Full Black

CHAPTER 50

While it was Nicholas’s shift, Harvath closed his eyes and allowed himself to drift off. It was morning and he had been asleep for several hours when his cell phone began vibrating and woke him up.

He popped the earbud in, and his eyes were drawn to the laptop as he activated the call.

“Do you see what I see?” asked Nicholas from the SCIF back in Reston.

“I do now,” replied Harvath as he grabbed a pair of binoculars and crawled over to the window. A white passenger van had pulled up in front of Sarhan’s house. He read off the license plate number.

“I’m running it now.”

Harvath readjusted the laser mic and also activated a small parabolic he had pointed toward the driveway.

Nicholas had an update for him momentarily. “The van is registered to a cardboard box manufacturer in Torrance, California.”

“Throw it into the TIP program and see if it connects any dots.”

“Roger that.”

Harvath had moved to the still camera and was taking pictures of the van. It was hard to make out the driver from this angle. He appeared to be waiting for someone.

Two minutes later, the microphones picked up the sound of Sarhan’s door opening. Muted good-byes were exchanged in Arabic before two young Middle Eastern men appeared towing wheely bags.

Harvath snapped several wide shots and then got close-ups of their faces. “Let’s run these right away.”

“I’m already on it,” replied Nicholas.

They were dressed in casual business attire. It reminded him of the airport security footage of the 9/11 attacker Mohammed Atta. He suddenly had a very bad feeling about what he was seeing. “Where are you two girls going?”

The two men placed their heavy bags in the van’s cargo area and climbed inside. The driver then pulled away from the curb.

“Can you follow them in the traffic cam system?” asked Harvath.

“Yes.”

“You should ping the Old Man and let him know what’s going on.”

“Already did.”

“Good,” said Harvath as he watched the van disappear at the end of the street. What is going on inside that house? he wondered. Had they just wrapped up some sort of meeting and these two guys were heading home, or was something else going down?

Ten minutes later, the mystery deepened as two more men with luggage exited the house and climbed into a taxi that had just arrived.

Once again, Harvath snapped pictures, and everything was beamed back to Nicholas in Reston.

“We need to follow that taxicab as well. Make sure you get all the information about the cab company and the driver and put it all into