by Larry Bond
London had been bombed flat during the Blitz and periodically targeted by the IRA, but Washington, D.C., had existed in relative peace for many years. Not since the riots following Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination had racial tensions been so high. And not since Jubal Early’s tattered Rebels fell back toward the Shenandoah Valley in 1864 had so many in the American capital felt the oppressive dread of knowing that a deadly enemy lurked close at hand.
Around-the-clock television coverage fed the public’s barely controlled panic. The first pictures of each new terrorist outrage were played over and over again on every news channel, magnifying their scope and impact. In the fiercely competitive war for exclusives, every wild rumor found a reporter to repeat it, deny it, and then repeat it afresh—often the same reporter and often within the same hour.
Even the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was not immune to the general paranoia gathering force across the country. The security detachments manning its entrances had been reinforced by U.S. Army Rangers. Razor-wire entanglements surrounded the building, keeping pedestrians, the press, and potential terrorists at a distance.
Deeply worried by the signs of widespread, almost crippling fear he saw all around him, Peter Thorn followed Helen Gray into the conference room adjoining Special Agent Mike Flynn’s office.
His Metro ride over from the Pentagon had been instructive. Uniformed D.C. policemen were posted on every train coming into Washington. They were backed by heavily armed SWAT contingents conspicuously stationed at every subway stop. Passengers embarking and disembarking were subject to identity checks and random searches. While the heavy security presence provided some deterrence against terrorist attack, it also reinforced the overwhelming feeling of entering a city under siege.
Thorn frowned. The nation’s capital seemed to be nearing a breaking point. They were running out of time.
There were only two men waiting for them inside—Mike Flynn and his deputy, Tommy Koenig. Both looked exhausted. That was understandable. They had worked straight through the night trying to follow the lead he and Rossini had given them.
“Thanks for coming, Pete. I’m glad you could make it,” the head of the FBI task force said quietly. “You have any trouble getting through our watchdogs?”
Thorn shook his head, inwardly noting with some amusement the other man’s decision to use his first name. Evidently, he’d been promoted from nosy, Pentagon pain in the ass to helpful, fellow investigator overnight. Interesting. Well, better late than never. He took the chair next to Helen and set his uniform cap aside.
“What’s the skinny, Mike?” she asked.
“We’ve got a preliminary read on the CompuNet address,” Flynn answered. “Andy Quinlan’s team checked in an hour ago.”
Helen leaned forward, her eagerness apparent. “And?”
“I think we have a target.”
Thorn felt himself relax slightly. More than anything, more than he had wanted to admit to himself, he had feared that he and Rossini were only stumbling down the wrong path—and dragging everyone else along with them. But they had been right. Their instincts were on target.
Helen, though, appeared unsatisfied. “You think? Or you know?” she pressed.
Flynn shrugged. “Let’s say the evidence Quinlan and his people have assembled is mighty suggestive, but it’s not conclusive.” He glanced at his deputy. “Tommy can take you through it piece by piece. He rode herd on the investigative team every step of the way.”
Koenig nodded. “Mike made it clear that we didn’t want to spook these people prematurely—whoever they are. So Quinlan’s been working around the edges for the last twenty-four hours.”
He flipped open a file. “Basically, what we’ve got is this: The phone number CompuNet gave us belongs to a house in Arlington just off the Columbia Pike. The place was rented nine weeks ago by a blond-haired man with a slight, but discernible, European accent. He told the Realtor his name was Bernard Nielsen and that he worked for a Danish import-export firm—a company called Jutland Trading, Limited. Apparently, this guy Nielsen told her his bosses wanted him to explore business opportunities in the U.S. and that he needed a home base to come back to between trips. He signed a six-month lease and paid his security deposit in traveler’s checks. Since then, he’s paid one time—by mail—using personal checks drawn on a local bank.”
“Not from his business or from a Danish bank?” Thorn asked.
