by Brad Thor
“There’s another one of those landscaping trucks stuck in traffic the other way.”
“Where?”
“We just passed it.”
“Boy, would I like to have a piece of that action. Their trucks are everywhere.”
“And at this time of year they must be making a killing.”
Moments later, an enormous explosion detonated behind them. The girls screamed as the windows shattered and Marcy lost control of the SUV. There was the horrible, wrenching sound of metal on metal, followed by a deafening crash as everything went black.
Thirteen
LAKE GENEVA, WISCONSIN
Jack Rutledge had always been of the mind that pilots and presidents shouldn’t be seen drinking; at least not in the afternoon. There was something too unnerving about it. So even though he would have enjoyed a nice vodka and tonic right about now, and despite the fact that he was technically on vacation, he stuck to his Arnold Palmers.
As he sipped his half lemonade, half iced tea, he reflected that there were few places in the United States he enjoyed as much as Lake Geneva. He couldn’t understand why he hadn’t discovered it sooner. His old college roommate, Rodger Cummings, a successful real estate developer from Chicago, had bought a home here three years ago and already the president had been to visit six times. It had been his retreat during the rigorous campaign—the place he came for a day or two of rest to get away from it all, and continued to be his preferred getaway; more so than even Camp David.
The area was referred to as the Hamptons of the Midwest and though it was an extremely beautiful place to visit in the summer, the president found that there really was no bad time to visit.
His love of Lake Geneva was a bit ironic as just across the lake from where he now stood was the home of the deceased industrialist, Donald Fawcett, who had orchestrated his kidnap several years ago. It was also the home in which two United States senators who had conspired with Fawcett had met a very grisly end.
Watching the sailboats and assorted pleasure craft crisscrossing the lake, the president was glad he’d taken his old roommate up on his most recent invitation. There was something instantly soothing about arriving here. The lake seemed to have a profound effect on him and allowed him to put the cares and concerns of being the leader of the free world on hold as he focused simply on being Jack Rutledge the man.
He had brought along a stack of novels that he couldn’t wait to dive into. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t be able to do that until tomorrow, after the daily presidential briefing that happened every morning, no matter where in the world he was. Right now, though, he had to “sing” for his supper, as his old friend had put it. It was just a small gathering. Only about fifty people, many of whom, thanks to Cummings’s fundraising prowess, had been major contributors to his recent presidential campaign. Cocktails and light hors d’oeuvres and then he was off the hook. Then he could really relax for the next three days.
The only thing that would have made the holiday weekend perfect was if his daughter Amanda had been there with him, but it was summertime, she was growing up, and she had friends of her own.
Knowing the president would be tired, Rodger had been kind enough to start the party early. The brilliant white pier in front of the large house, which had once belonged to an Illinois railroad tycoon, jutted out into the warm, spring-fed waters of the lake. It had been tastefully decorated by Mrs. Cummings with fresh flowers, potted palms, and small wicker lanterns. The guests stood talking on the end of the pier near a group of bright blue Adirondack chairs as well as on the expansive aft deck of the estate’s magnificent sixty-foot 1915 steamship, the Jolly Rodger.
Rutledge made it a point to invite Meg Cassidy, who was also a Chicago resident and Lake Geneva homeowner, to the estate whenever he came to town. Meg had done a particularly significant service to her country when, as a civilian, she had agreed to help track down one of the world’s most dangerous terrorists. Without her ability to ID the faceless terrorist, the United States might never have stopped him.
Meg brought along her new fiancé, and while he seemed a decent enough man, he definitely didn’t have the charisma of Scot Harvath. The president had always been sorry that the two of them hadn’t been able to work things out. They still seemed perfectly suited for each other, but with the demands of both of their careers, he also saw that their breakup just might have been inevitable.
The trio was enjoying a pleasant conversation when the head of the president’s security detail, Carolyn Leonard, discreetly approached. She apologized for the interruption and then whispered into the president’s ear. Immediately, Rutledge’s entire body stiffened.
“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking first Meg’s hand and then her fiancé’s. “A situation has come up and I have to leave.”
“I hope it’s not serious,” said Meg, but the president had already been joined by several more agents from his Secret Service detail and was being escorted off the Jolly Rodger.
“What’s going on, Carolyn?” asked Rutledge as he looked over and saw the wet-suited SEAL Team that augmented his maritime activities surface with their weapons at the ready.
“New York has been hit,” replied Leonard.
“What do you mean, hit?”
“I have very few details at this point, Mr. President. I think it would be better if your own people briefed you on that once we’re in the air.”
Rutledge didn’t want to wait until they were in the air. He wanted answers now, especially considering the fact that his daughter was spending the holiday weekend with friends on Long Island. But as he turned to put the question of Amanda’s well-being to his chief Secret Service agent, the rotors of his rapidly approaching helicopter quickly made talking impossible.
Fourteen
NEW YORK CITY
With traffic at an absolute standstill, Harvath threw twenty bucks onto the front seat of the cab, and he and Bob jumped out.
According to Herrington, they were only about six blocks away from the VA, and so they decided to make that their destination.
