The Skin Collector (Lincoln Rhyme 11)

One, a pretty blonde, screamed, 'Police! Down! Down on the floor! If we don't see your hands at all times, we will fire.'

Josh began to cry. Harriet and Matthew exchanged glances.

'On the ground!'

'Now!'

Other officers were moving in from the doors. More guns, more screaming.

My Lord, they were loud.

After a moment, Matthew lay down.

Harriet, though, seemed to be debating.

What the hell is she doing? Matthew wondered. 'Lie down, woman!'

The officers were screaming at her to do the same.

She looked at him with cold eyes.

He raged, 'I command you to lie down!'

She was going to get shot. Four muzzles were pointed her way, four fingers were curled around triggers.

With a look of disgust, she lowered herself to the carpet, dropping her purse. Matthew lifted an eyebrow when he noted a gun fall out. He wasn't sure what disappointed him the most - that she had been carrying a gun without his permission, or that she'd bought a Glock, an okay weapon, but one that had been made in a foreign country.

CHAPTER 67

Mention the word 'terrorism' and many Americans, perhaps most, think of radicalized Islamists targeting the country for its shady self-indulgent values and support of Israel.

Lincoln Rhyme knew, though, that those fringe Muslims were a very small portion of the people who had ideological gripes with the United States and were willing to express those views violently. And most terrorists were white, Christian card-carrying citizens.

The history of domestic terrorism is long. The Haymarket bombing occurred in Chicago in 1886. The Los Angeles Times offices were blown up by union radicals in 1910. San Francisco was rocked by the Preparedness Day bombing, protesting proposed involvement in World War One. And a horse-drawn wagon bomb outside J.P. Morgan bank killed dozens and injured hundreds in 1920. As the years went by, the political and social divisiveness that motivated these acts and others continued undiminished. In fact, the terrorist movements grew, thanks to the Internet, where like-minded haters could gather and scheme in relative anonymity.

The technology of destruction improved too, allowing people like the Unabomber to terrorize schools and academics and to evade detection for years, and with relative ease. Timothy McVeigh manufactured a fertilizer bomb that destroyed the federal building in Oklahoma City.

Presently, Rhyme knew there were about two dozen active domestic terror groups being monitored by the FBI and local authorities, ranging from the Army of God (anti-abortion), to Aryan Nations (white, nationalist neo-Nazis), to the Phineas Priesthood (anti-gay, anti-interracial-marriage, anti-Semitic and anti-taxation, among others), to small one-off, disorganized cells of strident crazies called by police 'garage bands'.

Authorities also kept a watchful eye on another category of potential terror: private militias, of which there's at least one in every state of the union, with a total membership of more than fifty thousand.

These groups were more or less independent but were joined by common views: that the federal government is too intrusive and a threat to individual freedom, lower or no taxes, fundamentalist Christianity, an isolationist stance when it comes to foreign policy, distrust of Wall Street and globalization. While not many militias put it in their bylaws, they also embrace certain de facto policies like racism, nationalism, anti-immigration, misogyny and anti-Semitism, anti-abortion and anti-LGBT.

A particular problem with the militias is that, by definition, they're paramilitary groups; they believe fervently in the second amendment ('A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed'). Which meant that they were usually armed to the teeth. Admittedly some militias aren't terrorist organizations and claim their weapons are only for hunting and self-defense. Others, such as Matthew Stanton's American Families First Council, obviously felt otherwise.

Why New York City should be a particularly juicy target Rhyme had never figured out (the militias, curiously, pretty much left Washington, DC alone). Maybe it was the other trappings of the Big Apple that appealed: gays, a large non-Anglo population, home of the liberal media, the headquarters of so many multinational companies. And maybe they felt the Rockettes and Annie carried thinly veiled socialist propaganda.

If Rhyme totaled the number of perps he'd been up against over the years, he supposed he'd rank anti-social personality disorder doers first (that is, psychos) and domestic terrorists second, far more numerous than foreign plotters or organized crime perps.

Like the couple he was about to speak to: Matthew and Harriet Stanton.

Rhyme was now on the tenth floor of the Stantons' hotel, along with officers of the NYPD Emergency Service operation. ESU had cleared the building and found no other co-conspirators. Rhyme and Sachs hadn't expected any. The hotel records indicated that only the Stantons and their son were staying here. Clearly there was one other perp - the deceased Unsub 11-5 - but there was no evidence of anyone else in New York. After Rhyme and Sachs had determined that the Stantons had been involved in the terror attack they and Bo Haumann had put together a tactical op to nail them.

The hotel manager had arranged for the elevators to bypass the tenth floor and had moved his staff elsewhere while the police evacuated the floor's legitimate guests. Then woman ESU officers donned cleaning jackets, tossed their MP-7s into laundry carts and hung around the elevator until the family showed up.

Surprise ...

Not a shot fired.