“Nope. Curious, isn’t it?” Koenig looked up from the file. “One of our guys took a little walk through Nielsen’s account records. There’s been a steady movement of cash money in and out—but the balance has always been over five thousand dollars and always under ten thousand.”
Thorn heard the shorter FBI agent’s emphasis on those figures and nodded slowly. Again, that made sense. Five thousand dollars in a checking account made bank managers smile at you and generally kept them from asking too many inconvenient questions. On the other hand, ten thousand in cash triggered an automatic report to the IRS. It certainly looked like this Bernard Nielsen liked cruising in a comfortable financial zone that guaranteed him both flexibility and relative anonymity.
Helen frowned. “Does this Jutland Trading company even exist?”
Koenig shrugged. “We’re still working with the Danish authorities on that. The phone number our blond friend gave the Realtor only connects to an answering service. The Danes are trying to follow the trail further, but it’ll take some time to generate results.” He smiled grimly. “I can tell you this. I spent the morning breathing down some necks in the Commerce Department. And Commerce sure as heck doesn’t have any record of a Jutland Trading company registered to do business here in the States.”
“What a surprise,” Thorn said flatly.
Flynn nodded. “After I heard that, I gave Quinlan the go-ahead to dig deeper near the house itself.”
Thorn looked at Koenig. “And what did they find?”
The shorter man’s grim smile faded. “That’s the inconclusive part,” he admitted. “It’s a transient neighborhood. Lots of rentals. Lots of people moving in and out on temporary assignments with the Pentagon or other government agencies. Lots of people who go to work early, come home late, and go right to sleep. Nobody really knows much about any of their neighbors.”
“Nobody’s noticed anything?” Helen asked, surprised. “Nothing odd at all?”
Koenig spread his hands. “We did find one retired couple who said they’d seen several suspicious men coming and going from the house at odd hours …” His voice trailed off.
“But?” she prompted.
“But this Mr. and Mrs. Abbot are both a little blind and hard of hearing. Plus, we checked with the Arlington police. They say the Abbots average reporting one prowler, rapist, or drug dealer a week. The cops don’t usually bother investigating their calls anymore.”
Thorn grimaced. Perfect. If this rented house in Arlington was a terrorist safe house, whoever had picked it had done a brilliant job. He turned to Flynn. “So what’s the next step? Surveillance?”
That would be the standard procedure, he knew. Find a house nearby, move the occupants out, and put in a stakeout team to monitor the suspect’s comings and goings, phone conversations, and associates. Once enough evidence of possible wrongdoing had been collected, the FBI would obtain a search warrant from a sympathetic judge and move in. For a by-the-book guy like Flynn, that would be the best and safest way to proceed. But it would also gobble up hours and days he wasn’t sure they could afford.
Flynn surprised him. “No, Pete. We go in as soon as possible.” He pointed upstairs and growled, “When I briefed the Director and the Attorney General this morning, both were adamant that we take any action necessary to break this thing open.”
From his tone, Thorn suspected the senior FBI agent was leaving a lot unsaid. If anything, the country’s political and media elites were even more spooked by the terror campaign than the general public, and the political p
ressures to act were enormous.
Flynn turned to Helen. “The Attorney General herself is seeking a search warrant authorizing an HRT raid. Once we have the warrant in hand, I’m assigning the mission to you and your section. You know the general area pretty well and you’re damned good—the best I’ve got, in fact. John Lang concurs.”
“Okay.” Helen nodded flatly, taking the compliment in stride without any false modesty. She glanced at Koenig, getting down to business without wasting any more time. “What do we know about the house right now, Tommy?”
“Not as much as I’d like.” He slid a faxed copy of a real estate brochure across to her. “The place is fairly large—about twenty-five hundred square feet. Four bedrooms. Two and a half baths. One story aboveground and a good-sized basement below. A one-car garage attached to the house.”
“Brick exterior construction?” she asked.
