The Enemy Within

Ducking low under the spinning rotors, Helen clambered into the lead Blackhawk and took the flight helmet offered her by the crew chief. She would need the intercom system to hear and talk over the helicopter’s engine noise.

Lang pulled himself inside right behind her. Although she would plan and lead any assault on the synagogue, her chain of command ran through him. Once they were on scene he would set up an HRT command post and generally run interference with the locals and the FBI agent in charge. Ideally, that should free her to concentrate entirely on the mission at hand. The system worked well in training exercises. She only hoped it would work as well under the stresses and strains of a real operation.

The Blackhawk lifted off in a shrieking, teeth-rattling roar as its engines came up to full power. It then spun right as it climbed and then slid forward, heading northwest at nearly two hundred miles an hour. Helen glanced through the open side doors, her eyes drawn to the eerily beautiful spectacle of the moonlit, wooded countryside rippling past below them.

“ETA is ten minutes.” The pilot’s voice crackled through the headphones built into her helmet. “They’re clearing a corridor for us now through National ATC.”

“Understood.”

Lang leaned closer. “You ready for me to fill you in on the details?”

Helen pulled her gaze away from the moonlight-dappled landscape and nodded. “What have you got?”

The older man shrugged. “Not much. And none of it good.” He sat back against his thin metal and canvas seat and started ticking off what he knew. “This whole thing first blew up about three hours ago.”

She checked her watch. “Around nine?”

Lang nodded. “That’s when the local police got the initial Leports of shots fired. The first squad car on the scene found a man lying in the temple courtyard. When the cops started to investigate further, they were warned off by somebody inside the synagogue claiming to hold hostages.”

Helen frowned. “And we know that’s true?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” Lang matched her expression with a frown his own. “Tomorrow’s the first day of a major Jewish holiday something called Sukkot.”

“That’s right. The Feast of Tabernacles.” She saw his questioning look and explained. “I had a Jewish roommate at the Academy. It’s some kind of harvest festival, isn’t it?”

“Correct.” Lang hunched his shoulders. “Part of the celebration involves building a wood hut, a tabernacle, outside and decorating it with autumn crops pumpkins, Indian corn, that kind of stuff. This year the folks at Temple Emet decided to make the tabernacle a preteens-youth project.”

Helen’s jaw tightened. “How many kids are we talking about?”

“We’re still trying to get an exact count from the parents, but it looks like at least ten to twelve boys and girls, two or three mothers who were chaperoning them, and the assistant rabbi in charge of the temple’s youth group.”

- “God.”

Lang nodded somberly. He had two small children of his own. “This could be a real bad one, Helen.” His mouth turned down. “I don’t know why, but my gut’s telling me the negotiators aren’t going to be able to talk these bastards outside. I think it’s going to be up to us to get those kids out alive.”

“Yeah. You could be right.” To hide a sudden fear that they might fail, Helen turned away from him, staring blindly out the helicopter’s side door. She’d already been seeing horrifying mental images of what might happen to those children and their mothers if things went wrong.

She looked at the ground. There were man-made lights down there now the regular glow of streetlamps that told her they were already flying over the capital’s southernmost suburbs. _

The Blackhawk rolled right suddenly, altering courage to the north.

“ETA now three minutes,” the pilot warned.

Helen squared her shoulders, pushing her doubts away for the moment, and turned back to Lang. “Who’s already on scene?”

“Last I heard, the Arlington cops had most of their patrol force and their SWAT team deployed around the perimeter. Plus, the Virginia state police have their people on the way. It’s going to get crowded.”

Helen nodded, unsurprised. Major hostage situations were like criminological black holes sucking in every local and state police agency within driving distance. Waco, the standoff with Mormon extremists in Utah, and all the others in recent history had wound up involving hundreds of police officers, state troopers, and federal agents. By definition, domestic counterterrorism operations came under the FBI’s control, but it often took hours to confirm those lines of authority. Nobody local willingly surrendered power to the feds before making absolutely sure they were dealing with a real terrorist incident and not just with a burglary or robbery gone sour.

She asked about that. “So exactly how did we get jurisdiction here so early, John?”

He shrugged. “We don’t have jurisdiction. At least not yet. But we will.”

“What?!”