“His team had asked for it and were getting some static. With everything that’s happened in Manhattan, there were certain people that felt a funeral flyover was an inappropriate diversion of resources. I disagreed. Bob Herrington was a hell of a guy and one of the finest warriors this country has ever seen.”

Hilliman removed a folder from his briefcase and handed it to him. “I read the debriefing they did on you while you were getting patched up at the VA. I thought you deserved to have some of the blanks filled in.”

As Harvath looked through the file, the secretary of defense continued, “Scot, you’ve been in this game long enough to know why certain operations must remain classified. Sometimes it’s of vital national security that the right hand not know what the left hand is doing. Sometimes, though, we begin with the absolute best of intentions and clarity of purpose, but the walls we build to protect our operations can actually prevent us from sharing strategic information of paramount importance. It’s clear now that’s what happened last week and we lost a lot of good people because of it.

“Though I have some incredible resources at my disposal, I can’t change the past. I can, though, have a significant impact on the future.”

Harvath wasn’t listening anymore. When he looked up from the folder the anger was chiseled across his face. “I can’t believe what I’m reading. You were actually getting ready to let him walk? After everything we know about Mohammed bin Mohammed? After the incredible amount of manpower and money that went into tracking him down? What about the people who were killed trying to apprehend him? What about what he is planning to unleash on this country?”

“You don’t know the full story.”

“You know what, Mr. Secretary? I don’t see how that could possibly make a difference.”

“Listen to me and I’ll tell you.”

Harvath tossed the file onto the seat next to him and prayed the man had a good answer. If not, he was going to rip his throat out right in the back of that limousine.

Hilliman took a deep breath and replied, “Nobody can withstand torture indefinitely, not even a man like Mohammed bin Mohammed. The problem lies in knowing when you’ve truly broken them. To know that, you have to verify the intel a subject gives you, and that can take time. Time was not something we had on our side in Mohammed’s case. Making matters even more difficult were his extensive dialysis treatments.

“Therefore, it had been agreed that if we couldn’t make measurable progress within a certain window, we were going to transport him to another nation that collaborates with us in interrogations, a nation we knew his associates might be likely to subvert to help facilitate his escape.”

“I still don’t understand why you’d do that.”

“So we could track him.”

“But it took you guys years to find him in the first place. What makes you so sure you wouldn’t lose him?” demanded Harvath.

“That’s the thing. We were over ninety percent certain we wouldn’t lose him-and in our business, that’s a percentage we were willing to bet the house on.”

“How were you going to track him?”

“Through a radioisotope we’d been administering as part of his dialysis treatments. It creates a very specific signature which can be tracked via satellite.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

The secretary held up both hands and said, “So help me. It’s a very new technology, but it works. We’d seen the data, but we went a step further and did a slew of comprehensive tests ourselves. The bottom line is that it works.”

“Ninety percent of the time,” clarified Harvath.

“Correct.”

“So, do you know where Mohammed bin Mohammed is now?”

Hilliman looked at him. “Yes, we do.”

“So what are you waiting for? Why don’t you grab him?”

“Because we need to know who al-Qaeda is about to get their nuclear material from.”

“And once you do? What then?”

Hilliman pulled two more files from his briefcase, handed them across to Harvath, and said, “That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

Ninety-Nine

GIBRALTAR

THREE DAYS LATER

Of all the places Harvath had ever traveled to, he’d never had a reason or a desire to see Gibraltar. As his plane circled on its approach, he quickly realized that he’d been missing something extraordinary.

The enormous limestone Rock of Gibraltar rose dramatically from the Mediterranean Sea, forming one of the two ancient Pillars of Hercules, which once marked the very edge of the known world.

Staring out the plane’s window, Harvath could make out the various grassy glens that were home to the only free-ranging monkey in Europe, the barbary ape. He could almost smell the aloes, capers, cacti, and asparagus that grew wild along the nearly 1400-foot-high rock. And though he barely knew her, he could already tell this was the kind of place Tracy Hastings would like-a lot.