The First Commandment

CHAPTER 61

The small, unremarkable home sat at the verdant end of Graves Road on St. Patrick’s Creek — a small inlet of the Potomac River, less than fifty kilometers from where the Potomac emptied into the Chesapeake.

The cars parked in the home’s driveway were equally unremarkable — a smattering of SUVs and pickups, the kind of cars one would expect to see at the weekend home of a general contractor from Baltimore.

Had the neighbors seen any of the men getting out of their vehicles and entering the house, none would have given them a second look. They were trim and of varying heights, their faces bronzed from being in the sun, signs that they were all undoubtedly engaged in the same profession as the home’s owner. Had anyone taken any notice of them they would have assumed the men had all come down for the fishing.

The fishing was one of the many reasons that the area around Coltons Point was known as one of the best-kept secrets in southern Maryland. The chamber of commerce slogan made for a wink-wink, nod-nod insider sort of joke among the select few at the CIA who knew about the Coltons Point safe house. If there was anything that the spooks at Langley loved, it was irony.

The six highly skilled men assembled inside the home were known in CIA parlance as an Omega Team. The word Omega was taken from the Greek, which referred to the last and final letter of the Greek alphabet. It also referred to the literal end of something. Omega Teams had not been given their name by accident. Theirs was very, very dirty work. Sometimes their missions were overt, but more often than not they were extremely covert and required surgical delicacy.

The team leader unbuckled his leather briefcase and tossed five dossiers onto the dining-room table. He didn’t need one for himself. He’d already memorized the contents. “I know many of you are currently standing up other operations,” he said, “but effective immediately, this assignment is your one and only concern.”

Like most CIA field groups, Omega Teams were composed of highly intelligent and extremely patriotic individuals. One of the team members looked up from the dossier and said, “Are you sure about this?”

“Not that any of you are allowed to repeat this, but this came from DCI Vaile himself.”

“But this guy’s practically a national hero,” said another operative. “It’s like asking us to shoot fucking Lassie.”

The team leader didn’t care for what he was hearing. “What is this, a book club meeting all of a sudden? Nobody asked for your opinions. The subject is a significant threat to national security.

“He was asked repeatedly by the president to stand down and refused. He was then given a timetable within which to turn himself in and he refused again.”

“Wait a second. How’s President Rutledge involved in this? What’s this guy wanted for anyway?” asked another.

“That’s none of your business. All you need to know is that, by not complying with the president’s orders, he’s putting innocent American lives in jeopardy.”

“Bullshit,” claimed yet another member. “We’ve all read his jacket. This guy is one serious tack-driving pipe-hitter. If we’re going to go after somebody this experienced, this dangerous, I think we deserve to know what he’s really up to. Why won’t he comply with the president’s order?”

The team leader was in no mood to explain the motivations of their target, or those of the director of Central Intelligence, or those of the president of the United States to his men. “I’m going to say this once and only once, so shut up and listen. All I am going to tell you, and all you need to know, is that both DCI Vaile and the president of the United States have okayed us to take down this target. Our job is to stop Scot Harvath by any means necessary. End of story.”