Harvath set an empty Blackhawk load-out bag on top of the Truck Vault and began filling it up. Into the bag went his LaRue 14.5” PredatOBR rifle and his Remington 870 Express tactical shotgun. He grabbed his .45 caliber H&K USP compact pistol, a Glock 21, a Glock 17, and a RONI conversion kit that would turn the 17 into a short-barreled rifle.
He threw in a Taser X26P, a set of night vision goggles, flashlights,
walkie-talkies and earpieces, an extra Benchmade folding knife for Sloane and one for Chase, as well as plastic restraints, holsters, ammunition, his Otis cleaning kit, and extra magazines.
With his bug-out bag over one shoulder and his overnight bag over the other, he extended the handle of his load-out bag and wheeled it behind him into the building.
Signature Flight Support was known for always having fruit, fresh-baked muffins, cookies, and popcorn. Harvath grabbed an apple and a bottle of water.
He had just taken his first bite when Sloane Ashby appeared. She was wearing jeans, trail runners, and an Under Armour shirt.
“An apple, huh?” she said. “I guess guys your age really have to watch their weight.”
“Fuck you,” Harvath replied through a smile and a mouth full of apple.
“Gotcha. Listen, about my hostile work environment complaint? How does Tuesday look for a sit-down with HR?”
Harvath gave her the finger and grabbed another apple.
“Allahu Snackbar,” Sloane said, lampooning the terrorist battle cry of
Allahu Akbar
, as she studied the counter full of treats. She made a show of picking the two biggest cookies and then filled up a bag with popcorn.
Harvath shook his head. Ashby was a wiseass and it was one of the many things he liked about her. Despite the difference in their ages, they had a lot in common—the same healthy disrespect for authority, the same determination to succeed at any cost, and the same wise-guy sense of humor. They were two peas in a pod. So much so that Carlton had given Harvath a very stern warning—
no dating.
The last thing the Old Man wanted was a romance to develop between them. He had been perfectly clear what the repercussions would be if that happened.
Even though Harvath thought Sloane was “cute”—a word he used continually because he knew she hated it and it got under her skin—he kept their relationship platonic.
He admired her skills and saw her as a teammate; someone he could mentor. In fact, he believed she’d probably end up being an even better operator than he was. She was born for the work and everything about
her made her perfect for it. The Old Man had always been a scary-good judge of talent.
Chase Palmer was the other operator Harvath figured would outpace him. General George Johnson, the Director of National Intelligence, had uncovered Chase while heading the Army’s Intelligence Support division, also known as “The Activity.”
Johnson had a career full of experience with clandestine operations. He had seen men rise and fall, come and go, but he had never seen an operator like Chase. There was a row of locked file cabinets at the Pentagon stuffed with accounts of his exploits at the Unit. There was also a coterie of career soldiers, or
Chairborne Rangers
as they were derogatorily referred to, who resented not only Chase’s talent and meteoric rise but also his above-average intelligence.
His star was burning white-hot right about the time he ran afoul of a drunk two-star general and knocked him out. It didn’t matter that the general was asking for it both by being overly aggressive with a female soldier and by exhibiting conduct unbecoming an officer. Word spread quickly. Chase had embarrassed the two-star, who was bound and determined to make Chase pay. That’s when General Johnson had stepped in.
Johnson spoke with the Unit and they agreed to “share custody” of Chase. It gave Chase the best of both worlds, and he very much enjoyed the arrangement. But just when he thought it couldn’t get any better and he was preparing to reenlist, Reed Carlton had come along. He was a difficult man to say no to.
Before Chase knew it, he had given up his house at Fort Bragg, had bought a new car, and had taken a splashy condo in D.C. Carlton was opening up an incredible new world to him and he could already tell he had a lot to look forward to. And with his sense of humor, he fit right in.
Joining Harvath, Chase looked at Sloane’s cookies and said, “A moment on the lips, forever on the hips.”
Harvath chuckled as Sloane gave them both the finger. As she did, the copilot stepped inside and told them the plane was ready to go.
