The Enemy Within

CHAPTER 14 RABBIT PUNCH

An emergency conference on domestic terrorism had replaced the President’s standard morning briefing on foreign military and political developments. The rapidly developing internal crisis took precedence over slower-moving global concerns.

The first minutes of the White House meeting were played out before an array of television cameras and print journalists. With opinion polls showing a public that was increasingly fearful, the President’s political and policy advisors all agreed on the need to convey the impression of an administration on top of events and working hard to put things right. Pictures of the nation’s chief executive conferring with the Attorney General, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the heads of the F131 and CIA were an integral part of that confidence-building process.

But the real work of the gathering began only after the last members of the media were ushered out of the Cabinet Room. Jefferson T. Corbell, the President’s top electoral tactician, slipped in a side door and dropped into one of the empty chairs.

The President waited for Corbell to settle himself before dropping his tight, confident smile. He stared across the elegant, polished table at his assembled advisors. “Well?” he asked sourly. “Are we any closer to putting a cap on this god damned situation?”

Nobody spoke up immediately.

“Well?”

David Leiter, the Director of the FBI, cleared his throat. “I’m afraid not, Mr. President.” “And why the hell not?” the President demanded angrily. He jerked a thumb toward the television set parked in the corner of the Cabinet Room. The sound was off, but the picture was on. Right now it showed aerial shots of Chicago’s South Side. Whole city blocks were burning.

“This country’s third largest city is under martial law and tearing itself to pieces. One of the country’s biggest civil rights leaders has been blown to hell along with a couple of hundred other important people, congressmen included. Jesus Christ, Nightline’s running broadcasts asking whether or not this is the first battle of a full-scale American race war! What am I supposed to tell the American people? That we’re still twiddling our damned thumbs while this army of white-power maniacs is out there killing at will?”

Leiter and the others sat stiffly, waiting for the fiery burst of executive temperament to fade slightly. Years of service to this President had taught them how to ride each storm out.

“There’s no solid evidence to suggest that we’re facing an army of terrorists, Mr. President,” the FBI Director said quietly. “Even assuming the press club bombing and the schoolyard massacre were conducted by different people, we’re still talking about less than ten individuals, possibly no more than five. Taking the time between the two attacks into account, I suspect both were carried out by the same group.”

“Well, then, these five or ten fanatics of yours are making quite a mess, David,” Sarah Carpenter said sharply. There was little love lost between the Attorney General and the head of the FBI. In the past, they’d repeatedly locked horns over Justice Department policy and spending priorities. Now she saw an opportunity to score a few points at his expense. “If you hadn’t dragged your heels when I ordered you to increase surveillance of the neo-Nazi extremists, we might not be facing this crisis today!”

Leiter glared back at her. “With all due respect, Madam Attorney General, I doubt all the electronic eavesdropping in the world would have picked up the slightest hint of either the bombing or the school massacre before they occurred. The people conducting this campaign are not stupid.”

He turned back to the President. “Frankly, sir, my behavioral sciences people are puzzled. Neither of these attacks fits the pattern we’ve come to expect from the extreme right in this country. They tend to be an impulsive, open poorly educated lot. But both the National Press Club bombing and the slaughter in Chicago bear every indication of sophisticated, intricate planning and flawless execution.”

“So?” the President prompted impatiently.

“I think we’re facing a small number of uncommonly skillful and resourceful terrorists. Probably with military training or experience. And, given their choice of targets, their political orientation seems clear.” Leiter shook his head glumly. “But I seriously doubt they’re in our files as active members of existing neo-Nazi organisations. We’re checking out every possible suspect anyway, but so far, we’re coming up empty.”

“What about a foreign connection?” Admiral Andrew Dillon, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, asked. “I understand your agents have been investigating a possible tie-in to Germany’s neo-Nazi organisations.”

“That’s correct, Admiral.” The FBI Director nodded to ward his counterpart from the CIA “With help from Bill’s people we’ve been trying to rule the possibility in or out.”

