by Brad Thor
Jesus Christ,” said Morgan as they retreated back into the hallway and he looked up at the pockmarked wall just above their heads. “Flechettes.”
The word was French for tiny arrows, and that’s exactly how they had gotten their name. They were fin-stabilized steel projectiles that looked just like little arrows, which could be fired from a twelve-gauge shotgun, significantly increasing the weapon’s lethality.
Herrington looked at the wall and said, “Even so, watch your language in here.”
Cates asked, “Am I the only one who finds it ironic that we’re in a Christian church duking it out with Muslim terrorists?”
“So far they’re the only ones doing the duking,” replied Harvath. “Now here’s the plan. Bob, Tracy, and I are going in on my command. Cates and Morgan, you’re going to provide cover fire. Everybody ready?”
The team nodded its assent, Harvath readied his weapon and said, “Now!”
Rick Cates kicked open what was left of the door leading into the sanctuary, and he and Morgan laid down a vicious curtain of cover fire.
Crouching low and moving as fast as they could, Harvath, Herrington, and Hastings raced for the nearest row of pews. They went as far as they could until the men at the end of the church began returning fire, and then they hit the deck.
Harvath pulled the fire evacuation map from his vest and tried to get a fix on where their opponents were. As best he could tell, they were within spitting distance of an exit at the north end of the transept. But why weren’t they using it?
Grabbing his police radio, Harvath tried to raise McGahan. With the roar of the gunfire filling the cavernous church, it took a moment before he could hear anything over the radio. Finally, he could make out McGahan’s voice. “Are your men in place yet?”
“Affirmative,” replied McGahan. “I’ve got one on Fifty-first who almost got his ass shot off, but he just pushed the targets back inside.”
That explained it. And it also gave Harvath an idea.
If he could get McGahan’s men on the north and south ends of the transept, they could execute a classic pincer movement. Confident for the first time that they might have the terrorists all but in the bag, he radioed his plans to McGahan and then used his Motorola to radio Cates and fill him in.
Crouching near Herrington and Hastings, Harvath prepped them on the plan. As they nodded their heads, he then radioed McGahan and told him to get ready.
Harvath glanced at his Suunto, counted down thirty seconds, and then over both radios gave the command, “Go, go, go!”
Right on cue, Cates and Morgan laid down as much cover fire as they could muster. As they did, the terrorists returned fire and retreated into the back of the nave. Harvath didn’t need to look at his evacuation plan to know they had them trapped. There was no way out.
Eighty
Reloading, Abdul Ali looked toward Sacha and commanded, “Find us a way out of here. Now!”
It had been the Chechen’s idea to flee into the church, where he had legitimately expected little to no resistance. But what the enormous warrior had not planned on was for the men chasing him to be reinforced so quickly—at least not in such a manner as to hinder their escape. They needed to put a lot of distance between themselves and their pursuers as quickly as possible.
While he was incredibly adept at thinking on his feet, the Chechen disliked being put on the defensive and being forced to react. A hasty retreat was hard to turn to one’s advantage, especially when you had no idea where the hell you were going. The most deadly mistakes in combat often came from operating too quickly and without enough information. In this case, though, Sacha had little choice.
Near the altar, he found the door to the sacristy and ruptured it from its hinges with a kick from one of his enormous boots. Signaling to the rest of the team, he took up position in the door frame and tried to pin down their opponents as one by one his men ran past him. As the last man came through, he took a grenade from him, pulled the pin, and threw it toward the center of the church.
When the device detonated, showering St. Bartholomew’s with its deadly shrapnel, Sacha and his men were already running through the sacristy and into a narrow service corridor. The Chechen knew that, if not already, the church would soon be surrounded and that heading back out could be suicide. They needed another route, and as his eyes fell upon a small steam radiator along one side of the corridor, Allah blessed him with an idea.
Once Sacha located the correct door, he opened it, careful not to leave any signs of entry, and sent Ali and the rest of the team down the stairs. Before he could join them, though, he needed a diversion—something that would send the men chasing them in a completely different direction. Moments later he found it.
Sacha didn’t bother opening the glass case. Instead he smashed it with the butt of his weapon and tore the ax from its mounting bracket. With one swing he was through the window, and with two more he had torn away the security wire. He then threw the ax out the window into the narrow, ground-level courtyard and ran back toward the stairwell. With any luck, he and the rest of his team would be long gone before their pursuers had any idea what had really happened.
Eighty-One
The first thing Harvath heard when the ringing in his ears subsided was Paul Morgan cursing at the top of his lungs. As Bullet Bob had done to Cates earlier, Scot was about to admonish the man for spewing obscenities in a church, until he saw the reason why—Morgan had been hit.
The team ran to where he lay, blood oozing from several wounds to his chest. Along with Cates, he had advanced up the south wall of the sanctuary, but unlike his partner, he had failed to drop fast enough when the huge Chechen pitched his grenade into the center of the church.
In a flash, Harvath had undone Morgan’s vest, drawn the Benchmade knife from his pocket, and sliced through the marine’s bloody shirt. As Harvath looked at the wounds, he asked, “Can you breathe?”