T
he flight to Nashville would take a little over an hour and the FBI would have a car waiting at the airport for them to use. Harvath had requested something with a big trunk, as well as rope, plastic sheeting, and several other things Director Erickson would probably rather not have known about. Harvath also asked him to arrange a safe house, preferably in the middle of nowhere, with lots of acreage and no neighbors.
He had watched the man write everything down and was sure that as soon as the instructions had been relayed to the field office in Tennessee, Erickson would burn the list. He was a decent man who played by the rules. The way Harvath handled business obviously made him uncomfortable. Not because he couldn’t stomach violence, but because he believed in the rule of law and the concept that Americans should hold themselves to a higher standard than their enemies.
It was a noble notion and one that Harvath wanted to live by as well. The trouble was, it was something that no nation could afford to cling to without having a Plan B. When your enemies succeed because they aren’t constrained by rules, at some point you have to either accept defeat, or tear up the rulebook. Harvath had pretty much played by the rules while he was in the Secret Service. The President at that time had joked that it was like staking a pit bull to a chain in the backyard. No matter how mean he looked or how loud he barked, there were some people who wouldn’t be deterred.
Take that same pit bull, though, unchain him and let him go, and it was a different dynamic altogether. The pit bull might bite the wrong person someday, but if he was well-trained enough, you wouldn’t lose sleep over something that
might
happen. You actually might sleep much better knowing he was on duty. That was how President Jack Rutledge had seen Harvath then and how President Paul Porter saw him now.
Onboard the plane, Harvath and his team stowed their gear, chose their seats, and buckled up. They had been given priority clearance for takeoff.
Once the plush Citation Longitude was airborne, Harvath accessed the pressurized luggage compartment behind the lavatory and retrieved his load-out bag. He wanted to clean and check the weapons as they went over what the plan was going to be.
“And if he’s not there?” Sloane said as she broke down the LaRue rifle. “What then?”
“Then we’re going to let ourselves in, take a look around, and let ourselves out.”
“What about wiring the room?” Chase asked.
Harvath shook his head. “I don’t have that kind of equipment. The Bureau is sending one of its top guys, but he won’t get in until later tonight.”
“It had better be a top guy,” Sloane interjected. “If he doesn’t do a first-class job, and Deng finds something, that’s it. We’re blown.”
“I agree. That’s why I’d rather follow him and see where he leads us.”
“Understood,” Chase replied as he tried the action on Harvath’s Remington. “How long are we going to let him walk around before we grab him?”
It was a difficult question. Time was a double-edged sword. The longer they followed Deng, the more they might learn from him. The flip side was that the longer they followed him, the greater their odds of losing him. The biggest factor, though, was that every minute that they weren’t interrogating Deng was one minute the terrorists were closer to pulling off their attack. Usually, as the clock was winding down, you wanted to score as soon as you could. Putting up some Hail Mary right at the buzzer
wasn’t an act of professionalism; it was an act of desperation. Sometimes, though, a Hail Mary was all you had.
Harvath didn’t intend to let it come to that. “We’re going to watch him for as long as we can. I’ll let you know when it’s time to roll him up.”
That answer seemed to satisfy Chase and the team went back to checking the equipment before restowing it in the load-out bag.
Because Sloane and Chase hadn’t had to share a plane back home with a pissy ambassador, they had slept a lot better than Harvath. Despite a little bit of jet lag, they announced they were ready to hit the ground running.
When the Longitude touched down, it taxied to the general aviation area of Nashville International and a local Signature Flight Support FBO. An impressive array of high-end jets was lined up outside. Nashville hosted a lot more than just country music. The city was booming in high tech, biotech, health care, publishing, and finance. Harvath knew more than a few Tier 1 military operators, as well as intel people, who had purchased homes and land in the Volunteer State.
Inside the Signature building, an envelope had been left at the desk under one of Harvath’s aliases. Opening it, he found a set of keys for a blue Ford Taurus sedan parked outside.
The team exited the building and Harvath popped the trunk. Inside were all the items he had requested. Pulling out his phone, he texted the Old Man that they had landed and that everything was a go.
