as Kashgari, but his desire to live had been just as powerful, and just as pointless.
Stepping away from the body, Cheng retraced his steps through the house, making sure he had not left any fingerprints anywhere.
• • •
An hour and a half later, via an encrypted email, Cheng provided Colonel Shi with both an update and a recommendation. It took less than twenty minutes for Shi to respond.
The colonel okayed Cheng’s next move, but required him to make one other stop before leaving Tennessee. Cheng didn’t like it, though he had little choice but to comply.
CHAPTER 30
* * *
* * *
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Harvath had tried to get some sleep as soon as Carlton left, but he was too keyed up. He shared the Old Man’s concern that they might be missing something and he wanted to think. Exercise always cleared his head so he changed into shorts, threw on a T-shirt, and went for a long run.
The sweat rolling from his pores and the burn in his legs felt good. The steady pounding of his feet along the shoulder of the tree-covered road had relaxed his mind.
The game of intelligence was a lot like assembling a puzzle with the lights out or the top of the box missing. Two pieces might feel as if they “should” fit together perfectly, but in reality they couldn’t be further removed from each other. You had to be very careful about what kind of assumptions you made.
As he ran, Harvath had gone through the bits and pieces of intelligence they had amassed so far, trying to see the bigger picture. How did it all come together? What was the attack? No matter how hard he had pushed, he couldn’t get it to come into focus. He was frustrated and it made him angry.
Returning home, he grabbed a quick shower, changed clothes, and went out to pick up some food. He knew he needed to get some rest, but the further he could push it off, the more helpful it would be to battle his jet lag. In fact, the more sun he could get on his skin, the faster he would reset his body clock back to D.C. time.
It took him about forty-five minutes to run his errands. Returning home, he put away his groceries and carried his lunch down to his dock. While Potomac Therapy normally involved some sort of an alcoholic beverage, this time he only brought a bottle of water. He wanted his mind clear.
He sat there for a long time, eating and watching the summer boats pass by. He thought about Lara, the woman several years his junior whom he was dating up in Boston. Friends who had seen her picture called her the “underwear model” because of her striking resemblance to one of the Victoria’s Secret women. Friends who had actually met her, though, called her perfect for him.
He had never dated a woman with a child before. This was completely new territory. He wasn’t just building a relationship with Lara; he was also building a relationship with her little boy, Marco, and he cared for them both very much. It was daunting, but it felt right.
Sitting there with the late summer sun blazing down on him and the water lapping at the pier, he enjoyed letting his mind wander. When he was on an op, he couldn’t afford to think of anything but the mission. He had to wall off everything back home. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be able to focus. And when operators were unable to focus was when bad things happened.
When his lunch was eaten and his bottle of water empty, he walked back up to the house. Retrieving his laptop from his office, he set it on the kitchen table while he brewed some coffee. As soon as it was ready, he poured himself a large mug, sat down at the table, and opened his iTunes app. Scrolling through, he selected Parliament’s album Up for the Down Stroke.
With coffee to keep him awake and some of his favorite funk music to keep him company, he began to hammer out the written debrief the Old Man was expecting.
By the time his after-action reports on the Karachi and Dubai ops were complete, all the coffee in the world would no longer have been able to keep him awake. Dragging himself upstairs, he stripped out of his clothes and fell into bed.
• • •
When a muffled ringing of bells beckoned from a distance, it felt as if he