Brad Thor - The First Commandment

“I am still working on tracking him down.”

“He’s not in Scotland?” asked Roussard.

“No. I’ve already had the house and the estate searched. He hasn’t been there for some time.”

“Let me help you find him.”

“No,” stated the handler. “Focus on your next target. I will find him myself.”

“And then?”

“And then I will decide how he is to be disposed of and you will follow my orders exactly. Is that clear? We are getting very close now. I do not want any more surprises.”

Though the bile choked his throat, Roussard kept his anger under control. When this was over, he would deal with his handler.

His voice barely above a whisper, the operative replied, “Yes, it is clear.”

Philippe Roussard pulled off the crushed-gravel drive and allowed his vehicle to roll to a quiet stop. From here, the car would be out of sight of any vehicles passing along the main road, as well as from anyone in the small, stone farmhouse about a half mile away.

He gathered the items he’d need from the trunk and proceeded the rest of the way in on foot.

It was actually quite a beautiful day. The sun was bright and only a few thin clouds drifted overhead. Roussard could smell the distinct scent of freshly mown grass from a nearby property.

As he crept through the woods, a variety of birds called out from the treetops above him, but other than that, there were no sounds but his own footfalls to be heard.

At the tree line, he removed the binoculars from his pack and made himself comfortable. This wasn’t anything he needed to rush.

Twenty minutes later, the woman appeared, and snapping at her heels was the dog. He was surprised that she trusted the animal enough not to run off. Harvath had left her with it only a matter of weeks ago, but the accursed dog was still young, nothing more than a puppy, and apparently bonded easily with anyone who paid attention to it.

The woman was older, but not elderly in any sense of the word. She was in her late sixties, tall and attractive, with a face bronzed a deep copper color by the sun. Her steel-gray hair came to her shoulders and she walked her small farm with a haughty self-confidence that Roussard assumed was a prerequisite for anyone who had ever worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

She was tending to her daily chores-gathering eggs from the small henhouse, feeding the chickens, then slicing open a bale and dropping hay into the corral of her two horses.

There were two atrocious potbellied pigs, which only a culture like America ’s could have ever warmed to as pets, and a clutter of cats that delighted in asserting their dominance over the tiny dog.

As Roussard studied the woman, he found himself thinking of his own mother. It was entirely unprofessional and entirely inappropriate. He was here to do a job and this American woman’s similarities, or lack thereof, to his own mother had no bearing on what he needed to do.

The unwelcome distraction edged Roussard into action. He had no desire to sit alone in the woods with his thoughts. It was time.

He would take the woman in the barn. His only concern was the dog, but Roussard believed he had that figured out.

As the woman disappeared around one of the farm’s outbuildings, Roussard picked up his backpack and ran.

Ever the pragmatist, he stopped near the small stone house and disabled her vehicle. Should something go wrong, he did not wish to leave her a convenient means of escape.

From the old Volvo station wagon, he then crept to the woman’s house. He pressed himself up against the facade, the stones of which, even in the morning’s increasing warmth, still felt cool to the touch.

Peering around the corner of the farmhouse, he waited until he could see the woman. When he saw her unwind a long garden hose to clean out the horse trough, Roussard made his move.

He chose not to run for fear of startling the horses. He walked quickly and with purpose, his hand clamped around the butt of the silenced pistol he had withdrawn from his backpack. If the woman noticed him and attempted to cry out, or to flee, he could easily take her even at this distance with a single round.

Once inside the barn, he concealed his pack and made himself ready. There was a gap between the exterior boards where he stood, and it gave him an excellent vantage point from which to observe the woman’s approach.

His heart pounded in his chest and he loved the sensation. There was nothing so exciting as lying in wait for one’s prey. The adrenaline surged through his bloodstream. Anything else, any other experience of life, was merely a fitful and incomplete dream of reality. To have the power to kill and to take and use that power-that was what life was all about.

Perspiration had begun to form on Roussard’s brow. He stood inhumanly still, the beads of sweat slowly trickling together and rolling down his face and neck. Soon, he thought to himself. Soon.

When the woman appeared again from the corral, the killer’s body slipped into a completely different state. Immediately, his breathing slowed. Next his heart rate began to decrease. His field of vision narrowed until all that he could see were the woman and the puppy at her feet. He stood as steady as a granite statue, his muscle fibers tautly spun coils ready to spring forward in sweet release.

When the woman neared, the killer stopped breathing. Nothing else mattered but this. She was almost at the wide open doors. A second later he could see her shadow spilling into the barn.

Finally, she crossed over the threshold and he sprang.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Harvath had dumped the Omega Team member’s Ford pickup almost immediately. Once he’d put some good distance between himself and the safe house, he had begun cruising the waterfront homes north of Coltons Point. It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for.

It was a large and obviously expensive house, and Harvath was amazed that it didn’t have an alarm system. It was almost comical how little people thought about security once they left the big city behind them.

The keys for the magnificent thirty-six-foot-long Chris Craft Corsair had been hung on a peg in clear sight. While Harvath didn’t care for taking things that didn’t belong to him, given the circumstances, he wasn’t left with much choice.

The Corsair had a fully charged battery, a full tank of gas, and fired right up. He was “borrowing” a boat with a retail value of over $350,000, and Harvath vowed that its owners would get it back in exactly the same, mint condition it was in now.

He pulled the sleek pleasure craft out into the Potomac, pointed the bow northward, and bumped the throttles all the way forward.

The twin, 420 horsepower Volvo Penta engines growled in response. Like captive lions being set loose from their cages, the throaty engines popped the boat out of the hole and brought it right up on plane.

Harvath rolled up his sleeves and kept his eyes open as gusts of spray frothed up from the sides of the boat. He’d hidden the pickup in the house garage before climbing aboard the Corsair, but there was no telling how close his pursuers were.

The only thing he knew for certain was that even with Rick Morrell at their helm, the Omega Team would stop at nothing, not even killing him, to remove him from the picture.

At the Washington Sailing Marina, Harvath limped in feigning engine trouble and docked the Corsair. The staff left him alone to call his supposed Chris Craft dealer in Maryland, but instead, Harvath dialed a local cab company, and ten minutes later he was being driven the short distance to Reagan National’s extended parking lot.