Dead Zero

INTERSECTION OF 37TH AND P

GEORGETOWN

WASHINGTON, DC

1024 HOURS

THURSDAY

Here,” said Bogier.

“Here?” said Tony.

It wasn’t really an intersection. Basically, 37th bent to the right and became P, or, if you were facing in another direction, P bent to the left and became 37th.

“It has to be,” said Bogier.

“Mick, I see a hundred other places it could be.”

“Name them. Don’t point to them, but indicate them.”

“Any of those buildings on the campus,” he said.

They were standing at the end of the wall that blocked off the public front to Georgetown University along 37th Street, the wall itself too tall to see over. But they knew what was there: several acres of campus lawn latticed with walkways and interrupted by benches, much of it shaded by the giant umbrellas of hundred-year-old trees, the whole maybe 250 yards long. From where they were, they could see an L formation of august Gothic buildings snared in vine over old stone, dormer windows, archways, whatever signifiers one can imagine indicating the solemnity of higher education. These sealed the north and west perimeters of the lawn and all faced directly or at a slight angle to the entrance, at the lawn’s southern end, of Lauinger Library, itself an outlier in newfangled, cutting-edge, hip-to-the-max architecture that would be the site of Ibrahim Zarzi’s upcoming speech before the American Foreign Policy Association. There, before assorted invitees mostly from State and the Administration, and several dozen reporters, it had been widely reported that Zarzi would make his formal announcement that indeed, he was a candidate for the presidency of Afghanistan in the fall election a few weeks off.

“Those buildings will be closed down,” said Bogier. “No way he penetrates. The lawn will be closed down; no way he gets out onto it for a shot. And, you’re not considering his skill set. He doesn’t have to penetrate because, unlike you and me, he doesn’t need a stable rest, a pedestal or bipod, a Kestrel weather station, a range finder, a computer, any of that bullshit. He’s a super-offhand guy. He’ll shoot from there,” he said, nodding to indicate where his team boy should look.

Tony took the cue and saw the end of the wall where there was just a little space between it and a perpendicular wrought-iron fence complete with a line of black shafts and spearheads. Z realized that the sniper could wedge himself into that space and on the other side of the wall get a direct line of sight to the library entrance through which Zarzi, after the speech, would waltz in triumph, wave to his fans, pose for the cameras, and begin a walk to the limousine parked out on 37th. The range would be about 250 yards.

“Ray slides in there, out comes the rifle, poof goes the suppressor, and time in flight later, Zarzi, standing at the entrance, waving to reporters, supporters, and the world, has a crater for a face.”

“Maybe he’ll crash one of those houses on the left side of Thirty-seventh. Shoot from upstairs. Has a nice angle into the library entrance.”

“Secret Service has it covered. Guys have or will have knocked on all the doors, spoken to all the people, asked them to stay away from windows during and after the speech. There’ll be countersnipers on the roofs of the Georgetown buildings. Ray knows that and he knows his best bet is to kind of scuffle into the margins of the place, real late. Like I say, to just this spot.”

“You don’t think they’ll have cops out here too?”

“Yep. They’ll have P Street sealed off and Thirty-seventh as well. No car traffic. But it doesn’t matter. You know why? Because he’s already there.”

“Already there?”

“Maybe even now,” said Bogier. “That’s how bad he wants this shot. Look over the wall on P. See what’s behind it. Looks like some woods or forest, undeveloped, just waiting for Georgetown to build its new chem lab or something. He’ll hit it tonight, slide in there in ghillie, probably up close to the wall. Then he waits. He waits through tonight, he waits through tomorrow. He waits through rain, snow, sleet, earthquakes, animal bites, bouts of depression, winning the lottery, cats and dogs living together. Thirty-six hours without a move or a sound or a shit. That’s the zen of this bastard. They’ll close this place down tomorrow, but he’s already here. They’ll run dog teams, but he’s probably perfumed up with skunk piss, so the dogs’ll steer clear. No human eye will pick him out. Tomorrow night, game time, he comes out of his hole. His move to his shooting site is probably no more than fifty feet. He has to get over a wall, no biggie to an athlete like him. He may run into a cop but he’ll be on him and kung fu him down in two seconds, he’ll slide along into that gap between the fence and the wall, the Great Man comes out, the red dot comes up, and that’s the ball game. Ray doesn’t care about getting away. Getting away isn’t a part of the plan. And it doesn’t matter if I put a hollow point into his brain a second after or if he spends the rest of his life in federal prison or rides the needle. Sergeant Ray Cruz, USMC, did his job, and by his Semper Fi code, by all that bullshit that he believes separates him from us and makes us shit to his noble goodness, that’s what’s important. It’s moral vanity, his only flaw. He’s got a code; we don’t.”

“And that’s why you hate him, Mick?”

“I don’t hate the fuck at all. I love him. I wish I was half as hung as he is. No way I’d be where he is now, not with all the shit we’ve put on his ass. I wish I could let him have his shot. I wish we could just go away. But we showed the greed, we showed the need, we have to do the deed. We took the dough, so we have to go. That’s our code. It ain’t much of one, but goddamnit, I will play it out, same as him, right to the end.”

“Where are we, Mick?”

“Do you mean philosophically? Somewhere between Housman and Xenophon.”

“No, Mick, I mean where are we space-time-location-wise. That kind of ‘Where are we?’”

Mick pivoted, but did not point.

“Down P Street, almost to Wisconsin. Remember, the cops will have it cordoned off, so there won’t be any traffic. It’ll be a straight shot to his position. We park early to get a location. We go see a movie, then we come back, slip into our war gear, and set up. We’ve pre-lased the ranges, we’ve figured the angles, there’s not supposed to be any wind tomorrow night. I’ve dialed in the scope setting, so there’s no holdover. I’ll go with the.338 instead of the.50, much easier to manipulate and shoot. I’m prone in the back, shooting through the rolled-down window. You’re next to me, on the spotting scope. You pick him out, index me into him, and when I have him on the cross, I take the slack out on him whether he’s made his move or not. Suppressor mutes our signature; the only thing anybody hears is a sonic boom six hundred yards downrange indicating nothing. I pull the rifle into the car, you scramble to the driver’s. Then we just drive away, turn left on Wisconsin, drive to Baltimore-Washington airport and catch a flight to Florida. If we have time, we dump the guns and burn the car, but it ain’t no big deal. MacGyver says all the firepower was obtained overseas for black ops and can’t be traced, and the car is registered through a maze of shipping companies, holding companies, Cayman Islands banks, Mexican rental agencies, and what have you.”

“Suppose you read him wrong, Mick. Suppose he doesn’t show or he doesn’t show at this spot.”

“He will. He doesn’t know why, but I do. He has to do the deed the sniper way. He has to complete Two-Two’s mission, make Two-Two’s shot. That’s his thing. That’s what’s driving him, subconsciously. He’ll be exactly where I say he’ll be. It’s his only shot.”

“But I’m saying a lot can go wrong. He doesn’t show. What then?”

“Well,” said Mick, “I guess we commit hari-kari on the spot.”

“Not me, Mick. Tony Z’s not that much into the samurai thing. I’ll just feel really bad for three full days, is that okay?”

“Four days,” said Mick. “Minimum.”

FBI INCIDENT COMMAND HQ

O’BRIAN CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT CENTER

BASEMENT

3614 P STREET NW

GEORGETOWN

WASHINGTON, DC

1530 HOURS

FRIDAY

I know you’re a professional, Sergeant. But let’s pretend I’m an infirm old man with short-term memory loss and I’ve forgotten we just went over this seven minutes ago. One more time, please.”

Ray looked at the FBI executive hard, at the man Swagger who was supposedly-he was still trying to wrap his mind around this one-his father, at the beautiful Asian woman who repped the Agency, who were the stars here. Meanwhile, clerks, techies, SWAT cowboys, street agents, commo people bustled about, though all vehicles were parked a mile away.

“You’re going to dump me off at Reservoir. My job is to infiltrate the mile or so down the hill, through the woods, and get to the other side of the wall that fronts P Street right at the point where P bends left to become Thirty-seventh.”

“Do you think that’s a good choice?” asked the woman. “It all turns on that choice.”

“It’s the only choice, ma’am. It’s my only shot.”

“Swagger made the choice,” said Memphis. “He said it would be his choice.”

“It was an easy read,” said Swagger.

“I get in, I wait,” continued Ray. “I’m next to the P Street wall. I’m hearing police activity outside, I know there are cops all over the place. We’re hoping we have some bad guys down P Street, closer to Wisconsin.”

“Another interpretation,” she said.

“It’s right. If I’m here, they have to be there. It’s their only shot. We’re both locked in by the geography of the site.”

“Go on.”

“I wait, I wait, I smoke a couple of cigarettes, I listen to Iron Maiden on my iPod, I watch the movie Mesa of Lost Women on my portable disc player, yadda yadda.”

“He has a sense of humor,” said Memphis. “I like that.”

“Humor deflects bullets, though it didn’t do Billy Skelton any good. Anyhow, the witching hour is 1915. At that point, I leave my hide, creep to the roadway that separates me from my shooting position at the end of the Thirty-seventh Street wall, check out the cop situation. I have to hop a wall. Maybe I can get across that roadway easy does it, on stealth, ’cause I’m a Ninja Turtle bastard from way back. Maybe I have to conk a cop. At any rate, I uncover, I move, and as I move into position, whammo, I’m hit, that is, by cops across the road. In ten seconds there are twenty cops there. I’m moving so fast Mick Bogier can’t risk a shot, he’s got no sight pic, or that’s the theory, at any rate. But he’s real into it, and he’s got Zemke spotting the action for him, he’s on me all the way. Anyhow, the cops wrestle me to the ground, a couple of cop cars pull up. I’m cuffed, surrounded by cops, and I’m dragged to the police car. I’m put in the back. And then I wait for the shot, head in profile through the back window. When he fires, I’m so fast, I can duck before it arrives.”

“Ha, ha,” said Nick.

“When I get in…” And he continued with Nick’s plan, chapter and verse, crossing all the t’s and dotting all the i’s and Swagger more or less blanked out, having heard it so many times already.

“It’s a good plan, I think,” said Nick. “But then I thought it up, so I would think it’s good. Sergeant Swagger, do you have any comments?”

“Sergeant Cruz, don’t get cute out there. You are never standing still, you are never not moving erratically. You give the motherfucker a whisper of a chance, he’ll put one right through you. And if he’s shooting a.50 or anything heavy, the body armor don’t mean a thing.”

“I get it,” said Cruz.

“You better get it. I’ll kick your ass if you don’t.”

“My ass will be dead if I don’t.”

“Don’t matter. I’ll kick it anyway.”

Cruz just shook his head at the man’s intransigence. Once a sergeant, always a sergeant, no matter what.

“I know you’d feel better if you had your rifle, Cruz,” Nick finally said. “But you know we can’t play it like that.”

“Sure,” said Cruz. “I’ll play your little game, even if it sucks. Me, I’d just call in a Pred and order up a Paveway Two crater. But your game is the only game in town.”

INFILTRATION ROUTE

RESERVOIR ROAD TO P STREET

GEORGETOWN

WASHINGTON, DC

1600 HOURS

The van pulled to the extreme southern edge of the woodland behind the Georgetown University Hospital parking lot. It halted for just a second, and Ray slipped out, crossed a walkway, launched himself over a low brick wall, and found himself on a wooded downslope that ultimately would bring him to the intersection of P and 37th with its interesting geometry of walls, trees, open shots across the green to the library entrance, the FBI trap, and a meet with Mick Bogier on the wrong end of a rifle.

Though encumbered by his ghillie suit and Kevlar body armor, he was unarmed, as per agreement. Through the trees ahead, he could catch glimpses of the twin Gothic spires that were the university’s contributions to the skyline. He oriented on them, followed the incline, listening intently for human sounds, reasonably sure that in this twilight his slow movement and camouflage kept him invisible to whoever would be out here in this inaccessible parcel of undeveloped slope.

As he moved, he could not help but consider.

The story was simple. Swagger said it came from late-arriving NIS witness accounts. Someone in the Navy’s investigative service, prodded by the FBI, had finally tracked down an elderly couple who knew Tomas and Urlinda Cruz on Subic Bay Naval Station in the late sixties and early seventies. The same investigator also found two other couples who had corroborated the story.

The story: Tomas and Urlinda had widely lamented their childlessness, particularly now that Tomas had retired and wouldn’t be at sea anymore, and was running the Navy’s Special Services department at a salary that by Philippine standards was quite generous. He grew restive; he could play golf, go to Europe, visit with his wife’s relatives for only so long. They began to actively look into adoption.

But after Tet, with the upheaval in Saigon, he and Urlinda disappeared for a month. When they came back, they had a three-month-old baby, and the story they told, lame as it was, was widely accepted: Urlinda had taken some fertility drugs, the two had gone to Australia for medical care, the child was born prematurely, and now they were back home. An Australian birth certificate validated the process, and so Reyes Fidencio Cruz was accepted as the natural son of Tomas and Urlinda Cruz, of such and such an address in the rather nice residential section of the vast naval installation, really a small American city in the islands.

But State Department records had no mention of a trip to Australia. Instead, as an intrepid investigator found out, the Cruzes had gone to Saigon in the immediate aftermath of Tet. There, the inference was, they had been able to locate a black market mixed-race white-Asian baby for sale. They asked no questions, and even if they had, there would have been no answers. Presumably the aftermath of a major battle with massive civilian casualties would produce a bumper crop of babies for sale. The birth certificate, its fraudulence easily penetrated by the NIS investigators, must have been part of the deal, and in those days, who really cared? The Cruzes were happy, and the boy Ray grew up smart and lithe and quick, taking instantly to his dual heritage of American and Filipino, perhaps representing the best of both countries.

