Hidden Order: A Thriller (47 page)

“Okay,” the first man growled as he caught back up to the Land Rover, “you can go in. Make sure you tell them to bring us our food.” He added,
pretending to put his hand back in, “I’ll make sure to come see you later at the bar.”

Ashby gunned the engine once more and the man dramatically leapt back as if she were suddenly radioactive. His smiling colleague opened the gate and allowed them to enter.

As they drove into the courtyard, she activated her radio and announced, “Free parking.”

Palmer smiled. “Come to think of it, maybe this phase should have been called
Community Chest
.”

She flipped him the middle finger. “We’ll deal with your alcohol and guns comment later,” she said. And then, playing on his nickname, she added,
“Ass Kisser.”

He smiled as she brought the Land Rover to a stop outside the stone home’s heavy wooden front doors.

“Just like we rehearsed it,” she stated as she turned off the ignition and they both hopped out.

Removing trays of food, they walked up the front steps. Ashby went first, followed by Palmer. Before she even reached the doors, they were opened for her. Two more men stood there.

Ashby offered the trays to the taller of the two, but he shook his head. “Kitchen,” he told her.

She started walking in the most likely direction and the other man put his hand out to stop her. He peeled back the lid on the top tray each of them was carrying, while the taller man gave them a quick pat-down.

When the taller man tried to give her a second pat-down, she sidestepped him and asked, “Where’s the kitchen?”

The man grunted out directions and he and his colleague went back to their posts as she and Palmer walked down a wide hallway toward the rear of the house.

The rest of Durkin’s pals, four more men in total, were gathered around a large TV, watching soccer and drinking beer. The man himself, though, was nowhere to be found.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Palmer said. “Should we prepare eight plates? Or will there be others joining you?”

“Leave the food in the kitchen,” one of the men said with a dismissive wave. “We’ll get it ourselves.”

A voice from Northern Virginia came over their earpieces. “We’re picking up one additional heat signature in the northwest corner of the house.”

“Understood,” said Ashby. Quickly, she and Palmer unpacked the food, along with their weapons, which had been sealed in Ziploc bags and hidden inside.

With Palmer acting as a screen, she assembled a plate of appetizers and wrapped her suppressed weapon in a linen napkin underneath. She waited until the intensity of the soccer game began to pick up and then stepped into the television area.

“Who wants some?” she asked. “Compliments of Kau Tapen Lodge.”

One of the men turned to tell her to shut up, but upon seeing her, his pockmarked face spread into a lascivious grin and he beckoned her over.

His attention flitted back and forth between the soccer match and the attractive young lady carrying a plate of hot food.

Something wasn’t right, though. Was it the look in her eyes, or was it the fact that he could only see one of her hands and the other was hidden behind a napkin?

Ashby knew she was in trouble when the man gave up any pretense of watching the match. As his grin faded and his eyes narrowed, she saw his hand go for his gun.
It was on
.

“All teams go!” she said over her radio, and taking aim, she let the rounds from her weapon fly.

A
s Harvath and Ryan came driving up the private road toward the gated ranch, thing one and thing two stepped out of the guardhouse. Matt Sanchez, hidden high above in the hills, watched it all unfold through the scope atop his rifle.

“You’re all clear,” he said over his microphone.

With Sanchez providing overwatch and Ryan in the passenger seat ready to engage any targets, Harvath leapt out of the 4x4 and opened the front gate.

Driving into the courtyard in front of the house, they received an update that not only had Ashby taken out the four men near the kitchen, Palmer had neutralized the two men just inside the front door. The only man left was the only man they were looking for.

Coasting to a stop, Harvath turned off their vehicle and removed the keys from the ignition. He and Ryan quietly climbed out and gently closed their doors.

They met Palmer in the entry hall and he signaled where he believed Durkin was holed up. Harvath nodded and gestured for him to circle
around outside and make sure he didn’t escape. Ashby would remain inside and make sure nobody sneaked up on them from behind.

With their weapons up and ready, they crept down the hallway toward Durkin and the northwest corner of the house.

A door at the end of the hall was open and a television could be heard from the inside. It was tuned to an American cable news channel. There was no other sound. Harvath didn’t like it. How could Durkin have gone to all the trouble to set himself up at the end of the world with bodyguards and a gated retreat, but not have any intrusion detection measures? Did he feel that safe here? Or had he simply not gotten around to it because the ranch was never intended to be anything more than a fly-fishing getaway?

A few feet from the room, Harvath gave Ryan the signal to stop. He listened intently, his ears straining for any sound other than the TV coming from inside. He couldn’t make anything out.

Removing a flash-bang from his coat pocket, he showed it to Ryan, counted to three, and pitched it into the room.

He and Ryan crouched down, closed their eyes, plugged their ears, and opened their mouths to equalize the pressure from the blast. As soon as the device had detonated, they swept into the room.

Durkin had been taken by surprise, but not by them. He lay on the floor of his study with a single gunshot wound to the back of his head, blood pooling around him.

Ryan looked at Harvath. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Harvath reached down and touched his skin. “This is fresh. He’s still warm. Come on.”

Running toward the front of the house, he radioed Ashby and Palmer to meet him there.

