Everywhere Thorn looked he saw agents and technicians hard at work hunched over computer terminals or blownup crime-scene photos, standing over humming fax and copier machines, or hurrying from room to room carrying hard-copy files or disks. But there were also more untenanted offices and empty desks than he’d expected.
Helen saw his quizzical look and nodded wearily. “We’re running short of warm bodies and good brains. Between Chicago, Dallas, and Seattle, we’d already lost a lot of manpower. Two more teams left for Disneyland and Louisville tonight. I’m afraid we’re getting close to the breaking point.”
Thorn knew exactly what she meant. For all its influence in American law enforcement, the FBI was a comparatively small organisation. Just over eight thousand agents worked out of the Bureau’s fifty-five field offices, and only a small percentage had the training and experience needed for topnotch counterterrorist work. In 1995, the investigation of the Oklahoma City bombing had tied up most of the FBI’s available forensics specialists and terrorism experts for weeks. Now the Bureau was being forced to cope with the terrible equivalent of a new Oklahoma City attack one or two times a week. Flynn’s task force was the only place to find the people needed to staff additional investigative units. Caught in a constant reshuffling as new teams were formed and dispatched to the field, the strain was clearly beginning to tell on the agents assigned to each case. There were only so many investigators, so many hours of computer and lab time, and so many hours in the day. It was no wonder that all of them were beginning to feel like they were floundering around in the dark, waiting helplessly for the next blow to fall, the next bomb to go off.
Helen opened the door to a large office suite and led him through a crowded central area. Panel partitions broke the room up into smaller cubicles, each one just big enough for a single desk, two chairs, two phones, and a network-linked personal computer. None of the people closeted in the cubicles looked up as they passed through.
Helen had her own tiny office off to one side. It wasn’t much just four walls, a door, and a desk but it offered her some much-valued privacy. She used it to catch up on paperwork whenever her HRT section was out of the duty rotation.
She shut the door behind them and kissed him passionately, almost fiercely. Then she stepped back and smiled again, a shade more happily this time, at the surprised expression on his face. “I’ve been waiting to do that since I last saw you, Peter.”
For the first time in days, Thorn felt his spirits lift a bit. He moved closer. “It has been a while. I guess I’ll just have to prove my good intentions all over again.”
Helen’s eyebrows went up. She backed up to her desk and held up a warning hand. “Sorry! No fooling around on federal property, mister.” She shook her head in regret. “We’ll have to save that for later. After we’re both off duty.”
Thorn nodded slowly, briefly reluctant to come back to the grim reality they faced. “Fair enough.” He set his briefcase down on the floor and took the chair she indicated. “So. Fill me in. From what I hear, nothing’s working.”
Her smile slipped. “Worse.” She sat down in the only other chair. “We keep running into dead ends at every turn. We’ve got fingerprints from the press club bomb, but they don’t match anyone in our files. Even the C4 used was bought by an untraceable dummy corporation. It’s the same story everywhere.”
“I thought you had a picture of the bomber.”
Helen nodded. “One of our guys spotted him on the videotapes shot by the Metro surveillance cameras. Wearing that damned fake ECNS jacket and carrying all his gear. Flynn’s releasing it to all the news services tomorrow morning.”
Then she shrugged. “Not that it’ll do much good. Here.” She rummaged around in the papers stacked on her desk, pulled one out, and slid it across to him. It was a blowup of a photo taken by one of the Metro cameras.
Thorn studied it and saw right away what she meant. The man framed in the picture was dark-haired, thin, of average height, and wore dark glasses and a mustache. Even if he still looked anything like the photo, and that was doubtful, there were millions of men all across America who might fit that description.
He handed it back to her without saying anything.
“We have even less to work with in Chicago,” Helen said tiredly.
“Shell casings from the scene would help us ID the weapons used… if we could only find the weapons. And that rental van we found was useless wiped clean.”
“What about the rental agency?” he asked. “Anything from them?”
“Zip. They think the guy who rented it had blond hair and blue eyes… but they’re not sure. What we are sure of is that he used a fake credit card and a fake driver’s license.”
Thorn nodded. Again, that wasn’t surprising. Credit card fraud and forged identification were a multibillion-dollar business in the United States. “And there’s nothing new from any other site?”
“Not a thing. The explosions and fires in both Seattle and Dallas/Fort Worth took care of most of the evidence. We know now they were both deliberately set not accidents. We don’t know much more than that.”
Thorn set his jaw, fighting memories that were still painful. “What about Flight 352?”
Helen’s gaze softened. She had her own nightmare visions of that terrible day and night by the Potomac. “The lab says the solid-rocket exhaust residues we picked up on the shore near Georgetown probably came from Russian-designed missiles either SA-7s or the newer SA-16s. Our divers and the Park Police are still dragging the river for any bits and pieces we could use to confirm that.”
“Wonderful,” Thorn said softly. There were so many SA7s and SA-16s piled up in military and terrorist arsenals around the world that tracing the weapons used for this particular attack would be almost impossible.
“What about on your end, Peter? Have you and the Maestro zeroed in on any of our guys who might have gone bad?” Helen asked.
“Only a handful.” Thorn spread his hands in a gesture of negation.
“And none I’d lay any money on. One’s in prison, so he’s out. Another’s overseas working as a bodyguard for a Saudi prince. I understand most of the others had airtight alibis when your people checked them out. Anyway, none of them showed any signs of having the kind of connections or money they’d have to have to jump all over the country without getting caught.”
Suddenly, he shook his head. “I just don’t buy this, Helen. I could swallow the Bureau not spotting one or two small, sophisticated domestic terrorist groups… but three or four or five? Where the hell are all these bastards coming from?”
“Believe me, Peter, we’ve all been asking the same question,” Helen said quietly. She lowered her eyes to the pile of reports and photos on her desk. “Our intelligence people honestly thought they had a handle on every group likely to cause trouble. But it’s a big country out there and the evidence is pretty clear that we screwed it up somehow. Maybe we counted too much on these people slotting neatly into our psychological profiles. Or we relied too heavily on informants who weren’t tracking the right organisations.”
She looked up again. “All I know is that we’re getting hammered by terrorists of all stripes using different techniques and weapons to hit different types of targets in different parts of the country. And the only thing I can see that they’ve got in common is that they’re damned good at what they do.”
Thorn grimaced. “True.” Every separate attack showed clear signs of careful advance planning and attention to detail. That was one of the factors that had first led him to believe someone with military training might be involved. Something else about the terrorist strikes tugged at his memory. Something about the communiques claiming responsibility…