Takedown (16 page)

T
racy Hastings spoke into the microphone hidden beneath her collar and said, “Contact. Probable target thirty yards and closing. Mid-forties, dark hair, wearing dark trousers and a black button-down shirt.”

“Is this our guy, Tracy?” asked Harvath from his position on the other side of the Denesmouth Arch.

“He doesn’t look very Middle Eastern—maybe Spanish or Italian, but I can’t say for sure.”

“Is he carrying anything?”

“Just a newspaper.”

“How’s he carrying it?” said Harvath.

“Under his left arm.”

“Can you see his hands?”

“Negative. They’re folded across his chest. One looks like it might be actually inside the paper.”

That was enough for Harvath. He signaled Herrington and said into the radio, “I need you to tag him for Bob and then see if he’s got any trailers. You know what to do. Be careful.”

“Roger that,” replied Hastings. Getting up from the bench she had been sitting on, Tracy headed south on the Wien Walk toward the suspect. With a concerned look on her face, she removed her cell phone from her pocket and began sweeping it through the air as if she were trying to get a signal.

As she neared the man in the dark shirt and trousers, she stopped and did a complete three-sixty, holding the phone high in the air. Though she pretended to be too wrapped up in finding cell service to notice, she could feel the man’s eyes all over her. It wasn’t the same feeling she got when people stared at the scars on her face. This was something completely different. It gave her chills, but she had tagged him, and right now Herrington would be tracking him with his rifle.

She kept walking, and once she was convinced no one was following the man, she cradled the cell phone against her shoulder and spoke into her collar, “He’s alone.”

Hastings waited for a confirmation that Harvath had received her message and when none came, she repeated it again. Still, there was nothing. “Scot, can you read me?” she asked. When there was still no response, she knew something very bad had happened.

“Drop your weapons and keep your hands where I can see them,” said a voice from behind.

Both Harvath and Cates did as they were told.

“The man on the bench,” the voice said. “Your buddy in the space blanket. Tell him to come over here.”

“Take it easy,” replied Harvath. “We’re legit.”

“Do it,” commanded the voice.

Harvath heard the unmistakable click of a pistol hammer being cocked and so he signaled Paul Morgan to get up and join them.

When Morgan approached, their captor ordered him to drop his weapons and get his hands up. Harvath nodded his head and Morgan reluctantly complied, dropping his machine pistol.

There was a crashing through the brush ten yards away and they all turned to see Bob Herrington forced onto the path by a second NYPD mounted patrol officer who had found him on the arch.

The cops had ruined their ambush. Their target had picked up on the commotion and was now walking away in the other direction. Harvath had to do something. “I’m with the Department of Homeland Security. We’ve got a potential terrorist subject nearby—”

“On the ground—now,” replied the cop.

The man was very jumpy. Stumbling upon a bunch of heavily armed, plain-clothed people hiding in Central Park right after a string of devastating terrorist attacks was extremely serious. Harvath needed to tread very carefully.

“I’ve got my badge in my pocket,” he said. “Nobody wants any trouble here, okay? I’m just going to reach for my wallet.”

“You’re not reaching for anything. This is the last time I’m going to say it,” commanded the officer as his partner radioed for backup. “Everybody on the ground—
now.
”

“You’re interfering with a highly sensitive counterterrorism operation.”

“I don’t know what the hell we’ve stumbled onto here and until I do, you’re going to do as I say.”

Harvath had no choice but to comply. “Listen,” he said as he lay down on the ground. “There’s a man retreating along the pathway—dark hair, mid-forties, with dark pants and shirt. He looks Spanish or Italian. That’s who we were waiting for. He may be connected to today’s bombings. We need to apprehend him for questioning. Please.”

The officer looked down at Harvath and then over at his partner. “Frank, you wanna take a look?”

“Sure,” replied the partner. “Why not?”

Before Harvath could object, the officer’s horse crunched through the brush and clattered out onto the paved walkway, its hoofbeats echoing like machine-gun fire off the stone walls of the Denesmouth Arch.

“You see anything?” yelled the first officer.

“Nope,” replied the partner, who then said, “Wait a second, yeah I think I do. Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

Spurring his horse into a trot, the partner rode along the pathway and disappeared beneath the arch.

“You’re making a mistake,” said Harvath.

“First you want us to apprehend the guy, and now we’re making a mistake?” said the cop in his thick New York accent. “What’s wrong with you? You retarded or something?”

“He didn’t want
you
to go, dumb-ass,” replied Herrington. “He wanted
us
to.”

“Watch your mouth, smart guy.”

