Best of all would be a simple assassination with a rifle, but that was too hard to set up. Just getting a perch overlooking the proper place would be difficult and dangerous. The Cartel overlords kept tabs on every window with a line of sight to their own domiciles. If an American rented one, and soon thereafter a shot was fired from itwell, that wouldnt exactly be covert, would it? The whole point was for them not to know exactly what was happening.

Clarks operational concept was an elegantly simple one. So elegant and so simple that it hadnt occurred to the supposed experts in black operations at Langley. What Clark wanted to do, simply, was to kill enough of the people on his list to increase the paranoia within his targeted community. Killing them all, desirable though it might be, was a practical impossibility. What he wanted to do was merely to kill enough of them, and to do so in such a way as to spark another reaction entirely.

The Cartel was composed of a number of very ruthless people whose intelligence was manifested in the sort of cunning most often associated with a skilled enemy on the battlefield. Like good soldiers they were always alert to danger, but unlike soldiers they looked for danger from within in addition to from without. Despite the success of their collaborative enterprise, these men were rivals. Flushed with money and power, they didnt and would never have enough. There was never enough of either for men like this, but power most of all. It seemed to Clark and others that their ultimate goal was to assume political control of their country, but countries are not run by committees, at least not by large ones. All Clark needed to accomplish was to make the Cartel chieftains think that there was a power grab underway within their own hierarchy, at which point they would merrily start killing one another off in a new version of the Mafia wars of the 1930s.

Maybe, he admitted to himself. He gave the plan about a 30 percent chance of total success. But even if it failed, some major players would be removed from the field, and that, too, counted as a tactical success if not a strategic one. Weakening the Cartel might increase Colombias chances of dealing with it, which was another possible strategic outcome, but not the only one. There was also the chance that the war he was hoping to start could have the same result as the final act of the Castellammare Wars, remembered as the Night of the Italian Vespers, in which scores of mafiosi had been killed by their own colleagues. What had grown out of that bloody night was a stronger, better-organized, and more dangerous organized-crime network under the far more sophisticated leadership of Carlo Luchiano and Vito Genovese. That was a real danger, Clark thought. But things couldnt get much worse than they already were. Or so Washington had decided. It was a gamble worth the taking.

Larson arrived at the house. Hed come here only once before, and while it was in keeping with Clarks cover as a visiting prospector of sortsthere were several boxes of rocks lying around the houseit was one aspect of the mission that bothered him.

Catch the news?

Everyone says car bomb, Larson replied with a sly smile. We wont be that lucky next time.

Probably not. The next one has to be really spectacular.

Dont look at me! You dont expect that Im going to find out when the next meet is, do you?

It would be nice, Clark told himself, but he didnt expect it, and would have disapproved any order requiring it. No, we have to pray for another intercept. They have to meet. They have to get together and discuss whats happened.

Agreed. But it might not be up in the mountains.

Oh?

They all have places in the lowlands, too.

Clark had forgotten about that. It would make targeting very difficult. Can we spot in the laser from an aircraft?

I dont see why not. But then I land, refuel, and fly the hell out of this country forever.

Henry and Harvey Patterson were twin brothers, twenty-seven years of age, and were proof of whatever social theory a criminologist might hold. Their father had been a professional, if not especially proficient, criminal for all of his abbreviated lifewhich had ended at age thirty-two when a liquor-store owner had shot him with a 12-gauge double at the range of eleven feet. That was important to adherents of the behavioral school, generally populated by political conservatives. They were also products of a one-parent household, poor schooling, adverse peer-group pressure, and an economically depressed neighborhood. Those factors were important to the environmental school of behavior, whose adherents are generally political liberals.

Whatever the reason for their behavior, they were career criminals who enjoyed their life-style and didnt give much of a damn whether their brains were preprogrammed into it or they had actually learned it in childhood. They were not stupid. Had intelligence tests not been biased toward the literate, their IQs would have tested slightly above average. They had animal cunning sufficient to make their apprehension by police a demanding enterprise, and a street-smart knowledge of law that had allowed them to manipulate the legal system with remarkable success. They also had principles. The Patterson brothers were drinkerseach was already a borderline alcoholicbut not drug users. This marked them as a little odd, but since neither brother cared a great deal for law, the discontinuity with normal criminal profiles didnt trouble them either.

