Use of Force

CHAPTER 19

Forty-five minutes later, Harvath walked back into the room, carrying his laptop and satellite phone. Crossing over to the window, he opened it up and then placed everything atop the dresser and slid it over.

Once he had a strong signal and a clear picture established, he grabbed the shopkeeper’s chair and dragged him over, so that he could watch what was about to unfold.

Harvath didn’t need to signal Barton to remove the man’s hood. He snatched it off himself.

The shopkeeper shut his eyes against the light. Harvath grasped him by the back of the neck and pushed his face forward toward the screen. “Open your eyes,” he demanded. “Watch.”

Slowly the man’s eyes adjusted and he focused on the screen in front of him.

Through Facebook’s facial recognition program, the NSA had identified the shopkeeper’s wife in record time. From there, they were able to pinpoint her cell phone and to leaf out her entire relationship tree.

Placing a headset on, Harvath gave the order to begin. The animated globe spinning on the screen was replaced by a live feed from a Reaper drone already in flight.

The drone had been launched from a covert U.S. base just across the border in Tunisia.

Harvath wanted to bring the drone in over the port city of Zuwara. As soon as the shopkeeper realized what he was looking at, he’d know exactly where the drone was headed.

Despite the Reaper’s amazing speed, the minutes would pass like hours as a sense of dread built within him. As he watched familiar buildings and landmarks pass by underneath, he’d agonize that his family was that much closer to death.

But, because of its airport, the CIA wanted to avoid Zuwara entirely. Instead, they decided to fly the drone in via the desert. Harvath wasn’t happy.

The desert offered nothing but sand and rocks. The shopkeeper could only guess what he was looking at.

As the drone neared the edge of Al Jmail, though, he began to pay closer attention. There was a soccer field, a gas station, a bank. Harvath watched the shopkeeper. He recognized all of it.

Near Al Jmail’s center, the drone slowed and went into a wide elliptical orbit overhead. The ruins of the burned-out electronics shop were not hard to discern. Harvath instructed the drone operator to zoom in on the scene.

If the shopkeeper thought Harvath had been lying to him, he was now fully disabused of that notion.

The detail captured by the drone’s camera was astounding. After scanning across the smoldering rubble of the electronics shop, its roof having fully caved in, the drone’s camera switched to the faces and license plates of those gathered outside. It was an incredible piece of technology.

Just as incredible, though for different reasons, was the shopkeeper’s cell phone. Harvath had disabled the fingerprint sensor and was able to dip in and out of it at will.

Opening up the call log, he held it up for the shopkeeper to see. “Your wife has called you multiple times. Do you think she has heard about the fire?”

The man’s jaw tightened.

“Speaking of your wife,” Harvath continued. “Let’s go see what she’s doing.”

Activating the microphone, he instructed the drone operator to proceed to “Target Bravo.”

Like a telescope being collapsed, the camera lens zoomed back out and the drone took on a new heading.

The NSA had pinpointed the shopkeeper’s wife to a property outside Al Jmail. Harvath knew they had the right spot just by the shopkeeper’s reaction once the drone had arrived overhead and began to circle.

“Zoom in,” Harvath instructed.

The operator did, and the home could be seen as clearly as if they were floating fifteen feet above it.

Financially, the shopkeeper appeared to be doing well. There was evidence of recent construction on the house. There was a healthy garden, much greener than his neighbors’. There was even a large play set, the kind you saw in suburban backyards across the United States, for his children.

Harvath was about to comment on it, when movement caught his eye. “Zoom in,” he instructed.

A woman, presumably the shopkeeper’s wife, had just opened a door from the house to let the two boys play. Their timing was perfect.

Harvath looked at the man and said, “This is your last chance, Fayez. Tell me where I can find Umar Ali Halim.”

The shopkeeper stared at the laptop, speechless, his eyes moist. It wasn’t the answer Harvath was looking for.

Hailing the drone team, he requested a readout of the Reaper’s weapons package.

The screen split in two and a digital rendering of the drone’s underbelly appeared next to the live feed. The Reaper was carrying a contingent of highly accurate air-to-ground Hellfire missiles and a pair of five-hundred-pound laser-guided Paveway II bombs.

“Arm Hellfire missiles,” he said.

On the weapons readout, the Hellfires were highlighted in red, followed by the word Armed.

When the shopkeeper finally broke, he spoke so softly Harvath could barely hear him.

“Riqdalin,” he whispered. “Umar Ali Halim lives near the village of Riqdalin.”