Full Black

CHAPTER 59

Across the country, families, friends, and neighbors huddled around television sets. They watched over and over the repeated horrors of the last two days. Many asked Why? Many more asked Could it have been prevented? Even more asked Would it happen again? For all its strength, for all its greatness, much of America was paralyzed. Much, but not all.

As Harvath passed through security and into the Carlton Group offices, they were alive with an activity he had never seen before. Shifts and hours had been tossed out the window. All hands were on deck. The entire twenty-fifth floor was teeming with activity.

Harvath made his way to Digital Ops, punched his code into the door that guarded Nicholas’s domain, and when the lock released, slid the door open and stepped in.

His tiny friend looked like hell, but before Harvath could even comment, he was preempted. “There’s some body spray around here somewhere,” he said. “If I need it, let me know. Other than that, I don’t want to hear about how I look, okay? I haven’t been out of the SCIF much in the last seventy-two hours. Carlton has had someone walking the dogs for me.”

There were times when Harvath was stunned by the man’s ability to practically read his mind. Bending over to quickly scratch both of the dogs behind the ears, he replied, “Everyone’s stretched to the max.”

“True,” said Nicholas, who snapped his fingers and held out his hand. “Drive.”

Harvath removed the device from his pocket and handed it to him.

Nicholas studied it for several minutes and then connected one of the many hydra-headed cables near his work station to it.

“What did the Russian say the password was?” he asked.

Harvath repeated it to him and Nicholas rolled his chair over to another keyboard and punched it in.

“Do you mind?” asked Harvath, gesturing at the minifridge.

“Help yourself.”

Opening the door, he reached inside and withdrew an energy drink. Popping the top, he grabbed a chair and sat down. “How many other airport attacks were there?”

“Based on LAX, they were able to prevent attacks at Denver, Miami, JFK, DFW, Boston, and San Francisco. The FAA and the White House have shut down the entire commercial air system. United, Delta, Southwest, American, none of the airlines will be flying tomorrow. Not until a new set of security procedures is developed.”

Harvath had long been worried about how vulnerable Americans were in airports. They were incredibly soft targets. It was only a matter of time before the terrorists zeroed in on them. In fact, they already had, and the one thing everyone in the antiterrorism communities knew was that today’s terrorists learned from yesterday’s mistakes. No one responsible for airport security could claim they didn’t see this coming. There had been more than enough warnings.

The 1972 attack by the Japanese Red Army at the airport in Tel Aviv had killed two dozen people and wounded seventy-eight others. That should have been the wakeup call. The only people who woke up were the Israelis. The rest of the world stayed asleep.

Then came the Rome and Vienna airport attacks by Muslim terrorists in 1985. In 2002, an Egyptian-born, green-card-carrying gunman, employed as a limousine driver, and living in the United States for ten years, opened fire at the El Al ticket counter at LAX. In 2007, a Muslim doctor and a Muslim engineer tried to drive a bomb-laden Jeep Cherokee into one of the terminals at Glasgow International Airport. Would America wake up now?

Harvath had no idea. What he did know was that when Muslim doctors, Muslim engineers, as well as Muslim green card holders in the most prosperous nation in the history of the world committed acts of terrorism, it wasn’t because of economics. It was because of ideology.

What Harvath also knew was that airline travel was going to become even more of an aggravation than it already was. With each terrorist attack on U.S. soil, Americans gave up more of their rights. Harvath was reminded of the line, paraphrasing Benjamin Franklin, that those who trade some of their liberty for a little temporary security deserve neither and will lose both. The wisdom of the founders never ceased to amaze him.

Nicholas pointed to a stack of reports on the foiled attacks and Harvath wheeled himself over to them.

As he sifted through them, he asked, “Any progress with Mansoor in Iceland yet?”

Nicholas shook his head. “He’s not bouncing back as fast as they would have liked. Riley’s last report says they’re afraid that they may have to take him back into surgery, or that he does have some low-level brain damage that they can’t nail down. It’s been very slow going.”

“We’re also going to need to look into James Standing, the hedge fund guy. When you’re done with the drive, put him in that TIP program along with Ashford and see what you can find, okay?”

“I’ll add it to my list,” the little man replied, without looking up from what he was doing.

Harvath could tell he was distracting his friend, so he stopped talking and paged through the rest of the reports. DHS, TSA, and law enforcement at every airport across the country had gone on high alert. Based on the information they had been supplied from the attack at LAX, they had known what to look for and had been able to move quickly to take the terrorists down. It was a win for the United States, one it desperately needed. It had also saved thousands of lives.

Setting aside the last report, Harvath leaned back and watched Nicholas work. Regardless of how rapidly his fingers moved across his keyboard or how many times he clicked and double-clicked his mouse, the man’s expression was tranquil.

