Takedown

Gary didn’t bother responding. Like he had said, they were done talking. If Mr. Stanton thought only one of them was leaving the building alive, he was in for a very big surprise.

A company called Guardian Protective Devices of New Jersey had approached the Department of Homeland Security a while back with a very interesting pepper spray device. Very intelligently, DHS had snapped up as many as they could get their hands on, as did many other branches of the military, intelligence, and law enforcement communities. As Lawlor removed the small three-ounce can from the tiny holster on his belt, he was grateful for the ingenious “set it and forget it” feature it contained.

Unlike most pepper sprays that required a button to be continually depressed or a trigger to be pulled to dispense its contents, the Guardian device had a mechanism that allowed the canister to be primed and thrown into a room where seconds later a fog of pepper spray would pour out, making the space completely uninhabitable.

Lawlor triggered the device, pitched it inside the inner office, and with his Beretta up and at the ready, waited for the NSA operative to stumble out hacking and choking.

When he did, Stanton came out with his gun blazing, shooting in all directions, and Gary had no other choice but to return fire.

Fifty-Seven

NEW YORK CITY

You couldn’t have just winged him?” asked Harvath.

“I had no time. His bullets were way too close for comfort,” replied Lawlor from his cell phone back in DC. “Whatever was going on, he and Forrester took it to their graves together. Everyone at the NSA is being incredibly tight-lipped, including my contacts, and despite the urgency of this situation, all they’ve said is that they’ll get back to me. They’re not even prepared to admit that Stanton was one of theirs.”

This was exactly the kind of bureaucratic bullshit that was encouraging Harvath to seriously consider resigning his position. “So they don’t care if their next location gets hit?” he asked.

“They won’t even admit there is a fourth location, much less a first, a second, or a third.”

“What are we supposed to do?”

“You’ve got all the information I was able to get before Stanton killed Forrester. I think you should make your way to the third location as quickly as possible and see if you can find out anything there.”

“And if we don’t?” asked Harvath.

Listen,” replied Lawlor. “This has been a hard day for everybody. Just see what you can do. I’ll keep working things from this side.”

“Fine, but Gary?”

“What?”

“If Stanton thought this program was worth killing to protect, and his people know you’ve uncovered it, you’d better watch your back.”

“I will. Don’t worry,” replied Lawlor. “Just get to that Strong Box location and let me know what you find.”

When they found the bodies of the slain employees in the back of the New York Waterway bus garage, Harvath knew they were already too late. Nevertheless, Bob Herrington led the way down the hidden stairwell-the more senseless destruction he saw, the more the demons from his last mission in Afghanistan seemed to haunt him. He insisted on being on point, and out of all the members on the team, he was starting to concern Harvath the most.

After making their way down the metal stairs, the first thing the team noticed was the enormous door that had been blown off its hinges. As they carefully entered the facility, they saw that shrapnel had pitted both the walls and the ceiling. Whatever kind of bomb had gone off in here had done incredible damage. Blood was everywhere and several bodies had been sawed completely in half.

As Harvath tried to pinpoint how long ago the attack had occurred, the one thing he was confident of was that it had happened before their botched ambush in Central Park. They couldn’t have made it here in time even if they had wanted to.

“What the hell hit this place?” said Rick Cates as he stepped around the bodies of what looked like three more dead marines. “This was no fragmentation grenade.”

“This was more like the type of bomb suicide bombers use,” replied Tracy Hastings, who had witnessed the aftermath of suicide bombers more times than she cared to remember.

“Are you saying somebody walked in here and blew him or herself up?” asked Harvath.

Tracy looked around some more and then replied, “Maybe. All I can say is that I think we’re looking at a tight and very powerful package of plastique packed with ball bearings as the projectile.”

“Any idea how it got in here?”

Tracy shook her head.

“Maybe the pizza guy brought it,” said Cates as he bumped the edge of a personal pan-pizza box still sitting on someone’s desk.