Halfway through one report, Smith stopped, his pen poised over a blank line. He sat chewing his lower lip absentmindedly while mentally running through the rules, regulations, and legal information he’d crammed in at the academy. Finally, he gave up. He turned toward the older man. “Say, Joe, what’s the code for felonious ”
Bailey’s head exploded. Blood and bits of brain matter blew across the rookie policeman’s horrified face. The older man shuddered once and slumped sideways across the seat with his bulging eyes fixed and staring at nothing. Bright red arterial blood spilled across the papers in Smith’s lap.
The young policeman pulled his terrified gaze from the dead man at his side and turned slowly toward the shattered side window. A dark figure stood there just outside the patrol car, still, calm, and poised a faceless man dressed in black from head to toe. Smith’s eyes widened as he saw the pistol aimed at his forehead.
His mouth opened in a frantic, whispered plea. “No…”
The last thing Hank Smith saw on earth was a blinding burst of bright light.
Salah Madani lowered his silenced 9mm automatic and stared into the car’s blood-spattered front seat for a moment. Neither of the two policemen showed any signs of life.
Sure now that they were dead, the Egyptian turned away and signaled the rest of his team into action. Four men wearing the same kind of black overalls and black ski masks to hide their features darted out of an alley and loped across the parking lot toward the New Hope Church. Two of them held shotguns at the ready, guarding another pair lugging heavy, bulging backpacks.
Madani stayed by the police car ready to abort this mission at the first sign of trouble. Not that he expected any. Not now. America’s cities averaged only two full-time law enforcement officers for every thousand or so of their citizens. Spread so thinly across such a vast population, the police simply could not be everywhere and protect everyone all the time. This would be even simpler and safer than his cell’s earlier work in Dallas.
A soft whistle from the alley caught the Egyptian’s attention, and he saw another figure in black there giving him a thumbs-up signal. Antonovic had finished setting his charges ahead of schedule.
Men and women and children dressed in their Sunday best packed every pew and aisle of the New Hope Baptist Church, swaying in time with the music as they sang. Sweat beaded up on shining faces and foreheads. With so many people crowded so close together, the temperature inside was climbing rapidly, but nobody wanted to break the spell the overwhelming sense of fellowship and community by opening the church doors or windows. Perhaps later, perhaps when the minister began his oration, they would seek comfort in the cool night air. For now, though, the congregation was content to stand and shout out its joy to the Lord in hymns of praise and celebration.
None of them heard the faint, muffled thump as an explosive charge knocked out an electrical switching station two blocks away.
The power went off in a five-block radius around the New Hope Baptist Church. Streetlights and homes went dark instantly. But the loss of electricity knocked out more than lights. It also disabled fire alarms and sprinkler systems.
Inside the church itself, the hymn stumbled to a stop in the sudden darkness. Voices rose in consternation as people called out for lights or for their husbands, wives, parents, and children. Other voices urged calm and asked everyone to stand still until the electricity came back on. Two of the ushers standing in the back tried to open the main doors to let the congregation filter outside.
They were chained shut.
Seconds later, the incendiary charges Madani’s men had planted around the outside of the church began going off.
Although it was close to midnight, most of the lights in the massive FBI headquarters building were on. More bright lights shone on the streets surrounding the imposing structure. Television crews from around the world were camped out there, relaying a constant stream of reports to their viewers about the progress, or lack of progress, of the FBI’s special counterterrorist force. Normally, D.C.-area investigations were run out of the Washington Metropolitan Field Office at Buzzard Point on the Anacostia River. In a bid to present the public with a confidence-inducing backdrop, the FBI’s powers that he had insisted that Special Agent Mike Flynn run his task force from the more imposing and accessible Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue. As the weeks slid by without results, many of them were beginning to think that had been a mistake.
Just through the building’s main doors, Colonel Peter Thorn finished signing in at the security desk and clipped a visitor’s badge to his uniform jacket. “Where do I go now?” he asked.
A grim-faced guard slid his briefcase back across the desk and pointed toward a small open area near a bank of elevators. “Just wait there, sir. Agent Gray will be right down.”
Thorn spent the next few minutes watching a sporadic stream of other visitors run through the maze of security precautions. Like every other important government building and military base, the Hoover Building was locked up tight shielded from terrorist attacks by concrete barriers outside and metal detectors and armed guards inside. So far none of the right-wing or left-wing terrorist groups they were hunting had tried to target a secure installation, but no one was taking any chances.
Helen Gray stepped out of an arriving elevator into the waiting area. She smiled as soon as she saw him, but even the smile couldn’t hide the fact that she was dead tired and deeply troubled. There were faint worry lines developing around her eyes.
Thorn knew that expression. It was the same look he saw on every face inside both the Pentagon and the Hoover Building. It was the same look he saw every morning in his mirror. It had been sixteen days since the first bomb blasts rocked the National Press Club. Sixteen days. And yet, despite the application of massive investigative manpower and every piece of advanced forensic technology at the FBI’s disposal, they seemed no closer to solving any of the dizzying parade of terrorist attacks that were coming with increasing frequency. They were losing ground, not gaining it.
Helen stopped a few feet from him. “Hello, Peter,” she said softly.
“Hi.” Thorn struggled against the temptation to take her in his arms. They were on public ground and near the inner sanctum of her professional life. Flaunting their personal relationship inside the Hoover Building would only damage her hard-won credibility with her superiors. “I’ve got those patrol overlays you asked for.”
“Great.” She nodded toward the elevators. “We can go over them in my office, if you’d like.”
“I’d like that a lot.”
On paper, Thorn was here to help coordinate Delta Force’s operations in and around Washington with the FBI’s counterpart counterterrorist unit, the HRT. In reality, he hoped to obtain more hard data than he could glean from the Pit-flack news briefings the Department of Justice held at irregular times. Virtually the only good thing about the administration’s ill-conceived Operation SAFE SKIES was that it gave him a better excuse to prowl around inside the Bureau’s hallowed halls. He was still looking for some way to make himself useful to his country in this snowballing crisis.
Helen led him into an elevator and punched the number for the floor set aside to hold Flynn’s special counterterrorist task force. They rode up in a companionable silence. The security cameras and microphones visible on the car ceiling precluded any meaningful conversation.
They emerged into a bustling hallway. Plush carpeting, soft lighting, and freshly painted pastel walls testified to the administrative clout of those who ordinarily worked in this part of the headquarters building. Now the administrators and bureaucrats were gone, crowded onto other floors by Flynn’s task force.