“Have you made any progress?”

“Nothing significant. At least not so far.” Leiter shrugged. “Several hundred thousand Germans visit the U.S. every year on business or as tourists. That’s rather a large haystack to hunt through for what must be a very small needle.”

“Terrific, Mr. Leiter,” the President ground out. ‘ - ‘Do you have any good news to report or just more about all the things you don’t know?”

The tiniest flash of irritation crossed the FBI Director’s face, but then vanished beneath a bland mask. “Some good news, Mr. President. Our investigative teams are just beginning to work the Chicago crime scene, but we do have a few leads in the National Press Club bombing.”

“What kind of leads?”

Leiter started ticking them off one by one. “First, we’ve been able to track the explosives used to their point of origin a manufacturer in Arizona. One of Special Agent Flynn’s teams is combing through their records right now”

“To find the buyer?” the President interrupted.

“Possibly.” Leiter shrugged. Privately, he doubted the people they were up against would have made so elementary an error. He fully expected to learn that the C4 plastique had been purchased by a dummy corporation with a forged certificate. But it seemed impolitic at the moment to explain his low expectations on that score. He pushed ahead. “We’ve also definitely identified key components of the various explosive devices electrical cabling, shards of electronics junction boxes, and pieces of a rigged VCR and video camera.”

The President looked closely at him. “And that’s significant?”

Leiter nodded. “Yes, sir. For example, Flynn informs me that his experts have concluded the bombs were manually armed.”

“So the son of a bitch was there? Right in the room?”

The FBI Director nodded again. “Yes, sir. The various devices were concealed among all the other television and radio equipment in the room.”

“Were your investigators able to pick any prints off the debris?” the CIA Director, William Berns, asked softly.

“Two,” Leiter confirmed. “One thumbprint. And one partial from an index finger. Both off what was left of the video camera case.” He saw the surprise on the other faces in the Cabinet Room and explained.

“Fingerprints often survive even the intense temperatures and pressures in an explosion. If the bomber has ever had a run-in with the law or served in the military, for example, we should be able to identify him given enough time at least.”

For the first time in the meeting so far, the President’s features relaxed slightly. “Anything else so far, David?”

Leiter nodded. “Yes, sir. Some of the lettering on the camera case also came through the blast intact. The letters ECNS. We think that stands for ‘European Cable News Service.’ ”

“And?”

Berns, the CIA Director, answered that. “We checked, Mr. President. No such organisation exists. It’s a complete fabrication.”

“Shit,” the President muttered.

Leiter took up the tale. “But that does confirm that the bomber gained access to the press club by posing as either a technician or a correspondent. Flynn’s people are busy interviewing all the survivors again, looking for anybody who might have seen this person. If we can work up a good physical description from what they tell us, we can plaster it over every square inch of this country.”

The President nodded his understanding. “Keep Flynn and his team hard at it then, David.” His mouth tightened. “I want results I can take to the nation. And soon.”

“Excuse me, Mistah President.” Jefferson T. Corbell’s soft Georgia drawl cut through the murmurs of agreement from everybody else around the table. He stabbed a slender finger at the television. It was still showing pictures of looters roaming Chicago’s smoke-filled streets.

“Catching these people is all well and good, but what the country wants to know right now is what you’re going to do about that.”

“True enough, Jeff,” the President said reluctantly. It was no secret that he preferred prolonged and theoretical discussions to hard decision-making. He looked around the room. “Both the mayor of Chicago and the governor of Illinois have officially requested federal troops to help restore order in the martial-law zone. I need your views on that.” He glanced at the white-haired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “Admiral Dillon?”

Dillon sat up straighter. “I’ve conferred with the Army’s Chief of Staff, General Carleton. He informs me that we could have a full mechanised infantry battalion from the 1st Infantry Division at Fort Riley on the ground in the city within twenty-four hours, with the rest of a brigade in place in two days.”

“What about the 82nd Airborne or the 101st?” the President asked, clearly somewhat surprised by their omission. “Aren’t they part of the contingency force?”

