Something the Troll had said during their chat room session kept replaying in Harvath’s mind as the Elk Mountain Cessna Citation X raced toward Coronado.

He had pointed out that the lamb’s blood above Harvath’s door was very “biblical.” Harvath didn’t disagree, but ever since it had happened, he couldn’t connect it to anything-at least in a way that made sense. Now his mother had been attacked and subjected to a veritable “plague” of locusts. Also biblical.

Harvath fired up Finney’s onboard laptop and accessed the internet. He entered lamb’s blood and locusts as his search terms. Over half a million results came back. The first was from Wikipedia, and the summary line said it all. The lamb’s blood and locusts were from the ten plagues of Egypt. Harvath opened the link.

The plagues were recounted in the book of Exodus. They were the ten calamities visited upon Egypt by God in order to convince Pharaoh to release the Israelite slaves.

The first plague was the rivers of Egypt and other water sources turning to blood. It was followed by reptiles, or more specifically frogs, overrunning the land. Then there were lice, flies, and a disease on livestock. Next came a plague of unhealable boils, followed by hail mixed with fire. There were locusts, then darkness, and finally the death of every first-born male, except those of Israelites whose doorposts were painted with the blood of the Paschal lamb.

Whoever had shot Tracy and attacked his mother was definitely using the ten plagues as a bizarre kind of playbook, but in reverse order.

The tenth plague was the killing of all the first-born males in Egypt. Only the Israelite houses with the blood of a sacrificial lamb smeared on their lintels and doorposts were spared. God literally “passed over” their houses, and from this the festival of Passover had been born. It marked the release of the Israelites from their bondage under Pharaoh and the birth of the Jewish Nation. How it applied to Harvath and the shooting of Tracy Hastings was beginning to seem a little clearer.

The shooter apparently saw himself as the angel of death. He had passed over Harvath’s house and spared him, but had tried to take Tracy instead.

The ninth plague dealt with darkness, hence the deliberate blinding of his mother. God had instructed Moses to stretch his hand over Egypt, and it brought about a plague of “complete and utter” darkness lasting for three days.

The eighth plague, meant to “harden Pharaoh’s heart,” was the plague of locusts. Neither Harvath’s heart nor his resolve needed any further hardening at this point. Targeting both Tracy and his mother was enough. Regardless of what the president or anyone else said, his mind was made up. Whoever was behind these attacks had to not only be stopped, but killed, and that was exactly what he was going to do.

Harvath continued reading. The rest of the plagues were equally unpalatable, and he had no desire to imagine what their modern-day equivalents would look like. His only hope was to stop whoever was behind them before he could strike again.

That led Harvath to an even worse thought. Whom would this nut bag target next? First it was Tracy. Then it was his mother. Was this guy only targeting women who were close to him, or would he target men too? Should Harvath warn all of his friends? Even if he wanted to, what would he say? There’s a plague of biblical proportions with your name on it? No, the key here was to stop this guy before he could strike again. But to do that, they were going to need a break-a big one.

When Harvath walked into the hospital room and saw his mother lying there he was overcome with rage. Her face was badly battered and bruised. Who the hell would do something like this?

Though he wanted to go to his mother, he couldn’t. The emotion of it all-the guilt he felt for being the reason she’d been targeted and the primal anger he felt in reaction to such an audacious violation-was crushing. Harvath found himself choking up. When the tears came, he did nothing to wipe them away.

Finally, he forced himself to walk over to the side of her bed. As he stared at his mother’s swollen face, Harvath gently took one of her hands in his and said, “Mom, I’m so sorry.”

He stood there like that for several minutes and finally pulled a chair alongside the bed and sat down. As he smoothed his mother’s hair, an unwelcome twinge of déjà vu surged through him. It was almost like being in Tracy ’s hospital room.

Why the hell was this going on? Why, when he was finally getting his life together, was someone trying to rip it apart?

It was a good question and one that he’d asked himself many times since Tracy ’s shooting.

Out of everything Harvath had mastered in his life, relationships with women wasn’t one of them. For a long time, he blamed his occupation and the demands his career placed on him. But when he met Tracy, he swore he wouldn’t let his job be an excuse for another failed relationship.

He also blamed his commitment phobia on the stress his father’s career had placed on his mother. In truth, though, they’d had an excellent marriage in spite of his dangerous profession and the all-too-frequent occasions when he had to disappear for weeks, sometimes even months at a time.

Finally, one night as Tracy lay sleeping next to him, Harvath looked deep inside himself for a reason-the real reason he had used to push every good woman who had ever come into his life away from him.

He saw the face of Meg Cassidy hover before his mind’s eye. As with Tracy, they had met under extraordinary circumstances. In Meg’s case it had been a hijacking. Afterward, they’d been assigned to an incredibly difficult operation. For all intents and purposes they should have been perfect together-maybe even as perfect as he and Tracy were. But things just hadn’t worked out. She was an incredible woman and someone Harvath regretted deeply having lost.

Nonetheless, it was an odd image to fixate on. Meg had moved on with her life. She had met someone new and was going to marry him soon.

His mind then went to a very dark corner that he usually worked hard to stay away from. He was in the right place. He knew it by the gut-wrenching feeling he experienced as he began to explore one of the darkest days of his life.

It was his second assignment with SEAL Team Two. They’d been sent into Finland in the middle of one of the worst winters on record. The blinding wind-driven snow made it nearly impossible to see or hear anything. His team split up into pairs as they closed in on their target.

Somehow, the men they were hunting had turned the tables and had snuck up on them from behind. How they knew that the SEAL team was there, Harvath never could determine.

By the time the confrontation was over, he had taken a round through the shoulder and his dead teammate had taken one through the head.

Though he managed to take out all the shooters, he found little satisfaction in it. The guilt he carried was immense. His teammate had a wife and two little kids.

Harvath had insisted that he be the one to inform the man’s wife. Though she’d been a good, strong Navy spouse, the look on her face when she got the news broke Harvath’s heart wide open. He vowed to never cause another wife that kind of pain ever again.

For years Harvath thought that meant making sure all of his men came back alive. It was a noble goal, but in their line of work people sometimes died. It was the biggest downside to what they did for a living. It was also one of the reasons that Harvath preferred working alone whenever he could.

Lying there next to Tracy, Harvath had finally understood why he’d pushed all the good women from his life. And at that moment he made a new vow to himself. If Tracy turned out to be the one for him, he would never let her go.