State Of The Union

Chapter 37

Harvath gave everything on theRebecca a final check before raising anchor and sailing the old trawler through the island’s narrow cha

The noxious blue smoke of the coughing diesels couldn’t mask the smell of the salt-laden air. The scent stirred up a flood of memories in Harvath. Despite the amount of time he had spent in and around the ocean as an adult, its smell always reminded him of time he had spent with his father as a young boy. As far back as Harvath could remember, the ocean had been part of their life. They lived near it, swam in it, fished in it, and sailed upon it. While some fathers and sons talked and bonded over baseball or other sporting pursuits, Scot’s father, who was not a very communicative man to begin with, was always able to talk about the ocean. He spent hours teaching his son about navigation by stars and currents, sextant and compass. The younger Harvath had incredible recall and could name any type of navy vessel in San Diego Harbor after only seeing it one time. The same went for battle ships, frigates, and the like which his father would point out in books. By the time he was twelve, Harvath had read all of the Horn-blower novels, courtesy of his father’s vast maritime library. In fact, Scot had long suspected that had it not been for the navy, his father would have very likely selected some other seafaring profession that would have kept him co

And there was no doubt in Scot’s mind that the sea was his father’s mistress. Many times in his young life, Scot felt that the sea mattered more to the man than his own family, but then, Scot himself had joined the Navy and began his own affair with it. Though Scot had very much enjoyed his career as a competitive skier, if he was honest with himself, he would have to admit that there had always been something missing.

The U.S. Ski Team, as much as he had cared for his teammates, was really no team at all. It was every man and woman for themselves. All that mattered was you and the judges. There might not have been any “I” in team, but there was “me.” Harvath had been hungry to be part of something more than just his own selfish pursuits and the SEALs had given him that opportunity.

For the first time in his life, he had discovered the true meaning of the wordteam and what it meant to be part of something greater than yourself. It didn’t take long for him to realize what the SEALs had meant to his father. In a way, Scot’s time on the Teams had given him a sense of something he had never before experienced, a sense of belonging-belonging to something that really mattered and really made a difference in the world. With the SEALs, character, honor, integrity, loyalty, and duty meant something. They weren’t just empty words. And though he often liked working on his own, being able to still do that as part of a team, where everyone had a shared objective and where every participant’s performance mattered, was one of the most fulfilling undertakings he had ever pursued.

As he thought about it now, he wondered if maybe his decision to follow in his father’s footsteps was less about searching for something from his father and more about searching for something in himself.

Harvath’s concern over his mission drew his mind back to more relevant issues. As he glanced out the back of the wheelhouse to check on his Diver Propulsion Vehicle, which had been tied to the rear of the trawler, he hoped the rest of the team had made it to their objective safely.

After Frank Leighton’s nuke was retrieved and brought down to the beach, it was placed in a long, streamlined tube, which Carlson and Avigliano gently slid into the water and co

As Harvath headed further into the Eastern Gulf of Finland, he monitored the trawler’s antiquated radar system and tried to assess the proximity of the Russian patrol boats he knew were shadowing him. TheRebecca’s equipment was useless. Random islands, fishing boats, patrol boats…they all looked the same on the cracked, green display screen. It was only a matter of time before the Russians would be on top of him.

Almost as if rushing to meet the challenge head on, Harvath shoved the trawler’s twin throttles farther forward, trying to coax as much speed as he could from the struggling old engines.

Three hours and twenty-seven minutes later, after a short stop to change the trawler’s registration markings from Fi

A second Sokzhoi joined in the chase and fired a warning shot from its 30mm ca

Pressing the throttles as far forward as they would go, Harvath heard the engines groan in protest. Just then, another 30 mm round was loosed, landing much closer to the bow than the one before, throwing up a large sheet of spray that covered the wheelhouse. Harvath began to realize that dead or alive, the Russians had no intention of letting him leave.

With the high-speed crafts staring him right in the face, Harvath’s decision to get back into the cold water was made a lot easier. He doused all of theRebecca’s lighting and then “lit the candles” as Carlson had put it, on the special “cake” he had baked for the Russians. Blocks of C4 had been placed strategically throughout the vessel, with special attention focused on the engine room and its remaining stores of diesel fuel. As Harvath grabbed the boat’s flare gun and exited the wheelhouse, he activated a waterproof timer strapped to his wrist. It was synched to Carlson’s digital fuse aboard theRebecca, which had already begun its own deadly countdown.

Arriving at the rear of the trawler, Harvath was suddenly illuminated by one of the most powerful spotlights he had ever seen. A voice over a loudspeaker commanded him first in Russian and then English to stop where he was and prepare to be boarded.Fat chance of that, Harvath said to himself as he readied the flare gun. Aiming it over the top of the patrol boats, he pulled the trigger.

The bright red signal flare soared high into the night sky and hopefully carried with it the eyes of the Federal Border Guard agents so intent on capturing him. Placing the regulator in his mouth and flipping over the side, Harvath was far beneath the surface when the crews of the Sokzhois began strafing the water with rounds from their 14.5mm machine guns.