvath couldn’t wait to get his hands on him.

He’d used the onboard phone to fill Finney and Parker in on what he’d learned, and they immediately began strategizing. They expected to have several different options to present by the time he returned.

Harvath spent the next several hours going through his own set of scenarios. What little reserves of energy he still had were all but depleted. After the takeoff from refueling in Iceland, his fatigue won out and he fell into a heavy, dark sleep. And with the sleep came his dreams.