Brad Thor - Takedown

“What are you saying?” asked Rutledge.

“I’m saying that if al-Qaeda knew where we were holding Mohammed, they would have tried something by now. They’re not coming, Mr. President. These horrible attacks on New York were just that-horrible attacks. Al-Qaeda was doing the only thing they could do in retaliation for our grabbing Mohammed. It shows you how devastated they are by his capture.” The secretary waited a moment for that to sink in and then said, “I know it’s an incredibly high price to pay and I know it doesn’t look like it now, but we beat them, Mr. President. The nuclear attacks Mohammed was spearheading would have been a significant turning point in the war on terror, and it would have turned the war in their favor, but we cut them off at the knees. What we saw today was their death knell. We’ve clamped the lid down and as soon as we break Mohammed, we’ll begin nailing that lid to the top of their coffin.”

The president wanted desperately for his secretary of defense to be right. He wanted to be able to tell himself that as horrific as today’s attacks were, the Americans who had perished hadn’t died in vain-that their deaths meant something and that they marked a long-awaited turning point in the war on terror.

But as much as the president wanted to believe Bob Hilliman, a man who in over five years had never steered him wrong on matters of national security, he had learned early on in his presidency that things were never exactly as they seemed, especially when it came to terrorism.

While a two-man contingent of McGahan’s officers used the gear from the back of the Tahoe to rope down through the sidewalk grate and cover the Waldorf platform, Harvath and his team ran back up Lexington toward the 50th Street stairwell.

When they arrived, they found not another Tahoe but a black Yukon Denali double-parked on the sidewalk. It had the same dashboard-mounted lights that flashed bright halogen strobes of blue and red. As Harvath carefully peered inside, he saw crushed CD jewel cases, South Beach Diet bar wrappers, and a stack of textbooks littering the floor. Two or three hair scrunchies were wrapped around the gearshift, and a pink snowflake air freshener dangled from the front passenger door handle.

The terrorists had been driving two identical Tahoes, but not anymore. Harvath must have caused more damage than he thought to force them to steal a new vehicle. Judging by the thin mist of blood that had been spattered on the driver’s-side headliner, the owner of this vehicle had not met with a very pleasant end. Removing his knife once more, he plunged it to the hilt in two of the tires, just in case the terrorists were able to slip by them.

The bad guys had blown the lock out of this door just like the one on 49th Street. When Hastings realized the door was open, she replaced the det cord and slung the demo bag over her shoulder. Backing away, she signaled everyone to take their places. Harvath radioed McGahan and told him that his team was ready.

“Roger that,” came the commander’s voice. “Teams one and two in place.”

Listening to McGahan’s countdown over his headset, Harvath counted backward on his fingers from five. When he closed his fist and pulled it down like a trucker blowing an air horn, Hastings pulled the door open.

With Harvath in the lead this time, they all poured into the stairwell and took the stairs as quickly and as quietly as they could.

Simultaneously, McGahan’s breaching team hit the door on 49th Street and bounded up the stairs.

By the time the lead man noticed the booby trap, it was too late. Shrapnel ripped through the tightly packed stairwell, killing two officers and wounding three more. It was complete pandemonium.

Despite barely being able to hear as a result of the explosion or breathe because of the smoke, McGahan radioed his team’s situation to help warn the others. After hearing the details, one of the special-response officers below on the platform responded that he was leaving to get the medical kit from their truck. Harvath told the man to remain at his post, but the NYPD officer ignored him. He didn’t take his orders from DHS. He had injured colleagues who needed immediate medical attention, and that’s what he was focused on.

With the 49th Street assault team out of commission and the team on the platform down to only one tactical officer and two MTA patrolmen, the brunt of the assault had just fallen squarely on the shoulders of Scot Harvath and company.

Harvath held up a closed fist to stop his team so that he could relay the information. It was then that a man in a black balaclava appeared at the top of the stairs with a grenade and all hell suddenly broke loose.

With their vehicle on the 49th Street side compromised by the presence of the police, exiting by the 50th Street side made the most sense, but somehow something just didn’t feel right about it for Abdul Ali. If the police knew about the railroad platform and the 49th Street entrance, then they very likely knew about the 50th Street stairwell too. Ali could be running right into another trap, and so he made sure to choose their method of egress very carefully.

Because the Grail facility’s private garage entrance let out onto the 49th Street side of the building, it was immediately ruled out. That seemed to leave them with no alternatives until Ali realized that the hotel had at least two more perfectly acceptable exit points-the main doors at the rear of the hotel on Lexington Avenue as well as those at the very front of the Waldorf on Park Avenue. The only question was how they were going to get there.

As the secret garage exit opened only from the inside of the facility, Ali was fairly confident that they would not find a swarm of police officers waiting for them on the other side. Once in the garage, they could locate a service entrance to the hotel and from there make their way to either the Park or Lexington Avenue exits. Considering that everything was happening at the east end of the hotel, near Lexington, Ali leaned heavily toward making an escape via Park Avenue. They could decide what to do next, once they were safely out of harm’s way.

As Ali put the finishing touches on one of the little surprises they planned on leaving behind, Sacha dispatched men to check the status on each of the stairwells. Osman was the first to report. From what he could tell, the booby trap in the 49th Street stairwell had been triggered and the police had been forced to retreat. Yusha reported not seeing any signs of pursuit via the 50th Street stairwell, but then he suddenly broke off. When Sacha asked him what was going on, the man quietly spoke into his microphone to say that he thought he heard people approaching. Sacha told him to fall back and wait, that they were coming to support him, but the overconfident warrior told his commander not to bother. He had the high ground and could handle it himself. It was the very last Sacha heard from him.

With the man at the top of the stairs lined up right in the center of his sights, Harvath yelled “Grenade!” and lunged backward, knocking his team down the stairs. As he fell with them, Harvath repeatedly squeezed the trigger of his weapon until its magazine was empty.

The team hit the landing in a pile of twisted limbs and then scrambled to descend farther to safety. When the grenade detonated, they were pressed against the opposite wall a story and a half down. Harvath had quite literally saved their lives.

As the stars began to clear from their heads, Harvath inserted a fresh mag and they remounted the stairs twice as fast, knowing that the terrorists’ colleagues couldn’t be far behind.

When they reached the uppermost landing and stepped over what was left of the man’s corpse, they could see he was probably dead before the grenade even detonated. Most of Harvath’s shots had found their marks-in both the man’s head and chest area. Falling to the ground, the grenade must have rolled backward into the corridor where, a few feet later, it detonated and tore huge chunks away from the concrete walls and ceiling.