Harvath grinned and gave him the finger. They kept walking until they arrived at a miners-style elevator. Finney raised the grate and they all stepped inside. Removing a keycard from his pocket, Finney swept it through a magnetic reader and then presented his right thumb and pupil for biometric verification. Once he had been approved, the elevator began to descend.
It came to a stop at the bottom of the shaft, where they were met by a low-exhaust Dodge Ram pickup specifically designed for subterranean driving.
As the truck’s driver took them deeper into the mine, Finney explained the purpose of the Sargasso program. “We’ve had teams visit us from Fort Bragg, Camp Perry with the CIA, as well as Fort Story with the SEALs, and they all love the training here, but at the end of the day, no matter how good their people are, their success or failure comes down to one critical component-intelligence.
“That gave me an idea, and I started making a few phone calls to people I know back east. We hear a lot about the high attrition rates in the special operations community as operators leave the armed forces and go to work for groups like Blackwater or Triple Canopy where they can make a hell of a lot more money. What you don’t hear about are the attrition rates in the intelligence community.
“I never had any desire to run a private military company, per se. But a private intelligence company, now that’s something completely different, and it seemed to dovetail well with what we were already doing here.”
Harvath held on to the headrest in front of him as they hit a series of potholes. Once the surface had smoothed out, he asked, “I understand how Valhalla and Site Six make money for you, but how do you make money with your own intelligence company?”
“We do it in two ways,” replied Finney. “First, I don’t have to focus on the entire world. I focus solely on the sweet spots where the most action is happening. All the terrorism and terrorist-related intelligence that we gather and analyze is from areas where the U. S. government is backlogged and overloaded.
“Second, there’s no congressional oversight of what we do. We have a lot more latitude in our operations. There are agencies willing to pay a lot of money for us to gather intel for them. As far as our ops tempo is concerned, we’re double the volume of where Ron and I projected we’d be by this time. We can’t get guys out of the CIA, NSA, FBI, and the like fast enough to come work here.”
Harvath shook his head. Finney was amazing.
The truck came to a stop before a final checkpoint in front of what looked like a pair of heavy blast doors. Once they had been waved through, Finney led the way into the heart of the Sargasso Program’s Operations Center.
It wasn’t at all what Harvath had expected. The minute they stepped inside, they left the feeling of being in a mine hundreds of feet beneath the surface behind them. If Harvath hadn’t known better, he would have sworn he was in some cutting-edge development think tank on the Microsoft campus.
Gone were the caged bulbs strung along the rough-hewn walls. They had been replaced with sophisticated fixtures recessed at the edges of the ceiling that replicated bright, outdoor light. The floors were polished granite and the offices were walled in with sheets of soundproofed glass, the opacity of which could be dialed up or down based on the occupant’s desired level of privacy.
Impossibly slim, high-definition monitors suspended on the glass acted like windows to the outside world. As they passed scenes of Alpine Switzerland, the Bolivian rainforest, and a spit of rocky coastline from Maine, Finney explained that employees were allowed to choose their own “view” from a database of digital backdrops from around the world. It was just one of the many small touches Finney had created to make his employees’ time below ground as pleasant as possible.
At the end of the next hallway, the group turned left and arrived at an office where the virtual window displayed a river with jagged mountains in the background. In the midground a man in waders was fly fishing. The sound of river water gently moving by played from a hidden speaker somewhere in the room.
“Tom should be right back,” Finney said in regard to the office’s absent occupant. “We can wait in here for him.”
On top of the polished chrome desk was a neatly arranged stack of files, a lone silver pen, and a pad of Post-it notes. Whoever this guy was, he either didn’t have a lot to do or was extremely well organized. Based on what Finney had told him, Harvath figured it had to be the latter.
He had turned his attention to the virtual window and was admiring the scene when Tom Morgan entered the office. “That’s the Snake River,” said Morgan as he set a paper coffee cup and his laptop down on his desk. “One of the finest dry fly rivers in the world.”
“This particular spot is just outside Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Island Park, isn’t it?” asked Harvath as he turned around.
“You’ve fished the Snake, then.”
Harvath nodded. “Both the Henry’s and the South Fork. In fact I think I’ve fished that exact spot,” he added as he pointed over his shoulder at the screen. It was a scene he recognized immediately.
He’d been planning to take Tracy there that fall to teach her how to fish. The summer crowds would be gone, the leaves would be turning, and the mountains would be gorgeous. He’d already reserved a small cabin at a place called Dornans just inside Grand Teton National Park. He wondered now if they’d ever be able to go anywhere together again.
“I love the Snake, but there’s some pretty good fishing around here in Colorado. That’s part of the reason I took this job,” said Morgan, pulling Harvath’s mind back to the here and now.
Harvath acknowledged the remark with a knowing smile as Tim Finney made formal introductions. Tom Morgan was ex-NSA and somewhere in his late sixties. He wore glasses, had a mustache, and walked with a limp-the result of a field operation gone bad, which he never discussed.
After a lifetime of suits and ties at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, Morgan had embraced Elk Mountain ’s somewhat casual dress code. Tonight, he was wearing jeans, a plaid shirt, and a tweed sport coat. He appeared very fit for his age. When he spoke, there was a slight New England accent to his words, and Harvath placed him as a native of Rhode Island or New Hampshire.
“Tom’s the reason I asked you to come out,” said Finney as they all sat down.
This was the part Harvath had been waiting for. “What have you got?”
Morgan didn’t mince words. “I think we’ve located the Troll’s lockbox.”
Harvath looked at him, his eyebrows arching. “Everything?” he asked.
Morgan looked at him and replied, “Bank accounts, data deposits, everything.”
Chapter 12
“So the way we see it,” said Finney as Tom Morgan wrapped up his presentation and closed his laptop, “we’ve got this little runt’s nuts in a vise. The only question is how hard do you want to squeeze?”
Harvath was impressed. Finney and his Sargasso Intelligence Program had been able to do what the United States government wouldn’t or couldn’t do. They had located the Troll’s stock-in-trade, his highly classified data.
It wasn’t a tough decision for Harvath to make. The Troll had helped Al Qaeda carry out the attacks on New York City.
Then there was the whole matter of Tracy.
Looking at Finney, Harvath said, “I want you to squeeze so hard his eyes roll back into his fucking head.”
The Warlord nodded at Morgan, and the former NSA employee picked up his phone and dialed. The Troll’s field of play was about to be dramatically upended.