Takedown

Inside, they found a high-tech security control room that had been blown apart by what Hastings claimed was probably one or more fragmentation grenades. Lying on the floor were the badly mangled bodies of three men in tactical vests with modified M16s lying nearby.

“These guys are jarheads,” remarked Morgan as he rolled one of the bodies over.

“Plenty of guys in the security industry cut their hair too short,” said Cates. “That doesn’t make them marines.”

Morgan ignored the remark and pointed at the men’s feet. “The Marines only use the best gear, and these guys are all wearing Quantico Desert Boots.”

While Harvath preferred Original S.W.A.T. boots, Paul Morgan did have a point. Many of the marines he’d known were particularly fond of Quantico Boots, but even with the M16s, there still wasn’t enough evidence to qualify the bodies as being marines.

As if reading his mind, Morgan slid a plate out of one of their tactical vests, wrapped on it with his knuckles and said, “ U.S. military-issue Interceptor body armor. Harder than Kevlar and can stop anything up to a 7.62-millimeter round.”

Cates whistled and said, “These guys certainly were prepared.”

“But for what?” replied Harvath, more for his own benefit than anyone else’s. “Whoever took these marines out must have been very good. Let’s finish clearing these rooms.”

Bob and the rest of the team relieved the marines of their SIG Sauer P228 pistols, as well as their machine guns and as many loaded magazines as they could carry, before sweeping the balance of the Geneva Diamond and Jewelry Exchange. As they did, Harvath tried to figure out what the hell the operation’s real function was. In the heart of New York City, no jewelry store-no matter how busy or how well connected its owners-was going to be granted the protection of three machine-gun-toting U.S. marines.

As they went from room to room, it became apparent that the operation was completely paperless. Whatever secret it held had either been taken to the grave when its personnel had been raked with gunfire, had been stolen by the terrorists, or was locked up in its workstations and racks and racks of servers.

Exercising the only other option left available to him, Harvath collected whatever photo identification he could from each of the fifteen corpses, including the three U.S. servicemen whose IDs listed them in fact as active-duty marines.

He hoped Gary would be able to make some sense out of it, because at this moment, Harvath had absolutely no idea what or who they were dealing with.

Thirty-Eight

Less than halfway through their list of locations, Abdul Ali considered himself lucky that they’d only lost one of the Chechen soldiers. It was a treacherous but necessary path they’d been forced to follow. The Troll had explained that each location would be more difficult to assault than the last, and that was why Ali and his team were taking them in ascending order of difficulty. There was no sense starting with the most difficult location and working their way backward only to find that Mohammed bin Mohammed was being held at one of the less fortified sites. It seemed reasonable and there was a consolation, however small, that with each location they scratched off their list, Abdul Ali was one step closer to recovering Mohammed.

Whether the man was waiting inside this location or the next made no difference to the Chechens. Unbeknownst to Ali, the Troll was paying them on a per-assault basis, and so it was in their financial interest that the attacks continue until the very bloody end.

What Ali did know was that the Troll had been one hundred percent correct about the American government’s penchant for secrecy-especially when it came to the deep-cover operations on their list. Both the left and the right hands purposefully strove to keep each other in the dark and thereby created a considerably uncommunicative culture. It would take days to sort out what had happened to the various New York undercover operations, and by then, Allah willing, Abdul Ali and Mohammed bin Mohammed would be long gone.

As the team approached its next objective, Ali was supremely confident that its occupants had no idea they were coming. He girded himself with the hope that this might be the last assault they would have to conduct.

The vents for the Lincoln Tunnel vent shaft were located at the West Midtown Ferry Terminal, also known as Pier 79, on Manhattan ’s West Side. As Abdul Ali and his Chechen mercenaries arrived, the vent shaft towers were still belching plumes of acrid black smoke high into the air from the hundreds upon hundreds of vehicles burning in the tunnel beneath the Hudson River.

Emergency personnel were everywhere as they tried to use the ventilation shafts to evacuate survivors. With over forty million vehicles passing through the tunnel each year, it was one of the busiest in the world and a perfect target. Ali quietly marveled at the chaos. Allah had indeed blessed their undertaking.