Chapter 27
Just as Harvath expected, someone had sent in a drone. It was unlike anything he’d ever seen before.
Instead of being shaped like a typical quadcopter with four foldable arms, this one appeared more compact and much denser. Its arms were short and thick. And rather than one rotor at the end of each arm, there were two—twin counter-rotating blades stacked one above the other.
Even in the semidarkness, its skin appeared to be some sort of matte graphite, likely meant to devour light, not reflect it. There were no blinking navigation lights. No manufacturer markings.
Everything about it screamed both sophisticated and expensive—neither of which surprised him. Any organization capable of outfitting its operatives with tricked-out twenty-thousand-dollar watches probably had plenty left over for pricey, next-level high-tech gear.
Harvath watched the drone hover over the corpse. It was tilted slightly forward, as if hunting. Every few seconds, it would move and re-examine the body from another angle.
“C’mon,” he coaxed, quietly urging whoever was on the other end to take the bait.
Minutes passed.
Finally, the drone lifted back into the night sky and disappeared.
“Do you think they bought it?” Morrell asked.
“We’ll see,” Harvath replied, as he hailed Haney over the radio. He wanted to see if his colleague recognized the type of drone that had been used.
Haney was already one step ahead of him.
Using a still image, he tried to reverse search it on the internet.
When that failed, he uploaded a picture to Nicholas back at the Carlton Group, but nothing in their database was a match either.
With nothing further to go on, they were back to playing a waiting game.
Harvath’s teammates knew him well enough to trust his plan.
Morrell, however, had his doubts. Yes, Harvath had more experience dealing with the Chinese, but the idea that they’d be so painstakingly methodical when it came to an injured colleague just didn’t sit well with him.
He also thought Harvath’s plan was a little bit nuts.
When sufficient time had elapsed and they were confident the drone wasn’t coming back, they returned to the roof.
Unfurling the body bag, the pair placed the corpse inside and zipped it up, along with the IV. They left the watch where it was, its silent emergency locator beacon still transmitting. Then, each taking an end, they picked up the bag and returned inside, carrying the body down to the third floor.
As the periodontist’s had already been broken into, there was no need to disturb any of the other offices. They would deposit the dead man there, inside a small, easily locked bathroom.
With the trap baited, Harvath and Morrell returned to their position. They made small talk until a figure materialized downstairs and Haney’s voice came back over the radio.
“Here we go,” he announced. “Someone’s at the lobby door.”
It was a small woman who appeared to be pushing a janitorial cart filled with cleaning supplies. Opening the door, she let herself in—the fact that she found it unlocked seemed to neither surprise nor disturb her.
She paused at the building directory and looked to be studying the list of tenants. Once she had finished, she headed for the elevator.
“Look sharp,” said Haney. “She’s on her way up.”
Harvath and Morrell retreated into the stairwell and made ready.
They could hear the old elevator as it descended to the lobby, followed by a chime as its doors opened.
Moments later, the doors closed and a loud, metallic grumble reverberated throughout the building as the elevator made its cranky ascent to the fourth floor.
If this was the first probe by the Chinese, which Harvath suspected it was, the woman would have been tasked with locating the “injured” operative and reporting back on his condition. The people who had sent her would want to know—was the man alive, how bad were his injuries, and was he ambulatory?
What she wouldn’t have been told was that her mission would also have a secondary purpose—to smoke out any potential ambush.
Knowing the Chinese, the odds were pretty good that they would have co-opted someone from the local diaspora; someone with family back in China who could be threatened if they didn’t cooperate.
It was a tactic Harvath had watched them use for years.
The Chinese Communist Party ruled by fear.
With over a billion people subject to an autocratic system built on control, power was the only principle.
Human lives were currency and the exchange rate was brutal.
The Party did whatever was necessary to stay in power, even employing the most abhorrent forms of coercion and extortion. Harvath despised them.
Slamming shut his dislike of the CCP, he pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind and focused on the issue at hand.
“Everyone remain in position,” he radioed. “We’re going to zero comms. No one moves and no one speaks unless I say so.”
