Brad Thor - Takedown

The tunnel curved to the right and then intersected with another. The light wasn’t very good;even so, when Harvath looked into the new tunnel, he could see movement way down at the other end.

Holding his hand up in a fist, he froze his team in place. Tunnels were very bad places to get into gunfights. The walls had a very nasty habit of funneling rounds right at you. Turning, he used hand signals to let the others know what he was looking at.

Herrington queried him on range and Harvath relayed what he thought the distance was.

Raising one of the M16 Vipers they’d taken from the Geneva Diamond location, Bob indicated what he wanted to do. Nodding his assent, Harvath peered back around the corner just in time to see the terrorists disappear from view.

Abdul Ali had no idea where the access door led. He knew only that this was the one they needed to take. Whether it was precognition, a gut instinct, or divine intervention he had no idea, but an overwhelming sense of urgency had overtaken him and it told him to get out of the tunnels as quickly as possible. He sometimes wondered if it was Allah Himself speaking to him. It made no difference where it came from. When the voice spoke to him, he did what it said, and he knew that was one of the reasons he had lived as long as he had.

Crashing through two more doors the team found a set of stairs and followed them up into a large commercial laundry area. From the uniforms of the startled staff as well as the stenciled letters across the large canvas carts, the team realized that they had stumbled into the bowels of the Doubletree Metropolitan Hotel.

One of the Chechens raised his weapon as if he was going to fire, but Sacha quickly pushed it back down and shook his head no. They hadn’t been hired to kill civilians. That was what the Arabs did, not them. It was a pointless waste of ammunition and would draw too much attention.

Ali waved the team forward and they threaded through the carts and stacks of laundry to a small corridor and a bank of elevators at the end. As he pressed the button, Sacha withdrew his map of New York and tried to figure out where they were.

“ Lexington and Fifty-first,” he said as a set of elevator doors opened and they filed in.

Ali did the calculation in his head and replied, “About five blocks from the final target.”

As Sacha was not the leader of this operation, he simply raised his eyebrows in response as if to say How should we proceed?

His index finger hovering in front of the elevator buttons, Ali tried to decide the best course of action. They had never planned on losing their vehicles. Their dangerous carjacking attempt in front of the Waldorf had almost cost them their lives, but might be worth trying again. Confident that he would come up with something, he pressed the button for the lobby level and stated, “Allah shall provide.”

Little did he know that what Allah chose to provide were four very well armed and extremely dangerous American Special Operations personnel.

Bursting into the laundry area, Harvath and the rest of the team swung their weapons from side to side but saw no trace of the terrorists save for a few barely detectable wet footprints they had tracked in with them.

The team kept their weapons up and at the ready. Harvath identified himself to the nearest employee he saw as a federal agent and quickly asked about the men who had just come through. The woman, who apparently spoke no English, could only stare. Rick Cates then tried in Spanish.

Seconds later, he translated, “Five men. They went down the hall to the elevators, and just my luck, there’s a stairway right next to it.”

Herrington glanced at Harvath, who could barely hold up his weapon. His shoulder was obviously giving him increasing trouble. “I’m going to take point,” he said.

Harvath shook his head no. “Let’s catch that elevator.”

Herrington had a bad feeling about letting Harvath remain on point in his condition, but he didn’t argue. This was Harvath’s operation. Kicking it into gear, he and the rest of the team took off for the elevators.

As they approached, they could see one of the elevators was already on its way up to the lobby. With no time to spare, they headed for the stairwell. Everyone, including Cates, took the stairs three at a time-the adrenaline coursing through their bloodstreams.

Hitting the lobby-level landing, Harvath paused for a moment to let the team regroup and slowly cracked the door to see what was happening on the other side.

A line of hotel guests were backed up against a wall near a bank of elevators, staring at something that must have just rushed by. Harvath knew it could only be one thing. Nodding his head, he pulled open the door and the team rushed out in pursuit of the terrorists.

With its swanky sixties retro feel it looked like they had fallen down the rabbit hole and landed in the private lair of Auric Goldfinger. The only thing that kept the scene from being completely surreal were the looks on the faces of the hotel’s guests as they closed the distance with the terrorists.

Coming around the corner into the stainless-steel lobby, the team fanned out into a wedge formation, and not a moment too soon. The Chechen bringing up the rear of his group’s escape spun just in time to see them. Yelling a warning to the others, he raised his weapon and began to fire.

Immediately, Harvath and company took cover behind anything they could find. They then all began to fire; all, that is, except for Harvath. Suddenly he could no longer lift the heavy Troy CQB assault rifle.

Dropping it to the floor, he transitioned to his pistol and let the rounds fly.

Hotel guests screamed as they ran from the mayhem, several of them cut down by stray rounds in the process.

Realizing the Chechens were wearing body armor, Tracy Hastings yelled for her team to go for head shots and seconds later, Herrington and Cates had one kill apiece.

The remaining terrorists emptied their magazines and reloaded, their assault furious and unrelenting. A thick cloud of cordite hung in the air, and though less than a minute had passed, it seemed like a lifetime.

Down to only three men, Sacha wanted to get the hell out of the hotel and motioned to Ali and his remaining comrade to make for the exit. Ali nodded his head and the trio laid down a swath of fire to cover yet another hasty retreat.

As they did so, Harvath and company continued to reload and pull their triggers, completely shattering the glass doors at the front of the lobby.

Arriving at the exit, Sacha and Ali continued to fire as they slipped out of the hotel toward the street. The remaining Chechen wasn’t as fortunate. When his weapon jammed, he fumbled with it just long enough to catch a very well placed bullet through his throat, courtesy of Scot Harvath.

The Chechen fell to the floor gurgling blood as his associates on the sidewalk searched for a way to make their escape. Ali pointed his gun at a shuttle van approaching the hotel on Lexington Avenue and when the van refused to stop, he put two rounds through the wind-shield, killing the driver, who slumped forward over the steering wheel as the van picked up speed, veered up onto the sidewalk, and slammed into the front of the hotel.

With no regard for the lives of the people inside or for his surviving comrade, Ali began firing in the direction of the gas tank. Sacha barely made it away before the vehicle exploded and sent a roiling fireball deep into the lobby of the Metropolitan.

The mammoth Chechen had a million curses he wanted to hurl at Ali, but he held his tongue. Now was not the time. While the man’s rash actions had almost cost Sacha his life, the al-Qaeda operative had just created the distraction they so needed to escape.