Spymaster

CHAPTER 69

They kept pushing west until Harvath, who had been glued to the rear window, watching to make sure they weren’t being followed, felt comfortable enough to give the okay to pull off the road.

Up ahead was a small, run-down truck stop and Sloane suggested they stop there. Harvath concurred.

Around the back was a pair of beat-up old Dumpsters and a crappy, out-of-service car wash. That was where they parked.

Getting out of the cars, they kept their eyes peeled for trouble as they stretched their legs.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” Chase demanded, as he approached Harvath.

“I had a bird in the hand,” he replied. “I wasn’t going to let him go.”

“A bird whose nest we had under observation,” stated Sloane.

“Sometimes birds don’t come back to their nests.”

Chase shook his head. So did Sloane. Staelin was unavailable for head shaking as he had walked over behind the car wash to take a leak.

“We’ve got Tretyakov,” Harvath declared. “That’s what matters.”

“The ends justify the means,” said Chase. “Is that what you’re telling me?”

“In this case? Absolutely. When you get a shot, you take a shot. It’s that simple.”

“You’re lucky we were there.”

“I am lucky,” Harvath admitted, not afraid to say it. “Very lucky. But what the hell were you doing there in the first place?”

Chase was neither ashamed, nor embarrassed. “I thought you made a really bad call. So when you left the roof, I decided to follow you.”

“Bullshit. I would have known you were behind me.”

“Not if I was using the Force.”

Again with the Force, thought Harvath. But there was no arguing with the fact that Chase had indeed followed him, and that Harvath hadn’t even realized it. Perhaps his skills were much farther along than Harvath had been giving him credit for.

Even so, he wasn’t thrilled with Chase’s decision to abandon his post on the rooftop. Harvath had been the ultimate rule breaker, it was the foundation of who he was, but now that he had one foot in management and was responsible for people beneath him, he needed his orders to be followed without exception. Hypocrisy at its best, he realized.

“Next time I do something you think is dumb,” said Harvath, “don’t you do something dumber. Okay? In the meantime, thank you.”

Chase hadn’t been expecting a thank-you. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Harvath answered. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, and then added, “You also need to thank Ashby and Staelin. They hauled ass to get there. We had no idea what you were up to, but we wanted to have your back in case something went down.”

Harvath thanked Ashby, and when Staelin reappeared, zipping his fly, he thanked him as well.

“You bet,” the Delta Force operative responded. “ ‘Gunfight in Kaliningrad’ is going to make a killer band name.”

Harvath smiled. “Make sure to save me a T-shirt.”

Staelin nodded and, remembering he had something for him, reached into his vehicle and pulled out Harvath’s backpack. “Your phone and the other things they took from you are in there, too.”

He was doling out a lot of thank-yous, but he had a top-notch team and they deserved every one of them. The presence of mind to clean the scene like that was a testament to their professionalism. “Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” replied Staelin. Looking at the damage on both cars, he added, “We need to get rid of these vehicles.”

Harvath agreed, but first he wanted to confirm they weren’t already being tracked.

They swept each of the GRU sedans and didn’t find any tracking devices. That was the good news.

The bad news was that their pickup point was at least forty-five minutes away. And that was if they took the most direct route. The direct route, though, wasn’t an option. Not for them.

If it hadn’t happened already, police and military throughout the exclave would soon be alerted. Patrols at the border would be stepped up, as well as along all the roads.

The longer they were out in the open, especially during the daytime, the greater the likelihood was that they were going to get caught. They had to go into hiding — now.

Glancing over at the defunct car wash, Harvath got an idea.

There had been just enough room to get both cars inside and still close the metal roll-down door. Harvath used the derma-bond from his med kit to make the broken lock look as if it had never been touched.

They each still had water and protein bars, and there were drains in the floor should anyone need to relieve themselves.

Though no one felt like sleeping, Harvath still posted a guard rotation. It was important that they be prepared for anything.

The next thing he needed to do was burst an update and request a change in the pickup point and the time.

He didn’t like risking the exposure, but inside the windowless car wash, without an unobstructed view of the sky, he wouldn’t be able to get a signal.

He had Sloane, with her suppressed H&K VP9 pistol, cover him as he placed a small, vehicle-mounted satellite antenna outside and then surreptitiously ran the cord back inside.

It was a calling card that, if discovered, would announce their presence, but he didn’t have a choice. Without comms, they were dead in the water.

Retreating inside, he attached the antenna, burst the message to Ryan, and then shut everything off.

Under the guise of combating terrorism, Moscow monitored satellite communications throughout Russia and its territories. While terrorism was a legitimate concern, the effort was more about controlling free speech and blunting espionage. Whatever was being said, at any time, anywhere, the Kremlin wanted to know it.

The position was so draconian that even foreign visitors were mandated to purchase Russian SIM cards for their satellite phones or face fines and potential imprisonment.

Compressing his message and sending it in a short, fast burst was designed to avoid detection and have the lowest probability of intercept. Even if the Russians noticed, there’d be no way for them to trace it.

With the message sent, all they could do was wait. They were used to it. Being good at waiting made you good at the game. And they needed to be good at the game if they were going to get out of Kaliningrad alive.

In fact, they were going to need to be great.