And that was the story Ray himself believed in until the man who called himself Ray’s biological father told him another.

According to Swagger, he was back in country on combat tour number two. Already a superstar marine NCO with one spectacular tour behind him, he had returned as a loaner to the Central Intelligence Agency’s SOG operation, the OSS of Vietnam, as it were, staffed by the best and the brightest and the bravest American NCOs and junior officers, most from Special Forces, some from the marines, some from the SEALs. Swagger made it sound like a KP detail, scrubbing pots away into the night. But Ray knew that SOG operators were incredibly brave men; they were the commando elite, going on long missions into Laos; they ambushed supply trains, they dared the VC to come out and fight; they did their share and much more. But on one mission, Sergeant Swagger had been wounded, and sent to Saigon for recuperation.

There he met and fell in love with one Tien Dang, the eldest daughter of Colonel Nguyen Thanh Dang, of the 13th Airborne Rangers, ARVN. It wasn’t your wartime hayroll at all. He met her parents, he explained his prospects, he formally proposed and married her. He went to great lengths to arrange a visa so she could accompany him to the States when his tour was over; but the paperwork proved difficult, so he extended his tour and made arrangements for her to give birth in the naval hospital.

It all fell apart at Tet. Swagger was in Laos, leading what was called a hatchet platoon, whose mission was to serve as a blocking force into which other units would drive main force VC and North Vietnamese formations for heavy engagement. It was dangerous, productive work, and many believed that SOG showed how the war should have been fought and how it could have been won. But Swagger wasn’t able to get back to Saigon for a month and when he did, the Dang neighborhood had been occupied by VC regulars and bombed out. Few survivors. No records. He never knew if she had the child or not before the war came and crushed everything.

The rest was unsaid, reconstructed by Ray as he slid through the darkening woods on his way to the wall at P. He inferred that Swagger lost his wife and child in Vietnam, and tried to imagine the anger and the bitterness and the sense of loss it would create. And maybe that’s why he’d trained so hard to come back as a sniper and why he pushed himself so hard up in Indian country, and why he made war upon the enemy like few in the whole decade’s doomed venture; and maybe that explained the twenty years of drunken, bitter solitude that followed before the man reinvented himself and somehow, some way, found a path back into the world, DEROS at last.

Swagger had insisted on a DNA test, but knew it to be so: he said, in certain lights, with a certain hard set of his features as viewed from a certain angle, Ray looked so much like his own father, Earl, it was a little startling. The way he carried his head, his hands, the way he squinted when he thought, his refusal to show anger, excitement, elation, anything at all with anything other than a dry chuckle and a wisecrack. All Earl, as Earl as any man could be, far more Earl than Bob.

Fine for him, Ray thought. But what about me? Who am I? Am I American, Bob’s son, Earl’s grandson, am I Filipino, Tomas’s son, or am I, all of a sudden, Vietnamese?

Then he realized who he was: he was, taking after his father, sniper all the way through.

UNIDENTIFIED CONTRACTOR TEAM

P STREET, JUST ABOVE WISCONSIN

GEORGETOWN

WASHINGTON, DC

2030 HOURS

They’d seen a movie. It sucked. They went to a massage parlor. It sucked. They had a nice dinner. It sucked. They’d taken a cab back to Georgetown. It sucked. They were nervous. It sucked. Now, crouched in the darkened car on the quiet street, two blocks east of the police barricade that cut off P as it headed to the bend in the road that turned it to 37th, they pulled on body armor over black tactical pants and shirts. They pulled on watch caps tight, covering the ears.

“Almost fucking done,” said Tony Z.

“Z, listen up. If I’m hit, don’t do anything stupid like coming back for me, or hanging around to give cover fire. Once we put this asshole down, it’s ejection time and if you have to go one way while I go another, that’s fine. If you make it and I don’t, that’s fine. We’ll link in Miami.”

“Nothing’s going to happen, Mick. We pop him, the fuckhead cops wonder what the hell that sonic boom is, we drive to the airport, we leave a timer in the car so it goes bang tomorrow at noon, we fly away. The gardener finds him stuffed between the fence and the wall a few weeks from now. What the hell is that? everybody wonders. Who did Ray Cruz? Meanwhile, you and me, it’s twenty-four/seven pussy, dope, and gin for a year or so. And here’s the best part: the fucking universe was falling apart, the struts that hold it all together were cracking, we did our job, we lived up to our calling. What else is there? It sure beats teaching high school English or selling software programs.”

“It does. Just so you know, you and Carl, you guys are the best I ever worked with. Too bad about him, but I’ll be on your six o’clock any time you need it, bro.”

“Same here, Adonis.”

“Now let’s do this sucker.”

They slid back to the rear of the SUV. The spotting scope and the.338 Lapua Magnum, a Sako TRG-42 with a big-ass chunk of Nightforce glass up top, were already in place. They squirmed into position, and Tony Z worked himself to the scope, fiddled with it, while Mick set to rifle business.

“Wait,” said Bogier. “Run a check on the BlackBerry on Swagger. See where he is. That might come in handy.”

“You got it,” said Tony. He rolled to his back, pulled the BlackBerry out of the pocket of his tactical vest, then squirmed back over and turned it on. Magically, a grid of the streets where they were operating opened up, and in a few seconds, the small, beeping light that always announced the satellite’s astronomical opinion on the presence of Planet Swagger came to life.

“Yeah, he’s on-site. He’s at the library. That must be their command HQ.”

“Good,” said Bogier. “If they were on to anything, he’d be down here in this area. We got it locked. I am filled with confidence. The mission is a big go.”

“Okay, Swagger’s moving, not much, but there’s motion.” Tony looked at his watch. “Good, that means the speech is over, now Swagger knows it’s the moment of maximum danger, and he’s moving close to Zarzi.”

“Go to scope, bro.”

Tony put his eye back to the spotter. He saw the stone wall, an upslope of grass to it, the perpendicular wrought-iron fence, a sidewalk into the campus, another outpost of fence, then the driveway that presumably led to parking lots. Two cops stood together, talking casually, about thirty yards down 37th, their backs to the driveway and gate. It was six hundred yards out, and by now, it had darkened considerably. The range was too far for night vision, but the optics gave excellent resolution and there was enough ambient light from the campus lights and the buildings across 37th Street to illuminate the scene for him.

“I’ve got a good visual.”

“Me too,” said Bogier.

The rifle was a phantasmagoria of modern accuracy tricks, with a free-floating barrel, its action bedded and sunk into a green plastic stock that had accuracy enhancements 1 through 233, including a rigid pistol grip, a bolt grip the size of a golf ball, and infinitely adjustable potential, whole pieces and sides and hemispheres that could be adjusted inward and outward just so. It looked like a piece of plastic plumbing put together by a drunken committee of clowns, but it fit like a glove, and riding its bipod, Mick brought it readily to hand, eye, supporting elbow. The muzzle of the suppressor projected just slightly from the rear opening and the windows of the vehicle were so blackened that you’d suspect a sniper only if you were looking for a sniper.

Through the scope, which was set at a modest 6 power, Mick could see exactly what Tony saw, only smaller. But there was no jiggle, no wobble, no irritating tremble matched to his breathing, which is the great advantage of the lower magnification.

“I am so locked on,” said Mick. “I can feel my heartbeats, I can feel my atoms shifting. Man, I am in a zen wave you would not believe.”

“Me too, brother. Yes.”

“Any second now,” Mick said, and both understood the time for chatter was over.

They waited. It sucked. They waited. It sucked. They waited. It sucked.

“Uh!” said Tony, a little peep to his voice. “I have him. Jesus Christ, he just leaned out from around the iron fence at the entrance to the parking lot. You read it so right, Mick! He’s twenty feet from his shooting position.”

“Cops, do you see cops?”

“They’re looking the wrong way, assholes. He’s trying to decide whether to conk them, then go to the wall gap, or just go anyway, hoping they don’t turn.”

“I got him, damnit, he keeps pulling out and back in, I don’t have enough of him long enough to shoot.”

“You cool?”

“Like the hand of death, man. Just let him move, stay stable, and bingo, we got him.”

Then the sniper emerged. He dipped across the entryway to the driveway, huddled at the foot of the separation between it and the walkway.

“He’s going along the fence. Then he’ll curve back into the gap. I’ll take him when he’s in place. I don’t want to shoot through the fence.”

“You cool?”

“I’m coolly cool, boy. High times ahead.”

They could both see the sniper ease forward, but the problem was the wrought iron. From this extreme angle, the gaps between the metal would be tiny, and to risk a shot through them foolish. Let him slide along, get into position, and then whack him.

“He’s almost-”

The lights cut into the scene like a madman’s stab. The beams leapt from nothingness from the near building roof, three, four of them, crucifying the crawling sniper next to the wrought-iron fence. From nowhere it seemed, men rose from bush and from ground and closed the distance in split seconds. They had shotguns leveled and someone was screaming, if indistinctly, from this far out.

“Goddamnit! It was a fucking trap! Swagger must have set it up! Goddamnit!” screamed the angry Tony. “Oh fuck fuck fuck fuck fu-”

“Stay on the scope. Maybe when they move him, I’ll get the shot. Be cool, goddamnit, be cool.”

“They’ve got him now. Six of them. They’re on him. Shit.”

One of the cops broke away from the struggle and was talking on a hand unit. In seconds, a squad car, its lights beaming red-white pulses into the night, pulled around a corner a block down, and raced to the scene. It halted, and two cops got out.

“Okay, he goes in the car. Stay on him,” said Mick. “I’m orienting on the car. Talk to me, talk to me.”

“They’ve got him, man, he’s fighting hard, oops, they knocked him down, he’s cuffed, oh yeah, now they’re dragging his ass to the car, I can’t even see him there are so many cops on him, okay, they’ve got him there, pushing his head down, opening door, in he goes-”

“Dead zero,” said Mick.

He had him. Cruz’s head was silhouetted perfectly in the rear car window, the scene well lit by the pulse of the police lights. Mick more or less oozed through a slight correction, placing the exact and motionless intersection of the crosshairs onto the center of the head, knowing the.338 would not deviate an inch as it plowed through the glass so much more powerfully than a.308, and when it hit it would splatter whatever organic lay at the end of its long journey and in that moment of perfect truth and clarity, his finger independently squeezed gently into the trigger and he fired.

LAUINGER LIBRARY

GRESHAM AUDITORIUM

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY

WASHINGTON, DC

2115 HOURS

He had them. Of course. They were eager to be had. They believed so urgently, so earnestly, so passionately.

“Finally,” Ibrahim Zarzi said, “finally, I speak of honor. It is not much spoken of these days. It is an old-fashioned virtue that belongs, it is said, in books about Camelot or Baghdad during the great years of the caliphate. It is the bond between men of good faith, goodwill, and lion hearts that supercedes creeds, religions, sects, units, parties, any artificial human grouping you can name. It is not between groups, it is between men.

“Thus, standing up here in the blaze of lights, I do not see a group called ‘American diplomats’ and ‘policy intellectuals.’ I do not see uniforms, clothes, hair styles, skin colors. I do not see sexes. I see other men, and you will forgive an old fellow for not, briefly, indulging in the politically correct gender blur. The women in this room are men also, in that they are fierce warriors committed in the end to a world at peace, where the letters IED do not stand for improvised explosive device but for ice educational development, and those employing it work hard to improve the world’s figure skating until even we Muslims can do a triple axel!”

He waited for the laughter to subside, luxuriating in the waves of love that washed upon him.

“As I say, this can only happen if men have honor among themselves. I look, I see men of honor. I see my new friend Jackson Collins who oversees his Agency’s efforts in my country; I see my new friend Theodore Hollister who supervises all, I see Arthur Rossiter, sublime of countenance, yet as fierce a warrior as there is. And finally I see Walter Troy, who makes sure that what must happen happens. These are men I love and respect. They believe in my country and in its future. They understand that our two nations and our two cultures must embrace and entwine and learn from each other. They understand that the trust between men is what holds us together and enables us to reach out and overcome our tiny, negligible differences, and in the words of your great moral reformer, overcome. One day we shall overcome, I swear it, my friends, my honorable friends, I swear it on my honor.”

His eyes brimmed with a fervor that took the shape of tears, and the tears drained sweetly down his face.

“And thus it is my pleasure, my duty, my responsibility, but above all required by my honor that I declare myself a candidate for the presidency of my country and I will return on Sunday to begin to run to capture the hearts, the souls, the minds, and the love of my countrymen. Thank you, Americans, for showing me, a much fallen sinner, the path back to honor!”

The diplomats, normally staid men with dry eyes and the demeanor of undertakers, rose in unison to clap thunderously.

UNIDENTIFIED CONTRACTOR TEAM

CORNER, P STREET AND WISCONSIN

GEORGETOWN

WASHINGTON, DC

2119 HOURS

Dead center,” said Tony. “Bing-fucking-go! Home run, three-pointer, goaallllll! Now let’s-”

“Shit,” said Mick. “I hit a fucking TV. I saw it shatter. It’s a fucking trap.”

His bullet had struck the center of what was supposed to be Cruz’s head, but wasn’t. He realized, from the momentarily unperturbed image of Cruz sitting immobile after the hit, which a second later disappeared in a shattering collapse of transparent plastic and the sparks of electrical damage, that he’d drilled some kind of screen displaying a prerecorded image of Cruz sliding into the car and taking a seat.

