and turned back to Harvath. “You did a good job. A really good job.”
Praise normally made him uncomfortable, and he brushed it aside. “Who’s lead on everything now? Where’s the investigation being coordinated from?”
“Your ride will fill you in.”
“My ride?”
Ryan pointed out the window at a black Chevy Suburban. “Reed is here to pick you up. I’m going back to Langley. I want to turn our geek squad loose on the laptops and hard drives right away.”
“Will you keep me in the loop?”
Ryan smiled. “Absolutely. In the meantime, get some rest. You look like shit.”
Harvath smiled back and followed her out of the plane. Standing at the top of the airstairs, he watched as she descended. Her team had loaded the bags into a Sikorsky S-76 helicopter and its rotors were already churning the humid late-summer air. As soon as she had climbed inside and put her headset and seat belt on, the helo lifted off, its landing gear retracted, and the bird banked northwest for the short hop to Langley.
Walking down the airstairs, he thought about the intel Ryan was carrying with her. Tracking down Hanjour had been a success, but he wondered whether it would be the string that would unravel the entire plot. Nothing was ever easy in their business, and no one knew that better than Reed Carlton.
As Harvath crossed the tarmac to the black SUV, he hoped the Old Man would have good news for him.
CHAPTER 24
* * *
* * *
VIRGINIA
Well aware that his protégé would be wiped out from the long flight, Carlton had stopped and picked up coffee—black with two shots of espresso. He’d seen Harvath order it enough times to know that’s how he took it when he needed a lift. As they drove off the base, he handed it to him.
“I’ve heard Ambassador Conrad is a real piece of work,” he said.
Harvath peeled the lid off his cup and blew on the surface of his coffee. “He’s a real piece of something.”
The Old Man chuckled. “Well, you’ll be happy to know that he isn’t headed straight to the Four Seasons.”
“No?”
“No. He’s been ordered to Foggy Bottom. Whatever ass-chewing he got over the phone in Abu Dhabi, the Sec State wants to repeat in person.”
Harvath took a sip of coffee before replying. “I think the Sec State is going to find the ambassador has a much improved attitude.”
Carlton took his eyes off the road for a moment to look at him. “Why? What’d you do?”
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
The Old Man doubted that, but he let it go. There were more important things to discuss. He needed to debrief Harvath and be walked all the way through the Karachi and Dubai operations.
For his part, Harvath wanted to know what they were going to do next. He was exhausted. He didn’t want to rehash Karachi and Dubai, not now. Besides, the Old Man would expect written reports on everything anyway.
Nevertheless, Harvath understood this was how things worked. If they didn’t do it while it was fresh in his mind, they might miss something. So as they drove, Harvath provided the Old Man with an extensive accounting of everything that had happened.
They discussed what had gone wrong and what had gone right. Occasionally, Carlton injected some Monday morning quarterbacking about how Harvath could have done things differently. The goal was to make him a better operative and Harvath understood that, but it didn’t mean he agreed with everything the Old Man said. It had been a long time since Carlton had been in the field.
At the end of the day, Harvath had gotten the jobs done in Karachi and Dubai. That’s all that mattered. He wasn’t in the mood for advice on how he could make improvements. Right now, what he wanted to focus on was how to move forward.
Mercifully, they had just turned onto his road and were nearing his house. Not that the Old Man would have let him change the subject just because they had arrived at their destination. He and Harvath had a lot in common—neither of them stopped until he had everything he wanted.
Harvath saw the entrance to his driveway up ahead. Normally when he returned home, he was happy to be back. It meant that whatever job he had gone off to do was completed and he could relax. Those times when he couldn’t relax, when he had seen terrible things he couldn’t get out of his mind, he would engage in what he referred to as “Potomac