She waited without moving for the next reports to be repeated over the command circuit. It was crucial to take the suspected terrorists 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.
“L ights 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.
“Jesus Christ!” Helen snarled. A booby trap. Those bastards inside had rigged their front door with a booby trap as a precaution against unwelcome nighttime visitors. Part of her mind was silently screaming in shock and in time with lackson. Another part, colder and more analytical, realised that knocking down the door had triggered the explosive probably a sheet charge mounted in the side jamb. Simple. Classic. And totally unexpected.
She tore her eyes away from the boiling cloud of smoke and still-falling debris at the front door. Ricks and Jackson were out of action, but she had other forces in motion. She keyed her mike. “Three, are you in yet?”
Frazer answered immediately. “Negative! Negative! They’ve reinforced the back door! It’s backed by steel!”
“Can you rig a breaching charge?” Helen demanded. The tactical situation was going from bad to worse at a rapid, breathtaking pace.
It got worse.
Gunfire crackled suddenly from somewhere in the back of the house.
“Shit! Shit!” Frazer shouted over the radio. “We’re taking fire! Christ!” The noise doubled ih volume as he and Brett started shooting back. “We’re pinned down, One! Can’t go forward! Sure as hell can’t go back!”
Helen gritted her teeth. She called the leader of the sniper team posted to cover the rear of the house. “Byrne! Take that bastard out!”
“Trying, Sierra One,” the sniper replied calmly. She heard him pause and caught the muffled crack of his high-powered Remington rifle. “Gonna be tough. Hostile has a flash-suppressed weapon. I’m having a hard time drawing a bead on him.”
Lying beside her in the hedge, DeGarza suddenly stiffened. “I’ve got movement in the right front window, boss.”
“Great.” Helen peered through her goggles, zeroing in on the window he had indicated. Was that a curtain stirring?
More gunfire erupted this time from the front of the house. The Ford Taurus parked on the street rocked crazily back and forth, hammered by the stream of rounds that tore through its doors and shattered every window. Sparks flew off metal in wild, corkscrewing patterns. Whoever was inside the house was making sure there were no attackers hiding behind the vehicle.
Helen saw brick dust and splintered wood puff up around the house’s front windows as her snipers opened up in an attempt to silence the still-unseen gunman. The curtains jerked wildly shredded by each bullet but the hostile fire continued without pause. She shook her head decisively. This was too slow. “Emery!” she ordered. “Smoke ‘em out!”
In response, a grenade launcher thumped once from behind her, hurling a tear-gas grenade toward one of the house’s windows. But instead of sailing on through into the rooms beyond, the grenade bounced back outside onto the lawn and lay hissing, spewing its grey cloud of tear gas harmlessly into the open air.
Helen swore sharply to herself. The defenders must have strung netting behind the curtains. She grimaced. Booby traps, reinforced steel doors, and now grenade netting. She and her section were attacking a fortress.
Alerted by the attempted grenade attack, the gunman inside shifted his fire away from the mangled Taurus to the homes across the street.
Helen and DeGarza burrowed deeper into the hedge as rounds whipcracked past their heads. The chattering roar of automatic-weapons fire rose higher. Someone else inside the house had opened up, systematically shooting into every piece of cover that could shelter an attacker.
“Jesus,” the stocky HRT trooper whispered into her ear. “Who are these guys?”
She shook her head impatiently. Their enemies were damned good. That was all that was important now.
Her gaze darted across the flame-lit, bullet-torn landscape in front of her as she evaluated and then rejected courses of action in the blink of an eye. That bomb-blasted front door gaped open invitingly, but getting to it would be impossible. There was too much cleared ground to cover. Anyone trying to cross that street would be gunned down before they took three strides.
The back door was out too. Frazer and Brett were still pinned down there, unable to get close enough to slap the necessary breaching charge in place. What did that leave?
Helen’s eyes narrowed as she made her decision. It was time to gamble. They were running out of time and options. Every passing minute gave the terrorists inside more time to destroy the information they needed or to prepare for a mass suicide.
She tapped DeGarza’s helmet to get his attention and wriggled back out of the hedge. The other agent followed her. Crouching low to avoid the bullets still flying past overhead, she made another radio call to the sniper team covering the front. “Horowitz! Keep shooting! Keep these bastards busy! Emery! Fall back and meet us at the school!”
With half its interior taken up by the radio and other equipment needed to manage a surveillance operation or raid, the five men inside the back of the command van were crowded together almost cheek-tojowl. They were parked out of sight, two streets away from the pitched battle now raging around the terrorist safe house.
“Damn it!” Peter Thorn slammed his fist into his thigh in frustration as he listened to the rising crescendo of gunfire outside and the desperate radioed reports from the stunned HRT assault force. He couldn’t just sit here idle while Helen and her section were cut to ribbons. He yanked off the headphones he was wearing and whirled around to face Flynn. “Your people need help now! Give me a weapon and three men and I’ll lay down a base of fire on that Frigging house long enough for them to break inside!”
For an instant, the older FBI man seemed tempted. Then he shook his head. “Not possible, Pete! You don’t have any jurisdiction here.”
“Screw the fucking jurisdiction!” Thorn snarled angrily. He started to stand without really being sure of where he planned on going or what he planned on doing.
“Sit down!” Flynn barked. His voice softened. “Look, Pete, think it through. Things are already bad out there. You really think throwing in another set of strangers with guns in the dark is gonna make them better?”
Thorn shook his head numbly, unwillingly admitting to himself that the other man was right. His instincts