“Yes, sir,” the admiral answered patiently. “And that is why General Carleton would prefer to use the 1st Infantry. Both the 82nd and the 101st are our immediate reserve against a crisis somewhere overseas. Committing either one to a domestic peacekeeping role would measurably strain our readiness.”

“I see.” The President sounded unconvinced. His limited experience of military operations had taught him that the American people were reassured by the sight of the two elite divisions swinging into action. Their use was also a clear signal of serious intent and firm resolve.

Shaking her head vigorously, the Attorney General leaned forward. “Mr. President, I strongly advise against sending federal troops to Chicago. It would be provocative and an unnecessary infringement of civil liberties.” She frowned at the television. “Frankly, I believe both the mayor and the governor have already overreacted badly turning a peaceful demonstration into a full-fledged riot. Committing Regular Army units to the fray would only compound that error.”

Corbell made sure the President could see him and nodded slightly, privately signaling his own agreement with the Attorney General’s heated comments. The Georgian kept his own reasoning quiet. Though the alliance had been frayed by the lack of progress so far against these radical white-power terrorists, black Americans were still one of the administration’s most loyal constituencies. Seeing federal soldiers shooting black Americans in the streets of Chicago would only inflame an important political bloc they would need desperately in the next election.

“What are you proposing, then, Sarah?” the President asked sharply.

“I suggest that we focus on the real enemy here the radical right. They’re the real menace not the inner-city poor. So I propose a renewed push by you for much tighter gun laws. This is a golden opportunity to move our legislation through the Congress.” Carpenter’s eyes gleamed.

“After all, if we can disarm the crazies, we’ll solve most of this terrorism problem once and for all.”

She shrugged. “Beyond that and pressing the FBI’s ongoing investigations forward at a rapid pace, I see no need to panic.”

Two miles west of the White House, the quarter-mile-wide Potomac River drifted lazily past a wooded northern shore. A national park established to preserve the remnants of the historic Chesapeake & Ohio Canal separated the capital city’s elegant and exclusive Georgetown district from the river. Across the expanse of slow-moving water, the modern steel and glass skyscrapers of Rosslyn, Virginia, dominated the southern skyline.

On mild days, the clerks, waitresses, and waiters who worked in Georgetown’s trendy boutiques, antique stores, and restaurants found the canal park and the Potomac waterfront a pleasant place to eat lunch or read a book. But it would be far too cold for that today. Even the light breeze coming off the river intensified the chill. The weak sun was blocked by scattered high-altitude clouds, giving the morning light a grey, thin quality.

Sefer Halovic sat with studied calm in the back seat of their chosen transport for this operation a black Ford Econoline van. All Nizrahim sat next to him, nervously glancing out the side windows from time to time. Nizrahim was a light-skinned Iranian, a small man with long experience in the use of special weapons. Khalil Yassine, their Palestinian driver and scout, was behind the wheel. They were parked facing the exit of the small car lot near the treelined Chesapeake & Ohio Canal. Only the steady rumble of rush-hour traffic heading into downtown Washington along the elevated Whitehurst Freeway broke the early morning stillness.

Yassine had stolen the Econoline in Maryland the night before. Now it bore North Carolina license plates stolen weeks before and held in readiness for just such a use.

All three men were dressed in jeans, running shoes, and dark-colored winter jackets. All wore black gloves. Their outfits were effectively anonymous, devoid of anything distinctive that might draw attention to them now or that potential witnesses might remember later.

Both Halovic and Nizrahim carried 9mm pistols in shoulder holsters under their jackets. Yassine had their heavier small-arms firepower hidden beneath the empty seat beside him an Israeli-made Mini-Uzi with a twenty-round magazine. With luck, Halovic thought grimly, none of their personal weapons would prove necessary. The park had been empty at this time and in similar weather on previous days.

