The bus the terrorists had demanded was just pulling up in
front of the Olympic village apartment building. The
casual observer wouldn't see the dozen German army snipers
lying in wait around the street, but Isabella Torres was
no casual observer. A trained spotter for military
snipers, she ranged her gaze across the scene, picking out
the vital details.
An Olympic flag hung limp behind a policeman on the roof.
No wind — good conditions for the shooters. A shadow moved
on the floor inside the front door of the building. One of
the terrorists — no doubt moving there in preparation for
the transfer of the surviving Israeli hostages to the bus.
The bus driver's bulging muscles and lack of visible fear
marked him as German Special Forces.
A lull developed in the scene below. Nobody moved. They
hardly breathed. These terrorists were scared, nearly
paralyzed with fear. No need to hurry them. It was
probably smart of the Germans to let the fear ripen into
stupidity. Isabella released a long, slow breath of her
own.
This whole scenario was making her acutely uncomfortable.
Her last name might be Torres, compliments of her Mexican
father, but her mother was a Middle Easterner. Iranian
born and bred. Half of Isabella's heritage tied her to
those masked terrorists. They might be Palestinians, but
in the Middle East, there were only two kinds of people in
a crisis like this. Israelis and everyone else.
Of course, she'd never thought of herself as Middle
Eastern, even if she did speak Arabic and Farsi, had
visited her relatives in Tehran on multiple occasions, and
had even worn the heavy black robes and veils of a Muslim
woman while she was there. Even when she followed Muslim
customs out of respect for her family, she considered
herself Americano.
A flurry of radio chatter in German announced that the
eight Palestinians were approaching the exit with their
hostages. Finally. After twenty-three hours of stalemate.
Since there were more prisoners than guards, the
terrorists would no doubt move the hostages as a group,
surrounded by captors. And that meant there'd be an
excellent opportunity for the snipers to get clear shots
and end this thing here and now.
Each sniper had been assigned a single terrorist target.
They'd been watching this nightmare unfold through their
telescopic gun sights, long enough for the snipers to
easily differentiate between the terrorists, even though
the Palestinians dressed in identical track suits and wore
black ski masks over their faces. It wasn't hard, really.
Individual posture, movement and gesture were easy to pick
out for a trained sharpshooter.
These would be very short-range shots. No more than a
couple hundred meters. Kid's stuff for snipers. They could
put a bullet through Lincoln's eye on a penny at that
range.
A command was barked across the sniper radio net. The
order to prepare to take their respective shots. Abrupt
tension permeated the scene. This was it. This crisis
would be resolved in the next few seconds.
Two men in black ski masks appeared in the building's
doorway. She registered myriad details about them in the
blink of an eye. Lean. Tense. Safeties off their AK-47s,
fingers on the triggers. Weapons pointed outward at the
police. Dumb. The guns ought to be pointed inward at the
hostages, so that even if the terrorists were shot, their
reflexive grasps on the weapons would fire the guns into
the tight cluster of Israeli athletes. The German
authorities might not call the kill if the Palestinian
guns were pointed at the hostages. But arrayed like this —
the op was a go.
The rest of the terrorists and all the Israelis shuffled
forward in a tight phalanx. For their part, the athletes
looked equal parts terrified and defiant. The Palestinians
were smart enough to make at least some effort to use the
hostages as human shields. But it was no good. The
shooters surrounding that bus had their shots. There. The
entire group of terrorists was exposed. Every one of them
was in position for the snipers to take clear shots.
"Fire!" The command rang sharply across the sniper net.
Nothing happened.
Nothing happened!
"Fire, goddammit!" the German shouted into the radio.
Still nothing. Not a single one of the shooters took his
shot. Jack Scatalone, the Delta force colonel responsible
for the Medusas' training, held up a remote control and
hit the pause button. He stepped in front of the frozen
video image of the Israelis being herded into that bus. It
shone obscenely across his crisp uniform, which was
encrusted with row after row of ribbons for heroism. For
successfully resolving this very sort of crisis without
the complete breakdown of response they'd just witnessed.
Isabella — considered to be the top real-time, visual
intelligence analyst in the U.S. Air Force — stared, her
eyes opened wide in shock. She glanced at her teammates,
the other five women who comprised the Medusas, the highly
classified, and first, all-female Special Forces team in
the U.S. military. They gaped as well.
