Black List Read online

  A stunning masterwork of action, intrigue, and ingenious plot twists.

  #1 New York Times bestselling author Brad Thor returns with his most explosive thriller ever.

  Somewhere deep inside the United States government is a closely guarded list. Members of Congress never get to see it—only the President and a secret team of advisers. Once your name is on the list, it doesn’t come off… until you’re dead.

  Someone has just added counterterrorism operative Scot Harvath’s name.

  Somehow Harvath must evade the teams dispatched to kill him long enough to untangle who has targeted him and why they want him out of the way.

  Somewhere, someone, somehow can put all the pieces together. The only question is, will Harvath get to that person before the United States suffers the most withering terrorist attack ever conceived?

  An intense, page-turning novel that is action-packed and frighteningly real, Black List blurs the line between fiction and reality and once again reaffirms why Brad Thor “is arguably the best thriller writer of our time” (Suspense Magazine) and “America’s favorite author” (KTTX).

  “Anyone who thinks the only thing to fear is fear itself should meet Brad Thor.”

  —Newsweek

  “The Master of Thrillers.”

  —Bookreporter.com

  Click below to watch Brad Thor discussing the inspiration behind Black List.

  http://www.youtube.com/embed/hEnlyejMx7Q?rel=0

  BRAD THOR is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Full Black (one of Suspense Magazine’s best political thrillers of 2011), The Athena Project, Foreign Influence (one of Suspense Magazine’s best political thrillers of 2010), The Apostle, The Last Patriot (nominated best thriller of the year by the International Thriller Writers Association), The First Commandment, Takedown, Blowback (recognized as one of the “Top 100 Killer Thrillers of All Time” by NPR), State of the Union, Path of the Assassin, and The Lions of Lucerne.

  MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

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  JACKET DESIGN BY HENRY SENE YEE

  JACKET PHOTOGRAPH BY KAREN KASMAUSKI

  AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN REILLY

  BLACK LIST

  ALSO BY BRAD THOR

  The Lions of Lucerne

  Path of the Assassin

  State of the Union

  Blowback

  Takedown

  The First Commandment

  The Last Patriot

  The Apostle

  Foreign Influence

  The Athena Project

  Full Black

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  ATRIA BOOKS

  A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Brad Thor

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Emily Bestler Books/Atria Books hardcover edition July 2012

  EMILY BESTLER BOOKS/ATRIA BOOKS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Thor, Brad.

  Black list : a thriller / Brad Thor.—1st Emily Bestler Books/Atria books hardcover

  ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Terrorism—Prevention—Fiction. 2. Intelligence officers—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3620.H75B56 2012

  813’.6—dc23

  2012014513

  ISBN 978-1-4391-9298-6

  ISBN 978-1-4391-9306-8 (ebook)

  To Barrett Moore

  An exceptional visionary, patriot, and friend

  CONTENTS

  Author’s Note

  Preface

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Brad Thor Reader’s Companion

  About the Author

  About Atria Books

  About Emily Bestler Books

  Ask Atria

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  All of the technology contained in this novel is based on systems currently deployed, or in the final stages of development, by the United States government and its partners.

  PREFACE

  On August 17, 1975, Senator Frank Church appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press to discuss the results of his full-scale investigation into America’s burgeoning intelligence capabilities.

  Senator Church revealed startling information and closed with a dire warning to every citizen of the United States:

  [America’s intelligence gathering] capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left. Such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.

  If this government ever became a tyrant, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has
given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.

  I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that [the NSA] and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.

  PROLOGUE

  PENTAGON CITY

  PRESENT DAY

  There were a lot of places in which Caroline Romero could envision being murdered—a dark alley, a parking lot, even a nature preserve—but a shopping mall in broad daylight wasn’t one of them. Especially not one just steps away from the Pentagon. Nevertheless, here she was.

  The team following her appeared to be made up of three men, one of whom she recognized, a tall man with almost translucent white skin and a head of thick, white hair. The trio took turns rotating in and out of view. There was no misconstruing their intention. The speed with which they had uncovered what she was up to and had locked on to her was astounding. As good as she was, they were better.

  It wasn’t a matter of simply being careful or of properly covering her tracks either. She had done all of that. The organization was just too big, too omnipresent to escape. Now it was coming after her.

  She needed to work fast. When the team moved in, there’d be nothing anyone could, or would, do to stop them. First they would interrogate her and then they would kill her. She couldn’t let them take her or what she was carrying.

  The mall was large, with lots of upscale shops and closed-circuit cameras. They would be tapped into that system, watching her. She knew it because she had done it herself countless times. Knowing how they worked was the only thing that gave her an advantage.

  She walked with a moderate pace, purposeful, but not frightened. If they sensed any panic in her, they’d know she was on to them—they would close ranks immediately and snatch her. She couldn’t allow that to happen, not until she finished one last thing.

  All around her, shoppers ambled in and out of stores, woefully unaware of what was taking place in the world just outside. It was their world too, after all, and she wanted to shake them. She wanted to wake them up. She knew, though, that they’d only look at her like she was crazy. In fact, until very recently, she probably would have agreed with them. What she had discovered, though, was beyond crazy. It was insane; frighteningly insane.

  Her job had been pretty simple, with one primary directive: to tie up loose ends by clipping the loose threads. But along the way, she had committed a cardinal sin. Instead of clipping threads, she had begun to pull on one, and now she was about to pay the ultimate price.

  In the first store she entered, she paid cash and bought multiple items in order to hide what she was doing. She politely told the clerk that she didn’t need a receipt.

  Back out in the mall, she merged with the stream of people and tried to keep her anxiety under control. She took a deep breath through her nose and shoved the fear as far down as it would go. Only one more step, she told herself.

