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Each weapon was only to be fired once and then gotten rid of. The hitters were then supposed to be taken to a hotel near LAX to fly back to Russia the next morning. The good thing about hiring Spetsnaz operatives was that on the outside chance something got screwed up and they were caught, they would never, ever speak. Escrow accounts had been set up for each of the hitters, and news of their arrest would trigger an automatic payment to their designated beneficiary and annual payments would continue to be made for every year they remained in prison. It was referred to in Russian as an annuity of silence.

The fact that the operation appeared to have been foiled didn’t make any sense. The targets had been three American civilians with no bodyguards or security presence whatsoever. They had neither military nor law enforcement backgrounds. It should have been one of the easiest contracts ever. But somewhere something had gotten screwed up.

“Kitchen fires are very dangerous things,” continued Standing. “They have a way of spreading.”

Ashford didn’t exactly know how to interpret that remark. Was Standing worried about Salomon coming after him? “You’ve got plenty of fire extinguishers,” the MI5 man replied, referring to the billionaire’s personal security detail. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“That’s the problem with fires. You may think you have it under control, but then suddenly it explodes and it’s all around you. Those kinds of fires get lots of news coverage. No one likes fires, but those are the fires I like the least.”

“I understand.”

“Just in case,” Standing asserted, “let me be perfectly clear. If I start smelling smoke, I am going to be very upset.”

“Believe me, I’m just as upset as you are.”

“Then get this handled. Immediately.”

“I’m working on it,” replied Ashford.

“You’ll want to do better than that,” said Standing. “This one could have a very big impact on your career.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Check the box,” ordered the billionaire who then terminated the call.

The box referred to the email account Ashford and Standing shared. It was an additional form of clandestine communication that allowed them to communicate without actually sending any messages over the web. They conversed by leaving messages for each other in the account’s draft folder.

Rising up from the conference table, Robert Ashford walked to his desk and sat down in front of his computer to log in through a cleansed, difficult-to-track server on the Isle of Man. He knew that whatever was waiting in the draft folder wouldn’t be good news. When he opened the message from Standing he immediately realized how much trouble he was in.

He had been careful, but apparently not careful enough. He scrolled through picture after picture of himself in Yemen. They showed him arriving at the apartment building and then atop the roof unpacking the RPG.

The very last picture in the series turned out not to be a picture at all, but a video. Though he knew what that would show as well, he still clicked on it. Instantly, he was sorry he had.

The video showed Ashford firing the RPG and then leaving the building, but several minutes of footage followed. It focused on the carnage the RPG had wrought: the twisted wreckage of the burning car that had been targeted, as well as the dead, dying, and wounded in the street. Before the video ended, it panned the café across from where the car had been parked. There, Robert Ashford saw a quick glimpse of a non-Arab face and knew exactly who it was.

It was the man who had captured Aazim Aleem, had stuffed him in the trunk of that white Toyota Corolla, and had driven him to the café to be given up to the CIA. The threat from Standing left no room for confusion.

Ashford’s migraine flared. He reached into his desk drawer for the bottle of painkillers, but then stopped. He’d have to work through the pain. He couldn’t afford to have his brain muddled.

He’d made a mistake trusting Standing. Actually, that wasn’t correct. He had never truly trusted the billionaire. He’d trusted their commitment to a shared cause, but he shouldn’t have overlooked Standing’s self-preservation instinct.

Ashford leaned back in his chair, shut his eyes, and massaged his temples with the heels of his hands. He was in a dangerous box and would have to chart a very careful course. Injecting Scot Harvath, the man from the café, into the game had just raised the stakes to a new level.

CHAPTER 18

S
WEDEN

H
arvath knew the Old Man was right. He was always right. Sightseeing was for tourists, not for counterterrorism operatives. They needed to get off the X, as it was called, as soon as possible.

The operation had been designed to last only a matter of hours, twenty-four, tops, and no more. Because of how vulnerable Chase would be, the insertion had been done completely clean. There were no follow cars and he wasn’t carrying any weapons or tracking devices. The assignment was incredibly dangerous. No one wanted to add to the jeopardy he was already in by throwing another ingredient into the mix that could get him killed. If anything happened to him, the Agency would devote its full attention to driving a stake through the Carlton Group’s heart.

Ever since the Old Man had started his organization, the powers that be at Langley had wanted it shut down. The Carlton Group was doing everything the Agency claimed couldn’t be done, and doing it better, faster, cheaper, and often a lot more quietly.

It upset the CIA to no end that the Old Man had sucked up a lot of their talent and was employing them in a much more streamlined organization that wasn’t afraid to take risks. They knew they were too top-heavy. They also knew that they were choking themselves to death on their own red tape. When the next major terrorist attack hit the United States, America was finally going to wake up to how inefficient the Central Intelligence Agency was and call for a stake to be driven through their heart. That fact, more than any other, was what kept CIA bureaucrats lying awake in their beds every night. America had been too forgiving after 9/11. It wouldn’t make that mistake again.

But instead of fixing its leaking ship, the CIA focused on protecting its turf. The writing was on the wall. Eventually, they were going to be replaced by a leaner, more productive organization. They were in a fight for their very existence and they lashed out accordingly at anyone or anything they saw as a competitor. And that was exactly how the Carlton Group was perceived.