Isabella looked back at Jack and demanded, "You mean to
tell me the Germans had the shots, were greenlighted to
take them — hell, were ordered to take them — and they
didn't?"
Jack's jaw rippled. "Kat? Care to explain?"
The Medusas'sniper, Katrina Kim, a petite woman ofAsian
descent, leaned forward. In a voice so calm it had to be
masking fury at what they'd just witnessed, Kat
said, "It's called the Munich Massacre Syndrome. The
snipers spent so long watching the terrorists that they
started to see them as human beings.As people.As scared
young men. Not as targets. By the time they were ordered
to shoot the terrorists, not a single one of the snipers
could bring himself to pull the trigger."
Outrage still vibrated through Isabella's gut. "In all the
news coverage I've seen of the '72 Olympics, nobody ever
mentioned that the Germans had a chance to take out the
terrorists and save those Israeli athletes."
Jack shrugged. "You probably never saw news coverage of
Yasir Arafat's order for the assault, either, but he
admitted to it freely by the mid-1990s."
Good point. The press was by no means the purveyor of the
whole truth and nothing but the truth. She glanced at the
picture sprawled across Jack's gut. "Jeez, that was more
than a chance to stop it. That was a slam-dunk. The
Palestinians handed themselves to the Germans on a silver
platter."
"Conclusions?" Jack asked her.
The words, as dry as sawdust in her throat, wanted to
stick there, but she forced them out. "The Munich Massacre
never should have happened."
Jack nodded grimly. "That's correct. And out of this
incident came counterterrorism as a formalized training
specialty within the armed forces of most of the world's
major armies. It completely changed how snipers were
trained and deployed, and the psychological selection
criteria for snipers were heavily revised."
Isabella still reeled. It could have been prevented. A
tragic and vicious attack on a group of athletes who'd
gone to Munich to celebrate the unity of mankind in a
demonstration of the best of the human spirit. Instead,
eleven young men had been murdered in cold blood, plus
five terrorists and one policeman had died. Worse, they
could've been saved. It had been the ultimate corruption
of everything the Olympics stood for.
"Why was this covered up?" she demanded.
Jack shrugged. "I can't speak for the politicians. It
would've been pretty ugly for Germany to admit that Jews
were slaughtered on their watch again and they could've
prevented it — again. The whole idea behind taking the
Olympics to Munich in the first place was to demonstrate
that World War II was in the past."
Isabella stared at the frozen images looming on the screen
over Jack's shoulder like vengeful ghosts. A cold finger
of dread rippled down her spine. "And why did you choose
today to teach us about this syndrome?"
Jack nodded tersely at her. "Very perceptive, Adder."
Adder was her field handle. All the Medusas had nicknames
that matched the names of dangerous snakes.
Jack continued. "I have a job for you ladies." He clicked
the remote and the silver screen went blank. "It's at the
Winter Olympics next week. And it involves a girl. Her
name is Anya Khalid."
It was a soft, gray day. Desultory snow drifted down
toward the tarmac, and Isabella huddled in her white, down-
filled parka against the chill blowing across the runway.
Her ears aching from the scream of its engines, she
watched a jet pull up to a gate at the newly renovated
Lake Placid, New York International Airport.
Of course, everything about Lake Placid was newly
renovated these days. The sleepy little Adirondack town
had spent the past five years and close to a billion
dollars revamping its historic Olympic facilities for its
third Winter Games, which would begin in a few days. The
Games were also why a town of three thousand year-round
residents boasted this high-tech terminal and jet-length
runway.
With a last look around the ramp for possible threats, she
nodded at the marshaller with his orange wands and headed
for the steel door to the terminal. The ramp supervisor
opened it when she knocked and she hurried upstairs into
the main arrival area.
A cluster of Olympic officials waited in the baggage claim
area to collect incoming athletes, while several loudly
dressed resort employees waited to collect tourists coming
to watch the games. A group of camera-toting reporters
stood off to one side. Oddly, most of them were olive-
skinned. Must be a big delegation of athletes coming in on
this flight from some warm-climate country.