Together, they had robbed, burglarized, and assaulted their way across southern Alabama since their mid-teens. They were treated by their peers with considerable respect. Several people had crossed one or bothsince they were identical twins, crossing one inevitably meant crossing bothand turned up dead. Dead by blunt trauma (a club), or dead by penetrating trauma (knife or gun). The police suspected them of five murders. The problem was, which one of them? The fact that they were identical twins was a technical complication to every case which their lawyera good one they had identified quite early in their careershad used to great effect. Whenever the victim of a Patterson was killed, the police could bet their salaries on the fact that one of the brothersgenerally the one who had the motive to kill the victimwould be ostentatiously present somewhere miles away. In addition, their victims were never honest citizens, but members of their own criminal community, which fact invariably cooled the ardor of the police.

But not this time.

It had taken fourteen years since their first officially recorded brush with the law, but Henry and Harvey had finally fucked up big-time, cops all over the state learned from their watch commanders: the police had finally gotten them on a major felony rap and, they noted with no small degree of pleasure, it was because of another pair of identical twins. Two whores, lovely ones of eighteen years, had smitten the hearts of the Patterson brothers. For the past five weeks Henry and Harvey had not been able to get enough of Noreen and Doreen Grayson, and as the patrol officers in the neighborhood had watched the romance blossom, the general speculation in the station was how the hell they kept one another straightthe behavioralist cops pronounced that it wouldnt actually matter, which observation was dismissed by the environmentalist cops as pseudoscientific bullshit, not to mention sexually perverse, but both sides of the argument found it roundly entertaining speculation. In either case, true love had been the downfall of the Patterson brothers.

Henry and Harvey had decided to liberate the Grayson sisters from their drug-dealing pimp, a very disreputable but even more formidable man with a long history of violence, and a suspect in the disappearance of several of his girls. What had brought it to a head was a savage beating to the sisters for not turning over some presentsjewelrygiven them by the Pattersons as one-month anniversary presents. Noreens jaw had been broken, and Doreen had lost six teeth, plus other indignities that had enraged the Pattersons and put both girls in the University of South Alabama Medical Center. The twin brothers were not people to bear offense lightly, and one week later, from the unlit shadows of an alley, the two of them had used identical Smith & Wesson revolvers to end the life of Elrod McIlvane. It was their misfortune that a police radio car had been half a block away at the time. Even the cops thought that, in this case, the Pattersons had rendered a public service to the city of Mobile.

The police lieutenant had both of them in an interrogation room. Their customary defiance was a wilted flower. The guns had been recovered less than fifty yards from the crime scene. Though there had been no usable fingerprints on eitherfirearms do not always lend themselves to this purposethe four rounds recovered from McIlvanes body did match up with both; the Pattersons had been apprehended four blocks away; their hands bore powder signatures from having fired guns of some sort; and their motive for eliminating the pimp was well known. Criminal cases didnt get much better than that. The only thing the police didnt have was a confession. The twins luck had finally run out. Even their lawyer had told them that. There was no hope of a plea-bargainthe local prosecutor hated them even more than the police didand while they stood to do hard time for murder, the good news was that they probably wouldnt get the chair, since the jurors probably would not want to execute people for killing a drug-dealing pimp whod put two of his whores in the hospital and probably killed a few more. This was arguably a crime of passion, and under American law such motives are generally seen as mitigating circumstances.

In identical prison garb, the Pattersons sat across the table from the senior police officer. The lieutenant couldnt even tell them apart, and didnt bother asking which was which, because they would probably have lied about it out of pure spite.

Wheres our lawyer? Henry or Harvey asked.

Yeah, Harvey or Henry emphasized.

We dont really need him here for this. Howd you boys like to do a little favor for us? the lieutenant asked. You do us a little favor and maybe we can do you a little favor. That settled the problem of legal counsel.

Bullshit! one of the twins observed, just as a bargaining position, of course. They were at the straw-grasping stage. Prison beckoned, and while neither had ever served a serious stretch, theyd done enough county time to know that it wouldnt be fun.

How do you like the idea of life imprisonment? the lieutenant asked, unmoved by the show of strength. You know how it works, seven or eight years before youre rehabilitated and they let you out. If youre lucky, that is. Awful long time, eight years. Like that idea, boys?

