Takedown (18 page)

M
ark Schreiber dropped the printout onto Joseph Stanton’s already overcrowded desk and said, “That makes three now:Transcon, Geneva Diamond,
and
the Strong Box beneath the Lincoln Tunnel. Are you still going to sit there and tell me we don’t have a problem on our hands?”

“Take it easy,” replied Stanton as he looked over the printout. “Even if we wanted to, there’s nobody we can call for help now anyway.”

“There’s got to be somebody.”

“There isn’t.”

“Are you serious? We don’t have a contingency for this?”

“For what, Mark? We still don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

Schreiber looked at his boss like he was nuts. “We’ve got three substations that are unresponsive.”

“Unresponsive, but still processing as far as we can tell,” clarified Stanton. “New York has been overwhelmed. Give it a little more time.”

“That’s what you said the last time I came in here.”

“And as the director of this program that’s going to be my answer no matter how many times you come in here and ask.”

“What if the sites have been compromised?” ventured Schreiber.

“Then we wouldn’t be seeing any processing at all. You know how the systems work, Mark. You also know what the communication protocols are. Listen, we’re all angry with what’s happened today and we’re all concerned about the people we know and work with in New York, but I’m only going to tell you this one more time. Stay focused on your job.”

“But what if we—” began Schreiber, but he was cut off by the ringing of Stanton’s phone.

“It’s from upstairs,” he said as he pointed toward the ceiling and reached for the receiver. “I need to take this in private.”

Once Schreiber had left the room and closed the door behind him, Stanton said, “Why the hell are you contacting me on this line?”

“Because you haven’t exactly been answering your cell phone,” said the caller.

“If you turned on your television set once in a while, you’d see we’ve got our hands pretty full today.”

“Fuller than you think.”

“What are you talking about?” replied Stanton.

“Not over the phone. We need to meet.”

“That’s impossible. Not today.”

“Yes, today,” said the caller. “And I want you there in a half hour.”

“That’s insane,” said Stanton. “Do you know what the traffic is like between here and there?”

“Use one of the company helos.”

“We’ve got a major national crisis going on. Helicopters are for emergency use only at this point.”

“This
is
an emergency. Somebody knows about Athena.”

T
he Bell JetRanger helicopter touched down in the parking lot of a large warehouse, and out stepped Joseph Stanton. With his heavy-rimmed glasses, seersucker suit, and suede bucks, he looked nothing like Gary Lawlor had pictured. Superspooks came in all shapes and sizes, but this was the first time he’d ever seen one who was a dead ringer for a sloppy Warren Buffett.

Once they were sure Stanton had come alone, Gary and Bill Forrester got out of the car and met him halfway across the parking lot. The Marine captain made the introductions and as Lawlor began to speak Stanton said, “Not here. Wait till we’re inside.”

Inside
turned out to be a well-appointed office suite at the back of the structure that Stanton and Forrester used for their meetings. Sitting down on a leather couch, Stanton smoothed out his trouser legs, picked a few pieces of lint from inside one of the cuffs, and then said, “Okay, what the fuck is going on?”

Ever the marine, nobody bullied Bill Forrester, especially not some Ivy Leaguer in a seersucker suit. “Why don’t you tell us, Joe? It’s your op.”

“What do you mean, tell
us?
As far as I’m concerned captain, the only
us
that should be in this room is you and me.”

“Well, suck it up,” said Forrester, “because Agent Lawlor here might just be the only one able to save your bacon.”

“Who says my bacon needs saving to begin with?”

“Listen, Joe, I didn’t come out here to get jerked around.”

“Neither did I.”

“Good. So let’s save the ‘my dick’s bigger than your dick, but I can’t show it to you because we don’t work for the same agency’ crap for the time being.”

“If you’re suggesting, captain, that we bring Agent Lawlor into the know regarding Athena, that’s not going to happen.”

Forrester had a very short fuse and burned real quick. “Three of my marines are dead, so yeah, it is going to happen.”

“Wait a second,” said Stanton. “I haven’t heard anything about any marines being killed.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. They never were a priority, in your opinion. Now, I want some goddamn answers.”

