by Brad Thor
“A pressure switch?” repeated Harvath. “Are you sure?”
“EOD’s all about attention to detail, right? You said so yourself.”
As Tracy tried to find an access panel to get under the floor and see what they were dealing with, the rest of the team stood there, not knowing what to do. Harvath looked at Herrington and said, “If you want to watch me wet my pants, we can do it later once I down that bottle of Louis XIII you owe me. In the meantime, why don’t you guys figure out how our terrorists got out of here. If this ends badly, I’d rather face Allah by myself. Speaking of which—”
“Those three outside?” replied Herrington. “Yeah, I noticed. They were all left facing east towards Mecca.”
“What do you think?”
“If they’re Caucasian Muslims allied with al-Qaeda, then they’ve gotta be Chechens.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” said Harvath.
Bob was just staring at him wordlessly, so Harvath said something for him. “Get the hell out of here. Can’t you see Tracy and I want to be alone for a while?”
Herrington forced a smile and replied, “See you soon.”
Harvath nodded and watched as Cates and Morgan followed him out of the room. Once they were gone Harvath asked, “How are we doing down there?”
Several moments went by without a response so Harvath tried again. “Talk to me, Tracy. What are we looking at?”
Still nothing.
“Hey, Tracy. How about a situation report already?”
The waiting was interminable, especially when it was his ass on the line and he could do absolutely nothing about it. He was about to call out again, when Hastings popped her head up over the edge of the platform. Harvath was going to ask her if it was actually a bomb and if she could handle it, but he didn’t have to. The look on her face said it all.
“It’s a bomb. A big one.”
“Great,” replied Harvath as he began to shift his weight to his other foot and then caught himself just in time. “So what’s the bad news?”
“I don’t think I can defuse it.”
“Oh yes you can.”
Hastings turned her scarred face away.
“Tracy, you can do this stuff in your sleep,” said Harvath. “Let’s just take it one step at a time.”
“I can’t, Scot.”
“Did I ever tell you what a good dancer I am?”
She looked back over at him, unable to keep the smile from her face. “What does that have to do with any of this?”
“It has everything to do with this,” he replied. “I was going to wait for a more romantic opportunity to ask, but I was hoping I could take you out when we’re all finished with this.”
“You want to take me out? Dancing?”
“That depends. If you don’t defuse this bomb, I think our budding friendship is going to be a little bit strained.”
Hastings smiled again.
That was what Harvath needed to see. “You can do this, Tracy. Get back down there and tell me what you see.”
“I can tell you right now,” she replied, the smile disappearing from her face. “It’s almost identical to the last bomb I handled.”
“Then it should be a piece of—” said Harvath who suddenly realized what she was saying.
The last bomb Tracy Hastings had attempted to defuse had detonated, taking her left eye, half her face, and life as she’d known it along with it.
Sixty-Nine
Walk me through what you did on the last bomb,” said Harvath, trying to help Tracy hold it together.
“It was pretty unsophisticated,” she replied.
“Unsophisticated, how?”
“Everything. The plastique, the initiator, everything.”
“Okay, if it was so unsophisticated textbook, what went wrong?”
“I don’t know. I never knew. I did everything right, but it didn’t make a difference.”
Harvath had to work on keeping his cool. He was no good to himself or Tracy if he lost control. For both of their sakes, he had to remain calm. “Let’s just focus on this device. Can you go back under the platform and pop up one of the adjacent panels so I can see what you’re doing or at least talk to you a little more easily?”
Hastings nodded her head and disappeared back below. A few seconds later a floor panel next to Harvath popped up, and Tracy slid it out of the way.
“Perfect,” he said. “Now we can talk. Is there any way we can immobilize the pressure plate?”
“I already checked that,” said Hastings. “We can’t.”
“Then we’re going to do everything from scratch, okay? Do it for me. Just check it one more time.”
Hastings did as he asked, but her response was the same. “The pressure plate is a dead end.”
“Excellent choice of words, Tracy.”
“Sorry.”
“What about the main charge? Can you separate it?”
She looked at the device and then back up at Harvath, slowly shaking her head.
“Do you see any place to insert a safety pin of any sort?”
Hastings scoured the device, but came back with the same answer, “None at all.”
Harvath was running out of options. “What about minimizing the damage then? What can you tell about the projectiles?”
She took several moments before responding. “It looks like a lot of it has been cobbled together on the spot. They’re using broken glass and bits of Lexan for the projectiles.”
“Is it a directional device?”
“No. The projectiles are set to radiate out in all directions. Effective range about two hundred meters, I’d say. Apparently they didn’t want anybody getting out of here.”
The same thought had gone through Harvath’s mind. The fact that the bomb appeared to be cobbled together with materials found on the scene was also running through Harvath’s mind. There was something else, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. The rational part of his brain kept avoiding it, blaming the stalemate on Hastings, a trained EOD technician who should know what to do. Because he couldn’t stand the silence, he posed a very stupid and very obvious question: “Is there a way to interrupt the detonator?”