Ever the professionals, the team members affirmed Harvath’s orders, not with their voices, but rather with a series of squelch clicks over their radios.
When the woman walked into the lobby, one of the first things—besides the janitor’s cart—that Harvath had noticed about her was that she was wearing glasses. The frames were dark, thick, and seemed out of place.
If he had to guess, they were some sort of smart glasses, which provided a live feed of everything she was seeing and hearing.
They probably also included a feature similar to a bone-conducting headset, that allowed her to receive instructions, or she had been outfitted with a well-hidden earpiece.
Either way, he figured somebody—a handler of some sort—was giving her instructions.
That meant that she was likely a walking, talking relay station and it was critical that everyone stick to the plan.
“How’d you know she’d be wearing glasses?” Morrell whispered.
“Lucky guess,” Harvath replied.
In reality, it was the option that made the most sense—especially if the woman was a civilian.
Throwing on a pair of glasses was easier than wiring her up with a bunch of hidden surveillance equipment.
What’s more, if at any point she felt her cover had been blown, she could easily pull them off and toss them.
Morrell was about to ask a follow-up question, when the elevator chimed. He and Harvath both fell silent.
They heard the doors open, followed by several seconds of silence, as if the woman was awaiting instructions or trying to decide where to go.
Then there was the sound of the janitor’s cart being pushed out of the elevator and into the hallway.
As they strained to listen, they heard it rumble away from them, toward the door out onto the roof.
Leaving the cart behind, the woman stepped outside. The moment she did, Harvath could see her via the feed on his phone.
The woman paused and did a slow visual scan of the roof before heading right to the air-conditioning unit where the body had been.
All that remained was the watch—the only evidence to prove the man had ever been there.
Removing it from the pole, she gathered up the antenna wires and placed everything in her pocket. Then she did a quick but methodical search of the roof.
“We should take her,” Morrell stated, second-guessing Harvath’s plan. “This could be the only chance we get.”
“We’re not taking her,” Harvath replied.
“What if she knows more than you think? What if KitKat and Mo can pull evidence off those glasses? We can’t just let her walk.”
“Yes, we can,” said Harvath, his eyes never leaving the screen. “That’s the plan.”
Morrell shook his head. “I’m starting to think this is a bad plan.”
Harvath smiled. “The only thing you need to worry about is getting that body back to your girlfriend on time.”
“Ex-girlfriend.”
As the woman completed her search of the roof, Harvath radioed for Ashby and Palmer to stand by. While he and Morrell had been covering the fourth floor and Haney and Staelin were covering the lobby, they were responsible for covering the third floor.
Harvath doubted the woman would go office to office looking for the missing Chinese operative, but he had two reasons to think she might peek inside the periodontist’s office.
The first was that it was the only medical business in the building.
It wasn’t a coincidence that she had stopped and looked at the directory on her way in.
Any intelligence outfit worth its salt would have determined that that was where the operative had sourced his IV and bandages and that he might have returned there.
The second reason was that Harvath had made sure that the office’s front door had been left ajar.
Much like her search of the roof, he figured she would conduct a quick in and out. If the operative wasn’t visible, she would leave the property, and her handlers would be forced to make a decision. That was when things would get interesting.
Not knowing if the woman would get back on the elevator, or ditch the cart and take the stairs, Harvath and Morrell descended two stories and held their position. Within moments, they heard the elevator again.
It stopped on the third floor and Ashby quietly relayed what she and Palmer could see from where they had hidden themselves. The woman had entered the periodontist’s office.
In less than sixty seconds, however, she was out again. Getting back on the elevator, she headed down to the lobby and, pushing the cart in front of her, exited the building and disappeared from view.
The moment she had gotten back on the elevator, Ashby and Palmer had stepped from their hiding place and reentered the periodontist’s office. Their job was to make sure that the operative’s body hadn’t been found. It hadn’t, and they sent a quiet confirmation over the radio.
For the moment, everyone could exhale. Harvath’s plan had worked. The most complicated and dangerous part, however, was yet to come.