Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

M ONDAY

F LIGHT 337

K RAKóW TO O SLO

Scot Harvath hadn't thought twice about splurging on a first-class ticket. He'd been through hell.

After fighting his way into an active war zone in Ukraine, rescuing an American hostage from behind enemy lines, and fighting his way back out, all he wanted was a nice, long chunk of uninterrupted recovery time. The more luxurious, the better. He had earned it.

Boarding his flight to Norway, he'd been accompanied to his seat by a flight attendant who asked what she could bring her handsome passenger before takeoff. His answer—three Ziplocs packed full of ice and a glass of bourbon.

He'd had the shit kicked out of him and could feel it from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. His body was tattooed with bruises, his left shoulder felt like somebody had driven an ice pick through it, and his ears were still ringing. He probably needed to see a doctor.

Making himself as comfortable as possible, he placed the bags of ice where he had the most pain and then sipped his drink while the rest of the passengers boarded.

He hadn't told anyone back at the Carlton Group where he was going. It wasn't any of their business. If the world suddenly caught fire over the next week, he was content to let it burn. For the time being, he was out of the spy business.

Closing his eyes, he envisioned what awaited him in Norway.

S?lvi Kolstad had appeared at the lowest moment in his life and had given him a reason to live, something he hadn't imagined would ever again be possible.

They were two shattered vessels—he broken by the murder of his wife, she abandoned by her husband because she couldn't bear children. Yet what had felt like the end was actually the beginning, a form of kintsugi, the Japanese art of putting pieces of pottery back together with gold. They had merged their flaws, their loneliness, and their pain to create something beautiful, something stronger. And despite their age difference, with S?lvi several years his junior, they shared a lot in common.

Harvath had been a U.S. Navy SEAL, first with the cold-weather specialists of SEAL Team Two, and then with the storied SEAL Team Six. S?lvi had also served with an elite Special Forces unit—Norway's all-female Jegertroppen. Both of them had eventually wound up in the espionage game.

Like him, she was a highly skilled operative and had made an exceptionally good spy. In fact, Harvath was willing to admit that she was smarter and even better at it than he was. His only advantage over her was that he had been at it for longer.

Unlike him, however, when a plum leadership position had become available inside the Norwegian Intelligence Service, she had jumped at the chance.

Promoted to deputy director status, S?lvi had been placed in charge of a top-secret program critical to Norway's survival. If the Russians ever overran their shared border, her covert unit was responsible for standing up a shadow intelligence service.

She loved her new job. Her career was taking off and her future was filled with nothing but possibility.

Harvath, on the other hand, couldn't bear the thought of ever coming out of the field only to ride a desk. He had been handpicked by the Carlton Group's founder to run the organization after his passing, but had repeatedly turned the position down.

It wasn't just the corporate bullshit and office politics he couldn't stand—it was the fact that hanging up his cleats would mean that he had aged out. And as far as he was concerned, he wasn't there yet. He could still do his job better than any of the younger operatives.

Did it require increasingly tougher workouts and a mix of performance-enhancing drugs in order to keep his edge? Sure, but in his world, there was no Marquess of Queensberry, no rulebook.

In fact, the Carlton Group had been created to level the playing field. It was a private intelligence agency—operating beyond the gaze of Congress—empowered to hunt down enemies of the United States who refused to respect the international order.

The idea was that if bad actors were going to choose to ignore the Geneva and Hague Conventions, then America needed a way to defend itself. Fighting with both your arms and legs tied behind your back wasn't a winning strategy. That's where Harvath came in.

The powers that be could let him off the chain, look in the other direction, and know that the job would get done.

It wasn't a calling for a sadist or a maladjusted personality. You couldn't have someone in the role who took pleasure in inflicting pain on others or who enjoyed breaking the rules simply for the sake of breaking them. The position required a person with a strong moral compass who only broke the rules when necessary. That was Harvath.

He lived by the SEAL maxims that the only easy day was yesterday and that when tasked with an assignment, success was the only option.

His personal motto was that there was no American dream without those willing to protect it.

More and more, however, he had begun to ask himself what his American dream looked like. Once he was ready to lay down his sword and remove his armor, what would life be like? What was there for him to look forward to?

The obvious answer, as the plane pushed back from the gate and taxied out to the runway, was S?lvi. Over oysters, a fabulous bottle of champagne, and a terrific view of the Oslofjord, he had proposed and she had accepted.

Yes, things had moved fast. But having known excruciating heartbreak, neither of them wanted to risk letting something so good slip away.

Since her job required that she work at NIS headquarters in person, he had spent the summer with her, burning through all of his vacation and sick days. It wasn't until the Carlton Group had threatened to fire him that he had gotten serious about returning to work himself. And no sooner had he made that decision than his operations tempo had been pushed into overdrive.

Assignment after assignment rained down. In less than two months, he had been to Tajikistan, Afghanistan, India, Romania, Poland, and Ukraine. During that time, he had been unable to see S?lvi. And therein lay the biggest problem in their relationship—the intense demands of their careers. Something had to give.

Right now, though, he didn't want to think about it. All he wanted was to see her, to touch her, to quiet their busy lives long enough to reconnect and reassure each other that they were doing the right thing and that what they had was worth making any sacrifice for.

As the plane roared down the runway, Harvath felt the familiar feeling of the stress leaving his body. It was like this every time he finished an assignment. Lifting off instantly helped him relax.

Within minutes, his exhaustion overcame him and he fell into a dark, dreamless sleep. But it didn't last.

About an hour later, somewhere over the Baltic Sea, he was jolted awake by the sound of screaming coming from the rear of the aircraft.