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toward his house, he saw two blacked-out Suburbans parked in his driveway. Either Nicholas had someone watching his house, or he had access to real-time satellite imagery. Knowing the little man’s skills, he suspected it was the latter.
    A small contingent of hard men in crisp suits with earpieces stood near the vehicles, their heads on swivels. They definitely hadn’t come to sell Girl Scout cookies. Harvath wished he’d taken his .45 down to the dock with him.
    As he watched, one of the men spoke into a microphone at his sleeve. When the passenger door of the second vehicle opened, Reed Carlton stepped out and Harvath relaxed.
    He was a tall, fit man in his mid-sixties with a prominent chin and silver hair.
    “You really should call first, Reed,” said Harvath as he slipped from behind the tree line and took Carlton’s security team by surprise.
    “Sorry about that,” said the Old Man as Harvath met him in the drivewayand the two shook hands. “Something has come up. Can we talk inside?”
    “As long as you’re okay with casual Monday,” replied Harvath, referring to his shorts-and-no-shirt look.
    The older man nodded and followed him inside. After pulling a shirt from the hall closet and putting it on, Harvath directed his new boss to the kitchen.
    “Coffee?” he asked.
    “Please,” said Reed as he sat down at the kitchen table and placed his briefcase next to him. “I understand Iraq was a success.”
    “Not for the little boy who died.”
    “I was sorry to hear about that.”
    Harvath didn’t reply. He kept his back to the man, pulled two large mugs out of the cupboard, and set them on the counter.
    “I haven’t read your full debrief yet,” continued Carlton. “Did you go through with the whole thing?”
    There was silence, and the Old Man waited. Finally, Harvath said, “All of it.”
    While Carlton was a master at psychological operations, this assignment had been Harvath’s from start to finish. He had dubbed it Paradise Lost . The idea was to shake any other al-Qaeda cells who might be considering the kidnapping and torture of children. Upon each terrorist body at the safe house was left a black envelope. Inside the envelope was a detailed account, in Arabic, of horrible things supposedly done to the men before they had been killed. Placed into the mouth of each terrorist had been a pickled pig’s foot from a jar that Harvath had brought with him from the U.S.
    The idea of the notes in the black envelopes was to send a message to all of the other terrorists preying on children in Iraq. They would not die martyrs’ deaths. They would not go to Paradise. They would be defiled before their god. They would be unclean and unworthy. And to make sure the point was driven home, the pickled pigs’ feet were placed into the mouth of each of the corpses.
    It was a derivative of the Colombian necktie, and Harvath was confident word of it would spread quickly, its meaning clear.
    Carlton changed the subject. “You heard about Rome?”
    Harvath filled the coffee cups and brought them to the table where he sat down. “I did. Twenty American college students.”
    “Plus their teacher, the bus driver, and eleven others who had the misfortune of being near that bus when it detonated at the Colosseum. Current count has over forty wounded.”
    He shook his head. “Do we have any leads?”
    Reaching into his briefcase Carlton withdrew a folder. “The Italians are investigating a rumor about four Muslim men trying to purchase military-grade explosives in Sicily. The same kind used in the attack in Rome.”
    Sicily could mean only one thing. “They think the Mafia’s involved?”
    “That’s what they thought at first. And considering the fact that the Cosa Nostra did over two billion dollars in illicit-weapons trafficking last year, it makes sense to start with them.”
    “So there’s a connection?”
    Carlton shook his head. “From what they’ve uncovered, the Mafia was happy to sell the suspects