Were not fools. Watchu here for? the other Patterson asked, indicating that he was ready to discuss terms.

You do a job for us, and, well, something nice might happen.

What jobs that? Already both brothers were amenable to the arrangement.

You seen Ramn and Jess?

The pirates? one asked. Shit. In the criminal community as with any other, there is a hierarchy of status. The abusers of women and children are at the bottom. The Pattersons were violent criminals, but had never abused women. They only assaulted menmen much smaller than themselves for the most part, but men nonetheless. That was important to their collective self-image.

Yeah, we seen the fucks, the other said to emphasize his brothers more succinct observation. Actin like king shit last cupla days. Fuckin spics. Hey, man, we bad dudes, but we aint never raped no little girl, aint never killed no little girl neither and they be gettin off, they say? Shit! We waste a fuckin pimp likes to beat on his ladies, and we lookin at life. What kinda justice you call that, mister po-liceman? Shit!

If something were to happen to Ramn and Jesus, something really serious, the lieutenant said quietly, maybe something else might happen. Something beneficial to you boys.

Like what?

Like you get to see Noreen and Doreen on a very regular basis. Maybe even settle down.

Shit! Henry or Harvey said.

Thats the best deal in town, boys, the lieutenant told them.

You want us to kill the motherfuckers? It was Harvey who asked this question, disappointing his brother, who thought of himself as the smart one.

The lieutenant just stared at them.

We hear you, Henry said. How we know you keep your word?

What word is that? The lieutenant paused. Ramn and Jesus killed a family of four, raped the wife and the little girl first, of course, and they probably had a hand in the murder of a Mobile police officer and his wife. But something went wrong with the case against them, and the most theyll get is twenty years, walk in seven or eight, max. For killing six people. Hardly seems fair, does it?

By this time both twins had gotten the message. The lieutenant could see the recognition, an identical expression in both pairs of eyes. Then came the decision. The two pairs of eyes were guarded for a moment as they considered how to do it. Then they became serene. Both Pattersons nodded, and that was that.

You boys be careful now. Jail can be a very dangerous place. The lieutenant rose to summon the jailer. If asked, hed say thatafter getting their permission to talk to them without a lawyer present, of coursehed wanted to ask them about a robbery in which the Pattersons had not been involved, but about which they might have some knowledge, and that he had offered them some help with the DA in return for their assistance. Alas, theyd professed no knowledge of the robbery in question, and after less than five minutes of conversation, hed sent them back to their cell. Should they ever refer to the actual content of the conversation, it would be the word of two career criminals with an open-and-shut murder charge hanging over their heads against the word of a police lieutenant. At most that would result in a page-five story in the Mobile Register, which took rather a stern line on violent crime. And they could scarcely confess to a double murder whether done at police behest or not, could they?

The lieutenant was an honorable man, and immediately went to work to hold up his end of the bargain in anticipation of the fact that the Pattersons would do the same. Of the four bullets removed from the body of Elrod McIlvane, one was unusable for ballistic-matching purposes due to its distortionunjacketed lead bullets are very easily damagedand the others, though good enough for the criminal case, were borderline. The lieutenant ordered the bullets removed from evidence storage for reexamination, along with the examiners notes and the photographs. He had to sign for them, of course, to maintain chain of evidence. This legal requirement was written to ensure that evidence used in a trial, once taken from the crime scene or elsewhere and identified as significant, was always in a known location and under proper custody. It was a safeguard against the illicit manufacture of incriminating evidence. When a piece of evidence got lost, even if it were later recovered, it could never be used in a criminal case, since it was then tainted. He walked down to the laboratory area, but found the technicians leaving to go home. He asked the ballistics expert if he could recheck the Patterson Case bullets first thing Monday morning, and the man replied, sure, one of the matches was a little shaky, but, he thought, close enough for trial purposes. He didnt mind doing a recheck, though.

The policeman walked back to his office with the bullets. The manila envelope which held them was labeled with the case number, and since it was still in proper custody, duly signed for by the lieutenant, chain of evidence had not yet been violated. He made a note on his desk blotter that he didnt want to leave them in his desk over the weekend, and would take them home, keeping the whole package locked in his combination-locked briefcase. The lieutenant was fifty-three years old, and within four months of retirement with full benefits. Thirty years of service was enough, he thought, looking forward to getting full use from his fishing boat. He could scarcely retire in good conscience leaving two cop-killers with eight years of soft time.

