Path Of The Assassin

“Good morning,” said Morrell as he neared the table and smiled at Meg as sincerely as he was capable of. “I trust everyone slept well?”

“Like a baby,” offered Harvath. He knew the reason his AC didn’t work was somehow Morrell’s doing, but he wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of complaining.

“Ms. Cassidy, are you ready for your physical?”

“The sooner it’s over the sooner I can eat. Let’s go,” said Meg.

“Good. Agent Harvath will meet you back here for lunch.”

“I’ll see you later, okay?” said Scot. “I’m going to go over to the arts-and-crafts cabin to make my mom either a cutting board with a secret compartment for microfilm or a key chain that shoots poison darts.”

Morrell was fed up, but he tried not to show it. “Ms. Cassidy, if you’re ready, I’ll drive you over.”

Meg said good-bye to Scot, and once she had walked away from the table, Harvath caught Morrell by the arm. “You make sure you take care of her, understand me?”

“Yeah, I understand you,” said Morrell, jerking his arm out of Harvath’s grasp. “Relax.”

“Like you take care of your eyes, Ricky. I don’t want anything to happen to her.”

“For fuck’s sake, Harvath, I’m taking her to get a physical. It’s not like we’re disarming land mines.”

“I’m talking about in general. I’m setting the ground rules for the training and the operation right now.”

“You?”

“Yeah, me. Meg Cassidy is not expendable, so you figure that into your planning. Got me?”

“You have a thing for this woman, don’t you?”

Harvath avoided the question and simply responded, “Her safety is the number-one priority.”

“Number one for you maybe, but number one for me is the successful outcome of my mission.”

“You’d better find a way to reconcile the two, because I’m here to see that nothing happens to her.”

“I thought you were here because you wanted to see us nail Hashim Nidal.”

“That too,” said Harvath, “but not at the expense of this woman’s life.”

“Understood. Are you finished now?” asked Morrell as he impatiently glanced down at his watch.

“Just about. You guys need to realign the profile on Nidal.”

“What? You’re joking right?”

“No, I’m one hundred percent serious. There were two masked hijackers on that plane. I think Meg saw the lieutenant’s face and not Nidal’s.”

“Based on what?”

“She said she saw the one you’re calling the lieutenant, tell off Nidal.”

“Harvath, Meg Cassidy barely remembers anything of what she saw.”

“That’s not true. She had trouble putting together a coherent timetable of the events during her struggle with the hijackers.”

“Same thing in my book. Listen, the man Cassidy saw without his mask was the one issuing all of the orders during the hijacking. I have eyewitnesses who will back that up. This man was also wounded by Cassidy and had to be assisted in his escape from the plane. Are you telling me that we’ve got it wrong and Hashim Nidal would risk his freedom, or possibly worse, his life, to help a lieutenant escape?”

“If that lieutenant knew enough to bring him down, yes.”

“Then why not just kill the lieutenant? Why go to all that extra trouble?” asked Morrell as he glanced once more at his watch.

“Who knows? Maybe there’s honor among thieves, after all. Maybe the lieutenant was very valuable to him or had information buttoned down somewhere as an insurance policy. There’s a million possible reasons.”

“Yes, but only one makes sense. The face Cassidy saw belonged to Hashim Nidal, period.”

“Revise the profile, Rick.”

“What, and go solely by a set of eyes? Because that’s all anyone has seen of the other hijacker.”

“It’s a good start.”

“It’s a waste of time. Just like this conversation is. We’ve got the right man and we’re not diverting our focus.”

“You’re making a mistake.”

“And you’re free to leave any time you like,” said Morrell as he began walking away. “You’ll excuse me, but I’ve got a schedule to keep.”

37

It didn’t take long for Meg’s training at Harvey Point to grow monotonous. It was based upon intelligence the CIA had been able to gather from its Indonesian sources, who believed Hashim Nidal’s base of operations was on one of the Moluccas Islands, formerly known as the Spice Islands.

During the day, Meg worked with Rick Morrell and his sniper teams, learning how to identify and call out targets. In the evenings, they would do the whole thing all over again, only this time aided by night-vision devices. Meg’s free time was never her own. She was plonked down in front of monitors and subjected to hours of images relating to suspected and known terrorists. It soon became overwhelming. Despite her resolve, everything began getting to her-the heat, the humidity, the insects, the incessant training schedule…Morrell had planned everything down to the minute. They went through the same drills over and over again until the execution was perfect, and then they did them again.