She had special permission to be in the relatively
deserted, ticketed passenger-only area to meet Anya and
her coach. The passengers on this flight had already
cleared customs in New York City, and they began to exit
directly off the plane and stream toward the baggage claim
area. Standing by the gate, Isabella scanned each face as
it emerged, looking for her new charge.
Anya Khalid.
Until a few months ago, not a soul outside of a local ice
skating rink in Brisbane, Australia had ever heard of her.
But now, she was undoubtedly the most well-known — and
controversial — member of the international figure skating
community. Born in the emirate of Bhoukar, a small
principality smack-dab in the center of the Arab world,
she'd had the un-mitigated gall to flaunt her country's
conservative Muslim culture and become a figure skater.
Global debate raged over whether or not that constituted
freedom of expression or a capital crime punishable by
death. Either way, she was a young lady in need of
protection from the numerous threats that had come her way
and would continue to escalate if she dared to skate at
the Olympics.
The emir of Bhoukar, an Oxford-educated religious
moderate, supported her and had authorized her to
represent Bhoukar. Although she'd been living in Australia
for a decade while her father worked there as a petroleum
engineer, her citizenship was still Bhoukari. With the
exception of a men's downhill skier nearly thirty years
ago, she was the only athlete ever to represent the tiny
country in a Winter Olympics.
But instead of embracing her, her fellow countrymen,
mostly religious conservatives, had reviled her. They
accused her of being immodest and anti-Muslim for showing
too much flesh and performing such outrageous maneuvers as
raising her leg in the air and exposing the bottoms of her
feet.
When she'd burst onto the Olympic scene six weeks ago by
finishing in the top ten at the last of the qualifying
events and earning a spot in the Winter Games, the
rhetoric had started flying. And some of it had taken on a
dark enough tone that the IOC — the International Olympic
Committee — had requested the Olympic Security Group
provide extra protection for the nineteen-year-old upon
her arrival in Lake Placid. The Medusas had been called in
to do the job in the interest of not further offending the
Muslim world by putting male bodyguards on the young
woman.
Isabella was chosen as the front woman for the team
because she spoke fluent Arabic, Anya's native tongue. Of
course, the girl probably spoke excellent English, having
practically grown up in Australia. Isabella had only seen
a handful of photos of Anya. She was a beautiful, slender
girl with black hair, doelike brown eyes, and a dancer's
carriage. Whether she would arrive today in the full black
robe and veil Bhoukari women traditionally wore in public
or merely a hijab, the head scarf preferred by more
moderate Muslims was anybody's guess.
The Medusas'reports were sketchy, but intelligence
indicated the girl came from a fairly conservative family
who'd lived a low-key lifestyle in Australia. The girl had
more freedom there than she would have had in Bhoukar —
enough to take up figure skating — but probably not
anywhere near as much freedom as a typical Australian
girl. Thankfully, Isabella knew a whole lot more about
life in conservative Muslim households than any of her
temporary bosses in the Olympic Security Group.
She shouldn't have worried about spotting Anya. As soon as
the girl appeared in the jet bridge, a swarm of reporters
rushed forward to the glass window behind Isabella and
flash-bulbs went off like strobes. The girl recoiled
beneath her red silk head scarf. Her coach, a petite,
blond Australian named Liz Cartwright, looked alarmed as
well.
Isabella stepped forward. "Welcome to Lake Placid, Ms.
Khalid, Mrs. Cartwright. My name is Isabella Torres, and
I'm here to escort you to the Olympic village."
The Australian stuck out her hand and Isabella shook it
briefly. Normally, she wouldn't tie up her hands in such a
manner while on the job, but this wasn't a high-threat
situation, and she had no authorization to use force
anyway. She'd been specifically ordered to lay low and
stay out of sight.
Technically, Isabella wasn't Anya's bodyguard. She was
merely under orders to keep an eye on the girl and steer
her away from serious threats. How had the IOC security
chairman, Manfred Schmidt of Germany, put it? "We do not
wish for the United States to act like a police state, for
that would be contrary to the spirit of these games."
"The exit's this way." Isabella turned and led them to a
revolving door. She stepped through first and nobody paid
her any heed. But when Anya and her coach passed through
the turning glass, the mob of Middle Eastern-looking
journalists descended on them.