The Enemy Within

CHAPTER 9 MISFIRE

Helen Gray lay alone under her covers in that warm, comfortable zone halfway between drowsy wakefulness and true sleep. After the focused intensity of every day on duty, the chance to let her thoughts and feelings run free at night was a luxury she prized. In the peaceful darkness she had nothing to prove and no one to impress.

The clean, crisp smell of pine drifted in through the window she had left cracked open, caught and carried by a cool breeze blowing off the nearby Potomac. She burrowed deeper under the blankets. Autumn was on the way, and though the days were still warm, the nights were growing steadily colder. Helicopters clattered somewhere off to the north, muffled by the distance and the forests crowding both sides of the river. The familiar sounds meant the marines based at Quantico were practicing night flying again.

The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team had its headquarters on the edge of the Bureau’s wooded Quantico academy campus. Firing ranges, an old airliner, and a smaller version of the Delta Force killing house gave team members a chance to hone their specialised skills. Beyond the ranges, a central building provided administrative offices, conference rooms, and temporary living quarters for HRT sections rotating through for refresher training or on routine alert.

As a section leader and one of the HRT’s only women agents, Helen had a room all to herself. It wasn’t fancy. Just a place to wash up and bunk in some privacy during the days and nights when she and her men took their turn as the team’s ready-response force. A duffel bag beside the single bed held her gear, sidearm, and a change of clothes. Nothing else.

Not that she would mind having Peter Thorn here beside her right now, she realised. They’d known each other for only a few months, but Helen was already growing used to having him with her at night. She smiled drowsily at the thought of sneaking him into her room past her fellow agents. That would certainly shatter her Bureau reputation as an “ice maiden” once and for all!

Thoughts of Peter spun away in a dozen different directions.

She loved the way his face lit up when he smiled at her a sunburst of joy on a face normally so serious and reserved. Or the catch in his voice when he shared memories of his childhood and his father with her, revealing a vulnerability he kept hidden from others. Their time together had been a revelation for both of them as each learned to lower carefully constructed defences, discovering the intense pleasure two people could find in shared laughter and comfortable silence, and the touch of hand on hand, body on body.

But it was also confusing. She was having to face questions she’d been avoiding ever since leaving the Academy for her first assignment. What did she really want? A husband? Or something less? She had sacrificed much for her career. Could she risk all she had won for the love of a man? Even this man?

And what did Peter want from her? So far they’d both been careful to stay very much in the present moment to avoid any real discussion of a future together. That couldn’t last for much longer. She realized that, although she wasn’t sure he did. And what then? What would happen when the time came to think beyond the next evening out? He hardly ever spoke of it, but she knew that his mother’s desertion of his father had left scars that ran deep. Would he shy away from her when their affair turned serious?

The phone by her bedside rang sharply, ripping through her sleepy, wandering thoughts. Helen rolled over, suddenly wide awake, and answered it. “Grey here.”

“This is Lang. Sorry to wake you.”

She sat up in bed, still cradling the phone. Special Agent John Lang commanded the Hostage Rescue Team. She could hear the tension in his voice. Something big must be in the wind. “Go ahead.”

“We’ve got a situation developing up near D.C. I need you and your section in the briefing room in five minutes.”

“On my way.” Helen hung up, slid out of bed, and began pulling gear out of her duffel bag a whirlwind of brisk, economical movement. She was aware of the excitement suddenly coursing through her veins. A situation, Lang had said. That single, flat word meant someone was in trouble big trouble. But it also meant a chance to prove herself in action after all the years and months of training and simulations.

Still moving fast, she fastened Kevlar body armor over her black coveralls and then zipped an assault vest over the Kevlar. Sturdy rubber pads to protect her elbows and knees came next. Then she checked her service automatic and snapped it into the holster rigged low on her thigh. Done.

Helen went out the door and headed down the corridor to the briefing room at a trot. She could hear agents stirring behind her as the phone alert rippled through the building.

The briefing room contained all the tools needed to plan and prep HRT missions. Chairs faced a wall given over to a screen for an overhead projector, blackboards, and a large video monitor. A computer terminal linked them to databases at the Hoover Building and at other federal agencies. A locked armory downstairs held still more gear: submachine guns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, shotguns, climbing gear, portable electronic surveillance systems, even the demolition charges used to breach locked doors, walls, and roofs.

John Lang, tall, gray-haired, and in his late forties, was there ahead of her. He waked up from the secure phone he was on and waved her to a chair up front, all the while talking in a clipped, tense tone. “Yes, sir. I understand. We’re moving now.”

Helen waited for him to finish, working hard to control her growing impatience. One by one, the other agents in her ten-man section hurried in through the door and dropped into seats beside her. Their eager expressions mirrored her own.

Lang finished his conversation and spun around to face them all.

“Okay. I’ll make this short and sweet. We have a hostage situation just outside D.C. This is the real thing. This is not an exercise.”

Helen leaned forward, intent on his every word.

“There are terrorists holding a rabbi, some women, and some kids inside a synagogue in Arlington, Virginia. A place called Temple Emet. We don’t know who the bad guys are. We don’t know how many of them there are. But we do know they’re serious. We’ve already got one confirmed fatality a father who drove there to pick up his kid and apparently just stumbled into these bastards.”

Helen’s initial excitement faded, replaced by a growing sense of anger and outrage. Hostage-taking was vile enough. But murdering an unarmed innocent simply because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time marked the thugs inside the synagogue as either truly vicious or truly cowardly. The thought of children held captive in such cruel, capricious hands was chilling.

“The Director wants this section enroute to the scene pronto,” Lang continued. He looked straight at her. “Questions?”

“No, sir.” Helen shook her head, She had questions, but none important enough to slow them up now. She stood up and faced her team members.

“All right, people, you heard the man. You know the drill. Prep for a possible building assault. Let’s move!”

Time seemed to fly by as she and the others scrambled to gather the weapons, ammunition, and other gear they might need. Minutes were precious and she begrudged every moment it took to collect their gear, but they were outside and jogging toward the helipad next to the headquarters building in less than ten minutes.