From side streets along the five blocks of P to the target zone, heavy SUVs gunned into view, cranked east hard, and ramrodded at them.

It seemed that a fucking convention of special operators also began to spill out of bushes left and right with all the world’s collection of submachine guns and black rifles, and spotlights came on them, as an amplified voice rose from an indeterminate point and said, “In the SUV, show us your hands, you are surrounded, this is the FBI.” Choppers whirled in low overhead, sending their own beams of illumination down to penetrate through the elms above. The world had instantly gone to war.

Mick slapped Tony hard on the shoulder.

“Okay, son,” he said. “Let’s show these motherfuckers a thing or two.”

“Hoochie mama,” said Tony. “It’s the big rodeo!”

Mick picked up his MP5, lying next to the big Sako sniper rifle, thrust its snout out the open rear window, and with one strong hand emptied a long burst into the darkness at the nearest men, watched them fly or drop. He heard Tony Z’s M4 empty itself of thirty.223s in less than two seconds and saw the lead SUV vibrate in tune to his multiple hits as it veered left, hit something hard, veered right, and totaled itself and the car it creamed, blocking P street.

“Great shooting!” yelled Mick.

The night became magical with havoc. Their own vehicle began to shiver as bullets hit it, metallic clangs ringing in protest at each penetration. It sank on quickly flattened tires. The windows smeared with a spidery webbing of fissure and crack as the bullets sheared through them, holding for a bit, but as more came, one, then another atomized into a spray of shiny sparkles.

Mick got out first, left-hand side, curbside, as bullets plowed into the grass around him, kicking up superheated puffs of vegetable protein. He squeezed close to the car, seeking what little cover was available in its lee, as Z squirmed out next, fast and awkward. Mick saw targets, he gunned targets. He saw another SUV having squirmed around the wreckage and come down the sidewalk, he put his sight on it and lit it up, watched it waver as junk and shit flew off it, and then it collided with a tree and came to rest on its side. More lights came on, but Mick and Tony firing in a stack, one on top of the other in classic SWAT formation, each emptying a magazine at fast movers and vehicles with signs of motion in them, which seemed to drive back the agents. None of the badges wanted to be the only guy to die.

The shooting was fabulous, all you could want in the mad psycho surge of the moment, it was Heat, The Wild Bunch, The Dogs of War, the North Hollywood bank robbery, Babyface going hard at the FBI gunners, his tommy gun blazing, all of them, all at once, a world gone spastically into chaos and mayhem. Flashes danced at muzzles, the smokeless powder spurted its intoxicant, a devil’s cologne so potent that the hair inside the nose became erect with pleasure, while the spent shells flew in a blur, like insects spiraling from the hive, the recoil was satisfyingly stern but not stout, and over that drama another one played out, the drama of men falling, windows shattering, cars veering, dust flying, things breaking, the fan exploding as the shit hit it by the ton.

Mick rushed through a mag change.

“You guys want a little war?” he screamed. “Okay, motherfuckers, we’re gonna have us a little war, and guess what, we like war!”

Tony laughed. It was, really, mercenary heaven. It was all that mercs dreamed about, when they were honest with themselves. It was the final big ride with the devil, firepower, destruction, a great deal of ammo, an enemy who expected you to fold and was not at all anticipating World War Three here in sedate Georgetown.

“You good?” asked Mick, completing his reload.

Tony got a new mag into the carbine.

“I am so good,” he said. “Man, am I good. I just wish Crackers was here.”

Mick reached into his pocket, pulled out a handful of Dexies, and swallowed them dry. They banged off in his head like illumination rounds hitting stainless steel. Man, was he jacked. Fucking A, he was crazed with war lust.

He saw Tony swallow his share of the magic pills, and each flashed the other a cocky fuck-the-world grin, all macho death wish and lust, maybe the last look that passed between Matix and Platt behind the Suniland shopping center in Dade County, 1986, or maybe the Delta snipers Shughart and Gordon at Black Hawk UH-60’s crash site in Mogadishu in 1993.

“Let’s kill some assholes,” said Tony.

Both rose, firing. Their rounds, splaying out in the night, plowed up debris, stucco, splinters, atomized glass, steel shrapnel, turning the weather to a 100 percent chance of death. They ran across somebody’s front yard, while incoming rounds pulled up turf geysers all around them. A bullet smacked Tony down, but it was stopped by his armor, and he was up in a second, laughing at the wit of it all.

“Fucking guy thought he had me!” he said. “What a loser.”

They got between houses.

Mick, changing magazine again, blinking to wipe the sweat from his eyes, looked up to see a little girl peering down on him through a window.

“Down, down, honey,” he gestured wildly.

She smiled.

He smiled back, winked, and made the “get down” signal once again, and this time she obeyed.

“Good to go?” asked Z.

“Cocked, locked, hung like a stud horse, ready to rock, roll, and die proud and loud.”

“I am so psyched,” said Tony Z. “Man, this is so Heat!”

“It’s the Auburn game all over again,” laughed Mick. “Roll, Tide! Okay, on my lead, I’m reckoning we’ll head to Wisconsin where we can really do some damage.”

“Go on, you lazy bastard,” said Tony.

They ran between houses, one with the MP5, the other with his M4, two armored, hulking terminators crazed on drugs and destruction, sweaty and doomed and loving every motherfucking second of it.

FBI INCIDENT COMMAND HQ

O’BRIAN CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT CENTER

CORNER, 37TH AND P STREET

GEORGETOWN

WASHINGTON, DC

2142 HOURS

Nick had gone to the scene, in full body armor.

All around, people talked on commo, coordinating incoming SWAT units, the air traffic overhead, the pileup of emergency vehicles, all of it made crazier by the Secret Service need to get its high-value target securely out of the way fast.

“I told him these guys wouldn’t go easy,” said Swagger.

“Jesus, get me a rifle, I need to get there,” said Cruz.

“You stay put, Cruz. You’re going nowhere,” said Swagger in a voice that meant exactly what it said.

They could hear: “Suspects crossing Wisconsin, firing both directions. They are shooting up storefronts, they shot the windows out of a bus, there are people down everywhere, we need maximum medical personnel-” And then Nick’s voice coming in, “This is Incident Commander, no, repeat no, negative medical personnel to move to site until suspects are apprehended, I will convey that information.”

“This is DC SWAT commander, I have ten armed men good to go at the corner of Wisconsin and N, I need permission to deploy. Incident Commander, may I-”

“Hold still, DC SWAT, we have two active shooters, they are difficult to pin down.”

“Incident Commander, this is Air Six, I have a good visual and a sniper aboard, permission to fire?”

“If you get him, take him, but be advised these individuals appear to be wearing body armor, so I am advising head shots, and if they are down, I am advising snipers to take brain shots on the body before approach.”

“Maneuvering for shot, Incident Commander-Oh, he fired, I think he-” and the helicopter crew report exploded into chaos.

“This is Whipshot Four, I have one suspect down, I have the other suspect entered into convenience store, 2955 Wisconsin, I think he’s going to barricade.”

“Was that your shot, Air Six?”

“Affirmative, that was my shot,” and Swagger recognized the voice of Ron Field, who had been involved in another event with Swagger some years back and ended up in charge of the FBI’s sniper school.

“Good shooting, Ronnie, now listen to me, from maximum allowable altitude, I want you to put another one into his head. All units hold, let the sniper make sure the perp is closed down.”

“Read you, Command, will comply.”

The airwaves, still floating with static and crackle and dust, went silent for a few seconds and then a single crack went to all receivers.

“He’s toast,” came a call, then a dozen other confirmations.

“Good work, Ronnie,” said Nick. “All teams converge on 2955 Wisconsin, we have a barricade situation. I’m releasing medical personnel to handle casualties on or near the five-block P Street corridor, but everyone else not in a SWAT team, stay off Wisconsin. DC SWAT, you are released to barricade position, 2955 Wisconsin, FBI SWAT be advised DC SWAT is incoming. We have a very dangerous individual.”

“This guy thinks he’s got the Bruce Willis role,” someone said.

HERE-4-FOOD

2955 WISCONSIN AVENUE

LOWER GEORGETOWN

WASHINGTON, DC

1943 HOURS

Z was down. So much shit was in the air you’d never know who fired the shot. But he lay in the street, squirming, his carbine a few feet away, in a vast lake of blood. Still, he was trying to rise, and he kept waving at Mick, go back, go back, mouthing the word no even if blood had frosted his teeth and goatee.

Then the head shot blew his watch cap off, and he was still and that was it.

“Via con dios, amigo,” Mick said, and felt a knife of pain that another good guy in a firefight had departed the earth. He took a deep breath, looked one way up Wisconsin, then the other. Each was a festival of blue-red flashes, and behind the screen of pulsing illumination, figures ducked and bobbed, dark men, bent double over their weapons, trying to find an angle to get the killing shot. Mick had been hit four times in the chest and lower back, the body armor saving him each time. He knew he couldn’t stay put. Snipers, not the most mobile, would have finally caught up to the front lines and this very second be setting up over car hoods for the brain shot. As it was, rogue bullets pecked up dust puffs down the street, zinged through the glass windows of this place, shot up and withered the cars parked along the street. He could see creepers in the shadows trying to get close for that finishing round.

Fuck all you amateurs, he thought. SWAT! Wannabes and never-weres. Do it where it’s real, motherfuckers, where an IED may take you down any second or the nice lady selling pop will pull out an AK. Do it where the guy with the mild smile on his face and the gentle, empathetic eyes says Allah Akbahr and detonates himself and all pilgrims in a hundred-foot circumference. Hunt the motherfuckers on goat paths and in twisted arroyos and in little mud and wood towns where an RPG can turn you to barbecue at any fucking second. Lie in your own shit and piss for three days for a high-value shot. Raid the cave by moonlight, taking fire all the way to extract. Then tell me you’re a pro.

He turned, kicked his way into the store.

At first it seemed empty. But he ran to the rear counter, where four people cowered, one on top of the other.

“Hey,” he said. “I’ll take a six of Bud and a package of Camels. Also, got any 9-mil hollow points?”

He laughed at his own joke through cracked, dry lips, though his face was heavily wet with sweat, blood, crap, whatever. He caught a glimpse of himself in the reflection of the beer-cooler glass, a stocky figure in all black, watch cap low over the ears, face mottled, the subgun cradled in his hands, body armor, a SIG P226 in a mid-thigh tac holster, black Danner assault boots bloused, mags in pouches everywhere. God, he was beautiful. He was war. He was Special Ops. He was Forces. He was the Real Thing. Nobody could stand up to him. Then he completed his turn, lifted his submachine gun over the racks of shelves that stood between himself and the door and windows, and fired the rest of his magazine in a sweeping blast that shattered all the glass into a spew of glitter until only a few jagged pieces clung to the frame.

He bent over. One of the women was a blonde, blondes are best. He came around, grabbed her by her hair, and pulled her up. He saw she was forties, attractive, the Washington party dame type, and he yanked her to the doorway of the walk-in beer cooler.

“You people,” he yelled at the ones who remained cowering behind the counter. “You people, get the fuck out of here, make sure you go out hands up or these assholes will shoot you. I want to see the head FBI guy. Fast, or Diane Sawyer here gets it in the neck.”

He pulled the woman by the hair into the vault and felt the frosty air against his sweating skin. He began to steam. That was funny. He dragged her to the rear, and forced her down.

“Please,” she said, her face gone to dumb fear, “I have children.”

He laughed. “So do I. About fifty. I just don’t know any of them. Here, have a beer.” He pulled a big can from the shelf, and leaned over and handed it to her. It was a Sapporo, very good beer. Then he got one for himself, kicked her forward, and scootched down behind her, so that the wall was at his back and she was between him and anyone coming through the door. He locked his armored legs around her pelvis, drawing her near. He tossed the MP5 away, pulled her toward him, tight, intimate, sexual, and took out his SIG P226. He cocked the hammer, and laid his wrist along her shoulder so that the pistol muzzle nonchalantly touched her ear.

“Tell you what,” he said. “I’m real close on you and you’re thinking sex. That’s your primal fear. But I won’t do anything dick-wise, okay? I may kill you, sweetie, but I won’t rape you, so you can relax. Now open my beer.”

He handed the can to her with his other hand. She struggled with it, her fingers shaking, shivering with hysterical sobbing, but somehow got it open and handed it back.

He took a deep swallow, and lord, was it not the finest slug of beer he’d ever had in his life?

“Boy,” he said, “did I have a tough day at the office!”

Again he laughed at his own bad joke. Then they sat for a few minutes, listening as various forces and entities got things organized outside.

In time, the beer-cooler door opened.

“Bogier?”

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”

“Bogier, I’m Memphis, FBI. You don’t need to do this. Let that woman go. It’s not like you to put someone untargeted at risk. You’re a pro.”

“She’ll get a book contract out of it and do the talk shows for a year. She’ll become a star on that fat-black-chick TV show. She’s in better shape by far than you or me, Memphis.”

The woman shivered. Mick had finished his beer. He pointed at the one he’d given her, which had rolled a few inches away from her leg. She grabbed it obediently, opened it, and handed it back.

“Thanks, sweetie,” he said. “Now just close your eyes and think of the happiest day of your life. When you got married. The birth of little Nicholas von Featherstone the Third. When you got that big divorce settlement. When you hit the putt on the eighteenth at Burning Tree to edge out Jennifer Tilden for the club bitch championship. Whatever, just think of it and it’ll be over in a few minutes.”

He took another swig.

