Act of War (8 page)

In addition to his weapons, Tang had come armed with a stack of
currency, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, a carton of cigarettes, and three
Playboy
magazines. In the DPRK, those items were equivalent to a small fortune. If they found themselves in a tough situation, Tang’s goal was to bribe their way out of it. They were behind enemy lines. Shooting was to be avoided at all costs. The minute one police officer or soldier went missing was the same minute the alarm bells would start ringing.

Their objective was to get in and get out without the North Koreans ever knowing they had been there.

As Hyun Su fired up the engine of his truck, Tang looked him over once more. He was transporting foreign soldiers—a death penalty offense—yet he appeared completely calm.
No
, Tang thought.
Not calm. Content.
This was his way of getting even.

The young smuggler had no idea who the men were or why they were here, but judging by their appearance, he had probably guessed that they weren’t friends of the regime in Pyongyang. That was all that mattered to him.

Hyun Su’s only job was to drop them off and pick them up.
So far, so good,
thought Tang. If everything else went this smoothly, they’d be back in the United States in a matter of days.

But Tang knew all too well that the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. In the darkness of the cab, he reached for his SIG and wondered if this would be the trip where his good luck would finally run out.

USS
F
LORIDA

H
arvath had been asleep for about four hours when the communications room sent for him. He could feel the submarine ascending toward the surface. “We picking somebody up?” he asked the young sailor maneuvering through the narrow hatchway in front of him.

“No, sir,” the sailor replied. “Dropping off.”

Something told Harvath he didn’t need to ask who was getting dropped off.

Moments later, via a secure satellite uplink, he had his answer.

“I hear you are looking for Khuram Hanjour,” said a voice from CIA headquarters in Northern Virginia. It belonged to the Agency’s Deputy Director, Lydia Ryan.

Believing the Agency needed more overhaul than could be handled by one person, President Porter had originally tapped Ryan to be a codirector, along with her CIA mentor, Bob McGee. It had been a bear trying to get that through the confirmation hearings. The CIA was highly protective of its turf, as well as its long-standing way of doing things. It didn’t like change and it had some key allies on the Hill. The unprecedented idea of two DCIs, especially one only in her early thirties, was more than the bureaucracy at Langley could abide.

It became clear pretty quickly that it wasn’t going to pass. To help the President save face, and also to save McGee’s candidacy for Director,
Ryan had graciously stepped aside and agreed to accept the deputy directorship.

In her opinion, she had gotten the better end of the deal. For the most part, she’d be free from having to deal with the politicians on the Hill and could focus on day-to-day intelligence operations, as well as helping to clear out the deadwood at Langley that prevented the Agency from being the absolute best it could be. There was plenty of time left for her to become Director of Central Intelligence—if that was even what she wanted. Right now, she liked where she was. She believed in the CIA and its potential to be even better. She also liked serving a president who was determined to give those on the front lines anything and everything they needed to succeed.

Harvath had worked with Ryan before and he liked her. She was a tall, striking woman with dark hair and green eyes who was half Irish and half Greek. She had been a highly adept field operative who also knew how to navigate the Agency’s personalities and inner workings. “What do you have?” he asked.

“Khuram Pervez Hanjour, age fifty-seven, current base of operations Dubai. Suspected of recruiting for Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist organizations. He’s also done recruiting for sundry criminal enterprises in Russia, South America, and Asia.”

“Where in Asia? China?” Harvath asked, hoping there was a connectable thread.

“No, Thailand mostly. Which doesn’t mean that he hasn’t done work for the Chinese, just that prima facie there isn’t any direct connection.”

“And his ties to Yaqub?”

“Based on the phone you took off Yaqub in Karachi, we were able to trace some calls back and forth to Dubai, but we don’t know yet if any of the numbers belong to Hanjour,” Ryan replied. “The NSA is working on it.”

“How about financials? Any indication that money has moved between them?”

“I wish we had something concrete, but you know how murky the transactions usually are with these guys.”

Harvath did know. Following the money used to be a surefire way to
build relationship trees in order to see who was working with whom. The problem now was that traditional banking transfers had been abandoned in favor of what were known in the Muslim world as
Hawalas.

