by Brad Thor
“There’s a special freight elevator from the train platform beneath the hotel,” said Harvath. “It goes to a secret facility within the hotel that is being used by one of our intelligence agencies.”
McGahan looked at him like he was nuts. “Are you for real?”
Harvath gave the commander the broad brushstrokes of what they had witnessed up to that point and then let the man make up his own mind.
It didn’t take McGahan long. “And you’re sure about the diagram that marine gave you?”
“One hundred percent,” said Harvath.
McGahan walked over to one of his men, relieved him of his radio, and brought it over to Harvath. “I wish I had more, but that’s all I can spare. Our truck is two blocks over and I don’t think either of us want to waste any more time.”
“You mean, this isn’t your truck?” asked Harvath as he took a step back from the Tahoe.
“This belongs to whoever the shooters are.”
Harvath should have known they wouldn’t leave their escape vehicle too far away. With its lights left flashing, who would have suspected it was anything other than a very official vehicle on very official business? It really was a clever idea. “Did your people look through it?”
“We were just wrapping up a quick cursory when the shooters came out of the stairwell and began firing at us.”
“Did your men find anything?”
“No. It’s pretty clean.”
Harvath nodded his head. A more thorough search of the truck would have to wait. Hopefully, though, it wouldn’t be necessary. Pulling the LaRue tactical knife from the sheath on his vest, Harvath punctured both passenger-side tires. One could never be too careful.
“Okay, then,” said the commander. “Get your team over here. I want to brief them and be inside that building in less than three minutes.”
Harvath signaled Herrington, who brought the rest of the team from around the corner and up 49th Street to where he and the commander were standing.
Compared to the special response unit, Harvath’s team was woefully underequipped, but there was nothing they could do about it. Even if the NYPD officers had wanted to help out, it wasn’t as if they drove around with duffels full of extra helmets, kneepads, and body armor. What they did have, though, were explosives.
After synchronizing their watches, the Emergency Services Unit breacher tapped Harvath on the shoulder, handed him a small canvas bag with det cord and everything else necessary to blow a heavy metal door off its hinges, and said, “Just in case.”
Sixty-Four
THE WHITE HOUSE
Pulling the secretary of defense to the side of the situation room, the president demanded, “Where’s General Waddell?”
“He’s still tied up at DIA and asked me to give you his regrets.”
“Regrets? What the hell does he think this is, a tea party?”
“Of course not, sir, but—”
The president cut him off. “Don’t defend him, Bob. This situation has gotten way out of control. It’s worse than I could have imagined. How the hell did al-Qaeda figure out we have Mohammed bin Mohammed in New York in the first place?”
“Again, sir, we don’t know that the intercept specifically referred to Mohammed. It could have been referring to Sayed Jamal.”
“Like hell it was,” replied Rutledge. “It only happened this morning, and you and I both know that Scot Harvath conducted a perfectly clean grab. He dragged the man back through the woods to get him across the border, for crying out loud. Nobody was following them. This attack on New York is in retaliation for Mohammed.”
“Either way, someplace there’s a leak, and we’re working overtime on identifying it.”
“What about the operation itself? Whether al-Qaeda knows about Jamal or Mohammed doesn’t matter. They know we have one of their people in New York. How do we know they’re not mounting some kind of rescue operation?”
Hilliman chuckled and said, “I think that’s highly unlikely, sir.”
The president didn’t find any of this amusing. “What should have been highly unlikely is anyone finding out that we had either one of those men in New York in the first place, but it still happened, didn’t it?”
The smile fell from the secretary’s face. “Yes, sir, it did.”
“So what’s being done to help reinforce the men running this operation?”
“Nothing,” replied Hilliman.
“Nothing? What are you talking about?”
“Sir, in all fairness, the intercept didn’t specify a location. All it referred to was our taking a subject to New York City.”
“What about the man who’s running the operation for us—what does he think?”
“Mike Jaffe? From what I was told, he wanted immediate evacuation.”
“So why wasn’t it granted?”
“Sir, the only way we can preserve Mohammed’s legal status is to make sure he doesn’t touch U.S. soil until we’re ready to close out the interrogation phase and move him to trial. If we evac him, we’d have to position an appropriate vessel outside our territorial waters and airlift Mohammed back out to sea. When that NYPD helicopter was shot down, a bubble was placed over Manhattan. No air traffic in or out.”
“But that was hours ago.”
“And in that time, Jaffe and his team have reported no problems whatsoever,” said Hilliman as a bit of a cocky smile crept back across his face.
“What are you saying?” asked Rutledge.
“I’m saying that if al-Qaeda knew where we were holding Mohammed, they would have tried something by now. They’re not coming, Mr. President. These horrible attacks on New York were just that—horrible attacks. Al-Qaeda was doing the only thing they could do in retaliation for our grabbing Mohammed. It shows you how devastated they are by his capture.” The secretary waited a moment for that to sink in and then said, “I know it’s an incredibly high price to pay and I know it doesn’t look like it now, but we beat them, Mr. President. The nuclear attacks Mohammed was spearheading would have been a significant turning point in the war on terror, and it would have turned the war in their favor, but we cut them off at the knees. What we saw today was their death knell. We’ve clamped the lid down and as soon as we break Mohammed, we’ll begin nailing that lid to the top of their coffin.”