“Bogier, you’re not walking. You know that. No immunity, not after Baltimore and the Filipinos plus all the dead cops out there. But I’ll get you off the needle, get you a good joint, maybe conjugals, no butt sex from the Blackstone Rangers. Give her up, give it up, walk out, testify against the assholes who put you here, everybody’s happy.”

“Sounds pretty crappy to me. I want a window, goddamnit. A guaranteed window and a cell next to Dr. Lecter.”

He laughed again.

“Now I’ll tell you the name of the game we’re playing. It’s called, ‘Will Mick blow Lady Astor’s brains out?’ I think she’s the wife of somebody important. This would be a very dark mark on your record, Memphis.” He laughed again, at his own twisted, drug-cranked humor. Everything was pretty goddamned funny.

“Okay, here’s the game. I want Cruz. Get his ass over here, send him through the door. Then Mrs. van Jackson gets to go home to her husband, the third assistant secretary of agriculture and mineral rights. I get Cruz, you get Lady Plushbottom. Oh, and do it fast. Like, say, in three minutes. Or I blow her fucking head off, and come out shooting, and in case you haven’t noticed, I shoot very well and I will take a lot of SWAT bozos with me to hell. Nothing but head shots. Any trace of tear gas or immobilization chemistry and Lady Winthrop decorates a convenience store beer cooler with her cerebellum tissue and I know whose career goes into the dipsy Dumpster. Get me Cruz!”

FBI SUV ALPHA 6

EN ROUTE

INCIDENT COMMAND TO HERE-4-FOOD

LOWER GEORGETOWN

2046 HOURS

The driver pressed it. He careened the wrong way down one-way streets, roared through power turns riding the brakes against the laws of gravity and physics, went to sidewalk blowing out shrubbery and small trees where emergency medical vehicles blocked the streets.

Outside, Washington gone to war sped past the windows: medics working on the wounded, gurneys, plasma units everywhere, men in battle gear with tense faces, lots of throat mikes in play, the roar of low-flying choppers, more guns than at the NRA annual meeting, all of it a kind of eternal D-Day in the half dark.

“I see where this is going,” Bob said in the backseat. “He still wants his kill. Cruz, you do not have to do this. You don’t have to do any heroic thing, do you hear me? Enough is enough.”

Cruz said nothing. He was hunched in the front seat, breathing imperceptibly, his dark face tense and sweaty, his eyes gimlet slits. He gave no indication of having heard Swagger.

It seemed to take an eternity, but they reached the convenience store on Wisconsin, its windows shot out, fire trucks and ambulances standing by, a fleet of first-responder vehicles everywhere except the route out of which they’d been hastily pulled to admit the SUV. The lighting was intensified, the shards of glass everywhere seemed to pick up and reflect that already intense wave of illumination. Again, Kevlar-clad, helmeted commandos everywhere, crouching, weapons loose and ready, on balls of feet, with that go-to-war vibe so heavy in the air you could feel it.

As Swagger and Cruz bailed out, agents flew at them like butlers to push them into Kevlar vests and helmets, and they slid through the shattered doors, over glass and a thick gunk of soda, beer, cereal, canned peaches, gobs of yogurt, melting ice-cream lumps, burritos, cigarette cartons, squished doughnuts, a whole food fight on the floor, debris from the fusillade Mick had fired when he entered. A SWAT team, the Bureau’s very best guys, all stacked up and ready for Armageddon, crouched against one wall. Nick and a fleet of commo assistants with radios up the ass were just off the entrance to the cooler, whose door was jammed open.

Swagger could see more evidence that Bogier knew what he was doing. The beer cooler: genius touch. No sniper could go for the head, nobody could flank, and a pro like Bogier wouldn’t be fazed in the least by flash-bangs or any other distractors. There was only one way in.

Nick frantically gestured them over.

“Okay,” he said, whispering hoarsely into Cruz’s ear, “here’s what it is. He has a hostage, some poor woman who happened to be in here. He says if you don’t go in, he’ll shoot her in the head and come out blazing. It’s your call, Cruz. No man would say a thing if you say no. I have to tell you, your survivability in there is slim to nothing.”

“I hear you.”

“Memphis, you can’t send him in there, goddamnit,” Swagger yelled. “Bogier just wants his kill and he’ll check out happy.”

“It’s his choice,” said Nick. “Say the word, Cruz, and I’ll send SWAT in behind a wall of flash-bangs. Maybe he’s bluffing, maybe he’s out of ammo, maybe in the end he can’t drop the hammer on some innocent woman, and he goes down like Jimmy Cagney and it’s a happy ending.”

“You can’t blow the vault?” said Swagger. “Come in from the outside?”

“Old building, thick walls. Enough explosive to get through the walls would kill them.”

“Where’s my little friend?” screamed Bogier from inside. “I want to see my little friend. We served together in Afghanistan, did you know? We’re war buddies!” and his shout ended in a dry, harsh laugh, the laugh of a man who had the pedal on the metal and knew that his long-dreamed-of movie ending was just a second away.

“It’s bitch-whacking time if little Ray doesn’t come through that door,” he yelled again. “Ka-pow, it’s the end of Chatsworth Osborne’s mother. I know Cruz is here. I heard the car arrive.”

Ray stood, peeled off his body armor, tossed the stupid fucking Kevlar helmet away.

“Okay,” he said, “I’m going in.” He turned to Swagger. “Sorry, old guy. A world where she dies so I can survive isn’t a world I choose to live in.”

He turned.

“Bogier, hold fire. This is Cruz. I’m coming in.”

Bob reached out to touch his son, thinking, irrationally but helplessly, No, it’s not right, I just found him, and feeling a surge of pain and fear from a well so deep he never suspected it was there, but then Ray dipped in and was gone.

This was the worst hell of war, Swagger thought. He’d shot and been shot at, killed with blade, slithered in fear, ridden himself to exhaustion, seen boys following on his orders blown to pieces, been hit hard a half dozen times, felt the fear when the blood pooled out in lakes, ceaselessly, felt panic, begged God for life, clenched tight as incoming blasts searched him out, seen human wave attacks, done it all. But nothing was worse than sending a son off to die. He started, very quietly, to cry.

BEER COOLER

HERE-4-FOOD

2955 WISCONSIN AVENUE

LOWER GEORGETOWN

WASHINGTON, DC

2048 HOURS

Cruz could see nothing at first. For some reason, a light fog lay across the cooler. All he saw was shoulder-high shelves and a glittery display of world beers. But he heard the breathing, followed it to its point of origin. Peering around a last shelf, he saw Bogier and the woman in a twisty heap against the back wall.

The woman’s face had gone to stupor. She had given up and seemed barely conscious. Bogier had her in a tight wrap, his legs clamped around her pelvis. The SIG, cocked, was an inch from her ear. Bogier leaned out from behind her head, and Cruz saw him for the first time: an astonishingly handsome man, with a somewhat grown-out thatch of blond hair, rugged, wide-boned face, thin cheeks under the bed-knob bones, and fierce or crazed warrior eyes.

“Bogier, let her go, goddamnit. She’s-”

“Shut up, junior, this is my dance, I paid the band.”

Ray froze, felt Bogier’s eyes on him.

“For so much trouble, you’re a scrawny rat. Goddamn you, if I’d have been a microsecond faster three separate times, you’d be among the permanently dead. You must have fucking reflexes like a cat. Think you can dodge this, sucker?”

The SIG came off the woman’s ear channel and floated onto Ray, dead zero for his center chest. Bogier’s finger teased the trigger.

“This isn’t war,” said Cruz. “This is execution. Some soldier you-”

“Shut up, motherfucker. I lost two very fine men trying to whack your ass. You know how hard it is to find men that good?”

“I knew one once. Billy Skelton, lance corporal, USMC. Some fucker blew him in two.”

“It wasn’t his day. You know what I fucking hate about you? I can feel it even now, at the very end. It’s your fucking moral certitude. You sit there, knowing I’m going to blow your heart out in three seconds, and there’s nothing you can do about it, and you still think you’re so holy because you worship some bitch named Duty, and you don’t get it that she’s a whore and will fuck you up the ass any time she has a chance. Oh, yeah, you have a code. Duty, honor, country. Semper Fi, all that good bullshit, true believer, patriotism, Fourth of July, apple pie, all that war movie crap from the forties. Oh, you’ve got a code, Sergeant Cruz, that makes you morally superior.”

There was nothing for Cruz to say to this mad barrage.

“Look at me! Look at me,” Bogier screamed, and Cruz brought his eyes into total connection with the man.

“Guess what, junior. It’s easy to die for something you believe in. I’ve seen it ten thousand times and it ain’t that fascinating. You know what’s hard? Here’s hard: dying for a code you don’t believe in. That’s what the samurai knew. They died for the master they knew was corrupt, cowardly, venal, and pitiful. They died anyway. That was their code, and I’d say it was a hell of a lot tougher than that show tune you call patriotism.”

Bogier’s eyes bored into him.

“Here’s our code, asshole. These in the day when heaven was falling, when earth’s foundations fled, followed their mercenary calling, took their wages and are dead.”

He smiled, raised the SIG to his own skull, and happily blew his brains out.

GEORGE WASHINGTON PARKWAY

NORTHERN VIRGINIA

2219 HOURS

At first, after the turn off the brown lights of the band of highway called a “beltway,” they saw nothingness. Trees on both sides of the roadway, steep embankments, the hazy sense of lights, homes, civilization behind the screening, the traffic too fast, still too heavy, Bilal driving especially carefully, so tense he could hardly stand it now, so close, so soon.

But then the trees broke in the dark, the river was clear off to the left, and beyond it, lit like some kind of theatrical production, lay the city itself.

“It’s no Paris,” said Khalid. “The first time I saw Paris, oh, that was a sight. But it’s nice. So white.”

The city loomed across the river and two sources of reflection helped it shimmer, the river beneath, the low clouds above.

“Pah,” said Faisal. “It is a city. It is not magical. Know its name or not, it’s just another urban sprawl with a few monuments, more beautiful by night in its gown of lights than by day, which reveals its tawdry-are they expecting us? Look!”

He pointed. Something was indeed happening. They saw a high, arched bridge ahead, spanning the river, and beyond it to the left a ridge, on top of the ridge two steeples and a collection of Gothic buildings, and somewhere above the buildings or just beyond them, a swarm of circling helicopters, a frenzy of searchlights knifing upward; and on the ground, intermittently visible through a maze of streets, much commotion as illuminated by the presence of a great many police lights blinking red-blue, on-off in great rapidity.

“Perhaps it’s a festival of some sort,” said Khalid.

“No, no, not with all the policemen,” said Bilal, at the wheel. “It’s probably some kind of civic catastrophe, a fire, a crime, something banal like that.”

“I hope nobody was hurt,” said Khalid.

“You are such a fool,” said Faisal. “These people bomb your country and kill your kin and occupy and defile your holy sites, they are infidel scum without souls, and yet you weep tears for a few of them caught in a brothel fire.”

“Actually, they have never bombed my country, and I am not weeping, but I feel pain for anyone’s loss. Loss is loss; it is degrading and debasing, no matter the faith of he who loses. You would know that, Faisal, had you ever developed any sort of empathy, but you are far too narcissistic for-”

“Narcissistic? Narcissistic! Do I spend an hour each morning patting my few remaining hairs this way or that? Do I secretly admire myself in every mirror, window, polished surface in America? Do I have a vocabulary of charming looks cultivated from debased Western movies? Khalid, give us ‘slightly angry but secretly pleased,’ please.”

“You have seen a Western movie or two. You have lusted after the flesh they display so wantonly. I see your dried-up eyes in that ancient prune face as they follow a sixteen-year-old child in tiny shorts and undershirt. I see you make adjustments to your sudden erection, hoping that no one will notice. You’re lucky you didn’t get us all arrested-”

“Old men!” screamed Bilal. “Silence! I am so sick of your bickering. Bicker bicker bicker, all the way across America. You hardly notice America, except for the ice cream-”

“It is the buzzard who is obsessed with ice cream.”

“I am no mirror-gazer, however, and my heart is true to Islam.”

“Stop it!” screamed Bilal, aware that under the stress of the argument he had speeded up. He nervously eyed the rearview mirror for any sign of Virginia police, but saw nothing, and eased back well under the speed limit.

“Silence. Just look at what you have come all this way to destroy. Face your destiny. Embrace your fate. Honor your God. Obey the text. And shut the fuck up.”

To the left, on the other side of the river, the silver-and-white city sped by. It looked like a movie Rome. Its temples were marble with columns thick as old oaks, its rooftops flat, all of it lit by a genius with an eye for the play of light and shadow across glowing surfaces, all of it sunk magically into lushness, like the hanging gardens of ancient memory. It twinkled and blinked across the wide, dark, glimmering river, offering up its famous sights one at a time, the Kennedy Center, the Lincoln Memorial, the high needle of the Washington Monument, a glimpse of the president’s mansion set in trees, just a smudge of white dignity in the dark, and finally that colossal dome, its flag rippling against the night wind, flashing blue-white-red signals as it furled and unfurled.

“Do you see corruption, decadence, blasphemy?” asked Khalid.

“Of course not. They keep them hidden. It is internal rot that threatens our world. But yes, they put on a nice show. It’s a handsome capitol, I give you that, but its beauty expresses not love but power, not peace but war, and a hunger to obliterate. I see in its grace and beauty our doom, if we do not destroy it first. In fact, its very hugeness inspires me to what I must do, not that I ever had a whisper of a doubt.”

Khalid sighed.