Next, he called the FBI agent whose card had been left in the envelope. Special Agent Dennis Urda had been designated the team’s local liaison.
While the FBI’s main Tennessee field office was in Memphis, it operated satellite offices, referred to as “resident agencies,” in other cities, such as Clarksville, Cookeville, Columbia, and Nashville.
Urda was the number-two agent in the Nashville office, and he answered his phone on the second ring. “Special Agent Urda.” He spoke with a slight New York accent.
“Agent Urda, this is Scot Harvath.”
“Did you find the car?”
“Yes. We just arrived at the airport. Thank you. Can you give me a situation report?”
The Residence Inn by Marriott in Cool Springs was situated in a mixed-use office park. In addition to high-rise office buildings, there were single-story buildings that housed retail businesses, including bars, restaurants, and a yoga studio.
When Harvath had insisted the FBI pull back their surveillance, he had agreed that they could covertly set up in any of the office buildings, but he didn’t want them in the parking lot or the hotel itself. He had also insisted that none of the agents move around the area on foot. Experienced operatives could smell law enforcement from a mile away. Unfortunately, pulling back had limited what the FBI could see, especially at night.
“Lots of what we would consider normal hotel traffic,” said Urda. “No obvious signs of our guy.”
“What about his room?”
“The TV is on, the
Do Not Disturb
is still on the door, and the drapes are still pulled.”
“Okay,” Harvath replied. “You’ve got my cell number. Call me if anything changes. We’re headed your way now.”
Urda agreed to call Harvath if anything changed and they ended their call.
Turning to Sloane and Chase, Harvath said, “No matter what happens, we absolutely take this guy alive. Understood?”
His two operatives nodded and Harvath signaled for everyone to get in the car. As they did, a sense of foreboding swept over him. He silently hoped that they had made the right decision by coming to Nashville.
N
ORTH
K
OREA
J
imi Fordyce looked Billy Tang square in the face and said, “Are you crazy? Not only no, but
hell
no. There’s no way I’m authorizing that.”
“What if I told you I wasn’t asking for your authorization?”
“You’re going to get us all fucking killed,” Johnson stated.
Fordyce held up his hand to calm his teammate down and kept his attention focused on Tang. “I’m not letting you jeopardize this mission, Billy. The answer’s
no.
”
“But what if his sister does know something?” said Tang.
“What if she doesn’t?”
“Then we’ll know for sure. Isn’t that better than wondering
what if
?”
“Completing our mission is what’s better, period.”
Tang looked at him. “And our mission was to gather as much intel as possible. This
is
possible.”
“No,” Johnson said. “It’s insane.”
Fordyce waved him off again. “If you go down there and you get caught, you’re going to bring an army down on us. I won’t have that.”
“The key word here is
if
I get caught. They’re not going to catch me. Do you know how many times I have snuck in and out of the DPRK?”
“I don’t know if you have a huge set of balls, or you really are just crazy, but you’re talking about fences, armed guards, and prisoners who are conditioned to snitch. You know damn well if they see a strange face, they’re going to find the nearest guard and raise the alarm in the hope of getting an extra half-ration of cabbage soup.”
Tang shook his head. “It’s a labor camp. Those people are being worked to death. You think they sit up all night playing Mah-Jongg? By the time I slip in there, they’ll all be asleep.”
“Except for the guards,” Fordyce replied.
“You saw the map Jin-Sang drew. The part of the fence he sneaks through is less than a hundred meters from the infirmary. He says the guards don’t patrol that area as often.”
“And ‘the check is in the mail’ and ‘I’ll still respect you in the morning,’ ” Johnson snarked.
Tang ignored him. “If it’s too hairy, I’ll pull the plug. Believe me, I have no desire to spend the rest of my life in a place like that.”
“No,” Fordyce repeated.
“Damn it, Jimi. That girl may hold the key to unlocking the entire thing. When conditions on the ground change, the op parameters have to change.”
“We get in, we get what we can, and we get out. Those are our parameters. Nothing has changed.”