Full Black

CHAPTER 57

Harvath backed into Hank McBride’s driveway and parked underneath the carport near the kitchen door.

“Thanks for coming,” said the old SEAL, giving him a hug.

“No problem,” replied Harvath. “You look good.”

“Must be all my healthy habits.”

Harvath knew what a hard drinker and terrible eater Hank was known to be and he smiled.

“C’mon inside,” said McBride. “Luke and Salomon are looking forward to meeting you.”

“I need your help getting something out of the trunk first.”

Hank looked at him. “Something or someone?”

Harvath directed him to the rear of the car and popped the lid.

“Who the hell is he?” the old SEAL asked.

“He was never here. You never saw him.”

“Did he have something to do with what just happened at LAX?”

“I don’t want to get into it,” said Harvath.

“Son of a-” said McBride. He pulled back his fist and punched Tariq Sarhan in the head before Harvath could stop him.

“For fuck’s sake, Hank. Knock it off.”

“So what? Tell them he slipped getting out of the car.”

“Are you going to help me or not?” asked Harvath.

“Just leave him in there,” said the old SEAL. “What do you need to bring him into the house for?”

“Ever heard of sudden in-custody death syndrome?”

“As in you’ve got some wiseass and you decide to throw him off a bridge?”

“If you leave a suspect duct-taped in a confined space for too long he can die,” said Harvath.

“The whole country’s going soft,” replied McBride. “We used to leave shitbags like this in trunks for days at a time. I always found it made them a lot more cooperative.”

Harvath ignored him. “I need a pole. Something that’ll support a lot of weight and won’t break. A sheet, too.”

McBride shook his head, walked into the house, and reappeared a couple of minutes later.

After making sure there was nobody who could see them from the street, they pulled Sarhan from the trunk and laid him down on the concrete apron on his stomach. They slid the pole under his duct-taped ankles and then beneath his FlexCuff’d wrists, which Harvath had reinforced with more tape. Throwing the sheet over the pole, they lifted him like a couple of Bushmen returning to their village with a fresh hog and moved him inside.

Once safely into the kitchen, Hank let go of his side of the pole. “Woops,” he said.

Harvath lowered his end, withdrew the pole, and pulled off the sheet.

“Where do you want to put him?” asked McBride.

“We can leave him right there.”

“You don’t care who he sees or what he hears?”

Normally, Harvath wouldn’t have cared, but he had no idea where Sarhan was going to end up. The less he knew about everything, the better.

“Do you have someplace we can put him?” asked Harvath.

Hank shook his head. “I should start charging rent,” he said as he motioned for Harvath to follow him.

Harvath grabbed Sarhan by the back of his shirt and dragged him across the linoleum floor and down a short hallway to McBride’s laundry cum hobby room. He knocked and the door was opened by another man, who Harvath assumed was Ralston. Sitting next to the old SEAL’s workbench was Larry Salomon. Harvath had seen his picture many times before.

On the floor, and also restrained with duct tape, was a man about Hank’s age with greasy black hair and a pug face.

“Sorry we’re late,” said Harvath as he let go of Sarhan.

“Another pinata,” replied Ralston. “Now things are getting interesting.”

“If you gentlemen want to use the kitchen to talk,” said Hank, “I’ll keep an eye on these two.”

Harvath thanked him and followed Ralston and Salomon out. As he was leaving, he reminded the old SEAL not to abuse his prisoner. Hank picked up a ball-peen hammer from the workbench and told him he wouldn’t dream of it. Shaking his head, Harvath joined the other men in the kitchen.

Ralston introduced himself and then Salomon.

“I’m a big fan,” Harvath said to the producer.

“Thank you. We appreciate your coming.”

“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on,” said Harvath as he motioned at the kitchen table for the men to sit. He saw that Hank had a pot of coffee made and helped himself. He offered to pour for the other two men, but they politely refused.

Sitting down at the table he listened as Luke laid out what had happened and Salomon filled in some of the details.

Twenty minutes and an additional cup of coffee later, Ralston finished by saying, “That’s when Hank called you and here we are.”

It was an amazing story. Harvath leaned back in his chair, processing what he had heard. “For what it’s worth, you were smart not to kill Yatsko.”

“I gave my word,” replied Ralston. “That said, I probably ruptured his eardrum, discharging the weapon so close to his head.”

“He deserves to pay,” said Salomon.

Harvath nodded in agreement. “You both did the right thing, though.” Changing gears, he asked, “What happened to the homeless guy in his trunk?”

“After I dumped Yatsko here, I drove the car back up to L.A., wiped all of my prints off it, and left it in his garage.”

“Where’s the hard drive?”

Ralston reached under the table where it had been taped, removed it, and handed it across to Harvath. He then gave him the code the Russian had revealed out in the desert.

“You haven’t tried to open it, have you?”

Ralston shook his head. “He was bargaining for his life, so I think he was being straight with me. But I’ve dealt with this stuff enough to know that he could have given me a kill code. I didn’t want to type in that password only to have it fry the entire drive.”

“Smart,” replied Harvath. “We’ve got somebody back east that should be able to get into it and see what’s there. What about Project Green Ramp? You said it was a plan to weaken the United States and then collapse it via a black swan event? Do you have any idea what kind of black swan? Could that be what’s behind all of these terrorist attacks?”

“You probably shouldn’t rule anything out,” Ralston replied with a shrug, “but I don’t see Standing as the terrorism type. He’s a financial guy who buys influence and messes with currencies and economies.”

“Who may have used an active MI5 operative as a cutout to hire a Russian wet work team to kill Mr. Salomon.”

“I guess when you put it that way, anything is possible.”

It was definitely possible. In fact, having the unrestricted warfare piece of the puzzle, Harvath now saw Standing as highly likely to be behind the entire thing. He had the financial means. He also, from what Harvath knew, had the ideology and hadn’t been shy in his public calls for the American system to be replaced with something else.

“If Ashford is dirty,” asked Salomon, “will you be able to link him to Standing?”

“We’ll definitely try. But it would be helpful to have copies of the material you were working on. Did you back it up offsite or does the LAPD have all of it now as part of their investigation?”

“Everything was in my home office at the time of the attack.”

“So, no backup, then.”

“No,” said Salomon. “There’s a backup. I just don’t know how you can get to it.”

“Let me worry about that,” replied Harvath, figuring the Old Man could put together a team to take care of the job. “Where is it?”

“Back at the house. I have a stack of high-capacity portable drives in a locked cage hidden in the basement. My entire life is backed up on those things, including the rough cut, or at least as far as we had gotten on it, of the Well Endowed documentary. If you can get someone past the police and into the house, I can tell them how to find the cage and access the drives.”

As Ralston and Salomon began to sketch out a map of the house and the surrounding property in Coldwater Canyon, Harvath stepped outside to make a phone call.

He needed to bring the Old Man up to speed on what he had learned, but more important, he needed to lay the groundwork for what they had to do next. Reed wasn’t going to like it, but they were going to have to go after Robert Ashford.