Takedown (4 page)

A
fter a short debrief, a man named Mike Jaffe, who was the lead Joint Terrorism Task Force agent, asked, “So where to now? You going back to DC for the Fourth of July weekend?”

Harvath shook his head. “I’m stopping in New York City to see an old friend who just got back from Afghanistan.”

The man smiled and asked, “Where are you going to watch the fireworks from?”

“Probably a bar stool.”

“You gotta be kidding me,” said Jaffe, the pronounced New York accent unmistakable in his voice. “Let me tell you something. The best place to watch them is in Brooklyn on Furman Avenue between Atlantic and Cadman Plaza.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“And if you’re hungry afterwards, go to Lundy Brothers on Emmons Avenue for a real bowl of New York red. Don’t miss their egg cream either. They throw in a pretzel for a swizzle stick.”

Harvath laughed and shook his head. He had no idea what a bowl of New York red was, much less why it was important that he search out a “real” one. And he’d never had an egg cream in his life. But that was New Yorkers for you. The sun rose and set by their city. Anyplace else in the world was only second best.

“You getting all this?” asked the intense, silver-haired Jaffe, sensing Harvath’s mind was wandering. “Or do you want me to write it down for you?”

“I think I got it,” replied Harvath. “What about you guys? A weekend in the Catskills before running our pal down to sunny Guantánamo Bay?”

Jaffe laughed. “Actually, we were thinking about stapling all of his indictments to him and stringing him up outside Fort Drum. We figured we could sell tickets at a buck a whack and tell the soldiers he was a Muslim piñata.”

Harvath liked the JTTF agent’s sense of humor. “You’d probably make a fortune,” he responded, knowing that New York’s Fort Drum was the home of the 10th Mountain Division Light Infantry and that they’d lost more than their fair share of people in Iraq, especially to IEDs.

“But unfortunately, we don’t have time for that,” replied Jaffe. “The Bureau wants him down at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan today for his initial processing. After that, though, he’ll be somebody else’s problem.”

Harvath didn’t envy the people who would have to spend the holiday weekend away from their families and friends while they interrogated Sayed Jamal, but that was how the business worked and Harvath knew it all too well. America couldn’t afford to take a day off from its fight on terrorism, not even on the anniversary of its independence. The bad guys were always working;always probing for another soft spot they could exploit, and America had to remain one step ahead.

As Harvath watched Jaffe walk away to join his men, he lamented the immutable fact that no matter how hard it tried, the United States would never be able to be on top of everything. This time, just like so many times before, they’d gotten lucky. That was it. Though they’d pulled a rather big player off the field, there were innumerable second-stringers standing in the shadows ready to take his place.

For all of the setbacks the enemy had supposedly suffered, their roster of fresh bodies seemed to roll on without end.

And the one unspoken truth that every American involved in the war on terror knew was that it wasn’t a matter of
if
the terrorists would hit us again, it was only a matter of
when.

Harvath prayed that he would never see that day, because he knew that when it came, it would make 9/11 look like choir practice.

T
he drive from Rouses Point to Manhattan normally took five and a half hours, but with the help of a thermos full of coffee, a heavy foot, and George Clinton and Parliament, Harvath made it in four.

With the sunroof open, the windows rolled down, and “Tear the Roof Off the Sucker” pumping from the speakers of his black Chevy TrailBlazer, Harvath rumbled across the George Washington Bridge toward Manhattan a little after 2:00
PM
. As he took in the skyline and watched the tidal wave of fleeing holiday traffic, the weather couldn’t have been better—low eighties, bright sunshine, and only a trace of humidity. It was going to be a perfect weekend.

An hour outside the city, Harvath had phoned his pal, recently retired Delta Force operative Robert Herrington—better known to his friends as “Bullet Bob”—and established a rendezvous point for their meeting.

Because Bob was still wrapping things up at the Manhattan VA, they decided to meet at one of Harvath’s favorite pubs near Times Square called the Pig & Whistle, where they’d begin the first leg of their bar-hopping Alcoholics Unanimous meeting.

After driving around the neighborhood for twenty minutes, Harvath settled on the cheapest garage he had seen, agreed to hand over his first born, three pints of blood, and a vital organ to be named at a later date as payment, and then walked four blocks over to the Pig.

Inside, the staff and the customers were glued to TV sets. Harvath grabbed a seat at the bar, ordered a pint of Bare Knuckle Stout, and tried to piece together what was happening.

The stations were covering a hostage standoff at a grade school in the Bronx.
What a way to start the Fourth of July weekend,
thought Harvath as he ordered a late lunch and tried to forget about the world and its problems for a while.

His mind drifted to the first time he and Bob Herrington had met. They’d been assigned to a unique Joint Special Operations program training the special forces of an allied South American country. The soldiers’ final task at the end of the training was to show off their new skills in a series of high-end exercises culminating with them assembling on a mountain plateau where the country’s president, its top generals, and other assorted VIPs were sitting in a reviewing stand. The catch was that it had to be done in a very tight time frame.