The president wanted desperately for his secretary of defense to be right. He wanted to be able to tell himself that as horrific as today’s attacks were, the Americans who had perished hadn’t died in vain—that their deaths meant something and that they marked a long-awaited turning point in the war on terror.
But as much as the president wanted to believe Bob Hilliman, a man who in over five years had never steered him wrong on matters of national security, he had learned early on in his presidency that things were never exactly as they seemed, especially when it came to terrorism.
Sixty-Five
While a two-man contingent of McGahan’s officers used the gear from the back of the Tahoe to rope down through the sidewalk grate and cover the Waldorf platform, Harvath and his team ran back up Lexington toward the 50th Street stairwell.
When they arrived, they found not another Tahoe but a black Yukon Denali double-parked on the sidewalk. It had the same dashboard-mounted lights that flashed bright halogen strobes of blue and red. As Harvath carefully peered inside, he saw crushed CD jewel cases, South Beach Diet bar wrappers, and a stack of textbooks littering the floor. Two or three hair scrunchies were wrapped around the gearshift, and a pink snowflake air freshener dangled from the front passenger door handle.
The terrorists had been driving two identical Tahoes, but not anymore. Harvath must have caused more damage than he thought to force them to steal a new vehicle. Judging by the thin mist of blood that had been spattered on the driver’s-side headliner, the owner of this vehicle had not met with a very pleasant end. Removing his knife once more, he plunged it to the hilt in two of the tires, just in case the terrorists were able to slip by them.
The bad
guys had blown the lock out of this door just like the one on 49th Street. When Hastings realized the door was open, she replaced the det cord and slung the demo bag over her shoulder. Backing away, she signaled everyone to take their places. Harvath radioed McGahan and told him that his team was ready.
“Roger that,” came the commander’s voice. “Teams one and two in place.”
Listening to McGahan’s countdown over his headset, Harvath counted backward on his fingers from five. When he closed his fist and pulled it down like a trucker blowing an air horn, Hastings pulled the door open.
With Harvath in the lead this time, they all poured into the stairwell and took the stairs as quickly and as quietly as they could.
Simultaneously, McGahan’s breaching team hit the door on 49th Street and bounded up the stairs.
By the time the lead man noticed the booby trap, it was too late. Shrapnel ripped through the tightly packed stairwell, killing two officers and wounding three more. It was complete pandemonium.
Despite barely being able to hear as a result of the explosion or breathe because of the smoke, McGahan radioed his team’s situation to help warn the others. After hearing the details, one of the special-response officers below on the platform responded that he was leaving to get the medical kit from their truck. Harvath told the man to remain at his post, but the NYPD officer ignored him. He didn’t take his orders from DHS. He had injured colleagues who needed immediate medical attention, and that’s what he was focused on.
With the 49th Street assault team out of commission and the team on the platform down to only one tactical officer and two MTA patrolmen, the brunt of the assault had just fallen squarely on the shoulders of Scot Harvath and company.
Harvath held up a closed fist to stop his team so that he could relay the information. It was then that a man in a black balaclava appeared at the top of the stairs with a grenade and all hell suddenly broke loose.
Sixty-Six
With their vehicle on the 49th Street side compromised by the presence of the police, exiting by the 50th Street side made the most sense, but somehow something just didn’t feel right about it for Abdul Ali. If the police knew about the railroad platform and the 49th Street entrance, then they very likely knew about the 50th Street stairwell too. Ali could be running right into another trap, and so he made sure to choose their method of egress very carefully.
Because the Grail facility’s private garage entrance let out onto the 49th Street side of the building, it was immediately ruled out. That seemed to leave them with no alternatives until Ali realized that the hotel had at least two more perfectly acceptable exit points—the main doors at the rear of the hotel on Lexington Avenue as well as those at the very front of the Waldorf on Park Avenue. The only question was how they were going to get there.
As the secret garage exit opened only from the inside of the facility, Ali was fairly confident that they would not find a swarm of police officers waiting for them on the other side. Once in the garage, they could locate a service entrance to the hotel and from there make their way to either the Park or Lexington Avenue exits. Considering that everything was happening at the east end of the hotel, near Lexington, Ali leaned heavily toward making an escape via Park Avenue. They could decide what to do next, once they were safely out of harm’s way.
As Ali put the finishing touches on one of the little surprises they planned on leaving behind, Sacha dispatched men to check the status on each of the stairwells. Osman was the first to report. From what he could tell, the booby trap in the 49th Street stairwell had been triggered and the police had been forced to retreat. Yusha reported not seeing any signs of pursuit via the 50th Street stairwell, but then he suddenly broke off. When Sacha asked him what was going on, the man quietly spoke into his microphone to say that he thought he heard people approaching. Sacha told him to fall back and wait, that they were coming to support him, but the overconfident warrior told his commander not to bother. He had the high ground and could handle it himself. It was the very last Sacha heard from him.
