Black List

“We’re talking about a needle in a haystack.”

“We own the fucking haystack,” Middleton spat. “Every last fucking straw of it. We own every rock. We own every drainpipe. We own every hollowed-out fucking tree. You can’t even change your fucking mind without us knowing about it. So don’t tell me you’ve got nothing yet. You’ve got everything you could possibly need at your disposal. Which means you’d better get me something and get it to me soon. Do you understand me?”

Schroeder nodded.

“Don’t you fucking nod at me,” snapped Middleton. “Answer me.”

“Yes, sir,” he piped up. “I understand.”

His boss then raised his hand and pointed at the door. The pep talk was over.

As Schroeder left the house and climbed back into his car, Middleton crossed over to the desk and picked up the handset of his encrypted telephone, known as an STE, short for Secure Terminal Equipment. Inserting a dummy NSA Crypto Card into the slot, he dialed.

After two rings, the call was answered. “What’s the verdict?”

“I think he’s lying,” Middleton stated.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Follow him.”

“And if he is lying?” replied the voice.

“Add him to the list.”

CHAPTER 2

PARIS

MONDAY EVENING

Gun!” yelled Scot Harvath, launching himself into the apartment as a hail of bullets splintered the door frame around him.

Knocking Riley Turner to the floor, he flipped onto his back and kicked the door shut.

“Move! Move! Move!” he ordered as he struggled to get to his feet, but Riley didn’t stir.

Looking down, Harvath saw blood and pieces of gray matter from where one of the bullets had torn through her head. He didn’t need to feel for her pulse. It would have been useless. She was dead. For a split second, everything stopped.

But just as soon as it had stopped, his survival instinct kicked in, and right along with it, his training. The shock of seeing Riley dead was relegated to a far corner of his mind as he focused on the here and now. Running his hands along her body, he searched for a weapon but didn’t find one.

Leaving his dead partner on the floor of the entry hall, he jumped up and ran for the living room. Everything now was about staying alive.

All of the Carlton Group safe houses were set up in the same way. Rushing toward the two sleeper sofas, he yanked the cushions off the first one but immediately abandoned it when he saw the pullout mattress beneath. The next one was where the capabilities kit should be.

Capabilities kits were Espionage 101. Though they could be tailored to fit specific assignments, in general they contained all of the hard-to-acquire items an operative might need in a foreign country: cash, sterile SIM cards, cell phones, lockpicking tools, a small trauma kit, tracking bugs, Tuff-Ties, a Taser, OC foggers, folding knife, multitool, an infrared and laser designator strobe, a compact firearm, suppressor, loaded magazines and extra ammunition, and a handful of other items.

Removing the cushions of the other couch, Harvath tore out the faux panel beneath and exposed a long metal box. He punched in the code, a green light illuminated, and the box’s electronic lock released.

As he threw open the lid, he didn’t need to hear the boots of the shooters staging outside in the hallway to know he didn’t have much time. Judging by the suppressors on their weapons, not to mention the fact that they had located the highly secretive safe house, they were professionals.

Also, this wasn’t some Parisian ghetto where gunshots and violence might go ignored. Even suppressed weapons made a very distinct and audible sound. In all likelihood, neighbors had already called the police. The shooters would be under pressure to finish their job and get away from the building. Harvath had to work fast.

His heart pumping and adrenaline coursing through his bloodstream, he snatched a .45-caliber Glock 21 pistol and spun the suppressor onto the weapon’s threaded barrel. After racking the slide, he shoved two additional magazines in his pocket and grabbed a couple of foggers.

The only lights that had been on were in the living room and he quickly extinguished them. He needed every advantage he could get.

Peering back into the darkened hallway, he could see Riley’s body still on the floor exactly where she had fallen. He punched the top of the fogger against his thigh and then pitched it into the hall.

It rolled a few inches as it hit the floor and then began to hiss as an aerosolized cloud of pepper spray was released into the air. It wouldn’t prevent professional hitters from entering the apartment, but it was unlikely they had come prepared for it. Anyone who had trained to do entry work expected furniture and other obstacles, as well as the target being armed when they entered, but a fog of OC was an outlier, and that’s why Harvath had deployed it.

True professionals would have been subjected to pepper spray as part of their training and could move through it, but it still sucked when immediately your mucus membranes dumped, your eyes began to water, and saliva ran from your mouth. Your lungs felt like you had breathed in thousands of needles. On top of everything, your eyes burned like hell and your vision was impaired, which was what Harvath was counting on. Now he could focus on the back door.

No safe house had only one way in and one way out. There had to be at least two means of ingress and egress. The fact that the shooters had not only located the apartment but had waited until he had shown up to start shooting told him they had access to way too much information and had done their homework. They would have nailed down all means of entering and leaving the building and therefore had him at a distinct disadvantage.

He had never been to this safe house before, though he’d been inside similar apartments in Paris. Often in these older buildings, there was a servant’s entrance via the kitchen.

If this apartment had such an entrance, it wouldn’t have been left uncovered. In fact, there was likely another team assembling there right now, poised to burst in. Harvath wasted no time finding out.

Entering the kitchen, he stood stock-still and listened, his eyes scanning the room. A shaft of ambient light spilled through a pair of weather-beaten French windows. Just as he had assumed, a door at the other end served as an exit.

Slowing his breathing, Harvath readjusted his grip on his weapon. He couldn’t hear anyone on the other side of the door, but he didn’t need to. He could sense them. He was an apex predator—at the top of the food chain. People didn’t hunt him. He was the hunter, and he hunted them. Whoever had decided to put an X on his back had made a very, very bad mistake.

Creeping to his left, he opened the cabinet beneath the sink and quickly rummaged through it until he came up with what he was looking for. He removed the top from the bottle of dishwashing liquid, crept to the door, and dumped it all over the floor. When it was empty, he laid it in the sink and backed out of the kitchen.

Though the OC fog hung like a thick cloud in the entry hall, Harvath could already smell it from where he stood. His eyes weren’t watering yet, but they would be soon.

He took one final deep breath and readied his weapon as an icy calm overtook him. It would be any moment now.

Five seconds later, he heard the distinct thock from outside the apartment’s front door as the automatic timer turned off the lights.

“One, one thousand. Two, one thousand,” he said to himself.

Just before reaching five, the assault came as both the front and back doors of the