She knew he wasn’t serious and grabbed his ass. “Tell him he needs to go through me from now on, or I’m not voting for him again.”
Ever since he had come to the realization that he loved her, everything she did or said seemed to back it up.
“I’ll tell him. Reed Carlton won’t like being cut out of the loop, but he’ll learn to live with it.”
“Let him know he doesn’t have a choice.”
He smiled and kissed her again before grabbing his keys and heading for the door.
“Hey!” she shouted from behind him.
When he turned, he saw her holding up a roadie. “Black. Two shots of espresso.”
Smiling, he crossed back over to her. “I love you. You know that?” he said, trying to take the cup from her.
“Wait. What did you just say?”
Shit. It had totally slipped out. He meant it, of course, but this wasn’t the way he wanted to say it for the first time — not rushing out the door.
It was a watershed moment. He could make it better, or he could make it worse.
Setting down the mug, he took her face in his hands and said, “I love you.”
Lara was speechless. She had only truly loved one other man, her husband, and had watched him drown right before her eyes. Now, here she was with this SEAL, whom she teasingly referred to as James Blond, and he had just told her that he loved her. For a moment, it felt like she couldn’t even breathe.
“This sucks,” he said.
“No, it doesn’t,” she replied. “This definitely doesn’t suck.”
“I thought we’d at least have the morning together. I didn’t think I’d be saying this and running out the door.”
She looked at him. “You were actually planning how you wanted to say that to me?”
He didn’t know how to respond. Was “planning” to tell her a bad thing? Didn’t women like when men planned?
He decided to explain how he had planned to do it and why, but all he could get out was, “Yes.”
Lara put her arms around his neck, pulled his lips to hers, and gave him the longest kiss they had ever shared.
Then, she was the one who broke it off. “You’d better get going,” she said. She was smiling from ear to ear. Slapping him on his backside as he picked up his coffee, she added, “Remember what I told you to tell the President.”
All he could do was shake his head and laugh. It was another moment; another brief, wonderful moment where nothing else existed and nothing else mattered. Then he climbed into his SUV and the real world crowded in with him.
He did the time difference in his mind with his mother in California, as well as a former SEAL buddy of his who ran a remote fishing lodge in Alaska. It was too early to call either of them. He decided to put those phone calls on hold.
It was also too early to call Ben Beaman, but that call couldn’t wait. There were some things about Congo that needing sorting out. He also needed a favor. A big one.
By the time Harvath rolled up to the White House security checkpoint at the West Gate, the biggest item on his personal list already had a check mark next to it. It was a good start and with that done, he could focus on work and why the President had called him in.
Pulling into one of the parking spaces near the West Wing entrance, he turned off the ignition and hung the badge he had been issued around his neck. It always felt weird coming back. He had practically lived at the White House at one point. He didn’t miss the Secret Service, though. Leaving the SEALs hadn’t been a mistake. He had learned a lot, met a lot of people, seen and heard some incredible things, but protecting a President had meant playing defense. That wasn’t his strong suit.
Offense was what he did best — finding the bad guys and taking the fight to them before they could bring the fight to us. With the SEALs and the Secret Service, he had gone through the best training the United States had to offer. Then, the Old Man had shown him what else was out there and had taken his game to a level he never before could have imagined. He had gone from being an Alpha dog to an Apex Predator — a species that sat astride the top of the food chain with no competition.
He radiated a calm, effective confidence that had nothing to do with arrogance, but rather an effective ability to handle anything that was thrown at him, no matter how fast. It was a good thing too, because things were about to speed up. Dramatically.
The Marine Guard outside the Situation Room waved him to the blast-proof door, which was so well engineered that it opened without any perceptible hiss of its locks releasing or any sound of its bolts sliding back.
Reed Carlton was already inside, as was the President. At the long, mahogany conference table were Lydia Ryan; her boss, CIA Director Bob McGee; General Ian McCollum, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Colonel Sheila White, MD, the Director of USAMRIID.
Absent were any other members of the President’s national security team. His own Chief of Staff wasn’t even there. Per the Old Man’s suggestion, he had kept this meeting highly compartmentalized.
There was something in the wind, something he didn’t like. Seeing those government personnel assembled at Damien’s Virginia estate troubled him. It had looked like a conclave of third-tier royal functionaries, and, historically, when that many functionaries assembled outside a palace, it usually meant that they were up to no good.
The Old Man pulled out the chair next to him and waved Harvath over. Their briefing was already in progress.
Sitting down next to Carlton, Harvath reached for the carafe of coffee in front of them, poured himself a cup, and listened as Colonel White spoke.
“The STAR team’s drone shows zero activity at the Ngoa facility. In fact, it looks completely abandoned. We’re getting the same thing from the satellite.
“Normally, we’d conduct this kind of operation at night, but all things considered, we decided to advance the timetable. With your permission, Mr. President?”
President Paul Porter nodded. He had a glass of orange juice in front of him and looked like he had been up all night.
General McCollum picked up his phone and gave the command to begin the operation. “This is Wedgewood,” he said. “Raptor is a go.”
The raid on the Ngoa facility, where the African Hemorrhagic Fever had allegedly been weaponized, would be coordinated by the United States Special Operations Command out of a highly secretive TOC, also known as a Tactical Operations Center, at a far corner of MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. The large, acoustically protected, darkened, raised-floor room was packed with flat-panel monitors, electronics, and rows of desks. On the outside of its door, there was no name, no number. None of the personnel who worked there ever spoke of it. It was a black hole from which some of the countries’ blackest operations were conducted. For all intents and purposes, the TOC and what happened within it didn’t exist.
The Situation Room back at the White House was similarly adorned with flat screens. Synched with the TOC at MacDill, each of them showcased a variety of images.
In addition to the satellite and drone footage, there were feeds from the helmet cams being worn by the STAR team.
A voice from the MacDill TOC came down through the Situation Room’s overhead speakers. “Raptor Actual, this is Raptor Main. You are clear to commence.”
“Roger that, Raptor Main,” said a voice from the team in Congo. “Raptor is clear to commence.”
Considering the distance it had travelled up the satellite and back down to the United States, the transmission was clear with almost no delay.
As the team emerged from the tree line and approached the facility, Harvath set his coffee down and leaned forward. It reminded him of his own approach of the Matumaini Clinic just six days ago.