her Athena brick.
Megan Rhodes was the quintessential “American” girl; blond-haired and blue-eyed. Her mother passed away when she was very young and her father, a cop, raised her in the Chicago suburbs.
Rhodes attended the University of Illinois, where she was a successful competitive swimmer. Thanks to her striking Nordic features and five-foot-eleven height, she’d been nicknamed the Viking Princess, and it had stuck with her all the way to Delta. Those who knew her loved the moniker. She was every bit the Viking, but there wasn’t an ounce of princess in her. She was a stone cold killer when she had to be and endured the worst situations any assignment threw at her without ever complaining. Like her teammate Casey, Rhodes was in her early thirties, fit, and very attractive.
Harvath didn’t feel comfortable speaking in Dan McGreevy’s office. There was no telling if he had it wired or not. Unless he knew for sure, he always assumed the worst.
Signaling his concern, he asked, “Is there someplace else we can talk?”
Outside the nail salon, Harvath swapped the memory cards and handed Mike Strieber’s phone back to him. Strieber eyeballed the two attractive yet serious-looking women across the parking lot but didn’t say anything. He knew this was business.
Strieber had plenty of customers he could see in and around Bragg and told Harvath to simply buzz his cell phone once he had figured out what he wanted to do. Harvath thanked him and as Strieber fired up the courtesy van and exited the lot, Harvath joined Casey and Rhodes at their car.
Fifteen minutes later, they were sitting in Casey’s living room. Rhodes came back from the kitchen and handed him a beer. “You look like you can use one.”
Harvath accepted it, twisted off the top, and proceeded to tell the two women everything that had happened. When Casey paused to ask him about the photographs, he pulled the microSD card from his pocket and handed it to her.
She slid it inside her phone as Rhodes leaned over to stare at the images. Both women, though tough as hell, were visibly upset by what they saw.
“We have no idea who did this?” Casey asked.
Harvath shook his head. “No. I only have the name of the person who supposedly tasked the kill teams, Colonel Chuck Bremmer.”
“He’s active U.S. military?” replied Rhodes.
“As far as I know. He was a special DoD liaison to the White House and the National Security council back when I was on the President’s Secret Service detail.”
“Was he running kill teams then?”
“He and I weren’t exactly chatty.”
“So we have no idea,” Casey interjected, “whether or not Riley was specifically targeted or was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Harvath looked at her. “Have you spoken with Cooper and Ericsson?”
“I spoke with both of them last night. Julie is on leave visiting her family in Hawaii, and Cooper is doing a training rotation in New Mexico.”
“What about Rodriguez?”
“She’s fine; still recovering, but she’s okay,” Casey said.
“If nobody else was targeted on your team, then Riley had to have been killed because of me.”
“What were the two of you doing in Paris anyway?” Rhodes asked.
“Carlton has an Israeli contact there. He sent me to pass off some information. After the meeting was over the Israeli handed me an envelope. Inside was the address for the Paris safe house written in Carlton’s handwriting. When I got to the building, Carlton texted me the apartment number. I rang the bell, was buzzed in, and went upstairs. Riley opened the apartment door and that’s when the shooting started from the stairwell.”
“Do you know why she was there?”
“I never got the chance to ask.”
Casey removed the SD card from her phone and handed it back. “Where’s Reed Carlton now? Do you have a way to contact him?”
“Yeah, but there’s no way to be certain it’s secure. Based on everything else, I have to assume he’s being watched.”
“By ATS.”
Harvath nodded.
Megan Rhodes balanced her beer on her thigh. “So in addition to not knowing if Carlton is alive or dead, we don’t know who’s pulling all the strings.”
“Correct. We’ve got no idea.”
Casey looked at her teammate and then at Harvath. “It seems like there’s only one person at this point capable of giving us any answers. I think we need to pay Chuck Bremmer a visit.”
“I agree,” said Harvath. “But there are a few things we need to do first.”
CHAPTER 50
VIRGINIA
Reed Carlton knew he wouldn’t be able to stay long, maybe only a day, two at most, and even that would be pushing it. He was a fugitive and had to keep moving. If he stayed too long in one place, he risked being discovered.
He passed through the sleepy towns of Lancaster County as he wended his way north. The crowds of summer vacationers who thronged to this area near the Chesapeake Bay had long since gone, and many of the shops had closed for the season. He found a small ethnic grocery and bought a bag of supplies. The man behind the counter took little interest in his customer, transfixed by some foreign soap opera being beamed to his TV from a dish on the roof. There were no cameras, and Carlton paid in cash.
The turn-off to the rental home was exactly where he remembered it. Three summers earlier, a lady friend of his had rented the home for a month to entertain family and friends. Carlton had made the hour drive from D.C. to visit with her on the weekends. He remembered it as if it had been yesterday.
It had been July. All of the little towns up and down the Rappahannock were decorated in red, white, and blue. It was straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting, and American flags flew for as far as the eye could see.
The weather had been hot and of course summer-in-Virginia humid. Carlton had consumed more ice cream and Popsicles over that month than in the previous ten years of his life combined. During those weekends, he had allowed himself to forget who and what he was. The only paper he had picked up was the small local gazette, with its schedule of parades, fireworks, and pancake breakfasts. The house didn’t even have a television. It was the most relaxed he had felt in ages.
The yellow house with its wraparound porch and white shutters brought back a flood of memories, none of which he had time for. He crept around the perimeter to make sure there was no one inside. Window stickers from a nonexistent alarm company were the extent of the property’s security. Carlton ignored the management company’s key box hanging from the doorknob in the breezeway and removed a set of picks from his jacket pocket. Unlocking the door, he walked inside.
It smelled clean but empty, as if it had been buttoned up for the season. Walking into the kitchen, he checked the refrigerator. It had been emptied out and unplugged. No one was planning on using this house anytime soon.
Carlton checked the garage. All the summer toys were neatly arranged along one wall. Against the other was a neat row of plastic garbage cans, a lawn mower, rakes, brooms, and assorted tools. There was a kettle grill and a half-empty bag of charcoal.
Opening the overhead door, he walked out to the Cadillac and pulled into the garage. He retrieved his groceries from the passenger seat, along with the few items he had in the trunk and then closed the garage door and returned to the house.
