you’re going. Hurry up.’”
“Have you ever spent the night there before?”
“Me?” replied Schroeder with a shake of his head. “No. It’s only for board members.”
“And their families,” Harvath clarified.
“They have the families out once a year in the summer, but never for board meetings. Those are always very private. They don’t want kids and grandkids running around. They don’t even allow spouses. That’s what doesn’t make any sense. Why would they be bringing family members to an emergency board meeting?”
“Because they’re about to launch their attack,” said Casey.
“But the next big family event at the estate was going to be in about three weeks,” Schroeder replied.
Harvath looked at him. “I thought they only did one family event a year, over the summer.”
“They do, but this year they added some sort of team-building seminar, and the board members were bringing in the families for that. They’d already begun stocking up the estate.”
“Do you think that’s when they were going to conduct the attack?” Casey asked.
Harvath nodded.
“So what changed? Why would they need to move up their timetable? What could have possibly spooked them that bad?”
Raising his index finger, Harvath brought it to his chest and said, “Me.”
CHAPTER 63
RURAL VIRGINIA
Carlton kept Martin Vignon secured to the chair and interrogated him right there in the bathroom.
The pasty, white-haired man had taken so many blows to the face and head from the soap on a rope that the swelling made him look like the Elephant Man. When he spoke, it was difficult to understand him. His lips as well as one of his eyes were swollen. Several of his teeth were loose. Blood ran from his mouth, his nose, and one ear.
It had been an incredibly effective beating, but what had pushed him into acquiescence was the waterboarding. It was absolutely impossible to hold out against, and for a man who was afraid of very few things in life, it had created inside him a surge of raw, animal panic. In short, it was terrifying and something he never, ever wanted to experience again.
After winding two spirals of toilet paper and shoving them into the prisoner’s nostrils, Carlton had begun his questions. Banks stood in the hallway, with the iron kept hot and nearby as requested.
Vignon didn’t have a lot of answers. He was a thug and a drone. He did, though, have one key piece of information to share—the names of those whom he worked for. Both Carlton and Banks had heard of Craig Middleton and of ATS, but neither had ever met the man.
One of the many questions Vignon was unable to answer was who had killed Carlton’s security team and tried to burn his house to the ground with him in it. Vignon swore up and down it wasn’t him or his people and that he didn’t know anything about it. Carlton believed him.
He also believed the white-haired man when he said he had no idea who had killed the Carlton Group’s operators. Though he admitted to having a paramilitary background, his job was running corporate security for ATS.
Carlton asked dozens of questions more, but Vignon was of no further help. When it came down to the inner workings of the company or why Middleton would have wanted Carlton and his people dead, the white-haired man knew absolutely nothing.
Carlton decided it was best to stick with what the man did know and try to uncover something from that. Slowly, he had him unpack his side of the operation that had ended up with his capture.
Halfway through his account, Carlton made him stop, back up, and repeat something. “You were prepared to engage how many men?”
“Three,” Vignon replied.
“But there weren’t three of us. There were only two.”
The white-haired man nodded. “Middleton thought you might be making contact with a third man.”
“Who? What third man?”
Vignon paused for a moment, trying to remember the name and then it came to him. “Harvath. Scot Harvath. A former SEAL. Middleton said that if Harvath showed up, he wanted us to kill him.”
Carlton couldn’t believe what he was hearing. For the last week, he had grieved for Harvath. He thought he was dead. He didn’t want the possible disappointment of allowing himself even a sliver of hope, only to have it dashed. All the same, it was the first good news he’d had since this entire thing started, and his heart leapt, even as he fought to keep his emotions under control. “Harvath is alive?”
The white-haired man nodded. “According to Middleton; alive and extremely dangerous. That’s all I know.”
“And Middleton believed he might show up at the meeting in D.C.?”
Vignon nodded.
Stepping out of the bathroom, Carlton walked into the kitchen and motioned for Banks to follow.
“That’s a piece of good news,” the older man said.
“I need to get to a computer,” Carlton replied. “Right now. Do you have a laptop or something?”
Banks shook his head. “I don’t have any of that here. Staying off the radar means using as little electricity as possible.”
Carlton parted the curtains above the sink and looked out toward the farmhouse. “What about your landlord? It’s pretty dark over there right now.”
“That’s because they’re out of town.”
“They’ve probably got a computer and an Internet connection, right?”
Banks shrugged. “Maybe. It’s definitely worth a look.”
Carlton didn’t even bother to respond. He was halfway to the door when Banks yelled to get his attention. When Carlton turned, he tossed him his ring of keys. “One of those opens their back door. The missus has a home office under the stairs. If there’s a computer, it’ll probably be in there.”
He should have known Tommy would have availed himself of a key to his landlord’s house and would be familiar with its layout. He was still the best field agent Carlton had ever met.
Bounding down the stairs and out of the barn, he took off across the grass to the house.
It took four keys before he found the right one and was able to let himself inside. He was grateful for the tip to check under the stairs, because it was a place he would probably not have thought to search for a computer. Sure enough, there it was.
Pulling the chair out from the desk, he squeezed into the tiny space, sat down, and fired up the computer. It was an old Dell model on a dial-up connection. Once it was ready to go, Carlton opened its Web browser.
He chastised himself for having left the IronKey drive back at the barn. While not perfect, it did help hide one’s IP address and location. It wasn’t the only way, though, and Carlton took several minutes, using a variety of different methods to cloak himself and his trail before landing on the dating site he and Harvath had designated as a means of communication of last resort.
As he clicked on his ad, he held his breath. The damn page seemed to take forever to load, but finally it did, and there, among multiple responses, was Harvath’s. Carlton exhaled, and out of joy, slapped the narrow desk so hard that the bulletin board behind it fell down.
He quickly hung it back up and clicked on the tab along the top of Harvath’s response inviting him to “private chat.” Once inside the private chat, he left Harvath a message coded in pickup terms that authenticated that it was really Carlton communicating and that he was doing so of his own free will, not with someone holding a gun to his head. He closed by giving Harvath the number for his last clean cell phone.
Leaving the dating site, he shut down the computer, pushed back in his chair, and closed the door to the little office beneath the stairs.