In this he resembled the multitudes of counterterrorism operatives Harvath had worked with over the years. No matter how dangerous the situation, they approached each mission with an icy resolve. Though they all felt strongly about what they were doing, it was as if they were completely devoid of emotion, which was probably true. As things heated up, they calmed down and became completely focused. Essentially, each was in his or her own particular zone. That was exactly what he saw in Nicholas at the moment.

Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. Half an hour after he had begun, Nicholas turned from his computer. His expression reminded Harvath of that of a doctor stepping out of a difficult surgery to update an awaiting family.

“There’s a lot here,” he said.

“If you’re talking about loan sharking and racketeering, I’m not interested. We can leave that for the Feds. Is there anything damning on Ashford or not?”

The little man tilted his head to the side. “By name, no. Everything so far is coded. Everyone appears to have a different designator. It’s filled with random strings of letters and numbers.”

Harvath wasn’t surprised. Yatsko had been a professional spy, and some old habits died very hard. “So we’ve got nothing.”

“Not exactly,” said Nicholas. “There’s one remaining file. I think it’s a Rosetta stone that might explain all the other data, but it’s heavily encrypted.”

“Can you crack it?”

“Given enough time, I can crack anything. But all things considered, why don’t we just crack Yatsko instead.”

“I think they took him to the house in Maryland. I’ll have the Old Man call the interrogators.”

“The Old Man is Yatsko’s interrogator,” said Nicholas.

“Reed? Really?”

“Really. I think the two of them have a history. Don’t ask me what it is. Reed Carlton has more secrets than anyone I’ve ever met.”

Harvath didn’t know if he should like the sound of that. From what Ralston had said, Yatsko was a tough son of a bitch. The Old Man, though, was the toughest son of a bitch Harvath had ever met. If the two men had a history, it could result in a very successful interrogation. There was also a flip side. History could also result in an extremely regrettable interrogation.

“Did they take Yatsko to the farm in Maryland?”

“Maryland?” replied Nicholas. “Why bother? They wanted to get started right away, so they brought him and Sarhan here.”

“They brought them here?”

“Yeah, Carlton has them downstairs on twenty-four.”

There was a stairwell near Nicholas’s SCIF that Harvath knew led to the twenty-fourth floor. Access was via a keypad next to the door. Harvath punched in his code and waited. The tiny light above the pad remained red.

He tried it again. Nothing.

“Damn it,” he muttered.

Finally, Harvath decided to try the code he’d seen the Old Man use on multiple occasions. He punched the numbers into the keypad and watched as the little light turned green and he heard the sound of the locks releasing.

Pulling open the door, he stepped into the stairwell and headed down to twenty-four. It had always been characterized as “empty office space” to him. It was a buffer between their offices and the rest of the building. It had also been explained as future space that the Carlton Group could grow into. As Harvath descended the stairs, though, he wondered if maybe he hadn’t been told the whole truth.

In fact, as he neared the landing for twenty-four he was reminded of something Robert Ashford had told him the first time they had met. The MI5 man had picked Harvath up at the airport, and after whisking him through customs and passport control, he had inquired as to the Old Man’s well-being. Of course, as they were about the same age, he hadn’t referred to him as the Old Man. That was what his employees referred to him as. But Ashford hadn’t referred to him as Reed or Carlton either. He had called him Peaches.

When Harvath had jokingly asked if it was because his boss was so sweet, Ashford had laughed and flatly stated, “No.”

The two men had worked together many times over the years and Ashford explained that Carlton was anything but sweet. No matter how unsavory a tactic the enemy employed, Carlton would always one-up them. According to Ashford, the Old Man had never shied away from doing whatever needed to be done. He was apparently a very aggressive interrogator. Bloody ruthless, in Ashford’s words. Hence the nickname Peaches-the antithesis of the man’s operating style.

Ashford was one of the few people Harvath had met who had worked with the Old Man in the field. He found his stories about Carlton fascinating. He also found some of them very disturbing. Allegedly, he had pushed a handful of interrogations way too far. Prisoners had died, or so the rumors went.

Though the Old Man had never been charged, some of the whispers cited his tactics as a prime reason he and the CIA had parted company.

Harvath knew not to put a lot of stock in rumors, especially Washington rumors, but nevertheless, as he plugged Reed Carlton’s code into the keypad at the door for twenty-four, he couldn’t help but wonder what he would find on the other side.

There was a particularly nasty rumor about the Old Man’s beating a prisoner with an electrical cord. Harvath had overheard several staffers talking about it when he first came on board at the Carlton Group. He’d made the mistake of asking the Old Man about it and had been put firmly in his place. Harvath hadn’t asked him again.

As he stepped onto twenty-four, he didn’t know what he would find, but when it came to Carlton and his reputation, he figured nothing would surprise him. Harvath’s mind, though, was about to be changed.