Besides his sidearm, the Bosnian also carried a small walkie-talkie clipped to his belt. It was tuned to National Airport’s Air Traffic Control frequency, but right now it wasn’t producing much beyond static and the occasional squawk. Yassine had a larger tactical radio with better reception up front, and he wore headphones that helped cut out background noise. His radio was tuned to the same frequency.

Halovic laid a hand on the two long green tubes propped up against the seat beside him. He stroked the cold metal appreciatively. These were the real reason they were here.

He shifted slightly and checked his watch. This was ordinarily a busy time for the airport as the early morning flights from all over the country began arriving with planeloads of families bent on touring their nation’s capital, government workers on assignment, and lobbyists determined to shape laws for their clients. The timetable for this mission was fairly precise molded by the minimum intervals between incoming flights and their scheduled arrival times. But Halovic also knew that the vagaries of weather and mechanical malfunction could throw the timetable off.

That was why he’d kept the plan simple.

Yassine looked up sharply, with one hand held to his headphones. He glanced into the back seat. “We have one! He just turned on to final.” The Palestinian quickly craned his head, scanning the area around them again. “All clear!”

Halovic nodded and slid the Econoline’s side door open. He hopped out onto the asphalt and pulled first one and then the other of the shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles off the seat. They weighed more than thirty pounds apiece. Nizrahim scooted out beside him as soon as the way was clear. Each man grabbed a tube and sprinted toward the water’s edge.

Halovic’s walkie-talkie came to life. This time he heard a fragment of the air traffic controller’s conversation through the static. “Roger, Northwest Flight Three-Five-Two. We have you four miles north and west. You’re cleared for Runway One-Eight…”

Barely two minutes out from the airport, the Bosnian realized, mentally calculating the incoming jetliner’s position and likely bearing. He thumbed a safety switch on the missile launcher. It took about five seconds for the nitrogen in a small sphere to cool the missile’s infrared seeker. He was rewarded with a low buzzing growl from the weapon as he ran. The system was ready to fire.

The Bosnian and his Iranian subordinate reached the shore in seconds, only slightly winded by their short dash.

Halovic searched the sky rapidly. Nothing. He turned more to his front and relaxed as he saw the bright red plane there, hanging in the air against the tall skyscrapers of the urban northern Virginia skyline.

Northwest Airlines Flight 352 was a Boeing 757, a twinjet airliner with a crew of nine and more than one hundred passengers aboard. Captain Jim Freeman, the senior pilot, had been in the air almost six hours since starting his day in Denver. His red-eye flight had landed in Minneapolis-St. Paul for a one-hour stop before continuing on to Washington, D.C. So far the weather had been fair and the flying without incident. Now Freeman knew he had only the always difficult landing ahead before calling it quits for the day. He was scheduled to take another flight out to Detroit early the next morning.

National Airport lay on the western side of the Potomac River, just south of the center of the District of Columbia. Because of the many sensitive and historic sites in the capital city, jetliners approaching from the west flew first over the northern Virginia suburbs near Tysons Corner before swinging southeast toward the capital city. Just over the Georgetown Reservoir they always made a sharp turn south to follow the Potomac in a slow, winding approach that taxed any pilot’s skill.

Freeman kept both eyes and all his attention on the job at hand while his copilot, Susan Lewis, ran through the landing checklist. He was a former Navy attack pilot, and right now he missed the heads-up displays and sophisticated electronics of front line military aircraft. Putting the 757 down safely on one of National’s notoriously short runways required a precision juggling act involving altitude, speed, and distance.

Getting something that goes very fast to slow down safely and quickly is a delicate task. While a Boeing 757 cruised at 450 knots, its approach speed was only 130 knots just above stall speed. Any loss of power, any maneuver that slowed the plane too much, would drop it right out of the sky.

Add to this low altitude. Any problem in the air usually means losing altitude, so height gives a pilot time to act. But Freeman’s aircraft, caught in the landing pattern, was only a thousand feet up.

Flight 352 was low and slow.

Along the Potomac Sefer Halovic had spotted the passenger jet when it was almost abreast of him, passing from right to left. Now he raised the SAM launcher to his shoulder and pressed his eye against the sight.