Hawalas were networks of Muslim money brokers. Money was left with one Hawaladar somewhere in the world and it could be picked up from another anywhere else. It was based on the honor system and was described as money transfer without money movement. There weren’t even any promissory notes involved. It was all done via personal relationships, which made it virtually impossible to track. Only informal records were kept, and the Hawaladars settled up accounts between themselves, sometimes doing so by exchanging things other than cash, such as precious stones, property, even employees. The system was confounding for law enforcement and counterterrorism agencies.

“So nothing conclusive connecting Hanjour and Yaqub?” said Harvath.

“Not yet, but a week ago Emirati intelligence rolled up a Hawaladar in Dubai on a narcotics charge. He was having synthetic cannabis, also known as Spice, along with crystal meth, shipped to him from abroad. The UAE has a zero tolerance policy on drugs and he’s looking at anywhere from four years minimum to a max of fifteen in prison. The authorities haven’t rushed to get him a lawyer, but he’s been rushing to make a deal. He’s telling them anything they want to know. He’s already named all of his clients, legit or otherwise, including a Khuram Hanjour.”

“He listed Hanjour as a drug client?”

“No,” Ryan replied. “From what we understand, he ID’d Hanjour strictly as a Hawala client.”

“Do we know for sure if this is
our
Hanjour?”

“We’re talking to the Emiratis now.”

“Where is this Hawaladar being held?” Harvath asked. “Dubai?”

“We think so. We should have more information soon.”

“If his client is our guy and he’s in Dubai, how fast can you get eyes on him?”

“Our local people are working on it.”

“What about leverage? Is there anything we can use against him?”

Ryan flipped through some notes before replying. “The French and the Brits also have files on Hanjour. We’re going through those now, but there do seem to be two interesting items that could be useful.”

Once she explained to Harvath what they were, he told her what he needed and then asked, “How soon can you get me to Dubai?”

U
NITED
A
RAB
E
MIRATES

F
orty-five minutes later, Harvath was standing topside on the
Florida
along with a squad of SEALs and a hooded and bound Ahmad Yaqub.

It took over fifteen minutes to get everyone winched up to the U.S. Navy Seahawk helicopter hovering above the submarine. Once everyone was aboard, the helo banked and took off for the USS
Abraham Lincoln.

The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier was the flagship of Carrier Strike Group Nine and home to the United States Navy’s Carrier Air Wing Two. In addition to its Growler, Hawkeye, and Greyhound fixed-wing aircraft, Air Wing Two boasted four strike fighter squadrons. Strike Fighter Squadron 2, aka the “Bounty Hunters,” flew the F/A-18F Super Hornet.

The almost $70 million aircraft had a range of more than twelve hundred nautical miles, a top speed of 1,190 miles per hour, and—best of all for Harvath—a second seat.

By the time the Seahawk touched down on the deck of the
Abraham Lincoln
and the SEALs unloaded their prisoner, Harvath’s flying taxi was already fueled, hot, and ready to take off.

In all of his time with the Navy, Harvath had never flown in a Super Hornet. He was given a rapid briefing, during which the ejection seat was explained and he was told not to touch it. After he changed into an anti-G flight suit and put his helmet on, he climbed into the aircraft and was strapped in.

The pilot made a joke about there not being a beverage service because of the short duration of the flight, then after communication with the air boss, the yellow-shirted catapult officer gave a series of signals and the pilot throttled his engines to military power. Twenty seconds later, the steam catapult fired, shooting the plane down the deck of the
Abraham Lincoln
and out over the Persian Gulf.

While a special request could have been made to allow the Super Hornet to land at Dubai International Airport, Harvath wanted to keep his arrival in the UAE quiet. The United States 380th Air Expeditionary Wing was already stationed at Al-Dhafra air base outside Abu Dhabi, and that’s where he was flown.