Two FBI-owned UH-60 Blackhawks were there waiting for them, already spooling up. Her section split up, one five man team heading for each helicopter. That was a safety precaution in case one of the birds went down. Would-be terrorists had too much access to shoulder-launched SAMs these days for any mission planner’s peace of mind.

Ducking low under the spinning rotors, Helen clambered into the lead Blackhawk and took the flight helmet offered her by the crew chief. She would need the intercom system to hear and talk over the helicopter’s engine noise.

Lang pulled himself inside right behind her. Although she would plan and lead any assault on the synagogue, her chain of command ran through him. Once they were on scene he would set up an HRT command post and generally run interference with the locals and the FBI agent in charge. Ideally, that should free her to concentrate entirely on the mission at hand. The system worked well in training exercises. She only hoped it would work as well under the stresses and strains of a real operation.

The Blackhawk lifted off in a shrieking, teeth-rattling roar as its engines came up to full power. It then spun right as it climbed and then slid forward, heading northwest at nearly two hundred miles an hour. Helen glanced through the open side doors, her eyes drawn to the eerily beautiful spectacle of the moonlit, wooded countryside rippling past below them.

“ETA is ten minutes.” The pilot’s voice crackled through the headphones built into her helmet. “They’re clearing a corridor for us now through National ATC.”

“Understood.”

Lang leaned closer. “You ready for me to fill you in on the details?”

Helen pulled her gaze away from the moonlight-dappled landscape and nodded. “What have you got?”

The older man shrugged. “Not much. And none of it good.” He sat back against his thin metal and canvas seat and started ticking off what he knew. “This whole thing first blew up about three hours ago.”

She checked her watch. “Around nine?”

Lang nodded. “That’s when the local police got the initial reports of shots fired. The first squad car on the scene found a man lying in the temple courtyard. When the cops started to investigate further, they were warned off by somebody inside the synagogue claiming to hold hostages.”

Helen frowned. “And we know that’s true?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” Lang matched her expression with a frown his own. “Tomorrow’s the first day of a major Jewish holiday something called Sukkot.”

“That’s right. The Feast of Tabernacles.” She saw his questioning look and explained. “I had a Jewish roommate at the Academy. It’s some kind of harvest festival, isn’t it?”

“Correct.” Lang hunched his shoulders. “Part of the celebration involves building a wood hut, a tabernacle, outside and decorating it with autumn crops pumpkins, Indian corn, that kind of stuff. This year the folks at Temple Emet decided to make the tabernacle a preteens-youth project.”

Helen’s jaw tightened. “How many kids are we talking about?”

“We’re still trying to get an exact count from the parents, but it looks like at least ten to twelve boys and girls, two or three mothers who were chaperoning them, and the assistant rabbi in charge of the temple’s youth group.”

- “God.”

Lang nodded somberly. He had two small children of his own. “This could be a real bad one, Helen.” His mouth turned down. “I don’t know why, but my gut’s telling me the negotiators aren’t going to be able to talk these bastards outside. I think it’s going to be up to us to get those kids out alive.”

“Yeah. You could be right.” To hide a sudden fear that they might fail, Helen turned away from him, staring blindly out the helicopter’s side door. She’d already been seeing horrifying mental images of what might happen to those children and their mothers if things went wrong.

She looked at the ground. There were man-made lights down there now the regular glow of streetlamps that told her they were already flying over the capital’s southernmost suburbs.

The Blackhawk rolled right suddenly, altering courage to the north.

“ETA now three minutes,” the pilot warned.

Helen squared her shoulders, pushing her doubts away for the moment, and turned back to Lang. “Who’s already on scene?”

“Last I heard, the Arlington cops had most of their patrol force and their SWAT team deployed around the perimeter. Plus, the Virginia state police have their people on the way. It’s going to get crowded.”

Helen nodded, unsurprised. Major hostage situations were like criminological black holes sucking in every local and state police agency within driving distance. Waco, the standoff with Mormon extremists in Utah, and all the others in recent history had wound up involving hundreds of police officers, state troopers, and federal agents. By definition, domestic counterterrorism operations came under the FBI’s control, but it often took hours to confirm those lines of authority. Nobody local willingly surrendered power to the feds before making absolutely sure they were dealing with a real terrorist incident and not just with a burglary or robbery gone sour.

She asked about that. “So exactly how did we get jurisdiction here so early, John?”

He shrugged. “We don’t have jurisdiction. At least not yet. But we will.”

“What?!”

For the first time, Lang looked slightly abashed. “One of the hostages is the nine-year-old daughter of Michael Shorr.”

“Shorr?” Helen mentally paged through a list of VIPs. “The President’s economics advisor?”

Lang nodded. “That’s the guy. I guess the President’s already been on the phone to the Director. I know the Director has a call in to both the mayor of Arlington and the governor of Virginia.” He shrugged. “And you’re aware that the Director is a very persuasive fellow.”

Whalen shook her head, even more troubled now. Starting off with a set of crossed administrative wires and with nervous politicians hovering over her shoulder sounded like a ready-made recipe for disaster. She rechecked the magazine on her submachine gun as the Blackhawk dipped lower, clattermg toward a floodlit football field.

Outside Temple Emet, Arlington, Virginia The Arlington police and the Virginia state troopers had set up their command post in a two-story brick high school down the road from Temple Emet. Patrol cruisers and unmarked cars crowded the parking lot. Policemen wearing bulky bulletproof vests and carrying rifles and shotguns stood in small clumps outside the front entrance, all talking at once and gesturing excitedly toward the distant bulk of the synagogue complex caught in the glow of the full harvest moon.

Other uniformed officers were busy directing a steady stream of men, women, and children down the street and away from possible danger. Most of the civilians were still in their pajamas with jackets and coats hurriedly thrown on against the brisk night air. Some were clearly confused, still sleep-fogged. Others were obviously angry at being rousted out of their beds without notice. Most were just plain curious, turning back now and again to stare at the synagogue before being ushered on by the police.

