“If you don’t think what I brought you is worth celebrating, I’ll buy you an entire case to replace this. Where do you keep the champagne glasses?”
Page tilted his head toward the cabinet above the microwave and fired up his MacBook.
It took a moment to boot up, but once it did, he attached an SD card reader, inserted the card, and clicked on the icon. Several folders appeared.
“Which one should I start with?” he asked.
There was a pop as Jordan wrenched the cork out of the bottle. “The one marked Burning Man.”
Page did and instantly regretted it. It contained photo after photo of dead bodies, people missing limbs, and thick rivers of blood.
The carnage made his stomach churn. “I don’t want to look at this.”
“Keep going.”
Page relented and scrolled through until he came across pictures of a man with a face full of war paint, beating another man.
“Those are the money shots,” Jordan said as he handed him a glass of champagne. “Wait’ll you get to the video.”
“What’s in the video?”
“Click on it.”
Once again, Page complied. The feed was shaky, taken on a camera phone by someone quickly backing away from the chaos.
Several men in the crowd could be seen rushing the man with the war paint, who pulled out a pistol and fired into the air.
“Where’d all this come from?”
“Nevada Park Rangers,” Jordan replied. “The people at Burning Man were apparently very cooperative. The Park Rangers handed the footage over to the FBI. We got copies from them.
“From what we’ve been able to figure out, there were four suicide bombers at the festival. Three were interdicted.”
“By whom?” Page asked.
“CIA contractors.”
“Working with the FBI?”
Jordan shook his head. “The Bureau had zero idea they were there.”
“That must be causing a little consternation.”
“Are you kidding me? The FBI Director hit the roof. And when the CIA Director asked him to keep quiet, he hit it again.”
Page’s eyebrows peaked in surprise. “McGee asked the FBI to hush it up?”
Jordan nodded. “Yup.”
“This is a huge clusterfuck for the Agency. What does it have to do with Reed Carlton, though?”
“The guy with the war paint? He’s Carlton’s golden boy.”
“What’s his name?” Page asked.
“Scot Harvath. SEAL Team Six guy. He’s got a pretty impressive background.”
“How impressive?”
Jordan took a sip of his champagne. “Click on the folder marked Personnel Records.”
Page opened the folder and skimmed the documents. There were copies of Harvath’s service records, his SF-86 Top Secret clearance questionnaire, the photo attached to the green badge he was issued to come and go at CIA headquarters, even prior tax returns showing the Carlton Group as his employer.
Page was impressed. “You weren’t kidding. This is damn good stuff.”
“It gets better. Click on the last file. The one marked Blue Door.”
Page did. The first photo showed a small lockkeeper’s house along what looked to be the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal near D.C. “Is this what I think it is?”
“Keep scrolling,” Jordan instructed.
As he moved through the pictures, he saw shots of the Director of Central Intelligence, Bob McGee, arriving with his security detail. He was followed by Deputy DCI Lydia Ryan. Last but not least, Scot Harvath arrived.
The best pictures, though, were the ones right at the end. In those, you could clearly see all three, standing together and chatting, followed by an extremely friendly good-bye.
While Page had made mistakes years ago in Italy, he wasn’t a stupid man — not by a long shot. As he went back through everything Jordan had collected, he analyzed each piece.
He knew Carlton. More important, he knew how Carlton’s mind worked. He knew that no matter what the situation appeared to be, Carlton was always ten steps ahead of everyone else.
There would only be one chance to take him down. If he failed, Carlton would come after him with everything he had. Page, though, didn’t intend to fail.
And he didn’t care whom he burned in the process. He wasn’t going to let anyone — not Bob McGee, not Lydia Ryan, not even whoever this Scot Harvath was, stand in his way.
“So the CIA knew about a potential terrorist attack and didn’t inform the FBI?” he asked.
“Not just the CIA,” replied Jordan. “The Carlton Group too. Harvath’s the linchpin in all of this. Imagine the lawsuits from the victims and their families if this was made public.”
Page already was imagining it. It would be devastating for both organizations. “This has all got to be irrefutable. Are you going to be able to get me the rest of what I need?
“I’m already working on it,” said Jordan. “Don’t worry. I’ll get it.”
Raising his glass, Page saluted his colleague. “In that case, to revenge.”
CHAPTER 17
The safe house was better than Harvath had expected. The property sat along the coastal road, en route to the Tunisian border. It had a motor court with a high wall, no neighbors, and an unobstructed, 360-degree view of the surrounding terrain.
It was sparsely furnished. There was electricity and running water. A rooftop deck, surrounded by a lattice parapet made of concrete, provided decent concealment for use as a sniper or observation post.
While Barton and Gage cleaned up and then secured the shopkeeper to a chair in one of the ground-floor bedrooms, Mike Haney drew up a roster for guard duty. Staelin and Morrison pulled first shift.
Morrison grabbed his rifle and a bottle of water and headed to the roof. Staelin took his rifle and his Meltzer book and headed to the motor court. Harvath collected his backpack and the phones he had gathered up at the electronics shop and walked upstairs to the second floor.
The home’s master bedroom faced the ocean and had a wraparound balcony. Stepping outside, he saw a small table and chairs. He dragged them over to where he could get the best signal and then removed a laptop and satellite phone from his pack.
Once a connection was established, he attached his laptop to the SAT phone, removed the SIM cards from the cell phones, and uploaded their information back to the CIA. In particular, he wanted to know with whom the third militia member was talking when he walked into the shop and if any sort of alarm had been raised. With the help of the NSA, it wouldn’t take long.
All of the phones had been locked. The lock on the shopkeeper’s phone was controlled via fingerprint. All Harvath had to do to open it was place the man’s finger on the sensor.
The address book was full of contacts, but there was nothing, at least not by name, for the man they had come looking for — Umar Ali Halim.
The smuggler could have been listed under an alias, or it was possible that the shopkeeper dealt with an intermediary. While it might have looked like a bust, Harvath’s search of the phone did turn up something — something he anticipated would be very useful.
With a plan beginning to form in his mind, he fired off a quick email to the CIA. In it, he included pictures of the Glocks that he had stripped from the dead militia members, serial-number side up.
Then, repositioning his chair, he put his feet up and tilted his head back. He had been at this game long enough to know to grab rest whenever he could find it.
The late afternoon sun was warm on his face. Below, waves from the southern Mediterranean Sea rolled onto the beach. Harvath tried not to think about the dead bodies, from sunken smuggler vessels, washed ashore here, or the dozens of Christians ISIS had beheaded up and down the coast. For the moment, all that mattered was that he could close his eyes without fear of someone putting a knife to his throat or taking a shot at him.