When the pilot landed at Al-Dhafra and slid the Super Hornet’s canopy back, the cockpit was instantly enveloped in desert heat. Waiting on the tarmac was one of Ryan’s people from Dubai, a sharp-as-nails case officer named Anne Reilly-Levy. She was an attractive blonde in her forties with a distinct Texas drawl. “Welcome to the United Arab Emirates,” she said, extending her hand.

Harvath shook hands and followed her to a waiting SUV. Levy had left it idling with its air-conditioning on full blast. “It’s so damn hot,” she said as they climbed in, “I saw two trees fighting over a dog.”

Her comment made him smile. “What part of Texas are you from?”

“Dallas.”

“So you’re used to the heat.”

She shook her head. “You never get used to this kind of heat.”

Harvath agreed. “But at least they make up for it with the culture, right?”

Levy chuckled. “Yeah, in spades.” She pointed to a large shopping bag on the backseat as she put the truck in gear. “There are shoes and a couple changes of clothes in there. If they don’t fit or you need something else, let me know.”

Harvath glanced at the bag and thanked her. “How long have you been here?” he asked.

“In the UAE? Almost a year now. Before that I was in Iraq. And before Iraq, Saudi and Yemen.”

“Somebody back at Langley must hate your guts.”

She smiled. “My father was in the oil business. I spent most of my childhood in the Middle East. I’m good with languages. Arabic in particular.”

“You’re lucky the CIA got you and not the Navy. With language skills like those, they would have sent you to South America.”

“They’re that screwed up?”

“I’ve seen some dumb stuff.”

Levy turned onto a service road and increased her speed.

“If you’re not a fan of the culture,” Harvath asked, “what are you doing here?”

“This is where the fight is. Yemen, Saudi, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, every Muslim country is rotting with jihadists. This isn’t a vacation, this is work, and I go where they send me. Fortunately, I enjoy what I do.”

She was right. The Middle East was definitely where the fight was. He was also glad to hear her say that she truly enjoyed her work. The war on terror had exacted a heavy toll. In addition to those who had been killed or wounded, it had destroyed marriages and broken families both in the military and in the intelligence community. It was just wave after wave that never relented. There was only so much people could handle.

Harvath, though, had yet to reach his breaking point. He enjoyed his work, too, and Levy’s comment reminded him of the wooden sign that hung near his front door at home. The property had once belonged to the Anglican Church. In the attic he had discovered an old wooden sign engraved with the motto of their missionaries—
TRANSIENS ADIUVANOS
.
I go overseas to give help.
It was strangely fitting for the career he had chosen for himself.

Levy drove them to a squat, sand-colored building on the base that the CIA used for planning and operations. Its narrow windows were covered with reflective film meant to keep out the sun and also mitigate blast damage should a potential bomber ever get inside the wire.

“We sweep it daily,” she said as she pulled into a parking spot marked by two sun-bleached stripes. “My team just went over it forty-five minutes ago. It’s clean.”

Harvath grabbed the bag out of the back and followed Levy inside.

She led him to a midsized conference room lined with maps of the
UAE and other countries in the region. A large flat-screen monitor hung on the wall at the front of the room. Waiting for them were three other CIA operatives.

Harvath wasn’t thrilled with the welcoming party. He had asked Ryan to keep his arrival off the books. All he wanted were the items he had requested and any additional intelligence they had available. After that he preferred to be on his own.

After the introductions had been made, one of the operatives, a man named Cowles, pointed to the back table and said, “We’ve got coffee, water, and sandwiches. Whatever you want.”

Harvath nodded and helped himself to a bottle of water and what looked like a turkey sandwich before grabbing a seat at the nicked-up conference table.

As Cowles worked on hooking up his laptop to the flat-screen, Levy removed a small cell phone and a black U.S. diplomatic passport and slid them across the table. “The phone has been programmed with several numbers listed as belonging to our embassy in Abu Dhabi or the Consul General’s office in Dubai. All of them will be answered by Agency personnel if dialed. The number listed for the economic advisor’s office rings to my cell.

“Now, the passport we created for you should succeed at shooing away any local law enforcement flies, but the higher up the chain you go, the less chance it’ll hold water. Hopefully you won’t need it, but if you do, be careful how you use it.”