The Boeing 757 leaped into view. The Bosnian knew he had only seconds to fire. The missile had a decent range, but when fired from behind, its effective range dropped because it was chasing the target.

He held the airliner in the center of the crosshairs and heard a buzz from a small speaker in the sight. The buzz became stronger and higher-pitched, verifying that the missile seeker had locked onto the 757’s heat signature.

Halovic fought the urge to pull the trigger instantly. Instead he pressed a switch that “uncaged” the heat seeker. Now the infrared sensor would pivot freely inside the missile’s nose, and he didn’t have to hold the missile precisely on target.

He angled the SAM launcher upward at the nearly forty-five-degree angle needed to make sure the missile cleared the ground after firing. The buzz continued. At last, sure that the seeker still had a solid lock on the airliner, he pulled the trigger.

A dense, choking cloud of grey and white smoke enveloped him, and the echoing roar made by the rocket tearing skyward seemed incredibly loud more appropriate for a battlefield than a peaceful park. Through the clearing smoke, he looked for Nizrahim and saw the Iranian also sighting on the airliner, still as a statue.

Nizrahim’s finger twitched, and he, too, disappeared in a thick acrid cloud. The second SAM streaked aloft a small bright dot at the end of a curving white smoke trail.

Halovic’s own missile was already closing on the lumbering airliner.

NATO designated the shoulder-fired, heat-seeking SAMs they were using as SA-16s. The Russians who had designed the system called it the Igla-1, the Needle.

The missiles used in this attack were manufactured by the North Koreans, not the Russians. Iran had bought Igla-is and training equipment from the Russians for its Army, but those purchases were aboveboard and easily traced. The North Koreans, experts at selling arms to nations who valued their privacy, had exported others to the war-torn Balkans. And once in that chaotic region, Taleh’s agents had found it easy to covertly appropriate one of the shipments intended for the Bosnian Serbs.

Little more than a four-foot tube with an attached sight and grip, the Igla-1 was a popular design. It had first entered Russian service in the early 1980s and was a great improvement over earlier shoulder-fired SAMs. The missile could attack a target from any angle, and its seeker was sophisticated enough to ignore some early forms of IR jamming and decoy flares. The weapon’s chief flaw was its small warhead, just a few pounds of high-explosive, but Iglas had shot down coalition warplanes during DESERT STORM and NATO attack aircraft in the Balkans.

Compared to a wildly maneuvering military jet, an undefended passenger airliner flying straight and slow made a perfect target.

Halovic stood motionless, still holding the now-useless missile launcher. By rights, he and Nizrahim should be back in the van, speeding away from the scene. This waiting was foolish even dangerous.

But he had to stay. He had to know if the missiles worked. He had been trained well enough to know how many ways the weapon could fail. And so, like two children watching a model plane fly for the first time, Halovic and Nizrahim stood, immobile, watching their SAMs arcing in for the kill.

WHAMM.

Captain Jim Freeman’s first sign of trouble was a loud bang from the left and behind. The 757 shuddered abruptly, bouncing around in the air as though its port wing had slammed into something. Startled, he checked the altimeter. That was impossible. They were over the river and still at a thousand feet.

The pilot’s eyes raced over the array of gauges and dials, looking for the problem. Lord. There it was. The rpm gauge on the port engine was dropping fast. The 757 dipped left, and its airspeed began falling.

Freeman instinctively pushed his throttles forward, increasing power to both engines. He snapped out a quick, “Power loss on the port engine, Sue!”

“Understood.” Susan, his copilot, stopped monitoring the plane’s altitude and distance from the runway and started a frantic check of her instruments. That bang suggested an explosion of some sort, but it was better to go by the numbers. Her eyes flicked first to the fuel flow gauge. No problem there…

The 757’s port wing was still dropping.

Freeman clicked his radio mike. “National, this is Three-Five-Two. Declaring emergency. Repeat, declaring…”

WHAMM.