“Who knew the old buzzard with the horny eyes had a little bit of poetry left in him? Yes, Faisal, that is what I see too. I see and feel in my dreams the need to destroy it as well.”

On that, and that alone, they agreed.

UNIDENTIFIED CONTRACTOR TEAM SUV

P STREET

GEORGETOWN

WASHINGTON, DC

2208 HOURS

No interrogation.

“That’s why he did it,” Bob said. “He was telling us, ‘I won’t give up my bosses for anything. They don’t deserve me,’ he was saying, but he was doing it by the code of the mercenary, a lot harder to live up to, so he says, than the code of a marine sniper. He didn’t seem to get that right to the end, Cruz outbraved him.”

“Cruz is one hundred percent real, no doubt about it,” said Susan Okada. “He’s as real as Swagger.”

“He’s a lot realer than me,” Swagger said. “He didn’t make the mistake of getting old.”

“But I will,” said Cruz.

“And thank you,” Susan said to Swagger, “for not jumping to the conclusion that these anonymous bosses were Agency,” she said.

“I just learned how to stay on your good side. Maybe it’s not the Agency. But it’s someone with the power to do things and hide from the consequences. It’s someone who gets to snipe without taking no incoming. He’s the bastard I want.”

“Maybe this is the night.”

“If not tonight, tomorrow,” said Bob.

“Swagger always gets his man,” said Nick.

Now they were clustered at the Ford Explorer that the Unidentified Contractor Team had used on its mission. It was shot to pieces, with no window or door or panel unperforated, no tire inflated, on top of a puddle of leaking internal fluids and a spew of glass frags and twisted metal shrapnel.

“Looks like Bonnie and Clyde’s last ride,” somebody said. “And guess what’s inside. The same swag. Look at what these boys were carrying.”

The evidence recovery team busily photographed and tagged the loot: one Barrett.50 M107 rifle with Schmidt & Bender scope, four 9-mm semiauto pistols, one Sako TRG-42, one.338 Magnum bolt-action rifle with Schmidt & Bender 10× tactical scope and a custom Gemtech suppressor, two M4 carbines with Aimpoint or EO Tech optics, at least five thousand rounds of various types of ammo, a Schmidt & Bender spotting scope, dual-spectrum night vision goggles, any number of Motorola mini-radio units, several cells, a half dozen or so SureFire flashlights, some yogurt, some chewing gum, some prophylactics, several bottles of amphetamines, some-

“Look, Mr. Memphis,” said Cruz, “I hate to tell you your business or anything, but I’m not seeing much urgency here. We’re just standing around kind of laughing at all the crap these guys had. But doesn’t that tell you something? Top-of-the-line stuff, all of it, the very best. The Marine Corps isn’t that well equipped. And the fact that even this late in Zarzi’s visit, whoever it is is still sending trained men with high-value tech at risk to protect him, because they don’t think the FBI and the Secret Service are up to it. To me, it all points to the idea that something is yet to happen, and they are therefore locked into a total protective response, even one at some risk. So I see the seconds tick away and nobody seems to care.”

“Earth to Cruz,” said Nick, “evidence collection is the basis of any criminal case, and mistakes made during it can jeopardize the outcome of the prosecution. These evidence technicians are highly trained, methodical, the best in the world. They must be allowed to work, and when they clear what they recover, it will be turned over to us.”

Cruz said nothing but was clearly not satisfied.

“Okay,” said one of the technicians, coming up to Nick, “this is it, right? This is what you’ve been waiting for?”

“That’s it,” said Nick.

“One Thuraya SG-2520 state-of-the-art satellite phone. Tagged and printed, sign on the dotted line, your possession noted in evidence chain, scratch your initials into it with a key or something, and you will sign it in when you are done, according to regulations, right, Mr. Assistant Director?”

“Yep,” Nick said. He looked over at Ray, then to Susan and Bob, as he scratched a crude NM into the plastic. “I think you’ll find this interesting. I’ll put it on speaker and cut all you guys in too. Folks, it’s showtime!”

An assistant brought Nick a cell. He punched a button, waited.

“Agent Jeffrey Neal, Technical Support Division, Quantico,” came the voice.

“Agent Neal, Assistant Director Nick Memphis, we’ve recovered, as you suggested we might, a highly sophisticated satellite phone. Care to open it up for us?”

“That’s what I’m here for, sir.”

“Tell us what to do.”

“Describe what’s on the screen.”

Nick turned the instrument, which looked like a cell any kid in a mall carried, except that it had an aerial folded telescope-style inside. Like any cell, it had the small screen above the keyboard where a message glowed.

“It says ‘Enter Unlock Code.’”

“Okay. Obviously we don’t have the unlock code. So we’ll be going back door, no offense meant to all you gay special agents out there in FBI land.”

“Neal, I’m the head comedian. I’ll make the jokes, okay? Your job is to laugh at them.”

“Got it, sir. I want you to keyboard the number 667723 onto the screen and then hit the star button three times. Do it slowly and carefully. This number was inserted in the CPU by the subcontracted Israeli development team as a request from Mossad. Very few people know about it.”

“Got it,” said Nick, punching in the numbers and stars.

In a second “Unlocked” came onto the screen.

“Okay,” said Neal, “now go to ‘Dialed Calls.’”

Nick punched the choice on the screen menu.

“There’s only one number here,” Nick said. “It’s got a 206 area code.” Nick read him the number.

“Seattle,” said Neal. “They have set up a few remote relay points. Need a sec to trace them. But first, I’m going to put you on hold while I call the U.S. Attorneys’ Office in DC. They’ve been alerted. They will issue a numbered Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant that will enable us to legally trace the linkages and come to the destination phone.”

“Excellent,” said Nick, listening as the phone went dead. “See, Cruz, this stuff can happen pretty fast if you know what you’re doing.”

“Okay, I was wrong,” said Cruz.

“I’m glad you see the error of your ways and I don’t have to have Gunnery Sergeant Swagger kick your ass.”

“I may do it anyway, on general principles,” Swagger said. “Dumb bozo goes into that icebox unarmed to face a man paid to kill him.”

“What an idiot,” said Nick. “Oh, and by the way, that’s the bravest thing I’ve ever seen a man do in my life. I’m betting Swagger thinks the same and I bet these guys do too.”

“Here, here,” said a number of the clustered special agents and SWAT pros.

“He’s got guts, he ain’t got no sense at all,” muttered Swagger.

“Somebody’s sure cranky tonight,” Nick said. It seemed true-all Swagger had said to Cruz on the way over was stuff like, “That was a really stupid decision. You risked your life for a hostage and endangered what we’re trying to do. You don’t own your life, Sergeant, the Marine Corps does. It’ll give you permission to die, and it hasn’t,” and the younger man merely shook his head, almost in comic disbelief.

Neal came back on. “Okay, I’ve got the warrant, my next call is to Frontier Communications in Seattle, and with the warrant, they’ll tell me where we’re going. Give me a few minutes.”

It went to silence again, and then-

“Okay, Director Memphis, I’m finally through the bounces. It went from Seattle to Oklahoma City to Charleston before it arrived in Washington, DC.”

“Good work, Neal.”

“You haven’t seen anything yet. Now we have some real magic coming up.”

“Is he trying to get on the Comedy Network?” somebody asked.

“Typical IT guy,” Nick said. “Smarts off to everybody, sucks up to nobody.”

Neal came back.

“The phone number ties to an AT &T cell phone. Our FISC warrant means that we have full cooperation from AT &T and I have them working at level ten, the most dedicated and urgent level of compliance. Oh, I love it when a plan comes together. Now we’re going to use a special program developed by the former technical head of a British security company. We can turn on our bad guy’s cell from here in Quantico, going through AT &T. Once it’s surreptitiously on, it not only broadcasts its GPS location but also sends a unique signature that we can track. The tracked signal is actually more accurate here in DC than the GPS coordinates and updates more frequently. Next call: National Reconnaissance Office and ask them-tell them-to direct their satellites to this area to listen for the signal and start a multilateration calculation to pinpoint the cell phone. They’ll come back with a longitude-latitude that we can easily translate into an address. And there’s your boy. Total elapsed time, seventeen minutes, a new record.”

“Good work, Neal,” Nick said, then turned to the crew:

“All right, people. Let’s get convoyed up. We’re going to make a big bust.”

644 CEDARCROFT NW

NEAR BETHESDA

WASHINGTON, DC

2325 HOURS

It was a big house, the kind in which most American kids dreamed of growing up. Secluded among trees on one of DC’s most exclusive streets, it had turrets, gables, dormers, balconies, a screened-in front porch, a free-standing garage, a gazebo, a pool, formal gardens, the American dream.

“Security team, deploy,” Nick said, and from the dozen or so unlit federal vehicles arrayed down the street, SWAT teamers slipped out and began to slide off into the trees and bushes to surround and control the dwelling.

“Do you recognize it?” asked Bob, looking to Susan’s serene face as she took in the details of the house.

“Yes,” she said.

“So which guy is it?”

“It’s none of them.”

Nick said: “You three stay put. I’ll handle the arrest with my people. We’ll repair to the Hoover Building and begin the interrogation. We’ll go all night and through tomorrow if necessary. If he’s lawyered up, it may take a while.”

“I want to be there,” said Cruz.

“Me too,” said Swagger.

“I have to be there,” said Susan.

“Marine guys,” said Nick, “full frontal self-discipline. No anger, no unprofessionalism, no screaming, no punches thrown. I insult you by saying that, but I don’t want any trouble with this bust. Do you read me?”

Silence meant they did.

Then a message came into Nick’s earpiece, telling him the security teams were holding in place.

“Okay,” said Nick, “now my people will make the pinch. Could you call him, Susan? Get him on the phone so he doesn’t notice us pulling up. I worry about suicide in cases like this, or suicide by cop or something.”

“This guy isn’t committing suicide,” said Susan.

Nick handed the phone over, got out of the vehicle, waving, as six agents from the car behind came out to flank him, and they headed up the walk.

Susan punched the button on the phone.

“Talk to me, talk to me,” came the voice. “Did you make it out clean? I hear sirens and the TV is full of craziness. Did you get him? Where are you?”

“Hello, Jared,” she said, “it’s Susan Okada. No, they didn’t make it out clean. They are in hell, actually. And no, they didn’t get him. And we are right outside with a warrant for your arrest. Jared, don’t do anything stupid. Get ahead of the prosecution and maybe somehow you can survive this.”

“How about lunch tomorrow?” he said.

FBI HQ

FBI INTERROGATION SUITE 101

HOOVER BUILDING

PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE

WASHINGTON, DC

0010-1900 HOURS

Who would have guessed? Jared Dixson was a stand-up guy. He wouldn’t budge. Handsome, diffident, supercilious in that annoying upper-class, so-Ivy way, heavily ironic; underneath, he was a steel ideologue. He seemed to be enjoying himself. He waived legal representation. He even went so far as to enjoy the claim that it was he who’d ordered the Pentameter shot using poor Jack Collins’s computer codes.

“Jack’s the jerk from World War Two,” he said. “I mean, he thinks he’s still a frogman. IQ, maybe thirty-five on a good day. Annapolis, old SEAL, all he-man Afghan Desk, straight out of the movies and Kipling before that. Hello, dummy! Wake up, smell the flowers. You need somebody with smarts, a view on strategy, a vision of what should be. Hmm, I think I described myself rather well there.”

He wasn’t bluffed by legal threats.

“Do whatever you want,” he said to Nick and his assistant Chandler, as Okada, Swagger, and Cruz watched on closed-circuit TV. “Bring any charges you want. Subpoena anybody you want. I don’t care. Some things are worth spending the rest of your life in prison for, and getting the guys out of Afghanistan is one of them. You can say: ‘He tried to murder a marine sniper team.’ I suppose it’s true and I’ll bet that marine sergeant would like to strangle me about now. Maybe that would be fair. But I would argue: national defense in the trenches is murky, bloody business. No way to recall the team. Nothing personal, but I could not stand by and watch our soon-to-be most valuable asset on the ground get taken out by a sergeant and a lance corporal. Ugly decision? Hell, yes. Hello, it’s what we do. Ugly is our specialty. But consider this: since we had his unit’s commo tent bugged and the team on satellite, I could have set Whiskey Two-Two up for capture by the Taliban. That would have been the easy way for me but not for them: interrogation, torture, eventual beheading. Instead, I opted for mercs who would do the job cleanly. No pain, no torture, no degradation. Why, I should win the goddamned Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. My only mistake: who knew that marine kid was Sergeant Rock and Superman combined?”

He quickly worked the political angle.

“Now, do you want to run a huge case against me? Do you want the dirty laundry in the world press for months? Do you want the Agency, the Marine Corps, and the FBI in a pissing match for all to see? Maybe you do, but you have to also see that it does nobody any good. I know the Administration doesn’t want that, and I believe that by this time next week, once they’ve made their assessments, you will get orders to back off. I think you’ll find I’m too big to fail. Tell you what: here’s my offer. I will resign immediately and disappear even faster. You don’t have a piece of evidence against me except the fact that my phone number happened to be on some gun-crazy screwball’s satellite phone. How do we know I gave him that phone and all the equipment? You’ll never prove it because, after all, we are the CIA and rather nimble at hiding stuff like that. Then consider the following: I actually succeeded. I put such pressure on your security teams that even if we didn’t get Cruz, we made it impossible for anyone to get to Zarzi. Zarzi gets his medal”-he made a show of checking his watch to see the time-“in a few hours at the White House, which is impregnable, he’s out of here tomorrow, and I won my little gambit. And as a special parting gift, I’ll use my considerable influence to get Okada a promotion, though in my opinion she should be up on charges of treason. Her career will take off, she’ll even get my old job, under a new Afghan Desk. Her life will be fabulous, except, most sadly, she won’t be able to have that lunch with me, which would have been so much fun for her.”

