Harvath ignored her and leaning down gripped the panel and tore the rest of it away. He pulled Tracy out from underneath and onto her feet. To her credit, or more than likely her exceptional survival instinct, she didn’t bother to stop and thank him. She ran like hell. And true to her prediction, she looked back over her shoulder and saw Harvath losing a footrace to some girl.

It might have actually been funny except for the fact that five seconds later both bombs detonated and sent shards of glass and bulletproof Lexan screaming through the room.

Hitting the entry corridor, Tracy spun, grabbed ahold of Harvath’s tactical vest, and tried to pull him out of the doorway. The blast wave that came through the passage slapped him so hard, it felt like he’d gone off a high dive and had landed right on his back. Tracy lost her footing and they both stumbled to the ground.

When Harvath looked up, he found Hastings sitting against the wall, while his head, or more appropriately his face, was in a rather ungentlemanly position right between her legs.

“I suppose most guys probably just would have said thank you,” he joked.

Hastings eyes were wide. “You don’t feel that?” she asked, looking down.

Harvath had no idea what she was talking about. “Feel what?”

“Your back.”

“It hurts like hell, but it’ll pass.”

“Not if I don’t do something about it,” she replied as she pulled a pair of needle-nose pliers from her pocket.

It wasn’t until Harvath glanced over his right shoulder that he saw what Tracy was talking about.

“Do you have something to bite down on?” she asked.

Harvath looked at Hastings ’s very toned inner thigh beneath her pants and remarked, “Maybe I should just focus my mind in another direction. Make it quick, would you?”

“All right, Mr. Macho SEAL. Here we go. Can I get a Hooyah?”

The pain was amazing for such a relatively small hunk of Lexan. Harvath accompanied its extremely nasty extraction with a very long and very loud Navy Hooyah.

The minute it was out, Hastings tore open one of the QuickClot pouches Morgan had handed her when they were treating the mounted patrolman in Central Park and shoved it into Harvath’s wound. Without any gauze to cover it, she reached for the next best thing-duct tape. She still had several pieces hanging from her shirt from dealing with the IEDs, and after tearing back part of Harvath’s shirt, she was able to perfectly cover the wound and flatten out the tape so it adhered to his skin.

“You want to keep it as a souvenir?” she asked as she showed him the piece she’d pulled from his back.

“I’ve got my eye set on another trophy,” he said.

Hastings looked down at him still poised between her legs and raised her eyebrows.

Harvath shook his head and began to get up. “I’m talking about the people who are responsible for all this.”

A smile came to Tracy ’s face, and she was about to say something, when Harvath’s radio crackled to life. It was Bob Herrington. “Scot? Scot, do you read me? Over.”

“I read you, Bob,” said Harvath as he swung the lip mic back into place and push-up-style raised himself off the floor and then backed away from Tracy Hastings.

“We heard an explosion. Are you okay?”

“Roger that,” replied Harvath. “Only slightly worse for wear.”

Hastings shot a glance at the makeshift bandage across his back and Harvath ignored her. “What have you got, Bob?”

“They gained access via some ductwork off the elevator shaft and went out via the concealed garage exit.”

Harvath found that hard to believe. “McGahan and his men are on 49th Street. They never would have made it.”

“They didn’t go out 49th Street. They found a service entrance and cut back through the hotel.”

“Where are you now?”

“Right behind them. They’re headed for the Park Avenue exit.”

“Do you have a visual?”

“Negative.”

“How are you following them?”

“You’d be amazed at the stuff they dragged in on their boots from the garage,” replied Herrington.

Gasoline, oil, brake fluid…Harvath could only imagine. God bless Bob Herrington. Urban tracking was an absolute bitch and something Harvath had never been that good at.

Realizing that it was safer to go out the 50th Street stairwell than to slowly creep down the 49th Street side and hope that McGahan and his men would recognize them as friendlies and not jump the gun and open fire on them, Harvath relayed his plan to Herrington.

If they could get to the Park Avenue entrance in time, they might be able to finally put an end to the terrorists’ killing spree once and for all. What they were learning, though, was that things didn’t always go as planned.

WASHINGTON, DC

Gary Lawlor had first boarded the helicopter in DC with no idea what to expect from the NSA interrogation or why Stan Caldwell had invited him along. On a day like today, the deputy director should have been glued to the Strategic Information and Operations Center at FBI headquarters. It made little sense that he would break away to personally conduct an interrogation, even if it was at the behest of the NSA director.

Regardless, Lawlor had kept his mouth shut and had gone along for the ride, hoping that something would come out of it that could help his own investigation and Scot Harvath’s efforts on the ground in New York City. But now that the Schreiber interrogation was complete and Lawlor had nothing more to gain, he wanted answers out of Caldwell.

Once the Sikorsky S76C lifted off, Gary turned to the deputy director and said, “I want to talk about why you asked me to come along on this.”

Stan had known this was coming, and he’d hoped to avoid it by getting on the phone right away and keeping busy with headquarters until they got back to DC. Realizing he was stuck, he turned toward his mentor and said, “I told you. It was a professional courtesy. I thought it might help with your current investigation.”

“Just like the interrogation you threw our way in Manhattan?”

Caldwell nodded his head. “We finally got someone over there, but apparently the guy’s not talking. Did your guy do any better?”

“Don’t change the subject,” said Lawlor. “Why the largess?”

“I told you.”

“Right, professional courtesy. You know, Stan, you always were a bad liar.”

Caldwell smiled. “It still didn’t stop me from inheriting the deputy director position after you left, though, did it?”

“Apparently not. Now, do you want to tell me what’s really going on? No bullshit, Bureau guy to Bureau guy.”

Caldwell would have liked nothing more than to answer that question, but he knew he couldn’t.

“Stan, Americans in Manhattan are actively being slaughtered. We’re talking about government employees along with a significant number of marines. If you know something, anything that might be able to help me put a stop to it, you need to tell me.”

“Let it go, Gary. All four NSA locations have already been hit. Whatever the bad guys came for, they already got.”

Lawlor couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Let it go? I’ve got a team hot on their trail. I’m not letting anything go. Who are you trying to protect?”

“I’m not protecting anybody. Whatever information your team has compiled, I want it turned over to me. The Bureau is now the lead agency on this, and we’re going to take it from here.”

“Like hell you will. Right now, my people are the best and the only chance we have.”

Caldwell hated to do it, but he looked at his mentor and said, “I’m not asking you, Gary. As deputy director of the lead agency in charge of investigating the New York City attacks, I’m giving you a direct order.”