Hidden Order: A Thriller Read online

  Harvath, still upset about the Kenyan being killed, pressed down hard on the accelerator and replied, “Fuck them.”

  Sanchez nodded and activated his radio. “Shotgun, this is Streak. ETA to exfil point sixty seconds. Over.”

  “Roger that, Streak. Be advised the port is crawling with skinnies. Over.”

  “Understood. Just be there. Over.”

  “We’ll be there, don’t worry. Shotgun out.”

  Sanchez looked at Harvath. “You ready for this?”

  Harvath gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Just watch.”

  The Mercedes came screaming down the narrow main street into the port. As people ran in every direction, Harvath leaned on the horn to move them out of his path. While it might have been the somewhat humane thing to do, it also succeeded in drawing a hell of a lot of attention, particularly from the pirates gathered on the beach, who were watching their ships burn.

  After glancing into the backseat, Sanchez said, “I hope our passenger has comfortable shoes. It’s going to be a long walk from the parking lot.”

  “Who says we’re stopping in the parking lot?” replied Harvath as he pointed the Mercedes toward the dock and picked up even more speed.

  “You’ve got to be kidding—” Sanchez began, but was interrupted by a hail of gunfire that tore up their right rear quarter-panel.

  As the Mercedes barreled through a stack of crates at the front of the pier, Sanchez returned fire at the heavily armed Somalis on the beach.

  Activating his radio, he said, “Shotgun. Shotgun. This is Streak. We have contact. Multiple armed skinnies on the beach. You are cleared hot. We need you now. Over.”

  “Roger that, Streak. Shotgun coming up on your three o’clock.”

  Before breaking transmission, Sanchez and Harvath looked over to see the Shotgun team and their boat come almost parallel with them out on the water and open up on the men on the beach via a devastating minigun mounted on the bow of their boat.

  Racing down the dock, Harvath brought the Mercedes skidding to a stop next to the resupply boat and leapt out. Taking cover, he aimed his MP7 toward the end of the pier and instructed Sanchez to get the tanker captain out of the car and onto the boat.

  Once the captain was safely on board, Sanchez returned with a rag that had been soaked in some sort of chemical. After opening the Mercedes’s gas cap he shoved it halfway in, removed a lighter, and ignited what was hanging out, saying to Harvath, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  The two men untied the resupply boat and jumped on. As soon as Pili saw that Harvath and Sanchez were aboard and they were clear of the pier, he spun the craft around and made for the mouth of the harbor. The Shotgun team was right behind and covered their six o’clock all the way out.

  The last thing any of them saw were the few surviving pirates who foolishly rushed down the dock firing wildly from their AK-47s. One of them even took a knee, mounted an RPG on his shoulder and was just about to fire, when the Mercedes exploded, taking the pier and everything else with it.

  CHAPTER 4

  Having reinstated Captain Velopoulos and debriefed the crew, Harvath and his team scuttled their weapons and slipped off the Sienna Star about forty-five minutes before INTERPOL boarded near the Kenyan port of Mombasa.

  They were met by a crooked customs official arranged for by the Old Man. He stamped their passports and directed them to a waiting vehicle, which drove them to the airport.

  The only deviation from their departure plan was that instead of flying home commercially with his teammates, Harvath was now going back via a private jet that was already waiting for him. Carlton was reluctant to give him many details, even over an encrypted satellite phone. He simply said he needed Harvath back as quickly as possible.

  Harvath knew better than to question him. The Old Man was a legend in the espionage business. With more than three decades at the CIA, he had helped establish the Agency’s counterterrorism center before retiring and starting his own private enterprise. If he said he needed him back right away, he needed him back right away.

  While Harvath didn’t like the idea of not personally seeing his team safely out of the country, they were all exceptional operators and big boys who could handle clearing passport control and getting on the correct flight. It goes without saying that they hazed Harvath for having his “own private jet” and being “too good” to fly commercial with them. It was nothing more than male chop-busting. None of the men held it against him. They understood that in this line of work, time wasn’t only money—it could mean the difference between saving or losing lives.

