The Enemy Within (23 page)

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 Leports 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.