Takedown

“That’s it?” asked Hastings. “That’s all you’re going to do for him?”

“It’s all we can do,” Harvath responded as he radioed McGahan, told him they had a man down, and gave him Morgan’s position.

The marine looked up at him and forcing a smile, coughed, “Let’s hope this is the worst thing that happens.”

Standing up, Harvath turned to the others and said, “Let’s go.”

With Harvath at the lead, the team raced toward the nave while McGahan’s ESU officers from the north and south ends of the transept were already well ahead of them.

When they exited the sacristy and charged into the service corridor they saw the two cops standing in a pile of glass on either side of a broken window.

Using hand signals, one of the officers indicated for Harvath and his team to hold up, because the terrorists they were chasing had gone out the window.

Harvath didn’t like it. It was too dangerous. As they went through that window, the terrorists could pick them off one by one. They needed a better plan.

Harvath hugged the wall and began creeping forward. He wanted to tell the ESU guys to back off, when he heard something pop beneath his boot and Bob Herrington grabbed his arm.

Raising his leg, Harvath looked down at what he’d stepped on-a tiny piece of glass. Herrington didn’t need to say a word. Harvath knew what it meant. Whoever had broken that window had come back down the hallway in their direction. Maybe his urban tracking skills weren’t as bad as he thought.

And maybe they had just caught a significant break.

Eighty-Two

The floor of St. Bart’s service corridor was covered in linoleum tiles. Not the most inspired decorating choice, but as far as Harvath was concerned, they were absolutely beautiful. Whoever had broken the glass fire cabinet and the window had managed to get another small piece of glass wedged in the sole of his boot.

Studying the floor, Herrington and Harvath soon discovered the true route by which the terrorists had exited the corridor.

Once Tracy gave them the thumbs-up indicating that the door wasn’t rigged, they slowly made their way down the stairs, keeping their eyes open for booby traps the entire time.

Despite Harvath’s discovery, McGahan’s two ESU officers opted to tackle the window. They were going with their guts and Harvath couldn’t blame them, though his gut told him it was a dead end. The real trail was the one he and his team were following right now down an old metal staircase.

As they descended, the brick walls on either side grew slick with moisture. The air was dank and moldy. A series of bare lightbulbs lit their way down until finally, at the bottom, they encountered a large iron door marked Utility Tu

Cates, who was bringing up the rear, smiled and raising his weapon, said, “I brought my authorization.”

“Shut up, Rick,” replied Tracy. She didn’t like what she was seeing. The fact that the door had been left ajar put her on edge. It was almost too inviting.

Harvath, though, doubted that it was rigged. Whoever had gone through the trouble of breaking the window upstairs hadn’t expected to be followed-at least not right away.

Once Tracy finished checking the door over and gave the okay, the team filed though.

Rusting pipes of varying sizes lined the fetid walls, while water dripping from the ceiling created a patchwork of stagnant puddles along the floor. Even their breathing seemed to send echoes bouncing off in all directions, and as they made their way forward, Harvath, Hastings, Cates, and Herrington took great pains not to make any u

The tu

Holding his hand up in a fist, he froze his team in place. Tu

Herrington queried him on range and Harvath relayed what he thought the distance was.

Raising one of the M16 Vipers they’d taken from the Geneva Diamond location, Bob indicated what he wanted to do. Nodding his assent, Harvath peered back around the corner just in time to see the terrorists disappear from view.

Eighty-Three

Abdul Ali had no idea where the access door led. He knew only that this was the one they needed to take. Whether it was precognition, a gut instinct, or divine intervention he had no idea, but an overwhelming sense of urgency had overtaken him and it told him to get out of the tu

Crashing through two more doors the team found a set of stairs and followed them up into a large commercial laundry area. From the uniforms of the startled staff as well as the stenciled letters across the large canvas carts, the team realized that they had stumbled into the bowels of the Doubletree Metropolitan Hotel.

One of the Chechens raised his weapon as if he was going to fire, but Sacha quickly pushed it back down and shook his head no. They hadn’t been hired to kill civilians. That was what the Arabs did, not them. It was a pointless waste of ammunition and would draw too much attention.

Ali waved the team forward and they threaded through the carts and stacks of laundry to a small corridor and a bank of elevators at the end. As he pressed the button, Sacha withdrew his map of New York and tried to figure out where they were.

“ Lexington and Fifty-first,” he said as a set of elevator doors opened and they filed in.

Ali did the calculation in his head and replied, “About five blocks from the final target.”

As Sacha was not the leader of this operation, he simply raised his eyebrows in response as if to say How should we proceed?

His index finger hovering in front of the elevator buttons, Ali tried to decide the best course of action. They had never pla

Little did he know that what Allah chose to provide were four very well armed and extremely dangerous American Special Operations perso