The influx of drug money to Colombia has produced all manner of side effects and one of them, in a stunningly ironic twist, is that the Colombian police had obtained a new and very sophisticated crime lab. Residue from the Untiveros house was run through the usual series of chemical tests, and within a few hours it had been determined that the explosive agent had been a mixture of cyclotetramethylenetetranitramine and trinitrotoluene. Known more colloquially as HMX and TNT, when combined in a 70-30 mixture, the chemist wrote, they formed an explosive compound called Octol, which, he wrote on, was a rather expensive, very stable, and extremely violent high explosive made principally in the United States, but available commercially from American, European, and one Asian chemical company. And that ended his work for the day. He handed over his report to his secretary, who faxed it to Medelln, where another secretary made a Xerox copy, which found its way twenty minutes later to Felix Cortez.

The report was yet another piece in the puzzle for the former intelligence officer. No local mining operation used Octol. It was too expensive, and simple nitrate-based explosive gels were all that commercial applications required. If you needed a larger explosive punch to loosen rocks, you simply drilled a wider hole and crammed in more explosives. The same option did not exist, however, for military forces. The size of an artillery shell was limited by the diameter of the gun barrel, and the size of a bomb was limited by the aerodynamic drag it imposed on the aircraft that carried it. Therefore, military organizations were always looking for more powerful explosives to get better performance from their size-limited weapons. Cortez lifted a reference book from his library shelf and confirmed the fact that Octol was almost exclusively a military explosive . . . and was used as a triggering agent for nuclear devices. That evoked a short bark of a laugh.

It also explained a few things. His initial reaction to the explosion was that a ton of dynamite had been used. The same result could be explained by less than five hundred kilos of this Octol. He pulled out another reference book and learned that the actual explosive weight in a two-thousand-pound bomb was under one thousand pounds.

But why were there no fragments? More than half the weight of a bomb was in the steel case. Cortez set that aside for the moment.

An aircraft bomb explained much. He remembered his training in Cuba, when North Vietnamese officers had briefed his class on smart-bombs that had been the bane of their countrys bridges and electrical generating plants during the brief but violent Linebacker-II bombing campaign in 1972. After years of costly failures, the American fighter-bombers had destroyed scores of heavily defended targets in a matter of days, using their new precision-guided munitions.

If targeted on a truck, such a bomb would give every appearance of a car bomb, wouldnt it?

But why were there no fragments? He reread the lab report. There had also been cellulose residue which the lab tech explained away as the cardboard containers in which the explosives had been packed.

Cellulose? That meant paper or wood fibers, didnt it? Make a bomb out of paper? Cortez lifted one of his reference booksJanes Weapons Systems. It was a heavy book with a hard, stiff cover . . . cardboard, covered with cloth. It really was that simple, wasnt it? If you could make paper that strong for so prosaic a purpose as a book binding . . .

Cortez leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette to congratulate himselfand the norteamericanos. It was brilliant. Theyd sent a bomber armed with a special smart-bomb, targeted it on that absurd truck, and left nothing behind that could remotely be called evidence. He wondered who had come up with this plan, amazed that the Americans had done something so intelligent. The KGB would have assembled a company of Spetznaz commandos and fought a conventional infantry battle, leaving all manner of evidence behind and delivering the message in a typically Russian way, which was effective but lacking in subtlety. The Americans for once had managed the sort of subtlety worthy of a Spaniardof a Cortez, Flix chuckled. That was remarkable.

Now he had the How. Next he had to figure out the What For. But of course! There had been that American newspaper story about a possible gang war. There had been fourteen senior Cartel lords. Now there were ten. The Americans would try to reduce that number further by . . . what? Might they assume that the single bombing incident would ignite a savage war of infighting? No, Cortez decided. One such incident wasnt enough. Two might be, but not one.

So the Americans had commando teams prowling the mountains south of Medellin, had dropped one bomb, and were doing something else to curtail the drug flights. That became clear as well. They were shooting the airplanes down, of course. They had people watching airfields and forwarding their intelligence information elsewhere for action. It was a fully integrated operation. The most incredible thing of all was that it was actually working. The Americans had decided to do something that worked. Now, that was miraculous. For all the time he had been an intelligence officer, CIA had been reasonably effective at gathering information, but not for actually doing something.

