Brad Thor - Takedown

“I can tell you right now,” she replied, the smile disappearing from her face. “It’s almost identical to the last bomb I handled.”

“Then it should be a piece of-” said Harvath who suddenly realized what she was saying.

The last bomb Tracy Hastings had attempted to defuse had detonated, taking her left eye, half her face, and life as she’d known it along with it.

Walk me through what you did on the last bomb,” said Harvath, trying to help Tracy hold it together.

“It was pretty unsophisticated,” she replied.

“Unsophisticated, how?”

“Everything. The plastique, the initiator, everything.”

“Okay, if it was so unsophisticated textbook, what went wrong?”

“I don’t know. I never knew. I did everything right, but it didn’t make a difference.”

Harvath had to work on keeping his cool. He was no good to himself or Tracy if he lost control. For both of their sakes, he had to remain calm. “Let’s just focus on this device. Can you go back under the platform and pop up one of the adjacent panels so I can see what you’re doing or at least talk to you a little more easily?”

Hastings nodded her head and disappeared back below. A few seconds later a floor panel next to Harvath popped up, and Tracy slid it out of the way.

“Perfect,” he said. “Now we can talk. Is there any way we can immobilize the pressure plate?”

“I already checked that,” said Hastings. “We can’t.”

“Then we’re going to do everything from scratch, okay? Do it for me. Just check it one more time.”

Hastings did as he asked, but her response was the same. “The pressure plate is a dead end.”

“Excellent choice of words, Tracy.”

“Sorry.”

“What about the main charge? Can you separate it?”

She looked at the device and then back up at Harvath, slowly shaking her head.

“Do you see any place to insert a safety pin of any sort?”

Hastings scoured the device, but came back with the same answer, “None at all.”

Harvath was running out of options. “What about minimizing the damage then? What can you tell about the projectiles?”

She took several moments before responding. “It looks like a lot of it has been cobbled together on the spot. They’re using broken glass and bits of Lexan for the projectiles.”

“Is it a directional device?”

“No. The projectiles are set to radiate out in all directions. Effective range about two hundred meters, I’d say. Apparently they didn’t want anybody getting out of here.”

The same thought had gone through Harvath’s mind. The fact that the bomb appeared to be cobbled together with materials found on the scene was also running through Harvath’s mind. There was something else, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. The rational part of his brain kept avoiding it, blaming the stalemate on Hastings, a trained EOD technician who should know what to do. Because he couldn’t stand the silence, he posed a very stupid and very obvious question: “Is there a way to interrupt the detonator?”

“C’mon, Scot. Like Rick said back at the VA, I might have lost my job, but I didn’t lose my training. That was one of the first things I looked for.”

He didn’t know what it was, but something about what Hastings had just said raised a heavy curtain in his mind a fraction of inch, teasing him with the answer he was looking for. Damn it. It had been so long since he had worked with explosives. The majority of his explosives training as a SEAL had been in the detonation, not the diffusing department. The joke in the Teams had been the only explosives equation a SEAL needed to remember was P for plenty. Even in the Secret Service, there were dogs and specialty technicians to handle the bombs. And yet, something kept knocking at the back of his brain. What the hell was it?

Harvath looked down at Hastings and said, “You’re sure the device looks rudimentary?”

“Totally.”

“Why is that? What we’ve seen of these guys so far is anything but simple. They seem pretty sophisticated and definitely know what they’re doing, correct?”

“Yeah. So?”

“So why are you not seeing the same level of tactical sophistication in that device down there?”

“Who knows,” replied Hastings. “There could be a million reasons. They were probably in a pretty damn good hurry. People often resort to the basics when they’re pressed for time.”

Harvath shook his head. “I don’t think so. Not these guys. I think they want you to believe that bomb is paint-by-numbers.”

“What for?”

“So that you’ll miss something. Something you wouldn’t have missed if you were being extracareful.”

Just then, something clicked, but it wasn’t for Harvath, it was for Hastings. “Jesus, you’re right,” she said.

“What is it?”

“Hold on” was the last thing she said before disappearing once again beneath the floor.

Standing on top of a pressure plate, even a few minutes could seem like a lifetime. Harvath had not heard anything from Hastings and he was beginning to wonder if maybe she had lost her nerve and was lying beneath the platform completely paralyzed with fear. Not that he could blame her. After having a bomb go off in her face, he couldn’t even begin to image what it was like tackling one again, much less a device almost identical to the one that took her eye and scarred her appearance for life.

When Hastings did reappear, it wasn’t beneath the open floor panel just to his right. She rolled out from beneath the platform and stood a wary distance away. She seemed stunned. Her expression was hard to read. Was it anger? Fear? Suddenly Harvath wondered if maybe it was regret.

“What’s going on?” he asked, but Hastings didn’t answer.

As she turned away from him, she ran out of the room muttering, “There are only two rules. Rule number two, see rule number one.”

Immediately, Harvath was transported back to the conversation he’d had with Samuel Hardy, PhD: Each person reacts to the stresses of war in different ways.

But what if things get ugly?

There’s no way to predict. You won’t know until something happens.

At which point it could be too late.

Hardy had nodded and said, Many symptoms exhibited by soldiers outside the realm of combat have more to do with adjusting to the real world than anything else. Put them back into the stresses of combat, and nine out of ten times their symptoms disappear.

And that tenth time? Harvath had specifically asked him. How do you deal with that?

You can’t. Only that soldier can. It comes down to facing his or her personal demons, and that’s a battle that requires more courage than anything you might ever face on the other end of a gun.

Or on the other end of an IED, thought Harvath as Hastings disappeared out the door, and he realized that she had just left him alone…to die.

Harvath had begun gauging the weight of objects within an arm’s reach, wondering if he could fool the pressure plate into making it think he was still standing on top of it. He knew it was useless. But he also knew that this was not how he wanted to die. His mind flashed to the descriptions of Bob Herrington’s wounded men and he remembered his friend saying that sometimes being wounded in combat was worse than dying. Harvath had seen men shredded by land mines and different explosive devices, and at this moment he found it hard to envision living the rest of his life without the use of his arms or legs. To a certain degree, he’d rather the bomb kill him than maim him.

By the same token, Harvath had been trained to recognize this counterproductive, defeatist self-talk, and he slammed an iron door down on the inner conversation. The only thoughts he could afford to entertain were how to get out of the situation and do so without being killed or injured.