Though the soldiers were performing better than any of their American instructors thought they would, once they hit the run up the steep mountain face, it was obvious they weren’t going to make it up to the parade ground by the specified time. So what did Bob do? Once they arrived at the base of the mountain and were out of sight of the reviewing stand, he gathered up all the soldiers’ rifles, strapped them to his pack, and ran ahead of them.

For his part, Harvath couldn’t understand what Herrington was doing. Just below the plateau, he stopped and then handed a rifle to each one of the soldiers as they passed. Up on the parade ground, there were several moments of confusion as the soldiers traded rifles back and forth until each was with its rightful owner. As Harvath walked to the edge of the parade ground, he saw Bob smiling, and it was at that moment that he learned his greatest lesson about leadership—the only thing that matters is that your team achieve its objective together. How that happens is immaterial as long as you all cross the finish line together.

Bob could have taken credit for the soldiers’ success, but that wasn’t his style. He was happy just to see them succeed. Harvath had liked Bob from the minute he met him, but on that dusty parade ground in South America, he had developed a real respect for him and that respect had turned into a friendship that transcended the years and more than a few assignments together. In fact, Harvath often joked that Bob had become the older brother he never wanted.

Forty-five minutes later, Harvath was about to order another beer, when Bullet Bob materialized out of thin air and slapped a Joint Special Operations Task Force coin down on the bar. The rule was that if you and a colleague had both been given the same coin for an operation or a team you’d been on and you didn’t have your coin with you, you were responsible for buying the round. If you did have it, then the man who issued the challenge had to pick up that round. Harvath was way ahead of his old friend. Reaching down, he lifted his cocktail napkin and revealed his coin.

After asking if there was any Louis XIII Cognac in the house, Harvath shook his buddy’s hand. “Nice try, my friend,” he said, careful of Bob’s injured shoulder.

“You win some, you lose some,” replied Herrington, who was at least three inches taller than Harvath and a bit broader in the chest. His similarly colored brown hair was cut neat, but he still sported his
go native
Afghanistan beard. His narrow green eyes took in everybody and everything in the room. Turning to the bartender, Herrington said, “Bring us another round of whatever he’s drinking and make mine a double.”

“He’s having a pint of stout, love,” the Irish barkeep said flirtatiously.

Bob smiled his most charming smile and replied, “Then bring me two of them. I don’t like the fact that this guy’s got a head start on me.”

The woman rolled her eyes as she went in search of three new glasses.

“I think she likes you,” said Harvath once the woman was out of earshot.

“Hearts and minds. It’s what I’m all about.”

Harvath laughed. It was nice to see Bob in reasonably good spirits. Under the smile and devil-may-care attitude, though, he knew the man was not taking his forced retirement well. That was a big part of why Harvath was spending the Fourth of July weekend in New York City.

The other part was because at present, he didn’t have a solid relationship with anyone worth spending the weekend with. The only woman Harvath could have seen himself with was otherwise engaged, quite literally, and on her way to marrying someone else.

As if he could read minds, Bob wasted no time in asking, “So, how’s Meg?”

Harvath knew the subject was bound to come up. Both he and Bob had been part of a hostage rescue team that had freed Meg Cassidy from a hijacked airliner just a few years prior. Because Meg had been the only one to see the key hijacker’s face, she had been recruited to help track and ID him for termination. A good part of her training for the assignment had taken place
behind the fence,
as it was known, with Bob and several of his colleagues at the Delta Force compound at Fort Bragg. “This time next year, you and I’ll probably be attending her wedding,” said Harvath.

“You’ve gotta be one of the dumbest people I’ve ever met, you know that?”

“Good to see you too, Robert,” replied Harvath as the bartender returned with their beers and set one in front of Harvath and two in front of Bob.

After she walked away to take care of another customer, Bob said, “Meg Cassidy is hands down the best woman I’ve ever seen you with and you let her slip right through your fingers.”

“It’s complicated.”

“She’s a woman,” said Bob as he took a sip of his stout and let his response hang in the air between them. “They’re always complicated.”

It was a subject Harvath really had no desire to get into. “It’s over, okay?”

“It’s okay with me if it’s okay with you.”

“It’s okay with me,” said Harvath centering his beer on its coaster.

“So who are you dating now?” asked Bob.

“Nobody.”

Herrington smiled, “So then you’re not
really
okay and its not
really
over, is it?”

“Give me a break, would you?”

“At least tell me you’re gay. SEAL or no SEAL, you were in the Navy, after all. Being gay comes with the territory for you squids. What do they say?
When you’re under way, gay is okay?”

“Fuck you,” replied Harvath, who then added, “You know if at any point you want to pull that excessively large nose of yours out of my personal life, I’d be more than happy to discuss what happened in Afghanistan.”

This time, it was Bob’s turn to be silent. Though he hadn’t meant to, Harvath had dragged a piece of sandpaper over a very raw nerve.

When Herrington finally spoke he said, “How many men did you lose when the president was kidnapped?”

“Too many.”

