Terror At Dawn

SEVEN

Hank Greenfield was hungry, tired, and a damned sight colder than the weather warranted. He was wearing a lightly insulated jacket, as were the other FBI agents clustered around him. But the chill in his bones came from inside, a cold, clear warning signal he’d learned long ago not to ignore. There was something very wrong about this mission, and his body was reacting to it as though it was a threat to self-preservation.

Greenfield had joined the FBI fifteen years ago, following two tours in the Army. Despite his military experience, he’d come out with a strong belief in his country in general and law enforcement in particular. With his college degree in military justice and his test scores, he’d been accepted on his first application. He began his career with several tours in field offices, working on every type of case from breaking up drug rings to organized crime and kidnapping. It was on his last case as a junior agent, the kidnapping of the three-year-old daughter of a wealthy oil tycoon, that he began to experience the first glimmers of doubt about the FBI way of life.

The kidnappers had been clear — and to Greenfield’s mind, entirely serious. The money was to be delivered or the girl would die.

He’d watched dumbfounded at the political maneuverings that had taken place over what to do. The father, who had insisted on calling in the FBI over the mother’s protest, supported the FBI plan to nab the kidnappers at the pickup. If the girl wasn’t with them, they would force whoever they got to lead them back to her. Everything would be, the agents assured the father, all right. They had used this tactic countless times.

What the father had not asked, but the mother had, was how many times it had worked. Greenfield had watched the senior agent dodge the question, offering soothing remarks about the mother’s state of mind, the horrible tragedy of it all, and advising her to leave it all in their hands. Reluctantly, and only at the insistence of the father, she had acquiesced.

What they had not reckoned on were the kidnappers’ political leanings. One was a former employee at the father’s business, mentally unstable at best, psychotic at worst. The FBI had nabbed the pickup man, who led them back to the house where they were holding the girl. But by the time they’d arrived, both the girl and her other captor were dead. The small crumpled body with its throat covered with hard black bruises was never far from Greenfield’s thoughts.

Why think about that now? He tried to shake the memory off, to concentrate on the operation at hand, but her face kept intruding on his thoughts. Maybe it was the house — yes, that was it. The house where they’d finally tracked her down bore an uncanny resemblance to Smarts’ home. Both were isolated, small white buildings with mountains in the background. The only difference was that Kyle Smart’s home looked a good deal better kept than the other one had.

It wasn’t that he disagreed with mounting a raid on the Smart residence. At least, not in principle. The militia groups rising up around the United States were almost as much a threat to national security as the possibility of a foreign terrorist act. Drug dealers, child pornography peddlers, and domestic terrorists, they were all the same to him.

But however much he might agree in principle, as a law-enforcement action, this mission was something entirely different from any he’d ever been involved with. Operating under the direction of the new Homeland Security policy, and given what was probably domestic terrorism in post-September 11th America, the HSD had decided to take preemptive action. Greenfield knew that the power struggle going on in Washington right now was driving part of the decision to act. The Homeland Security folks were growing increasingly insistent that all domestic law-enforcement agencies should be under their command, including the FBI. The FBI, for its part, was adamantly opposed to being drawn in under the broad HSD umbrella. Having outsiders peering into their private files and their carefully developed informants and sources, changing procedures and practices that had served them so well for decades, was anathema. The FBI needed to be what it thought it was — a lean, mean crime-fighting machine. No matter that layers of bureaucracy and political battling had always been part of its culture, being supervised by Homeland Security was far worse than anything the FBI had ever dreamed up itself.

“Everybody straight on the plan?” Greenfield asked, surveying the faces around him. They were in camouflage, with masks of paint and fabric, and each was armed with an automatic weapon.

One by one, they nodded their readiness. Greenfield cast around for some reason to delay the inevitable, but there was no help for it.

Intel supporting this operation was far too skimpy for his tastes. Greenfield had a hard-won law degree, earned at night at the University of Columbia. Many agents did, but he had the feeling that he took his a good deal more seriously than others. Evidence, probable cause — for most agents, these were artificial barriers to doing the right thing. To Greenfield, the successful preparation of the case was far more important.

He ran through the evidence — if you could dignify the meager collection of facts with that name. A few confidential informants, one whose information had proved to be reliable in the past. Some intercepted e-mails, Kyle Smart’s visits to subversive Web sites, and what sounded like a few hastily spoken political opinions. Hardly sufficient, in Greenfield’s mind, to justify what they were planning.

But the decision wasn’t yours, was it? You do what you’re told, just like a good little soldier.

But I’m not a good little soldier. Regardless of what they think, this isn’t the military. And okay, maybe I take my membership more seriously than most of them do.

Above your pay grade. Get on with it.

“All right. Positions, everyone. Wait for the go signal.” More nods of agreement. Greenfield had no doubts about his team. Most of them were experienced field agents, and the ones who weren’t were paired with senior agents. It was the people who had sent them here that worried him.

