The Last Patriot

“She said she needed to see a doctor and that you would understand.”

Harvath set down the book and then opened the false panel and removed the box containing the pistol.

Nichols sensed what Harvath was thinking and added, “She also said she didn’t want you coming after her.”

“Every police officer in this city has our pictures by now,” said Harvath as he withdrew the weapon and tucked it into his waistband. “How far do you think she’s going to get?”

“Probably not far and I think she knows that. I also think she feels that she was only slowing you down by staying here.”

“You do, huh?” Harvath replied rudely.

“Scot, her headaches were worse than she was letting on,” stated Nichols.

“So you’re a doctor now?”

“She didn’t want to put you in a position of having to decide between her and what we need to accomplish.”

Harvath looked at Nichols. “What we need to accomplish?” he repeated.

“She said you weren’t going to be happy about it.”

“You know what? Don’t tell me what my girlfriend thinks or feels anymore, okay?” snapped Harvath as he crossed to the tiny desk, fished the headset out of its drawer, and powered up the laptop.

The professor realized they were done talking and quietly backed out of the room.

Harvath chose an e-mail address from the host of anonymous accounts he maintained and sent a message to both Ron Parker’s cell phone and his desktop.

It took some time before he appeared in the video chat room.

“You look like shit,” said Parker as he came on line from the Sargasso conference room in Colorado. He was in his late thirties, about Harvath’s height with a shaved head and a dark goatee.

Parker was normally a wiseass until he understood the severity of a situation, so Harvath ignored the remark. “What took you so long?”

“I was doing a training exercise with SEAL Team 10 on the other side of the property, and my Ducati only moves so fast. What’s up? Your message said it was urgent.”

“Tracy’s gone.”

Parker straightened up and leaned forward into his camera. “What happened?”

“She left while I was out. She said she needed to find a doctor.”

“For what? Is she injured?”

“She’s had headaches. Bad ones, apparently.”

“What do you mean apparently?” asked Parker. “You don’t know?”

“She didn’t want me to know,” replied Harvath. “She’d been taking painkillers under the radar.”

“If you sit tight, she’ll probably come back in a bit. Don’t worry.”

“Ron, I am worried. Every cop in this city has to be looking for us. You’ve got contacts here that I don’t. How quickly can you find out where she is?”

The video chat room was not as fast as Harvath would have liked and it took a moment for Parker’s response to be piped back.

“I’ll reach out to my guys now, but Tracy could be anywhere-a hospital, a doctor’s office. I’ll try my embassy sources first. We’ll see if anyone contacted them looking for a referral.”

“No,” replied Harvath. “No one from the embassy. I want this kept off their radar screen.”

“That might be tough.”

“Why?”

Parker adjusted his camera so Harvath could see the owner of the Sargasso Intelligence Program, Tim Fi

Fi

Fi

“Why would he call you two?”

Fi

“How much does he know?”

“He knows you’re in Paris.”

“How does he know that?” asked Harvath.

“He says that’s what the president wants to talk to you about.”

Harvath had told Nichols not to make any calls or to use the computer while he was gone. He wondered if the professor had disobeyed him. He doubted it. More than likely, the French had already ID’d him and had contacted the president. Either way, things were now even more screwed up than before.

“Gary asked if we were putting you up,” continued Fi

Harvath had no desire to hear what the president had to say. “What’d you tell him?”

“We told him that if we heard from you, we’d tell you to check in with him.”

“Did he buy it?”

Fi

“Was my boss,” clarified Harvath.

“Whatever. Why don’t you call him and ask him yourself?”

“I’ll think about it,” he lied.

“Well think about this. You’re in the shit way up past your eyeballs, and so is Tracy. I don’t think we’ve got a rope long enough to throw to you. You might want to put your pride on the back burner and think of someone other than yourself for a minute. Gary Lawlor and President Rutledge might be the only people who can help untangle this mess.”

Fi

When he didn’t reply, Parker took the microphone back and said, “I’ll get back to you as soon as we have something. In the meantime, get yourself cleaned up.” Then the feed from Sargasso went dead.

CHAPTER 43

Harvath had always had a good relationship with Gary Lawlor. The former FBI deputy director had been a close friend of the Harvath family for almost as long as Scot could remember. And when Scot’s father, a SEAL instructor, had died in a training accident in California, Gary had become like a second father to him.

When President Rutledge had decided to mount the Apex Project to battle terrorists on their own terms, he wooed Gary away from the Bureau to put him in charge. Though they often butted heads in their attempts to get results, Scot and Gary worked well together.

Even so, Harvath had not spoken with Lawlor since he and Tracy had left D.C. To a certain degree, he felt guilty about that. Gary had always been there for him and his mother. He was tough, but also fair, and had pulled Harvath’s bacon out of the fire too many times to remember. Harvath owed him a lot more than a phone call right now.

It was just one of those things that had gotten away from him. The longer he put off calling, the harder it was to do it. Gary was a real by-the-book kind of guy. Though his job was to be as unconventional as the terrorists he was charged with hunting, there was still an ingrained sense of due process and fair play that had been instilled in him over his lifelong career at the FBI. He had gotten better about it, but only because he’d learned to save his questions until Harvath was done with an assignment or to not even ask them at all.

Scot had known that when he did finally reco