  Before that step, though, she needed to lay a little more cover. Paying cash again at two additional stores, she emerged toting two bags filled with nonessentials that would hopefully further mislead her pursuers. Her plan was to fill the figurative theater with so much smoke that no one would know where the fire was until it was too late.

  The last store was the most important. It was also the biggest roll of the dice. Everything depended on it, and if it didn’t go perfectly, her entire operation and everything she had risked would be for naught.

  Entering the lingerie store, Caroline scanned for cameras. There were three—two covered the store itself, a third was trained on the sales desk where the registers were.

  She moved casually from rack to rack examining items. As she moved, she looked to see if any of the men had followed her inside. She doubted it. While male customers might come in to buy items for their wives or girlfriends, they wouldn’t loiter. Nothing would grab unwanted attention faster than a man aimlessly hanging around a women’s lingerie store.

  The team following her seemed to have realized that and had stayed outside, exactly what she had prayed they would do. It was time to make her final move.

  With several items in hand, Caroline asked for access to a dressing room. As a clerk showed her into the dressing area, Caroline was relieved to see there were no cameras overhead.

  The clerk unlocked one of the rooms and Caroline entered. Setting her bags down as the door clicked shut behind her, she removed several items and quickly got to work. Time was of the essence. The organization following her didn’t like it when people fell into “shadows” and couldn’t be monitored.

  Cracking the dressing room door, Caroline extended a camisole and asked the clerk if she could bring her a larger size. When the clerk had walked back out onto the floor, Caroline closed the door and, keeping her voice as quiet as possible, recorded her transmission.

  Now came the difficult part—sending it. This was where she had decided to go as low-tech as possible. It was the only way it had any hope of sneaking by unnoticed. She prayed to God it would work.

  Exiting the dressing room, Caroline strode purposefully toward the sales desk, fighting to appear relaxed as she conducted her transaction. It took everything she had to maintain her smile and laugh with the chatty clerk. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the white-haired man pass the store entrance.

  Once the purchase was complete, Caroline accepted the latest addition to her collection of shopping bags, squared her shoulders, and left the boutique. She had done it.

  As she stepped outside, her heart began to pound. There was nothing else for her to do, nowhere else for her to go. She knew how this had to end. Threading her way through the crowd of people heading toward one of the mall’s busiest exits, she spotted the row of glass doors and began to pick up her pace.

  The urge to run was overwhelming. She couldn’t fight it anymore. The team that was following her seemed to know exactly what she was thinking, because that’s when they struck.

  But they were already too late.

  CHAPTER 1

  RURAL VIRGINIA

  FRIDAY

  FORTY-EIGHT HOURS LATER

  Kurt Schroeder glanced down at his iPhone while his Nissan subcompact crunched across the estate’s pebbled motor court. No signal. It was the same with his navigation system. He didn’t need to turn on his satellite radio, it wouldn’t have a signal either. Everything had been blacked out about a mile before the gates—just as it was supposed to be.

  None of the locals had ever made a connection between the signal loss and the fact that it only happened when the owners of the estate were in residence.

  Some blamed atmospheric conditions, while a few local conspiracy theorists pointed to the government, as neighbors laughed them off. Little did those neighbors know how close to the truth the conspiracy theorists were.

  A company called Adaptive Technology Solutions had developed the signal-blocking technology for the use of the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq. ATS was one of the most successful American tech companies most people had never heard of.

  Practically an arm of, and indistinguishable from, the National Security Agency, ATS also conducted highly sensitive work for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Department, the State Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, the Treasury Department, the Department of Justice, and a host of other agencies, including the little-known United States Cyber Command—the group in charge of centralizing U.S. cyberspace operations.

  Whether via software, hardware, personnel, or training, there wasn�
�t a move the United States government made in relation to the Internet that didn’t somehow involve ATS.

  So intertwined was it with America’s political, military, and intelligence DNA, that it was hard to discern where Uncle Sam stopped and ATS began. Very little was known about the organization, which was exactly what ATS wanted. Had its board of directors ever been published, it would have read like a who’s who of D.C. power. In addition to two former intelligence chiefs, it included a former Vice President, three retired federal judges, a former Attorney General, a former Secretary of State, a former Federal Reserve Chairman, two former Secretaries of the Treasury, three former Senators, and a former Secretary of Defense.

  Some believed that ATS was a front for the NSA, while others speculated that the CIA might have been involved in its creation. All, of course, pure speculation. Anyone who knew anything about ATS only really knew about that particular facet they were dealing with, and even then, they didn’t know much. The highly secretive company had worked for decades concealing its true breadth and scope. What was visible above the waterline was only the tip of the iceberg.

  The organization was also exceedingly careful about whom they brought inside. Nowhere was the selection process as rigorous as at ATS. Its members shared a very particular worldview, along with a deeply held belief that not only could they shape domestic and international events, it was their duty to do so. Their goals were not the kinds of things they wanted discussed in newspapers and on the Internet. They took great pride in their anonymity.

  The corporation’s retreat, with its sophisticated countersurveillance and anti-eavesdropping measures, sat on more than two hundred rural Virginia acres of rolling green countryside. It featured a clutch of buildings, the centerpiece of which was a large, redbrick neoclassical home fronted by thick white columns.

  The estate had been named Walworth after the ruins of a small, walled farm at the south end of the property predating the Revolutionary War. Its ownership was hidden behind blind land trusts and offshore corporations. No records existed at the county recorder’s office, and no overhead imagery of the property could be accessed via satellite. For all intents and purposes, the estate didn’t even exist, which was exactly what the powerful forces behind Adaptive Technology Solutions wanted.