Sixty-Seven
With the man at the top of the stairs lined up right in the center of his sights, Harvath yelled “Grenade!” and lunged backward, knocking his team down the stairs. As he fell with them, Harvath repeatedly squeezed the trigger of his weapon until its magazine was empty.
The team hit the landing in a pile of twisted limbs and then scrambled to descend farther to safety. When the grenade detonated, they were pressed against the opposite wall a story and a half down. Harvath had quite literally saved their lives.
As the stars began to clear from their heads, Harvath inserted a fresh mag and they remounted the stairs twice as fast, knowing that the terrorists’ colleagues couldn’t be far behind.
When they reached the uppermost landing and stepped over what was left of the man’s corpse, they could see he was probably dead before the grenade even detonated. Most of Harvath’s shots had found their marks—in both the man’s head and chest area. Falling to the ground, the grenade must have rolled backward into the corridor where, a few feet later, it detonated and tore huge chunks away from the concrete walls and ceiling.
As the team stared at the dead body, they all noticed that it appeared too pale to be Arab. “He almost looks Caucasian,” said Hastings, not realizing that in the truest sense of the word she was absolutely right.
“Who the hell are these people?” asked Herrington as he removed the man’s balaclava so they could get a good look at his face. “Are we sure we’re dealing with al-Qaeda?”
Harvath went through the man’s pockets but found nothing helpful. He was just as in the dark as his team was. All he knew was that they were less than a step behind the terrorists now and he didn’t want to lose any ground.
The group fell into a stack formation, pushed on into the corridor, and got ready for the fight they all knew was waiting for them just up ahead.
When they hit the Grail’s entry chamber, it looked like a scene straight out of Iraq or Afghanistan. The charred walls were riddled with bullet holes. The floor was covered with spent shell casings, blood, and body parts. Off to the side, three more Caucasian corpses, their balaclavas removed, were lying facing the Lexington Avenue wall. Or had they been positioned that way—facing east toward Mecca? Harvath filed that part of the scene away, and once they had gone through the dead men’s empty pockets, he led the team deeper into the facility.
The carnage inside was just as bad, if not worse than what they had seen at the three previous sites. The marine guards were all dead, as was each and every facility employee. And for what? What were these people after? Why risk so much just to attack these sites? No matter how hard Harvath tried, he just couldn’t wrap his head around it.
The other thing he couldn’t understand was where the rest of the terrorists were. Including the man he had gunned down in the stairwell, there were five corpses in the Grail facility, all dressed in the same black Nomex fatigues with patches identifying them as members of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team—yet another ingenious ploy. With everything going on today, the cops were even less likely to question federal officers than their own Emergency Service personnel. What’s more, the NYPD for the most part knew very little about the makeup of HRT. The chances of the terrorists being uncovered as frauds, at least in the short run, seemed pretty minimal.
As Harvath and his team continued to clear the facility, they readied themselves for the inevitable. There had to be more men somewhere—the satellite photos had shown at least two teams of four to seven men. Would the four dead men have needed to come here in two separate vehicles? There had to be others and they had to be close. Harvath could feel it.
Walking back into the center of the main room, Harvath took another look at its raised floor platform. It was about thirty by thirty and similar to those he’d seen in brokerage houses, as well as in the FBI and DHS crisis management centers. Framed within the polished aluminum railings that defined the platform’s edges were the fa
cility’s computer workstations. On the first pass, Harvath had thought he’d heard something strange, and now as he stood still, he could almost make out what it was—a strange beeping coming from one of the computers.
As he hopped up onto the platform, he radioed the special response officer downstairs on the train siding. Since no one had come out the 50th Street stairwell and he knew that even the wounded McGahan and his remaining officers had their eyes on the 49th Street stairwell and the adjacent garage, the only remaining egress the terrorists had was via the elevator.
The officer reported back that not only had they not seen anything, they hadn’t heard anything either. Wherever the elevator was, it hadn’t moved—he was certain of it.
Harvath was pretty sure of it too. Just as he was sure they hadn’t finished off the last of the terrorists. But if they hadn’t taken the elevator, where the hell were they?
The question was still banging on the front door of Harvath’s mind as he approached the beeping computer. Suddenly Tracy Hastings yelled, “Stop!”
As Harvath looked at her she added, “Whatever you do, don’t move.”
Sixty-Eight
The beeping of the computer had been joined by something else—something barely audible just below the surface of the first noise. Harvath hadn’t been able to hear it until he neared the work station. It sounded like the high-pitched whine a professional photographer’s flash makes as it charges back up. The funny thing was, Tracy Hastings had heard it too and she wasn’t even standing on the platform. That could mean only one thing—the whining noise hadn’t actually begun until Harvath neared the computer.
“Stay put,” cautioned Tracy. “Don’t even shift your weight. Do you understand me?”
“What’s going on, Tracy?”
“I think you tripped a pressure switch.”