Helen followed Lang up the steps leading into the school, letting him clear the way through the curious cops with his FBI identity card. She’d left the rest of her section back at the makeshift helicopter landing pad to avoid getting them mixed up in the media circus she saw developing there. Print reporters and TV news crews were already starting to swarm on the street outside the police command post. Andre other special tactical units, the HRT worked best outside the glare of publicity and camera lights.

When they were through the high school’s big front doors, Lang stopped a police technician wheeling in a cartload of radio gear.

“Where’s the CP, son?”

After a cursory glance at his ID card, the radio tech nodded down the hall. “Principal’s office, sir. End of the corridor. Captain Tanner said it had the best line of sight to the synagogue.”

Lang headed that way after signaling Helen to close up with him.

“Tanner’s the local area commander for the state troopers. I guess we’re not in charge here yet.”

She glanced at him. “You know him?”

He nodded. “I’ve met him at a few conferences. He’s a good guy. Tough. Smart. Pretty levelheaded.” His tone left a few other things unsaid.

“But he’s not the kind of guy who’s going to enjoy seeing the feds bulling their way onto his patch?” Helen prompted.

Lang’s thin lips creased into a slight sardonic smile. “Not hardly, Agent Gray.”

Wonderful.

The principal’s office was a sea of uniforms: blue for the local police, brown and khaki for county sheriffs, black for SWAT personnel, and blue-grey for the state police. Helen found her eyes drawn to the one man out of uniform. Everything about him shouted FBI to her everything from his well-tailored grey suit, power tie, starched white shirt, and shiny black shoes to his close-cropped blond hair and chiseled chin. He was busy talking earnestly into a cellular phone, cupping one hand over his unused ear to shut out some of the pandemonium around him.

She frowned. She knew Special Agent Lawrence McDowell all too well. They’d had one date a couple of years back. That was before she’d instituted her self-imposed ban on office romances. In fact, he was the reason she’d laid down the ban.

McDowell was a climber, an ambitious prima donna with his eye firmly fixed on sitting inside the Director’s corner office someday. Right now his star inside the Bureau was rising fast boosted both by some solid investigative work and by constant self-promotion.

He was also a first-class jerk. He toadied to his superiors and politicians of all stripes, yelled at his subordinates, and generally rubbed most law officers outside the FBI the wrong way. He’d also taken Helen’s refusal to sleep with him very hard. She suspected he was the one behind a series of nasty little rumors percolating through the Hoover Building that she was either frigid or a lesbian.

She nudged Lang. “Is Mr. Wonderful here for a reason? Or just to have his picture taken?”

The older man hid a sudden smile. He didn’t like McDowell much either. Then his mouth turned down. “He’s got a reason.”

“Oh, crap,” Helen muttered. “Don’t tell me we’re going to be saddled with him as the AIC for this op.”

Lang nodded flatly. The AIC, or agent in charge, was the top-ranking FBI officer on the scene.

“Perfect.” She eyed him sharply. “Any other pieces of good news you’ve been waiting to dump in my lap?”

“Not at the moment.”

A brawny, balding man with captain’s bars on his state police uniform suddenly pushed through the milling crowd and strode toward them. He held out one large paw to Lang. “John, how the hell are you? Did you bring any of your Bureau cutthroats with you? Or just your ugly self?”

“I brought ten of them, Harlan.” The HRT commander shook hands with him and turned to Helen. “This is their section leader, Special Agent Helen Gray. Helen, this is Captain Tanner of the Virginia state police.”

“Pleased to meet you, Agent Gray.” Tanner’s right hand came out again and engulfed hers in a firm, dry grasp. If he was surprised to see a woman wearing the HRT’s black coveralls and body armor, he hid it well. He pulled the pair of them aside to a slightly quieter corner of the office.

“So what’s the drill, Harlan?” Lang asked softly when they were out of earshot of the assorted policemen setting up phone lines and radio gear and laying out maps of the surrounding neighborhoods.

“It’s a mess. A great big god damned mess,” Tanner replied bluntly. He nodded angrily toward McDowell. “But we were getting a handle on things when Jesus Christ over there showed up and announced himself I expect he’ll put that cell phone down anytime and come tell me that God Almighty and the governor have jointly decided to put him in charge.”

Helen winced. McDowell was working his own personal black magic again, pissing off every sheriff and state trooper he came in contact with.

Lang hastily started to offer his own embarrassed apology. “Jesus, I’m sorry about that, Harlan. I wish…”

Tanner shrugged. “Hell, it’s not your fault, John. I knew you feds would butt in sooner or later. Anyway now that you and Agent Gray here have arrived, we’ll just put our heads together and work around J. Edgar Junior over there if need be. Okay?”

Helen nodded firmly and was relieved to see Lang doing the same thing. Tacitly agreeing to side with local law enforcement against their own anointed Bureau superior might not be strictly kosher, but the truth was that they needed the manpower Tanner controlled a lot more than they needed to stroke McDowell’s overinflated ego. For the two HRT agents, getting the hostages held inside Temple Emet out safely took precedence over every other consideration, even their careers.

Tanner seemed satisfied. He began briefing them on the latest developments. “My boys and the Arlington SWAT have had a pretty tight perimeter set up for the last couple of hours. Nobody’s gotten in or out of the synagogue complex during that time.”

That was one piece of good news, Helen decided. Containing the terrorists and their hostages within known geographical bounds was a key first step. It froze the tactical situation in place and lowered the odds of an accidental contact that could panic the hostage-takers into killing their captives.

“Any further word from the people inside?” Helen asked.

Tanner shook his head grimly. “Not a peep. We’ve tried calling every number listed for the temple, but they’re not answering.”

Helen frowned. That was not a good sign. Close communication was always a crucial part of ending any hostage crisis peacefully. At best, the FBI’s skilled negotiators could often persuade the bad guys to surrender or to release some of their prisoners as a show of good faith. Even at worst, voice contact between the two sides played an important role in keeping the surrounded terrorists on a relatively even keel. And conversations with them always provided significant information on their numbers, behavioral patterns, motivations, and intelligence.

She shook her head suddenly. Unless they could find a way to make contact with the terrorists holding those kids, she and her teams would have to go in after them blind. And that was the way people got killed.

