“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.”
