Chapter 59
B ETHESDA , M ARYLAND
A ndrew Conroy, the CIA’s deputy director of operations, returned home to his three-bedroom, three-bath house on Tournay Road in Westmoreland Hills. It had been an absolute shit day.
He had yet to hear anything from Hale. Despite accompanying the Willis family out to their ranch in Wyoming, the man was still expected to check in via their secure channel. There had been nothing so far but radio silence.
Compounding Conroy’s frustration, the attack on the NATO Summit at the Washington Convention Center had been an absolute flop. Kennedy was dead, as were several of the neo-Nazis he was using, and the summit had been reconvened at the White House with the principals and their chiefs of staff.
Instead of a mass-casualty event, dominating every television and cable news station as the attack on the motorcade had, it was being reported as an evacuation based on unspecified security concerns.
Worse still, NATO seemed more determined than ever to ratify Sky Shield, and its reluctant members were now leaning toward yes votes.
Undoubtedly, that prick in the Oval Office was going to find a way to spin all of this into good news for himself. Conroy needed a drink. A big one. And then he needed to figure out what he was going to do.
Walking into his study, he had a tall gin and tonic in mind. What he received, however, was a literal and figurative shock to his entire system.
Gagged and duct-taped to a chair in the middle of the room was Dennis Hale. Conroy had only a fraction of a second to process what he was seeing before a man with a Taser materialized and pressed the device’s trigger.
Every muscle in Conroy’s body seized and he lost control of his bladder as he fell to the floor and wet himself.
No sooner had he fallen than another chair was dragged into the center of the room and he was roughly hauled up, shoved into it, and duct-taped securely in place. Unlike Hale, however, he hadn’t been gagged.
His attacker set the Taser on the desk and turned to face him. “Do you know who I am?” the man asked.
“Fuck,” Conroy blurted out, recognizing him.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Harvath replied.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
“All of it. Every single piece of information you have. I want to know about the entire plot, front to back, and I want the names of everyone involved.”
“I’m not telling you anything,” said Conrad.
“Option B then,” Harvath responded, walking around the desk and picking up a small Igloo cooler and an AED defibrillator. “Popular choice today.”