Lang’s grim face showed his own comprehension of the mounting risks. He lowered his voice even further. “Any better idea of the numbers we’re up against?”

Tanner spread his hands. “Zip. But the way I figure it, we’re talking at least two bad guys… probably more.” He gestured toward the windows. “I’ve got troopers out canvassing the neighborhood right now, looking for cars or trucks that don’t belong around here at this time of night.”

Helen nodded to herself. Lang’s assessment of Tanner’s competence had been squarely on target. Pinpointing the terrorists’ vehicles would give them a much better idea of their likely strength. She looked up at the big state police captain. “What about hard data on their weapons?”

The corners of his mouth turned down. “They’re heavily armed. There’s at least one full-auto assault rifle in there. That poor dumb bastard who walked in on them got cut almost in half. No semiauto could do that.”

Helen nodded her understanding.

Lang pointed out the nearest window toward the synagogue. “You know much about the temple layout yet, Harlan?”

“Not as much as I’d like to, which is why I’m having somebody dig the blueprints out of the county records office,” Tanner admitted. He pursed his lips. “I do know it’s a hell of a big place, John. See that large building on the eastern end? That’s the centerpiece. Got a worship hall in there that can seat six hundred and an adjacent auditorium that’ll hold as many more. Plus a slew of offices, dressing rooms, kitchens, classrooms… and that’s just the main building. The whole complex takes up a full city block. And there’s wide-open ground on all three sides facing away from the street.”

Helen fought down the urge to swear out loud. This situation was sounding worse and worse. They were up against an unknown number of enemies, holding an as yet undetermined number of hostages in an unknown location somewhere inside a labyrinth. Just terrific. She focused her attention on the main building, trying hard to concentrate on possible solutions instead of intractable problems. “That roof’s flat all the way around?”

Tanner nodded slowly. His eyes gleamed. “You thinking about working this one from the top to the bottom, Agent Gray?”

“Maybe. I’d like to ”

“Mind if I join your little planning session, Captain Tanner?” Lawrence McDowell’s perfectly modulated voice broke in on the conversation. He looked triumphant. “Especially since your governor has now agreed that I’m in command here?”

“Fine by me.” The Virginia state police officer nodded dourly. He stepped back slightly to make room for the other man.

“Good to see you, Larry,” Lang lied smoothly, apparently determined to avoid a scrap with the agent in charge until it proved necessary.

McDowell smiled thinly. “You too, John.” He glanced at Helen briefly, frowned coldly, and immediately turned his attention back to the two men. “I don’t usually work this informally, but since you’ve already begun, let’s just carry on from here, shall we? Now, as I see it, our first order of business is to conduct a covert reconnaissance of the synagogue grounds. Once we know where these terrorists have barricaded themselves, we can work on establishing communications with them. Our negotiating team is enroute by helicopter. I expect them no later than 0100 hours…”

Helen listened to him regurgitating the Bureau field manual with mounting irritation. The son of a bitch apparently intended to ignore her whenever possible. Very well. That suited her just fine. Let him pass his orders through Lang, then. He could play his insidetrack power games, and she would get on with the business of rescuing those kids.

Suddenly, she noticed him eyeing her again, nervously this time. She made him nervous? Why, for God’s sake? As the agent in charge, he held all the cards here. What kind of threat did she pose to him?

Then she understood his reasoning and hurriedly tamped down a crooked grin. McDowell was deathly afraid that her presence would jinx his chance to be a media superstar. If the press found out that the Hostage Rescue Team’s tactical commander was a woman, they’d trip all over themselves making her the story and not him. He evidently judged everyone else by his own low standards. Didn’t he realise that the very last thing a counterterrorist assault section leader wanted during a hostage standoff was publicity?

She was still shaking her head in disbelief when McDowell finished issuing his orders with a terse “Very well. You know what I want done. Now let’s go do it.”

While a rigid, poker-faced Tanner stormed off to marshal his own forces, Helen followed Lang out into the hall. They walked a few steps away from the crowded doorway and then paused, looking closely at each other.

“Can you put up with McDowell’s shit? Or should I try to have him yanked off this operation?” the HRT commander asked abruptly. His tone was dead serious, and he clearly expected a carefully considered response from her. During any hostage crisis, tension between different agencies and different branches of the same agency was normal and expected. But bitter dissension between the overall commander and his ranking subordinates was another matter entirely. When you were dealing with terrorists holding prisoners, success or failure often hinged on a snap judgment made in a split second. Under those circumstances, uncontrolled personal disputes and rancor carried far too high a price in lost innocent lives.

Helen faced her superior full on. She wasn’t going to be sidetracked by personal animosities not now and not ever. Besides, laying her squabble with McDowell in front of the Bureau’s higher-ups was more likely to hurt her than him. He had more pull with the FBI brass than she did.

With that in mind, she spoke firmly and with absolute determination.

“I won’t lie to you, John. I don’t like him, and I don’t like his attitude. But I do know who the real bad guys are here. And you know my troops and I are the best there are. You keep McDowell off my back and let us do our job, and I promise you we’ll bring those hostages out alive and in one piece.”

Lang nodded sharply, making up his mind with the swift assurance that characterised all of his decisions. “Okay, Helen. That’s good enough for me.” He clapped her on the shoulder. “Carry on, Special Agent Gray. Let’s go pinpoint those terrorist sons of bitches.”

She flashed a quick, lopsided smile at him and then whirled toward the exit, her mind already busy grappling with the tactics necessary to implement her first set of orders.

Above Temple Emet Moving slowly, Helen Gray wriggled closer to the western edge of Temple Emet’s flat roof. Her right hand swept back and forth across the rooftop in front of her, feeling for unseen obstacles or soft spots that might creak under her weight. This close to the terrorists barricaded somewhere inside the synagogue, the slightest noise might result in disaster.

A faint rustle of clothing from behind told her that Special Agent Paul Frazer, her number two, was right on her heels. For a tall man he slithered on his belly with surprising grace, silence, and speed.

