Full Black

CHAPTER 45

Even though he was contracted to the DoD, Harvath and his organization technically didn’t exist. That meant he couldn’t barrel up to Reston under lights and klaxon. He didn’t even have them.

Instead, he had to apply a lead foot and hope he didn’t get pulled over along the way.

The traffic wasn’t as heavy as it would have been only an hour before, but it was still rough. Harvath shot from lane to lane, ticking off a lot of other drivers, many of whom leaned on their horns and gave him the finger. The fact that he was driving a brand-new black Chevy Tahoe made no difference. If you didn’t have lights or a klaxon, you were the same as everybody else. He tried to not let his own stress and animosity get the better of him. Nobody knew who he was. To them he was an overly aggressive driver.

As he tore his way up to Reston, Harvath listened to the reports of death and destruction coming in on his satellite radio. It was horrific. One thing was for sure, Mansoor Aleem’s interrogation would be kicking off momentarily. There was no way the CIA was going to allow this attack to stand. The president and the director of national intelligence were probably already rattling the cage of the director of central intelligence. Every single law enforcement and intelligence agency was calling its personnel in right now. It was all hands on deck.

Just then, Harvath saw a set of red and blue flashing lights racing up behind him. He cursed out loud as he prepared to be pulled over. But as the lights grew closer, they suddenly swung over onto the shoulder.

Harvath had no idea to whom the blacked-out Suburban belonged. It was probably some Fed racing back to D.C. in response to the attack. Harvath decided to take advantage of his lead, and he swung onto the shoulder as well and slammed down his accelerator in order to catch up and ride his bumper.

At Springfield, the Suburban took the Capital Beltway toward D.C. and Harvath weaved back into traffic as he kept going toward Reston.

In the twenty minutes it took him to make it the rest of the way to the office, he counted no fewer than seventeen vehicles, complete with flashing lights, headed in the opposite direction toward D.C.

Pulling into the garage, he grabbed the first parking space he could find and made his way to the service door and the private freight elevator beyond.

The first thing he noticed when he stepped onto the twenty-fifth floor was that the guards at the entrance to the Carlton Group had been doubled and they were no longer in suits. They were outfitted in full tactical gear, with knee-to-cranium Crye Precision level IV ballistic protection, and toting MP7s. The company’s security protocols were very specific. A terrorist attack on U.S. soil automatically kicked their alert level up several notches.

Harvath was buzzed in and was told the Old Man was in the Tactical Operations Center, also known as the TOC.

It was a high-tech command post outfitted with computers and video monitors used for guiding tactical teams during an operation. Right now, all of the monitors were tuned to different news channels. Each screen showcased the carnage from the bombings across the country.

“The death toll is already over three thousand,” said Carlton as Harvath entered the TOC. Shaking his head, he motioned for Harvath to follow.

They left the TOC and joined Nicholas in his SCIF. The dogs barely stirred as the two men entered. There’d probably been a lot of activity over the last couple of hours and they were growing used to people coming and going.

“We should have been able to stop this,” said Nicholas. “We weren’t fast enough.”

“Even if we had known about this specific attack, there’s no guarantee we could have stopped it in time,” said Carlton.

Harvath reached into Nicholas’s fridge and pulled out an energy drink. “How does this stack up against your map of dots?”

Nicholas made a couple of clicks with his mouse and brought up a map of the United States. “These are the cities and towns where theater attacks have been confirmed,” he said, as the locations popped up from coast to coast. He next overlaid the terrorist map with different-colored dots all around the country.

He then deactivated all of the dots except for one color and said, “We now know what kind of attack silver represents.”

“Silver screens,” replied Harvath. “How many years have we been worrying about an attack like this?”

“Too many,” said the Old Man.

“Wait a second,” interjected Nicholas. “You knew an attack like this was coming?”

Harvath shook his head. “Al Qaeda in particular likes symbolic targets. The film industry has always been a deep concern for the United States.”

“So why didn’t the government do anything?”

“Like what? Ring every theater with tanks?”

“Why not search people as they go in?”

“If we did that, where would it end?” said Harvath. “Grocery stores? Buses? Libraries?”

“It would be better than nothing.”

“The government didn’t just sit by,” Carlton explained. “They’ve been working closely with the movie industry for years. The last thing Hollywood wanted to do was suggest that theaters were unsafe.”

“But they were unsafe.”

“Up till now, they were completely safe.”

“Now, they’ll be completely out of business,” said Harvath. “The quintessential American experience of sitting with strangers in the dark watching a story unfold on the big screen is over. Nobody will go back to a theater after this.”

“People went back to flying after 9/11.”

“Largely because they had to,” said Carlton. “I agree with Scot. This will be different.”

“If you own any stock in Netflix,” replied Harvath, “it just went through the roof.”

They all studied the map up on the monitor in silence for a moment.

“What do we know about the identities of the bombers?” Harvath asked. “Anything?”

“The FBI has already pulled the security footage from all of the theaters that had cameras,” said Carlton. “It appears to have been a mix of Middle Eastern men, eighteen to thirty-five, and Africans of the same age range from Somalia or possibly Sudan. All of them carried backpacks into the theaters.”

“Any names? Anything we can cross-reference?”

“One. Ayman Hasan Shafik. Police in Albuquerque were reviewing CCTV footage with the FBI from their theater that got bombed and they recognized him immediately. Apparently, he had been involved in several domestic-abuse calls. Each time, though, his wife refused to press charges.”

Harvath shook his head.

“Shafik was a naturalized U.S. citizen. Originally from Egypt,” said Carlton. “I’ll let Nicholas fill you in on the rest.”

The little man turned halfway around in his chair to look at Harvath. “Ever heard of TIP?”

Harvath shook his head.

“TIP,” continued Nicholas, “is short for Total Intelligence Paradigm. It’s something a Finnish company has built and it’s absolutely amazing. Not only can it search any database, but it looks for patterns, and as it does, it actually learns and thinks, using artificial intelligence. It searches medical records, military records, utility bills, phone traffic patterns, bank accounts, Facebook usage, Twitter, emails, online purchases, credit card usage, voter registration, you name it. It is so sophisticated, it can access much older, antiquated databases without having to write new programming to access it. Essentially it can read blind, out-of-date data.

“The most amazing part is that it doesn’t just spit out a list of items attached to the name you give it. It develops an entire profile and from there builds a relationship tree of the people associated with your subject.”

“And the Finns gave you access to this?”

“Not exactly,” said Nicholas. “But that’s beside the point. What’s important is that we were able to enter Ayman Hasan Shafik’s name and then watch what TIP came back with.”

“Which was what?” said Harvath.

“Fifteen years ago, Shafik arrived in the United States on the same Egypt Air flight as a man named Mohammed Fahad Nazif.”

“That thing pulls up fifteen-year-old flight manifests?”

Nicholas nodded.

“So who’s Nazif?”

“According to TIP, Nazif is a suspect in a highly classified FBI investigation.”

“Wait a second,” replied Harvath. “How does TIP know about a highly classified FBI investigation?”

Nicholas exhaled the air from his lungs and shook his head. He glanced at Carlton before responding. When the Old Man signaled his approval, the little man began to speak. What he had to say wasn’t good. In fact, it was very, very bad.