Another explosion rattled the plane, but this time the resulting shudder went on and on, growing rapidly worse. Both Freeman and Lewis heard a wrenching, tearing screech from the wing.

Halovic’s SAM had functioned perfectly, literally flying up the tailpipe of the airliner’s port engine before exploding. Fragments from the blast damaged the after stages of the compressor fan, resulting in a rapid power loss. But jet engines are relatively tough, and the plane could still have landed safely.

Nizrahim’s missile finished the job.

The Igla-1 blew up only a few feet from the port engine pod. Pieces of shrapnel peppered the pod’s metal skin and sliced into the engine inside. They cut the fuel line and wrecked the digital controls, but most important, they weakened the after stage of the compressor fan again. Spinning at more than ten thousand revolutions per minute, the fan tore itself and the rest of the engine apart.

Freeman saw the port engine gauges run wild and then go dead. Still fighting the wing as it dropped, he looked aft and saw the ruin of the port engine, now little more than a pylon with sharp-edged scraps of metal attached. Damn it.

“Give me full power on the right!” Freeman screamed. He strained on the control yoke, trying to get the port wing up. They were sliding off to the left, veering off course toward downtown Washington. He could see the gleaming white roof of the Lincoln Memorial ahead. Oh, Christ.

He silently cursed their slow speed. They were too close to the ragged edge of the 757’s envelope. The shattered engine pylon was now a liability instead of an asset, creating drag instead of power.

“Gear up!” he shouted.

“It’s already up,” Lewis replied desperately. She’d raised the wheels in an effort to reduce the drag.

Behind them, they could hear shouts and screaming through the bulkhead.

“Pass the word back to brace for impact.”

Freeman had reached the end of a distressingly short list of things to try. He looked at their airspeed. Still falling. They weren’t going to make the runway.

Along the Potomac Halovic followed the dying 757 with satisfaction. The airliner was lower now, and canted to the left. Black smoke trailed from its damaged wing, and even at this distance he could see the shattered left engine.

“Oh, my God!”

The horrified shout from behind them brought the Bosnian out of his trance. He whirled around and saw a tall, stout, middle-aged man in a tan topcoat staring upward at the stricken plane. A small dog, a tiny white poodle, tugged unnoticed at the leash in the American’s hand.

The man’s eyes flashed from the falling aircraft to the SAM launchers still on their shoulders. Horror turned to sudden, appalled knowledge and then to terror. He dropped the leash and turned to flee.

Alexander Phipps had not run anywhere in his life for years. The wealth accumulated over a lifetime of shrewd business dealing had ensured that other people did the running not him. Now all that money meant nothing.

Gasping in panic, he dodged off the canal park path and crashed into the trees. He heard shots behind him and felt a slug rip past his ear. It seemed to pull him along and he ran faster. Another bullet gouged splinters off a tree in front of him.

Phipps skidded on the wet grass and fell forward onto his hands and knees. An impact from behind threw him facedown in a flood of searing, white-hot pain. The world around him darkened and vanished.

Halovic watched the American shudder and lie still. It had been Nizrahim’s shot that felled him.

The Iranian trotted over to the slumped figure and fired once more this time into the man’s head. Then he calmly holstered his weapon and walked back toward Halovic. He stopped a few feet away and asked flatly, “What about the dog?”

The little white poodle had emerged from its hiding place and now stood nuzzling its fallen master, whimpering softly. The Bosnian shrugged. “Leave it.”

He turned away, striding toward the missile launchers they’d thrown aside to hunt down the dead man. It was time they were on their way.

The crippled airliner was down to three hundred feet above the Potomac.

Freeman yanked desperately on his controls and felt the 757 roll right a hair not much, not more than a couple of degrees. It was just barely enough.

The white bulk of the Lincoln Memorial flashed past the cockpit’s portside window and vanished astern. They were heading back for the center of the river. Then he felt the controls go mushy under his hands and grimaced. He was out of airspeed and out of options.

The jetliner dipped again, sagging toward the water.