It was nearly pitch-black. Dawn was still three hours away, the harvest moon had finally gone below the horizon, and the star-filled sky provided very little ambient light. She had decided against using night vision gear for this part of the jaunt. The goggles amplified all available light, turning even the darkest night into something resembling blue-green daylight, but you paid a price for that in reduced depth perception and peripheral vision. For now she planned to rely on her own, unfiltered senses.

She poked her head carefully out over the edge and peered down into a dimly lit courtyard. Temple Emet was built in a horseshoe shape around a parking lot and a landscaped quarter acre used for dancing and as a playground for children using the school. The tabernacle, a half-built wooden hut, stood abandoned in the center of the open area. Ears of corn and smashed pumpkins lay scattered across the grass and pavement. Her eyes rested briefly on the dark, broken shape sprawled awkwardly near the tabernacle. They hadn’t yet been able to retrieve the body of the man the terrorists had gunned down at the very start of this mess.

She shook her head sadly and looked away, continuing her scan. The dead would have to wait. She was more concerned with finding the living.

Helen craned her head further out over the edge of the roof, studying the main entrance to the synagogue. Shallow steps led up to a pair of massive doors right in the middle of the main building. This was by far the largest and the oldest structure in the complex. The others were clearly add-one built as the temple’s congregation grew and prospered. And an Arlington SWAT contingent attached to her command had already carefully combed through those outbuildings and confirmed that they were empty.

She had two of her four snipers posted inside one of those outbuildings, ready to provide covering fire for her six-man recon party if the terrorists spotted them first. The section’s other pair of sharpshooters was deployed inside the beeline about a hundred yards away from the synagogue’s eastern face. Most of the doors and windows in the complex opened onto the inner courtyard, but there were two enormous stained glass windows on the eastern wall. The windows themselves were famous works of art each separate pane contained a representation of one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

A soft voice crackled through the earphones built into her helmet.

“One, this is Romeo Three. In position. Ready to deploy.”

Helen stared into the darkness, searching the rooftop thirty or so yards from her own position for Romeo Three and Four, Special Agents Brett and DeGarza, the second of her two-man recon teams. Nothing. She gave up, flipped the night vision goggles down over her eyes, and switched on the battery that powered them.

Two equipment-laden figures leaped into focus. One perched on the roof edge with his back to the courtyard, ready to rappel down the side of the building. The second HRT trooper sat facing him, braced to pay out a length of climbing rope for his partner.

She keyed her mike. “Three, this is One. I see you. Go ahead.” She loosened the strap on her submachine gun and brought it around in front of her. Frazer crawled into place beside her and unlimbered his own weapon.

Romeo Three, Tim Brett, stepped back into the open air, dropped a couple of feet, and then swung back lightly against the temple wall. Then he repeated the process, slowly and gently making his way down the side of the building toward a window facing into the courtyard. He was using one hand to control his descent while the other held a sidearm ready.

Helen held her breath until Brett stopped moving, dangling only a foot or so from the window, just out of the line of sight of anybody looking outside. She watched closely as he holstered his automatic and reached inside one of the equipment pouches on his assault vest. Then he leaned over, slapped the piece of electronic listening gear now in his hand onto the top part of the window and rolled away.

His whisper ghosted through her headset. “Probe active. Live on channel three.”

Helen switched the setting on her radio, shifting to the broadcast from the bug Brett had just put in place. Nothing.

Just the soft hiss of static and dead air. There was no one inside the room behind the window. She swallowed her disappointment. On paper, the senior rabbi’s office had seemed a logical spot for the terrorists to hole up in. According to the blueprints Tanner’s men had liberated from the county records, the room had just that one narrow window and only one easily guarded door leading out to a secretary’s office. Well, she thought coldly, they would just have to try again, somewhere else.

At her quiet command, Brett began climbing, hauling himself up hand over hand easily, despite the weight of equipment and weapons he carried.

“Romeo One, this is Romeo Five. I think I’ve got something.” Special Agent Frank Jackson’s normal stoic calm was gone.

Helen glanced behind her in surprise. She’d deployed Jackson and his partner, Gary Ricks, along the synagogue’s eastern wall, more to cover all the bases than from a real belief they might hear anything in that area. She could just make out Ricks hunched over near the edge of the roof. So Jackson must be suspended somewhere beside one of the two huge stained-glass windows that opened up into the temple’s worship hall. “Go ahead, Romeo Five.”

“I have audio on channel six.”

“Switching now.” Helen changed the setting on her radio again.

She tensed as a number of different voices suddenly boomed hollowly through her headphones. Some were higher-pitched children’s voices, several of them crying softly while others tried to console them. Others were deeper, but still identifiably belonged to women mothers trying desperately to hush their weeping sons and daughters. There were other voices too louder, harsher, and angrier. They belonged to men riding on the knife edge of sudden violence and bloody murder. The terrorists.

One guttural drawl in particular caught her horrified attention. “Tell those brats to shut up, or I swear to God, I’ll blow them and this whole damned Jew rat’s nest to kingdom come!”

Another masculine voice sounded in her headset, but this one was younger, calmer, and more educated. “I will do my best. But I tell you again this exercise is futile. Surely you must know that the police are all around this temple by now? What do you hope to gain by holding these children and their mothers prisoner? Let them go and I will stay behind. Surely I am hostage enough for you?”

Helen nodded to herself. That must be Temple Emet’s assistant rabbi. A brave man. She only hoped his courage didn’t get him killed before she and her troops could rescue him.

The guttural voice spoke again, even angrier now. “One more word out of you, Jew-boy, and I’ll splash your god damned brains across that organ there, you hear?”

Helen breathed out. She had heard enough. The terrorists and their hostages were in the synagogue’s choir loft. It was time to leave before they realised just how close the HRT had gotten to them. She switched back to her section command frequency. “All Romeo units, this is Romeo One. We’ve pinged ‘em. Pull back to RP Alpha. Verify.”

One after another the men in her recon team checked in and confirmed that they were moving back to the rally point to await further orders.