“C’mon, Scot. Like Rick said back at the VA, I might have lost my job, but I didn’t lose my training. That was one of the first things I looked for.”
He didn’t know what it was, but something about what Hastings had just said raised a heavy curtain in his mind a fraction of inch, teasing him with the answer he was looking for. Damn it. It had been so long since he had worked with explosives. The majority of his explosives training as a SEAL had been in the detonation, not the diffusing department. The joke in the Teams had been the only explosives equation a SEAL needed to remember was P for plenty. Even in the Secret Service, there were dogs and specialty technicians to handle the bombs. And yet, something kept knocking at the back of his brain. What the hell was it?
Harvath looked down at Hastings and said, “You’re sure the device looks rudimentary?”
“Totally.”
“Why is that? What we’ve seen of these guys so far is anything but simple. They seem pretty sophisticated and definitely know what they’re doing, correct?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So why are you not seeing the same level of tactical sophistication in that device down there?”
“Who knows,” replied Hastings. “There could be a million reasons. They were probably in a pretty damn good hurry. People often resort to the basics when they’re pressed for time.”
Harvath shook his head. “I don’t think so. Not these guys. I think they want you to believe that bomb is paint-by-numbers.”
“What for?”
“So that you’ll miss something. Something you wouldn’t have missed if you were being extracareful.”
Just then, something clicked, but it wasn’t for Harvath, it was for Hastings. “Jesus, you’re right,” she said.
“What is it?”
“Hold on” was the last thing she
said before disappearing once again beneath the floor.
Standing on top of a pressure plate, even a few minutes could seem like a lifetime. Harvath had not heard anything from Hastings and he was beginning to wonder if maybe she had lost her nerve and was lying beneath the platform completely paralyzed with fear. Not that he could blame her. After having a bomb go off in her face, he couldn’t even begin to image what it was like tackling one again, much less a device almost identical to the one that took her eye and scarred her appearance for life.
When Hastings did reappear, it wasn’t beneath the open floor panel just to his right. She rolled out from beneath the platform and stood a wary distance away. She seemed stunned. Her expression was hard to read. Was it anger? Fear? Suddenly Harvath wondered if maybe it was regret.
“What’s going on?” he asked, but Hastings didn’t answer.
As she turned away from him, she ran out of the room muttering, “There are only two rules. Rule number two, see rule number one.”
Immediately, Harvath was transported back to the conversation he’d had with Samuel Hardy, PhD: Each person reacts to the stresses of war in different ways.
But what if things get ugly?
There’s no way to predict. You won’t know until something happens.
At which point it could be too late.
Hardy had nodded and said, Many symptoms exhibited by soldiers outside the realm of combat have more to do with adjusting to the real world than anything else. Put them back into the stresses of combat, and nine out of ten times their symptoms disappear.
And that tenth time? Harvath had specifically asked him. How do you deal with that?
You can’t. Only that soldier can. It comes down to facing his or her personal demons, and that’s a battle that requires more courage than anything you might ever face on the other end of a gun.
Or on the other end of an IED, thought Harvath as Hastings disappeared out the door, and he realized that she had just left him alone…to die.
Seventy
Harvath had begun gauging the weight of objects within an arm’s reach, wondering if he could fool the pressure plate into making it think he was still standing on top of it. He knew it was useless. But he also knew that this was not how he wanted to die. His mind flashed to the descriptions of Bob Herrington’s wounded men and he remembered his friend saying that sometimes being wounded in combat was worse than dying. Harvath had seen men shredded by land mines and different explosive devices, and at this moment he found it hard to envision living the rest of his life without the use of his arms or legs. To a certain degree, he’d rather the bomb kill him than maim him.
By the same token, Harvath had been trained to recognize this counterproductive, defeatist self-talk, and he slammed an iron door down on the inner conversation. The only thoughts he could afford to entertain were how to get out of the situation and do so without being killed or injured.
Wiggling the thin metal cubicle-style partition next to him, Harvath was seriously considering using it as poor-man’s body armor, when he heard a voice at the other end of the room.
“I told you not to move.”
He looked up to see Tracy Hastings marching right toward him. She was armed with a small toolbox and a look of pissed-off determination.
“What?” she said seeing the look on his face. “Did you think I wasn’t coming back?”
“The thought had occurred to me. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you didn’t.”
“What? And miss an evening of dinner, dancing, and sparkling conversation?”
“I don’t know about sparkling conversation.”
“Neither do I, but it doesn’t matter. I never leave a soldier behind. Especially another anchor clanker.”
“Hooyah,” replied Harvath with as much confidence as he could muster as Tracy disappeared back beneath the platform.
Once she was situated, she said, “Those fuckers are pretty clever. You were right. It is too simple, but I couldn’t see it.”
“Couldn’t see what?”