“Had you given me a little more insight into why you called this impromptu meeting, maybe I would have been able to prepare some for you.”

It was pretty apparent these two were not going to get very far if left to verbally slug it out, so Lawlor decided to step in. “Mr. Stanton, what is the Athena Program?”

“I’m sorry, Agent Lawlor, but I am not allowed to discuss NSA business without proper authorization.”

Forrester was disgusted with his arrogance. “I wanted you to hear it from him, but if he won’t tell you, I will.”

“No, you won’t.”

“If it means preventing any more of my marines from dying, then just watch me.” Turning to Gary, the captain said, “The program is named after the Greek goddess of wisdom, as apparently the Greeks didn’t have a goddess of blackmail. It’s a deep-black-data-mining operation. Using both the Echelon and Carnivore systems, the NSA has been gathering otherwise overlooked intelligence that can be used as leverage against various foreign concerns.”

“Like al-Qaeda?” asked Lawlor, not completely understanding what Forrester was getting at.

“No. More like governments, heads of state, and influential foreign businesspeople. Basically, the Athena Program collects and sorts extremely dirty laundry. Once they have their teeth into something particularly juicy, like the Princess Diana crash, TWA 800, or Yasir Arafat’s death, they assign teams of operatives to flush out the big picture and uncover as much supporting evidence as possible. That way, when it comes time to use it, they have the victim pinned against the wall so tightly, there’s absolutely no room for him or her to wiggle free.

“And if they uncover a conspiracy involving several powerful foreign figures, it’s like hitting the jackpot.”

“You’re going to jail for a very, very long time, Forrester,” said Stanton as he solemnly shook his head.

Lawlor ignored him and asked the captain, “Tell me about the locations in Manhattan.”

“You already know about Transcon and Geneva Diamond. They were the first two tiers. Most of the field agents worked out of Transcon. Because a limited amount of sensitive data was handled there and because all of the employees were field rated and came to work armed, it was decided by Mr. Stanton here that they didn’t need extra security—a position I had always been against. Subsequently, none of my marines were stationed there.

“Geneva Diamond was the next step up. That’s where most of the data coming in is sifted.”

“Sifted how?” asked Lawlor.

“Don’t say anything more, Bill,” cautioned Stanton. “I’m warning you. You’re already in way over your head.”

Forrester disregarded the admonition and plowed ahead, “Whatever intelligence is deemed political in nature goes to a facility hidden beneath the Lincoln Tunnel known as the Strong Box. The location had been conceived during the Cold War as a means to evacuate high-ranking allied-nation UN personnel from the city via submarine in the case of a nuclear attack, but the project was eventually deemed unfeasible and abandoned. The NSA quietly took over the space and used it as a signals intercept and deciphering station. A stairwell is hidden in the south airshaft and allows access to the facility via a bogus storeroom at the New York Waterway bus garage. Like Geneva Diamond, with the high value of the work that goes on there and the fact that the employees are predominantly analysts, my marines provide round-the-clock security.

“As for the personal intelligence side of things, which is often significantly more damning, it goes to a rather ingenious location very near—”

“I warned you,” said Stanton as he drew an extremely compact .45-caliber Para-Ordnance P-104 pistol from his suit pocket, pointed it at Forrester’s head, and pulled the trigger.

G
ary Lawlor didn’t wait for Stanton to point the pistol at him. Instead, he bolted for the door.

Stanton fired, just missing Lawlor’s head and splintering the doorframe. The man was insane. First he killed an officer of the United States Marine Corps, and now he was trying to take out a Homeland Security agent. Gary didn’t have to think about what to do next. His reaction was instinctual. It was either him or Stanton.

Belying his age yet again, Lawlor dove for cover behind a long, wooden credenza in the outer office and drew his Beretta Px4 Storm. There was a wheeled desk chair next to the credenza, and he sent it spinning into the center of the room to draw Stanton’s fire. As tufts of batting wafted up into the air, Lawlor came around the credenza on one knee and sent a wave of .40-caliber lead right where the NSA man had just been firing from. The problem, though, was that Stanton knew what he was doing and quickly moved to a new location. He wasn’t going to be easy to kill.

