Brad Thor - Takedown

“Who bought it?” asked Lawlor.

“The Libyans.”

The Libyans? It had to be a dead end.

Lawlor was ready to write the entire thing off until Schreiber said, “But that’s not the weird part. The weird thing is that the machine wasn’t sent to Libya.”

“It wasn’t? Where was it sent?”

Schreiber leaned forward over the table and replied, “To their United Nations mission in New York.”

NEW YORK CITY

How much time is that going to give us?” asked Harvath when Tracy gave him the update and told him her plan.

“Don’t worry,” she replied. “All you have to do is jump off the platform and make a run for it. I’m the one who has to get out from underneath.”

“How much time?” he repeated.

“Probably not enough.”

“That’s no good, Tracy. It’s unacceptable.”

“If that’s the way you feel, then I guess it’s a good thing I’m in control.”

“I’m not going to let you do this.”

Hastings eased over and looked up at him through the removed floor panel. “You’re going to have to accept the fact that you’re not the boss here. Not this time, Mr. Harvath.”

“That’s Agent Harvath to you lady,” he chided, “and this is still my operation.”

“But this is my bomb.”

She was right, and he knew that no matter how hard he tried to dissuade her she wasn’t going to change her mind. This was how Tracy had been called to face down her demons. If the bomb did go off and take her with it, at least it would do so on her terms. She wasn’t running away, not anymore. She was sick of hiding her scars, sick of people trying to make her feel better about her appearance, and sick of feeling afraid-afraid of what had happened and how things might have been different if she’d just been able to defuse that last IED.

No, there was no changing Tracy Hastings’s mind. She was in this game till the end, no matter what its outcome.

For his part, Harvath couldn’t let her take all the risk upon herself. She didn’t deserve to die. She’d already been through enough in Iraq and with everything else she’d suffered since that failed IED disposal assignment. But what could he do? The answer wasn’t easy to accept, but it was perfectly clear-nothing.

“Your insubordination has been duly noted for the record,” said Harvath.

He could hear Hastings stifle a laugh beneath the raised floor.

“Really?” she said as she began quoting him almost word for word, “Well, seeing as how I’m neither a federal employee nor a recognized active-duty EOD tech, and my participation in this operation is in an unofficial, unrecognized, and most definitely unsanctioned capacity, I fail to see what the downside of that might be.”

Harvath thought about it for a moment and then said, “Insubordination on one of my teams comes at a pretty high price. You’re going to have to pay for our dinner now, Lieutenant.”

Hastings laughed again, though this time it seemed forced. “If we both get out of this alive, then I’m going to be thrilled to pay for dinner. In fact, we’ll go anywhere you want.”

“I’m going to hold you to that,” he said.

“Good,” she replied. “Now, when I tell you, I want you to take one step back off that floor panel and then run like hell.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Hopefully, I’ll be looking over my shoulder and laughing as you get beaten in a footrace by some girl.”

This time it was Harvath’s turn to laugh. “You’re anything but some girl, Tracy.”

“I’d tell you flattery would get you everywhere, but somehow encouraging you at such an awkward moment doesn’t seem right. Just focus on getting ready to run.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Hastings looked up through the hole in the floor and said, “That’s Lieutenant to you, Agent Harvath.”

Harvath smiled back at her and prayed to God she was going to make it. He didn’t know why-maybe it was her vulnerability, or maybe it was her smart-ass attitude, but she had really grown on him and he was one hundred percent serious about taking her out for dinner and dancing.

“Okay, on three,” she said, once she’d squirmed back beneath the raised platform to where the secondary bomb was located.

Harvath took a deep breath and waited. Then he heard her.

“One, two, three!”

Leaping off the raised floor platform, all Scot could think about was making sure Tracy Hastings made it out alive. Something told him that if she didn’t, he’d carry that burden for the rest of his life.

He turned, expecting to see her sliding out from beneath the platform, but she wasn’t there. He looked back toward the opening next to where he’d been standing, but she wasn’t there either. Where the hell was she?

Suddenly, there was a splintering sound near his feet, and he realized she must have crawled beneath the floor to the far side to have a better shot at the door. As the panel broke open she yelled, “Run, you idiot! Run!”

Harvath ignored her and leaning down gripped the panel and tore the rest of it away. He pulled Tracy out from underneath and onto her feet. To her credit, or more than likely her exceptional survival instinct, she didn’t bother to stop and thank him. She ran like hell. And true to her prediction, she looked back over her shoulder and saw Harvath losing a footrace to some girl.

It might have actually been funny except for the fact that five seconds later both bombs detonated and sent shards of glass and bulletproof Lexan screaming through the room.

Hitting the entry corridor, Tracy spun, grabbed ahold of Harvath’s tactical vest, and tried to pull him out of the doorway. The blast wave that came through the passage slapped him so hard, it felt like he’d gone off a high dive and had landed right on his back. Tracy lost her footing and they both stumbled to the ground.

When Harvath looked up, he found Hastings sitting against the wall, while his head, or more appropriately his face, was in a rather ungentlemanly position right between her legs.

“I suppose most guys probably just would have said thank you,” he joked.

Hastings eyes were wide. “You don’t feel that?” she asked, looking down.

Harvath had no idea what she was talking about. “Feel what?”

“Your back.”

“It hurts like hell, but it’ll pass.”

“Not if I don’t do something about it,” she replied as she pulled a pair of needle-nose pliers from her pocket.

It wasn’t until Harvath glanced over his right shoulder that he saw what Tracy was talking about.

“Do you have something to bite down on?” she asked.

Harvath looked at Hastings ’s very toned inner thigh beneath her pants and remarked, “Maybe I should just focus my mind in another direction. Make it quick, would you?”

“All right, Mr. Macho SEAL. Here we go. Can I get a Hooyah?”

The pain was amazing for such a relatively small hunk of Lexan. Harvath accompanied its extremely nasty extraction with a very long and very loud Navy Hooyah.

The minute it was out, Hastings tore open one of the QuickClot pouches Morgan had handed her when they were treating the mounted patrolman in Central Park and shoved it into Harvath’s wound. Without any gauze to cover it, she reached for the next best thing-duct tape. She still had several pieces hanging from her shirt from dealing with the IEDs, and after tearing back part of Harvath’s shirt, she was able to perfectly cover the wound and flatten out the tape so it adhered to his skin.

“You want to keep it as a souvenir?” she asked as she showed him the piece she’d pulled from his back.

“I’ve got my eye set on another trophy,” he said.