Brad Thor - Use of Force. A Thriller

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For Duane Dewey Clarridge

Keeper of the midnights watch.

Godspeed.

Citius venit malum quam revertitur.

Evil arrives faster than it departs.

I TALIAN C OAST G UARD H EADQUARTERS

M ARITIME R ESCUE C OORDINATION C ENTER

R OME

A n explosion of thunder shook the building as Lieutenant Pietro Renzi, dressed in his Navy whites, answered the phone in front of him.

Mayday. Mayday, a voice said in heavily accented English. My latitude is N, three, three, four, nine.

Renzi snapped his fingers to get his colleagues attention. Three, three degrees ? he asked.

Four, nine, replied the caller.

This was exactly the kind of call Renzi and his team were worried about tonight. North African refugee smugglers were subhuman. All they cared about was money. Once they had been paid, they put their passengers into unseaworthy boats, tossed in a compass and a satellite phone preprogrammed with the emergency number of the Guardia Costiera , and pointed them toward Italy.

Rarely did they provide them with enough fuel to make the journey. Rarer still, did they consult weather forecasts. Swells as high as fifteen meters had already been reported tonight, and the storm was only getting worse.

Thirty-three degrees, forty-nine minutes north, Renzi repeated, confirming the callers position.

Yes.

And beneath that? I need the number beneath.

Please, the man implored. I do not have much battery.

Sir, calm down. I need the number beneath.

The man read the numbers from the screen: One, three. Dot four, one.

Renzi entered the full coordinates into his computer: 3349'N1341'E. The distressed vessels position appeared on the giant screen at the front of the operations center. The boat was 120 nautical miles from the island of Lampedusa, Italys southernmost territory.

Please, please, you must help us, the caller implored. There is much water inside the boat. We are sinking.

Sir, please. We will send rescue, but you need to be calm. How many people are onboard?

One hundred and fifty persons. Many women. Many children. Please hurry. We are in danger. We are sinking .

An Italian Coast Guard helicopter was out of the question. They were too far away and there were too many people.

Lieutenant Renzi studied the screen at the head of the room. It showed ships and boats in the central Mediterranean Sea. He searched it for one close enough to help effect a rescue.

There was nothing. Seasoned captains had already fled the storms path. It would take hours to get any type of vessel to them.

Hello? the man said. Hello? Do you hear me, please?

Yes, I still hear you.

The waves are very high. All the people are sick. We need your help.

Sir, Lieutenant Renzi repeated, trying to reassure the man, we are sending a ship to rescue you, but you must stay calm.

Okay. Okay.

Now, how many flotation devices do you have?

Flotation devices? the man replied.

Life jackets, said Renzi. How many life jackets do you have?

There was a pause as the man shouted out a question in his language to the people on his boat. When he came back on the line, his response chilled Renzi to the bone: We have no life jackets.

B URNING M AN F ESTIVAL

B LACK R OCK D ESERT , N EVADA

T WO D AYS L ATER

S cot Harvath wasnt supposed to be here. The CIA was forbidden to conduct operations inside the United Statesespecially the kind he was about to undertake. Desperate times, though, called for desperate measures.

The seven-day Burning Man event was an extreme, weeklong summer solstice festival held on a flat, prehistoric lakebed three hours outside Reno, Nevada. Outrageous costumes were encouragedas was tasteful nudity. Costumes ran the gamut from Mad Max to Carnival in Rio.

As fit as he was, he could have gotten away without wearing much of anything. That wasnt his style, though. It also wouldnt have made sense for his assignment.

Instead, the five-foot-ten-inch Harvath, with his sandy brown hair and his glacierlike blue eyes, wore a Continental Army coat and a full face of Cherokee war paint, obscuring his handsome features.

As the wind kicked up again, he pulled a pair of steampunk goggles over his eyes and wrapped a keffiyeh around his face. Clouds of the fine alkaline dust that covered the playa were swirling everywhere. Visibility was dropping.

Fifty meters, a disembodied voice said over the device pushed deep into his left ear. He kept walking, scanning from left to right.

Burning Man took place in a temporary metropolis built in the Black Rock Desert, which was called Black Rock City. With more than seventy thousand attendees, BRC was twice as dense as the City of London.

Seen from above, the festival was laid out in the shape of a giant letter C, or two-thirds of a circle. It looked like a blueprint for the Death Star with a good chunk blown away.

It was a mile and a half across, and a quarter mile out from the center of the C was the Mana giant effigy that would be set on fire Saturday night.

There were no accommodations in Black Rock City, only what you hauled in (and hauled back out) yourself. Burners, as attendees were known, spent months in advance planning elaborately themed camps and villages. Only the ultrarich showed up on Day One, usually via helicopter, to luxury, turnkey camps that had already been constructed for them.

Almost as controversial as the camps of the ultrarich was something called Kidsville. It was one of the largest camps at Burning Man and was for families with childrenan interesting choice at such an adult festival. Nevertheless, this year, there were about a thousand kids in attendance.

An army of volunteers, augmented by private security, had screened each vehicle as it entered the festival. Occasionally, the volunteers were assisted by undercover law enforcement.

The massive flow of traffic, in addition to the laid-back atmosphere of the event, made it impossible to do anything thorough. It was more security theater than anything else.

Local and state law enforcement patrolled the festival, as did Park Rangers from the Bureau of Land Management. But as long as you werent openly doing drugs or providing alcohol to minors, it wasnt difficult to stay off their radar. They had their hands more than full. It was no wonder Burning Man had caught the attention of terrorists.

The voice spoke again in Harvaths ear. You should be able to see it now.

He stopped walking, raised a bottle of water to his mouth, and used the opportunity to look around.

Banners and tent flaps blew in the wind. There was a makeshift bar called 7 Deadly Gins, something called Camp Woo Woo, another place called No Bikini Atoll, and an enclave named Toxic Disco Clam. Just beyond was the blue RV .

I see it now, said Harvath, tossing the water bottle.

Hey! a woman behind him complained, but he ignored her and kept moving. He had come too far to let Hamza Rahim escape.