Coughing, Morgan replied, “It feels like somebody whacked me in the chest with a bat.”
“But can you breathe?” repeated Harvath.
Morgan coughed again and said, “Yeah, I can breathe, but it hurts like hell.”
“Why didn’t you duck, dumb-ass?” demanded Cates.
“I had that fucker in my sights. There was no way I was going to let him go.”
“So much for discretion being the better part of valor.”
“Discretion is for pussies. When you go back there, you’re going to find that clown on the ground.”
“Fifty bucks says you missed him,” responded Cates.
Morgan coughed out a laugh as he tried to stand up. “You’re on. Let’s go.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Harvath as the marine winced and fell back down. “You need medical attention. These wounds are pretty bad.”
“You want the coppers to get all the credit for collaring these guys?”
Harvath ignored him and quickly fished through the pockets of his vest for some gauze and a QuickClot pouch. Tearing it open, he pressed the rapid coagulation sponges against the worst of the wounds and then had Herrington lean him forward so that they could wrap his chest with gauze. The pain from the piece of Lexan that had been lodged in Harvath’s shoulder grew so intense as he did this that he had to back off.
“Are you okay?” asked Bob.
“Fine,” replied Harvath as he sucked it up and went back to rapidly dressing Morgan’s injury.
Once the gauze had been wrapped tight, Harvath leaned him up against the wall and crossed his arms, encouraging him to continue applying pressure.
“That’s it?” asked Hastings. “That’s all you’re going to do for him?”
“It’s all we can do,” Harvath responded as he radioed McGahan, told him they had a man down, and gave him Morgan’s position.
The marine looked up at him and forcing a smile, coughed, “Let’s hope this is the worst thing that happens.”
Standing up, Harvath turned to the others and said, “Let’s go.�
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With Harvath at the lead, the team raced toward the nave while McGahan’s ESU officers from the north and south ends of the transept were already well ahead of them.
When they exited the sacristy and charged into the service corridor they saw the two cops standing in a pile of glass on either side of a broken window.
Using hand signals, one of the officers indicated for Harvath and his team to hold up, because the terrorists they were chasing had gone out the window.
Harvath didn’t like it. It was too dangerous. As they went through that window, the terrorists could pick them off one by one. They needed a better plan.
Harvath hugged the wall and began creeping forward. He wanted to tell the ESU guys to back off, when he heard something pop beneath his boot and Bob Herrington grabbed his arm.
Raising his leg, Harvath looked down at what he’d stepped on—a tiny piece of glass. Herrington didn’t need to say a word. Harvath knew what it meant. Whoever had broken that window had come back down the hallway in their direction. Maybe his urban tracking skills weren’t as bad as he thought.
And maybe they had just caught a significant break.
Eighty-Two
The floor of St. Bart’s service corridor was covered in linoleum tiles. Not the most inspired decorating choice, but as far as Harvath was concerned, they were absolutely beautiful. Whoever had broken the glass fire cabinet and the window had managed to get another small piece of glass wedged in the sole of his boot.
Studying the floor, Herrington and Harvath soon discovered the true route by which the terrorists had exited the corridor.
Once Tracy gave them the thumbs-up indicating that the door wasn’t rigged, they slowly made their way down the stairs, keeping their eyes open for booby traps the entire time.
Despite Harvath’s discovery, McGahan’s two ESU officers opted to tackle the window. They were going with their guts and Harvath couldn’t blame them, though his gut told him it was a dead end. The real trail was the one he and his team were following right now down an old metal staircase.
As they descended, the brick walls on either side grew slick with moisture. The air was dank and moldy. A series of bare lightbulbs lit their way down until finally, at the bottom, they encountered a large iron door marked Utility Tunnel Access. Keep Out. Authorized Personnel Only.
Cates, who was bringing up the rear, smiled and raising his weapon, said, “I brought my authorization.”
“Shut up, Rick,” replied Tracy. She didn’t like what she was seeing. The fact that the door had been left ajar put her on edge. It was almost too inviting.
Harvath, though, doubted that it was rigged. Whoever had gone through the trouble of breaking the window upstairs hadn’t expected to be followed—at least not right away.
Once Tracy finished checking the door over and gave the okay, the team filed though.
Rusting pipes of varying sizes lined the fetid walls, while water dripping from the ceiling created a patchwork of stagnant puddles along the floor. Even their breathing seemed to send echoes bouncing off in all directions, and as they made their way forward, Harvath, Hastings, Cates, and Herrington took great pains not to make any unnecessary noise.
The tunnel curved to the right and then intersected with another. The light wasn’t very good;even so, when Harvath looked into the new tunnel, he could see movement way down at the other end.
Holding his hand up in a fist, he froze his team in place. Tunnels were very bad places to get into gunfights. The walls had a very nasty habit of funneling rounds right at you. Turning, he used hand signals to let the others know what he was looking at.
Herrington queried him on range and Harvath relayed what he thought the distance was.
Raising one of the M16 Vipers they’d taken from the Geneva Diamond location, Bob indicated what he wanted to do. Nodding his assent, Harvath peered back around the corner just in time to see the terrorists disappear from view.
