As he listened to the waves, he breathed in the scent of the ocean — a mix of salt and seaweed and fish. He had spent most of his life around the water. No matter where he traveled, or how dangerous the assignment, he always found the smell familiar. It was a constant the world over.
There weren’t many things that had been constant in his life. As a SEAL himself, his father had been gone more than he had been home.
And until Lara, his track record in the relationship department had been anything but stellar. The relationships had been fun, but few had been serious, and fewer still had shown any promise of surviving long term.
What he had with Lara and her little boy was the closest he’d ever come to creating a family of his own. Outside of his career, it was the thing he wanted most in his life. It was why he had rented a house and had moved almost everything he owned from Virginia to Boston.
He had encouraged Lara to come to him, but then she’d been offered the promotion of a lifetime. She couldn’t replicate her position in Alexandria or D.C. He had encouraged her to take it. That left him with only one option if he wanted things to work — him going to her.
With the Old Man’s blessing, that’s what he had done. He picked and chose which CIA assignments he wanted, went away and did them, and then came home. Langley cut a check to the Carlton Group and money appeared in one of his multiple bank accounts.
He would have been happy to continue the arrangement in perpetuity, but based on what Lydia Ryan had told him, the Old Man had other plans.
It pissed Harvath off and made him smile at the same time. Reed Carlton was inscrutable. No matter how sure you were that you had him figured out, he was always running multiple different angles you had never even considered. He was the spy master’s spy master. He had seen America through the Cold War and beyond.
As technology boomed, life became easier. As life became easier, Americans grew softer. As Americans grew softer, the threats arrayed against the United States grew more deadly. Weakness encouraged aggression.
And when the aggression arrived, America had turned to hard men like Reed Carlton to strap on their armor, climb into the arena, and run a sword through it. But now, Reed Carlton could no longer strap on his armor.
That was a hard fact for Harvath to come to terms with. The Old Man had been one of those few constants in his life. He was also the epitome of the warrior. Warriors died in the arena, in battle, on their feet.
Once again, Harvath was reminded of how cruel it was for a man as brilliant as Reed Carlton to lose his life to a disease known for robbing victims of their minds. Of everything he had given to his country — his courage, his patriotism, and his loyalty — it was his genius that had served America without equal.
Now, his mind was being stolen from him. But it wasn’t gone yet. His wife was in a nursing home, and before he joined her, he intended to not only set the chess board, but stack the bench of American chess players as deep as he could as well.
To do it right, though, he needed Harvath onboard. That was why he had asked Lydia Ryan to intercede. It wasn’t hard to see.
The Old Man loved him like a son, but Harvath knew he loved something more: his country.
So now, here he was — a world away with the weight of the world where it shouldn’t be at this moment, on his shoulders. This was the last thing he should have been wrestling with. He couldn’t do anything for the Old Man if he returned in a flag-draped box.
He needed a few minutes to decompress, to rest. And then he’d need to focus on his assignment.
He adjusted himself in his chair, turning his face ever so slightly to track the sun as it began its descent toward the horizon. He slowed his breathing and synchronized himself with the ebb and flow of the waves below.
He was about to drift off when he heard Mike Haney step onto the balcony.
“The shopkeeper’s coming out of the K-hole.”
CHAPTER 18
Haney was one of the most squared-away Marines Harvath had ever worked with. Handing him a cup of fresh-brewed coffee, he offered to monitor the laptop for message traffic from Langley while Harvath went downstairs. It was the best offer he’d had all day.
Grabbing the shopkeeper’s phone, he stepped back into the house and descended the stairs.
Down the hall was the bedroom where the shopkeeper was being held. Jack Gage sat in a chair outside the door. In his hand was the cup he’d been spitting tobacco juice into.
“Everything good?”
“Livin’ the dream,” the large man deadpanned, raising his dip cup in a toast. He was known for his dry sense of humor, as well as being stone cold under pressure. The saying in the Special Operations community was that the difference between Gage and a walk-in freezer wasn’t the temperature, it was the beard.
“Is that coffee?” he asked, eyeballing Harvath’s cup.
“Libyan style.”
“Hot, tasteless, and totally fucked up?”
Harvath grinned. “I was going to say Kareem, no sugar, but never mind. It’s in the kitchen. Go grab some.”
Gage got up from his chair and Harvath stood aside to let him pass. Then he knocked on the bedroom door and let himself in.
Barton was sitting on one of the beds. He had a towel in front of him and was cleaning his Sig Sauer pistol.
In the center of the room, the shopkeeper was bound to a chair with a hood over his head.
Harvath dragged Gage’s chair in from the hall and shut the door. Walking over to a small dresser, he set up his iPhone to record the interrogation.
After positioning himself in front of the shopkeeper, he motioned for Barton to go stand behind the man.
Once he was there, Harvath started recording and nodded for Barton to remove the man’s hood.
The shopkeeper was groggy. His head rolled and he blinked his eyes as he tried to adjust to the light and figure out where he was.
Harvath slapped him a little bit to help him come around.
“Come on, Fayez,” he ordered. “Wake up. Let’s go.”
He had learned the man’s name from accessing the social media accounts on his phone.
Slowly, the shopkeeper began to emerge from his stupor.
“Fayez, look at me,” Harvath commanded. “Look at me.”
When he didn’t obey, Harvath slapped him a few more times on each cheek. Finally, the man made eye contact with him.
“Where is Umar Ali Halim?”
As his mind returned from wherever it had been, and he realized what was happening, the man began to thrash in his chair.
“Laa. Laa,” he sputtered in Arabic. No. No.
“Look at me, Fayez.”
When he didn’t comply, Harvath grabbed the shopkeeper’s lower jaw and twisted his face toward him.
“I offered you a lot of money. You could have cooperated. So now here we are. This can be easy, or it can be very painful. Where do I find Umar Ali Halim?”
“I don’t know who—”
Before the man could finish his lie, Harvath drew his hand back and delivered a cupped slap to the side of his head.
Instantly, the shopkeeper saw stars and his ear began to ring.
“Where do I find Umar Ali Halim?”
When he didn’t answer, Harvath nodded and Barton hit him the exact same way on the other side, from behind.
The shopkeeper tried to turn around, but Barton grabbed the back of his head and forced him to face forward.
“Who’s this, Fayez?” Harvath asked, holding up the man’s cell phone so he could see. On it was a picture of him with a young woman and two little boys. “That’s your wife, isn’t it? Those are your sons?”