Helen stood at one of the large windows in the principal’s office they had commandeered as a command post, staring out across the open ground that separated the high school from Temple Emet. The sun was going down, spilling gold and red light across the synagogue complex. Pushed by the setting sun, the shadows were lengthening. It would be dark in less than an hour. But the full moon would rise a short time later, again making it too dangerous for them to move in until the very early hours of the next morning.

“Special Agent Gray?”

Helen turned away from the window. One of Larry McDowell’s assistants stood there a young man, fresh-faced, and probably almost straight out of the Academy.

“Agent McDowell would like you to join them across the hall for a planning conference.”

“I’ll be right there.” Helen watched the young man scurry off and then followed him. She was almost amused. So the all-knowing agent in charge had finally decided to acknowledge her existence. That must mean he was starting to feel the pressure from above and was looking for possible scapegoats.

Lang, Tanner, and McDowell were all gathered in the teachers’ lounge he had turned into his own private command center. One other man was there beside them, and she recognised him as the head of the FBI negotiating team.

McDowell preferred deliberating outside the organised chaos of the primary operations center, and she couldn’t blame him for that. The lounge was a small, quieter place. The four senior men stood grouped around a coffee-stained worktable, intently studying blueprints of the temple complex. Along the wall behind them, a small cadre of junior FBI agents in their trademark grey suits manned a bank of tactical radios and secure phones.

Lang looked up at her approach. “You feeling okay, Helen?” he asked.

“Fine.” She’d made sure her troops slept through the morning and early afternoon and she’d managed to grab a quick catnap herself. Sleep discipline was emphasised by HRT training. Of course, if this siege dragged on much longer, Lang would have to bring in another section to spell them. She shied away from that thought. Hearing those has lards inside the synagogue only made her more eager to be in at the finish.

“What’s up, John?”

“Nothing good.”

“Still no word from inside?”

Lang shook his head grimly. So far, despite every effort, they’d failed to establish two-way communication with the hostage-takers. There were no phones in the temple choir loft and the terrorists were apparently too afraid of police sharpshooters to risk venturing out of their improvised fortress to find one downstairs. Even an offer the FBI negotiators had made by loudspeaker to hand-carry a portable phone inside had so far gone unanswered and unheeded.

And an early hope that the unknown terrorists might be driven out of the choir loft by thirst had been quickly dashed by the discovery that it had a small adjoining washroom. Right now the FBI’s only source of information on the bad guys was strictly one-way eavesdropping via the listening device her team had planted early this morning and now supplemented by laser microphones aimed at the synagogue’s large stained-glass windows.

“Now that we’re all here, let’s recap this thing and see if we can come to a consensus. Okay?” McDowell said brusquely.

Typical, Helen thought wearily. He locks me out of the room and then he acts as though I’ve been goofing off when he finally condescends enough to invite me in on the planning. But she kept her irritation off her face. Showing anger would serve no purpose and might only encourage him to needle her further.

“First, Captain Tanner’s men have finally located the vehicle we believe the terrorists used as their transport. Correct, Captain?”

Harlan Tanner nodded slowly, his own face impassive despite McDowell’s barely concealed dig. “That’s right.” He didn’t bother referring to his notes. “We’ve identified a 1985 Chevy Suburban parked down the street from Temple Emet as having been stolen from outside a Richmond home earlier yesterday. Every other car, truck, and van in the neighborhood belongs to someone with a legitimate reason for being in the area.”

“Did your people find anything in the Suburban that might give us a handle on what we’re facing in there?” Helen asked, butting in before McDowell could push on.

“Yeah.” Tanner looked straight at her. “Forensics is still going over it with a fine-tooth comb, but they’ve already found traces of a lot of bad shit.”

“How bad?”

“Carrying cases and cleaning kits for assault rifles probably AKs.” He paused significantly. “They also found the chemical signature for some highgrade plastic explosive maybe four or five kilos’ worth.”

“Christ.” Helen was appalled. That much explosive power, properly emplaced, could easily turn Temple Emet into a smoking pile of rubble. She turned to the head of the negotiating team an agent named Avery, she suddenly remembered. “You’ve been listening in on these goons. How many are we dealing with exactly?”

“Three, Agent Gray. We’ve identified three separate voices belonging to the terrorists,” McDowell cut in sharply, clearly irked that she’d been taking control of his meeting.

Avery nodded. “That’s right. The accents are a little blurred because of the distance between our mikes and the choir loft, but my linguists believe two at least are originally from the Tidewater section of Virginia. The third man is definitely an American English speaker, but his precise origins are indeterminate. Their politics are pretty clear, though. We’ve picked up a lot of radical, neo-Nazi jargons and sloganeering. They also keep referring to someone they call’a brother-in-arms.’ A German national apparently named Karl.”

“And their mental state?” Lang asked.

Avery hesitated briefly, apparently reluctant to theorise without more hard evidence, but then he plunged on. “Very bad. And deteriorating. This was not a planned confrontation. Instead, it’s clear that these terrorists only intended to blow up the synagogue itself right before a major Jewish holiday. They stumbled on to the children’s decorating party by accident. Right now they’re pretty well locked into a classic paranoid state compounded by isolation, sleep deprivation, growing hunger, and alcohol abuse.”

He saw their appalled glances and amplified that last comment. “We’ve heard fairly clear signs that at least one of them is already very drunk and may still be drinking.”

“Damn it.” Tanner spoke for them all. Alcohol would slow the hostage-takers’ reflexes and reaction time, but it would also impair their judgment, perhaps making them more likely to start killing their captives.

McDowell took center stage again. “Right. You’ve heard the bad news. As I see it, the situation we face is inherently unstable. These creeps won’t communicate with us. And now they’re starting to lose it. So we’re getting nowhere fast out here and the media vultures are out in full force, circling thicker and thicker.” He paused. “I’ve been in constant touch with the Director. He’s personally stressed that the Bureau cannot afford another Waco. We can’t let this thing drag on indefinitely, and we can’t have this siege end in another pile of dead women and kids.”

Great, Helen thought to herself, talk about mixed messages. Risk an attack to end the standoff, but don’t take any risks with the lives of the hostages. And that was impossible.