Eighty-Three
Abdul Ali had no idea where the access door led. He knew only that this was the one they needed to take. Whether it was precognition, a gut instinct, or divine intervention he had no idea, but an overwhelming sense of urgency had overtaken him and it told him to get out of the tunnels as quickly as possible. He sometimes wondered if it was Allah Himself speaking to him. It made no difference where it came from. When the voice spoke to him, he did what it said, and he knew that was one of the reasons he had lived as long as he had.
Crashing through two more doors the team found a set of stairs and followed them up into a large commercial laundry area. From the uniforms of the startled staff as well as the stenciled letters across the large canvas carts, the team realized that they had stumbled into the bowels of the Doubletree Metropolitan Hotel.
One of the Chechens raised his weapon as if he was going to fire, but Sacha quickly pushed it back down and shook his head no. They hadn’t been hired to kill civilians. That was what the Arabs did, not them. It was a pointless waste of ammunition and would draw too much attention.
Ali waved the team forward and they threaded through the carts and stacks of laundry to a small corridor and a bank of elevators at the end. As he pressed the button, Sacha withdrew his map of New York and tried to figure out where they were.
“Lexington and Fifty-first,” he said as a set of elevator doors opened and they filed in.
Ali did the calculation in his head and replied, “About five blocks from the final target.”
As Sacha was not the leader of this operation, he simply raised his eyebrows in response as if to say How should we proceed?
His index finger hovering in front of the elevator buttons, Ali tried to decide the best course of action. They had never planned on losing their vehicles. Their dangerous carjacking attempt in front of the Waldorf had almost cost them their lives, but might be worth trying again. Confident that he would come up with something, he pressed the button for the lobby level and stated, “Allah shall provide.”
Little did he know that what Allah chose to provide were four very well armed and extremely dangerous American Special Operations personnel.
Eighty-Four
Bursting into the laundry area, Harvath and the rest of the team swung their weapons from side to side but saw no trace of the terrorists save for a few barely detectable wet footprints they had tracked in with them.
The team kept their weapons up and at the ready. Harvath identified himself to the nearest employee he saw as a federal agent and quickly asked about the men who had just come through. The woman, who apparently spoke no English, could only stare. Rick Cates then tried in Spanish.
Seconds later, he translated, “Five men. They went down the hall to the elevators, and just my luck, there’s a stairway right next to it.”
Herrington glanced at Harvath, who could barely hold up his weapon. His shoulder was obviously giving him increasing trouble. “I’m going to take point,” he said.
Harvath shook his head no. “Let’s catch that elevator.”
Herrington had a bad feeling about letting Harvath remain on point in his condition, but he didn’t argue. This was Harvath’s operation. Kicking it into gear, he and the rest of the team took off for the elevators.
As they approached, they could see one of the elevators was already on its way up to the lobby. With no time to spare, they headed for the stairwell. Everyone, including Cates, took the stairs three at a time—the adrenaline coursing through their bloodstreams.
Hitting the lobby-level landing, Harvath paused for a moment to let the team regroup and slowly cracked the door to see what was happening on the other side.
A line of hotel guests were backed up against a wall near a bank of elevators, staring at something that must have just rushed by. Harvath knew it could only be one thing. Nodding his head, he pulled open the door and the team rushed out in pursuit of the terrorists.
With its swanky sixties retro feel it looked like they had fallen down the rabbit hole and landed in the pr
ivate lair of Auric Goldfinger. The only thing that kept the scene from being completely surreal were the looks on the faces of the hotel’s guests as they closed the distance with the terrorists.
Coming around the corner into the stainless-steel lobby, the team fanned out into a wedge formation, and not a moment too soon. The Chechen bringing up the rear of his group’s escape spun just in time to see them. Yelling a warning to the others, he raised his weapon and began to fire.
Immediately, Harvath and company took cover behind anything they could find. They then all began to fire; all, that is, except for Harvath. Suddenly he could no longer lift the heavy Troy CQB assault rifle.
Dropping it to the floor, he transitioned to his pistol and let the rounds fly.
Hotel guests screamed as they ran from the mayhem, several of them cut down by stray rounds in the process.
Realizing the Chechens were wearing body armor, Tracy Hastings yelled for her team to go for head shots and seconds later, Herrington and Cates had one kill apiece.
The remaining terrorists emptied their magazines and reloaded, their assault furious and unrelenting. A thick cloud of cordite hung in the air, and though less than a minute had passed, it seemed like a lifetime.
Down to only three men, Sacha wanted to get the hell out of the hotel and motioned to Ali and his remaining comrade to make for the exit. Ali nodded his head and the trio laid down a swath of fire to cover yet another hasty retreat.
As they did so, Harvath and company continued to reload and pull their triggers, completely shattering the glass doors at the front of the lobby.
Arriving at the exit, Sacha and Ali continued to fire as they slipped out of the hotel toward the street. The remaining Chechen wasn’t as fortunate. When his weapon jammed, he fumbled with it just long enough to catch a very well placed bullet through his throat, courtesy of Scot Harvath.