What’s more, if he was a pro, he would have done his homework. He would have known Harvath was too smart and too well trained to have risked sneaking up on him.
Sending two knuckle-draggers to lure him outside was smart. They’d probably been paid to beat him within an inch of his life and take off before the cops got there. What the hooligans wouldn’t have known, was that once they had fled, the hitter’s plan was to materialize and finish the job. Smarter still, the cops wouldn’t have been looking for a lone, mysterious gunman. Based on the accounts of everyone in the bar, the knuckle-draggers would have been the prime suspects. The hitter would have walked away clean. Harvath had completely thrown a wrench in that plan.
No doubt, the two bruisers were expendable. Whether they regained consciousness and escaped before the police arrived was their problem. The killer had only one priority at this moment—taking out his target.
In the distance, the klaxons of emergency vehicles could already be heard. The assassin was running out of time. It was now or never.
As if reading his mind, the man took a deep breath, looked down the slide of his pistol, and adjusted his sight picture.
Harvath wasn’t afraid to die. He didn’t look away or close his eyes. In fact, he kept them locked right on his killer.
The assassin began to apply pressure to the trigger and Harvath knew the moment had arrived. He braced for the worst. And then it came.
There was a muffled pop followed by silence. That was it. He felt no pain. In fact, he was still very much alive.
How was that possible? Had the assassin missed? Had his weapon malfunctioned? A fraction of a second later, Harvath had his answer.
Blood began to trickle from a hole in the would-be killer’s forehead. And as he collapsed to the ground, Harvath realized the man had been shot by someone else. But by whom?
Suddenly, four men carrying suppressed weapons appeared out of nowhere. Their faces were obscured by balaclavas and night vision goggles. What the hell was going on?
“Time to go,” one of them ordered. Harvath instantly recognized the voice.
Before he could reply, two of the men had grabbed him under the arms and were steering him toward a narrow gangway.
Glancing over his shoulder, he caught a glimpse of the other men swiftly unfurling a body bag and placing the dead man inside.
When they emerged from the gangway, a dark panel van was idling at the curb. As they approached it, the door slid open and he climbed in. The two men with him stood guard outside. It smelled like disinfectant.
Seconds later, the other men arrived with the body bag. Once the corpse was loaded, everyone piled in, and the van took off. As it did, the occupants began removing their night vision goggles and balaclavas. One by one, the faces of his teammates were revealed.
The first one belonged to the man whose voice he had recognized—Mike Haney. With his square jaw and close-cropped hair, the six-foot-tall Force Recon Marine looked like he had stepped out of a recruiting ad.
“What the hell just happened?” Harvath asked.
“We saved your life,” Haney replied. “Again.”
The man was right of course. If it hadn’t been for them, Harvath wouldn’t have made it back to the United States from his last mission alive. But what were they doing here?
Tyler Staelin, the team’s de facto medic, removed a penlight from his medical kit, clicked it on, and asked Harvath to follow it with his eyes. Once the five-foot-ten former Delta Force operative was satisfied with his colleague’s neurological function, he began running through a checklist of questions to assess other possible injuries.
Harvath replied to about three of them before growing frustrated. “I’m fine,” he said. “Answer my question.”
Staelin cracked a pair of cold packs and handed them to him. “Place these wherever you need them.”
Harvath slid them under his shirt and, with great discomfort, held them against his rib cage. “What the hell’s going on?” he repeated. “What are you doing here?”
Their silence was unsettling. Gallows humor came with the territory and ran deep with this crew. Normally, he couldn’t get them to shut up. The fact that nobody was answering could only mean one thing. They had bad news.
It was Chase Palmer, the team’s other ex–Delta Force operative, who finally spoke up. In addition to looking like a younger version of Harvath, he had also been personally recruited by the Old Man. “We got a tip from the Norwegian Intelligence Service,” he stated.
Harvath’s frustration was growing. “What kind of tip?”
“Carl Pedersen was murdered.”
CHAPTER 5
It was like being hit by a truck. Carl Pedersen was not only Harvath’s best intelligence contact in Scandinavia, but he had also been a friend. The Old Man had introduced them and, despite their age difference, they had become close. Pedersen’s loss was devastating, especially on the heels of losing his wife and two dear friends.
“When did it happen?”
“Four days ago,” Chase replied. “Maybe more. His body wasn’t discovered until today. A neighbor found him. At his country house.”
“How was he killed?”
“From what the Norwegians say, it wasn’t pretty. He had been tied up and tortured. Then he was shot, once, in the chest. The round went straight through his heart.”
Not one prone to showing his cards—particularly his emotional ones—Harvath blanched. That was a shitty way to go, especially for someone like Pedersen.
He had been a good man. Old-school. Willing to bend and even break a few rules here and there if it meant saving lives. He had been a spy’s spy. There weren’t a lot like him at the Norwegian Intelligence Service. Sharing a border with Russia—and all the malign activity therein—Norway had been lucky to have him. He wouldn’t be easy to replace.
It sounded like a professional job. What didn’t make sense, though, was why the Norwegians had notified them. “What prompted the call?” he asked. “Why reach out to us?”
Reluctant to let the other shoe drop, Chase didn’t respond. He knew what a blow it was going to be.
Piloting the van toward Naval Air Station Key West, Sloane Ashby was the team’s lone female operative and also another one of its youngest. Ex-Army, she had been recruited by the Old Man as well. She was not only attractive, but she could also be quite funny. Now, though, wasn’t a time for jokes. It was time to tear the Band-Aid off and give it to Harvath straight.
“The working theory at NIS is that Pedersen was tortured in order to get access to his phone and laptop.”
Harvath caught her eyes in the rearview mirror. “Why? What for?”
“According to their computer forensics people, the killer was building a dossier.”
“On what?”
“Not on what. On who.”
As a pair of police cars went racing past them, it all came crashing down on him. “Me?”
Haney put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “That’s why the Norwegians reached out. They wanted to warn you. The killer accessed Pedersen’s phone, his laptop, and the secure NIS database. Every recent search appears to be related to you.”
Harvath didn’t want to believe what he was hearing. Not because of him. Not another murder.