The bright side of everything, if you wanted to call it that, was that if he decided to go through with leaving government service, he was not at a loss for job offers from the private sector. In fact there was one job in particular Harvath was thinking very seriously about taking-an instructor position with a world-renowned tactical training center in Colorado called Valhalla. What haunted him, though, was the fear that once he entered the private sector he would no longer be able to look in the mirror and still consider himself a patriot.

That said, it was still a decision he had to make and he knew that it would undoubtedly weigh heavily on his mind over the upcoming holiday weekend.

Rounding a bend in the otherwise deserted country lane, Harvath’s attention was drawn to more pressing matters as his vehicle was met by a police roadblock.

A smile began to metastasize across Sayed Jamal’s face. The terrorist clearly saw his salvation at hand. No matter who Scot Harvath was and what American agency he worked for, he could not legally take him from Canada against his will. This was about to end up very badly for the United States. The American had been a fool to ever remove him from the trunk. Had he left him there, the man very likely could have driven straight across the border without ever being searched. Sayed knew that it was only a matter of moments now before he would be free and then he would tell every reporter he could find about his terrible ordeal at the hands of the imperialist Americans.

Slowly approaching the roadblock, Harvath kept his cool.

“Can I see your license and registration, please?” asked a machine gun-toting officer in a Royal Canadian Mounted Police uniform when Harvath rolled down his window.

Harvath made a show of patting his pockets and replied, “I was so excited about coming to Canada I must have forgotten to bring them.”

The officer looked around the vehicle and then said, “We get that a lot. Who is your passenger?”

“Help me!” screamed Jamal, sensing this was the only chance he was going to get at freedom. “I have been taken against my-” he continued, but was cut off when Harvath slammed his elbow into the man’s mouth.

“Don’t mind him,” said Harvath, well aware that the Royal Mounted Police not only didn’t carry machine guns, but also didn’t patrol Canada’s borders. “He’s just a little moody. It’s his time of the month.”

“Yeah,” replied the officer. “I can see the tampons.”

“I think he’s just nervous about crossing into the States.”

“I would be too,” said the CSIS agent posing as a Mountie. He then waved for the roadblock vehicles to clear the road and added, “Especially if I’d been responsible for killing and wounding all those American military personnel.”

Jamal’s bloodied face went pale. The Canadians were in on it.

“We just wanted to make sure you got your man,” said the agent. “Anything else about the operation we should know?”

“You’ll want a team to sweep his apartment. He’s got a lot of bombmaking materials in there, but other than that, it was pretty smooth.”

“Okay, then,” said the man as he tapped the roof of Harvath’s car. “Thank you for visiting Canada. Have a safe trip home.”

“We will,” said Harvath, smiling and giving a little wave as he drove away.

Two kilometers later they came to a small clearing, and Harvath exited the car. Checking their GPS coordinates on his Suunto, he activated the preplanned-route feature, grabbed the Styrofoam cooler from the backseat, and pulled Jamal out of the vehicle, shoving him toward the woods.

Less than half a klick in, they heard a branch snap and Harvath knew they weren’t alone. As he looked over his left shoulder, he saw a small team of heavily armed men decked out in digital camouflage materialize from among the trees.

“Welcome to the United States,” said one of the men. “Do you have anything to declare?”

“Yes I do,” replied Harvath as he offered up Jamal and the cooler with the frozen laptop. “ Canada ’s a fabulous country. Great beer, great people, and they have just started a wonderful terrorist lending program.”

The team drove Harvath and Jamal out of the woods to the small town of Rouses Point, New York, where the operation had kicked off and where Harvath’s car was waiting.

After a short debrief, a man named Mike Jaffe, who was the lead Joint Terrorism Task Force agent, asked, “So where to now? You going back to DC for the Fourth of July weekend?”

Harvath shook his head. “I’m stopping in New York City to see an old friend who just got back from Afghanistan.”

The man smiled and asked, “Where are you going to watch the fireworks from?”

“Probably a bar stool.”

“You gotta be kidding me,” said Jaffe, the pronounced New York accent unmistakable in his voice. “Let me tell you something. The best place to watch them is in Brooklyn on Furman Avenue between Atlantic and Cadman Plaza.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“And if you’re hungry afterwards, go to Lundy Brothers on Emmons Avenue for a real bowl of New York red. Don’t miss their egg cream either. They throw in a pretzel for a swizzle stick.”

Harvath laughed and shook his head. He had no idea what a bowl of New York red was, much less why it was important that he search out a “real” one. And he’d never had an egg cream in his life. But that was New Yorkers for you. The sun rose and set by their city. Anyplace else in the world was only second best.

“You getting all this?” asked the intense, silver-haired Jaffe, sensing Harvath’s mind was wandering. “Or do you want me to write it down for you?”

“I think I got it,” replied Harvath. “What about you guys? A weekend in the Catskills before running our pal down to sunny Guantánamo Bay?”

Jaffe laughed. “Actually, we were thinking about stapling all of his indictments to him and stringing him up outside Fort Drum. We figured we could sell tickets at a buck a whack and tell the soldiers he was a Muslim piñata.”

Harvath liked the JTTF agent’s sense of humor. “You’d probably make a fortune,” he responded, knowing that New York ’s Fort Drum was the home of the 10th Mountain Division Light Infantry and that they’d lost more than their fair share of people in Iraq, especially to IEDs.

“But unfortunately, we don’t have time for that,” replied Jaffe. “The Bureau wants him down at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan today for his initial processing. After that, though, he’ll be somebody else’s problem.”

Harvath didn’t envy the people who would have to spend the holiday weekend away from their families and friends while they interrogated Sayed Jamal, but that was how the business worked and Harvath knew it all too well. America couldn’t afford to take a day off from its fight on terrorism, not even on the anniversary of its independence. The bad guys were always working;always probing for another soft spot they could exploit, and America had to remain one step ahead.

As Harvath watched Jaffe walk away to join his men, he lamented the immutable fact that no matter how hard it tried, the United States would never be able to be on top of everything. This time, just like so many times before, they’d gotten lucky. That was it. Though they’d pulled a rather big player off the field, there were innumerable second-stringers standing in the shadows ready to take his place.

For all of the setbacks the enemy had supposedly suffered, their roster of fresh bodies seemed to roll on without end.

And the one unspoken truth that every American involved in the war on terror knew was that it wasn’t a matter of if the terrorists would hit us again, it was only a matter of when.

Harvath prayed that he would never see that day, because he knew that when it came, it would make 9/11 look like choir practice.