Finney was speechless. He was familiar with the story, but not in such detail.

“We never knew exactly who was responsible, so aside from a few shells we lobbed at Syria, there never was any concrete response,” stated Harvath. “Now fast forward to about five years ago and a man named Asef Khashan.

“Khashan was extremely adept at guerilla warfare and the use of high explosives courtesy of training he had received from Syrian intelligence.

“He was a driving force within the Lebanon-based Hezbollah terrorist organization and reported directly to Damascus. When the United States uncovered information that Khashan had been directly involved in the planning and staging of the 1983 bombing, it was decided it was time for him to take an early retirement.”

Parker looked at Harvath from across the table and said, “And you were sent in to give him his pink slip.”

Harvath nodded.

Finney unclasped his hands and removed the pen he had tucked behind his ear. Pointing at the screen in the front of the room he said, “So this guy Najib is after you for what you did to Khashan?”

“If I’m right,” said Harvath, “then sort of.”

“What do you mean sort of?”

“The actual connection between Najib and Khashan is via their handler, Tammam Al-Tal. Khashan was one of his best operatives. Some say that he was like a son to Al-Tal. When Khashan was killed, Al-Tal placed a bounty on my head.”

“If this was a covert operation, how’d he know you were involved?”

“We used a Syrian military officer the U. S. had on its payroll to help track down Khashan,” replied Harvath. “I never gave him my real name, but he had compiled a dossier on me with surveillance photos and other pieces of information from our meetings. When he was indicted for embezzlement not long after, he tried to use the dossier as a bargaining chip. The dossier eventually made its way to Al-Tal, who used all of his resources to connect a name to my photos. The rest is history.”

“Did Al-Tal have anything to do with the attack?” asked Parker.

“We could never uncover enough evidence to prove whether he was directly involved. There is a mounting pile of evidence, though, that Al-Tal has been helping coordinate the sell-off of the weapons of mass destruction Saddam Hussein stashed in their country shortly before we invaded.”

“How much is the bounty he put on you?”

“Somewhere around $150,000 U.S.,” answered Harvath. “Allegedly, it represents the bulk of Al-Tal’s life savings, and due to his willingness to expend said life savings to fund my demise, the powers that be in Washington removed Syria and Lebanon from my area of operations.”

“It would seem that we’ve got more than enough to believe that Al-Tal is behind the attacks on Tracy, your mom, and the ski team,” said Finney. “Do you have any idea where he is?”

“He’s undergoing treatments in Jordan for stage-four lung cancer.”

“With the end drawing near,” stated Parker, “he’s probably even more determined to take you out.”

Harvath tilted his head in response as if to say, Maybe.

“But what does Najib’s alias have to do with Al-Tal?”

Harvath looked across the table at Parker. “Abdel Rafiq Suleiman was the alias Khashan was using when I tracked him down to a Hezbollah safe house just outside Beirut.”

“So?”

“Al-Tal had given Khashan that alias.”

“It’s not uncommon for aliases to be recycled,” offered Morgan. “In some instances, a lot of time and money goes into building them. If a previous operative wasn’t too high profile, an agency or a handler might decide to pass the alias on to another operative.”

At that moment, Harvath knew exactly how he was going to take down Abdel Salam Najib.

He was going to make his handler give him up on a silver platter.

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

Mark Sheppard had returned home with the makings of an absolute bombshell. Mac Mangan, the Charleston County SWAT team leader, had turned out to be a better resource than he ever could have imagined.

Though Mangan had asked that their discussion after the tape recorder was turned off be “off the record,” Sheppard knew there would be no story without it. It had taken him a major chunk of the afternoon, but he had finally gotten the SWAT team leader to agree to be quoted as an anonymous source.

Something was very wrong about that shooting, and Mangan had no desire to increase his complicity in it any further than he already had. The fact that a reporter from the Baltimore Sun had come all the way down to Charleston to talk to him about it told him he needed to start making things right.

Sheppard listened as the SWAT team leader recounted the events surrounding the takedown. It had all supposedly been coordinated via the FBI in D. C. But no one from the FBI’s Columbia, South Carolina, field office had been involved. The two agents who arrived to work with the SWAT team explained that the Columbia office was being purposely shut out. There was a concern that their fugitive had access to a person inside, and pending a full internal investigation, Charleston law enforcement was supposed to remain mum on the Bureau’s involvement in this takedown.

Sheppard had asked Mangan to describe the two FBI agents who had magically shown up from out of town with information leading to the subject’s location. They were the same men whom Tom Gosse had seen take the body from the ME’s office in Baltimore and who had threatened Frank Aposhian. The SWAT leader had described them to a tee, right down to the names they were using-Stan Weston and Joe Maxwell.

The “agents” were very convincing. They were polite, professional, and had all the right credentials. What’s more, they had come to apprehend a criminal who had threatened to kill a bunch of kids and whom the whole state was anxious to see brought to justice.

Mangan and his Charleston County SWAT team were called out, but were relegated to providing cover as Weston and Maxwell took the lead. The pair claimed they wanted to talk to the suspect in hopes of bringing him out alive. Shortly after they entered the house where he was holed up a brief, but fierce gun battle ensued.

Before the smoke had even cleared, Maxwell was at the door letting Mangan and his men know that the suspect had been killed and that they were going to need a meat wagon.

As the lead tactical officer on site, Mangan approached the house to survey the scene for his after-action report. Weston met him at the threshold and bodily blocked his entrance. The agent stated that he and his partner needed to collect evidence and that until they were done, the fewer people trampling the crime scene the better. Mangan didn’t like it. These guys were being a little too overprotective, and he made his feelings known loudly enough that Maxwell came to the door and told Weston to let the SWAT leader inside.

The first thing he wanted to look at was the corpse. It was in a back bedroom, a machine pistol still clasped in his hand and a sawed-off shotgun lying on the floor next to him. As Mangan studied the body, something struck him as funny. In spite of all the bullet wounds the subject had suffered, he wasn’t bleeding very much.

As Mangan bent for a closer look, Agent Weston swooped in and said he needed him to back up so he could get on with his job. Regardless of the voice in the back of his head telling him he had every right to examine the corpse, Mangan did as he was told.

Moments later, Agent Maxwell gently hooked him under the elbow and led him back toward the front of the house. As they walked, Maxwell explained that the FBI had decided to give the Charleston County SWAT team credit for the takedown. This had been a local problem and the citizens of South Carolina would feel much better knowing their own people had put this dirtbag out of commission.