ever. Besides, laying her squabble with McDowell in front of the Bureau’s higher-ups was more likely to hurt her than him. He had more pull with the FBI brass than she did.
With that in mind, she spoke firmly and with absolute determination.
“I won’t lie to you, John. I don’t like him, and I don’t like his attitude. But I do know who the real bad guys are here. And you know my troops and I are the best there are. You keep McDowell off my back and let us do our job, and I promise you we’ll bring those hostages out alive and in one piece.”
Lang nodded sharply, making up his mind with the swift assurance that characterised all of his decisions. “Okay, Helen. That’s good enough for me.” He clapped her on the shoulder. “Carry on, Special Agent Gray. Let’s go pinpoint those terrorist sons of bitches.”
She flashed a quick, lopsided smile at him and then whirled toward the exit, her mind already busy grappling with the tactics necessary to implement her first set of orders.
Above Temple Emet Moving slowly, Helen Gray wriggled closer to the western edge of Temple Emet’s flat roof. Her right hand swept back and forth across the rooftop in front of her, feeling for unseen obstacles or soft spots that might creak under her weight. This close to the terrorists barricaded somewhere inside the synagogue, the slightest noise might result in disaster.
A faint rustle of clothing from behind told her that Special Agent Paul Frazer, her number two, was right on her heels. For a tall man he slithered on his belly with surprising grace, silence, and speed.
It was nearly pitch-black. Dawn was still three hours away, the harvest moon had finally gone below the horizon, and the star-filled sky provided very little ambient light. She had decided against using night vision gear for this part of the jaunt. The goggles amplified all available light, turning even the darkest night into something resembling blue-green daylight, but you paid a price for that in reduced depth perception and peripheral vision. For now she planned to rely on her own, unfiltered senses.
She poked her head carefully out over the edge and peered down into a dimly lit courtyard. Temple Emet was built in a horseshoe shape around a parking lot and a landscaped quarter acre used for dancing and as a playground for children using the school. The tabernacle, a half-built wooden hut, stood abandoned in the center of the open area. Ears of corn and smashed pumpkins lay scattered across the grass and pavement. Her eyes rested briefly on the dark, broken shape sprawled awkwardly near the tabernacle. They hadn’t yet been able to retrieve the body of the man the terrorists had gunned down at the very start of this mess.
She shook her head sadly and looked away, continuing her scan. The dead would have to wait. She was more concerned with finding the living.
Helen craned her head further out over the edge of the roof, studying the main entrance to the synagogue. Shallow steps led up to a pair of massive doors right in the middle of the main building. This was by far the largest and the oldest structure in the complex. The others were clearly add-one built as the temple’s congregation grew and prospered. And an Arlington SWAT contingent attached to her command had already carefully combed through those outbuildings and confirmed that they were empty.
She had two of her four snipers posted inside one of those outbuildings, ready to provide covering fire for her six-man recon party if the terrorists spotted them first. The section’s other pair of sharpshooters was deployed inside the beeline about a hundred yards away from the synagogue’s eastern face. Most of the doors and windows in the complex opened onto the inner courtyard, but there were two enormous stained glass windows on the eastern wall. The windows themselves were famous works of art each separate pane contained a representation of one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
A soft voice crackled through the earphones built into her helmet.
“One, this is Romeo Three. In position. Ready to deploy.”
Helen stared into the darkness, searching the rooftop thirty or so yards from her own position for Romeo Three and Four, Special Agents Brett and DeGarza, the second of her two-man recon teams. Nothing. She gave up, flipped the night vision goggles down over her eyes, and switched on the battery that powered them.
Two equipment-laden figures leaped into focus. One perched on the roof edge with his back to the courtyard, ready to rappel down the side of the building. The second HRT trooper sat facing him, braced to pay out a length of climbing rope for his partner.
She keyed her mike. “Three, this is One. I see you. Go ahead.” She loosened the strap on her submachine gun and brought it around in front of her. Frazer crawled into place beside her and unlimbered his own weapon.
Romeo Three, Tim Brett, stepped back into the open air, dropped a couple of feet, and then swung back lightly against the temple wall. Then he repeated the process, slowly and gently making his way down the side of the building toward a window facing into the courtyard. He was using one hand to control his descent while the other held a sidearm ready.
Helen held her breath until Brett stopped moving, dangling only a foot or so from the window, just out of the line of sight of anybody looking outside. She watched closely as he holstered his automatic and reached inside one of the equipment pouches on his assault vest. Then he leaned over, slapped the piece of electronic listening gear now in his hand onto the top part of the window and rolled away.
His whisper ghosted through her headset. “Probe active. Live on channel three.”
Helen switched the setting on her radio, shifting to the broadcast from the bug Brett had just put in place. Nothing.
Just the soft hiss of static and dead air. There was no one inside the room behind the window. She swallowed her disappointment. On paper, the senior rabbi’s office had seemed a logical spot for the terrorists to hole up in. According to the blueprints Tanner’s men had liberated from the county records, the room had just that one narrow window and only one easily guarded door leading out to a secretary’s office. Well, she thought coldly, they would just have to try again, somewhere else.
At her quiet command, Brett began climbing, hauling himself up hand over hand easily, despite the weight of equipment and weapons he carried.
“Romeo One, this is Romeo Five. I think I’ve got something.” Special Agent Frank Jackson’s normal stoic calm was gone.
Helen glanced behind her in surprise. She’d deployed Jackson and his partner, Gary Ricks, along the synagogue’s eastern wall, more to cover all the bases than from a real belief they might hear anything in that area. She could just make out Ricks hunched over near the edge of the roof. So Jackson must be suspended somewhere beside one of the two huge stained-glass windows that opened up into the temple’s worship hall. “Go ahead, Romeo Five.”
“I have audio on channel six.”
“Switching now.” Helen changed the setting on her radio again.
She tensed as a number of different voices suddenly boomed hollowly through her headphones. Some were higher-pitched children’s voices, several of them crying softly while others tried to console them. Others were deeper, but still identifiably belonged to women mothers trying desperately to hush their weeping sons and daughters. There were other voices too louder, harsher, and angrier. They belonged to men riding on the knife edge of sudden violence and bloody murder. The terrorists.
One guttural drawl in particular caught her horrified attention. “Tell those brats to shut up, or I swear to God, I’ll blow them and this whole damned Jew rat’s nest to kingdom come!”
Another masculine voice sounded in her headset, but this one was younger, calmer, and more educated. “I will do my best. But I tell you again this exercise is futile. Surely you must know that the police are all around this temple by now? What do you hope to gain by holding these children and their mothers prisoner? Let them go and I will stay behind. Surely I am hostage enough for you?”
Helen nodded to herself. That must be Temple Emet’s assistant rabbi. A brave man. She only hoped his courage didn’t get him killed before she and her troops could rescue him.
The guttural voice spoke again, even angrier now. “One more word out of you, Jew-boy, and I’ll splash your god damned brains across that organ there, you hear?”
Helen breathed out. She had heard enough. The terrorists and their hostages were in the synagogue’s choir loft. It was time to leave before they realised just how close the HRT had gotten to them. She switched back to her section command frequency. “All Romeo units, this is Romeo One. We’ve pinged ‘em. Pull back to RP Alpha. Verify.”
One after another the men in her recon team checked in and confirmed that they were moving back to the
