Brad Thor - The Lions Of Lucerne

“Everything except my opinion about the trace.” Not wanting to admit that his constant headache might be affecting his judgment, Scot offered his excuse for not having come up with this insight earlier. “It wasn’t until I arrived here that this piece of information fell into place. It just doesn’t feel right.”

“‘Doesn’t feel right’? You want me to forgo maybe the only chance we have to get the president back because it doesn’t feel right? Agent Harvath, despite your feelings, do we have any information that indicates the president is anywhere else?”

“No, sir.”

“And have you thought about what kind of situation we might be in if we pass up this chance tonight and the president is moved tomorrow to another location from which the kidnappers do not make any further phone calls that can be traced?”

“No, sir.”

“And even if the recovery team does not find the president at this location tonight, have you thought about the intelligence we might be able to gather if we are able to take into custody any operatives of the Fatah organization who might have some connection to the kidnapping?”

“No, sir,” said Harvath for the third time. He could see exactly where the vice president was going with this reasoning. It was drastically flawed, but as he was the acting commander in chief, there was no way he could be overridden, no matter how many holes there were in his plan. The deck had been stacked against Harvath and General Venrick, but it had been used to make a house of cards. It wouldn’t take much to topple it, but by that time it would be too late.

“Agent Harvath, as far as I can tell, you have not thought this mission and its consequences out in their entirety. We proceed as planned,” ordered the vice president.

Choking on a response that would only have gotten him in deeper trouble and surely thrown out of the sit room, Scot sat back down. He reached for the carafe in front of him, poured a glass of water, and popped two more Tylenols. This was going to be a very long night.

So far, the JSOC mission was going according to plan. The recovery team rendezvoused with a small fishing boat off the coast of Israel just after 2 A.M. The contingent of Navy SEALs had been tasked to enforce a NATO blockade in the Persian Gulf. Since speed was of the essence for this mission, code-named Rapid Return, they were the best qualified and most readily available choice for the recovery.

The dark, humid air hung over the south Lebanese coast like a wet blanket. It was stifling, yet the team members paid no attention to the heat. Their minds were focused on their assignment and the role each would need to play for it to be successful.

Back in Washington, D.C., safely tucked away in the White House sit room, Scot Harvath knew exactly what the SEALs on that small fishing boat were feeling. Out of habit, his pulse picked up and the adrenaline began to surge as a quiet communication was relayed via satellite halfway around the world through the recessed speakers of the sit room.

“Jonah, this is Ishmael. No bites. We’re headed in,” said the voice of the SEAL team leader.

“Nothing on the nets either. Hope you land a big one. Happy fishing,” came the response from the JSOC command center.

Even though General Venrick wore a headset that kept him continuously in the loop, he had been furious that the vice president had insisted he watch the operation from the sit room. The general trusted his people at JSOC command, but when it came right down to it, he was in charge and should have been there, rather than in the sit room as if it were a skybox at a Redskins game.

The general had explained the codes and call signs to Harvath as they waited for the mission to begin. With that information, Scot was able to translate the exchange he was hearing.

Harvath knew from experience that anywhere from one hundred to two hundred yards out, depending on the conditions, the team would slide over the sides of their inflatable and into the water. Unsheathing their knives, team members would rip holes in the craft, and its heavy outboard engine would pull it straight to the bottom. Before any wreckage could possibly be discovered, the team would be long gone.

All eyes were glued to a series of monitors strategically interspersed across the front of the sit room. There were also individual monitors recessed at each setting in the table. Internal JSOC communications from the command center drifted down from the overhead speakers. The constant narrative relayed data on the mission’s progress and would be automatically interrupted any time a member of Rapid Return’s recovery force broke radio silence.

Glancing around the room, Scot noticed that both the general and CIA director Vaile had laptops plugged into the White House’s secure communication links. Undoubtedly, each was keeping in touch with their respective offices through private means as well. A very smart idea.

Harvath peered at the screens in the front of the room. They were considerably bigger than the monitor recessed within the table in front of him. Even though he could switch from picture to picture from where he sat, he preferred the wider panorama up front.

Each of the SEALs was outfitted with a fiber-optic night-vision wide-angle-lens camera that relayed back exactly what was in their field of view. The largest of the monitors was a flat-panel device showing images collected by an NSA spy satellite network known as Chaperone.

Chaperone was a highly sophisticated reconnaissance system designed to gather intelligence and assist in clandestine operations occurring predominantly at night. Chaperone incorporated night-vision capabilities unrivaled by any other intelligence-gathering system in existence. As it utilized several overlapping satellites, “loitering” time over a target had been greatly increased from times past.

The main flat-paneled screen at the front of the room provided a picture-in-picture view. The largest and most prominent image was of the beach that the SEAL team was swimming toward. In the lower-right-hand corner of the screen was the satellite image of what Harvath assumed was the primary objective, the FRC compound.

When the SEALs made land, they had just under a mile run inland, where a truck and two drivers would be waiting for them. Secreted in the back of the truck, the Special Ops team would be driven to within a few blocks of their target.

No one in the room spoke. The chatter of the JSOC command center and intermittent beeps, presumably from the satellites, had an eerie NASA quality to it all, as if the group were waiting for a fragile capsule to return from the dark side of the moon and report in. Scot realized that there was nothing that could be said at a moment like this. Besides, the general was still in charge and things needed to be kept absolutely quiet so he could work. He had insisted that was the one condition he would not compromise on if he was going to be at the sit room instead of JSOC command when Rapid Return went into action.

The minutes seemed like hours as the SEAL team made their way inland toward the truck. A monitor in the upper-right corner of the room showed a live picture of JSOC command. Harvath’s analogy of a NASA mission hadn’t been far off the mark. JSOC command looked very similar to what he had seen of Mission Control in Texas. JSOC operatives sat at long rows of computer terminals that tiered like amphitheater steps as they rose upward from the many screens covering the wall in front of them. Knowing the military’s penchant for organization, Harvath assumed that the operatives would be grouped according to their skills, such as communications and satellite technology, with the most important operatives being placed in the very back near the top brass.