Susan Lewis screamed suddenly, staring straight ahead.

Freeman looked up and saw the long, gray, car-choked span of the Fourteenth Street Bridge filling the entire width of the cockpit windscreen. He sighed softly. “Oh, shit.”

Northwest Flight 352 slammed nose-first into the bridge at more than one hundred knots and exploded.

The thundering, prolonged sound of the titanic blast barely half a mile away penetrated even the thick concrete walls of the Pentagon’s outer ring.

On his way back down to the ILU’s Dungeon after another unsuccessful sparring match with his counterparts in other DOD intelligence outfits, Colonel Peter Thorn paused with his hand on the staircase and stood listening. What the devil was that?

A young naval rating thundering down the stairs behind him supplied the answer. “A passenger jet just hit the Fourteenth Street Bridge, sir! Saw it out my window!”

The young man kept going.

Jesus. Thorn stood stunned for a split second and then took off after the sailor, taking the stairs down two at a time. He didn’t stop to think about it. If anybody on either the plane or the bridge had survived the impact, they were going to need help, and soon.

By the time he reached the ground floor, the hallway was filling up with dozens of men and women, most in uniform, some in civilian clothes. All were racing toward the Pentagon’s northeastern exit, the one closest to the crash site. He joined them.

A blinding cloud of thick black smoke hid most of the Fourteenth Street Bridge from view until Thorn crested the highway embankment and gained a clear line of sight. What he saw was worse than anything he had imagined.

Orange and red flames danced across the entire length and width of the span, fed by thousands of gallons of spilled aviation fuel and gasoline. The cars and trucks that had once crowded the bridge were unrecognisable mere heaps and lumps of blackened, torn, and twisted metal. The impact itself had gouged an enormous crater out of the roadway at the midpoint across the Potomac. Only one scorched wing of the passenger jet remained visible obscenely protruding above the water near a buckled bridge support like a giant shark’s fin.

A small cadre of Pentagon security officers, Virginia state troopers, and U.S. park policemen were already on the scene, frantically and futilely trying to fight the nearest fires with handheld extinguishers. More and more civilians from the vehicles bottlenecked on the jammed highway were rushing forward to lend a helping hand.

Against all Thorn’s expectations, there were survivors emerging from the tangled chaos on the bridge. He could see them stumbling and staggering toward safety. Most were bleeding, their clothing in tatters. A few were on fire human torches running madly in agonised circles amid terrifying shrieks and screams. People dashed toward them carrying coats and blankets to douse the flames.

Beneath the smoke pall, the kerosene-stained waters of the Potomac bubbled as debris from the sunken fragments of the airliner’s fuselage broke free and popped to the surface. Bright orange flotation seat cushions, jagged pieces of cabin ceiling insulation, and other unidentifiable odds and ends bobbed in the river.

Thorn came to the western end of the mangled bridge and stopped, staring downward into the black fog, straining to see clearly. Was that someone out in the water, drifting facedown in the midst of all the other debris? He caught a flash of long golden hair and made his decision without conscious thought. Nobody else was in a position to see what he saw or to act in time.

He stripped off his uniform jacket, kicked off his shoes, and dove straight into the Potomac - straight down into the black, icy waters.

For a terrible instant, Thorn feared the frigid cold had paralyzed him that he would never taste the air again. But a single frantic kick brought him to the surface. He sucked in a welcome lungful of oxygen and spat out the sickeningly sweet taste of the jet fuel clogging his mouth and nostrils. Then he started swimming, covering the distance toward the bobbing head he’d glimpsed so faintly with a powerful crawl stroke. As he swam, he tried to keep his bearings with quick glances toward the shattered bridge.

Twenty yards. Forty. He was starting to tire now, weighed down by the cold, the water saturating his shirt and trousers, and the kerosene burning its way down into his lungs. Where was she? Had she already been dragged under?

Thorn pushed a charred seat cushion out of his path and began treading water, pushing himself above the surface as he spun slowly, peering in all directions. There! He spotted the tangle of golden hair drifting just a few yards away.

