for the border. He had a snowmobile, a shotgun, and a modicum of other supplies. Did he have enough, though, to get him all the way? What’s more, what kind of shape was he in?
Considering how far he had come from the crash site and how much havoc he had caused, Teplov decided he was doing well enough to be dangerous.
The only other question he had was how long Harvath had been on the run with the snowmobile. If he could answer that, it would go a long way toward tracking him down.
Night was falling, and Teplov had no idea how much fuel Harvath had. It was going to get much colder. If he was going to resupply or rest for the night, where might he do that?
Teplov consulted his GPS. If Harvath maintained his course, the nearest habitation was a town approximately forty kilometers away.
He had to have known that he would stand out significantly from the local population. Merely putting on someone else’s clothing wouldn’t be enough to disguise him. The people of the Oblast could recognize an outsider quite easily. That would go double for an American.
Harvath’s only chance was to stay out of sight. He would be looking for a farm, another cabin, or some sort of abandoned property where he could get warm and, if need be, get food for himself and fuel for the snowmobile.
At the very least, Teplov now knew how Harvath was traveling and in which direction. That was a dramatic improvement.
Finding the needle was the easy part. Identifying the haystack was where the challenge lay.
But now he had his haystack. All he and his men needed to do was to get out their pitchforks and rip it apart. Scot Harvath didn’t stand a chance.
CHAPTER 34
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ABOVE THE ATLANTIC
The Gulfstream G650 ER extended-range jet was capable of Mach 0.925, more than seven hundred miles per hour. But, in addition to its speed, its fuel capacity had made it The Carlton Group’s preferred aircraft.
Fully fueled, it had a range of seventy-five hundred nautical miles. That meant it could do Hong Kong to New York nonstop. At about half the distance, Washington, D.C., to Helsinki, Finland, was even easier.
In addition to its range and speed, the aircraft was incredibly luxurious. It boasted a premium leather couch, handcrafted oversized reclining seats, sixteen panoramic windows, designer carpeting, fold-out flatscreen displays, LED lighting, a bathroom with a shower, and a full galley with a convection oven, wet bar, and even an espresso machine.
The private plane could sleep ten people and had voluminous cargo space—key requirements when sending a high-end tactical team downrange.
“This is a joke, right?” said the voice of Tyler Staelin as he opened the oven. “Who stocks a seventy-million-dollar plane with fucking pizza?”
The five-foot-ten Staelin was a former Tier One operator from the “Unit,” or Delta Force, as it was more popularly known. Hailing from downstate Illinois, the experienced thirty-nine-year-old played double duty as the team’s medic. An avid reader, he never travelled with less than three books.
“I did,” replied Chase Palmer. “Nobody wanted to take responsibility for catering, so I stepped up. Next time, don’t ignore my texts.”
A native Texan in his early thirties, Chase looked so similar to Harvath that the two were often asked if they were brothers.
He had been the youngest operator ever admitted to Delta, and his exploits were legendary—filling multiple hard drives at the Department of Defense. His teammates had loosely nicknamed him “AK,” for Ass Kicker, but after he had used an empty AK-47 to bluff six enemy fighters into surrender in Afghanistan, it stuck.
“You never texted me,” Staelin asserted as he pulled out his phone and scrolled through his messages. When he got to the ones from Chase, his expression changed. “My bad.”
“Apology accepted. By the way, there’s a warming drawer behind you. You might want to take a peek.”
Staelin did, and a smile spread across his face. “Sirloins?”
“You’re welcome,” Chase replied.
Normally, Harvath handled this stuff. He was a detail guy, and secretly they all believed he was a bit of a control freak. He liked to act as if he didn’t care about what anyone thought, but they knew better. Harvath was a good man who cared deeply about the people around him. That was yet another reason why the events of the last several days had been so difficult.
The news that the Old Man, Lydia Ryan, and Lara Cordero had been murdered came as a shock to the entire team. The fact