Flix rose from his desk and walked over to his office bar. This called for serious contemplation, and that meant a good brandy. He poured a triple portion into a balloon glass, swirling it around, letting his hand warm the liquid so that the aromatic vapors would caress his senses even before he took the first sip.

The Chinese language was ideographicCortez had met his share of Chinese intelligence types as welland its symbol for crisis was a combination of the symbols denoting danger and opportunity. The dualism had struck him the first time hed heard it, and hed never forgotten it. Opportunities like this one were exceedingly rare, and equally dangerous. The principal danger, he knew, was the simple fact that he didnt know how the Americans were developing their intelligence information. Everything he knew pointed to a penetration agent within the organization. Someone high up, but not as high as he wished to be. The Americans had compromised someone just as he had so often done. Standard intelligence procedure, and that was something CIA excelled at. Someone. Who? Someone who had been deeply offended, and wanted to get even while at the same time acquiring a seat around the table of chieftains. Quite a few people fell into that category. Including Flix Cortez. And instead of having to initiate his own operation to achieve that goal, he could now depend on the Americans to do it for him. It struck him as very odd indeed that he was trusting the Americans to do his work, but it was also hugely amusing. It was, in fact, almost the definition of the perfect covert operation. All he had to do was let the Americans carry out their own plan, and stand by the sidelines to watch it work. It would require patience and confidence in his enemynot to mention the degree of danger involvedbut Cortez felt that it was worth the effort.

In the absence of knowing how to get the information to the Americans, he decided, hed just have to trust to luck. No, not luck. They seemed to be getting the word somehow, and theyd probably get it this time, too. He lifted his phone and made a call, something very uncharacteristic for him. Then, on reflection, he made one other arrangement. After all, he couldnt expect that the Americans would do exactly what he wanted exactly when he wanted. Some things he had to do for himself.

Ryans plane landed at Andrews just after seven in the evening. One of his assistantsit was so nice having assistantstook custody of the classified documents and drove them back to Langley while Jack tossed his bags in the back of his XJS and drove home. Hed get a decent nights sleep to slough off the effects of jet lag, and tomorrow hed be back at his desk. First order of business, he told himself as he took the car onto Route 50, was to find out what the Agency was up to in South America.

Ritter shook his head in wonder and thanksgiving. CAPER had come through for them again. Cortez himself this time, too. They just hadnt twigged to the fact that their communications were vulnerable. It wasnt a new phenomenon, of course. The same thing had happened to the Germans and Japanese in World War II, and had been repeated time and again. It was just something that Americans were good at. And the timing could hardly have been better. The carrier was available for only thirty more hours, barely time enough to get the message to their man on Ranger. Ritter typed up the orders and mission requirements on his personal computer. They were printed, sealed in an envelope, and handed to one of his senior subordinates, who caught an Air Force supply flight to Panama.

Captain Robby Jackson was feeling a little better. If nothing else, he thought he could just barely feel the added weight of the fourth stripe on the shoulders of his undress-white shirt, and the silver eagle that had replaced the oak leaf on the collar of his khakis was so much nicer a symbol for a pilot, wasnt it? The below-the-zone promotion meant that he was seriously in the running for CAG, command of his own carrier air wingthat would be his last real flying job, Jackson knew, but it was the grandest of all. Hed have to check out in several different types of aircraft, and would be responsible for over eighty birds, their flight crews, and the maintenance personnel, without which the aircraft were merely attractive ornaments for a carriers flight deck.

The bad news was that his tactical ideas hadnt worked out as well as planned, but he consoled himself with the knowledge that all new ideas take time. Hed seen that a few of his original ideas were flawed, and the fixes suggested by one of Rangers squadron commanders had almost workedhad actually improved the idea markedly. And that, too, was normal. The same could also be said of the Phoenix missiles, whose guidance-package fixes had performed fairly well; not quite as well as the contractor had promised, but that wasnt unusual either, was it?