Koenig nodded. “Hardwood floors upstairs. Concrete covered by carpet in the basement.”
Helen looked up from the brochure. “I need more than this. Can we get a set of blueprints from the builder or the county records?”
“We’re working on it,” Koenig confirmed.
“Good. Now, what about numbers inside the house? Any data on that?” she asked.
“Nothing solid. We risked one drive-by earlier this afternoon and spotted two vehicles in the driveway—one minivan, one Toyota Camry. There was another car, a Taurus, parked along the street out front. The Camry is registered to this Nielsen. The other vehicles trace back to different names and addresses. Based on that, we’re guessing a minimum of two suspects and a maximum of six.”
“I see.” Helen sat back in her chair, her eyes distant as she considered her options for several seconds. Finally, she turned back to Flynn. “Okay, Mike, what are my rules of engagement for this operation?”
Thorn knew that was the key question. The rules of engagement, or ROE, would determine the Hostage Rescue Team’s tactics. The looser the rules were, the more options Helen would have in laying out her assault plan. If she could assume the people inside were hostile, she and her agents could bring significantly more firepower to bear in the early stages, and they could use their weapons a lot more freely.
Flynn looked troubled. “There’s a snag. Without clear-cut evidence of wrongdoing, I can’t get the AG or the Director to sign off on unlimited ROE. They’re too afraid we might nail some innocent civilians by mistake. So we have to tread lightly at first. I’m afraid you can’t go in with guns blazing on this one.”
Helen nodded slowly, hiding her concerns behind an impassive mask.
Thorn knew his own face was less controlled. He didn’t like the sound of this—not at all. Taking out terrorists was a lot different from conducting a sweep against a suspected crack house. Success always depended on the maximum application of controlled violence in the minimum amount of time. Without that, the risks to the assault force—to the woman he loved—went up dramatically.
Despite his relief that the FBI was moving at last, he couldn’t help worrying about Helen’s safety. Concrete evidence or not, he firmly believed that house in Arlington held some of the terrorists they were hunting. If he was right, Helen and her comrades could be walking right into a buzz saw.
“I’d like to move in after midnight,” she said calmly. “We’ll have a better chance of catching these people asleep, or at least at a low ebb, then.”
Flynn nodded his understanding and approval. “I can buy that much time from the Director.”
“Good.” Helen paused briefly, thinking again, and then went on. “That should also allow us to covertly evacuate the nearest neighbors. I don’t like increasing the chances that we’ll be spotted, but I think it’s imperative. If there are terrorists inside, we have to accept that they have heavy weapons and that they’ll use them if they get the chance. I don’t want civilians caught in the cross fire if we can help it.”
“Agreed. Anything else for now?”
When Helen shook her head, Flynn checked his watch and stood up. “Okay, then let’s start moving things into place. The clock is running fast on this one.”
Determined not to be left wholly on the sidelines, Thorn leaned forward. “I have one request, Mike. With your permission, I want to ride along as an observer.”
The senior FBI agent stared hard at him for a moment before replying. Then Flynn glanced at Helen, obviously making sure she had no objections. Finally, he nodded abruptly. “Okay, Pete. I guess you’ve earned the right to be in on the kill. We’ll find you a place in the command van.”
Thorn sat back, partially satisfied. He couldn’t do anything to reduce the risks she’d be running, but he knew he’d feel better if he were at least close by.
Much as he longed to lead the planned raid himself, he couldn’t think of anyone better qualified for the assignment than Helen. She had more tactical ability, fighting skill, and sheer guts than anyone else in the FBI—or even in the Delta Force for that matter.
Amazing. Six months ago, he would never have imagined himself thinking that of a woman—any woman. And now he couldn’t imagine being left without her.
DECEMBER 5
Arlington, Virginia
Somewhere off in the distance, a church bell chimed once and fell silent.