“This is exactly how they got me in Iraq. I can see that now. Two of the most important rules we learned in handling IEDs were never to assume there was only one device and rule number two—”
“See rule number one,” said Harvath, finishing her sentence for her. Finally the curtain had lifted from his mind, but he had to give Hastings the credit for it.
“No matter how positive you are that there isn’t another device, you always, always, always assume the presence of at least one more. I blew that in Iraq, and I almost blew it here. If I’d touched the one you’re standing on right now, we’d both have been wall covering. The magic lies in the second device.”
“Which you’ve found?”
“Yeah, I found it. Goddamn, these guys are good.”
“How good?” asked Harvath, the tentativeness evident in his voice.
“Not as good as me. You and I are going dancing. And trust me, the conversation is going to be sparkling. Now, be a good boy and zip it so I can do my job.”
“You sure that thing’s not going to detonate?”
“No, and that’s why I need absolute quiet. Discovering the second device is only half the battle. The hard part is making sure neither of these things go off.”
Seventy-One
STRATEGIC INFORMATION AND OPERATIONS CENTER
FBI HEADQUARTERS
WASHINGTON, DC
Director Sorce summed up his command in two words as he left his secure SIOC conference room, “Do it.”
His deputy director, Stan Caldwell, wasted no time. First he ordered a chopper, then he called Gary Lawlor and told him to be ready.
As the pair flew toward Fort Meade, Caldwell gave Lawlor the Highlights for Children version of what the FBI had learned. The NSA’s director, Lieutenant General Richard Maxwell, had called the FBI director personally for interrogation assistance. He explained that the NSA had been running a highly classified intelligence gathering operation out of New York City and that three of its four facilities there had been taken out and all the personnel killed.
Of course, none of this was news to Lawlor. He was the one who’d informed the NSA of the situation, including how he’d shot and killed Joseph Stanton after the man had killed Captain William Forrester and was in the process of trying to kill him. What was news was that the NSA had already identified the person who had leaked the locations of the crush depth facilities. They had a strong suspicion that the attacks on their facilities and the attacks on New York were connected, which made them doubly angry and desirous for justice.
The final piece of information, which Lawlor could have seen coming a mile away, was that the fourth NSA crush depth location was now unresponsive. Since his was the only qualified tactical team with relatively current top secret clearances, Lawlor was the obvious choice to bring along. What still wasn’t making sense to Gary was what the DIA’s role in all of this was.
He couldn’t help but wonder if his pending visit to the NSA might reveal more than just who had leaked the classified locations of the New York facilities. Now that he was face-to-face with Stan Caldwell, he had one question in particular he was very anxious to ask, but he was smart enough to know that he should save it until after the interrogation.
Seventy-Two
Lieutenant General Maxwell’s assistant met Gary Lawlor and Stan Caldwell at the helipad and steered them inside to the director’s office. It had been said that the letters NSA actually stood for No Such Agency, or if you were an employee, Never Say Anything. So far, the National Security Agency’s well-known penchant for obfuscation was holding up quite well. What would be interesting to see was how candid Dick Maxwell was actually prepared to be.
They were shown into a modestly furnished office hung with photos of Maxwell in a variety of desolate, far-flung locations around the world. It was the first time Lawlor had met the man, and when the lieutenant general stood up and walked around his desk to welcome his guests, Lawlor was immediately
struck by how much he resembled George Patton—his facial features, his bearing, almost everything about him. The only things missing were the ivory-handled Colt .45s and a bull terrier trotting alongside. If he wasn’t sure that it had been remarked upon a thousand times already, Lawlor might have said something, but it wouldn’t have been professional, and it had nothing to do with why they were here. Lawlor was here for answers, not to become buddy-buddy with the enigmatic head of the Puzzle Palace.
“Thank you for coming, gentlemen,” Maxwell said as he showed Caldwell and Lawlor to a seating area at the far end of his office. “Can I get anybody anything? Coffee? Tea? Something a bit stronger, maybe?”
“No thanks, Dick,” replied the FBI’s deputy director.
“Nothing for me either,” said Lawlor.
“Okay, then, let’s get right to it. Based on information we have received, we now believe that all four of our program facilities in New York City have been hit.”
“What sort of information?” asked Gary.
“The facilities are not responding correctly to specific computer-generated requests from this end. Someone apparently wanted it to appear as if it was business as usual, but we’ve been able to figure out that it’s not.”
Now they were getting to the heart of what Gary wanted to know. “And what exactly is business as usual for this program?”
“That’s classified,” replied Maxwell.
“You mean it was classified.”
“No,” said the NSA director. “Even though the operation has apparently been compromised, it’s still classified.”
“As is the reason one of your senior operatives believed it was worth killing for?”
Maxwell shook his head. “Unfortunately, there’s not much I can tell you there either, but not because I don’t want to. Joe Stanton went off the deep end.”
Be that as it may, Lawlor needed more information, and he knew Maxwell had it. “Exactly what type of information was being processed at the New York facilities?”
“I’m sorry, but as I said, that’s classified.”
