The First Commandment

Chapter 61

CIA SAFE HOUSE

COLTONS POINT, MARYLAND

The small, unremarkable home sat at the verdant end of Graves Road on St. Patrick’s Creek-a small inlet of the Potomac River, less than fifty kilometers from where the Potomac emptied into the Chesapeake.

The cars parked in the home’s driveway were equally unremarkable-a smattering of SUVs and pickups, the kind of cars one would expect to see at the weekend home of a general contractor from Baltimore.

Had the neighbors seen any of the men getting out of their vehicles and entering the house, none would have given them a second look. They were trim and of varying heights, their faces bronzed from being in the sun, signs that they were all undoubtedly engaged in the same profession as the home’s owner. Had anyone taken any notice of them they would have assumed the men had all come down for the fishing.

The fishing was one of the many reasons that the area around Coltons Point was known as one of the best-kept secrets in southern Maryland. The chamber of commerce slogan made for a wink-wink, nod-nod insider sort of joke among the select few at the CIA who knew about the Coltons Point safe house. If there was anything that the spooks at Langley loved, it was irony.

The six highly skilled men assembled inside the home were known in CIA parlance as an Omega Team. The word Omega was taken from the Greek, which referred to the last and final letter of the Greek alphabet. It also referred to the literal end of something. Omega Teams had not been given their name by accident. Theirs was very, very dirty work. Sometimes their missions were overt, but more often than not they were extremely covert and required surgical delicacy.

The team leader unbuckled his leather briefcase and tossed five dossiers onto the dining room table. He didn’t need one for himself. He’d already memorized the contents. “I know many of you are currently standing up other operations,” he said, “but effective immediately, this assignment is your one and only concern.”

Like most CIA field groups, Omega Teams were composed of highly intelligent and extremely patriotic individuals. One of the team members looked up from the dossier and said, “Are you sure about this?”

“Not that any of you are allowed to repeat this, but this came from DCI Vaile himself.”

“But this guy’s practically a national hero,” said another operative. “It’s like asking us to shoot fucking Lassie.”

The team leader didn’t care for what he was hearing. “What is this, a book club meeting all of a sudden? Nobody asked for your opinions. The subject is a significant threat to national security.

“He was asked repeatedly by the president to stand down and refused. He was then given a timetable within which to turn himself in and he refused again.”

“Wait a second. How’s President Rutledge involved in this? What’s this guy wanted for anyway?” asked another.

“That’s none of your business. All you need to know is that, by not complying with the president’s orders, he’s putting i

“Bullshit,” claimed yet another member. “We’ve all read his jacket. This guy is one serious tack-driving pipe-hitter. If we’re going to go after somebody this experienced, this dangerous, I think we deserve to know what he’s really up to. Why won’t he comply with the president’s order?”

The team leader was in no mood to explain the motivations of their target, or those of the director of Central Intelligence, or those of the president of the United States to his men. “I’m going to say this once and only once, so shut up and listen. All I am going to tell you, and all you need to know, is that both DCI Vaile and the president of the United States have okayed us to take down this target. Our job is to stop Scot Harvath by any means necessary. End of story.”

Chapter 62

Physically and emotionally, Harvath was wrung out. His nerves had been grated down to stubs and he probably shouldn’t have even been in the field. Nonetheless, all he could think about was the Troll. The man had lied to him. There weren’t four terrorists who had been released from Gitmo; there had been five. Harvath couldn’t wait to get his hands on him.

He’d used the onboard phone to fill Fi

Harvath spent the next several hours going through his own set of scenarios. What little reserves of energy he still had were all but depleted. After the takeoff from refueling in Iceland, his fatigue won out and he fell into a heavy, dark sleep. And with the sleep came his dreams.

It was the same nightmare he’d been having about Tracy, but this time it was worse. He dreamed he was standing on a long rope bridge between two groups of people he cared for, each in imminent danger. He could only save one. But instead of making a choice, he stood paralyzed with fear.

His indecision cost him dearly. He helplessly watched as the members of each group were killed one by one, their deaths gleefully carried out by a sadistic demon bent on extracting every ounce of pain-wracked suffering he could. All the while, Harvath merely stood and watched, unsure of himself and his ability to do anything to stop the holocaust being carried out so savagely in front of him.

It was a rapid ringing of the cabin chimes that tore Harvath from his nightmare. Opening his eyes, he looked out the window and saw that they were over land, though where exactly he had no idea. He raised the handset and punched the button for the cockpit.

“What’s going on?” he asked when the copilot answered.

“We’ve got a major mechanical problem.”

“What kind?”

The copilot ignored him and said, “We’re about fifty miles out from the airport. Stay seated and make sure your seatbelt is tightly fastened.” And with that the line went dead.

From the front of the cabin, Harvath heard the bolt of the cockpit door being thrown into place. Maybe it was a legitimate safety precaution, but there was something about it that didn’t sit right with him.

Harvath looked at his watch and tried to compute where they were. He had been asleep for a long time.

Protocol dictated that private aircraft stop at the first major city they overflew upon entry into U. S. airspace to clear customs and passport control, but Tom Morgan had been able to pull some strings with people he knew to have those requirements waived for both the Mexico and Jordan trips.

They should have been somewhere over Canada or the Great Lakes, but the terrain beneath them looked more like the East Coast of the United States. Something definitely wasn’t right.

The Citation X banked sharply and there was a hurried change in altitude as the private jet raced downward. Whatever was going on, Harvath didn’t like it.

He felt the landing gear lower and he cinched his seatbelt tighter.

He looked back out the window and a sense of dread welled up from the pit of his stomach as he recognized where they were.

The jet wasn’t landing anywhere near Colorado. It was on final approach to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in D. C.

Now he knew why the pilots had locked the cockpit door. There was no mechanical problem. Someone had gotten to Tim Fi

He needed to plan his next move.

A lot would be based upon what kind of law enforcement presence had been sent to meet the plane on the ground.

Harvath sat glued to his window as the Citation X glided in over the runway and then touched down with a gentle bump of its tires. A string of neon fire trucks and two ambulances had been mobilized and were following the jet on a taxiway just beyond the runway.