  Consoling himself with the fact that all his guys had flown private at some point in their lives, that thought quickly faded as he cleared passport control, walked out onto the tarmac, and saw his plane. While his men may have flown private before, he was pretty confident none of them had ever flown like this.

  Even Harvath, who had gotten used to being moved from country to country on high-end private jets from Gulfstreams, Cessnas, and Hawkers, to Bombardiers, Dassaults, and Embraers, had never seen anything like it.

  With its long, pointed nose and swept-back wings, the Aerion Supersonic Business Jet resembled a smaller, futuristic Concorde that had been designed for private use. A pilot, copilot, and flight attendant were waiting at the base of the air-stairs.

  They introduced themselves and the captain gave Harvath a quick tour of the aircraft’s exterior. Designed by an American aerospace firm in Reno, Nevada, the Aerion SBJ had a maximum speed of Mach 1.8 or 1,186 miles per hour and a range of up to 5,300 miles.

  The captain explained that while over the water, their maximum supersonic cruise speed would be Mach 1.6; over land, they would have to slow to just under Mach 1.2 in order to continue supersonic travel, but without the boom, or “boomless” as he put it.

  The man was full of interesting information and told Harvath everything except to whom the $90 million aircraft belonged. It sure didn’t belong to the Old Man, but it was obviously somehow connected to the reason Carlton needed him back in D.C. as quickly as possible.

  As the captain rejoined the copilot to complete his preflight check, Harvath was handed off to the flight attendant. She was an attractive redhead named Natalie. Her English was excellent, but he picked up on her Swedish accent immediately. His call sign of Norseman wasn’t given to him because he looked like some sort of Viking. In fact, with his brown hair and blue eyes, he looked more German than anything else. The Norseman call sign came from his early days in the SEALs when he had dated a string of Scandinavian Airlines flight attendants. What had started as a good-natured joke had stuck with him throughout his career. He didn’t have any complaints, though. There were much worse things an operator could be named for.

  Natalie escorted him up the stairs and into the aircraft. It was luxuriously appointed with large leather seats and intricate burled wood accents. At just over six and a half feet wide and thirty feet long, the cabin more than accommodated the five-foot-ten Harvath.

  After showing him the galley, the lavatory, and the area at the rear of the aircraft that could be closed off for a private sleeping compartment, Natalie offered him something to drink. He smiled to himself as he thought about how many buddies of his got on a plane like this and went right for the top shelf of the bar either because they were insecure and wanted to appear like they belonged on a private jet, or because they wanted to take advantage of whoever was footing the bill. That wasn’t his style. He was more than comfortable in his own skin and didn’t give a damn what anyone thought of him. He also knew well enough that the aircraft wouldn’t be provisioned with anything its owners didn’t want him to enjoy.

  Having been in the mood for a beer for over a week, that was exactly what he asked for.

  “A beer drinker,” Natalie replied with a smile. “I like that.”

  Harvath watched as she turned and walked up the aisle toward the galley. There was nothing like a woman in uniform, particularly a flight
attendant’s uniform. The scarf tied around the neck was always the coup de grâce for him. It radiated a confidence and sexiness that got him every time.

  When Natalie returned with his drink, she explained the meal services, the in-flight entertainment options, and also handed him an iPad that was wirelessly connected to the plane’s satellite Internet system.

  He didn’t plan on watching any movies. He planned on sleeping. Before disembarking the Sienna Star he had grabbed a quick shower and shaved, but that was it. It had been more than twenty-four hours since he had last slept. Knowing the Old Man the way he did, he was going to be expected to hit the ground running when the plane landed, so now was the time to get some rest.