“Mr. Stanton,” yelled Lawlor after he had ducked back behind the safety of the credenza. “I’m only going to give you one chance. I want you to throw your gun and then come out with your hands above your head. Do you understand me?”

“The security of those installations was Forrester’s responsibility,” replied Stanton.

It was a very out-of-place response, considering the situation. “Mr. Stanton,” said Lawlor. “Throw out your weapon, come out with your hands up, and we’ll talk about it.”

From the other room, Stanton laughed. “Sure we will.”

“These terms at not negotiable, Mr. Stanton.”

“He shouldn’t have been talking. I don’t care what good he thought he was doing his marines. He knew better than that.”

“Mr. Stanton, I am ordering you to come out of that room with your hands up, right now,” replied Lawlor.

“One of the most beneficial intelligence-gathering programs this country has ever developed and that idiot is ready to let it all out of the bag to save his precious marines. Marines die. That’s their job.”

As Stanton continued ranting, Lawlor crept from around the credenza and tried to maneuver himself for a better line of fire.

“Forrester put
his
needs and the needs of his marines above the people of this country,” yelled Stanton. “Do you have any idea how many lives have been spared because of this program? It might not be the prettiest way to do business but it’s goddamn effective.”

Lawlor now had a clean line of sight into the inner office. By the sound of Stanton’s voice, he was somewhere over to the right. If he had to, Lawlor was fairly confident he could take him out by firing through the drywall, but now that the playing field was a little more level, he wanted to take the man alive, if at all possible. “Your time’s up, Mr. Stanton. No more talking. I want you to slide your weapon out the door and then follow with your hands clasped on top of your head.”

Once again Stanton laughed. “That’s not going to happen, Agent Lawlor, and you know it. Only one of us is going to walk out of this building today. The question is, which one?”

Gary didn’t bother responding. Like he had said, they were done talking. If Mr. Stanton thought only one of them was leaving the building alive, he was in for a very big surprise.

A company called Guardian Protective Devices of New Jersey had approached the Department of Homeland Security a while back with a very interesting pepper spray device. Very intelligently, DHS had snapped up as many as they could get their hands on, as did many other branches of the military, intelligence, and law enforcement communities. As Lawlor removed the small three-ounce can from the tiny holster on his belt, he was grateful for the ingenious “set it and forget it” feature it contained.

Unlike most pepper sprays that required a button to be continually depressed or a trigger to be pulled to dispense its contents, the Guardian device had a mechanism that allowed the canister to be primed and thrown into a room where seconds later a fog of pepper spray would pour out, making the space completely uninhabitable.

Lawlor triggered the device, pitched it inside the inner office, and with his Beretta up and at the ready, waited for the NSA operative to stumble out hacking and choking.

When he did, Stanton came out with his gun blazing, shooting in all directions, and Gary had no other choice but to return fire.

Y
ou couldn’t have just winged him?” asked Harvath.

“I had no time. His bullets were way too close for comfort,” replied Lawlor from his cell phone back in DC. “Whatever was going on, he and Forrester took it to their graves together. Everyone at the NSA is being incredibly tight-lipped, including my contacts, and despite the urgency of this situation, all they’ve said is that they’ll get back to me. They’re not even prepared to admit that Stanton was one of theirs.”

This was exactly the kind of bureaucratic bullshit that was encouraging Harvath to seriously consider resigning his position. “So they don’t care if their next location gets hit?” he asked.

“They won’t even admit there is a fourth location, much less a first, a second, or a third.”

“What are we supposed to do?”

“You’ve got all the information I was able to get before Stanton killed Forrester. I think you should make your way to the third location as quickly as possible and see if you can find out anything there.”

“And if we don’t?” asked Harvath.

Listen,” replied Lawlor. “This has been a hard day for everybody. Just see what you can do. I’ll keep working things from this side.”

“Fine, but Gary?”

“What?”

“If Stanton thought this program was worth killing to protect, and his people know you’ve uncovered it, you’d better watch your back.”