He lunged out and grabbed the floating woman from behind. With his right arm locked around her chest to pull her face out of the water, he used his left to turn around and kicked out for shore, sculling vigorously against the slow current pushing him down toward the burning Fourteenth Street Bridge. The distance, the icy cold, and the weight dragging at his hip all fused in one long, nightmarish journey without a clear beginning and without a visible end.

Thorn could barely move by the time he reached the shallows. He was only dimly aware of the sudden rush of volunteers who came thrashing into the Potomac to help him out onto the long grass at the water’s edge. He lay shuddering for long moments, gasping for air. When an Air Force sergeant knelt down to drape a spare jacket over his shoulders, he recovered enough to lever himself to his knees.

“What about the woman? Is someone helping her?” he heard himself ask hoarsely.

The sergeant’s face fell and he looked away. “I’m sorry, Colonel,” he said softly. “It was no good, sir. You couldn’t have done anything for her. No one could have.”

Thorn stared past the noncom to where the blond-haired passenger lay faceup, staring blindly at the sky. She was quite young, he realized. And quite pretty. But there was nothing left below her thighs but a few dangling scraps of bloodless flesh.

On the Virginia shore, near the Fourteenth Street Bridge The rescue crews were still hard at it well into the night, working under hastily rigged floodlights to gather corpses and personal effects. Park Police and Coast Guard patrol boats motored back and forth across the searchlight-lit Potomac as they fished more bodies and more debris out of the river. Teams of divers in heavy wet suits were already conducting a coordinated search for the aircraft’s black boxes the 757’s flight data and voice recorders.

Helen Gray climbed wearily out of the official car she’d borrowed and made her way slowly down the steep embankment. The smell of burned metal and flesh hung everywhere in the air, on the roadway, on the grass, and in her clothes and hair. Earlier during that long, terrible day, she’d led a cadre of FBI volunteers in desperate rescue efforts on the D.C. side of the river. Now she’d taken the longer way around via the still-intact Memorial Bridge to find the man she loved.

Exhausted soldiers still plainly shaken by what they had witnessed directed her toward a small clump of senior officers gathered near the water’s edge.

One, a gray-haired Navy captain, nodded when she asked after Peter.

“Colonel Thorn? Yeah. He’s around here somewhere, ma’am.” He looked up, squinting further down the riverbank against the floodlights. Then he pointed toward a lone figure staring out across the water. “That’s him.”

Helen nodded her thanks and moved on.

Peter Thorn looked up at her approach. His drawn face held a look of anger and sorrow stronger than any she had ever seen before. “This was deliberate?” he asked grimly.

She nodded. “Several hundred eyewitnesses have reported seeing two or three distinct missile trails merging with the plane. And we know where the terrorists fired from. The canal park. They killed an innocent bystander there. We found the body this afternoon.”

His jaw tightened.

“I’m afraid it gets worse, Peter,” she said gently. “Somebody blew up the main fuel storage tanks at Dallas/Fort Worth International two hours ago. Several hundred thousand gallons of jet fuel went up in seconds. They’re still trying to fight the fires and make some estimate of the damage and casualties, but it’s pretty bad.”

She paused briefly before delivering the rest of her news. “The local papers here and in Dallas have already had phone calls claiming responsibility for both attacks. They seem genuine.”

“From the god damned New Aryan Order?”

Helen shook her head. “No. These came from a group called the African Liberation Front. They claimed they were retaliating against the ‘Nazi white establishment.’ ”

“Christ. That’s all we need.” Peter looked away again, out toward the floodlit river. His eyes were full of pain. “I became a soldier to fight the kind of bastards who would do something like this. The kind who shoot down airliners full of women and kids just to make some lousy political point. But now it’s happening right here at home, and I can’t do a single thing to stop it.”

She moved closer, into the circle of his arms. “I know,” she said softly.

He held her tighter, softly stroking her hair taking what comfort he could from her presence and her warmth.