Brad Thor - Takedown

Tracy used a little makeup to cover the facial scars left by an IED disposal gone bad, but the damage was still visible. From what Herrington had told Harvath, her injuries had been quite severe, but the surgeons had done a remarkable job-right down to matching the particularly pale blue color for her artificial eye.

Harvath could tell by looking at each of the people standing there that they were a tightly knit group. That was good. The question was, could they function both as individuals and as a cohesive unit under the stress of combat? And just as important, would they accept him, an outsider, as both one of their own and as their leader?

As Hardy went to check on some of his other patients, they had the office to themselves. Harvath asked Herrington to close the door. Once it was shut, he said, “I am going to be completely honest with all of you. You’re not my first choice for something like this, and you’re not even my last choice. But the situation being what it is, you are my only choice.”

“Fuck you too,” said Morgan.

Herrington held up his hand and said, “Let him finish.”

Harvath waited a beat and then said, “State, local, and federal resources are completely, and I mean completely, tied up with search-and-rescue efforts. Air traffic over and maritime traffic around Manhattan has been suspended due to sniper and RPG fire. What helicopter and boat traffic there is, is working off the opposite sides of both the Hudson and East rivers. Somebody doesn’t want any reinforcements making it to Manhattan. That means that we will have no support for this assignment whatsoever. Your participation will be in an unofficial, unrecognized, and most definitely unsanctioned capacity.”

“Meaning what?” asked Cates.

“It means you’re not federal employees and you are not being recognized as active duty soldiers-in essence, your disabled status hasn’t changed.”

“I guess it’s lucky for you then that even though they took our jobs, we all got to keep our training,” replied Cates.

Harvath liked that answer. Continuing, he said, “We’re dealing with an extremely well organized enemy of indeterminate size and resources who is presumably still operating somewhere in Manhattan.”

“You mean they’re not done yet?” responded Paul Morgan.

Harvath shook his head. “I don’t know. That’s why I wanted to be completely straight with you. In short, we have very little idea of what we’re up against. This could turn out to be nothing, but I’ve got a feeling it might be an extremely dangerous assignment. Anybody have any other questions?”

“Yeah,” joked Cates, “so what’s the bad news?”

A wave of tense laughter rolled through the room.

Tracy Hastings raised her hand halfway and asked, “If we don’t know who these people are and what their objective is, how are we supposed to find them?”

“I just got off the phone with someone who’s working on it,” replied Harvath. “We might have something very soon, so we need to be ready to move. In the meantime, we’ve got a bigger problem. All I have is a pistol, and it’s in my truck back up in Midtown. We’re going to have to figure out what we’re going to do for weapons.”

Another wave of laughter rolled through the room, but this time it was anything but tense.

Twenty minutes later Paul Morgan removed a piece of false drywall from the back of a closet in his small Gramercy Park apartment and said, “Go ahead and take your pick.”

It was a veritable arsenal. In the pistol department Morgan had two Unertl MEU SOC 1911’s, a Glock 19, and a four-inch-barreled.357 Smith amp; Wesson 620. Hanging next to them were a Mossberg 590 12-gauge shotgun, a Remington 40-X.308 sniper rifle, and a fully automatic Troy Industries CQB-SPC A4 assault rifle that Morgan had chanced a big official ass-whupping for smuggling out of Iraq.

“So much for our weapons problem,” said Harvath as he gazed at the display. “I’m going to ask another stupid question, but how are you set for ammo?”

Once again, the group laughed. Morgan crossed into the kitchen, which was covered with travel posters for places he hoped some day to see-Paris, Rome, Hong Kong-and removed a set of keys from his pocket. The refrigerator was a mosaic of snapshots showing Morgan as a marine in a number of other exotic locations around the world that were normally much more humid or dusty than Paris, Rome, or Hong Kong.

He unlocked a small padlock on the side of the freezer door and swung it open. Inside, boxes of shrink-wrapped ammunition stood in a neat series of rows.

“Where do you keep your grenade launcher?” asked Herrington.

“Dr. Hardy told me that grenade launchers are for paranoids, so I sold it to a buddy of mine a while back.”

Morgan let them stand there wondering for a second longer and then smiled and said, “Kidding. Only kidding. I never had a grenade launcher. Besides, with what the surface-to-air missile battery I’ve got up on the roof cost me, who could afford a grenade launcher?”

Everyone laughed, but secretly none of them would have been surprised to find that Morgan did have a crate of SAMs stashed somewhere upstairs.

Clearing off the kitchen table, Morgan hoisted a KIVA technical backpack stuffed to the gills with gear and set it onto one of the chairs.

“Is that your bug-out bag?” asked Hastings.

The marine nodded his head and began unloading his pack. “A week’s worth of the very best survival equipment money can buy.”

As Morgan pulled out MREs, chemlights, water purification tablets, parachute cord, and other items, Cates said, “A week’s worth? Whatever happened to seventy-two hours?”

“Hurricane Katrina, that’s what.” The marine looked at Harvath. “Even DHS is now telling people they need to have at least a week’s worth of supplies on hand in case of trouble, right?”

Harvath nodded his head knowing that they were talking about having people raise it to a month or even two. Not only did he have a bug-out bag ready to go at a moment’s notice in case of a terrorist attack or some other sort of disaster, but so did most of the military, law enforcement, and intelligence people he worked worth. Even civilians had them. The way Harvath saw it, it was pretty stupid for anyone, government employee or otherwise, not to be ready in case of an emergency. That said, his bug-out bag was sitting in the back of his TraillBlazer in a garage uptown. It weighed at least fifty pounds, and it would have been quite uncomfortable to carry everywhere with him. Even so, there were several items in it he would have liked to have with him right now.

As Morgan continued to remove items from his seemingly bottomless bag, Hastings asked, “Where’d you get all the money for this stuff?”

“Let’s just say that in my old life I was a good saver.”

“A real good saver,” added Cates as he checked the labels in a couple of the sport coats hanging in Morgan’s closet.

The marine laid out an assortment of extremely high-quality knives from Chris Reeve as well as a brand-new Gerber LMF II-Infantry, which could be used to carve one’s way out of a helicopter fuselage, and respectfully offered Harvath first pick.

Though they were all exceptional, Harvath already had his never-leave-home-without-it Benchmade auto in his pocket, and if they made it back to his TrailBlazer he’d have access to a superb fixed-blade knife from LaRue Tactical.

“I don’t suppose you’ve got some flashbangs in there?” said Harvath as he watched Paul Morgan continue to pull gear out of his bag.

“No, but I do have this,” replied the marine as he withdrew a Blackhawk medical pack.

Harvath was about to say that he hoped they wouldn’t need that when his cell phone rang. It was Kevin McCauliff.