London Bridges

And yet, the men under our surveillance might be his attack team in New York. So what did we do?
    I knew every detail about the job. Taking down the building would involve full-team deployment of the group, including both HRT and NYPD SWAT. There were six assault teams and six sniper teams, which HRT believed was two too many. They didn’t want help from SWAT. The HRT sniper teams were called X-Ray, Whiskey, Yankee, and Zulu; each included seven members. One FBI team was assigned to each side of the building; SWAT would assist on the front and rear only.
    The interesting thing for me was the certainty that HRT was the superior assault team, the opposite of what I’d felt when I was with the D.C. police. The HRT snipers were disguised in “urban hide” kits, individualized bunches of black muslin, rope, dark PVC tubing, and the like. Each sniper had a specific target, and every window and door in the building was covered.
    The question remained: were we going in?
    And was Shafer still there? Was the Weasel in that building right now?
    At 2:30 in the morning I joined a two-man sniper team in the brownstone directly across the street from the targeted one. This was starting to get very intense and very hairy.
    The snipers were holed up inside a ten-by-ten room. They had made a tent out of black muslin set back about three feet from the window. The window itself was kept closed, and I was given an explanation by one of them. “If we get the signal to go, we’ll use a lead pipe to knock out the windowpane. Seems kind of crude, but nobody’s come up with a better option.”
    There wasn’t too much small talk in the cramped, hot room, but for the next half hour I got to watch the targeted building through a sniper scope from a backup rifle. My heart was starting to race pretty good now. I was searching for Shafer in the scope. What if I saw him? How could I stay up there?
    The seconds were ticking away and I could just about measure them with my own heartbeats. The assault team was the “eyes and ears” for Command, and all we could do was wait for our official orders to come down.
    Go.
    No go.
    I finally broke the silence in the small room. “I’m going down on the street. I need to be down there for this.”

Chapter 49
    THIS WAS MORE LIKE IT.
    I set up with an HRT assault team just around the corner from the terrorist hideout. Technically I wasn’t supposed to be there—so officially I
wasn’t
—but I’d called Ned Mahoney and he smoothed the way for me.
    Three o’clock in the A.M. The minutes passed very slowly, without more news or clarification from Command in New York or FBI headquarters in the Hoover Building in Washington. What were they thinking? How could anybody make an impossible decision like this one?
    Go?
    No go?
    Obey the Wolf?
    Disobey and take the consequences?
    Three-thirty came and went. Then four o’clock. Still no word from the higher-ups back at headquarters.
    I got strapped up in a black flight suit with full armor and was given an MP-5. The HRT guys all knew about Shafer and my personal stake in this.
    The senior agent in charge sat down beside me on the ground. “You okay? Everything all right?”
    “I was D.C. Homicide. I’ve gone into a lot of places, lot of hot spots.”
    “I know you have. If Shafer’s in there, we’ll get him. Maybe you’ll get him.”
Yeah, maybe I’ll blow that creep away after all.
    And then, amazingly, we got the order to go. Green light! Five minutes of panic and thrill.
    First thing, I heard the snipers breaking windows across the street.
    Then we were running toward the hideout building. Everybody was strapped up for war, all in black flight suits and armed to the teeth.
    Two eight-passenger Bell helicopters suddenly appeared and veered in toward the roof of the brick building. They hovered and assault specialists began to “fast-rope” down.
    One team of four was climbing
up
the side of the building, an amazing sight in itself.
    Another of HRT’s “go to war” slogans flashed through my head—
speed, suspense, and violence of action.
It was happening just like that.
    I heard explosive entry charges blasting out doors, three or four different blasts within seconds. There would be no negotiating as part of this assault.
    We were in. This was good—
I
was in.
    Gunshots echoed through the dark halls of the building. Then machine-gun bursts came from somewhere above me.
    I made it up to the second floor. A male with wild, bushy hair came