as he sat up. “You should have seen their faces when we chucked that John Doe to the sharks. They’ll never look at shark fin soup the same again.”
“Don’t drop that,” Harvath said as two team members prepared to transfer the cooler containing the Nashville EMP device over to their vessel.
Standing up, he walked into the galley, removed his phone from the drawer, and called Nicholas, who was back at the NCTC working with the NSA.
“Did the Chinese buy it?” he asked.
“Hook, line, and sinker,” Nicholas replied. “When those kids phoned home, Chinese intelligence began tracing the calls immediately. Not long after that, Ho’s phone started ringing. Because Medusa was his asset, they blamed him for everything getting screwed up.”
“Good,” said Harvath. “As soon as we’re ready to allow the princelings to call home, I want Stephanie Esposito listening in. Let’s make sure we see this thing across the goal line.”
“You got it. Anything else?”
“Yeah, tell Ren Ho he’s one step closer to getting his son back.”
“Will do,” Nicholas replied. “Good luck interrogating Bao Deng, or should I say Tai Cheng?”
“Tell the Old Man I’ll call him once we have something.”
With that, Harvath disconnected the call and walked down to the master stateroom. Lying on the bed naked, except for his briefs, was Tai Cheng.
After Sloane had stepped into the gangway and Tasered him, Harvath had hit him with a syringe full of ketamine. They had dragged him into the master stateroom where they stripped off his clothes, including the bandage on his shoulder, put a piece of duct tape over his mouth, and hog-tied him with FlexiCuffs.
After dressing their disfigured, dark-haired John Doe corpse from the Miami morgue and splashing it with pig’s blood, Sloane fired a blank shotgun round and Harvath dragged the mutilated body out for the princelings to see.
As the middleman between the Second Department and the smuggler known as Medusa, Ho had indeed been helpful. He had provided more than enough intel for the FBI to arrest the boat’s owner and its crew.
Ho had in fact cooperated every step of the way, including giving up the locations of all the cell members in each city and explaining how the EMP devices worked. He had even detailed how they had been smuggled into the country and who had been involved. He had explained how China’s military intelligence division worked, who had been involved with Snow Dragon, and who had conceived of it. He talked at length about Colonel Jiang Shi and his mantra that they would turn out the lights and America would be made to bow to China.
Ho was an intelligence jackpot, and Harvath had been completely honest when he had said that for his cooperation, the man would get his son back.
Harvath had also been completely honest when he had promised Tai Cheng that he would see to it that he got to Cuba. But instead of Havana by boat, he’d be flying from U.S. Naval Air Station Key West to the GITMO detention camp at U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay.
CHAPTER 62
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TWO WEEKS LATER
Harvath had balked at the idea of being picked up in a limousine, but the powers that be had insisted. It was out of his control, so he gave in and went along with it.
As he watched the world pass by outside his window, he reflected on everything that had happened. Cheng had been difficult to break, but he had broken, and once he did, Harvath had handed him over to the team at GITMO. Based on what the princelings had told their families, the PSC and therefore the Second Department believed that Cheng had been shot and fed to sharks in the waters off Florida. The intelligence he provided would be extremely valuable to the United Sates.
As Harvath had sent the GITMO team Ahmad Yaqub, Khuram Hanjour, and Tai Cheng all in the space of a week, the lead interrogator had thanked him and then suggested he take up some sort of hobby, fishing, for a while. The President, on the other hand, had other plans for him.
Harvath had marveled at how President Porter had handled everything. Combined with the intelligence gathered by the SEALs in North Korea, the President had assembled an airtight case against the Chinese. Though he was outraged that any administration would secretly issue collateralized bonds and keep it from the American citizens, he had found a loophole.
The Chinese had conducted an act of war against the United States. Their goal was