“I’m soliciting opinions here, folks,” McDowell said. “Do we wait longer? Or do we strike now?” He turned to Lang. “John?” “I say we go,” the HRT commander said flatly. “Time is dearly not on our side.”

“Avery?”

The negotiator took a deep breath and then sighed. “I concur. We should go.”

McDowell stood silently for a few minutes, pondering his options and not liking any of them. Finally, he looked up. “Okay, I’ll phone the Director and pass on our recommendation.” He turned to Helen. “If he approves direct action, when can you and your section be ready to move?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Early tomorrow morning. When it’s dark.” She glanced at Lang for confirmation. “We can move sooner if they start to unravel faster, but it would be a lot more dangerous.”

He nodded his agreement.

McDowell frowned. “All right, Agent Gray. Assemble your section, make your plans, and then brief us.”

“Of course.”

But then he stopped her on her way out the door. “Don’t screw this up, Helen. We’ve all got a lot riding on this one.”

She smiled sweetly at him and pulled his hand away from her arm. “Not as much as those poor kids inside Temple Emet, Larry. Maybe you forgot about them.”

She didn’t wait to see what effect her parting shot had on him. She had work to do.

The moon was down.

Helen Gray checked the fastenings on her Kevlar armor and assault vest one last time and then slung her submachine gun from her shoulder. She glanced at Rabbi David Kornbluth, Temple Emet’s spiritual leader. “You understand about the stained glass, Rabbi? If there were any other way…” She left the rest carefully unsaid.

The rabbi, an elderly man, turned his shrewd gaze on her and shrugged.

“I would prefer that these barbarians had never invaded my synagogue, Miss Gray. But they have. And now you must root them out.” He gently took her hand. “May God go with you.”

Helen ducked her head, already knowing how much depended on her. “Thank you. I will.” She strode away quickly, desperately hoping she could fulfill the promise she had just made.

Oh, her plan was sound. Very sound. But she knew only too well how swiftly the most carefully crafted plans could disintegrate in practice.

She trotted down the steps of the high school and out toward the pair of parked school buses that sheltered her assault force from both media scrutiny and detection by those inside the temple. Her four snipers were already in position on the eastern edge of the synagogue roof.

Paul Frazer was there waiting for her. He stepped out of the shadows.

“What’s the word, boss?”

“We go in.” Helen felt again the thrill that rippled through her at those three simple words. Her emotions were racing in full gear crashing back and forth between anxiety and exultation. “The Director confirmed the assault orders to McDowell five minutes ago.”

“Outstanding.” Frazer clapped his hands together, put two fingers to his lips, and whistled softly. The rest of her section materialised seemingly out of nowhere and crowded around her.

Helen glanced around the tight circle, making one last check. Their weapons and gear were in perfect order. They were ready. She nodded toward the synagogue, invisible behind the school buses and in the growing darkness. “We’ve trained hard for this chance. You all know what to do. When we go in, we go in fast. No stopping. No hesitating. If you see a terrorist, you put him down. Three rounds and down. Clear?”

They nodded fiercely. Teeth gleamed in the darkness.

“Okay, let’s go! Alpha team takes the lead. Bravo takes overmatch. I’m with Alpha.”

Helen led the six men to the edge of the open ground surrounding the temple complex and crouched low. She keyed her radio mike. “Sierra One, this is Alpha One. We’re at the starting gate. Are we clear?”

Lang’s confident voice came through her earphones.

“Roger, Alpha One. Your birds are all in the nest. You’re cleared to move.”

“Moving.” Helen suited her actions to her words. She loped out across the open ground, sprinting for the southern edge of the temple. Three men followed her. Frazer and the rest settled in to cover them during the long run up to the wall.

Heart pounding hard, she ran right up to the synagogue and dropped prone with her submachine gun aimed at the ground-floor windows in front of her. The rest of her assault team followed suit peeling off to either side until they were ranged in a ragged line facing the building.

She spoke into her throat mike again. “Come ahead, Bravo One.” “On our way,” Frazer said.

Her tall deputy and his two-man team reached her position in less than thirty seconds. They dropped prone beside her.

Helen crawled right up to the wall and then raised her head slowly until she could peer in through one of the windows. Her night vision gear showed her an empty classroom. The classroom door was shut. Perfect.

She turned and waved her team forward. Then she smashed one of the lower windowpanes with the butt of her submachine gun and froze. The tinkling of glass shards falling onto a tile floor suddenly seemed very loud. “Sierra, this is Alpha. Any reaction to that?”

Lang’s voice was reassuring. “Negative, Alpha.”

“Entering now.”

Helen reached in through the broken window with one gloved hand and fumbled with the latch. It came free and she pulled the window frame outward. Moving rapidly, one after the other, the men of her two teams scrambled inside and fanned out through the classroom. She hopped lightly over the windowsill after them and glided quietly to the door.

It opened on to a small empty corridor. All the overhead lights were off. She signaled an advance.

Leapfrogging in pairs while the rest knelt to provide covering fire, the HRT agents slipped out through the door, turned left, and moved down the small hallway until it intersected another, much larger corridor running the entire length of the temple. Helen poked her head around the bend, risking a quick peek.

The central corridor was wide enough for several people to walk abreast. Dark wood paneling and a marble floor gave it an elegant appearance. Points of brightness gleamed amid the blue-green sheen her night vision gear gave the world. She flipped the goggles up for a quick scan with the unaided eye. Small lights twinkled at eye level along the walls, blazing out of the darkness. The walls were coated with banks of bronze plaques. Each was inscribed with a man or woman’s name, date of birth and date of death, a tiny, stylized tree, and a pair of lights, one on each side. The rabbi had briefed her on those plaques. Each commemorated a founding member or important contributor to Temple Emet.

Helen pulled her eyes away from the tiny lights and lowered her goggles again. The corridor ended in a pair of double doors leading into the synagogue’s worship hall itself. The doors were closed.

Keeping her back to the wall, she slid around the corner and crouched. Frazer and the rest followed her. They deployed on both sides of the corridor Alpha team on the right, Bravo on the left.

