Chapter 80

The sleek Mercedes sedan dropped Harvath at the heliport, where a bright blue Colibri EC 120B helicopter was ready and waiting for him.

After a look at the maps he’d pulled and a discussion of what Harvath wanted, the pilot nodded, gave Harvath the thumbs-up, and helped stow his gear.

They buckled themselves in, placed their headsets on, and the pilot fired up the sweeping rotors. Minutes later they were airborne.

He flew them over Corcovado Mountain with the towering statue of Christ, the Cristo Redentor with its enormous outstretched arms. There was something about it that reminded Harvath of Atlas, holding up the earth.

Harvath supposed there were parallels between Christ and Atlas. Judeo-Christian values were one of the few things holding up the modern civilized world against the barbaric hordes of Muslim extremists.

Harvath had to laugh to himself. The term Muslim extremist was starting to wear on him. It was PC-speak, something he loathed in others and absolutely despised in himself. The term was meant to draw a distinction between good Muslims and bad, but as far as he was concerned every single day that good Muslims did absolutely nothing about the atrocities being committed in their name, the line between good Muslim and bad Muslim became even more blurred.

All that was necessary for evil to triumph was for good people to do nothing. Harvath saw it every day, and he was determined that his nation would not be overrun by Islam. The French were already a lost cause and many other nations were following suit by allowing Islamic courts of law, banning historically significant symbols, icons, and pastimes as innocent as coed swimming to appease their rapidly growing and ever more vociferous Muslim minorities. Multiculturalism was bullshit. It was political correctness run amok and it made him sick. If these people wanted things to be exactly as they were in their countries of origin, why didn’t they just remain there?

Many of Harvath’s opinions may have sounded xenophobic, but he’d earned the right to them. He’d been on the front lines of the war on terror and had seen what the extremists were capable of. Radical Islam was as much about carefully and deliberately applied creativity and ideas as it was about bombs and bullets.

In America, expertly organized cells of so called “moderate Muslims” were waging an ideological jihad, working to undermine everything that the country stood for. They were a patient and determined enemy bent upon turning the nation into the United States of Islam, and many people responsible for protecting America were not paying attention.

Between the tidal wave of illegal immigration and the radical Islamic agenda in America, there were times Harvath felt like weeping for his nation.

They flew over Guanabara Bay and the Pão de Açúcar. The pilot then buzzed both Copacabana and Ipanema beaches before putting the chopper on course for their ultimate destination, the bay of Angra dos Reis forty-five minutes south of Rio by air.

They passed some incredible scenery along the way, most of it coastal villages and thick, lush forests. The ocean sparkled like countless shards of broken glass while enormous superyachts plowed through the water leaving foamy white trails of phosphorescence in their wakes.

It was absolutely pristine and Harvath was developing a keen appreciation for why so many people fell so in love with Brazil.

As they neared the Bay of Angra dos Reis, some forty-odd minutes later, the pilot brought the helicopter so low to the water its skis were almost touching the tops of the waves. Harvath had to look at him twice to make sure he wasn’t the same cab driver who had brought him in from the airport the day before.

Like the quick tour upon takeoff of Rio ’s most scenic sights, this little trick was probably meant as a way for the pilot to endear himself to his clients in order to get an extra-big tip. Harvath didn’t care for the man’s acrobatics and told him to knock it off. Helicopters drew enough attention as it was.

Sufficiently cowed, the pilot increased his altitude and proceeded as instructed.

From the satellite footage he had studied, Harvath knew that the island the Troll had rented for himself was particularly small. Nevertheless, he wanted to get as close a look at it as he could.

Since an overhead hover was definitely out of the question, Harvath had opted for a straight traverse at a relatively good clip. He’d have to process a lot of information in a short period of time, but it was the only way he could see the island with his own eyes from above without drawing the suspicion of its current inhabitant.

Angra was composed of 365 different islands. The pilot pointed to a tiny speck of land on the near horizon. As they got closer, Harvath studied his map, along with the size and shape of the other islands around the Troll’s, and realized the pilot was correct.

He took it from exactly the approach Harvath had asked for. Leaning against the door, Harvath strained to take in as much of it as he could, burning the entire picture into his mind-the main building and its cottages, the helipad, the speedboat at the dock, the shape and layout of the island, all of it.

He’d be coming back tonight, but by then it would be very dark, and the darkness would only contribute to the danger of what he planned to do.

Chapter 81

WASHINGTON, D.C.

James Vaile’s tenure at the CIA had not been marked by a particularly good relationship with the press. The devastating stories about the CIA’s secret prisons abroad and how the United States tracked terrorists through their banking habits still weighed heavily on him. And while the stories had come from asinine members of his own agency who put their dislike of the president’s policies above their loyalty to their country, all of his attempts to prevent those stories from being run had failed.

He had quickly learned that many newspapers had far more pride in their circulation than they did in their patriotism. That they were hobbling America and empowering her terrorist enemies made absolutely no difference to them. It was no wonder he held out little hope for being able to appeal to Mark Sheppard as an American.

If patriotism couldn’t motivate a reporter, sometimes he or she could be swayed by a promise of an exclusive on an even bigger story. But as in the cases of the secret prisons and the terrorist banking programs, Vaile didn’t have anything bigger to bargain with. He was going to have to find another way, and he’d have to do it in such a way that the Baltimore Sun reporter had no idea that the CIA was involved.

One of the first things Vaile did was to look into the man’s background. He’d met very few people in his life who didn’t have at least one skeleton in their closet. Unfortunately, though, Sheppard was clean. In fact, he was beyond clean. The man was practically a saint. Outside of a couple of speeding tickets back when he was in college, the reporter hadn’t so much as crossed against a light or faked the throw at an unmanned toll both.

Scanning his extracurricular activities, Vaile was further disenchanted as he discovered Sheppard donated a significant portion of his time helping underprivileged children throughout the Metropolitan Baltimore area. He even sat on one organization’s board.

Though Vaile didn’t want to do it, he quickly realized the only way to dissuade Sheppard from running his story was to threaten to go nuclear on him. If he didn’t cooperate, nothing would be left of the man’s former life but scorched earth.

A few hours later, once it was confirmed that everything was in place, the DCI picked up his phone and made the call.