Brad Thor - Takedown

It was like banging his head against a brick wall. Harvath’s blood was beginning to boil and he was getting very near his breaking point. He needed to go over this kid’s head and was about to do so, when Bob thanked the duty officer for his help, grabbed Harvath’s arm, and steered him out of the JTTF and into the stairwell.

“What’s the matter with you?” demanded Harvath.

“Shut up,” replied Herrington.

“The hell I will. I’ve got to find Sayed Jamal, and your getting in my way like that isn’t going to-”

“They don’t have him.”

“Or so says the dumb ass at the front desk. Sometimes you’ve gotta go higher up the food chain to get answers.”

“Well, you are going higher up the food chain, all right, because Mike Jaffe doesn’t work for the Joint Terrorism Task Force,” Herrington replied. “He’s with DIA.”

“The Defense Intelligence Agency?”

Bob nodded his head. “I met him in Afghanistan back in 2001. My unit was assigned to a very high-speed task force going after the top of the al-Qaeda leadership.”

“And Mike Jaffe was a part of that task force?” asked Harvath.

“He was in charge of it.”

“So why the hell would he pose as a JTTF agent?”

“We had a saying that both the Lord and the DIA work in mysterious ways. Obviously, he had a very personal interest in your prisoner.”

“A little too personal,” said Harvath as he began walking down the stairs.

“Where are you going?”

“To make a phone call. Then I’m going to find Mike Jaffe if I have to turn this entire city inside out.”

It was the tapping at his window that caused Tim Fiore to snap back into consciousness. His reflexes kicked in, and in a flash he had his SIG Sauer drawn and pointed dead-on at the threat.

“Mister, the bridge is going to collapse. You’ve gotta get the hell out of here,” a stranger yelled from the other side of the glass.

Fiore’s head hurt like hell. It felt like someone had smacked him with a lead pipe. For a moment he didn’t know where he was. Then slowly it started coming back to him. “On the ground!” he yelled at the man. “On the fucking ground-now!”

Terrified, the Good Samaritan fled for his life.

Though he was a seasoned Secret Service agent, nothing could have prepared Fiore for what he saw when he turned and looked over his shoulder.

The entire back half of the armored vehicle they’d been traveling in was gone; evaporated. It had taken the sliding gun drawers beneath the cargo area, along with the third row of seats, where Agents Grossi and Swartley had been sitting.

An enormous piece of twisted metal that looked like a pitchfork had pierced the second row of seats, impaling both of Amanda Rutledge’s friends. Amanda was unconscious, but Tim didn’t see any wounds. He reached for her and felt for a pulse; it was weak, but at least she was alive. For how much longer, though, he couldn’t tell.

Fiore looked over at his partner, whose chin was slumped against her chest.

“Marcy?” he said as he felt for her pulse. “Marcy, can you hear me?”

There was no response.

Twisting out of his seatbelt, Fiore kicked his door open and began yelling into his radio. “This is Echo One. We’ve been hit. I repeat, Echo One has been hit. All units respond. Over.”

Hopping out of the SUV, Fiore scanned for threats as he came around to the rear passenger door. Where the hell was the other Secret Service vehicle? It should have been right behind them. It was then that he began noticing the screams. Screams of terror. Screams of agony. All around, cars were overturned and huge sections of the bridge were missing. Their van had been slammed perpendicularly into the guard rail and, judging from the marks on the roof and hood, had flipped at least three or four times. It was only out of sheer luck they had landed upright and had managed to stay on the bridge at all. This wasn’t the work of just one bomb, there had to have been at least two, probably more. The injured were everywhere, and those who weren’t wounded sat frozen in their cars, wandered aimlessly in shock, or ran for their lives.

Fiore tried to open Amanda’s door, but it wouldn’t budge. With the extensive damage their SUV had sustained, going through the shrapnel-ridden cargo area was also out of the question. He was going to have to go around the other side and pull the president’s daughter over the bodies of her two dead friends.

As he came around the rear of the vehicle, Fiore noticed that along with everything else that had evaporated, so had their medical trauma bag. All that was left was a collapsible litter, and being careful not to gash himself, he climbed inside and grabbed it.

He continued to try to raise the other agents as he raced around to the driver’s side of the SUV. Because they’d been trained on what to do in case of just such an assassination attempt, Fiore was able to react almost without even thinking about it.

Yanking the rear driver’s-side door open, Fiore crawled in as far as he could go. Gently, he unbuckled the first daughter, supported her neck as best he could, and backed out of the SUV, guiding her around the jagged edges of the steel pitchfork that had eviscerated her friends until he could lay her down on the litter.

With two enormous holes behind them and being nearer to the Manhattan side of the bridge, Tim scanned the nearby buildings for a safe haven. His training dictated that he get Amanda to high ground as soon as possible, where he could better control their situation and hold out until their helicopter could arrive. Trying the Secret Service Command Post, he said, “Skybox, this is Echo One. Do you copy? Over.”

“Roger that, Echo One,” came the response from the command post. “What is your status?”

“We’ve been hit. At least two vehicle-borne explosives timed to coincide with our route. Echo Two is gone, we’ve got two agents missing from our vehicle, a third unconscious, and the package has been damaged. Request you initiate Operation Upswing immediately. Over.”

“Negative, Echo One. No can do,” said the command center control agent. “All bridges and tunnels into and out of Manhattan have been hit. We’ve got a report of an NYPD helicopter down, possibly due to hostile fire. Until further notice, NYC airspace is too hot and has been shut down. Is your vehicle operable? Over.”

All the bridges and tunnels? How the hell could that be possible? As incomprehensible as it was, there was no time to even try to make sense of it now. “Negative,” replied Fiore. “Our vehicle has been totaled. Over.”

“Echo One. Stand by. Over,” said the voice.

Stand by? Was this guy nuts? They were completely vulnerable out in the open like this, and Fiore wasn’t convinced that they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. What if there was a secondary attempt on Amanda’s life in progress right at this moment?

While watching the pandemonium around them, he bent down and checked her pulse again. Though each protective detail had a medical agent as part of the team, they all had gone through extensive medical training. Fiore suspected that if Amanda didn’t get help soon, she wasn’t going to make it.

“Skybox, we need to evac now! Over.”

“Stand by, Echo One. Over,” repeated the controller.

Fiore was about to tell the controller what he could do with his stand by’s, when he heard someone coming around the front of the vehicle.

Instantly, he moved his body to shield Amanda Rutledge while raising his pistol and applying pressure to the trigger.

The next thing he saw was a gun as it swung around the front bumper. He knew it-a secondary attack.

He was about to pull the trigger the rest of the way, when he heard, “Jesus, Tim. Don’t shoot! It’s me. Marcy.”