The Enemy Within

The younger man turned back to the pile of routine reports on his lap. Paperwork was always the bane of any cop’s working life, especially when you had a sly old fox like Joe Bailey for a partner. Fifteen years with the Louisville police department had taught the older man every trick there was to avoiding work he didn’t enjoy. Work like filling out arrest reports in the triplicate and quadruplicate so loved by bureaucrats.

Smith sighed under his breath. At least pulling guard duty outside a church on a quiet night offered him a chance to cut into the backlog a little. For several minutes, his pen scratched steadily onward through page after page, accompanied by the faint, off-key sound of Bailey humming and by the occasional crackle of voices over their car radio.

Halfway through one report, Smith stopped, his pen poised over a blank line. He sat chewing his lower lip absentmindedly while mentally running through the rules, regulations, and legal information he’d crammed in at the academy. Finally, he gave up. He turned toward the older man. “Say, Joe, what’s the code for felonious ”

Bailey’s head exploded. Blood and bits of brain matter blew across the rookie policeman’s horrified face. The older man shuddered once and slumped sideways across the seat with his bulging eyes fixed and staring at nothing. Bright red arterial blood spilled across the papers in Smith’s lap.

The young policeman pulled his terrified gaze from the dead man at his side and turned slowly toward the shattered side window. A dark figure stood there just outside the patrol car, still, calm, and poised a faceless man dressed in black from head to toe. Smith’s eyes widened as he saw the pistol aimed at his forehead.

His mouth opened in a frantic, whispered plea. “No…”

The last thing Hank Smith saw on earth was a blinding burst of bright light.

Salah Madani lowered his silenced 9mm automatic and stared into the car’s blood-spattered front seat for a moment. Neither of the two policemen showed any signs of life.

Sure now that they were dead, the Egyptian turned away and signaled the rest of his team into action. Four men wearing the same kind of black overalls and black ski masks to hide their features darted out of an alley and loped across the parking lot toward the New Hope Church. Two of them held shotguns at the ready, guarding another pair lugging heavy, bulging backpacks.

Madani stayed by the police car ready to abort this mission at the first sign of trouble. Not that he expected any. Not now. America’s cities averaged only two full-time law enforcement officers for every thousand or so of their citizens. Spread so thinly across such a vast population, the police simply could not be everywhere and protect everyone all the time. This would be even simpler and safer than his cell’s earlier work in Dallas.

A soft whistle from the alley caught the Egyptian’s attention, and he saw another figure in black there giving him a thumbs-up signal. Antonovic had finished setting his charges ahead of schedule.

Men and women and children dressed in their Sunday best packed every pew and aisle of the New Hope Baptist Church, swaying in time with the music as they sang. Sweat beaded up on shining faces and foreheads. With so many people crowded so close together, the temperature inside was climbing rapidly, but nobody wanted to break the spell the overwhelming sense of fellowship and community by opening the church doors or windows. Perhaps later, perhaps when the minister began his oration, they would seek comfort in the cool night air. For now, though, the congregation was content to stand and shout out its joy to the Lord in hymns of praise and celebration.

None of them heard the faint, muffled thump as an explosive charge knocked out an electrical switching station two blocks away.

The power went off in a five-block radius around the New Hope Baptist Church. Streetlights and homes went dark instantly. But the loss of electricity knocked out more than lights. It also disabled fire alarms and sprinkler systems.

Inside the church itself, the hymn stumbled to a stop in the sudden darkness. Voices rose in consternation as people called out for lights or for their husbands, wives, parents, and children. Other voices urged calm and asked everyone to stand still until the electricity came back on. Two of the ushers standing in the back tried to open the main doors to let the congregation filter outside.

They were chained shut.

Seconds later, the incendiary charges Madani’s men had planted around the outside of the church began going off.

Washington, D.C.