It went on like that. Meanwhile, Susan duly informed CIA, and a damage-assessment committee began to look into the charges, and meetings were set up to deal with potential public relations problems, while at the same time, arguments were broached at the White House and the Justice Department in favor of covering up the operation after accepting Dixson’s resignation. The main worry appeared to be that some reporter would break the story, and then all havoc would come out to play.

“Sometimes I think these people lost all their goddamned moral bearings,” Swagger said. “To me it’s black and white, over and done with. The guy’s a murderer. He killed Skelton, thirty-one Afghans, Colonel Chambers, nine Filipinos, and four cops. Put him on the needle. End of story.”

“It’s not that easy,” said Nick. “In the Marine Corps it’s Us, Them. In Washington it’s Us, the Us who are with Us, the Us who are not sure about Us, and the many Us-es who don’t care. The other team, our mortal enemies, are also Us, it’s just that they happen to be against the Us that is Us; they’re the other Us, and they have other Us-es who are against Us, then their own huge numbers of people who don’t care one way or the other, and finally, between the two Us-es, there are thousands who aren’t sure yet and are waiting for a signal from the Administration, from the pundits, from the blogosphere, from party headquarters or the union or the Internet message boards about which Us is really their Us. I should add, each Us is always one hundred percent right and has never, ever acknowledged a mistake in judgment, interpretation, execution, or public relations. Dysfunctional as hell, but at least you can say this-it doesn’t work. Never has, never will. Bob, I told you this coming in. Sergeant Cruz, sorry to shock you, but political considerations will play a part. What I’m betting we get is a shake-up at the Agency-bye-bye Jack Collins and whoever was in his clique-and a compromise jail term on Dixson, maybe a soft five for conspiracy, which he’ll use to write a book making himself out to be the smartest guy in the room. That’s possible.”

“What about the scandal?” asked Bob.

“Uh, today’s press isn’t eager to discredit this president. They backed him so hard they’re invested in him. And anyhow, are you going to blow the whistle to your good friend David Banjax? I didn’t think so. So it stays out of the papers and off the news.”

“May I say something?” asked Cruz.

“Go ahead.”

“Once again, it seems like you’re accepting this at face value. It is what it is, it’s a marginal triumph for the good guys, that is, what we’ve accomplished, there’s some justice for Two-Two in it, but that’s all it is, and now it’s over. But maybe it’s not over. Maybe it’s just starting.”

“Here we go again on the conspiracy merry-go-round,” said Susan.

“Ma’am, I know how Zarzi operated around Qalat. I’ve seen young marines blown to ribbons by IEDs his people planted and then they went and hid in his off-limits compound. I don’t see how he could have this ‘change’ that everybody says he had so fast.”

“Sergeant Cruz,” she said, “I have to tell you that our people went over Zarzi time after time, from all angles, using all technologies, from drugs to polygraphs to psychological evaluation to sleep deprivation. He volunteered, he got through it easily. If he’s holding something back, it’s beyond our science to detect it, which to me at least means he’s not holding something back.”

“Sergeant Cruz, you are an extraordinary man,” said Nick. “Brave, resilient, the only man I’ve ever seen who’s the equal of Sergeant Swagger here. But there’s not a shred of evidence that anything is set for tonight. If it were there, I’d act on it, believe me. But I-”

The phone rang.

Hmm, Nick had given instructions not to be interrupted.

He picked it up.

“Nick, is that you? Jesus, you’re hard to find.”

“Sorry, Jim. I’m really in the middle-”

“I’ve got something for you on this guy Zarzi.”

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL PAGE

SATURDAY MORNING

The Administration is to be congratulated on its heroic decision to continue business as usual with the Freedom Medal presentation to Afghan presidential candidate Ibrahim Zarzi. The violence that occurred yesterday in Washington when four police officers were killed and many more wounded by two as yet unidentified gunmen with a modern arsenal of assault-type weapons has not been allowed to stand in the way. This Administration’s desire to bring peace, and with it American withdrawal, to a region much troubled by war, remains firm.

Though details are as yet unknown, the gunmen’s modus operandi clearly suggests they were either far-right domestic terrorists or violent Zionists, possibly a combination of both. Extremists have more in common with each other than with the responsible middle-of-the-road adherents to their causes.

Mr. Zarzi himself must be singled out for courage and dedication. His selfless commitment to peace, his campaign to restore righteousness to a reputation much besmirched by political opponents who attempted to hang the nickname “the Beheader” on him, and his willingness to be a symbol of a peaceful, cooperative Islam are to be admired. The Administration is lucky to have him, he is lucky to have the Administration, and we are lucky to have both.

FOUR SEASONS HOTEL

SUITE 500

M STREET NW

WASHINGTON, DC

1800 HOURS

The suit-bespoke from Jay Kos, New York, dark gray lightweight Italian silk-fit superbly but with a muted elegance, too light for a funeral, too dark for a nightclub, perfect. Cuff links, gold, by Tiffany, thank you very much.

Glory to you, oh Allah, and yours is the praise.

The socks: Egyptian cotton, black, John Weitz. The shoes, again bespoke, from GJ Cleverley, Jermyn Street, London SW1. The tie, red, with small, subtle checks of gold, by Anderson & Sheppard, also Jermyn Street, London SW1. The shirt, bespoke of course, blindingly white, the white of movie star teeth, Anderson & Sheppard, Jermyn Street, London SW1.

In the name of God, the Infinitely Compassionate and Merciful, praise be to God, lord of all the worlds, the Compassionate, the Merciful, Ruler on the Day of Reckoning.

Cologne: Chanel. Mousse: Revlon cosmetics. Fingernail polish (clear): Revlon cosmetics. Underwear: 100 percent silk, Anderson & Sheppard, Jermyn Street, London SW1.

You alone do we worship, and you alone do we ask for help. Guide us on the straight path, the path of those who have received your grace, not the path of those who have brought down wrath, nor of those who wander astray.

Jewelry: gold diamond ring, Cartier; gold necklace with Islamic talisman in 24-carat gold, Jacques du Ritz; watch… watch? Watch?

I seek refuge in Allah from Satan, the Accursed. God is great.

The watch: black plastic, Casio DW5600E-1V G-Shock classic digital, Walmart, $37.95.

“Sir, the limousine to the White House has arrived.”

FBI HQ

FBI INTERROGATION SUITE 101

HOOVER BUILDING

PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE

WASHINGTON, DC

1900 HOURS

Okay, Jim, just a second.” He covered the mouthpiece. “Jim Stanford is head of counterespionage, DC. His people monitor, follow, infiltrate, tap, whatever, various ‘diplomatic’ initiatives here in the capitol.” He went back to the phone. “Jim, I’m with my staff now trying to figure out what’s going on with this guy. Can I put you on speaker?”

“Sure, sure,” said Jim and waited while Nick tried to figure out the phone, couldn’t, and a young agent came over and pushed the necessary buttons.

“Okay, Jim, you’re on loud and clear, go ahead please.”

“A week ago you sent out a confidential e-mail request to all coalition intelligence services with offices in DC embassies asking for any updates they came across on Ibrahim Zarzi, right?”

“I did. I got nothing out of it. But frankly, I expected nothing out of it, I did it to cover my ass in case later anyone said, ‘Why didn’t you blah blah.’”

“Understood. But of course Mossad got it from a dozen or so sources.”

“They’re pretty good, huh?”

“Not since the hot days of the Cold War and the classic KGB operators have I seen guys so good.”

“Cool.”

“You probably knew that. But here’s what you don’t know. The Israelis have a guy at the Four Seasons.”

“Wow.”

“He’s contract, probably would work for anybody, but he’s real good too, freelancer, keeps tabs on diplomatic guests whose policies might have a bearing on Israel.”

“Got it.”

“He told them, they told me, and now I’m telling you something that may or may not have some significance.”

“We’re listening.”

“A week or so ago, Zarzi was in a very strange mood. This is a cosmopolitan man, mind you, with the tastes of a Saudi prince and the morals of an alley cat.”

“We’re aware of that.”

“But he does this very odd thing. He offers a servant a choice between two watches. As a gift. Never done that before, never done that since, not known for that, a parsimonious man who tips the minimum and basically treats staff like cattle.”

Nick looked around at the people in the room.

“These two watches were both expensive. But one was really expensive. It was one of these custom jobs, a Paul Berger-Paul makes twelve or so a year, the big richies love them, it takes a fifteen-year wait to get one, that sort of thing, and it doesn’t keep time any better than a Timex, maybe even worse. It probably costs a hundred thousand or so. Of course the kid chose the wrong one, even if it was a nice watch, but the larger issue is: what the fuck?”

“Yeah,” said Nick, “what the fuck?”

“Maybe it fits into a pattern, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just a tell on his psychology of the moment. But it’s so out of character for this actor. That’s all. Thought you should know.”

“And you’re sure on this?”

“I am. My guy is one hundred percent with me. He does me, I do him, you know.”

“I got you. Thanks, Jim.”

He put the phone down, faced a dozen bewildered faces.

“So?”

Nobody said a thing.

Then, of course, Swagger: “A guy like him only gets rid of wordly treasure when he’s preparing to die. No other reason.”

“Well, then wouldn’t he dump it all?” said Nick. “Not just a selective, tiny percentage?”

“He knows if he did that, it would be noticed. This is ‘symbolic,’ or some crap that an egghead psycho nutcase like him would take as ‘symbolic.’ He’s the kind of asshole who needs symbols.”

“It’s a reach,” said Nick. “There’s nothing solid there.”

“He’s dumping his shit because he’s getting ready to blow himself up. And the president and the cabinet and the head of the CIA and all those generals, all of them, along with him. Tonight’s the night, this is the hour, and the minute is very close.”

“Impossible,” said Susan. “Not merely because of the exhaustive psychological penetration we’ve put him through, but also because White House security is extraordinary and there’s no way at all he can get an explosive beyond it. Even if he’s swallowed it or, excuse me, had it anally implanted, he will be examined and x-rayed, he agreed to that. He can’t be cleaner.”

“Then why’s he passing off watches to peons?” asked Bob. “It ain’t a bit like him.”

“Possibly he had an erectile dysfunction,” said Susan, “and he couldn’t find his Viagra and he was really depressed at his failure and in that vulnerable mood he uncharacteristically gave something of value to a servant. Been known to happen.”

“It’s not really actionable, Nick,” said Chandler. “Provocative, as Mr. Swagger says, but not actionable. I’d hate to take it to the White House.”

Nick glanced at his watch. “Practically speaking, there isn’t time to take it to the White House. They’re committed to this event, it’s already starting, we’d only get the duty officer and it would never reach the president. Anyhow, Chandler, pick an office and make the call with our recommendation that the event be canceled. Just so we’re on the record.”

“Yes, sir,” said Chandler, trundling off.

“Now what?” Nick said.

“Well, well, well,” said Susan.

“What?”

She pointed to one of the many monitors in the room; this was a security feed from the White House, just beyond the 15th Street entry, where all guests were wanded, prodded, poked, sniffed, and inappropriately touched to make sure they weren’t carrying any fizzing, bowling-ball-like cordite bombs.

“It’s the man himself. Can you rewind and show the last ten seconds?” she asked. “Number 5, the center screen. Go back to 1745 or something.”

Nick said, “Someone young, make it happen.”

A couple of junior agents scurried off, and in seconds the images on monitor number 5 began to run backward until they reached 1745, at which point they froze, showing a blur, then lurched forward.

The crew in the room watched as an obedient Ibrahim Zarzi allowed himself to be probed, etc., etc.

“There. Stop,” she cried, and the image froze.

It caught Zarzi with his hands up, his elegant suit momentarily drooping sloppily from the awkwardness of the position. His hands above his head as someone blurrily waved the metal-seeking wand across his body, his sleeves fallen back under the power of gravity. The angle, from slightly behind him, was such that his watch was displayed.

“Well, unless I miss my guess, that’s no fifteen-hundred-dollar Cartier, much less a Berger hundred-thousand-dollar model. It looks more like something you’d pick up in a Seven-Eleven,” she said, as if someone as elegant as Susan, much less Zarzi, had ever been in a 7-Eleven.

“Some kind of big, ugly plastic junk,” said Nick. “Again, unlike him.”

“Very unlike him,” she said.

“If he’s getting ready to do something nuts, the way his mind works, he wouldn’t wear a good watch,” said Bob.

“Very good catch, Ms. Okada. But…”

“But so what, you’re saying? Maybe Swagger is right. It’s an indicator.”

“Nick,” said ever-rational Starling, back from her call to the White House, “it is another indicator. But it sure as hell isn’t actionable. This is very touchy stuff, seeing as he’s an official State Department guest, under their protection.”

“I don’t see how I can do anything on that,” said Nick. “Let’s note it, and it goes into the CIA file, just in case this turns out real bad.”

The monitor reverted to real time, and it now displayed the actual time, 1814.12 and emptiness at the security point. Other monitors showed something else: all the heads and swells were gathered in the Rose Garden in the warm late summer evening, and in a few minutes the president would come to the podium, make a few kissy-kissy comments, call Ibrahim Zarzi to the podium and present him with the Freedom Medal as a ringing endorsement of his commitment to America, to democracy, to the joint future of their countries, to the friendship of Islam and the West, to a bright and bloodless tomorrow. Then it was over. A few minutes and it was over.

