State Of The Union

The most commanding view would have been from one of the upper floor windows facing the street, and a quick glance up was all Scot needed to confirm that he had located one of the surveillance teams. The only question remaining was who was covering the back?

Meg’s words were still ringing in Scot’s ears as he pulled his black Chevy TrailBlazer onto a deserted side road about a mile-and-a-half behind Gary Lawlor’s home. Though he didn’t want to, he had been thinking about what she had said. Unzipping the duffle bag in the cargo area, he tried to put it out of his mind and concentrate on what lay in front of him.

After suiting up and placing the rest of his gear into a small, camouflaged backpack, Harvath set off.

He moved quietly, using a small GPS device to lead him through the forest to the rear of Gary ’s property. When he reached the edge of the tree line, he found a spot with a good view of the back of the two-story Colonial-style house and removed a set of night vision goggles. The wind was blowing in fierce gusts, and a light snow had begun to fall.

Harvath took his time sca

He took off the night vision goggles and reached into his backpack for his modified Beretta Neos. With its modular design, it looked like a weapon straight out of aStar Wars movie. Its magazine held ten rounds of.22 LR-caliber ammunition and the full length of the weapon, before the modified stock and silencer were attached, was only twelve inches, making it very easy to conceal. It was also an extremely accurate weapon, especially when coupled with the advanced, next generation Starlight scope Harvath had brought along for the job.

Having attended many barbecues in Gary Lawlor’s back yard, Scot was familiar with the motion-activated security floodlights installed around the outside of the house. This was probably another part of the reason the FBI had felt the need to only post one team to watch his residence.

As Scot pulled the trigger for the first shot, he said a silent prayer of thanks that the neighbors’ houses were set far enough apart not to be able to hear thecrack of the silenced rounds as they slammed into and disabled the floodlight sensors.

He disassembled the Neos, put it back in his backpack and put his night vision goggles back on. After slowly sca

He hoped Gary hadn’t changed his alarm code. He found the panel in the mudroom, next to the door leading in from the garage and entered the four-digit code Lawlor had given to him the last time he was out of town. It worked. Like most people, Gary was a creature of habit.

Five or six coats, including the Holland and Holland hunting jacket he had received as a gift from the president, hung from an orderly row of pegs above a wooden storage bench where Harvath stowed his backpack and night vision goggles. He attached a red filter to his compact M3 Mille

The kitchen was neat and orderly, just like Gary himself. There wasn’t a dish in the sink, or a spot of grease on the stovetop. Harvath hadn’t thought about it before, but the degree to which Lawlor kept his house in order was almost sad. Who did he do it for? He lived alone and besides the occasional summer barbecue, no one ever saw the house except for him. It didn’t seem healthy.

Placed above the cabinets were mementos Gary had collected during his travels throughout Europe. There were German beer steins, a drinking bowl from Sweden, a ram’s horn cup from Hungary, a hand-painted Irish jar-the assortment covered almost every country and every type of drinking vessel. Each one, Gary had once explained, had its own special story and special meaning. At the far end of the cabinets was the collector’s edition bottle of Maker’s Mark Harvath had given Lawlor as a Christmas present. It made Scot glad to see that his gift occupied such a place of prominence in his home.

There were fresh vegetables in the fridge along with a new carton of milk. Whatever had caused Gary ’s disappearance, it certainly hadn’t been something he had seen coming.

Harvath decided to focus on where he knew Lawlor spent most of his time. He sat at the desk in Gary ’s study going through his bills and personal papers trying to find some sort of clue as to what had happened. Numerous commendations and meritorious service awards lined the walls, along with pictures of Gary and Harvath’s father in Vietnam and later with his mother as the three of them enjoyed parties at the house in Coronado and took fishing trips to Mexico. The centerpiece of the room was an enormous oil painting of General George S. Patton and his bull terrier, Willie, short for “William the Conqueror.”

Gary had modeled himself in many ways after the hard-charging general and was a compendium of Patton information. He was always citing one or another of the general’s famous quotes:Do not fear failure. Do more than is required of you. Make your plans fit the circumstances. There is only one type of discipline -perfect discipline.

Harvath felt guilty for being here alone and going through Gary ’s bank and retirement account statements, but he knew he had to do it. It was only after he had computed Lawlor’s healthy, yet not by any means legally unachievable net worth, that he realized how ridiculous the exercise was. If Gary had been selling out his country, he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to hide his ill-gotten gains in plain sight. Then what was it? Harvath had come to believe that everyone, no matter how careful they were, always left behind some sort of clue, but there didn’t seem to be anything here at all.

Frustrated, and wondering if the FBI had already bagged any promising items, he left Lawlor’s study and climbed the stairs to the second floor. The guest bedrooms and baths were clean-both literally and figuratively. He approached the master bedroom with a sense of déjà vu. Prowling around Gary ’s empty house like this reminded him of what it felt like to return to his parents’ house after his father’s burial ten years ago. His mother had been too distraught to do anything. Closing out his father’s affairs had been left to Scot and Gary. Going through his personal effects, his papers, his clothes-it all felt just like this. It was as if Gary had died. He hoped to God he was wrong.

As he entered the master bedroom, the first thing he noticed was the neatly made bed. The sheets and blankets looked so perfectly tight that Harvath knew he could bounce a quarter off of them military style, just like his father had always done to him.

He ran his finger along the top of the dresser where there was only the slightest trace of dust. Socks, underwear, and handkerchiefs had been neatly pressed and folded and placed in separate drawers. A small brown leather box contained two watches, several pairs of cuff links, several tie clips, and a discarded wedding band.

In the closet, stacks of crisply starched shirts sat in a perfect row along the shelf, while a line of suits hung in gradation of color above a phalanx of perfectly polished wingtip shoes. As Scot marveled at the man’s penchant for organization, he noticed that something was slightly out of place.