An assassin, looking to settle a terrible score, had targeted her out of revenge. Miraculously, she had survived, but in almost constant, unimaginable pain. Her one last act of love for Harvath was to leave him, so he could start over again with someone who could give him what she knew she never could—a family.
He had been racked with guilt and heartbroken on top of it. He would have done anything to ease her suffering. He would have taken it all upon himself if he could have, but that just wasn’t possible.
Instead, all Harvath could do was relive over and over again what had happened to her, finding new ways each time to blame himself. It was a terrible form of self-torture.
Slowly, though, his pain at losing her began to dissipate, though the guilt for what he had caused would never fully go away.
As a kind of perverse therapy, he threw himself into his work. He became more brutal with those who had committed evil, blurring the line between him and them. It wasn’t healthy. And although he told himself he could compartmentalize anything, this thing he couldn’t.
To compensate, he had done what everyone else he’d ever known in his line of work did—he had retreated further into himself, shrinking his circle of friends, drinking more, and playing it all off with a graveyard humor common in men who stared death in the face and kicked it in the balls for a living.
“Better to be lucky than good,” he would crack, echoing a flippant saying in the Special Operations community.
All the while, though, he knew that he was taking greater risks and that at some point it was going to catch up with him.
But Lara had changed that. His relationship with her had calmed his recklessness. She had given him something worth living for.
Now, though, his guilt was back. The more he thought about what had happened in New Hampshire, the deeper he spiraled.
Whether outside the house or in, Josef was always planning to kill Lara and everyone else. Harvath knew that. There was nothing he could have done to change it. But even so, he blamed himself.
He blamed himself for being the beacon that had drawn Josef there. He blamed himself for bringing Lara along. And most of all, he blamed himself for not thinking more quickly, for not finding some way to protect her.
The stew of rage and recrimination was eating away at him, now opening the door wider to his vengefulness and darkening his heart.
The more he fanned the flames of hate, the greater the threat to his humanity grew. If he allowed that part of himself to be extinguished, there was no coming back. He would become the abyss he was staring into.
He needed to snap out of it and turn his mind to something else—most important, getting the hell out of Russia alive.
Setting down the tea, he reviewed the remaining items in the ditch kit. Picking up the bag marked with a first aid cross, he sliced it open and dumped out the contents.
It contained a suture kit, more water purification tablets, Russian aspirin, blood-clotting gauze, an Israeli-style wrap bandage, tweezers, six Russian-style Band-Aids of varying sizes, two antibacterial wipes, a small tube of antiseptic ointment, and an electrolyte drink mix.
The fourth and final pouch in the ditch kit was emblazoned with words Harvath didn’t know. Opening it up, he looked inside.
As soon as he saw the signal mirror, he knew exactly what this bag was—a SERE kit.
In addition to the mirror, there was a compass, a whistle, more stormproof matches, more water purification tablets, a small notebook and pen, a silk scarf printed with panels containing survival instructions, more hextabs, a flint and striker, a packet of sunscreen, and some mosquito wipes.
Opening the flare gun case, he examined its contents. In keeping with similar setups from the Soviet days, the kit included the pistol itself and four flares, beneath which was a conversion tube. When inserted into the barrel, it allowed for firing of .45 or 410 ammunition. Two cardboard boxes with five rounds of each were also included.
It was a clever piece of equipment, but not something Harvath anticipated needing. Thanks to the Spetsnaz operatives onboard, he had access to much more effective firearms.
That said, the flare gun might come in handy, so he set it aside. Opening the aspirin container, he popped two in his mouth, picked his tea back up, and took a sip to wash them down.