She smiled sweetly at him and pulled his hand away from her arm. “Not as much as those poor kids inside Temple Emet, Larry. Maybe you forgot about them.”
She didn’t wait to see what effect her parting shot had on him. She had work to do.
The moon was down.
Helen Gray checked the fastenings on her Kevlar armor and assault vest one last time and then slung her submachine gun from her shoulder. She glanced at Rabbi David Kornbluth, Temple Emet’s spiritual leader. “You understand about the stained glass, Rabbi? If there were any other way…” She left the rest carefully unsaid.
The rabbi, an elderly man, turned his shrewd gaze on her and shrugged.
“I would prefer that these barbarians had never invaded my synagogue, Miss Gray. But they have. And now you must root them out.” He gently took her hand. “May God go with you.”
Helen ducked her head, already knowing how much depended on her. “Thank you. I will.” She strode away quickly, desperately hoping she could fulfill the promise she had just made.
Oh, her plan was sound. Very sound. But she knew only too well how swiftly the most carefully crafted plans could disintegrate in practice.
She trotted down the steps of the high school and out toward the pair of parked school buses that sheltered her assault force from both media scrutiny and detection by those inside the temple. Her four snipers were already in position on the eastern edge of the synagogue roof.
Paul Frazer was there waiting for her. He stepped out of the shadows.
“What’s the word, boss?”
“We go in.” Helen felt again the thrill that rippled through her at those three simple words. Her emotions were racing in full gear crashing back and forth between anxiety and exultation. “The Director confirmed the assault orders to McDowell five minutes ago.”
“Outstanding.” Frazer clapped his hands together, put two fingers to his lips, and whistled softly. The rest of her section materialised seemingly out of nowhere and crowded around her.
Helen glanced around the tight circle, making one last check. Their weapons and gear were in perfect order. They were ready. She nodded toward the synagogue, invisible behind the school buses and in the growing darkness. “We’ve trained hard for this chance. You all know what to do. When we go in, we go in fast. No stopping. No hesitating. If you see a terrorist, you put him down. Three rounds and down. Clear?”
They nodded fiercely. Teeth gleamed in the darkness.
“Okay, let’s go! Alpha team takes the lead. Bravo takes overmatch. I’m with Alpha.”
Helen led the six men to the edge of the open ground surrounding the temple complex and crouched low. She keyed her radio mike. “Sierra One, this is Alpha One. We’re at the starting gate. Are we clear?”
Lang’s confident voice came through her earphones.
“Roger, Alpha One. Your birds are all in the nest. You’re cleared to move.”
“Moving.” Helen suited her actions to her words. She loped out across the open ground, sprinting for the southern edge of the temple. Three men followed her. Frazer and the rest settled in to cover them during the long run up to the wall.
Heart pounding hard, she ran right up to the synagogue and dropped prone with her submachine gun aimed at the ground-floor windows in front of her. The rest of her assault team followed suit peeling off to either side until they were ranged in a ragged line facing the building.
She spoke into her throat mike again. “Come ahead, Bravo One.” “On our way,” Frazer said.
Her tall deputy and his two-man team reached her position in less than thirty seconds. They dropped prone beside her.
Helen crawled right up to the wall and then raised her head slowly until she could peer in through one of the windows. Her night vision gear showed her an empty classroom. The classroom door was shut. Perfect.
She turned and waved her team forward. Then she smashed one of the lower windowpanes with the butt of her submachine gun and froze. The tinkling of glass shards falling onto a tile floor suddenly seemed very loud. “Sierra, this is Alpha. Any reaction to that?”
Lang’s voice was reassuring. “Negative, Alpha.”
“Entering now.”
Helen reached in through the broken window with one gloved hand and fumbled with the latch. It came free and she pulled the window frame outward. Moving rapidly, one after the other, the men of her two teams scrambled inside and fanned out through the classroom. She hopped lightly over the windowsill after them and glided quietly to the door.
It opened on to a small empty corridor. All the overhead lights were off. She signaled an advance.
Leapfrogging in pairs while the rest knelt to provide covering fire, the HRT agents slipped out through the door, turned left, and moved down the small hallway until it intersected another, much larger corridor running the entire length of the temple. Helen poked her head around the bend, risking a quick peek.
The central corridor was wide enough for several people to walk abreast. Dark wood paneling and a marble floor gave it an elegant appearance. Points of brightness gleamed amid the blue-green sheen her night vision gear gave the world. She flipped the goggles up for a quick scan with the unaided eye. Small lights twinkled at eye level along the walls, blazing out of the darkness. The walls were coated with banks of bronze plaques. Each was inscribed with a man or woman’s name, date of birth and date of death, a tiny, stylized tree, and a pair of lights, one on each side. The rabbi had briefed her on those plaques. Each commemorated a founding member or important contributor to Temple Emet.
Helen pulled her eyes away from the tiny lights and lowered her goggles again. The corridor ended in a pair of double doors leading into the synagogue’s worship hall itself. The doors were closed.
Keeping her back to the wall, she slid around the corner and crouched. Frazer and the rest followed her. They deployed on both sides of the corridor Alpha team on the right, Bravo on the left.
Helen looked across at Frazer. He nodded once.
Using bounding overmatch, the two FBI teams advanced cautiously to the large double doors silent as ghosts on the slick marble floor. When they were within a few yards, she held up a hand, signaling a halt. They froze in place.
Helen went down on one knee, half turned, and motioned Tim Brett forward. The stocky agent was her surveillance specialist.
Brett crawled forward to the doors with Helen right in his wake. By the time she reached him, his hands were already busy fitting a length of flexible fiberoptic cable into a palm sized TV monitor. Then he plugged the whole assembly into a battery pack hooked to his assault vest.
Helen crawled closer until she could watch the monitor picture while he gingerly fed the cable through a slight crack under the right-hand door. The tiny TV showed a worm’seye view of the worship hall’s thin carpet. She saw nothing out of the ordinary and motioned to the left. Brett obeyed, sliding it back and forth to scan the carpet near the other door. Still nothing. At another signal from her, he withdrew the cable, bent it almost into a right angle, and then slid it back under the door. By rotating the angled portion of fiberoptic cable, he gave the monitor a clear view of the areas near the door hinges and latches. Again, she saw nothing. There weren’t any trip wires connected to explosives and not even anything as simple as tin cans rigged to sound a warning if someone burst through the doors.
Helen shook her head in mingled relief and disgust. These so-called terrorists were rank amateurs. Of course, that actually made them more unpredictable and potentially more dangerous. Professionals often followed set patterns that could be exploited.
Hand signals brought the rest of her assault force right up to the doors while Brett repacked his camera gear. She risked another whispered radio transmission. “Charlie One and Three, this is Alpha One. We’re outside the hall.”
“Acknowledged, Alpha,” the gravelly voice of her senior sniper said.
“We’re ready.”
From her crouch, Helen reached up and gripped the handle on the right-hand door. Slowly, carefully, she turned the handle and pushed gently. The door swung inward silently.
For the first time they could hear sounds from the choir loft overhead muttered growls and curses from the terrorists and the soft sobs and moans of frightened children. Grim-faced now, the FBI agents wriggled through the
