The Enemy Within

Thorn knew exactly what she meant. For all its influence in American law enforcement, the FBI was a comparatively small organisation. Just over eight thousand agents worked out of the Bureau’s fifty-five field offices, and only a small percentage had the training and experience needed for topnotch counterterrorist work. In 1995, the investigation of the Oklahoma City bombing had tied up most of the FBI’s available forensics specialists and terrorism experts for weeks. Now the Bureau was being forced to cope with the terrible equivalent of a new Oklahoma City attack one or two times a week. Flynn’s task force was the only place to find the people needed to staff additional investigative units. Caught in a constant reshuffling as new teams were formed and dispatched to the field, the strain was clearly beginning to tell on the agents assigned to each case. There were only so many investigators, so many hours of computer and lab time, and so many hours in the day. It was no wonder that all of them were beginning to feel like they were floundering around in the dark, waiting helplessly for the next blow to fall, the next bomb to go off.

Helen opened the door to a large office suite and led him through a crowded central area. Panel partitions broke the room up into smaller cubicles, each one just big enough for a single desk, two chairs, two phones, and a network-linked personal computer. None of the people closeted in the cubicles looked up as they passed through.

Helen had her own tiny office off to one side. It wasn’t much just four walls, a door, and a desk but it offered her some much-valued privacy. She used it to catch up on paperwork whenever her HRT section was out of the duty rotation.

She shut the door behind them and kissed him passionately, almost fiercely. Then she stepped back and smiled again, a shade more happily this time, at the surprised expression on his face. “I’ve been waiting to do that since I last saw you, Peter.”

For the first time in days, Thorn felt his spirits lift a bit. He moved closer. “It has been a while. I guess I’ll just have to prove my good intentions all over again.”

Helen’s eyebrows went up. She backed up to her desk and held up a warning hand. “Sorry! No fooling around on federal property, mister.” She shook her head in regret. “We’ll have to save that for later. After we’re both off duty.”

Thorn nodded slowly, briefly reluctant to come back to the grim reality they faced. “Fair enough.” He set his briefcase down on the floor and took the chair she indicated. “So. Fill me in. From what I hear, nothing’s working.”

Her smile slipped. “Worse.” She sat down in the only other chair. “We keep running into dead ends at every turn. We’ve got fingerprints from the press club bomb, but they don’t match anyone in our files. Even the C4 used was bought by an untraceable dummy corporation. It’s the same story everywhere.”

“I thought you had a picture of the bomber.”

Helen nodded. “One of our guys spotted him on the videotapes shot by the Metro surveillance cameras. Wearing that damned fake ECNS jacket and carrying all his gear. Flynn’s releasing it to all the news services tomorrow morning.”

Then she shrugged. “Not that it’ll do much good. Here.” She rummaged around in the papers stacked on her desk, pulled one out, and slid it across to him. It was a blowup of a photo taken by one of the Metro cameras.

Thorn studied it and saw right away what she meant. The man framed in the picture was dark-haired, thin, of average height, and wore dark glasses and a mustache. Even if he still looked anything like the photo, and that was doubtful, there were millions of men all across America who might fit that description.

He handed it back to her without saying anything.

“We have even less to work with in Chicago,” Helen said tiredly.

“Shell casings from the scene would help us ID the weapons used… if we could only find the weapons. And that rental van we found was useless wiped clean.”

“What about the rental agency?” he asked. “Anything from them?”

“Zip. They think the guy who rented it had blond hair and blue eyes… but they’re not sure. What we are sure of is that he used a fake credit card and a fake driver’s license.”

Thorn nodded. Again, that wasn’t surprising. Credit card fraud and forged identification were a multibillion-dollar business in the United States. “And there’s nothing new from any other site?”

“Not a thing. The explosions and fires in both Seattle and Dallas/Fort Worth took care of most of the evidence. We know now they were both deliberately set not accidents. We don’t know much more than that.”

Thorn set his jaw, fighting memories that were still painful. “What about Flight 352?”