Five minutes later, a series of clicks on his headset indicated that everyone was in place. Drawing in a deep breath, fighting down his doubts, Greenfield whispered, “Now.”

Kyle heard the dog bark once, a sharp, warning sound, followed by a low growl. The flap covering the dog door made a small scratching noise, and then the dog padded quietly into the bedroom.

Kyle reached for the rifle. He put his hand on Betsy’s mouth to wake her and whispered, “Get the kids.”

Betsy’s eyes went wide with alarm, but she nodded. She slid out from under the covers, pulled a.45 pistol from under the mattress, and moved quietly down the hall to the kids’ rooms.

Now that he was fully awake, Kyle could hear the noises that had alerted the dog. Small sounds like an inexperienced man trying to move silently, an almost inaudible clink of metal on metal. For just an instant, he wondered what unit would tolerate such sloppiness.

He slipped on his shoes, crouching down to avoid being outlined in the window. The dog followed. In the hall, the door that led down to the basement was just closing behind Betsy and the kids. Better that they remain below, out of the line of fire.

What the hell is happening? I can’t believe it — no, this isn’t real. I’m dreaming.

The Rottweiler muttered a low warning growl. Not a dream. All too real.

I’ll just walk out and deal with them. There’s obviously some sort of misunderstanding — something we can clear up right away. Hell, it’s probably the boys playing a trick on me, anyway. For just a moment, Kyle considered that possibility.

The Rottweiler growled again. He waited.

To Kyle’s right, a front window shattered. Something hit the floor, then rolled, followed by a hissing noise.

Tear gas! Dear God, it’s real!

Kyle ran to the kitchen and grabbed a dish towel. He wet it down and held it against his nose and mouth. The Rottweiler’s growl turned to a whimper as the tear gas enveloped the room.

Another canister, the metallic gleam noticeable even in the faint moonlight leaking through the curtains. Kyle coughed, the wet towel helping some but not enough.

“FBI with a search warrant!” a loudspeaker blared out. “Open the door slowly, and come out with your hands up!”

Kyle tried to answer, but every time he opened his mouth the gas forced its way into his lungs. His eyes were watering so badly he could barely see. Beside him, the Rottweiler was moaning, writhing in its skin.

“You’ve got until I count to five,” the voice said. “One.”

Kyle stumbled through the living room, headed for the front door. He heard the short, distinctive noise of a round being chambered in a shotgun. If he set foot outside the door, they would kill him. Coughing hard now, he waited.

“Two.”

The back door burst open at the same time the front one did. Men looking like bugs clad in gas masks swarmed into the room, black silhouettes with fluorescent yellow FBI letters on the backs.

“Drop the gun!” one shouted, his voice distorted by the gas mask. “Put it down. Now!”

Kyle stumbled and fell forward, keeping his hold on his rifle. He hit the ground, his finger inside the trigger guard, and the gun discharged.

“Three, four, five.”

Kyle had just a split second to realize how fatal his error was before the man opened fire.

“Hold fire!” the voice shouted, commanding. “Fall back, regroup.” The men pulled back, and the man who’d shouted advanced to check Kyle’s body. “Get some windows open and get this area cleared out.” He turned to other men. “The computer — don’t touch it. The rest of the team is on its way in.”

Suddenly, the lace curtains framing the front window burst into flames. The man swore, and another darted over to put it out. But the flames consumed the thin fabric and, fanned by the breeze from the open windows, jumped to the couch, then the carpet and the rest of the furniture. Before they could even begin to control it, the room was an inferno.

“Pull back!”

They retreated, swearing, not entirely sure who’d given the order, but recognizing the futility of trying to fight the fire. There was no chance that the local rural fire department could deal with this, not as quickly as it was spreading.

Greenfield was the last man out of the building. He staggered, coughing up the last of the tear gas as he crouched on the ground. In his brief glimpse of the interior of the house, Greenfield had seen nothing to confirm the reports that this man was a renegade leader. Nothing at all.

I told them not to do it this way, not to plan a commando-type strike, not the kind that had gone wrong so often enough in the past. But no — somebody at the top had decided that this was going to be a demonstration, that this would be the one arrest that made the rest of them sit up and take notice.

The noise increased as the flames consumed the structure. But even over the roar of the fire, Greenfield could hear the thin screams start from the basement.

Four hundred yards away, Special Agent A. J. Bratton watched the fire race out of control through the small house. He was too far away to hear the screams himself, but his directional microphone aimed at the scene picked up the shouts of the agents trying to brave the flames and the anguish in Greenfield’s voice in the intercepted phone calls demanding local firefighting assistance. Bratton stayed in position until he was certain he understood what had happened, then moved silently through the trees and brush to clear the area. Five minutes later, there was no trace of his extended surveillance on the Smart house.

There couldn’t be. After all, the CIA had no jurisdiction inside the United States. There was no reason for Bratton or the CIA to even be involved.

Yet.