Nick thought: It is not going to happen. It is too fantastic. There is nothing he can do.

And then he thought: That’s what everybody said on 9/10 as well. They are cunning assholes. They are not smart, but they figured out how to destroy a nation’s confidence and plunge the world into extended decades of darkness with $19 worth of X-acto knives.

What the fuck do I do? he wondered. Pray for a miracle?

“All right,” said Swagger, “I got a last little card to play.”

THE WHITE HOUSE

THE ROSE GARDEN

FREEDOM MEDAL PRESENTATION CEREMONY

1922 HOURS

How lovely it was. The flowers seemed endless, their blossoms bright even in the declining light of late summer. A kind of ambrosia filled the air, and there was just a tint of pink glow over the looming silhouette of the Executive Office Building.

The America that counted was here. The president, so charismatic that he even outshone the glowing Zarzi, his wife; the vice president, his wife; and all the others in suits and uniforms: chairmen, joint chiefs of staff; the service chairmen; the director of the Central Intelligence Agency; a dozen powerful senators, some even from the other party in the spirit of ecumenicalism; the cream of the liberal punditocracy from the great papers of the East Coast; the television heads, hair shellacked unto perfection; a variety of Washington-style women, all of whom seemed to have that tawny elegance over slender legs; and an audience consisting of dragooned staffers from the Administration, a sea of littles well primed to clamor and go wow for the TV cameras. All were gathered here to sell the world an important message: this man counts. This man we trust. This is the man who will bring us peace. This is the man we can work with. This is the man who understands. He is, well and truly, our man in Kabul.

He bowed as the president slid the ribbon necklace over his head, and he felt the weight of the huge gold disk added to his neck.

Oh the indignities to arrive at this moment: wanded, x-rayed, touched, even probed. Subjected to chemical tests, sniffed by dogs and men, touched again, touched yet again. But he had signed up for that; it was the price of the moment.

The president finished, speaking so eloquently as was his gift, of a vision of a world without IEDs and young men of any faith bleeding out in the dirt of a far-off country, and then stepped back to hand the lectern over to the Glorious Zarzi for some brief remarks.

FBI HQ

FBI INTERROGATION SUITES

HOOVER BUILDING

PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE

WASHINGTON, DC

1923 HOURS

They all looked at him.

“Let’s hear it,” said Nick.

“I want you to run a search, Google, or super FBI Google, some high-tech, high-speed data search on the following. See what links there are between our friend Dixson in there thinking he’s a hero and the director of National Intelligence, that guy Ted Hollister.”

“Why?”

“Dixson’s clearly in on this, whatever this is. But he only knows so much and nothing more. He’s told us everything and he thinks he’s a hero. And he ain’t heavy enough to go beyond what he’s done. He knows about the contractors and the policy and that’s it. I got an inkling from something Hollister said at that meeting he might know a little bit more than we think about all this.”

“Swagger,” said Susan, “Hollister was long gone from the Agency before Jared was even recruited.”

“Please. I can’t explain, ticktock, ticktock, time’s wasting. Please: check it out. He said something he shouldn’t have said at the meeting. Let me just see if there’s a link.”

Nick nodded. “Youth movement, prove your worth,” he ordered.

Young people stirred and hustled. Time crept by. Up on the monitors, from a dozen angles, the U.S. Army band played “The Star-Spangled Banner” in the Rose Garden, and men and women stood with hands on hearts or at perfect salute in tribute to their country.

“Prelim,” said Chandler, reentering. “Jesus Christ, turns out Dixson grew up in Braintree, Massachusetts, where Hollister lived when he was teaching at Harvard, same street, two houses apart. Dixson’s father, Roger, was at Harvard and Harvard Law with Hollister in the sixties. They were both on Law Review. Dixson later got his master’s at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. International Law, taught by none other than his dad’s old friend, classmate, and neighbor Ted Hollister. Immediately after, he joined the Agency-”

“Yes!” said Susan, in a squirt of zeal. “Yes! In those days you only got in with the recommendation of a senior Agency official or ex-official. Someone in the extended family. Jared Dixson was Ted Hollister’s legacy, as we call them in the shop, protected by Hollister’s rep and charisma. Dixson wasn’t working for Jack Collins, not really. He was working for Ted Hollister.”

“Chandler, sit down, catch a rest. Someone else under the age of thirty, call Secret Service White House right this second, see if Hollister’s at the event, he should be.”

“That old man’s in this up to his eyeballs,” said Susan. “And, ahem, allow Princess Perfection to point out to the monster Swagger, he’s not Agency.”

“Once again, you kick my ass, Okada-san.”

“He’s there,” came the call.

“We ought to talk to him. Now, not tomorrow, not next week. Now,” said Bob.

“We should,” said Nick.

Memphis rose, yelling at Chandler, “Get an SUV outside fast, clear us at the White House. I don’t know how this is shaping up but I think I might need a sniper. Get me a goddamned sniper fast.”

“Nick, they let SWAT go this morning. They’re all home in Virginia resting from the gunfight in Georgetown. I could get you one from DC metro in about twenty minutes.”

On all the screens, the president of the United States came to the podium.

“Hey,” said Swagger, pointing at Cruz, “there’s the best sniper in the world.”

THE IWO JIMA MEMORIAL

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

1850 HOURS

The six bronze men were gigantic. They struggled with the flag, its three primary colors flapping in a wind, cross-illuminated by many beams of light that illustrated the whole piece, the ripples of muscle, the rents in the metal clothing, the hobnails in the worn combat boots, the twelve-foot rifles, all in the muted, fading green of military glory, its tarnish eroded by the ages.

“Warriors,” said Professor Khalid. “You must honor their bravery.”

“Infidels,” said Dr. Faisal. “Brigands, crusaders, invaders, rapists, and scum.”

“You haven’t learned a thing, have you?” said Khalid.

“The Koran contains all the information I need to know. Other than science, the rest is delusional self-hypnosis on the part of the enemy.”

“Even now, can’t you control your enmity?” said Bilal.

They leaned against the van, which was in the parking lot of the Marine Corps memorial on a hill overlooking the river and the spotlit city that was Washington, DC. If anything, it was more beautiful and beguiling on this warm, comfortable, clear evening than any other. Above, pinwheels and novas blinked across cosmic nothingness, and below the city was a shimmering plain of white buildings, flags flying on many of them, the whole forming a kind of horizontal fusion of light and dark, patterns broken here and there by something of specific edge and shape, such as the spire in the center, and beyond it, the vast dome.

“Bah,” said Faisal. “He talks too much. He enjoys his little epiphanies, his ironies. He is vain and prissy. He has a Western mind. He is not one of us. He thinks too much. He has no internal discipline. He has not learned the fundamental lesson, which is submission.”

“You call it vanity, I call it individuality. Until we learn to value individuality, we will lag behind the West in all things and-”

“If you kill them all, there is nothing to lag behind,” said Faisal.

A few other vehicles dotted the lot, and a U.S. Park Service police car had passed through a few seconds ago, noting nothing, not stopping, and it had then disappeared toward Rosslyn, a banal assortment of skyscrapers that loomed behind them. Up at the monument, a few kids scrambled around, supervised loudly by a father.

“The journey is almost over,” said Bilal. “Are you prepared for what comes next? Have you accepted it?”

“Completely,” said Faisal. “Never for a second did I have a doubt.”

“I am without doubt too,” said Khalid. “The religious subtext here means nothing to me, it’s all mumbo jumbo, but I embrace the political one. My hand shall not pause, my heart shall not fail.”

“That was very good ice cream,” said Faisal.

“Another thing he said with which I agree. Yes, it was very good ice cream.”

They had stopped at a Baskin-Robbins on the way over, three men of obvious Middle Eastern persuasion, in fresh new dishdashas with prayer caps on, waited patiently in line among the moms and dads and squealing children, some in dirty baseball uniforms, some mere babies, and each had gotten a special treat. Khalid had double strawberry in a cup; Bilal a straight sundae with walnuts, whipped cream, and a cherry; and Faisal maple praline and mint chocolate chip in a waffle cone, but with a dish beneath so that when the cone could no longer support the ice cream, the whole confection would not disintegrate in his hands.

Now, finally, they were where they should be at the time they should be there.

PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE

FROM THE HOOVER BUILDING TO THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON, DC

1932 HOURS

Memphis, Swagger, Cruz, and Okada raced through the hallway to the exit dock, where a black FBI Explorer, its blue-red lights already flashing, its engine running, waited. Memphis got behind the wheel, and Cruz went to the rear of the vehicle, opened the tailgate, removed a gun case, opened it, and pulled an H-S.308 sniper rifle from it, and a red box of Black Hills 168-grain Match ammo. He went to the driver’s side and climbed in.

Memphis was saying, “I will designate target. You listen to nobody but me if it comes to that. And you do not fire unless I give you the green, you have that, Sergeant?”

“Yessir,” said Cruz, who at the same time was reading the rifle’s logbook, maintained shot by shot by its original assignee. He learned it had been fired 2,344 times, all with Federal Gold Tip 168-grain Match ammunition, for an average five-shot group from 100 yards of.56 inches. It was, of course, an H-S Precision rifle built from the design of a Remington 700 action, trued and bedded by the H-S custom shop, a Jewell trigger installed, with a Broughton barrel; its last 200-yard group, shot three weeks ago at Quantico, had been 1.06 inches, and the shooter, Special Agent Dave McElroy, had readjusted the zero to 100 yards, cleaned it, fired one fouling shot, and put it away for deployment. He had been on the perimeter of the convenience store on Wisconsin Avenue, but had not gotten a shot.

Chandler leaned in.

“Okay, you’re cleared through the southeast gate. Then you can pull around past the big house to the right and take the roadway to the right straight to the Rose Garden. Secret Service has been briefed and will greet you.”

“Good work,” he said. “Okay, let’s go.”

The SUV pulled out, scooted around the block, passed several vehicles that maneuvered out of the way, hit Pennsylvania’s broadness, turned right, and Nick accelerated.

The vehicle ate up the eight blocks of government architecture and hotel frontage that dominated Pennsylvania, slowing only to weave its way through the traffic at cross streets. It reached the White House southeast gate below the Treasury Department’s Doric immensity. The gate to the White House, nestled in a bank of trees, loomed just ahead. A red light and too much oncoming traffic momentarily halted them just a few yards shy of the goal.

“Where’s the goddamn siren?” Nick cursed.

Bob leaned forward to help him find it.

“Wait,” said Susan. “Jesus, look. That’s him. That’s him.”

Indeed it was. Stepping out of the pedestrian gate, a short, furtive figure paused for the same light that halted the SUV. Yes indeed, clutching his ever-present professorial briefcase, it was the director of National Intelligence, Ted Hollister. He checked his watch, looked both ways impatiently, and realized he had to wait for the shift to green like all ordinary mortals. They saw him exhale a large breath in frustration.

Nick found the siren. Blaring, he pulled ahead, as the cars before him parted awkwardly to clear a path. Nick took the left, pulled across traffic, and halted two feet from Ted Hollister.

“Mr. Hollister, sir, where are you going?”

In seconds Nick was next to him, Bob flanking the other side, and Ray close at hand. The car’s blue-and-red pumped color into the scene, and around them at the juncture of 15th and Pennsylvania, traffic piled up.

“He’s bugging out,” said Bob.

Susan came to them.

“Mr. Hollister,” said Nick, “you remember me, Nick Memphis, FBI?”

“I do. What is this about?” said the old man curtly. “I have an important appointment.”

“Sir, late last night we arrested Jared Dixson and he’s now confessed to assigning a contractor team to take out Whiskey Two-Two, and to authorizing a smart munition into a nonmilitary target in Qalat. There is more collateral that will have to be answered for as well. We’ve seen the records and clearly he is connected to you and-”

“I will be happy to discuss this with you at length in my office. Simply schedule an appointment and I will-”

“Sir, why are you leaving the White House now?” Bob said. “Ain’t this your big night? Seems odd-”

“I do not intend to stand in the street and discuss matters of national security with sergeants and low-ranking agents. I warn you, gentlemen, I will take severe action against you and I have considerable influence. Now, let me go-”

“Why are you in a panic to leave now? What’s happening in two minutes that you have to be far away from it?”

“I will not stand for this. I will call a policeman.”

“You ain’t calling no one, goddamnit,” said Bob.

“I will destroy you,” said Hollister. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”

But then Bob pulled Nick aside.

“This ain’t getting us nowhere,” he said. “Y’all take a little break. You go take a walk or something, whatever. You trusted me, I’s just an old fool, said I was too tired to go with you. You’re all off the hook. You leave. I guaran-fucking-tee you that in three minutes this weasel tells me everything. And I mean everything.”

“No,” said Nick. “Swagger, this is the United States. We do not-”

“Ticktock, ticktock. It’s happening now. The one they said wouldn’t never happen, the ticking-bomb deal. You’d risk all them lives and the morale, the humiliation, the degradation of this country because you want to feel good about yourself tomorrow morning? That’s a pretty high price for feeling good about yourself, Nick, and I have to say, it’s not your ass on the line, it’s theirs.”

“I want this off the table,” said Nick. “It is not to be discussed anymore. Instead, I want-”

“He’s right,” said Susan. “Ticktock, ticktock. It has to be done.”

Nick shook his head. He could not believe he was having this discussion, but he was.

“Then I should be the one who-”

“No,” said Bob. “Everyone here is young and has way more to contribute. Me, I’m done, there’s nothing left for me. Lay it off on me, I’ll go to prison, I’ll be the torturer, the one everybody can hate. I’ll break every one of his goddamned fingers and he’ll sing before I reach number three.”

