the curtain, he saw the shower was not only spotless, but had a head that could be adjusted to pulse and give you a massage.
Haney turned on the hot water full blast, but then changed his mind. Out of a sense of solidarity with Harvath, he flipped the temperature selector to cold.
It was good not to get too comfortable in the field. That’s when complacency set in.
Freezing his ass off, Haney took one of the shortest showers of his life. It reminded him of how bitterly cold it was outside and what Harvath was going through right at this very moment.
When he hit his bunk, he was thankful for the blanket, which he pulled up tight under his chin.
Before he drifted off to sleep, he said a prayer for Harvath. He vowed that if God would keep him alive, he and the rest of the team would do everything it took to get him out.
It wasn’t the first time Haney had made a deal with God. Often, in his life, there was blood, bullets, or both, but God had never let him down. And he didn’t believe that God would this time either. The only thing he needed was a sign.
CHAPTER 55
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The “sign” came a few hours later when Haney’s encrypted cell phone awoke him. He knew who it was just by the ring. They all had ringtones for each other. Partly as a joke, but partly because he respected him as one “bad motherfucker,” his ringtone for Nicholas was the theme song from Shaft.
Before even opening his eyes, he had grabbed his phone, activated the call, and pressed it up against his ear.
“Haney,” he said, blinking at his watch to see what time it was.
“I think we’ve got a fix on Harvath,” the little man stated.
“Where?” he asked, throwing back the blanket and getting out of bed.
“What’s up?” asked Barton, his head still on his pillow.
“We may have a fix on Harvath,” he replied.
“The National Reconnaissance Office had a satellite searching the area over Murmansk Oblast. They picked up something outside Nivsky.”
“They’ve got Harvath?”
“If it’s not Harvath, then the Russians have got another very big problem on their hands.”
“What did you see?” Haney asked.
“I’m transferring the imagery now. Hulkkonen and the Colonel are going to meet you in the ops center,” Nicholas answered. “We’ll pick back up via conference call there.”
Haney hung up and quickly got dressed. As he exited the room, Barton was right on his heels. Haney wanted to tell him that it might be nothing and that the operator should go back and get some sleep, but he knew it was no use. If their positions had been reversed, Haney would have insisted on coming along as well.
When they got to the operations center, the Colonel was already there. One of his techs patched in Nicholas via a secure video link and put his image up on one of the large screens on the opposite wall. He looked like a giant and Haney told him so as Barton brought over cups of fresh coffee.
As soon as Hulkkonen had arrived, Nicholas explained what the NRO believed it had picked up.
After the message had come in from Harvath, they had worked like crazy to get a satellite over Nivsky. The presence of the two helicopters in the town square told them the Russians were onto him.
From there, they started looking for vehicles traveling west. There were only a handful, but nothing definitive. There was also one person traveling via what had to have been skis, and even a couple of dog teams in the area. Again, there was nothing definitive.
“That,” said Nicholas, as he switched from the still images he had been feeding to the op center’s screens to infrared video, “was when this happened.”
They all watched as there was a commotion in the square and people and equipment, including two snowmobiles, were loaded onto one of the helicopters and it lifted off.
The satellite followed the bird as it traveled toward a speck of a village Nicholas identified as “Friddja,” about twenty klicks west.
There, the bird touched down and disgorged the two snowmobiles and all the people who had gotten on in Nivsky. One person, it appeared, was being dragged, or at least forced, by the presence of figures on either side.
A handful of other figures then got into a stack formation and made entry into one of the houses. Moments later, several more followed.
A short time later, they emerged with an additional person.