They made their way through the milling crowds to the police line. A young cop stepped forward to meet them. His rain poncho whipped in a sudden gust of cold wind. “Sorry, folks. You’ll have to move back. No one’s allowed any further.”
Helen pushed her Bureau ID under his nose. “I’m on the task force.” She nodded toward Peter, who held his own identity card in plain view.
“Colonel Thorn is a liaison officer from the Pentagon.”
The policeman scanned both cards quickly but thoroughly, carefully comparing the pictures with their faces. He looked up. “Okay, you can come through.” He pointed toward a temporary trailer parked just outside the entrance to the National Press Office building. “Just sign in at the command post, please. You’ll be briefed on site protocol there.”
The rain was falling even harder by the time Peter Thorn and Helen Gray strode across the narrow gap between the command trailer and the press building. Both of them carried sealed bags containing sterile, white plastic suits and plastic booties that would go on over their shoes. Special Agent Flynn’s instructions to his special task force were dear. He wanted to make sure the investigators themselves didn’t track in clothing fibers, dust, or mud that might confuse the — forensics experts combing through the explosion site. They’d also been issued hard hats that were color-coded to indicate status and function at a glance. As a member of the FBI task force command section, Helen’s was black. After minor haggling with the agent manning the security desk, Thorn had been issued a blue hard hat. The color proclaimed his status for now as an on-site observer.
Thorn looked up for a moment before entering the building, ignoring the rain sleeting into his face. From the outside, there was little visible bomb damage. The windows on all the top floors were blown out, and there were scorch marks visible on the concrete facade either from the blast itself or from the resulting fires but beyond that, the structure itself seemed largely untouched.
But when he and Helen stepped out of the central stairwell a few minutes later, he realised how horribly deceiving those external appearances were. It was hard to believe that this charred slaughterhouse had once been the third floor of the National Press Office. Rust-brown smears of dried blood were splashed everywhere on the scorched floor and walls. Massive hydraulic jacks braced the ceiling and some of the walls, indicating the immense force of the explosion.
Teams of coroners’ assistants in white protective suits were hard at work in every corner of the room, still tagging bodies and parts of bodies for eventual removal. Similarly clothed photographers moved among them, taking hundreds of pictures to build a coherent record of the scene for later use in the investigation. Even the distribution of the dead could provide important clues to the number, distribution, and types of bombs that had gone off inside the room.
Other teams of FBI agents and forensics specialists worked around and among the coroners, making precise measurements, sifting through the rubble, and collecting even the tiniest fragments of metal, plastic, paper, and cloth for more detailed lab work and analysis. In what was almost an obscene parody of an archaeological dig, even the smallest pieces of possible evidence were carefully tagged with the time of discovery and their precise location. Brigh. 1 hard hats identified experts in explosives. White, yellow, and green helmets signified fingerprint, finer, and electronics specialists. Everyone wore the same plastic suits and thick rubber gloves.
Thorn breathed in and fought down a sudden impulse to gag a foul stench hung in the air a stomach-turning blend of smoke, blood, the sickly sweet odor left by explosives, and the acrid reek of powerful disinfectants. He heard Helen coughing, but though pale, she was in full control when he looked at her.
She swallowed hard and motioned toward the near corner of the dining room where several other members of the task force command section stood conferring over a set of blueprints. “I’ve got to check in. Coming?”
Thorn nodded and trailed her through the tangled heaps of smashed, burned tables and chairs, careful to stay inside the cleared paths marked by yellow police tape pinned to the floor. He was already treading on ice just by being here without express authorisation, so there wasn’t much sense in trampling ungathered evidence.
The shortest of the men grouped around the blueprints glanced up at their approach. “Helen, glad to see you made it through the mob out there.” He looked curiously at Thorn, clearly not able to place him.
“Tom, this is Colonel Peter Thorn. He’s with the JSOC and one of the Army’s top counterterrorism experts,” Helen said, accurately if somewhat disingenuously. She turned to Thorn. “Colonel, this is Special Agent Thomas Koenig. He’s the number two man on the task force.”
The two men shook hands and stood sizing each other up while the other agents introduced themselves in a blur of names Thorn forgot almost as soon as he heard them. Aside from Special Agent Flynn himself, Koenig was the man who could make or break this informal consulting role Helen envisioned.
“You here on a mission, Pete?” Koenig asked finally.
Thorn shook his head slightly. “Just a watching brief, Tom. This is the FBI’s solo show as far as I’m concerned.”
He noticed Koenig relax minutely and hid a wry smile. Despite the clear edicts placing domestic terrorism incidents under the Bureau’s jurisdiction, turf battles with other interested agencies and departments like the DOD were not uncommon, especially in such a high-profile case.
“Where’s Flynn?” Helen asked, scanning the room.
“On the phone with the White House again, I think,” Koenig answered. He sounded disgusted. “Between the National Security Advisor, the press secretary, the head of the Secret Service, and half a dozen other lesser lights, I suspect Mike’s talked to half the god damned executive branch already.”
Thorn shook his head. As much as he wanted in on this investigation, he didn’t envy the FBI the task of trying to cope with the nation’s rattled political leaders. By targeting so many congressmen, opinion leaders, and important journalists, whoever had masterminded the press club bombing had struck squarely at the heart of the current political elite. From everything he’d seen on TV and read in the papers last night and this morning, both Congress and the administration were undeniably and understandably in a panicked uproar. They wanted concrete results, and they wanted them now.
He suspected that was part of the reason the FBI had summoned Flynn to Washington from the West Coast instead of handing the task force command to one of the Director’s immediate subordinates. Ever since he and his investigative team had cracked the Golden Gate Bridge massacre in less than forty-eight hours, Special Agent Michael Flynn had a media reputation as a miracle worker.
From what Helen had told him, Flynn’s reputation inside the Bureau was equally impressive but very different. He didn’t try walking on water to obtain results, he drained the whole pond. He was a detail man a man who paid attention to every piece of evidence, no matter how insignificant it seemed at first. As a rookie, Flynn was said to have solved his first big case a kidnap-murder by following up on what at first seemed only a typo on a bank deposit slip.
That was just as well, Thorn thought, carefully studying the bomb-shattered dining room. He doubted there would be any miracles this time. Everything he’d seen so far seemed professional to his practiced eye. The timing, the way the charges had been placed to maximize the damage and casualties. Everything. He said as much aloud.
Koenig shrugged noncommittally. “Maybe.” He nodded toward the red-helmeted explosives experts scouring the wreckage. “Our boys have already identified at least six separate devices. There may have been more.”