  Once the plane had taken off and had reached its cruising altitude, Natalie served Harvath a quick meal and then prepared the sleeping area. Despite how incredibly well insulated and quiet the aircraft was, she had left a pair of earplugs along with an eye mask and pair of silk pajamas. Thanking her, Harvath stepped inside and slid the doors closed behind him.

  He wasn’t a pajamas kind of guy. Hanging up his clothes, he slid between the sheets and closed his eyes. He was still wound up and no sooner had his eyes shut than a picture of Mukami getting his brains blown out floated across his mind. He had to force himself to think of something else.

  He tried several things, finally settling on an image of Natalie. From there his mind drifted to other things and ten minutes later he fell into a deep, dark sleep.

  CHAPTER 5

  When Harvath awoke, it was once again to a mental picture of Natalie. Perhaps it was because she was gently knocking on his door. With only one stop for refueling, they had made the entire trip in less than ten hours.

  After dressing, Harvath availed himself of the courtesy vanity kit in the lav to brush his teeth and clean up. When he stepped out, Natalie had a meal ready for him. He was able to get through only half of it before the pilot announced that they needed to prepare for landing and would be on the ground shortly.

  He grabbed a couple more bites and then thanked Natalie as she cleared everything away. Looking out the window, he was surprised to see the sun almost in the same place as when they had left Kenya. It was amazing how traveling backward across time zones, especially in such a fast aircraft, could make it seem like the day had stood absolutely still.

  Equally amazing was the fact that they were landing at Reagan National Airport and not Dulles International. The only international corporate jet flights allowed to land at Reagan were those originating at foreign airports with U.S. Customs and Border Protection preclearance facilities. Mombasa definitely didn’t qualify. Whoever had arranged this flight had a lot of pull somewhere.

  Once they had landed and the plane had taxied to a stop, the crew assembled at the door to say goodbye to their passenger. As Harvath thanked them, the copilot handed him a small gift box. “A souvenir from your flight,” he said.

  Looking inside, Harvath found a detailed display model of the Aerion SBJ, right down to this aircraft’s signature paint job. “Thank you,” he replied.

  “And you won’t want to forget this,” Natalie added, handing him the vanity kit from the lav.

  Unlike his mother, as well as many of the women he had dated, Harvath wasn’t a “travel size” guy. He didn’t keep hotel soaps or shampoos, nor did he keep the complimentary vanity kits when traveling first class. That said, he didn’t want to hurt Natalie’s feelings and so accepted the kit with a smile and a thank-you. He could toss it once he was off the plane.

  After he’d cleared customs and passport control, a courtesy vehicle picked him up for the short drive over to Signature Flight Support. It was a “Fixed Base Operator” facility where he’d have a chance to clean up before one of his Carlton Group colleagues drove him into D.C. for his meeting with the Old Man.

  As he arrived at the FBO, he saw that it was one of Carlton’s protégés, Sloane Ashby, who had been sent there to pick him up.

  Leaning against her car, with her high cheekbones, smoky gray eyes, and hair pulled back in a ponytail, she looked like the country club wife of some handsome young banker. It would be a mistake, though, to judge this book by its cover.

  Sloane was not only brilliant, having graduated at the top of her class from Northwestern University with a dual major in math and chemistry; she was also highly skilled as a winter athlete, having competed in both figure skating and snowboarding. She was also one hell of an operator.

  As a former member of the U.S. Freestyle Ski Team, Harvath told his colleagues that what he liked most about her was her prowess in winter sports, but none of them believed him. They all assumed that what he “liked” about her was that she was hot. In other words, even people trained to know better still fell prey to the mistake of judging her solely by what they saw on the surface.

  Carlton, on the other hand, had very different reasons for liking her. In addition to admiring her academic and athletic abilities, he respected her because, despite her family’s ability to cover all of her college expenses, she had insisted on paying her own way and had rocketed through the ROTC program. She had signed up insisting that she be promised combat duty. She went on to complete two tours in Afghanistan, killing more enemy combatants than all the women in the theater combined (not to mention many of the men). But when some glossy magazine ran an unauthorized cover story on her, it placed a huge bull’s-eye on her back and brought her combat career to a screeching halt.

