The Enemy Within

Barakat slid behind the wheel and took a moment to familiarize himself with the controls. Behind him, the other three got to work.

Stripping off their winter jackets, they opened the duffel bags and pulled out body armor, black coveralls, and black ski masks. Each of the coveralls bore a white sword on the back, hilt upward to resemble a cross. The body armor went on first, followed by the coveralls and masks.

A weapons check came next. Each man carried a military style assault rifle and a pistol in a shoulder holster. Hodjic passed a tiny TEC-9 machine pistol up to Barakat, who laid it on the seat beside him and covered it with his coat. He was not expected to need it, but graduates of the harsh training at Masegarh learned early on not to take chances.

Khalizad snapped a thirty-round magazine into his M16 and glanced at Tomcic and Hodjic. The two Bosnians nodded back silently, tightly gripping their own weapons. They were ready.

Barakat put the rented van in motion, and the three men in back checked their watches. They were seven minutes away from their objective. Plenty of time. Like paratroopers preparing for a combat jump, they checked each other over, looking for loose gear or forgotten items.

Finally, they crouched facing the rear door. They had to brace themselves against the twists and turns of the van, but the Egyptian was taking the shortest route he could and driving as carefully as he could. A fender bender now would be an unmitigated disaster.

The minutes ticked off slowly, almost interminably. Crouched beside Khalizad, Tomcic felt the sweat pooling under his ski mask. After the cold outside, the enclosed van felt like a steam bath.

“One block!” Barakat called out over his shoulder.

The Iranian reached up and unlocked the back doors. Soon.

Tomcic muttered a short prayer under his breath. The mullahs had said that he and the others were the very hands of God in this war guided by the will of the infallible and incapable of error. They had said that none of the innocent blood that must be shed would fall on his head that all who died sinless were necessary martyrs in the struggle against the Great Satan and assured of a place in heaven. He earnestly hoped the mullahs were right.

The van braked sharply and came to a complete stop.

“Now!” Khalizad shouted. He threw open the doors and leaped out onto the pavement, with the two Bosnians right behind. All three moved rapidly, spreading out to take up carefully rehearsed positions.

The Iranian team leader went to the left, toward the curb. Tomcic went with him. Hodjic spun right, covering an arc behind the van. On the far side of the narrow two-lane street was a row of small, decrepit shops: a check-cashing center, a shoe store, a little grocery, and a liquor store on the corner.

On the near side was the Anthony A. Settles Elementary School.

It was precisely 11:35 A.M., five minutes into recess on a sunny day, and the playground was filled with children, laughing and running and jumping in noisy, gleeful fun. Almost all were AfricanAmerican or Hispanic. The playground was separated from the sidewalk only by a chain-link fence.

Tomcic dropped to one knee at the fence and poked the muzzle of his Russianmade AKM through one of the gaps. Khalizad moved in beside him but remained standing.

Only seconds after the van squealed to a stop, and before anyone even consciously noted their presence, the Bosnian pulled the trigger. All his doubts vanished in the sudden, hammering pulse of the assault rifle against his shoulder. He was here, deep in the heartland of a nation that had let his people and his Faith be crushed by their foes, striking back.

It was an instant where fierce joy and blood-red rage met and mingled.

Tomcic’s face, hidden by the mask, matched the intensity of his emotions his eyes gleaming, his lips pulled back in almost a rictus of anger. He remembered to aim low.

His first long burst caught a cluster of children on a merrygo-round, knocking them off the ride in a welter of blood. Sparks flew wherever his bullets slammed into metal. He walked the burst to the left, toward the entrance to the school building. Halfway there, his first thirty-round clip ran dry. With a practiced motion, the Bosnian switched the empty out, slid in a new clip from a pouch at his waist, and yanked the AKM’s charging handle back, chambering a round and cocking the hammer. In seconds, he was firing again.

Settles Elementary, only blocks from the crime-ridden Cabrini Green housing project, was no stranger to gunfire, and the teachers tried to do as they were trained screaming at their students to lie flat or duck inside the building. While that might have worked against a random shooting or a gang gunfight, it was utterly useless against trained special warfare troops.