Takedown (6 page)

W
ith 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!”

A
bdul 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.

Though 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.

W
hat 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.

“Apparently, they’re not yet one hundred percent convinced that the attacks are connected to our pal downstairs.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. They’re the ones who informed us about the intercept in the first place. Al-Qaeda knows he’s here.”

“They know he’s in New York, we don’t know that they know he’s in this building.”

“So what are we supposed to do?”

“For the time being we stay put. An NYPD helicopter was just brought down by sniper fire, so now the air space above Manhattan is officially frozen until further notice.”

“Let’s go out by water.”

Jaffe shook his head. “NYPD, Port Authority, and Coast Guard craft have all come under heavy-caliber sniper fire as well on both the East River and the Hudson. They’ve also been ordered to pull back until further notice.”

“Then we’re not going to get any reinforcements.”

“It doesn’t look like it.”

“So what’s the plan?”

“We run this just the way we rehearsed it,” replied Jaffe. “Full battle dress and weld the doors shut on our floor.”

“And then?”

Jaffe looked at Harper and said, “And then we turn up the heat on our prisoner and get the information we need out of him before it’s too late.”

W
hen Harvath’s BlackBerry rang, he was still in a state of shock. Though nearly every civilian in New York City would find it impossible to use their cell phone at this moment because of the overloaded system, Harvath’s worked because it was tied to a special government program that granted priority access in times of crisis or emergency. Excusing himself, he walked to the other side of the roof. “Harvath,” he said raising the device to his ear.

“Scot, thank God,” replied his boss, Gary Lawlor. “Where are you?”

“In Manhattan. Twenty-third and First, on the roof of the VA Medical Center.”

“What can you tell me about what’s going on there?”

“We’re under attack. That’s what’s going on here. I just saw an NYPD helicopter blown out of the sky by an RPG. And from what I’ve heard, all the bridges and tunnels into and out of Manhattan have also been destroyed.”

“That’s exactly what we’re hearing here at DHS. All available local, state, and federal assets have been dispatched—marine units, aviation, you name it. They’re revving into full-blown search-and-rescue mode right now.”

“If you want me to suit up,” responded Harvath, “just tell me where I need to be.”

Lawlor pulled a paper from his desk and said, “There have been explosions at Air Traffic Control radar stations in New York and New Jersey, which have knocked the ATC system off-line in your area. Based on the intel I’m seeing, I’m worried that whoever did this may have a secondary agenda.”

“You think they’re trying to pull another 9/11?”

“We have no idea. When the sniper situation broke out at LaGuardia, the FAA started diverting flights, but anything is possible. Since you’re there, we need you to figure out what’s going on.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“I don’t know. From what I hear, it’s already anarchy in New York. They’ve got a lot of good people on the job, but their coordination is falling apart, just like on 9/11. Everyone’s rushing to the nearest attack site to try to help pull out survivors. The overwhelming number of sites is breaking down response capabilities. I won’t be able to get you any support. At least not right now.”

Considering the magnitude of the attacks, Harvath wasn’t surprised, but he needed more information to go on. “Gary, there are eight million people in New York City. Who am I looking for and what is the target?”

“A communication was intercepted earlier today. In it was a reference to ‘Allah’s bombmaker,’ who had been brought ‘against his will and in violation of international law’to New York City.”

“That’s impossible,” said Harvath. “No one could have put something like this together that fast. We grabbed Sayed Jamal this morning. How would anyone know we have him, much less where we have him?”

“That’s what you need to find out,” responded Lawlor, “I want you to question Jamal yourself. If this turns out to be an al-Qaeda operation, there’s a good chance he had a hand in planning or training the people involved. Either way, he may know the end game.”

“He’s in JTTF custody now. Why don’t we let their interrogators handle it?”

“Because somebody had to have leaked the fact that we grabbed him and have him in New York, that’s why. Until we can identify and plug that leak, I can’t trust anyone else but you on this. Is that clear?”

“Have you tried reaching the president?” replied Harvath, who could tell by the tone of his voice that Gary Lawlor was just as angry as he was.

“Of course I’ve tried, but DC’s just as chaotic as New York right now. Apparently, he was someplace in Wisconsin, but now they’re rushing him to
Air Force One
. Listen, we both know that he’s going to be locked down so tight only his closest people will have access to him for the next several hours. We’re on our own and I’m giving you a direct order. Lean on Jamal as hard as you have to. I don’t want any more people to die. We’ll worry about the consequences of the interrogation later.”

That was all Harvath needed to hear. But convincing the JTTF to allow him to conduct the kind of interrogation on their prisoner that he wanted to conduct, even after today’s events, was something that Harvath thought was going to be a lot easier said than done.