Brad Thor - Takedown

“Correct.”

“I know a guy over there who might let me peek behind the curtain. I’ll work that angle as well as the GPS tracking company’s servers. I’ll call you back in a half hour.”

Harvath gave McCauliff some additional information from the phone he had “forgotten” to put back in the NYPD evidence bag and then hung up.

“What do we do now?” asked Herrington.

“McCauliff’s the best guy on something like this. If anybody can turn this to our advantage, it’s him.”

“And then what? If we pick up a trail on the terrorists, there are still only two of us.”

“To tell you the truth, I hadn’t thought that far ahead yet,” said Harvath.

“I have,” replied Bob. “Let’s get back to the VA and see if we can’t improve our odds.”

With their two litter bearers, Tim Fiore and Marcy Delacorte pounded down the bridge as fast as their feet would carry them.

When they reached the end of the bridge, three ambulances were already pulling away-packed with injured.

Tim yelled to an NYPD officer about twenty feet ahead, “Stop that ambulance!” but the officer knew there wasn’t room in any of them for even one more person.

“There’s more ambulances on the way,” he shouted back.

“We can’t wait,” replied Marcy as she flashed her credentials. “ U.S. Secret Service. We have a priority injury here.”

“The ambulances are gone, ma’am. There’s nothing I can do.”

Fiore tilted his head in the direction of the officer’s squad car, and Delacorte knew exactly what he was thinking.

“We need your patrol car.”

“I can’t do that,” said the officer.

“And I’m not asking,” replied Marcy as she raised her weapon.

The cop put up both his hands. “Okay, okay. It’s yours.”

“Let’s get her into the car,” Tim said to the two men who were helping them.

They rushed to the patrol car, and as the officer watched them place Amanda on the backseat, he asked, “Is that-?”

Fiore nodded his head. “Where’s the nearest hospital?”

“Beth Israel,” replied the cop. “Fifteenth and First. The NYU hospital downtown is going to be overloaded.”

“You can’t drive,” stated Marcy as she got in the back with Amanda. “You don’t know your way around.”

Tim looked around and then spotted something on the dash of a car idling in the gridlock not far from where they were. Running toward it, Fiore removed his credentials and held them up when he reached in the window and grabbed the device. “U.S. Secret Service” was all he said.

Sprinting back to the squad car, Tim propped the Garmin iQue GPS handheld on the dash, fired up the vehicle, and hit the lights and siren. Motorists tried to get out of their way, but the effort was useless. There was nowhere for them to go. The traffic was absolutely locked down.

Aiming for the sidewalk between two parked cars, Fiore yelled, “Hold on,” and hit the gas.

As Ali knew from the information provided by the Troll, there was no telling which location Mohammed bin Mohammed was being held at. All they knew was that until they found the right one, each location was going to be very difficult to penetrate and each would pose its own special set of challenges.

The rather benign store on 47th Street between Fifth and Sixth, in the heart of New York ’s diamond district, looked like any other, but Ali and his men knew it was only a front. The windows and doors were mounted with bulletproof Lexan glass reinforced with high-tensile steel frames. There was an airlock-style double entrance that required patrons to be buzzed in the first door and have it close completely behind them before the next would be allowed open. Discreet vents near the floor were capable of pumping in an incapacitating nerve agent in the event the high-voltage-electrode woven “shock” mats were not enough to fell any would-be intruders. Even among the extremely security conscious merchants of the diamond district, this store was in a league of its own.

It was the Chechens who had decided to avoid the airlock all together. As far as they were concerned, there was no reason the balance of their force couldn’t go right in through the windows-provided, of course, someone was kind enough to “open” them up first.

Dressed like the ubiquitous Hasidic Jews who did business up and down the street, two of the Chechen operatives were buzzed into the store with nondescript briefcases in hand. Moments later, as the store staff was distracted by the blacked-out Chevy Tahoes that crashed up onto the sidewalk outside their windows with their lights blazing, the Chechens carried out their plan.

Both briefcases were detonated with deafening pressure concussions and blinding flashes of white light. Before any of the staff could react, they were gunned down by one of the operatives while the other slapped shape charges to the inside of the largest window. By the time the charge blew, both of the men were already at the vaultlike door leading to the heart of the store’s true operation.

Three U.S. marines, dressed in civilian clothes and body armor, were able to take down the first terrorist with fire from their short-barreled M16 Viper assault rifles, but as skilled as they were, they could not escape the high-velocity shrapnel from the grenade the man’s partner lobbed into their security room.

With the marine contingent down and the rest of the team in the store, the terrorists made their way into the bowels of the building, shooting anyone and anything that moved.

Three-and-a-half minutes later, the rooms had all been cleared. Two of the men body-bagged their comrade while the others reloaded their weapons. As Abdul Ali reached into his vest for another magazine, he noticed he was still carrying his cell phone-an unforgivable over-sight, especially as it was no longer necessary. If the Troll or anyone else needed to reach him, they knew how to do it.

Removing the battery, Ali smashed the phone with the butt of his weapon and gathered up the pieces. As he exited the store, he threw the remains into the nearest storm drain.

“Are we done here?” Ali asked an enormous bear of a man named Sacha.

The Chechen leader unslung his bag of electronics, threw it into the lead Tahoe, and nodded his head.

As the SUVs pulled off the curb, Ali looked at his watch and tried to compute how long it would take to maneuver through the streets to their next destination. He also wondered if it would be where they would finally find Mohammed bin Mohammed.

Half a world away, the Troll was lying on a long leather sofa as his Caucasian Ovcharkas, Argus and Drako, dozed on the floor next to him. He was enjoying an exquisite snifter of Calvados and an original copy of the Friedrich Dürrenmatt play The Visit, when a tiny chime sounded from the direction of his desk.

Setting the slim volume on the table next to him, the Troll swung his legs over the edge of the couch and hopped down onto the floor. Immediately, the dogs snapped to attention and followed their master to the manor house’s enormous dining hall. There, any traces of the hall’s original function had been erased by the rows upon rows of high-end computer servers and satellite equipment that filled the room.

A raised platform with a sleek, yet child-sized glass-and-chrome table sat accompanied by a tiny leather desk chair at the far end of the hall. Suspended above the table were three flat-screen monitors. Sitting down in the chair, the Troll punched a series of keys on a Lucite keyboard recessed within the table’s surface and the monitors sprang to life. It was amazing how far the Troll had come in his little life.