The Enemy Within

“Nobody’s noticed anything?” Helen asked, surprised. “Nothing odd at all?”

Koenig spread his hands. “We did find one reared couple who said they’d seen several suspicious men coming and going from the house at odd hours…” His voice trailed off.

“But?” she prompted.

“But this Mr. and Mrs. Abbot are both a little blind and hard of hearing. Plus, we checked with the Arlington police. They say the Abbots average reporting one prowler, rapist, or drug dealer a week. The cops don’t usually bother investigating their calls anymore.”

Thorn grimaced. Perfect. If this rented house in Arlington was a terrorist safe house, whoever had picked it had done a brilliant job. He turned to Flynn. “So what’s the next step? Surveillance?”

— That would be the standard procedure, he knew. Find a house nearby, move the occupants out, and put in a stakeout team to monitor the suspect’s comings and goings, phone conversations, and associates. Once enough evidence of possible wrongdoing had been collected, the FBI would obtain a search warrant from a sympathetic judge and move in. For a by-the-book guy like Flynn, that would be the best and safest way to proceed. But it would also gobble up hours and days he wasn’t sure they could afford.

Flynn surprised him. “No, Pete. We go in as soon as possible.” He pointed upstairs and growled, “When I briefed the Director and the Attorney General this morning, both were adamant that we take any action necessary to break this thing open.”

From his tone, Thorn suspected the senior FBI agent was leaving a lot unsaid. If anything, the country’s political and media elites were even more spooked by the terror campaign than the general public, and the political pressures to act were enormous.

Flynn turned to Helen. “The Attorney General herself is seeking a search warrant authorising an HRT raid. Once we have the warrant in hand, I’m assigning the mission to you and your section. You know the general area pretty well and you’re damned good the best I’ve got, in fact. John Lang concurs.”

“Okay.” Helen nodded flatly, taking the compliment in stride without any false modesty. She glanced at Koenig, getting down to business without wasting any more time. “What do we know about the house right now, Tommy?”

“Not as much as I’d like.” He slid a faxed copy of a real estate brochure across to her. “The place is fairly large about twenty-five hundred square feet. Four bedrooms. Two and a half baths. One story aboveground and a good-sized basement below. A one-car garage attached to the house.”

“Brick exterior construction?” she asked.

Koenig nodded. “Hardwood floors upstairs. Concrete covered by carpet in the basement.”

Helen looked up from the brochure. “I need more than this. Can we get a set of blueprints from the builder or the county records?”

“We’re working on it,” Koenig confirmed.

“Good. Now, what about numbers inside the house? Any data on that?” she asked.

“Nothing solid. We risked one drive-by earlier this afternoon and spotted two vehicles in the driveway one minivan, one Toyota Camry. There was another car, a Taurus, parked along the street out front. The Camry is registered to this Nielsen. The other vehicles trace back to different names and addresses. Based on that, we’re guessing a minimum of two suspects and a maximum of six.”

“I see.” Helen sat back in her chair, her eyes distant as she considered her options for several seconds. Finally, she turned back to Flynn. “Okay, Mike, what are my rules of engagement for this operation?”

Thorn knew that was the key question. The rules of engagement, or ROE, would determine the Hostage Rescue Team’s tactics. The looser the rules were, the more options Helen would have in laying out her assault plan. If she could assume the people inside were hostile, she and her agents could bring significantly more firepower to bear in the early stages, and they could use their weapons a lot more freely.

Flynn looked troubled. “There’s a snag. Without clear-cut evidence of wrongdoing, I can’t get the AG or the Director to sign off on unlimited ROE. They’re too afraid we might nail some innocent civilians by mistake. So we have to tread lightly at first. I’m afraid you can’t go in with guns blazing on this one.”

Helen nodded slowly, hiding her concerns behind an impassive mask.

Thorn knew his own face was less controlled. He didn’t like the sound of this not at all. Taking out terrorists was a lot different from conducting a sweep against a suspected crack house. Success always depended on the maximum application of controlled violence in the minimum amount of time. Without that, the risks to the assault force to the woman he loved went up dramatically.

Despite his relief that the FBI was moving at last, he couldn’t help worrying about Helen’s safety. Concrete evidence or not, he firmly believed that house in Arlington held some of the terrorists they were hunting. If he was right, Helen and her comrades could be walking right into a buzz saw.