Full Black by Brad Thor Read Free Book Online

that had slipped through might have been much worse had Harvath not acted, people had still been killed—lots of people. This knowledge followed Harvath like a diseased crow sitting on his shoulder.
    The only way to disrupt the enemy, and beat them so far back that they couldn’t attack, was to relentlessly hunt them down like the animals they were and unceasingly take the fight to them. That meant the gloves were off. It also meant that certain operations had to be kept secret from grandstanding politicians who would sooner bare America’s throat before the pack of wolves outside its door, than summon the fortitude to do the hard work necessary to ensure America’s survival.
    Though Harvath couldn’t pinpoint exactly when it had happened, at some point in the last seventy-or-so years, the political class had become completely disconnected from reality. It was a malady that struck equally on both sides of the aisle. It was evident in every single thing Washington, D.C., did, from its profligate spending, to granting terrorists greater rights and protections than CIA and military interrogators.
    Harvath knew what a chilling effect the threat of litigation had created throughout the ranks of American interrogators. It made little difference that the interrogators had gotten real intelligence that had saved lives.
    Only a select few of the decent politicians remaining in Washington understood what had to be done and supported it. If the rest of the pols, though, discovered even a fraction of what Harvath had done, he had no doubt they’d drag him to the public pillory and follow that up with a crucifixion upon the Capitol steps with all the media present.
    Harvath didn’t care very much and he worried about it even less. First they would have to catch him. Then they would have to prove it. He had no intention of ever allowing either of those things to happen.
    In fact, as Harvath opened the weathered barn doors to interrogate his prisoner, consequences were the furthest thing from his mind.

CHAPTER 9

     
    T hough no longer part of a working farm, the barn still retained the musty smell of raw earth and animal dung. It was exactly the kind of sensory input a man like Mansoor Aleem would find offensive.
    Harvath made a loud show of closing and locking the wide doors behind him as he entered. In the center of the barn, the young jihadist was tied to a wooden chair taken from the farmhouse kitchen. A hood had been placed over his head before they had pulled away from the accident scene.
    Though Mansoor had been an unknown up until quite recently, it wasn’t hard to work up a profile on him. In fact, by the very nature of what he did, it was quite easy to understand how he thought and thereby select the best approach for his interrogation.
    As far as the real world was concerned, the young jihadist was a loser. He was unremarkable in almost every way. With a poor complexion, unappealing features, and a pair of eyes that bulged just enough to suggest he might have a thyroid condition, he was considerably unattractive. He was too skinny and therefore unimpressive physically. Beyond the bulging eyes, he fit the cyber jihadi/hacker mold to a T.
    While he was nothing in the real world, in the digital world he could very well be the heat. He might woo the women in the chat rooms as if he were Don Juan incarnate, but he’d never have the courage to approach a member of the opposite sex in the flesh. Cyber-geeks like Mansoor were all about control; the control of information. It was the only thing they could have power over. Without it, they were impotent. When you placed them in a situation where they were devoid of any authority, or more precisely devoid of any control, it was tremendously unsettling for them.
    They were also completely visual. Depriving them of the ability to see tipped them off-balance and made them more pliant to interrogation.
    Harvath knew that the young man would still be in shock over what had happened in