Robby was in the carriers Combat Information Center. No flight operations were underway at the moment. The battle group was in some heavy weather that would clear in a few hours, and while the maintenance people were tinkering with their airplanes, Robby and the senior air-defense people were reviewing tapes of the fighter engagements for the sixth time. The enemy force had performed remarkably well, diagnosing Rangers defense plans and reacting to them quickly and effectively to get its missile-shooters within range. That Rangers fighters had clobbered them on the way out was irrelevant. The whole point of the Outer Air Battle was to clobber the Backfires on the way in.

The tape recording had been made from the radar coverage of the E-2C Hawkeye which Robby had ridden for the first engagement, but six times really were enough. Hed learned all he could learn, and his mind was wandering now. There was the Intruder again, mating up with the tanker, then heading off toward Ecuador and disappearing off the screen just before it made the coast. Captain Jackson settled back in his chair while the discussion went on around him. They fast-forwarded the tape for the approach phase, spent over an hour replaying the actual battlewhat there had been of it, Jackson noted with a frownthen fast-forwarded it again. Rangers CAG was particularly annoyed with the lackadaisical manner in which his squadrons had re-formed for the return to the carrier. The poor organization of the fighters elicited some scathing comments from the captain who had the title that Robby now looked forward to. Listening to his remarks was a good education, though it was a touch profane. The ensuing discussion kept the tape running untilthere, again, the A-6 reappeared, heading into the carrier after having done whatever the hell it had done. Robby knew that he was making an assumption, and for professional officers assumptions were dangerous things. But there it was.

Capn Jackson, sir?

Robby turned to see a yeoman with a clipboard. It was an action message for which he had to sign, which he did before accepting the form and reading it.

What gives, Rob? the carriers operations officer asked.

Admiral Painter is flying out to the PG School. He wants me to meet him there instead of flying back to D.C. I spose he wants an early reading on how my wonderful new tactics worked out, Jackson replied.

Dont sweat it. They aint going to take the shoulder boards back.

I didnt think this all the way through, Robby replied, gesturing at the screen.

Nobody ever does.

Ranger cleared the bad weather an hour later. The first plane off was the COD, which headed off to Panama to drop off mail and pick up various things. It returned in four hours. The tech-rep was waiting for it, already prepped by an innocuous signal over a clear channel. When hed finished reading the message, he called Commander Jensens stateroom.

Copies of the photo were being taken to The Hideaway, but the closest witness was in Alexandria, and he took it there himself.

Murray knew better than to ask where the photo had come from. That is, he knew that it came from CIA, and that it was some sort of surveillance photo, but the circumstances that surrounded it were things he didnt need to knowor so he would have been told had he asked, which he hadnt. It was just as well, since he might not have accepted the need-to-know explanation in this case.

Moira was improving. The restraints were off, but she was still being treated for some side effects of the sleeping pills shed taken. Something to do with her liver function, hed heard, but she was responding well to treatment. He found her sitting up, the motorized bed elevated at the command of a button. Visiting hours were overher kids had been in tonight, and that, Murray figured, was the best treatment she could possibly get. The official story was an accidental OD. The hospital knew different, and that had leaked, but the Bureau took the public position that it had been an accident since she hadnt quite taken a lethal dose of the drug. The Bureaus own psychiatrist saw her twice a day, and his report was optimistic. The suicide attempt, while real, had been based on impulse, not prolonged contemplation. With care and counseling, shed come around and would probably fully recover. The psychiatrist also thought that what Murray was about to do would help.

You look a hell of a lot better, he told her. How are the kids?

Ill never do this to them again, Moira Wolfe replied. What a stupid, selfish thing to do.

I keep telling you, you got hit by the truck. Murray took the chair by her bedside and opened the manila envelope hed carried in. Is this the truck?

She took the photo from his hand and stared at it for a moment. It wasnt a very good photograph. Taken at a distance of over two miles, even with the high-power lens and computer enhancement of the image, it didnt show anything approaching the detail of an amateur photographers action shot of his child. But there is more to a picture than the expression on a persons face. The shape of the head, the style of the hair, the posture, the way he held his hands, the tilt of the head. . . .

Its him, she said. Thats Juan Daz. Where did you get it?

It came from another government agency, Murray replied, his choice of words telling her nothingthe exact nothing that meant CIA. They had a discreet surveillance of some place or otherI dont know whereand got this. They thought it might be our boy. For your information, this is the first confirmed shot we have of Colonel Flix Cortez, late of the DGI. At least now we know what the bastard looks like.

