Takedown

“Nobody’s answering e-mail.”

“Did you try calling them?”

Schreiber nodded his head. “The phones don’t seem to be working.”

“How about pinging the servers?”

“I did that and it comes back A-Okay. Still processing.”

“So what’s the problem?” asked Stanton.

“If we can ping the servers via satellite and get a response, then why isn’t their e-mail working? It piggybacks off the same system.”

“ New York ’s in chaos right now. We don’t know what the damage is or what services have been interrupted. Let’s not worry about it.”

“You don’t find it a bit odd that we can’t connect with two of our substations?”

“Considering everything that’s going on up there, not really. The servers are still churning, right? You said so yourself. So, someone has got to be processing data.”

“Yeah, but I just have a bad feeling about it,” replied Schreiber.

“We’re under attack, so having bad feelings is understandable. Give it a little while longer. I’m sure we’ll hear something.”

“And if we don’t?”

Stanton didn’t have time for this. “Then we’ll have a friendly neighborhood beat cop stroll by and give us a report.”

“You’re joking, right?” said the young man.

Of course he was joking, and if this kid spent a little more time interacting with real live people and a little less time at his computer, he might know it. Picking up his highlighter and turning his attention back to the stack of paperwork on his desk, Stanton replied, “It’s going to be a very long night, Mark. Why don’t you take a few minutes, relax, and then see what kind of sourcing help they’re going to need upstairs.”

“Fine, but if we still don’t hear anything from New York?”

“Then we’ll dig a little deeper. But for now, I want you focused on helping the people here who need it the most. I’ve been to Transcon and Geneva Diamond. Believe me, those folks know how to handle themselves.”

Thirty-Six

NEW YORK CITY

Navigating through the traffic as best he could, Fiore kept the Secret Service Command Center apprised of their status, while Marcy fed him updates from the backseat. The bottom line was that their progress was horrible and their patient was getting worse.

With the FDR completely impassable, Tim was forced onto side streets, most of which were jammed.

At 7th Street near Tompkins Square, Marcy yelled, “Tim, she’s crashing! We’re losing her!”

Rapidly scrolling through the iQue’s options, Tim found what he was looking for. “I’m going to cut through this park. Hold on…”

Jumping the curb at Avenue B, Fiore raced through Tompkins Square and came out again at 10th Street and Avenue A. He barreled through a police barricade at First Avenue and, after hanging a tire-screaming right turn, pinned the accelerator and raced for Beth Israel Hospital. His only hope was that they’d be able to make it there in time.

Thirty-Seven

The lone NYPD officer standing guard outside the battered Geneva Diamond and Jewelry Exchange storefront was relieved when Harvath appeared and flashed his DHS credentials. The fact that he had pulled up on a dirt bike along with four other rather hard-looking individuals didn’t faze him a bit, not with everything else that had already happened that afternoon.

The officer had been waiting for backup since stumbling onto the scene forty-five minutes earlier while en route to another location. With every pair of professionally trained hands in the city needed to help search for survivors in the rubble of the bridge and tunnel bombings, random lootings weren’t on the patrolman’s priority list. But when a group of 47th Street merchants flagged him down and told him what had happened, the officer immediately changed his mind.

After moving onlookers away from the front of the store, he ventured a few feet inside. What he saw had caused him to remain there until help arrived. He was just about to reluctantly abandon the post, when Harvath showed. Now, he was more than happy to turn things over to someone with more authority and greater jurisdiction. In all his years on the job, nothing had prepared the patrolman for the carnage he’d seen inside.

Now it was Harvath’s turn. With Bob Herrington and the rest of the team in tow, they picked their way around the dead bodies and brass shell casings at the front of the store and headed toward the vault-style door at the back.

The door was half open and as they approached it, Tracy Hastings ordered the team to stop.

“What’s up?” said Harvath.

Hastings pointed to the pockmarks on the walls and ceiling around the frame and replied, “Shrapnel. We can’t touch that door until we’re sure it’s not rigged.”

Harvath thought she was being a little too cautious, until Herrington said, “Trust her. She knows what she’s doing.”

“All right,” he responded, stepping aside to let her get a better look at it. “But make it quick.”

Once Hastings was convinced it was safe, she waved the rest of the team forward.