“How do you know the guy’s not hopping on a ferry?” shouted Palmer as he rushed to the Land Rover.

“I don’t,” Harvath replied as he jumped into the 4x4. “But we should assume he wants to get home as quickly as possible.”

There were two airports on the island. Harvath hoped that he had selected the right one. Just in case, he sent Sanchez toward the other. Better to only have one person there than no one at all.

As he raced toward his airport, Harvath asked General Johnson’s team to zoom their satellite out to try to help him find what he was looking for.

“There are vehicles coming and going in both directions,” a voice from Northern Virginia said over their earpieces. “We need more to narrow down the search.”

“We don’t have more,” Harvath replied. “The target could be in a car, a truck, or even on a motorcycle.”

“Searching,” said the voice. “Stand by.”

Ryan looked at Harvath as he pulled the wheel hard to the left and then swung out onto the main road.

“If the house was under satellite surveillance, how the hell did anyone get in or out without being seen?” she asked.

“With the weather, they were relying heavily on thermal imagery. That kind of technology is no longer foolproof. In fact, if you have the right resources, anything can be beaten.”

The analyst’s voice from Northern Virginia came back over their earpieces. “We’ve now got a plane warming up at Ushuaia International.”

“Get somebody to overlay a schematic for an Aerion SBJ,” said Harvath. “I want to know if you get a match.”

“The Fed helped Durkin escape, only to turn around and kill him?” Ryan asked.

“I think somebody doesn’t want him to talk.”

“Who?”

Harvath was about to reply, when the voice from Northern Virginia came back. “We’ve got a hit on that aircraft profile,” it said. “You were right. Aerion SBJ. We also picked up a cell phone transmission between what we believe is the aircraft and a vehicle about fifteen miles ahead of you.”

Harvath looked at Ryan as he stepped on the accelerator and said, “I think we’re about to get all of our questions answered.”

 • • • 

By the time they caught up with the blue Chevrolet Celta, they were less than ten miles outside Ushuaia. Harvath slowed his approach so as not to spook the driver.

“What do you want to do?” Ryan asked.

“We’re going to box him in,” he replied, as he radioed Ashby and Palmer to tell them what he wanted to do.

“Roger that,” Ashby acknowledged. Punching the accelerator, she first passed Harvath’s vehicle and then the Chevy Celta before settling into the lead position on the road to Ushuaia.

Palmer had wanted to see if he could get a look at the driver, but Harvath had warned him not to. He wanted to take him by surprise. It was bad enough that the Land Rover had the fishing lodge’s logo emblazoned on the side of it. He didn’t need a man who was no stranger to killing locking eyes potentially with another such man. He told Palmer to pretend he was asleep.

If the driver of the Celta suspected anything, he gave no indication as he maintained his present course and speed.

Getting back on his radio, Harvath told Northern Virginia there was one other thing he was going to need and that the Old Man better get back on the phone to his SAS contact quick.

Five minutes later, the Old Man came back to him with a safe house location. Immediately after, Ashby told Harvath she could see a stoplight ahead and that they should launch the ambush at the next red.

As Ryan plugged the location into her GPS device, Harvath saw the Land Rover up ahead and just beyond that, the stoplight.

“Put your head against the headrest,” he told her.

Ryan did it and flashed him the thumbs-up.

Harvath calculated their speed. It wouldn’t take much to surprise the driver of the Celta, but he didn’t want to surprise him; he wanted to stun him if possible. He also wanted to make sure that he wasn’t going so fast that his air bags deployed.

As the Land Rover slowed down for the next light, the Celta slowed as well, but Harvath maintained his speed.

When he struck the tiny car, he sent it skidding sideways across the wet pavement into a lamppost. Before he could even release his seat belt and glance at Ryan to make sure she was okay, Ashby and Palmer were already out of the Land Rover with their weapons drawn.

They immediately closed the distance with the Celta, threw open the door, and pulled its bloodied driver into the street.

As Harvath jumped out of his 4x4, he recognized the man immediately. He didn’t know who he had been expecting, but William Jacobson, the Federal Reserve’s security chief, definitely wasn’t it.

W
illiam Jacobson was a hard, stubborn son of a bitch. Trying to get information out of him had been like trying to get blood from a stone. The Old Man had pulled his jacket and there weren’t any significant pressure points they could find. He had no wife, no children, no family. He was incredibly loyal to his employer. No matter how badly Harvath threatened him, he wouldn’t part with even the smallest detail about what the Fed, and with it Monroe Lewis, had been up to.

If Harvath had to torture him, he would, but that was never the first card he played. He was starting to think, though, that it was quickly working its way up to the top of the deck.

Harvath had already played what he thought was one of his strongest cards. He had threatened to turn Jacobson over to the Argentines to face murder charges, and the man hadn’t even flinched. No matter what downside Harvath outlined for the man, Jacobson simply shrugged it off or fixed Harvath with a cold, vindictive stare.

It was as if the man believed there was no force that the Fed couldn’t overcome and rescue him from. This left Harvath with very few options.

“I have to tell you, Will,” he said, “things are about to get even worse for you. You either start cooperating, or you’ll only have yourself to blame for what happens. We’re a very long way from home and nobody is coming to save you.”