rally point to await further orders.
Helen stood at one of the large windows in the principal’s office they had commandeered as a command post, staring out across the open ground that separated the high school from Temple Emet. The sun was going down, spilling gold and red light across the synagogue complex. Pushed by the setting sun, the shadows were lengthening. It would be dark in less than an hour. But the full moon would rise a short time later, again making it too dangerous for them to move in until the very early hours of the next morning.
“Special Agent Gray?”
Helen turned away from the window. One of Larry McDowell’s assistants stood there a young man, fresh- faced, and probably almost straight out of the Academy.
“Agent McDowell would like you to join them across the hall for a planning conference.”
“I’ll be right there.” Helen watched the young man scurry off and then followed him. She was almost amused. So the all-knowing agent in charge had finally decided to acknowledge her existence. That must mean he was starting to feel the pressure from above and was looking for possible scapegoats.
Lang, Tanner, and McDowell were all gathered in the teachers’ lounge he had turned into his own private command center. One other man was there beside them, and she recognised him as the head of the FBI negotiating team.
McDowell preferred deliberating outside the organised chaos of the primary operations center, and she couldn’t blame him for that. The lounge was a small, quieter place. The four senior men stood grouped around a coffee-stained worktable, intently studying blueprints of the temple complex. Along the wall behind them, a small cadre of junior FBI agents in their trademark grey suits manned a bank of tactical radios and secure phones.
Lang looked up at her approach. “You feeling okay, Helen?” he asked.
“Fine.” She’d made sure her troops slept through the morning and early afternoon and she’d managed to grab a quick catnap herself. Sleep discipline was emphasised by HRT training. Of course, if this siege dragged on much longer, Lang would have to bring in another section to spell them. She shied away from that thought. Hearing those has lards inside the synagogue only made her more eager to be in at the finish.
“What’s up, John?”
“Nothing good.”
“Still no word from inside?”
Lang shook his head grimly. So far, despite every effort, they’d failed to establish two-way communication with the hostage-takers. There were no phones in the temple choir loft and the terrorists were apparently too afraid of police sharpshooters to risk venturing out of their improvised fortress to find one downstairs. Even an offer the FBI negotiators had made by loudspeaker to hand-carry a portable phone inside had so far gone unanswered and unheeded.
And an early hope that the unknown terrorists might be driven out of the choir loft by thirst had been quickly dashed by the discovery that it had a small adjoining washroom. Right now the FBI’s only source of information on the bad guys was strictly one-way eavesdropping via the listening device her team had planted early this morning and now supplemented by laser microphones aimed at the synagogue’s large stained-glass windows.
“Now that we’re all here, let’s recap this thing and see if we can come to a consensus. Okay?” McDowell said brusquely.
Typical, Helen thought wearily. He locks me out of the room and then he acts as though I’ve been goofing off when he finally condescends enough to invite me in on the planning. But she kept her irritation off her face. Showing anger would serve no purpose and might only encourage him to needle her further.
“First, Captain Tanner’s men have finally located the vehicle we believe the terrorists used as their transport. Correct, Captain?”
Harlan Tanner nodded slowly, his own face impassive despite McDowell’s barely concealed dig. “That’s right.” He didn’t bother referring to his notes. “We’ve identified a 1985 Chevy Suburban parked down the street from Temple Emet as having been stolen from outside a Richmond home earlier yesterday. Every other car, truck, and van in the neighborhood belongs to someone with a legitimate reason for being in the area.”
“Did your people find anything in the Suburban that might give us a handle on what we’re facing in there?” Helen asked, butting in before McDowell could push on.
“Yeah.” Tanner looked straight at her. “Forensics is still going over it with a fine-tooth comb, but they’ve already found traces of a lot of bad shit.”
“How bad?”
“Carrying cases and cleaning kits for assault rifles probably AKs.” He paused significantly. “They also found the chemical signature for some highgrade plastic explosive maybe four or five kilos’ worth.”
“Christ.” Helen was appalled. That much explosive power, properly emplaced, could easily turn Temple Emet into a smoking pile of rubble. She turned to the head of the negotiating team an agent named Avery, she suddenly remembered. “You’ve been listening in on these goons. How many are we dealing with exactly?”
“Three, Agent Gray. We’ve identified three separate voices belonging to the terrorists,” McDowell cut in sharply, clearly irked that she’d been taking control of his meeting.
Avery nodded. “That’s right. The accents are a little blurred because of the distance between our mikes and the choir loft, but my linguists believe two at least are originally from the Tidewater section of Virginia. The third man is definitely an American English speaker, but his precise origins are indeterminate. Their politics are pretty clear, though. We’ve picked up a lot of radical, neo-Nazi jargons and sloganeering. They also keep referring to someone they call’a brother-in-arms.’ A German national apparently named Karl.”
“And their mental state?” Lang asked.
Avery hesitated briefly, apparently reluctant to theorise without more hard evidence, but then he plunged on. “Very bad. And deteriorating. This was not a planned confrontation. Instead, it’s clear that these terrorists only intended to blow up the synagogue itself right before a major Jewish holiday. They stumbled on to the children’s decorating party by accident. Right now they’re pretty well locked into a classic paranoid state compounded by isolation, sleep deprivation, growing hunger, and alcohol abuse.”
He saw their appalled glances and amplified that last comment. “We’ve heard fairly clear signs that at least one of them is already very drunk and may still be drinking.”
“Damn it.” Tanner spoke for them all. Alcohol would slow the hostage-takers’ reflexes and reaction time, but it would also impair their judgment, perhaps making them more likely to start killing their captives.
McDowell took center stage again. “Right. You’ve heard the bad news. As I see it, the situation we face is inherently unstable. These creeps won’t communicate with us. And now they’re starting to lose it. So we’re getting nowhere fast out here and the media vultures are out in full force, circling thicker and thicker.” He paused. “I’ve been in constant touch with the Director. He’s personally stressed that the Bureau cannot afford another Waco. We can’t let this thing drag on indefinitely, and we can’t have this siege end in another pile of dead women and kids.”
Great, Helen thought to herself, talk about mixed messages. Risk an attack to end the standoff, but don’t take any risks with the lives of the hostages. And that was impossible.
“I’m soliciting opinions here, folks,” McDowell said. “Do we wait longer? Or do we strike now?” He turned to Lang. “John?” “I say we go,” the HRT commander said flatly. “Time is dearly not on our side.”
“Avery?”
The negotiator took a deep breath and then sighed. “I concur. We should go.”
McDowell stood silently for a few minutes, pondering his options and not liking any of them. Finally, he looked up. “Okay, I’ll phone the Director and pass on our recommendation.” He turned to Helen. “If he approves direct action, when can you and your section be ready to move?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Early tomorrow morning. When it’s dark.” She glanced at Lang for confirmation. “We can move sooner if they start to unravel faster, but it would be a lot more dangerous.”
He nodded his agreement.
McDowell frowned. “All right, Agent Gray. Assemble your section, make your plans, and then brief us.”
“Of course.”
But then he stopped her on her way out the door. “Don’t screw this up, Helen. We’ve all got a lot riding on this one.”