“Yeah,” said Bob, nodding his head knowingly. “It sucks. But you know what can be worse?”

Harvath shook his head.

“Having men under your command seriously maimed and in constant pain. That’s worse than seeing them die. At least when they’re dead, they’re not in anguish anymore.”

Harvath signaled the bartender to bring him another round and said, “What happened in Afghanistan?”

Bob waited until Harvath had his beer and after a little more prodding responded, “We were tasked with taking down a target near Herat. Somehow, they must have known we were coming, because they hit us first and hit us hard—real hard.”

“We had a guy attached to our unit who’d messed up his ankle and I was helping hump his load. I should have seen that ambush coming, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t on point. I was the third guy in the column, making my way back up to the lead when it happened. The two guys in front got it real bad. I got off easy compared to them, but it doesn’t matter. Because of me, all three of us were handed medical retirements.”

“You think this is all because you weren’t on point?”

“A team leader leads, period.”

“That’s bullshit, Bob, and you know it,” said Harvath. “Nobody can be on point all the time, not even you. That’s why the position gets rotated.”

“But it was my turn to be up front.”

“Yet you were humping the pack of an injured man. You can’t do both.”

“Not anymore, apparently.”

“Shit happens, Bob.”

“Not to me it doesn’t and not to
my
team. We hadn’t even had so much as a hangnail in almost two years and then
bang,
three of us are out. One of my guys will never walk again, will never be able to make love to his wife, and the other one’s blind. He’ll never be able to watch his kids grow up. All of this because I wasn’t up front when I should have been.”

Harvath knew Bob pretty well and he knew his reputation firsthand. In fact, most people in the Special Operations community knew it. Bob could carry an entire battalion on his back. He was an incredible athlete, and that athleticism made one of the best soldiers the United States had ever created. Since the day he’d joined the Army right out of high school, through his time as a Ranger and into 7th Group and then Delta, Bob had always led the way. It wasn’t an ego thing, it was just Bob—you couldn’t hold him back.

The fact that he was taking the injuries of his teammates so personally was not surprising to Harvath. That was also the kind of guy Bob was. It was the way most American soldiers were. Truth, freedom, and the American way played well for the cameras, but the fact of the matter was that in the frenzied heat of combat, you weren’t fighting for your country, you were fighting for the guy right next to you.

Looking his friend in the eyes, Harvath tried to assuage some of the man’s guilt by repeating, “Bob, shit happens.”

“Yeah, maybe. But, it’s not the way I wanted to go out,” replied Herrington as he paused and took a long swallow of beer. “I wanted to go out on top. I would’ve liked just one more chance to prove not only to my team, but to myself that I could still do it—that what happened had nothing to do with me getting old, too slow.”

Harvath was not going to let this become the tone for the entire weekend. Bob needed to snap the hell out of it. “You and your team competed in how many triathlons when you were home last year?”

“Two.”

“And the worst showing you had?”

“Fifth place.”

Harvath pretended to think about it for a moment and then responded, “You know, I think it probably was a good idea for the Army to cut you loose after all. I mean, only two top-ten international finishes? You’re obviously on a downhill slide.”

Bob wasn’t looking at him, but Harvath could see the faint traces of a smile form on his face and he decided to push the humor a little further. “Jesus Christ, Bob, you’re forty years old. Someone oughtta be fitting you for false teeth and a new hip, not giving you a gun and sending you out on this nation’s most dangerous assignments. That’s what us young guys are for.”

Herrington’s smile now spread from ear to ear. “First of all, you’re only four years younger than I am, and second, SEAL or no SEAL, I could whip your ass in a New York minute, so don’t get cocky. You’d have a hell of a time meeting women this weekend if I end up dotting both of your eyes for you.”

Harvath was about to suggest Bob abandon the commando motto of silent, swift, and deadly in favor of senile, slow, and deaf, when Herrington looked up at the television and said, “That’s not good.”

Harvath looked up and noticed that several NYPD Emergency Services Unit trucks had gathered at the site of the Bronx school standoff.

“The ESU normally turns out in smaller trucks. Two per squad,” continued Herrington. “Those big rigs are their rolling armories. They don’t move those in unless the situation is really bad. I count at least four up there. That means four squads responding. This is no run-of-the-mill hostage situation.”

Harvath knew that outside the military, the NYPD’s ESU was not only the largest full-time SWAT response group in the country, but also one of its absolute best. And while they were all brothers in arms, each squad preferred to work alone and only called in backup when it was absolutely necessary. Scenes of the Beslan school massacre in Russia began to race through Harvath’s mind. A school was a perfect terrorist target and an attack on one would have an unbelievable impact here in the States. Harvath often wondered why a terrorist group hadn’t tried it yet. The media coverage, as well as the communal American heartache would be off the charts.

He was about to mention this to Bob, when one of the TV anchors cut in with two additional breaking news stories—a fire at New York City mayor David Brown’s Emergency Operations Command Center in Brooklyn and a sniper targeting aircraft out at LaGuardia in Queens.