Old Man and Agent Urda. Then he took his place at the door.
Sloane grabbed the remote and sat down on the couch. They’d had the news on, but searching through the program guide, she found a romantic comedy she liked and switched over to that. Harvath rolled his eyes. Sloane ignored him.
While Harvath wasn’t a big romcom fan, having something going in the background helped break up some of the monotony. After his half hour was up, he handed over the surveillance to Sloane.
They had bought snacks on their way in and he grabbed a bottle of water and a granola bar before sitting down on the couch.
Picking up the remote he searched the program guide to see what else was on. He just wanted to zone out for a little bit and didn’t care for Sloane’s movie. He was in luck as Black Hawk Down was on. As soon as he changed the channel, she flipped him the bird.
He smiled and put his feet up on the coffee table. Opening his granola bar, he began to eat.
When his cell phone vibrated, he looked down to see the Old Man had sent him an update. None of the FBI interviews at the Johnson Space Center had been able to produce any actionable intel and the CIA’s interviews with the engineering students’ families in the Emirates had also come up empty.
The one piece of good news was that some employees in the free Wi-Fi locations the terrorists had used in Seattle, Dallas, and Baltimore had remembered seeing them. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.
Everyone had been hoping that the engineering students had been undisciplined, and that when they had used the same locations for free Wi-Fi, it was because those were the closest to where they were living. Harvath acknowledged the Old Man’s message, set his phone on the arm of the couch, and closed his eyes.
When he opened them and looked at his watch, he saw that he had slept through his shift. “Why didn’t you wake me up?” he asked.
“Old people need naps,” said Sloane.
Harvath smiled and got off the couch. “You know what? You’re going to make a great first wife someday.”
Returning his unopened bottle of water to the fridge, he grabbed a tall Red Bull and took his post at the peephole.
“Touché,” Sloane replied, before hailing Chase over the radio for a SITREP.
All was quiet downstairs, so she settled in on the couch and changed the channel back to watch the end of her romantic comedy. Harvath had no grounds to complain. She had given him the gift of extra sleep.
After a couple of lines of stupid comedy dialogue, though, he smiled when she clicked back over to Black Hawk Down. They really did have a lot in common.
Listening to the movie as he peered out the peephole, Harvath could picture all of the scenes in his head, he had seen it that many times. The operation never should have gone as wrong as it had. Too many lives were lost on that op. Every branch of the military had studied it. The greatest insult that could have been paid to those who had died that day would have been to not have learned from their sacrifice.
When his shift was up, Sloane handed him the remote, told him the movie Commando was coming up, and then, mimicking one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s lines from the film, added, “I eat Navy SEALs for breakfast.”
“The line is ‘I eat Green Berets for breakfast,’ not Navy SEALs,” Harvath corrected. He offered to repay her kindness by taking the next shift, but she wouldn’t hear of it.
“I’ve got my second wind,” she said.
Harvath didn’t want to risk falling asleep again and was halfway to the fridge for another Red Bull when his cell phone vibrated. It was Special Agent Urda.
“This is Harvath.”
“I think we know where Deng is,” said Urda. “Or at least where he was recently.”
“That’s fantastic. Where?”
“There’s a brew pub on the corner. I’ll be parked outside. Meet me there in five minutes.”
CHAPTER 38
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Urda dispatched one of his agents to share watch with Sloane and another to sit with Chase in the manager’s office. Knowing they were both backed up, Harvath left the hotel and met up with the FBI man at the Cool Springs Brewery on the corner. He was a tall, solid guy in his late forties who looked like he had probably played football in college.