The Enemy Within

Helen glanced at the empty place beside her and guessed that the nightmare had begun only after Peter left her side. She shook off the last wisps of sleep.

Her nose twitched as she caught the welcome smell of coffee wafting in through the open doorway. She slid out of bed, threw on one of his shirts, and glided quietly out into the hallway.

The lights were on in the guest bedroom Peter used as a work space. She pushed open the unlatched door and went inside.

Wearing only a pair of ash-grey Army sweatpants, Peter Thorn sat at a desk, paging steadily through a stack of reports she had forwarded from the FBI task force. Under enormous pressure from above for results, Special Agent Flynn’s initial reluctance to share their information with the government’s other counterterrorist units had faded somewhat.

Peter had pinned a large map of the United States to the wall above his desk. Color-coded pins marked the location of different terrorist attacks. His light brown hair was tousled and his green eyes looked weary. A forgotten cup of coffee sat cooling beside a calculator and a pocket calendar.

Helen leaned over and put her arms around him. “Couldn’t sleep?” she asked softly.

He looked around with the same wry, boyish grin that had first attracted her to him. “Nope. Sorry.” He tapped the disordered pile of papers in front of him. “I just can’t seem to stop going over and over these reports in my mind.”

“What are you looking for?”

Thorn shrugged tiredly. “I’m not sure exactly. Maybe some pattern we haven’t spotted yet. Some common method of operations or choice of targets.”

She nodded slowly. “Not a bad idea, Peter. Nobody on our task force has the time or energy to look very hard at the big picture. Everybody’s locked into the little piece of the puzzle they’re directly responsible for investigating.”

“What about Flynn?”

Helen shook her head. “He tries. But every time he starts pulling all our data together, it seems like somebody from the White House calls for another briefing. Or he has to fend off the press or the Congress. There are too many distractions. Too many conflicting demands on his time.” She nodded toward his desk. “So, are you finding anything interesting in all of that?”

Peter grimaced. “Nothing solid. Just an ugly sneaking suspicion that we’re looking in the wrong god damned place for these bastards. I’m beginning to think we’re not dealing with domestic terrorism at all. That maybe most of what’s been happening is something that was planned and organised overseas. That we could be facing a single, coordinated terrorist effort.”

Helen straightened up to her full height, suddenly very alert.

“Explain.”

His mouth turned down even more. “I wish I could. It’s more a feeling than anything else.” He pushed some of the FBI incident reports to one side. “Look, discount the background noise the murders and penny-ante bombings conducted by the second-raters and punks we’ve already caught. Right?”

She nodded. Each large-scale terrorist massacre or bombing seemed to spawn half a dozen or more copycat acts most by known psychos or members of hate groups already under FBI surveillance. The legwork involved in running those incidents down consumed precious time and resources, but it never seemed to bring them any closer to the people who were doing the real damage.

“Well, then, take another look at what’s left. Bombings and massacres that jump from D.C. to Seattle, to Chicago, then back to D.C., and on to Dallas. More bombs that hit L.A. and Louisville on the same day. Then another series of bombs and ambushes back in this area. And now this communications virus in the Midwest.” Thorn jabbed a finger at the map as he spoke, pinpointing each separate incident. “Every attack is professionally planned and executed. Every attack strikes a new area and a new type of target. And every attack spreads our personnel and resources across a wider and wider area.”

“Sure.” Helen frowned slightly. “But, Peter, several groups with very different agendas have claimed responsibility for the worst attacks.”

“Sure. Groups that no one had heard of before this all started. Terrorist organisations that never showed up on any law enforcement agency’s radar screen. Terrorists with access to plastic explosive, SA-16s, and now computer viruses, for God’s sake!” He shook his head forcefully. “It’s just too damned much, Helen. Every instinct I’ve got tells me that there’s someone lurking out there pulling the strings and watching us jump.” “Who?” she asked quietly.

“God knows. I don’t.” Some of the fire went out of his eyes. “Maybe those German neo-Nazis we heard about after the synagogue hostage-taking you smashed. Maybe the people who recruited those Bosnian Muslims Rossini and I tried so hard to find earlier this year.”

“So you think the terrorists, or some of them anyway, are foreigners?”