“Your partner’s going to scare him off,” said Morgan.

“Or worse,” added Cates.

“Okay, everybody shut up,” demanded the mounted patrolman. “You. Homeland Security,” he said as he pointed his pistol at Harvath. “I want you to very slowly use your left hand to remove your creds from your pocket. Remember, very slowly.”

Suddenly, there was a burst of activity over the officer’s radio as his partner yelled, “The suspect is fleeing. West towards Fifth Avenue and the Sixty-fourth Street exit. One-Baker-Eleven in pur—”

The transmission was cut short by the unmistakable crack of gunfire.

The officer who had remained behind to watch Harvath and the other three men radioed
shots fired
to his dispatcher and then said, “One-Baker-Eleven, come in. Frank, talk to me. What the hell is going on?”

“Here,” said Harvath as he flipped open his wallet and revealed his ID. “
We’re
legit. Let us up.”

The cop was torn. On one hand his partner could be in grave danger, and on the other all he could think about was how Timothy McVeigh had been captured by an alert highway patrolman shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing. While everyone had been looking for Arabs, that officer had been smart enough to realize that McVeigh and the circumstances under which he was stopped warranted a closer look. It was just as true here. The cop couldn’t let these people go, ID or no ID. “No dice. Everybody stay where you are.”

Harvath couldn’t believe it. “Our suspect’s getting away and your partner could be dying or dead, for all you know.”

“One-Baker-Eleven, this is One-Baker-Twelve. Talk to me, Frank, God damn it. Talk to me.”

Harvath was about to appeal to the officer again, when a voice came over the earpiece attached to his Motorola. He listened to it for several seconds and then said to the patrolman, “I’ve shown you my ID and I’m going to stand up now. If you want to shoot a fellow law enforcement officer, that’s up to you, but I’m not going to lose that suspect.”

“I swear to God,” said the cop, “if you move I
will
shoot you.”

“I don’t think so,” replied Harvath as he slid his hands off his back and placed them palms-down like he was about to do push-ups.

“This is your last warning!” barked the patrolman as he steadied his weapon and took aim.

Suddenly, the well-trained police horse reared up on its hind legs. The officer was taken completely by surprise as Tracy Hastings’s deftly wielded tree limb connected with his chest and knocked him from his mount. To the man’s credit, he managed to hold on to his weapon, but it made little difference.

Cates got to the patrolman before he could find his feet and quickly stripped him of his gun.

“Cuff him,” said Harvath as he approached the startled horse, grabbed the reins, and swung up into the saddle.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m going after our suspect.”

I
t had been a long time since Harvath had ridden a horse, and he quickly discovered that riding one on pavement was nothing at all like riding on grass or sand. Racing out from under the Delacorte Clock, the horse slipped and Harvath thought for sure they were going down, but the animal righted itself and then lunged forward.

On the north side of the Armory, Harvath saw the other horse and just beyond it the second patrolman—both had been shot, both were on the ground, and neither was moving. Harvath radioed the information back to Tracy Hastings and kept riding toward the park’s 64th Street exit.

Once he emerged onto the sidewalk at Fifth Avenue he looked in every direction but couldn’t see the suspect. Then he noticed two black SUVs identical to the ones from the satellite imagery turn down 65th Street and head east.
It had to be them.

With their flashing red and blue strobes, the blacked-out Tahoes looked one hundred percent authentic. It was incredibly brazen, but in a city where both residents and law enforcement were used to getting out of the way of such vehicles, the ploy made perfect sense.

After almost getting killed crossing Fifth Avenue, Harvath galloped up 64th Street and tried to close in on the SUVs. Had the street been wide open, there was no way Harvath could have ever caught them, but with the traffic impeding the SUVs’ getaway, he actually had half a chance of catching up.

As soon as there were only four car lengths separating him from the nearest Tahoe, Harvath drew his .40-caliber H&K USP Compact and tried to synchronize himself with the rhythm of the horse. They were on the sidewalk, and the last thing Harvath wanted was for one of his shots to go wide and for some innocent bystander to get caught in his line of fire.

Squeezing off at least three rounds, Harvath blew out the rear window and drilled two holes through the Tahoe’s rear tailgate doors. If he didn’t have the terrorists’ attention before, he definitely had it now. In fact, he had everyone’s attention. The drivers of the cars behind the Tahoe panicked at the gunshots and slammed on their brakes, causing a dangerous chain-reaction collision.

From the backseat of the SUV, two men in black balaclavas raised submachine guns and opened fire. Harvath pulled up on the horse’s reins and as he did so the animal caught a round to the neck. The beast slipped and once again lost its footing. This time, though, it didn’t recover. Harvath followed it headfirst, straight down into the pavement.