Get him, Moira said.

Oh, well get him, Murray promised her.

I know what Ill have to dotestify and all that. I know what the lawyers will do to me. I can handle it. I can, Mr. Murray.

She isnt kidding, Dan realized. It wasnt the first time that revenge had been part of saving a life, and Murray was glad to see it. It was one more purpose, one more thing Moira had to live for. His job was to see that she and the Bureau got their revenge. The approved term at the FBI was retribution, but the hundreds of agents on the case werent using that word now.

Jack arrived at his office early the next morning to find the expected pile of work, on top of which was a note from Judge Moore.

The convention closes tonight, it read. Youre booked on the last flight to Chicago. Tomorrow morning you will brief Gov. Fowler. This is a normal procedure for presidential candidates. Guidelines for your briefing are attached, along with a copy of the national-security brief done in the 1984 presidential campaign. Restricted and Confidential information may be discussed, but nothing Secret or higher. I need to see your written presentation before five.

And that completely blew the day away. Ryan called home to let his family know that hed be gone yet another night. Then he got to work. Now he wouldnt be able to quiz Ritter and Moore until the following Monday. And Ritter, he learned, would be spending most of the day over at the White House anyway. Jacks next call was to Bethesda, to check in with Admiral Greer and get some guidance. He was surprised to learn that Greer had done the last such briefing personally. He wasnt surprised that the old mans voice was measurably weaker than the last time theyd talked. The good cheer was still there, but, welcome sound that it was, the image in Jacks mind was of an Olympic skater giving a medal-winning performance on thin, brittle ice.

Explanations HED NEVER THOUGHT of the COD as the busiest aircraft in the carriers air wing. It was, of course, and hed always known it, but the machinations of the ugly, slow, prop-driven aircraft had hardly been a matter of interest to a pilot whod been born in an F-4N Phantom-II and soon thereafter moved up in class to the F-14A Tomcat. He hadnt flown a fighter in weeks, and as he walked out toward the CODofficially the C-2A Greyhound, which was almost appropriate since it did indeed fly like a doghe resolved that hed sneak down to Pax River for a few hours of turnin and burnin in a proper airplane just as soon as he could. I feel the need, he whispered to himself with a smile. The need for speed. The COD was spotted for a shot off the starboard bow catapult, and as Robby headed toward it he again saw an A-6E Intruder, again the squadron commanders personal aircraft, parked next to the island. Outboard from the structure was a narrow area called the Bomb Farm, used for ordnance storage and preparation. It was a convenient spot, too small an area for airplanes to be parked and agreeably close to the edge of the deck so that bombs could easily be jettisoned over the side if the need arose. The bombs were moved about on small, low-slung carts, and just as he boarded the COD, he saw one, carrying a blue practice bomb toward the Intruder. On the bomb were the odd attachments for laser guidance.

So, another Drop-Ex tonight, eh? It was something else to smile about. You put that one right down the pickle barrel, too, Jensen, Robby thought. Ten minutes later he was off, heading for Panama, where hed hop a ride with the Air Force for California.

Ryan was over West Virginia on a commercial flight, sitting in coach on an American Airlines DC-9. It was quite a comedown from the Air Force VIP group, but there hadnt been sufficient cause for that sort of treatment this time. He was accompanied by a security guard, which Jack was gradually getting used to. This one was a case officer whod been injured on dutyhed fallen off something and badly injured his hip. After recovering, hed probably rotate back to Operations. His name was Roger Harris. He was thirty or so and, Jack thought, pretty smart.

What did you do before you joined up? he asked Harris.

Well, sir, I Names Jack. They dont issue a halo along with the job title.

Would you believe? A street cop in Newark. I decided that I wanted to try something safer, so I came here. And then look what happened, he chuckled.

The flight was only half booked. Ryan looked around and saw that no one was close, and listening devices invariably had trouble with the whine of the engines.

Whered it happen?

Poland. A meet went down badI mean, something just felt bad and I blew it off. My guy got away clean and I boogied the other way. Two blocks from the embassy I hopped over a wall. Tried to. There was a cat, just a plain old alley cat. I stepped on it, and it screeched, and I tripped and broke my fucking hip like some little old lady falling in the bathtub. A rueful smile. This spy stuff aint like the movies, is it?