In every bar and restaurant they ran past, people were glued to the televisions and scenes of the devastating explosion on the Queensboro Bridge.
When they arrived at the VA, the lobby was in chaos. Everyone, including the VA police, was huddled around the television sets. Bob led Harvath through the crowd and upstairs to the office of Dr. Sam Hardy. Hardy was in his late forties, tall and fit. He was balding and had a look in his eyes that suggested he’d been around the block more than a few times.
Hardy looked up from the TV set on his desk when Harvath and Herrington entered and said to Bob, “It looks like multiple attacks.”
“Multiple?” asked Harvath as Bob introduced him to Dr. Hardy. “We just heard about the Queensboro Bridge. There have been more?”
Hardy nodded his head. “The reports are just starting to come in, but it looks like all of the bridges and all of the tunnels into and out of Manhattan have been hit.”
Harvath was at a loss for words. He stood there with his mouth agape as they watched the television on Hardy’s desk. Finally, he stated, “I guess now maybe we know why they wanted to draw off the tactical teams.”
“And why they wanted to take out the Emergency Operations Center,” added Bob as he turned to Hardy and asked, “Have you heard from anybody else?”
“No,” replied Hardy, “but I think they’ll start showing up here real soon.”
“Who are you talking about?” Harvath asked.
Herrington ignored him and said to Hardy, “Can I borrow your keycard?”
“What for?”
“I want to take Scot up to the roof and get a look at what’s going on.”
“I’ll go with you,” said the doctor. “I want to get a look too. Let me just leave a note in case anyone comes by while we’re up there.”
Up on the roof, they could see enormous clouds of smoke coming from the direction of the Queensboro as well as several other points around
the city. Down on the street, people were in a panic, many of them sprinting down 23rd Street toward the East River, presumably so that they could get a better view of what had happened to the Queensboro and Williamsburg bridges.
For what seemed like an eternity, no one on the roof spoke. They were dumbfounded as they stood there taking in the horror and devastation.
“Bridges and tunnels,” Harvath finally said, “and at the beginning of one of our busiest holiday weekends. How many dead are we going to be looking at? Thousands? Tens of thousands?”
“At least,” replied Dr. Hardy, shaking his head. “At least.”
As they stood taking it in, not one of them needed to draw the parallel to that warm September morning in 2001 when a handful of hijackers brought the Twin Towers crashing to the ground. They were all feeling the same thing—the fear, the confusion, and finally the bitter anger that the enemies of America had once again been able to rain such death and destruction down on so many innocent people.
“Al-Qaeda,” Bob said, almost beneath his breath.
Harvath knew he was right. The attacks had al-Qaeda’s fingerprints all over them. Distract and then flank with multiple coordinated attacks. It was ripped right from their playbook. Harvath’s thoughts of leaving government service and going into the private sector suddenly seemed much less pressing. What he wanted at this point more than anything else was justice—a shot to get even, and he knew that Bob Herrington felt exactly the same way.
As they stood watching plumes of gray-black smoke twist into the late afternoon sky, the roof door slammed open and three figures emerged. They were just as Bob had described them in his e-mails and Harvath had no problem recognizing them.
“Are you all okay?” asked Hardy as the newcomers approached.
“They hit everything!” exclaimed Paul Morgan, a dark-haired, twenty-four-year-old who stood about five feet eleven. His preppy outfit of neatly pressed khakis and a crisp linen shirt stood in sharp contrast to the heavy Bronx accent he had grown up with. When Morgan said the word everything, it came out ever-ree-ting. “Every bridge and every tunnel, doc. They nailed them all.”
“We don’t know exactly what they’ve hit, Paul. Let’s just calm down here,” replied Hardy.
“Morgan’s right, Doc,” said Tracy Hastings, a twenty-six-year-old woman whose blond hair was braided into two pigtails. It was a look Harvath had always liked. Pigtails were for little girls, but when big girls wore them there was something sexy as hell about it. And just as Bob had said, Hastings was in incredible shape. She was obsessed with working out and she had sculpted her five-foot-seven-inch frame into a work of art. Normally, Harvath was not drawn to women who were as buff or maybe even more so than he was, but there was something very attractive about her that he just couldn’t put his finger on. Tracy must have noticed Harvath looking her over because she turned her face away as she continued, “It’s all over the TV. They hit every bridge and every tunnel—some of them more than once.”
“Redundancy,” added Rick Cates, the third and final member of their party. He stood at least six feet three inches tall, with dark eyes, a shaved head and a T-shirt that read Guns don’t kill people. I kill people. “This is the exact attack we’ve all been talking about,” he added with a look on his face that mirrored the mix of rage and frustration that they were all feeling.
Hardy tried to calm them down. “We don’t know what’s going on, so let’s just take a deep breath, okay?”
“Every bridge into and out of Manhattan has been blown,” insisted Hastings, “and you want us to just calm down?”
“Yes,” replied Hardy. “Everybody just stop a second.”
Harvath didn’t understand what the doctor’s connection with them was, but they all seemed to listen to him, including Herrington. After the moment of forced silence, Hardy formally introduced Corporal Paul Morgan, United States Marine Corps; Lieutenant Tracy Hastings, United States Navy; and Sergeant Rick Cates, United States Army.
