The Enemy Within

Helen glanced around the tight circle, making one last check. Their weapons and gear were in perfect order. They were ready. She nodded toward the synagogue, invisible behind the school buses and in the growing darkness. “We’ve trained hard for this chance. You all know what to do. When we go in, we go in fast. No stopping. No hesitating. If you see a terrorist, you put him down. Three rounds and down. Clear?”

They nodded fiercely. Teeth gleamed in the darkness.

“Okay, let’s go! Alpha team takes the lead. Bravo takes overmatch. I’m with Alpha.”

Helen led the six men to the edge of the open ground surrounding the temple complex and crouched low. She keyed her radio mike. “Sierra One, this is Alpha One. We’re at the starting gate. Are we clear?”

Lang’s confident voice came through her earphones.

“Roger, Alpha One. Your birds are all in the nest. You’re cleared to move.”

“Moving.” Helen suited her actions to her words. She loped out across the open ground, sprinting for the southern edge of the temple. Three men followed her. Frazer and the rest settled in to cover them during the long run up to the wall.

Heart pounding hard, she ran right up to the synagogue and dropped prone with her submachine gun aimed at the ground-floor windows in front of her. The rest of her assault team followed suit peeling off to either side until they were ranged in a ragged line facing the building.

She spoke into her throat mike again. “Come ahead, Bravo One.” “On our way,” Frazer said.

Her tall deputy and his two-man team reached her position in less than thirty seconds. They dropped prone beside her.

Helen crawled right up to the wall and then raised her head slowly until she could peer in through one of the windows. Her night vision gear showed her an empty classroom. The classroom door was shut. Perfect.

She turned and waved her team forward. Then she smashed one of the lower windowpanes with the butt of her submachine gun and froze. The tinkling of glass shards falling onto a tile floor suddenly seemed very loud. “Sierra, this is Alpha. Any reaction to that?”

Lang’s voice was reassuring. “Negative, Alpha.”

“Entering now.”

Helen reached in through the broken window with one gloved hand and fumbled with the latch. It came free and she pulled the window frame outward. Moving rapidly, one after the other, the men of her two teams scrambled inside and fanned out through the classroom. She hopped lightly over the windowsill after them and glided quietly to the door.

It opened on to a small empty corridor. All the overhead lights were off. She signaled an advance.

Leapfrogging in pairs while the rest knelt to provide covering fire, the HRT agents slipped out through the door, turned left, and moved down the small hallway until it intersected another, much larger corridor running the entire length of the temple. Helen poked her head around the bend, risking a quick peek.

The central corridor was wide enough for several people to walk abreast. Dark wood paneling and a marble floor gave it an elegant appearance. Points of brightness gleamed amid the blue-green sheen her night vision gear gave the world. She flipped the goggles up for a quick scan with the unaided eye. Small lights twinkled at eye level along the walls, blazing out of the darkness. The walls were coated with banks of bronze plaques. Each was inscribed with a man or woman’s name, date of birth and date of death, a tiny, stylized tree, and a pair of lights, one on each side. The rabbi had briefed her on those plaques. Each commemorated a founding member or important contributor to Temple Emet.

Helen pulled her eyes away from the tiny lights and lowered her goggles again. The corridor ended in a pair of double doors leading into the synagogue’s worship hall itself. The doors were closed.

Keeping her back to the wall, she slid around the corner and crouched. Frazer and the rest followed her. They deployed on both sides of the corridor Alpha team on the right, Bravo on the left.

Helen looked across at Frazer. He nodded once.

Using bounding overmatch, the two FBI teams advanced cautiously to the large double doors silent as ghosts on the slick marble floor. When they were within a few yards, she held up a hand, signaling a halt. They froze in place.

Helen went down on one knee, half turned, and motioned Tim Brett forward. The stocky agent was her surveillance specialist.

Brett crawled forward to the doors with Helen right in his wake. By the time she reached him, his hands were already busy fitting a length of flexible fiberoptic cable into a palm sized TV monitor. Then he plugged the whole assembly into a battery pack hooked to his assault vest.