State Of The Union

“The Army maintains a database of personnel it believes possess useful skills and abilities, long after said personnel leave the army. For example, after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, all Special Operations personnel, especially those with Arabic language skills were contacted just to make sure the army knew where they were in case it needed to reach them. Taking into account the considerable amount of time and money used to train these personnel, you can appreciate why we keep tabs on them even after they leave the service.

“We scrubbed the records of all the Dark Night team members clean. There was not only no mention of Dark Night involvement in their files, but there was no valid current contact information in the Army’s general management system. Besides their participation in the Dark Night program, they had been involved in many other international interdictions, which made them a lot of enemies. Suffice it to say, that the United States Government thought it better to conceal their whereabouts than to allow them to become public through some freedom of information error.”

“So how could someone have found them?” asked Harvath.

“The president and I were made aware of the Dark Night team by our predecessors. We were told that no one else knew and that it was to remain that way.”

“Well, somebody obviously found out.”

“Right, which means either someone on the team talked-”

“Which is highly unlikely,” interjected Harvath.

“Or, there was some other sort of breach.”

“How were the men contacted?”

“To facilitate some of its more clandestine operations, the Defense Department maintains a front company out of a townhouse in Foggy Bottom called the Capstone Corporation. Capstone owns several safe houses and apartments throughout Europe, including Gary’s in Berlin, which different teams have used over the years. In the basement of the townhouse is a secure computer network.

“The computer was programmed so that upon being given the command by the president, it could simultaneously contact each of the twelve Dark Night operatives via telephone. They’d be prompted to enter an authentication code, and once their identities were verified they would be activated.

“Could anyone have eavesdropped on these calls?” asked Harvath.

“No. The computer was able to detect any taps, and even if someone had found a way around it, most of the process sounded like a personal computer conducting a handshake with a server,” replied Hilliman.

“Or a high pitched fax machine on full volume?”

“Yes, but how’d you know?”

“I’m guessing Gary Lawlor placed a call to your computer in Georgetown. When I hit the redial button on his phone, I received those same tones. But you said the computer would have called him, not vice versa.”

“No, our records show that Gary did call back into the system to check on the status of the other team members. As the team leader, that would have been his responsibility-to know who had been contacted and activated.”

“Now I understand why Leighton called Gary’s house,” said Harvath. “If I had been activated after all these years, I would probably call my old team leader too before flying halfway around the world to nuke an old enemy we all thought was dead. But what about the other operatives? Does Gary know they’re dead?”

“No. They were all killed before they were activated. We put out the call to activate the team, but only Leighton and Gary were alive to receive it. Based on when Gary called back into the system, all he would have known was that the rest of the team hadn’t been reached yet.”

“And yet whoever killed them missed Gary and Frank Leighton,” mused Harvath.

Hilliman nodded his head. “Taking out ten highly trained American operatives, all of whom were scattered around the country, is no small feat. I don’t care if those men were retired. They were not easy marks. Whoever did this spent a lot of time planning.”

“But it still doesn’t explain why they didn’t take out Gary and Frank Leighton.”

“There’s a lot of this that doesn’t make sense, Agent Harvath, and at this point we can only focus on what we know. For the sake of the United States, this mission has to succeed.”

“I agree, but with ten out of twelve guys dead and Gary now missing, how can it?” asked Scot.

“That,” replied the president, “is where you come in.”

Chapter 17

SOMEWHERE ABOVE THE ATLANTIC

STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS-7 DAYS

At six hundred miles per hour, the luxuriously appointed Cessna Citation X, secured for Harvath by an affiliate of the Capstone Corporation, lived up to its reputation of being the fastest business jet in the world. It quickly rose to an altitude of 51,000 feet where its fuel economy could be maximized and commercial airline traffic was nonexistent. With a top speed of Mach.92, they were flying at nearly the speed of sound, screaming across each mile of the 4100 that they needed to travel in less than six seconds apiece.