Full Black - Brad Thor [38]
He’d felt chemistry the moment he met her. He thought she might have felt it, too, but he couldn’t be sure. She was very hard to read. He didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
All he knew was that he thought about her entirely too much. He didn’t like that. It meant that something was going on that he couldn’t control, and Harvath was all about control. It was one of those traits that had interfered with his ability to be a proper team player.
He had avoided bringing another Athena Project member on the assignment because he had wanted her to himself, so to speak. He didn’t want to share her. It was stupid, but if given a mulligan he knew he’d do it the same way again.
Harvath was not only exceedingly good at what he did, he was also a fun guy to be around. Nevertheless, the landscape of his personal life was like a tropical beach scattered with the wreckage of broken relationships. As long as you looked at the sand closest to you, it looked pretty good, but the further you glanced down the beach, the more you realized there had to be something out there, just beneath the surface of the water, to have wrecked all those ships.
There was certainly a reef out there, but it was only recently that he had begun to understand what it was made of. The razor-sharp coral that gashed the hull of anyone who got too close to him was in part due to his career. There were very few people whom he could tell exactly what he did. And even fewer who could tolerate his frequent and often unannounced absences.
Like a double helix, the DNA of Harvath’s career was entwined with something else—his desire for a family and a stable home life.
The biggest thing people in Harvath’s industry had in common was divorce. Disappearing at a moment’s notice to go off to some of the darkest corners of the world to do dangerous and unspeakable things wasn’t exactly the fertile soil in which happy families grew. You missed anniversaries, birthday parties, holidays, soccer games, school plays, parent–teacher conferences, and on and on. It took an amazingly resilient and unique spouse not only to put up with it, but to keep the family strong and together.
Though Harvath knew a woman like that was next to impossible to find, he specialized in the impossible, and refused to give up looking.
The Old Man must have sensed Harvath’s interest in Riley Turner, because he had been reluctant to okay her for this operation. Though Harvath had worked with her once before, his desire to learn more about her had tipped his hand. Nevertheless, Carlton had given in and allowed her to be part of the Uppsala operation. There were no other Athena operatives with her medical skill set. He hadn’t needed to overtly remind Harvath to keep it professional. His tone when okaying Riley’s participation had said it all.
While he had sons of his own, none of them had gone into his line of work, and the Old Man felt a special affinity for Harvath. That said, he knew Harvath had lost his own father, also a SEAL, just after high school, and he wasn’t above manipulating the father-son bond they had developed. It often proved the key to getting through Harvath’s headstrong personality and making sure he did the right thing. He suspected something might be materializing between Riley and his operative, but Carlton knew there was little he could do about it. Much like a parent, employers also had to trust that the people they task with difficult jobs will do the right thing and put the successful outcome of the assignment above everything else.
And that’s exactly what Harvath did. He had kept things professional, right up until he was ready to leave to join the assault team in Uppsala.
After placing all his gear into his car, he walked back into the barn. Bachmann had helped Riley wrap Mansoor