by Larry Bond
SEPTEMBER 16
Near Manassas, Virginia
(D MINUS 90)
Sefer Halovic lay motionless in the tall grass beside an old fallen tree. From his vantage point on the forward slope of a thickly wooded hillside, he had a clear view of the isolated side road he had selected as a drop point. He could hear the low hum of traffic on Route 28 drifting through the forest, but nothing closer in. This small part of the rural northern Virginia countryside was still relatively untouched by all the new housing developments and shopping malls spreading southward from Washington, D.C.
The Bosnian stiffened as a red Blazer came into view, driving slowly up the rutted dirt road. Through his binoculars he could make out the faces of the three men inside the vehicle. They were the men he had expected to see: Burke, McGowan, and Keller.
The Blazer stopped beside an almost-overgrown road sign twenty yards below his hiding place. Burke and Keller got out and stood looking warily in all directions. Both carried hunting rifles. Halovic considered their caution a mark of some intelligence. Prearranged drop points were the usual setting for double crosses or ambushes.
While the older neo-Nazi stood guard, Keller moved off into the woods behind the sign, his rifle held at the ready. Although the American was out of sight in moments, his excited shout soon echoed up the hillside. “The stuff’s here! Four crates! Just like Karl promised.”
Halovic sneered. Amateurs. In a less secure location, the noise Keller was making could have been disastrous.
“Check it out!” Burke yelled back. “Make sure we got what we paid for!”
The Bosnian knew what they would find. He’d helped Yassine pack the shipment himself. The crates contained Czech-made Skorpion machine pistols, AK-47 assault rifles, a PKM light machine gun, ammunition, several kilos of high-grade plastic explosive, and an assortment of sophisticated detonators. He’d told Burke that the weapons came from secret stockpiles of the East German Army. That much was true. Acting through several layers of middlemen, the Iranians had purchased them from ex-members of the Stasi—the East German secret police—who now controlled the criminal gangs in their former country.
Halovic watched closely as the three excited Americans began loading their new military hardware into the back of the Blazer. He was still faintly astounded by their greed and ignorance. Apparently, they really believed that someone would sell them equipment so far below the black-market price without expecting anything in return.
He stayed motionless until long after Burke and his companions were gone, making sure nobody else had observed this covert transaction. Then, as quietly as he had come, he slipped back down the hill to the spot where he’d concealed his own vehicle.
Like fat, lazy fish, Burke and the others had swallowed his lure. And when at last they were reeled in, the lines attached to them would lead the American authorities only in directions General Taleh wanted them to go.
SEPTEMBER 18
Special operations headquarters, Tehran
(D MINUS 88)
The squat, drab concrete building just off Khorasan Square had an evil reputation among the poverty-stricken residents of central and southern Tehran. Built decades ago as a local headquarters for the SAVAK—the Shah’s feared secret police—the deep basements within its massive walls were rumored to contain torture chambers and mass graves. When the Shah fell, the Pasdaran, the Revolutionary Guards, moved into the building. Their fanaticism and heavy-handed repression soon blackened its name further. Now new masters ruled the roost.
Soldiers in the camouflaged battle dress and green berets of Iran’s Special Forces manned checkpoints closing off the nearby streets. More troops garrisoned sandbagged emplacements on the roof, wielding an array of machine guns, light antiaircraft guns, and shoulder-launched SAMs. Nobody went in or out without an escort provided by soldiers personally loyal to General Amir Taleh.
Although the Khorasan Square building showed up in official documents only as an “auxiliary command post,” Taleh had turned it into his principal special operations headquarters. More than a hundred handpicked staff officers were stationed there—each part of a giant analysis and planning cell charged with shepherding his complex master plan to completion. To maintain airtight operational security, they worked, ate, and slept inside the facility.
The general himself had an office buried deep in the building’s basement. Detailed maps and operations orders covered each of the room’s four walls. Those showing the United States displayed a spiderweb of safe houses, arms caches, and targets spreading across the country at an ever-increasing pace.
As the schedule tightened, Taleh found himself spending more and more time poring over the daily status reports transmitted by each team. To ensure that he could wield the different cells as a coordinated weapon when they took action, all command and control functions were channeled through his headquarters. Under no circumstances were the teams allowed to communicate with each other. If American counterintelligence penetrated one, they would learn nothing that could lead them to the others.
He flipped through the latest sheaf of computer printouts brought in by Farhad Kazemi, noting potential problems and successes with a dispassionate eye.
SITREP: LION 46
LION Prime Via MAGI Link to MAGI Prime:
1. LION confirms special weapons drop made to Aryan Sword contact BURKE. Payment received. Further direct contact evaluated as unnecessary, possibly hazardous. Aryan Sword behavior is undisciplined and erratic. They will not respond to positive control, but may well undertake actions on their own initiative.
2. LION sections have now completed strike reconnaissance on all first-wave assigned targets. All targets are viable.
3. LION Prime recommends Target BRAVO TWO for the initial action. Information contained in today’s Washington Post suggests the following options …
Taleh read Sefer Halovic’s latest situation report with growing satisfaction. He’d made the right choice there, he decided. The young Bosnian was proving a superb team leader in a critical sector—intelligent, ruthless, and obedient to orders. Just look at his success in achieving useful contact with the American extremists. Only four of the other action cells scattered across the United States had made similar contacts—and none to the same degree.
Halovic had exactly the right mix of cool calculation and daring required to conduct the covert war Taleh envisioned. Training and preparation could only carry one so far, the general thought. They had to be built on God-given talents …
Taleh brought himself up short. He sounded more like a proud father than a military commander. Halovic and his men were weapons—to be saved if possible, to be expended if necessary. They existed only to serve God and Islam. To serve as he himself served—and to lay down their lives for the greater good of all the Faithful.
He rubbed briskly at weary eyes. Too many days spent away from the sun and fresh air were exacting a toll on his endurance. Perhaps he should pay heed to Kazemi’s nagging suggestions that he take more rest.
With an impatient snort at the weak longings of his own mind, Taleh thrust the thought away. He flipped through another report and then another, searching as always for signs of trouble that he had not anticipated. There were none. At least none of any consequence. No matter how hard he looked, he could see no indication that his plans had been discovered. The Americans seemed utterly unaware of the invaders hidden in their midst.
When he had finished, the Iranian general sat in silence at his desk, feeling again the sheer exultation of the great power he had harnessed. The arrow he had fitted to his bow was drawn tight, straining to be free, to fly toward the heart of his foes.
The Americans were rich. Then Taleh would strike at their wealth. The Americans had pushed their God aside in favor of a life of ease and materialism. So be it. He would strip them of ease and turn their goods into the instruments of their own destruction.
He closed his eyes, savoring the prospect. It would be as God willed.
&
nbsp; CHAPTER 9
MISFIRE
SEPTEMBER 27
HRT headquarters, Quantico, Virginia
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 specialized 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 realized. 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 defenses, 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. “Gray 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 looked 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 en route 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. On
ce 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 dead 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.”