While there was no love lost between the Old Man and Langley, he didn’t want to be sucked into their petty games. Already, a handful of stories had been leaked to the New York Times about his organization in an effort to discredit it. He had enough sources, both within the paper and back at the Agency, to know who’d been behind it. Though he found it unprofessional, he understood why the CIA was doing it. That’s why he’d been intent on mending fences.

Like it or not, his organization was here to stay. No matter how badly the CIA didn’t want them around, the Carlton Group now had the top cover and protection of the DoD. That didn’t mean, though, that Langley couldn’t make it difficult for them. The Old Man had decided the best way to stop the pissing match was to offer an olive branch. That’s what the Yemen operation had been all about.

Was it the best idea to swoop into the country and in a matter of days pinpoint and roll up the bad guy that the CIA had been trying to track down for a month? Probably not, but handing him right over and not wanting any credit was a very good idea. Had the attack on Harvath’s vehicle not happened and had Aazim been turned over to the Agency, it might have improved the relationship. At least that was what the Old Man had believed. Harvath hadn’t been so sure.

Though he had kept them to himself, Harvath had reservations. He thought they might see it as having had their faces rubbed in it. He also doubted they’d share any of the intel they gleaned from wringing Aazim Aleem out like a dishcloth.

Carlton had to be part mind reader. Without Harvath saying anything, the Old Man knew exactly what he was thinking. He was quick to remind Harvath of several things, each of which stung a bit and therefore stuck with him.

The Old Man made it clear that Harvath was an exceptional operative, but not yet as smart or as experienced as he was. He also stated that while one of Harvath’s greatest skills was his ability to think and act on his own, it was also one of his greatest flaws.

That last part burned the hottest, most likely because it was right on target. Even in the SEALs, Harvath had danced just on the edge of being a team player. Despite the fact that he was very well liked, his superiors had warned him again and again about his individuality. While there wasn’t any one thing they could specifically point to, he was warned that if he wasn’t careful he was eventually going to get his teammates killed.

Harvath hadn’t liked hearing it then and he certainly didn’t like hearing it now from a man he had so much respect for. Under the former president, Harvath had been expected to operate alone and to do things his way. He had excelled, but those days were behind him. For better or worse, Harvath was back on a team again, which required that he perform accordingly. He was determined to make it work.

That was a big reason he was upset to lose Riley Turner to the care of Mansoor Aleem. The very reason the Athena Project had been created by Delta was that an attractive woman’s beauty automatically disqualified her as a threat.

Harvath chastised himself for not remembering one of the SEALs’ maxims, Two is one and one is none. They all knew that Mansoor could have been injured in their manufactured car accident. He should have brought another member from the Athena Project along just in case. But he hadn’t, and he knew why.

He’d felt chemistry the moment he met her. He thought she might have felt it, too, but he couldn’t be sure. She was very hard to read. He didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

All he knew was that he thought about her entirely too much. He didn’t like that. It meant that something was going on that he couldn’t control, and Harvath was all about control. It was one of those traits that had interfered with his ability to be a proper team player.

He had avoided bringing another Athena Project member on the assignment because he had wanted her to himself, so to speak. He didn’t want to share her. It was stupid, but if given a mulligan he knew he’d do it the same way again.

Harvath was not only exceedingly good at what he did, he was also a fun guy to be around. Nevertheless, the landscape of his personal life was like a tropical beach scattered with the wreckage of broken relationships. As long as you looked at the sand closest to you, it looked pretty good, but the further you glanced down the beach, the more you realized there had to be something out there, just beneath the surface of the water, to have wrecked all those ships.

There was certainly a reef out there, but it was only recently that he had begun to understand what it was made of. The razor-sharp coral that gashed the hull of anyone who got too close to him was in part due to his career. There were very few people whom he could tell exactly what he did. And even fewer who could tolerate his frequent and often unannounced absences.

Like a double helix, the DNA of Harvath’s career was entwined with something else—his desire for a family and a stable home life.

The biggest thing people in Harvath’s industry had in common was divorce. Disappearing at a moment’s notice to go off to some of the darkest corners of the world to do dangerous and unspeakable things wasn’t exactly the fertile soil in which happy families grew. You missed anniversaries, birthday parties, holidays, soccer games, school plays, parent–teacher conferences, and on and on. It took an amazingly resilient and unique spouse not only to put up with it, but to keep the family strong and together.

Though Harvath knew a woman like that was next to impossible to find, he specialized in the impossible, and refused to give up looking.

The Old Man must have sensed Harvath’s interest in Riley Turner, because he had been reluctant to okay her for this operation. Though Harvath had worked with her once before, his desire to learn more about her had tipped his hand. Nevertheless, Carlton had given in and allowed her to be part of the Uppsala operation. There were no other Athena operatives with her medical skill set. He hadn’t needed to overtly remind Harvath to keep it professional. His tone when okaying Riley’s participation had said it all.

While he had sons of his own, none of them had gone into his line of work, and the Old Man felt a special affinity for Harvath. That said, he knew Harvath had lost his own father, also a SEAL, just after high school, and he wasn’t above manipulating the father-son bond they had developed. It often proved the key to getting through Harvath’s headstrong personality and making sure he did the right thing. He suspected something might be materializing between Riley and his operative, but Carlton knew there was little he could do about it. Much like a parent, employers also had to trust that the people they task with difficult jobs will do the right thing and put the successful outcome of the assignment above everything else.