Takedown

“Even better, if they amputate a limb, you get two bullets instead of one to bite on.”

At least Bob hadn’t lost his sense of humor. “What about my truck?” asked Harvath.

Seeing a cab that had just dropped off its fare, Herrington made a beeline for it and said, “Leave it. We’ll come back and pick it up later.”

As they drove, Harvath looked out the window at the hordes of people crowding the sidewalks, and his mind wandered back to the news reports they’d been watching in the Pig amp; Whistle. Taken as isolated incidents, the events unfolding just outside Manhattan were indeed serious, though nothing to panic about. But when you lumped them together as a whole, they were just too coincidental-and coincidences were something neither Scot Harvath nor Bob Herrington believed in. In fact, no one in their line of work did. They had been taught to always try to connect the dots and look for a bigger picture.

Even though he was supposed to be on vacation relaxing, Harvath couldn’t stop thinking about what Bob had said and so repeated his earlier question. “Let’s say you’re right about what’s going on across the river. Why do you think someone would want to tie up all of those tactical teams?”

“I can think of about a million answers,” replied Bob as he eyeballed a graffiti-covered truck idling outside a nearby bank, “and none of them have a happy ending.”

“But if you break this down into its simplest parts, the reason you’d want to tie up tactical teams is to prevent them from interfering with your objective or your egress, right?”

As their cab sped up, Bob’s eyes moved to a group of taxi drivers who had double-parked near a falafel stand and were chatting animatedly to one another. “So?”

“So if you were a suicide bomber or were going to fly a plane into a building, you wouldn’t care about tactical teams. By the time they knew what you were doing, theoretically it would be too late.”

“It depends on what you were doing. What if you weren’t a suicide bomber or planning on flying a plane into a building? What if you had other plans?”

Harvath looked back out his window and asked, “Like what?”

“I don’t know,” replied Herrington. “I just saw all that stuff happening on TV and it gave one of those uh-oh feelings.”

“Old habits are hard to break.”

Bob smiled.

“That’s better,” said Harvath as he decided to change the subject. They were both a little too on edge. “Now, am I going to be able to get that shot of Louis XIII you owe me at this place we’re going?”

“Probably not. For that we’ll need to find you some high-end gay bar. But maybe there’ll be some cute Navy guys there you can hook up with.”

Harvath gave his friend the finger and Bob laughed.

Below 34th Street the traffic began to back up and Herrington started giving the driver directions.

Fifteen minutes later, as they crawled down 28th, the cab’s radio erupted with terrified voices shouting in a language neither Harvath nor Herrington understood.

When Scot asked what was happening, the driver stammered, “The Queensboro Bridge!”

“What about it?”

“It just exploded!”

Twelve

LONG ISLAND EXPRESSWAY

Tim and Marcy didn’t mind driving the girls into the city. In fact, they actually preferred it. This way, the girls could have a few drinks and not have to worry about who was driving home.

As they drove, they could see that the five-o’clock traffic coming out of Manhattan was bumper-to-bumper as people fled to places like Fire Island, the Hamptons, and Montauk Point. Tim looked over at Marcy, and she could immediately read his mind. “Thank God we won’t have to be sitting in that,” she said.

The girls had given them the entire rundown on what they planned to do. First they were going to hit SoHo for shopping and then meet up later with some of their friends for dinner at a trendy new restaurant in Chelsea. After that, there was a hot new club in Midtown they wanted to hit, but they didn’t want to be there too early. Heaven forbid they be the first ones there. So, it had been decided that if upon the initial drive-by there wasn’t already a line in front, they’d kill time at a spot they all liked on 56th called Town. They’d have a glass or two of wine and then try the club again later.

Though Marcy had been cool about letting the girls listen to whatever they liked in the car, she facetiously begged five minutes of forgiveness as she changed the radio over to WCBS to get a local read on traffic. She wasn’t a worrier by nature, but with what was going on in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens, Marcy wanted to make extra sure they were steering well clear of any potential tie-ups.

According to WCBS, it looked like smooth sailing down to the Williamsburg Bridge and across into lower Manhattan, so Marcy switched the radio back to Power 105 and focused on the drive.