Helen looked across at Frazer. He nodded once.

Using bounding overmatch, the two FBI teams advanced cautiously to the large double doors silent as ghosts on the slick marble floor. When they were within a few yards, she held up a hand, signaling a halt. They froze in place.

Helen went down on one knee, half turned, and motioned Tim Brett forward. The stocky agent was her surveillance specialist.

Brett crawled forward to the doors with Helen right in his wake. By the time she reached him, his hands were already busy fitting a length of flexible fiberoptic cable into a palm sized TV monitor. Then he plugged the whole assembly into a battery pack hooked to his assault vest.

Helen crawled closer until she could watch the monitor picture while he gingerly fed the cable through a slight crack under the right-hand door. The tiny TV showed a worm’seye view of the worship hall’s thin carpet. She saw nothing out of the ordinary and motioned to the left. Brett obeyed, sliding it back and forth to scan the carpet near the other door. Still nothing. At another signal from her, he withdrew the cable, bent it almost into a right angle, and then slid it back under the door. By rotating the angled portion of fiberoptic cable, he gave the monitor a clear view of the areas near the door hinges and latches. Again, she saw nothing. There weren’t any trip wires connected to explosives and not even anything as simple as tin cans rigged to sound a warning if someone burst through the doors.

Helen shook her head in mingled relief and disgust. These so-called terrorists were rank amateurs. Of course, that actually made them more unpredictable and potentially more dangerous. Professionals often followed set patterns that could be exploited.

Hand signals brought the rest of her assault force right up to the doors while Brett repacked his camera gear. She risked another whispered radio transmission. “Charlie One and Three, this is Alpha One. We’re outside the hall.”

“Acknowledged, Alpha,” the gravelly voice of her senior sniper said.

“We’re ready.”

From her crouch, Helen reached up and gripped the handle on the right-hand door. Slowly, carefully, she turned the handle and pushed gently. The door swung inward silently.

For the first time they could hear sounds from the choir loft overhead muttered growls and curses from the terrorists and the soft sobs and moans of frightened children. Grim-faced now, the FBI agents wriggled through the narrow opening and split up. Helen and her Alpha team went right. Frazer and the rest of Bravo went left.

They came out into a vast open space. Temple Emet’s worship hall cantered on an altar positioned dead-canter between the two enormous stained-glass windows. Behind the altar stood the Ark a sliding curtain fifteen feet high and six feet wide that concealed the synagogue’s Torahs, the scrolls of the Old Testament and Jewish law. Two lecterns stood beside the altar one for the rabbi and one for the cantor. Rows of chairs for the congregation faced east, toward the altar and the Ark. Just inside the big double doors, carpeted staircases on the north and south walls led up into the choir loft.

Helen knelt by the southern stairs and peered upward with the submachine gun cradled in her hands. The terrorists and their hostages were still out of sight above her and around a bend in the staircase. She glanced over her shoulder. Frazer and his men were set.

She took a deep breath, trying to settle her racing pulse, and then let it out. She keyed her mike. “Charlie Team, this is Alpha One. Go! Go! Go!”

Before she finished speaking, four sections of the huge stained-glass windows shattered inward. Four muzzles poked through the jagged holes. Two of the weapons were Remington-made sniper rifles. The other two were M16s equipped with the M203 grenade launcher.

WHUMMP. WHUMMP. The launchers coughed once each, hurling two flash/bang grenades into the loft.

Helen was on her feet and charging up the stairs even before the grenades went off. Bursts of blinding light and deafening noise smashed at her senses. She rounded the corner and threw herself up the last few steps into a wild, shrieking tumult. Women and children and grown men staggered everywhere in utter confusion.

With her submachine gun held at shoulder level, Helen yelled, “FBI! FBI! Everybody down!”

Deeper voices echoed her shouts from behind her and from the other side of the loft. Most of the disoriented people in her field of view began diving for the floor. All but a few.

Out of the left corner of her goggles, Helen saw a young, hard-faced man whirling toward her with an assault rifle in his hands. She spun left and squeezed the trigger on her submachine gun. Three rounds fired at a point-blank range slammed into the terrorist. His chest and neck exploded and he toppled backward out of sight over a row of chairs.

A sniper rifle cracked off to the right. She glanced that way in time to see a tall, black-haired man shriek in horror and agony, stagger backward, and tumble over the railing into the synagogue below.

Two down.

Still probing for targets, Helen advanced through the tangle of seats and writhing bodies. Purposeful movement near the organ caught her eye. She turned that way and saw a third man in camouflage fatigues, older and gone to fat, painfully crawling toward a metal box. Different-colored wires led out from the box to all four corners of the loft.

She fired another three-round burst. So did several of her men. The older man’s body literally disintegrated under a hail of steel jacketed bullets. Blood, shattered bone, and torn flesh sprayed across the organ keyboard.

Helen looked away, choking down a sudden urge to vomit. Three terrorists down. She moved away, hunting through the muddle for more bad guys. Frazer, Brett, and the rest fanned out with her, their weapons still ready. But there were no more men to kill.

The ringing in her ears faded away, making room for the terrified whimpers of the women and children she’d come to rescue. Helen turned slowly through a full circle, checking them over. Beyond a few bruises and scrapes, nobody seemed seriously hurt. At least physically. They would all have nightmares for years, she knew.

She spoke into her radio again. “Sierra One, this is Alpha. The loft is secure. Repeat, the loft is secure.”

But she barely heard Lang’s jubilant response. It was as though her words had broken through a massive dam inside, opening the way for the great wave of weariness and sorrow that came crashing over her.

Helen found herself staring through a numbed haze at the mangled remains of the older man she’d shot. Then her knees buckled and she sat down hard with her head spinning. She heard retching noises from close by as other men under her command threw up. Most of them had never killed anyone before. Even the veterans who had seen death before stood silent and hollow-eyed. She closed her own eyes tightly, shutting out the carnage.

When she opened them, she saw Lang kneeling beside her, watching her closely.

Helen smiled faintly. “Well, John, I guess we won.”

He nodded somberly. “You won.”