  The Taliban and Al-Qaeda were both offering big rewards for her head on a pike and the Department of Defense had no other choice but to deny her request for a third tour. Without missing a beat, and as bold as brass, she requested to be sent immediately to Iraq before all the action ended there. She was turned down, though, once again.

  She ended up being detailed to North Carolina’s Fort Bragg, where she worked with the all-female Delta detachment known as the Athena Project. Despite her young age, she was an excellent instructor. Everyone knew, though, that her heart and her talent lay in being an operator. She was quite vocal about the fact that if it weren’t for the Islamic bounty on her head and the subsequent PR nightmare her capture or killing would cause, she’d still be out whacking and stacking Muslim terrorists like cordwood. Neither political correctness, nor empathy for the risk aversion of her commanders, was part of her DNA.

  Because of that, the United States Army had a love/hate relationship with Sloane Ashby. They loved the fact that they could push a super-attractive, athletic, young American woman as an Army success story, but they hated that she repeatedly suggested, in public, that the Army had no balls and was caving to the terrorists by not letting her return to the fight.

  She was definitely a headache for the Department of Defense, but there were many other people in D.C. who absolutely loved her. To the chagrin of her superiors, Ashby was invited to lots of powerful, insider cocktail parties where she freely spoke her mind. It was at one such party where she had met Reed Carlton.

  They chatted for over an hour about world events, politics, and the military. The next day they then met for a three-hour lunch. By the end of the month, the Old Man had worked his magic. Ashby was honorably discharged from the military and forty-eight hours later she had been hired on at the Carlton Group.

  Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t have been relegated to doing airport pickups, but these weren’t normal circumstances for the organization and everyone was chipping in. While she did have a hard-charging style, she was still a team player.

  “Hey, old man,” she said as Harvath stepped out of the courtesy vehicle.

  Old man? He might have been in his forties, but he was nowhere near “old,” especially when all of them worked for a literal “old” man like Reed Carlton. That said, she never missed a chance to needle him. He didn’t see himself as old at all and it grated on him when she called him that.

  “I brought you something from Africa,” he said without missing a beat.

  Suddenly, Ashby softened. �
�Really?” she asked with an almost childlike naïveté. “What is it?”

  “This,” Harvath replied, holding up his middle finger.

  Ashby laughed. There wasn’t even a hint of anger. She could admire a good joke, even one at her own expense and she never let it dent her ego. She was good at rolling with the punches.

  She was also good at sizing up people and situations. It was scary both in how bright she was and how rapidly she could analyze something and figure out what was going on. Harvath hated to admit it, but she was probably much smarter and quicker than he had ever been.

  “At least you have something to hang this on,” Sloane said, reaching through the window of her car and pulling out a garment bag.

  Harvath walked over to her. “Where’d that come from?”

  “This?” she asked, looking down through the opening at the top of the bag. “I think somebody mugged a pimp or maybe a TV weatherman.”

  “Very funny,” he replied, extending his hand. “How’d you get into my house?”

  Sloane lifted her right foot and executed a quick snap kick. “I used my size-six Manolo skeleton key.”

  Sassy. Harvath liked sassy. In fact, he liked it almost as much as he did Scandinavian flight attendants with scarves tied around their necks. But only almost. Sloane Ashby was not only too young for him; she was also a colleague. What’s more, Reed Carlton—who had very likely given her the key and alarm code for his house—had made it quite clear that he expected Harvath to maintain a strictly professional relationship with her. Someday she was going to go on to do some incredible things for their agency, even more than she already had for the country. By that point, God willing, she would be reporting to Harvath. The Old Man didn’t want any messy entanglements between them screwing up their performance.

  “If I get home,” Harvath said as he accepted the garment bag, “and find any of my Kool & the Gang records missing, there’s going to be hell to pay.”