W
hen Harvath came to, the first thing he saw was Bob Herrington. “So much for operating as a team.”

Harvath didn’t want to hear it and ignored his friend as he tried to move.

“Take it easy,” said Bob. “Don’t try to get up too fast. Are you okay? Anything broken?”

Harvath slowed down and tried moving his fingers. Next he moved his toes and then worked his way through the rest of his body. “I think I’m okay. What about the horse?”

Herrington looked over his shoulder, then back at Harvath, and shook his head. “Nope.”

“How about the cop by the Armory?” asked Harvath.

“Two rounds to the chest. Morgan had one of those QuickClot sponges in his bag and got it on him right away. Probably saved his life. I think he’s going to make it.”

Harvath pushed himself into a sitting position and leaned back against a parked car. He rubbed his brow along his shoulder to get some of the sweat out of his eyes and then saw that it wasn’t sweat, but blood.

“Don’t worry,” said Morgan, the team’s self-appointed medic, as he pulled some supplies out of his pack, including a tube of medical Krazy Glue known as Dermabond. “You’ve got one hell of a road rash on the left side of your face, but as long as we can get those cuts closed up, I don’t think it’s going to be too serious.”

“So much for me being the only pretty face in this group,” said Hastings.

Harvath’s smile quickly turned into a wince as Morgan swabbed his wounds with antiseptic.

“We heard the shots from the park,” said Cates. “Were you able to hit any of them?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What about faces, or something distinct about the vehicle?” asked Herrington.

“At least four faces,” said Harvath, “all covered. And as for the vehicle, it’s a late-model black Tahoe which now bears the distinction of having lost its rear window while gaining a bullet hole in each of its rear tailgate doors.”

“That’s a start,” said Herrington, trying to remain upbeat and bolster his buddy’s spirits. “Not a very good one, but a start nonetheless.”

“So what you’re telling us is that you got an NYPD horse killed and yourself beat to shit for nothing?” asked Cates.

As Morgan began applying the Dermabond to close his wounds, Harvath surrendered to the inevitable. They had just blown their last and only lead. Holstering his weapon, which Hastings had found and now handed back to him, Harvath said, “Yeah, I guess it was all for nothing.”

P
lease tell me you’re calling because you’ve got something good to report,” said Gary Lawlor.

From his office at the Pentagon, Lieutenant Colonel Sean Olson replied, “I’ll let you judge for yourself how good this is.”

Lawlor grabbed a pen. After finding a clean sheet of paper on his desk he said, “Go ahead.”

“The men your agent identified in New York City are definitely active-duty marines. At least they were as of their last fitness reports.”

“Which was when?”

“Eighteen months ago.”

“Eighteen months ago?”
replied Lawlor. “Don’t the Marines conduct fit reps every twelve?”

“Yeah,” said Olson, “but for some reason the paper trail on these marines stops exactly eighteen months ago.”

“Any idea why?”

“Based on what you’ve told me, I think that’s when someone took them off book.”

“That would make sense,” said Lawlor. “Were you able to find out anything else?”

“They were all Marine Security Guard School graduates and had been doing embassy security.”

“Where?”

“Pretty much all over the place, but one thing they had in common was that they each had requested high-risk postings.”

“What do you mean by
high-risk
?”

“They wanted to serve embassies that were operating under very high threat levels, like Bogotá, Athens, Kabul, Baghdad…you name it, and these guys were not only willing, but wanted to go.”

“Can you place them together at MSG school or in one of the embassy postings? There must be a bigger connection.”

“That was one of the first things I looked for, but they all graduated from different classes and never served at the same embassy at the same time either.”

“So what’s that leave us with?” asked Lawlor.

“Those avenues in particular don’t leave us with anything, but I dug a little deeper and found something that may be helpful.”

“I’m all ears.”

Olson pulled a file up on his computer and said, “While they’re deployed, the Marines are under the operational control of the State Department, but their coordination, logistics, and training is still handled by the Marine Security Battalion out of Quantico, and here’s where it gets interesting. The battalion maintains a low-key group of force readiness officers responsible for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of Marine Security Guard details in over one hundred and thirty embassies and consulates worldwide.

“The same force readiness officer filed very complimentary reports for the three marines whose names you gave me, as well as at least fifteen more, all of whom had their trails wiped clean as of eighteen months ago.”

“You think this guy recruited these marines into whatever off-book operation we’re looking at in New York?”

“All I can say is that I think it’s worth checking into.”