State Of The Union

“We have to tread very carefully,” said Hilliman. “If this is the greatest Trojan horse in history, the Russians will be throwing everything they have into it. We know the Soviets probably have planted long-term sleepers in the U.S., but obviously we don’t know where. They may be in the government, the military, or possibly even in the administration. There are very few people we can trust. Even as the FBI and CIA are looking for Gary and trying to get to the bottom of who killed those ten Army Intelligence operatives, they still don’t have the full picture. We have to assume that the Russians essentially have eyes and ears everywhere.”

“There’s got to be some people you can trust.”

“There are-to greater or lesser degrees. I have a core contingent of operatives from the Defense Intelligence Agency and if need be, I can pull from a handful of Diplomatic Security Service personnel in the countries where the nukes are and let them carry out the assignments, but we’ve got two pretty big problems.”

“What are they?” replied Harvath.

“With the State of the Union address only a week away, we don’t have very much time to train a replacement team and get them in place. And, probably the biggest problem, though we know where the nukes were hidden, we have no idea how Gary’s guys planned to get them in place.”

Harvath was dumfounded. “What do you mean you have no idea?”

“Operation Dark Night was established as an independent covert action team. Everything was highly compartmentalized. In fact, the word team is somewhat of a misnomer. Once activated, the operatives were to go their own separate ways and they only thing they would have in common was a shared point of contact-Gary Lawlor.

“The men had access to money, safe houses, and weapons caches secreted in both western and eastern Europe. We have general knowledge of how the men were going to go about achieving their objectives and what their targets in Russia were, but not the nuts and bolts of their plans. Gary encouraged all of them to be highly creative in their assignments.”

“So you have to coordinate with Gary.”

“And he’s disappeared,” responded the president.

Harvath wanted to hope for the best. “Just like he was supposed to do when you activated him, correct?”

“I wish it was that simple,” said the president. “A strict protocol was developed for the Dark Night operation that would allow us to maintain some semblance of control back here in Washington. Part of that protocol involved communication, and Gary has failed to check in since leaving the U.S.”

“Do you think they may have gotten to him?”

“Anything’s possible. No matter how you look at it, he’s gone far too long without contacting us. Until we get a better handle on things, we’re playing this very carefully. Especially until we figure out why would they take out everyone on the Dark Night team except for Lawlor and Leighton.”

There was only one answer that seemed to make any sense to Harvath and he offered it. “Obviously the two of them must be more useful to the Russians alive than dead. But why did you place an intercept team at Leighton’s house?”

“Gary was the lead member of the Dark Night team. He knows more than anybody, so we can understand why the Russians would want to take him alive, but ignoring Leighton doesn’t make any sense. We were toying with the idea that maybe they just hadn’t gotten around to him yet, and with the FBI sitting only a two man team on his house until they compiled enough evidence for a warrant, we decided to deploy some of our own, more sophisticated assets there as well on the off chance we might get lucky. That’s how they found you.”

“Great,” replied Harvath, as he rubbed his ribs and tried to change the subject. “If this was classified above top secret, how did the Russians get a hold of the names and whereabouts of the Dark Night operatives in the first place? In fact, considering that the entire operation had been deactivated, why did they even bother going to all that trouble to take those men out?”

“Our best guess is that they were covering their bases. The Russian assassins were given their targets, and they carried out the sanctions,” replied Hilliman.

“But how did they get the names?”

“We don’t know, and at this point we don’t have the resources to investigate. Our goal is to protect the American people from an impending attack and maintain the sovereignty of the United States.”

“As it should be,” replied Harvath. “So let’s try another tack. How were the Dark Night operatives to be activated?”