“If the Old Man asks, tell him you can’t raise me. Understood?”
“I don’t think that’s the right thing to do.”
“Lucky for me that-” Harvath cut himself off midsentence.
“Repeat, please,” said Nicholas.
“Hold on.”
“What’s up?”
“I’ve now got a black Lincoln Town Car approaching,” said Harvath, who was at the camera as two more young Middle Eastern men exited the house with wheely bags. They were soon followed, though, by a third.
“Zoom in on the third man, please,” said Nicholas.
Harvath didn’t need to be told. He zoomed in and began snapping pictures of Tariq Sarhan. “That’s our guy,” he stated.
“Is he going to get in the car with them?”
“Negative,” replied Harvath as he watched Sarhan kiss both of the young men on the cheeks and remain in front of the house as they walked down to the curb.
“I’m running the plates on the Town Car, now.”
“Roger that,” said Harvath as he watched Sarhan through the camera. “I hope you saved a little cake for me, Tariq, because you and I are going to have a little party of our own.”
“The Town Car looks clean. It’s registered to a Los Angeles limousine company. Wow, that makes eight guys. He really did have a lot of people in there.”
“Now we’re going to find out exactly what the hell he’s up to,” said Harvath. “I’ll call you back.”
Harvath disconnected the call and stayed at the window. He watched as the Town Car pulled away and Sarhan turned and went back into his house.
After grabbing a roll of duct tape and his Taser, Harvath exited the little room and headed for the stairs. He had no idea if Sarhan was alone or not now, but he had a pretty good feeling that he was.
The man had aged a lot since his photograph had been taken. He was still very thin, but his face was drawn. His hair had gone gray and he wore glasses. He looked more like a university professor than a terrorist, but that didn’t mean anything. Harvath would know soon enough what the man’s game was.
Having disabled the perimeter security system, he was halfway to the back door when his cell phone vibrated. Unwinding the earbud and placing it in his ear, he activated the call and said, “I told you we were going to zero comms.”
“Sarhan’s on the move,” stated Nicholas.
“What?” replied Harvath. He stopped and thought about returning upstairs to see for himself.
“He just came back out wearing a jacket and opened his garage door.”
“Is he alone?”
“As far as I can tell.”
Harvath turned around and headed for the front door. “Tell me when you can see his car.”
“He’s backing out now,” said Nicholas. “It looks like a blue Nissan Sentra.” He read Harvath the license plate.
“Tell me which direction he goes when he pulls out of the driveway.”
“Roger that.”
Seconds ticked by. Finally, Nicholas said, “He’s coming south. He’s going to go right past you.”
With the tall hedges in front of the downstairs windows, Harvath knew he’d have a hard time seeing the street. “Let me know when he does.”
“Fifteen seconds.”
Harvath waited.
“He should be passing you now.”
Harvath unlocked and cracked the front door. Sure enough, he heard the sound of Sarhan’s car as it passed. He figured it would take him at least ten seconds to get to the end of the street.
Fishing the car keys from his pocket, he said to Nicholas, “You let the TOC handle the other cars. I want you personally tracking Sarhan for me. Got it?”
“I got it,” said the little man as he began clicking once again at his keyboard back in Virginia. “What are you going to do?”
There were only two things Harvath could do. He could break into Tariq Sarhan’s house, tear it apart, turn it upside down, and see what he found, or he could go after the man himself.
As far as Harvath was concerned, there was only one move that made any sense.
CHAPTER 51
“Come on, Nicholas,” Harvath said over his phone. “That car has to be somewhere. It didn’t just vanish.”
Harvath had stepped out of the house and looked down the street just as Tariq Sarhan had applied his turn indicator and made a right turn. As soon as the car had disappeared from sight, Harvath had taken off running. He reached his rental car about a minute and a half later.
Jumping inside, he started it up and pulled out into the street. At the end of the block, he came to a four-way stop. Nicholas had yet to pick up the blue Sentra on any of the traffic cams.
“I’m still searching,” said Nicholas.
Having grown up in Southern California, Harvath knew its freeway systems intimately. Right now, he was inside a sort of rectangle made up of four different freeways-the San Bernardino to his north, the Pomona to his south, the Long Beach Freeway to his west, and the San Gabriel River Freeway to the east. Sarhan could be headed toward any of them.
“How about the other four vehicles?” he asked, trying to figure out what was going on. “Do we know anything yet about where they’re headed?”
“Negative,” said Nicholas. “The TOC is tracking them, but they’re all headed in different directions.”
The longer Harvath sat at the stop sign, the more rapidly his heart began to beat. He tightened his hands around the steering wheel. “Come on, Nicholas,” he said again. “Where is he?”
There were several agonizing moments of silence before the little man responded, “Got him. He just made a left turn four blocks in front of you.”
“Good job,” said Harvath as he stepped on the gas. “Don’t lose him.”
Sarhan looped around, doubled back, and changed direction multiple times. He even stopped twice for gas. There was absolutely no question that he was trying to figure out if he was being followed. This went on for more than forty-five minutes before it appeared he had finally committed to wherever it was that he was going.
He followed the Pomona to the Santa Monica Freeway and continued west toward the ocean. As Harvath saw signs indicating the intersection for the 405, or the San Diego Freeway as it was known, he wondered if Sarhan would alter his course or keep going toward the ocean. He was staying as far behind the blue Sentra as possible and was forced to endure long stretches where he couldn’t even see the vehicle. Fortunately, he hadn’t exited and Nicholas had been able to keep relatively good track of him.
The same couldn’t be said for the other vehicles. They had lost two out of the four and were scrambling to find them.
“He’s changing lanes,” Nicholas said over Harvath’s cell phone.
They were coming up on a series of choices. Sarhan could remain on the Santa Monica Freeway, or the 10 as it was known, or he could head north or south on the 405. The first ramp was for the 405 south toward San Diego.
“He’s in the far left-hand lane now. He’s not getting on the 405. At least not southbound.”
“Are you sure?” asked Harvath.
“So far. Stand by.”
Harvath watched as the exit for the 405 interchange got closer. “What’s he doing?”
“He’s still in the far left lane. No change. Stand by.”
