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.
The team spread out and combed the facility. Like the others before it, it was all computerized. Now, though, they knew the reason why. Morgan found a functioning workstation, but without a password, he couldn’t gain access to the system. Not only that, but as Harvath studied the shiny dials built into the frames of the computer displays, he realized they weren’t cameras, as several on the team had suspected, but actually retinal scanners. The Athena Program took the handling of its data very seriously.
It was hard to tell if anything had been stolen. From what Harvath and the rest of the team could tell, everything seemed to be there; it was just shot to hell-including the employees. The only thing that had avoided the carnage was the server room, just like in the previous two locations.
But why risk so much just to take out the employees? What the hell was al-Qaeda’s game? Was it some sort of payback? And what did any of this have to do with Sayed Jamal and Mike Jaffe? None of it made any sense.
That said, Harvath had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach that once he did uncover the answers he was looking for, he wasn’t going to like them.
As they left the server room, everyone was helping collect identification from the dead, when Herrington swung his weapon into the firing position and yelled, “Nobody fucking move.”
Harvath and the rest of the team had no idea what the hell he was talking about until they noticed two strangers at the far end of the room pointing a pair of very nasty-looking short-barreled M16 Viper machine guns at them. The strangers ordered Bob and the rest of the team to drop their weapons and remain absolutely still. It was a Mexican standoff-although this time they wouldn’t be able to count on Tracy Hastings sneaking up behind their adversaries with a big leafy tree branch.
“Everybody stay cool,” cautioned Harvath. “What do you guys want?”
“What do we want?” demanded one of the strangers. “Why don’t we start with who the hell are you?”
“My name’s Scot Harvath and I’m with the Department of Homeland Security.”
“Who are the rest of these people?” the man asked, indicating the rest of the team with the barrel of his weapon.
“They’re with me. Who you are?”
“Homeland Security? Bullshit. DHS doesn’t have anything to do with this facility.”
“We do since Captain William Forrester was shot and killed less than an hour ago,” replied Harvath.
“Captain Forrester is dead?”
“As a doornail,” said Morgan as he shouldered his weapon and pulled a half-liter of water from his pack.
Tracy saw the men tense and begin applying pressure to their triggers. “Paul, are you nuts?” she responded. “Quit screwing around. You’re going to get us all killed.”
“No, I’m not,” said Morgan. “And you know why? Because marines don’t kill other marines.”