Then Susan said, “Wait.”

“Look, I know this guy,” she said. “You’re right in thinking that if this thing is going to happen, it’s going to happen tonight, in a very few minutes. He is not afraid of pain or of disgrace or of failure. He is not an Islamist. He doesn’t believe in seventy-two virgins. He believes in nothing, and that being the case, only one thing can frighten him and you see it in his flight. He is afraid of death. If there’s death anywhere tonight, it’s at the White House. Take him to the White House. What happens to them happens to him. That takes it all from him, and that and that alone frightens him.”

“She’s right,” said Nick. “Get him in, let’s get in the gates and see what we get.”

They loaded the squirming old man into the front, wedged between Nick and the stoic Ray. Nick punched the siren again, pulled back, rotated the vehicle to the gate.

“Jesus Christ,” he said as the gate rose, taking an agonizing three seconds. The two uniformed White House cops on duty waved the vehicle by, and it slipped into White House territory, and began to wind on the circle around Executive Drive that would deposit its travelers at the Rose Garden, in the lee of the West Wing extension. The big white mansion, with its curving Harry Truman balcony dominated by vast columns, stood out white and immaculate in the spotlights, but more to the point, through a light screen of trees to the left of the portico, nestled in the crook of the much larger building, a ceremony was clearly transpiring, and a well-illuminated crowd of people could be seen standing before a podium on which stood the distinctive figure of the president of the United States, among other men of power and prestige.

“Stop, stop,” Hollister suddenly cried.

Nick halted the car.

“You have something to say?”

“Look, can we go somewhere and-”

“Yeah, the Rose Garden. That’s the only place we’re going.”

Hollister twisted, in some kind of further existential agony, licked his lips, swallowed hard. Nick looked at him, then turned, dropped the car into gear, and began to ease forward.

“Stop,” the old man said. “Oh Christ, stop.”

Nick looked at his watch. It was almost 7:45.

The thing was scheduled to end at 7:45.

“Talk to us or I will drive us there in ten seconds.”

Hollister swallowed again. Then he said: “They have a missile. It’s a Hellfire.”

THE IWO JIMA MEMORIAL

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

1944.30 HOURS

Behold Hellfire.

It was a stubby thing, six feet long, seven inches wide, painted olive drab. It had tiny, out-of-scale fins, four at the nose, four more at the tail, which looked almost comical against the girth and charisma of the larger thing. In the air it looked like a flying barrel with little cartoon wings, except that it moved too fast for the eye to see, and for the first few seconds, a searing blot of flame so blinded observers it was impossible to make out further details. It was suspended on a much-modified Norwegian launch tripod, welded crudely inside the van’s rear cargo area. It had a translucent nose, where the laser seeker had once been, and immediately behind it a warhead section, with the twenty pounds of a late-industrial-age witches’ brew called PBXN-9 explosive. Detonating upon impact in the Rose Garden, it would surely kill everyone who was within fifty feet of its point of impact, and it would burn, mutilate, blunt-force traumatize and otherwise perforate the many others outside the immediate kill zone. It would kill all the roses.

Then came the guidance section, where so much work had been done; then the pitch gyro to keep it stable in its brief flight; the autopilot electronics package that made sure everything worked when it had to work and in synchronicity, and then the propulsion section, a solid-fuel rocket motor with a three-second burn, from there on controlled by the vanes of its fins, torquing this way and that on computer mandate to bite an atmosphere whistling by at 1.4 mach and guide it to its target. Time in flight from launch to strike would be about seven seconds. Nothing could stop it; no one would see it coming. It would be over almost before it began.

Professor Khalid climbed into the space in the van just under the shaft of the missile, and using a flashlight in his teeth and a sharp knife, cut through the yards of tape that had secured the one-hundred-pound weapon into stability for the long trip. Freeing it, he slid it back on the double rails that were milled into its upper torso on the launch armature until it clicked in place on the launcher housing, and when he heard it click, he knew that the plug on the missile had locked into the socket, establishing communication between the missile and its controls.

Now he had to turn the missile “on.” It was really that primitive, a unit designed for simplicity, to be used under battle conditions in rough situations with time of the essence, as hordes of red T-72s were racing across the Fulda Gap and the NATO missileers would be the ones who had to stop them. This rocket happened to be Norwegian, and had once patrolled the northern NATO defensive perimeter aboard a Norwegian tank-destroyer vehicle.

Khalid went around to the front of the van-a cool breeze refreshed his moist brow as he went and now took from under the rear seat the heart of his improvisations upon the system, the original Norwegian control box, a military-strongbox with cable and a blunt, functional keyboard, ran the cable to the missile launch module, and plugged it in.

“Dr. Faisal, please run your program,” he said, “and make your system checks.”

Faisal came to the device, took out a small disc, found the input slot, and inserted the disc and pushed a certain number of keys. His information, concealed in Norwegian encryption that had taken him months to penetrate, flowed into the central processing unit of the missile. It held but one meaning: not to search for a specifically designated laser coding as the system had been originally designed to do, but for something much more primitive: a unique radio signal. No laser need apply; within the seeker module, behind the lenslike nose aperture, was not a laser seeker but a highly sensitive miniature FM receiver that was prelocked on to a unique frequency and would then only recognize an encoded tone. Old technology but very reliable. It would cause very tiny deviations from the path by sending signals to the servos that controlled the rocket’s fins. As the signal increased with proximity, the servos continued their adjustments. They sought the strongest signal and kept making it even stronger and rode the trolley toward detonation.

Now, at the control box, facing the launch menu in glowing Norwegian, Khalid designated a trajectory: the LOAL-DIR or Lock-On After Launch-Direct mode, meaning the missile would launch blind into the stratosphere at a relatively low angle, and when it found the encoded tone on the designated frequency the CPU aboard would tweak the servos and keep adjusting the angle of attack, then plummet directly to the target on that vector.

And all it would take to-

“We are ready,” he said to Faisal.

Faisal, with a police-frequency scanner purchased from Radio Shack, hunted for the signal. In the space where it should have been was nothing but static. He looked at his watch. It was 7:46:30. Not a noise anywhere on the immediate spectrum.

“Not yet,” he said.

“I wonder how long we can stay here before we are discovered.”

“Where is he? What is going on?”

“Agh,” said Faisal. “To come this far and fail. Aghhh-Allah will not allow it.”

“But will the FBI?” asked the anxious Professor Khalid.

At that point, the Park Services patrol car came slowly down the road to the parking lot.

THE WHITE HOUSE

EXECUTIVE DRIVE

WASHINGTON, DC

1938.12 HOURS

A Hellfire missile,” said Nick, incredulous. A missile? A missile. His mind seemed to fill with torrents of thick sludge as he struggled with the concept.

“It’s Norwegian,” said Hollister. “Came on the black market in Serbia, Zarzi paid for it on behalf of Al-Q. They have two scientists-an Indian rocket guidance expert and an Egyptian software genius-to decrypt it and make some basic changes. Instead of new-fangled laser it homes in on an old-fashioned FM tone at a specific frequency.”

“What FM tone?”

“Zarzi’s got a miniaturized FM transmitter in his wristwatch. The Russians built it for him. He pushes a button, it’s good for ten seconds of broadcast, missile flying through its cone reads it, locks on, and bang. They’re launching from the Iwo Jima Memorial. It will be in the air less than seven seconds. They’re going to detonate it on Zarzi. It’ll cut down everyone on the podium and half the audience. Now, I’ve told you, please, get me out of here.”

Nick suddenly achieved clarity, and understood exactly what had to be done and in what order. First Zarzi. Stop him or at least lock him in place so the president could get away from him.

“Sniper, hit Zarzi, take him down hard. Do it now!” Nick snapped.

Now: clear the fucking area.

He went to his unit, hit broadcast, held the button down.

“Break-break, all units, all units, emergency, incoming missile, clear the area, clear the area, this is no drill. Incoming missile, evacuate!”

Cruz rolled from the car, saw he didn’t have a shot because of a screen of trees, rotated around the iron fence until the angle came clear. He brought up the rifle, his finger ticking off the safety, and with his fine offhand skill he caught the face of Zarzi quadrasected by the crosshairs, and heard, “I lase two thirty-five, make it two and a third mil-dots above the hairs, one quarter value left windage,” and felt Swagger next to him, on the laser ranger, and as the slack came out of the trigger he saw Zarzi with a hand at the watch and though he hurried, he had to hurry smoothly and even as the shot broke and the scope image leaped after leaving a nanosecond’s view of shattered face, he knew he was too late.

“And so, Mr. President and my American friends,” Zarzi said in his fine baritone, “I stand before you, my honor regained, and I bring you greetings from my country and the bosom of my faith,” as his fingers played with the button on his watch. He smiled. He was happy. God is great. He was home. The years of debauchery, the lust for women and boys, the pleasures of alcohol and drugs, the addiction to the smoothness of silk, the softness of fine wool, the glitter of beautiful jewelry, it was all behind him.

“Incoming missile!” someone screamed. “Run, run, incoming missile!” And the crowd began to scream and disintegrate as panic filled the hearts, minds, and legs of those before him while at the same time men were tugging on the president. At that moment he touched the button on his watch, felt it click, and stepped through the gates of paradise, and then the Black Hills 168-grain Match bullet cracked into his cheekbone beneath his left eye and turned his brain to atomized jelly.

IWO JIMA MEMORIAL

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

1938.13 HOURS

As the policeman stopped and started to get out of his car, Bilal fired an AK-47 burst into his front tire, ripping it up, the percussion of the burst driving all tourists into panicked terror and the cop back into his car.

“Hurry up,” he screamed. “More will be here in seconds.”

“There is nothing,” screamed Dr. Faisal.

“Oh, Allah, I beseech thee,” implored Khalid, “send your sinning son a signal so that he may complete a-”

The blinking red light on the scanner signified success.

“It’s there,” screamed Dr. Faisal. “Yes, it’s-”

Khalid pushed the key.

Nothing happened.

“Oh my God!” shrieked Faisal.

His mind blanked, then came back and he remembered the launch sequence, repeated it, felt resistance in one of the keys, examined it, saw some piece of debris in the mechanism, scuffed it away, continued the sequence. Then he pushed the launch key again.

The missile’s engine fired and in.0005 seconds it acquired the 800 pounds of thrust necessary for flight and it fired from the van, appearing to rip the fabric of the universe, affording a glimpse into one of hell’s furnace rooms so hot no eyes could stand it, and all who saw it looked away as the rocket motor burned through its three seconds of solid fuel and in 300 yards had acquired enough velocity to arm itself, but still it accelerated, reaching 1.4 mach in another second or two.

It climbed to 800 feet and there acquired the message from Zarzi’s Casio watch, for it peaked as it skidded through the air, the vanes of its fins adjusting accordingly as its CPU solved the differential calculus necessary to guide it to its destination, then it yawed, bent around the sky, and began to hammer downward.

The two old men could follow it in the dark air from the slight trail of smoke, though no eyes were fast enough to focus on the missile itself. It seemed to ride a diagonal plumb line down to earth, without deviation, hesitation, qualm, or mercy, and it disappeared behind some trees, and then a flash lit the night sky over Washington and a second later the noise of the blast reached their ears.

“Allah Akbar,” said Khalid.

“You have returned to the faith, oh my brother,” said Dr. Faisal. “It is a night of miracles.”

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON, DC

1938.20 HOURS

A screaming came across the sky.

Two hundred thirty yards out, at the foot of the wrought-iron fence, Swagger turned on the noise just in time to see a streamlined blur incoming at a speed which has no place in time, turned again, and threw himself on Ray, driving him to the ground. In another instant the detonation cut the sky in half with a blade of light that reached the stars and simultaneously drilled a tremor through the earth and seemed to drive a nail into each eardrum. Then the blast wave struck, momentarily crushing everything erect in its mighty rush to infinity, sucking all the air from the planet. Next, an almost eerie silence, until someone began to scream.

Swagger rose.

Next to him came Ray, rising from the ground, and then Nick.

They saw the zone of destruction from 230 yards out. The missile had hit the podium and cratered a 20-foot gap in the earth, smoking now. All the windows on the walkway from the West Wing to the main residence were shattered, as were those of the West Wing, and many of the window frames were blown askew. The building’s famed white flanks were seared with the ochre of extreme but brief heat. Trees everywhere were toppled or shattered and shrubbery was torn out by its roots. Flames licked out of one of the Oval Office windows, and another fire announced its presence in a line of bushes closer to the main residence.

Across the lawn, in the flickering light of the fires, the bodies lay, flattened, twisted, smashed to earth horribly. But then… movement. Then some more movement. One by one, then ten by ten and twenty by twenty, the frail sacks of flesh stirred and began to pick themselves up, the stronger aiding the weaker; they climbed to their feet or rolled to sit up, groggy, shaky, hair a mess, unbelieving and begrimed.

A voice crackled over the radio, “The president is unhurt, the president is unhurt,” and then others, “Break-break, get emergency medical here fast, goddamnit, I have many people down,” and the sirens began to sound.

“Good God,” said Ray.

“Jesus H. Christ,” said Nick.

“Where’s Susan?” said Bob.

They walked back to the SUV as the howl of the sirens rose and the first of the emergency services vehicles roared by.

The SUV wasn’t there.

Susan lay in the grass. She was so beautiful. Her hair was slightly mussed, which made her even more beautiful. The wise, serene diamond eyes were open, the face calm, the cheekbones taut under the alabaster skin.

Her throat had been cut.