As Harvath finished shaking hands, a blue-and-
white NYPD Bell 412 EP helicopter roared right past the rooftop. It was so close that through the open cabin door they could see an NYPD sniper armed with one of the department’s high-end .50-caliber rifles, which was capable of taking out targets over a mile away.
“Hoo-rah!” bellowed Morgan as he pumped his fist in the air. “Go get those fuckers!”
Like spectators in a one-way tennis match, all their heads swung northward to watch the chopper as it raced up the East River toward the smoldering Queensboro Bridge. Whether there’d be anybody left worth getting once they got there was anybody’s guess, but as soldiers, they all appreciated the sight of fellow warriors going into battle, especially ones with an immediate opportunity to avenge an egregious wrong so in need of righting.
The helicopter was out over the middle of the East River, rapidly closing the distance to the bridge, when a white contrail of smoke suddenly appeared in the sky. Cates was the first one to process what they were seeing and as if the pilot of the chopper had any chance of hearing him he yelled, “RPG!”
Fifteen
Abdul Ali didn’t need to hear the explosion to know that it had happened. He had almost a sixth sense for these things, especially when working with such highly trained soldiers. The Chechens were exceptional and had been an inspired choice. With their hair cut short and their faces clean-shaven, they drew much less attention than Arabs would have. Though they were the most expensive element of the operation, their Russian Spetsnaz special forces training was worth every penny. So far, the Troll had proven to know exactly what he was doing.
While Ali had been concerned with using only two specific subterfuges to detonate the bridges and tunnels, the Troll’s plan to use fake landscaping trucks as well as vans disguised as Federal Express vehicles had worked. Even if one of them had been selected for a random police inspection, bags of fertilizer would not seem out of place for a landscaping business and no NYPD or Port Authority officer would have had the audacity to open any of the FedEx packages—unless they suspected one of the drivers, but Ali had selected only his best operatives for this most important of martyrdom operations. They had spent their last evening on earth shaving the hair from their bodies, reading the Koran, and ritually cleansing themselves for their entrance into paradise. Even the handful he had worried about losing their nerve had carried out their assignments perfectly. His martyrs had served both him and Allah well.
Based on what they were hearing over the radio, their efforts to make all of the bridges and tunnels, including those used for the subway and PATH trains, impassable had exceeded even Ali’s best expectations. Random sniper and rocket-propelled-grenade fire would now bring all helicopter, airplane, boat, and ferry traffic above and around Manhattan to a standstill. All law enforcement and emergency services personnel would now be totally engaged, and it would be some time before they could be reinforced, which was exactly what the terrorists wanted. Allah had blessed their entire undertaking.
Their two black SUVs with tinted windows and visor-mounted police strobe lights purchased over the Internet now roared up onto the sidewalk in front of a brownstone on West 84th Street. A brass plaque in front read Transcon Enterprises. With enviable military precision, the heavily armed and armored occupants of the two Tahoes poured out and took up defensive firing positions. From their boots to their balaclavas, they were clad completely in black, except for the large patches they wore on their uniforms falsely identifying them as members of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, or HRT for short.
As half of the team raced to secure the side entrance, the rest dashed up the front steps, disabled the video surveillance cameras and affixed a large plastic explosive shape charge to the front door. Yelling a warning to the others, the men in front took cover and detonated the plastique. Their colleagues at the side entrance did the same, and with an assortment of fully automatic weapons up and at the ready, they all poured into the building.
Thou
gh the gray-haired, chain-smoking receptionist inside immediately went for her Beretta subcompact, she wasn’t fast enough. Bullets tore through her body as half of the tactical team made a sweep through the lobby and the others fanned out over the rest of the three-story building.
They eliminated every Transcon employee they saw—both the men and women, many of whom poured out of offices and cubicles brandishing pistols and even a couple of short-barreled machine guns.
Less than four minutes after the killing began, the team’s weapons fell silent. A fog of cordite hung in the air. Ali removed his balaclava and radioed his men. As their situation reports came in, none contained the response he wanted to hear. There was no sign of Mohammed bin Mohammed anywhere in the building. As one of the men placed the electronic devices the Troll had explained would make the Americans believe each facility was still functioning, Ali quietly cursed and looked at his watch. Reloading his weapon, he tried to compute how long it would take to make it to Midtown.
Sixteen
ROOFTOP
309 EAST 48TH STREET
What do you mean, you can’t get a helicopter in here?” demanded Mike Jaffe as he gripped his encrypted satellite phone so tight it threatened to crack. “That’s bullshit. I’m telling you right now, if you don’t find a way, then our angel’s feet are going to end up touching the ground.”
Jaffe listened for several moments to the yelling on the other end of his phone and replied, “Negative. They can come in black after nightfall and lift us out. If not, I’m going to make other arrangements. Do we understand each other?” With that, Jaffe hung up and tossed the sat phone to his number two in command, a tall, ruggedly built, twenty-five-
year-old Marine sergeant named Brad Harper.
“No go on the evac?” asked Harper as he tucked the sat phone into the back pocket of his jeans.
