Takedown

When they arrived, they found not another Tahoe but a black Yukon Denali double-parked on the sidewalk. It had the same dashboard-mounted lights that flashed bright halogen strobes of blue and red. As Harvath carefully peered inside, he saw crushed CD jewel cases, South Beach Diet bar wrappers, and a stack of textbooks littering the floor. Two or three hair scrunchies were wrapped around the gearshift, and a pink snowflake air freshener dangled from the front passenger door handle.

The terrorists had been driving two identical Tahoes, but not anymore. Harvath must have caused more damage than he thought to force them to steal a new vehicle. Judging by the thin mist of blood that had been spattered on the driver’s-side headliner, the owner of this vehicle had not met with a very pleasant end. Removing his knife once more, he plunged it to the hilt in two of the tires, just in case the terrorists were able to slip by them.

The bad guys had blown the lock out of this door just like the one on 49th Street. When Hastings realized the door was open, she replaced the det cord and slung the demo bag over her shoulder. Backing away, she signaled everyone to take their places. Harvath radioed McGahan and told him that his team was ready.

“Roger that,” came the commander’s voice. “Teams one and two in place.”

Listening to McGahan’s countdown over his headset, Harvath counted backward on his fingers from five. When he closed his fist and pulled it down like a trucker blowing an air horn, Hastings pulled the door open.

With Harvath in the lead this time, they all poured into the stairwell and took the stairs as quickly and as quietly as they could.

Simultaneously, McGahan’s breaching team hit the door on 49th Street and bounded up the stairs.

By the time the lead man noticed the booby trap, it was too late. Shrapnel ripped through the tightly packed stairwell, killing two officers and wounding three more. It was complete pandemonium.

Despite barely being able to hear as a result of the explosion or breathe because of the smoke, McGahan radioed his team’s situation to help warn the others. After hearing the details, one of the special-response officers below on the platform responded that he was leaving to get the medical kit from their truck. Harvath told the man to remain at his post, but the NYPD officer ignored him. He didn’t take his orders from DHS. He had injured colleagues who needed immediate medical attention, and that’s what he was focused on.

With the 49th Street assault team out of commission and the team on the platform down to only one tactical officer and two MTA patrolmen, the brunt of the assault had just fallen squarely on the shoulders of Scot Harvath and company.

Harvath held up a closed fist to stop his team so that he could relay the information. It was then that a man in a black balaclava appeared at the top of the stairs with a grenade and all hell suddenly broke loose.

Sixty-Six

With their vehicle on the 49th Street side compromised by the presence of the police, exiting by the 50th Street side made the most sense, but somehow something just didn’t feel right about it for Abdul Ali. If the police knew about the railroad platform and the 49th Street entrance, then they very likely knew about the 50th Street stairwell too. Ali could be running right into another trap, and so he made sure to choose their method of egress very carefully.

Because the Grail facility’s private garage entrance let out onto the 49th Street side of the building, it was immediately ruled out. That seemed to leave them with no alternatives until Ali realized that the hotel had at least two more perfectly acceptable exit points-the main doors at the rear of the hotel on Lexington Avenue as well as those at the very front of the Waldorf on Park Avenue. The only question was how they were going to get there.

As the secret garage exit opened only from the inside of the facility, Ali was fairly confident that they would not find a swarm of police officers waiting for them on the other side. Once in the garage, they could locate a service entrance to the hotel and from there make their way to either the Park or Lexington Avenue exits. Considering that everything was happening at the east end of the hotel, near Lexington, Ali leaned heavily toward making an escape via Park Avenue. They could decide what to do next, once they were safely out of harm’s way.