Despite her Nomex coveralls and body armor, Helen Gray shivered. It was well below freezing outside and the need to stay motionless only intensified the cold. She lay burrowed in a hedge bordering the street and sidewalk across from the suspected terrorist hideout. Her post offered her a good view of the front of the house.
She studied it carefully, looking for the slightest evidence of anything wrong—anything that might indicate they had been spotted. Even with her night vision goggles down, she couldn’t see anything out of place. From the outside at least, the house appeared a perfectly ordinary suburban dwelling, identical to thousands of others throughout northern Virginia—all the way from its sloping shingle roof to its redbrick walls and the white trim around its curtained windows. There were no lights showing behind those curtains.
Well, Helen thought coolly, it was time to find out exactly what was hidden inside that quiet house.
She keyed her mike and whispered, “All Sierra units, this is Sierra One. Everybody set?”
Voices ghosted through her earphones as her teams checked in, one right after the other. Sierra Three and Four, Paul Frazer and Tim Brett, were around the back, poised to enter through the rear door on her signal. Five and Six, Frank Jackson and Gary Ricks, were crouched behind the rear of the Ford minivan parked in the driveway. They would take the front door. Sierra Two, Felipe DeGarza, lay prone beside her as a reserve. Her own two-man sniper teams, Byrne and Voss, and Horowitz and Emery, occupied positions in the surrounding homes.
She would have preferred to lead the assault teams herself, but with the situation still so murky, Flynn wanted her in a position to exercise tighter tactical control over her sections if things didn’t go according to plan. Leading from the rear wasn’t her style, but orders were orders.
The head of the FBI task force wasn’t taking many chances. As a safeguard against an attempted breakout by the suspects, he had deployed a cordon of local police and other special agents in a wide net around the neighborhood. He even had a Blackhawk helicopter standing by on the local elementary school’s playground—prepped for immediate flight if a pursuit became necessary. From the absence of any media nearby, she guessed that Flynn had also stomped hard on the Attorney General’s notorious tendency to curry favorable publicity.
Helen took a deep breath. Her next signal would open the ball. “Hotel One, this is Sierra One. We’re ready. Initiate shutdown sequence,” she said softly.
“Roger, Sierra,” she heard Flynn say.
Helen clicked her mike again. “All Sierra units, stand by. Wait for my mark.”
She waited without moving for the next reports to be repeated over the command circuit. It was crucial to take the suspected terrorist
s out while they were deaf, dumb, and blind. CompuNet already had instructions to block incoming and outgoing E-mail from the target address. Now it was time to take more direct measures.
“Landlines down.”
The telephone company had cut its service to the immediate calling area.
“Cell down.”
All cellular phone communications were down.
“Lights down.”
The streetlamps on this block blinked out as technicians switched off all electric power to the vicinity. Now!
“Go! Go! Go!” Helen ordered, sighting down the barrel of her submachine gun at the front of the house.
Jackson and Ricks were already on their feet and heading for the front door. They carried a door-breaker, a heavy battering ram with twin handles, slung between them. The restrictive rules of engagement prohibited the use of the HRT’s two favored methods for opening locked doors—breaching charges or shotgun blasts direct to the hinges.
One. Two. Three. Helen found herself mentally counting the seconds it took her lead team to reach the front steps and get into position. They were there!
Jackson and Ricks rocked back on their heels and then slammed the battering ram into the front door. The smashing, tearing thud seemed loud enough to wake the dead—let alone the suspects they were trying to surprise. The door sagged under the impact but stayed stubbornly shut.
Again! Another heave and more nerve-shattering noise. This time the front door gave way and fell open.
“We’re in!” Helen heard Ricks’ triumphant report as he dropped his side of the door-breaker and darted in with his weapon ready.
WHAMMM. The doorway disappeared in a dazzling orange and red explosion that lit the whole area. Caught full on by the blast, Ricks was blown in half. Jackson, two steps behind, flew backward off the front porch and landed on the lawn screaming in agony. He flopped around on the dead grass like a gutted fish.