breakfast, but Angela politely declined and encouraged them to sit down with the others at the kitchen table. With fresh biscuits in the oven, she set to work on bacon, sausage gravy, and fried eggs.
As the aromas of the country breakfast filled the room, Mike set his coffee cup down, took a seat, and called everyone to order. He and Harvath had held an in-depth discussion on the flight in, and the first order of business was operational security. Mike explained that there was to be no communication with the outside world until further notice. The vets were given a simple cover story to e-mail or text to friends and family explaining why they’d be off- line for the next few days. Once the messages had been sent, Mike respectfully asked the men to let him hang on to their phones. While he trusted them implicitly, they had no idea what they were up against. Harvath had explained it to him on the flight in, and frankly it scared the hell out of him. Better safe than sorry.
He also requested that they retrieve their laptops from the bunkhouse and drop them off after breakfast. None of the men argued. They understood operational security. For all intents and purposes, Mike was their commanding officer. They would do as he asked. Harvath could tell by looking at them that they found the possibility of impending danger more than a little exciting.
Once the operational security details had been hashed out, Mike assigned guard shifts. Angela was given one, as was his son, who was driving up from San Antonio. The younger daughter could pull a trigger, but she was too young to stand guard by herself. Mike and Angela’s elder daughter could have held her own, but she was still away at school.
Though Nicholas admirably volunteered, Harvath told him he wanted him to continue to focus on Caroline’s flash drive and anything else he could draw from it. As for Nina, she didn’t have much experience with firearms and therefore didn’t qualify. Angela Strieber told her not to worry. There’d be plenty for her to do.
Mike then explained that he would be flying Harvath to another location and would step into the shift rotation as soon as he got back.
Mrs. Strieber laid out breakfast and the group ate heartily. When it was over, she got Nina and Nicholas installed in the house, while the vets went to work on shoring up the perimeter and Mike led Harvath to one of his pole barns.
Bolted to the concrete pad inside was an Armag Arms Vault. It looked like a shipping container made of high-grade steel that had been painted desert tan. Mike removed a set of keys from his pocket, unlocked the door, and turned on the lights, revealing a mini armory.
Weapon racks held an array of long guns, pistols, sub guns, and Taser devices. There were suppressors, a host of weapons optics, knives, binoculars, radios, helmets, plate carriers, tactical vests, and of course Strieber flashlights. Stacked in ammo cans were hundreds of thousands of rounds in varying calibers.
Harvath took it all in and then looked at his friend. “What? No RPGs?”
Mike shook his head. “Just like a SEAL. All you ever want to do is blow shit up.”
While that was true for some, Harvath was of the school that each specific job required a specific tool. The only problem was that you often didn’t know what the perfect tool was until you were in the thick of it, and by then it was too late to go back and get what you needed. The key was choosing something that worked well in as many situations as possible.
“You haven’t seen this yet,” Mike said as he waved Harvath into the vault. “I just bought it.”
He picked up a large briefcase and laid it on the armorer’s table. “This is the new takedown rifle from LaRue Tactical,” he said as he opened it up. Packed neatly inside were the component pieces of one of LaRue’s high-end long guns. “Watch this.”
Harvath watched as Mike rapidly assembled the rifle, spun on a high-end suppressor, and mounted a large scope in less than sixty seconds.
“It doesn’t have to be rezeroed. You just put it together and it’ll drive a tack at over seven hundred yards. Ain’t that something?”
“What caliber is it? .308?” Harvath asked.
Strieber nodded. “And it breaks down just as quick. It allows you to get in, get it on, and get the hell out before anyone knows you’ve been there.”
It was something indeed. “Can I borrow that?”
Strieber waved his arm and gestured at the entire vault. “You can take whatever you want.”
Harvath wanted to take one of everything, but he couldn’t. He’d have to choose carefully. He was going into very hostile territory alone. There’d be no resupply, support, no nothing. The last thing he needed was to look back and wish he had chosen one piece of equipment over another. But no matter how carefully he planned, he knew that Mr. Murphy, of Murphy’s Law, was always destined to show up. The only thing you could count on when planning an op was to expect the unexpected.
Harvath let his operating environment be his guide. He chose equipment that was easily concealable and that he was the most familiar with. Laying everything he wanted on the armorer’s table, he then returned half to the racks, packed the rest of it into his Camelbak, along with lots of extra ammunition.
“That’s all you want?” said Strieber. “You’re sure? I can probably scare up a bigger ruck for you.”
He shook his head. “I’m good.”
“Okay, then. I’ll lock up here and get the plane fueled and ready. Angela or one of the guys can drive you out to the strip. How about we say forty-five minutes?”
“Thanks, Mike. I’ll see you out there,” replied Harvath as he picked up the briefcase with the takedown rifle in it and shouldered his pack.
Back at the farmhouse, he took a few minutes to strategize with Nicholas and debrief. He wanted to check the dating site for any word from the Old Man, but he didn’t dare, not from the Strieber’s farm. Nicholas agreed. They both suspected that Skype was how Harvath had been pinpointed in Spain. While Nicholas believed that ATS had gotten the Skype account through covert means, Harvath had a deeper fear.
His fear was that someone had grabbed Reed Carlton and had tortured all of the communication protocols out of him. That person or persons could be sitting on the dating site right now just waiting for him to show up. Which brought him to how a kill team had been able to find Three Peaks Ranch.
Nicholas had been very careful in his use of the Internet while there, but ATS was so sophisticated, there simply was no telling how they’d been discovered. They needed to assume that anything they did over the Net could and would expose them. They agreed that Nicholas would continue to study Caroline’s flash drive and all its data off-line, but that anything beyond that was off-limits, including Strieber’s landline phone. Nina and Nicholas had to completely cut themselves off from the outside world. Any contact, and even then only in an emergency, would be done through Mike.
“It’s been a long time since I felt this powerless,” Nicholas confided in his friend.
“You’re not powerless,” Harvath replied. “You’re going to stay on Caroline’s data. We need to know what these people are planning so we can stop it. The answer has got to be on that drive somewhere. Find it.”
He pointed at Nicholas’s tiny .45 and added, “Keep that loaded, keep it with you, and keep your head on a swivel. Got it?”
The little man smiled. “Got it.”
They didn’t say anything else to each other. Instead, Nicholas stepped forward and did something he had never done before. He motioned for Harvath to bend down, and then he gave him a hug. He had an awful feeling he was never going to see his friend again.
CHAPTER 47
NORTH CAROLINA
Flying into North Carolina was going to end up being either a very good or a very bad idea.
When Mike came in to see customers at Fort Bragg, he always landed at the Moore County Airport. The people there were friendly, the staff didn’t ask a lot of questions, and there was no tower. It was the perfect general aviation setup to have resting in the shadow of America’s primary counterterrorist unit.
The First Special Forces Operational Detachment—Delta, also known as Delta Force, Combat Applications Group (CAG), or simply the Unit to its members, was headquartered in a remote section of Bragg behind high
