Foreign Agent

CHAPTER 48

Getting Harvath into Syria was the first challenge McGee and Ryan had to tackle. There was a secret airstrip the Pentagon had been using in the north of the country, but it was hundreds of kilometers away from Damascus.

They contemplated flying him into Iraq and moving him across the desert, but that was fraught with problems, including potential contact with ISIS.

The best bet was to land him in Amman, Jordan. From there, it was only two hundred kilometers north to Damascus. All they had to do was get him across the Syrian border.

A white Embraer Legacy 600 business jet with crimson stripes delivered Harvath from Malta to Amman in less than three hours. Upon his arrival, a covert CIA operative named Williams met him at the airport.

Williams was a NOC, operating in Jordan without any diplomatic cover. McGee had known him for decades and told Harvath he could trust him.

Williams drove Harvath to a small apartment that the CIA kept off the books. After setting up a white backdrop, he took Harvath’s picture in front of it, and then another in profile looking out the window. He told him to help himself to whatever he found in the kitchen. He’d be back in the morning with a new passport and to drive Harvath to the border.

The tiny apartment was stuffy and probably hadn’t been used in a while. Harvath opened a couple of windows and walked into the compact kitchen.

Searching through the cabinets, he found a bottle of Bulleit bourbon. How Williams had laid his hands on it in a place like Amman was beyond him. But that’s what made a NOC a NOC. They were highly resourceful.

Pouring himself a drink, he grabbed a few pieces of pita bread and a container of hummus and walked back into the living room.

The sounds of motorbikes, car horns, and radios ebbed and flowed through the open windows like a tide. The music was distinctly Arab.

Turning out the lights, he pulled up a chair and took it all in as he ate.

He referred to these moments as “precompression.” It was another term for getting his head in the game — of focusing in on where he was and what he needed to do. It was the opposite of “decompression,” which happened after an assignment was complete and he tried to put everything out of his mind and behind him.

Getting up only to fix another drink, he sat at the window for over an hour taking it all in, especially the conversations in Arabic as locals came and went along the sidewalk below.

He was in a totally different world now. Different people, different motivations, different rules. No matter how many times he had been sent to the Middle East, it always felt alien to him. There was no other way to describe it. And there was no other place in the world like it.

After taking a shower, he lay down on the bed. An old ceiling fan turned slowly overhead, barely moving the air.

He had hoped the bourbon would help him sleep, but his mind drifted to Lara.

“Married?” she had asked him when they first met. “Any kids?”

“No,” he had replied.

“Divorced?”

“No.”

“I knew it,” she had said. “The haircut and the suit were a dead giveaway.”

“Of what?” His hair was short and he was wearing an expensive Brooks Brothers suit.

“Don’t be so defensive. Boston’s a progressive city. We’ve got gay cops on the force.”

He had laughed. “I’m not gay.”

“So what’s your problem, then?” she had asked. “Never grew up? Peter Pan syndrome?”

“Just never met the right girl.”

“You shouldn’t be looking for a girl. You should be looking for a woman.”

She was, of course, completely right. Then she had added, “If you’ve come this far in life without finding the right person, the problem isn’t them, it’s you.”

Three sentences. That’s all they were. But they had completely changed his life.

She reminded him that a “perfect ten” doesn’t exist, which at the time seemed almost funny coming from such an attractive woman. But he grew to understand what she meant. “If you’re hitting on five out of six cylinders with someone who truly cares about you,” she said, “you should run all the way to the bank with it.”

She was right. She was also an amazing woman. He knew he’d never meet someone like her again.

And with that, he finally knew what he was going to do once this assignment was over.

Williams showed up at dawn with two cups of Starbucks coffee and a large shopping bag.

“Sorry,” he said, handing one of the cups to him. “The knock-off Dunkin’ Donuts shop wasn’t open yet.”

Harvath smiled and took the lid off his cup. He hadn’t been to Amman in a while. “Which one has better coffee?”

“I don’t like that they’re ripping off an American brand, but they have damn good coffee. Cheaper too. Doughnuts aren’t bad,” said Williams.

“Is that what’s in your shopping bag?”

The NOC grinned. “Fancy guy like you gets a muffin,” he replied, reaching into the bag and tossing one to him.

“Thanks,” Harvath said. “Anything else?”

Williams peered into his shopping bag like an office party Santa Claus. “I don’t know. Lemme look. Did you order a new set of Louis Vuitton luggage?”

“Not really my style.”

“I didn’t think so,” the CIA man replied as he removed a hard-sided Pelican briefcase and set it on the table. “There you go. Special delivery.”

Opening the lid, Harvath recognized the logo inside immediately. Palafox Solutions Group was a company out of Gulf Breeze, Florida.

It was run by a SEAL who had retired as a master chief, gone into the private sector, and now had all sorts of interesting contracts. One of them was to build “capability kits” for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Capability kits were loaded with all the things an intelligence or counterterrorism operative might need, but couldn’t enter a foreign country with.

Sometimes all Harvath needed was a weapon; sometimes he needed more. There was no one-size-fits-all solution.

The first thing Harvath removed was a sand-colored, modified Palafox 9mm SIG Sauer P226 pistol. It had bright green TRUGLO Tritium/Fiber-Optic Day/Night sights that allowed for fast target acquisition regardless of light conditions. Portions of the slide had been milled away to lessen the weapon’s weight. It also helped to reduce muzzle flip and better assist recoil management.

Accompanying the pistol was a Sticky-brand inside-the-waistband holster, spare magazines, and several boxes of TNQ frangible 9mm ammunition.

There was also a jet-black, ultra-compact, single-shot Taser X26P, a flashlight, a compass, and a small trauma kit. It was a first-class set-up.

The last item Harvath removed was a stunning, fixed-blade knife by Daniel Winkler called the Spike. The team at Palafox obviously knew what it was doing because the knife came in a leather sheath. Leather not only stropped the blade each time it was drawn, it was whisper quiet. Kydex looked cool, but it made a lot of noise.

Next, Williams handed over Harvath’s passport and an envelope full of pocket litter — receipts, a canceled boarding pass, a handful of business cards that looked like they had been in someone’s wallet for a while — that would back up his new identity.

He looked at the passport and memorized the information. He was a Canadian, from Ottawa. Williams handed him a series of articles, authored under his assumed name, dealing with conflict zones and humanitarian crises.

They had been backdated to a faux blog the CIA sat on a commercial server in Canada. The photo Williams had taken the night before of him at the window served as his profile photo.

He then handed Harvath a laminated international press credential on an Associated Press lanyard. It was the best the Agency could do in such a short amount of time.

Harvath looked it over, knowing it didn’t have to be perfect. All it had to do was get him across the border.

Once he was ready, he followed Williams downstairs to his car.