“I will. Don’t worry,” replied Lawlor. “Just get to that Strong Box location and let me know what you find.”

When they found the bodies of the slain employees in the back of the New York Waterway bus garage, Harvath knew they were already too late. Nevertheless, Bob Herrington led the way down the hidden stairwell—the more senseless destruction he saw, the more the demons from his last mission in Afghanistan seemed to haunt him. He insisted on being on point, and out of all the members on the team, he was starting to concern Harvath the most.

After making their way down the metal stairs, the first thing the team noticed was the enormous door that had been blown off its hinges. As they carefully entered the facility, they saw that shrapnel had pitted both the walls and the ceiling. Whatever kind of bomb had gone off in here had done incredible damage. Blood was everywhere and several bodies had been sawed completely in half.

As Harvath tried to pinpoint how long ago the attack had occurred, the one thing he was confident of was that it had happened before their botched ambush in Central Park. They couldn’t have made it here in time even if they had wanted to.

“What the hell hit this place?” said Rick Cates as he stepped around the bodies of what looked like three more dead marines. “This was no fragmentation grenade.”

“This was more like the type of bomb suicide bombers use,” replied Tracy Hastings, who had witnessed the aftermath of suicide bombers more times than she cared to remember.

“Are you saying somebody walked in here and blew him or herself up?” asked Harvath.

Tracy looked around some more and then replied, “Maybe. All I can say is that I think we’re looking at a tight and very powerful package of plastique packed with ball bearings as the projectile.”

“Any idea how it got in here?”

Tracy shook her head.

“Maybe the pizza guy brought it,” said Cates as he bumped the edge of a personal pan-pizza box still sitting on someone’s desk.

The team spread out and combed the facility. Like the others before it, it was all computerized. Now, though, they knew the reason why. Morgan found a functioning workstation, but without a password, he couldn’t gain access to the system. Not only that, but as Harvath studied the shiny dials built into the frames of the computer displays, he realized they weren’t cameras, as several on the team had suspected, but actually retinal scanners. The Athena Program took the handling of its data very seriously.

It was hard to tell if anything had been stolen. From what Harvath and the rest of the team could tell, everything seemed to be there; it was just shot to hell—including the employees. The only thing that had avoided the carnage was the server room, just like in the previous two locations.

But why risk so much just to take out the employees?
What the hell was al-Qaeda’s game? Was it some sort of payback? And what did any of this have to do with Sayed Jamal and Mike Jaffe? None of it made any sense.

That said, Harvath had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach that once he did uncover the answers he was looking for, he wasn’t going to like them.

As they left the server room, everyone was helping collect identification from the dead, when Herrington swung his weapon into the firing position and yelled, “Nobody fucking move.”

Harvath and the rest of the team had no idea what the hell he was talking about until they noticed two strangers at the far end of the room pointing a pair of very nasty-looking short-barreled M16 Viper machine guns at them. The strangers ordered Bob and the rest of the team to drop their weapons and remain absolutely still. It was a Mexican standoff—although this time they wouldn’t be able to count on Tracy Hastings sneaking up behind their adversaries with a big leafy tree branch.

“Everybody stay cool,” cautioned Harvath. “What do you guys want?”

“What do we want?”
demanded one of the strangers. “Why don’t we start with who the hell are you?”

“My name’s Scot Harvath and I’m with the Department of Homeland Security.”

“Who are the rest of these people?” the man asked, indicating the rest of the team with the barrel of his weapon.

“They’re with me. Who you are?”

“Homeland Security? Bullshit. DHS doesn’t have anything to do with this facility.”

“We do since Captain William Forrester was shot and killed less than an hour ago,” replied Harvath.

“Captain Forrester is dead?”

“As a doornail,” said Morgan as he shouldered his weapon and pulled a half-liter of water from his pack.

Tracy saw the men tense and begin applying pressure to their triggers. “Paul, are you nuts?” she responded. “Quit screwing around. You’re going to get us all killed.”

“No, I’m not,” said Morgan. “And you know why? Because marines don’t kill other marines.”