Takedown

“And why they wanted to take out the Emergency Operations Center,” added Bob as he turned to Hardy and asked, “Have you heard from anybody else?”

“No,” replied Hardy, “but I think they’ll start showing up here real soon.”

“Who are you talking about?” Harvath asked.

Herrington ignored him and said to Hardy, “Can I borrow your keycard?”

“What for?”

“I want to take Scot up to the roof and get a look at what’s going on.”

“I’ll go with you,” said the doctor. “I want to get a look too. Let me just leave a note in case anyone comes by while we’re up there.”

Up on the roof, they could see enormous clouds of smoke coming from the direction of the Queensboro as well as several other points around the city. Down on the street, people were in a panic, many of them sprinting down 23rd Street toward the East River, presumably so that they could get a better view of what had happened to the Queensboro and Williamsburg bridges.

For what seemed like an eternity, no one on the roof spoke. They were dumbfounded as they stood there taking in the horror and devastation.

“Bridges and tunnels,” Harvath finally said, “and at the beginning of one of our busiest holiday weekends. How many dead are we going to be looking at? Thousands? Tens of thousands?”

“At least,” replied Dr. Hardy, shaking his head. “At least.”

As they stood taking it in, not one of them needed to draw the parallel to that warm September morning in 2001 when a handful of hijackers brought the Twin Towers crashing to the ground. They were all feeling the same thing-the fear, the confusion, and finally the bitter anger that the enemies of America had once again been able to rain such death and destruction down on so many innocent people.

“Al-Qaeda,” Bob said, almost beneath his breath.

Harvath knew he was right. The attacks had al-Qaeda’s fingerprints all over them. Distract and then flank with multiple coordinated attacks. It was ripped right from their playbook. Harvath’s thoughts of leaving government service and going into the private sector suddenly seemed much less pressing. What he wanted at this point more than anything else was justice-a shot to get even, and he knew that Bob Herrington felt exactly the same way.

As they stood watching plumes of gray-black smoke twist into the late afternoon sky, the roof door slammed open and three figures emerged. They were just as Bob had described them in his e-mails and Harvath had no problem recognizing them.

“Are you all okay?” asked Hardy as the newcomers approached.

“They hit everything!” exclaimed Paul Morgan, a dark-haired, twenty-four-year-old who stood about five feet eleven. His preppy outfit of neatly pressed khakis and a crisp linen shirt stood in sharp contrast to the heavy Bronx accent he had grown up with. When Morgan said the word everything, it came out ever-ree-ting. “Every bridge and every tunnel, doc. They nailed them all.”

“We don’t know exactly what they’ve hit, Paul. Let’s just calm down here,” replied Hardy.

“Morgan’s right, Doc,” said Tracy Hastings, a twenty-six-year-old woman whose blond hair was braided into two pigtails. It was a look Harvath had always liked. Pigtails were for little girls, but when big girls wore them there was something sexy as hell about it. And just as Bob had said, Hastings was in incredible shape. She was obsessed with working out and she had sculpted her five-foot-seven-inch frame into a work of art. Normally, Harvath was not drawn to women who were as buff or maybe even more so than he was, but there was something very attractive about her that he just couldn’t put his finger on. Tracy must have noticed Harvath looking her over because she turned her face away as she continued, “It’s all over the TV. They hit every bridge and every tunnel-some of them more than once.”

“Redundancy,” added Rick Cates, the third and final member of their party. He stood at least six feet three inches tall, with dark eyes, a shaved head and a T-shirt that read Guns don’t kill people. I kill people. “This is the exact attack we’ve all been talking about,” he added with a look on his face that mirrored the mix of rage and frustration that they were all feeling.

Hardy tried to calm them down. “We don’t know what’s going on, so let’s just take a deep breath, okay?”

“Every bridge into and out of Manhattan has been blown,” insisted Hastings, “and you want us to just calm down?”

“Yes,” replied Hardy. “Everybody just stop a second.”

Harvath didn’t understand what the doctor’s connection with them was, but they all seemed to listen to him, including Herrington. After the moment of forced silence, Hardy formally introduced Corporal Paul Morgan, United States Marine Corps; Lieutenant Tracy Hastings, United States Navy; and Sergeant Rick Cates, United States Army.