The First Commandment

CHAPTER 102

Though Harvath was traveling on his German passport as Hans Brauner and could go anywhere in the world he wanted, he had been marked a traitor, which made him a man without a country, and what was worse, he had absolutely no idea where he should be going.

In Roussard’s twisted countdown, the Bucket of Blood might have been meant for the final two plagues, but Harvath doubted it. He had a very bad feeling there was still one attack to go, and that it would represent the plague in which the waters were turned to blood.

Harvath tried to run through all of the people he knew who lived on or near water. He had grown up in California, spent a significant amount of time in the Navy, and lived on the East Coast for the last several years; the list was long. It was so long, in fact, that Harvath couldn’t keep track of all the names inside his head and had to find a pen and paper to write them all down.

It was a hopeless task. There was no telling where Roussard was going to strike next. The U.S. Ski Team facility in Park City and the Bucket of Blood in Virginia Beach were almost as random as Carolyn Leonard, Kate Palmer, Emily Hawkins, and his dog. They were all significant to him, but they were not people or places he would ever have anticipated being attacked.

After the jet had made its descent into Houston’s Intercontinental Airport and Harvath had made his way through passport control and customs, he proceeded to the private aviation business center.

The first thing he did, after building his layers of proxy servers, was to plug in his ear bud and make hospital calls. Finney’s security teams were still in place and Harvath spoke with their captains. Ron Parker had updated each of them on the failed attack in Virginia Beach.

As a precaution, the team watching Harvath’s mother had her moved to another room, which didn’t face the street. From a car bomb perspective, Tracy was already protected.

Harvath spoke with her father, who told him that they had run additional tests and the results weren’t good. The new EEG suggested further decreased brain activity, and they had been attempting to wean her off the ventilator without any luck. Tracy was still not able to breathe on her own. There was a double downside to that, as not only could she not breathe on her own, but as long as she was on a ventilator there was still no way to conduct a full MRI to look for the exact cause of her coma and the true extent of the damage.

There was a tone of fatalism in Bill Hastings’s voice that Harvath didn’t like. “This is not what Tracy would have wanted,” he said. “All these tubes and wires. The ventilator. Remember Terri Schiavo?” Bill asked. “We had talked about her once, and Tracy told us she would never want to live like that.”

Bill and Barbara Hastings were Tracy’s parents and her next of kin, so that gave them the power to make medical decisions on Tracy’s behalf, but it sounded as if they were considering throwing in the towel.

As long as Tracy was alive, there was still hope that she might pull through, and Harvath told them so.

Bill Hastings was not as optimistic. “If you’d spoken to the doctors, Scot. The neurologists. If you’d heard what they had to say, you might feel differently.”

The man didn’t have to say it. Harvath knew he and his wife were seriously considering removing their daughter from life support. He asked them not to do anything until he could come back and be there. It seemed like a reasonable request. Though he and Tracy hadn’t been together long, their relationship was intensely close and committed.

The elder Hastings’s response took Harvath completely off-guard. “Scot, you’re a good man. We know you cared for Tracy, but Barbara and I feel this is a family decision.”

Cared? They were talking about her as if she were already dead. Immediately, Harvath knew what he had to do. He’d find a way to get into the hospital without being apprehended. He had to. He had to be with Tracy and more important, he needed to speak with Tracy’s father, man-to-man.

Harvath was ready to alert his pilots to file a flight plan for D.C. when an email appeared in his gmail account that changed everything.