Little leaned forward and read.

URGENT URGENT URGENT.

FROM: DOJ TAG OP CENTER, WASHINGTON, D.C.

TO: TACTICAL COMMANDER, DOJ NORTHERN DISTRICT CALIFORNIA.

RE: DOJ NORTHERN DISTRICT CALIFORNIA OPERATION 139-01.

U.S. ARMY REPORTS MARINKILL SUSPECTS BROKE INTO SAN PEDRO MILITARY RESERVE AT 1540 HOURS TODAY AND STOLE LARGE CACHE OF AUTOMATIC WEAPONS, HAND GRENADES AND BODY ARMOR.

ADVISE TACTICAL AGENTS OF SAID SITUATION.

Man alive, Little thought, his pulse skyrocketing. The message knocked any suggestion of a negotiator right out of his thoughts. He glanced at Agent Steadman and said calmly, nodding at the screen, "Pa.s.s the word on this, George. Then get everybody into position. We go in six minutes."

CHAPTER 00101100 / FORTY-FOUR.

Frank Bishop walked around Shawn. The housing was about four-feet square and made of thick metal sheets. On the back was a series of ventilation slats from which hot air poured, the white wisps visible, like breath on a winter day. The front panel consisted of nothing except three green eyes - glowing indicator lights that flickered occasionally, revealing that Shawn was hard at work carrying out Phate's posthumous instructions.

The detective had tried to call Wyatt Gillette back but the phone was out of service. He called Tony Mott at the CCU. He told him and Linda Sanchez about the machine and then explained that Gillette seemed to think there was something specific he could do. But the hacker hadn't had time to tell him. "Any ideas?"

They debated. Bishop thought he should try to shut the machine down and stop the transmission of the confirmation code from Shawn to FBI tactical commander. Tony Mott, however, thought that if that happened there might be a second machine somewhere else that would take over for it, send the confirmation and, after learning that Shawn had been taken down, might be pre-programmed to do even more damage - like jam an FA A air traffic control computer somewhere. He thought it would be better to try to hack into Shawn and seize root.

Bishop didn't disagree with Mott but he explained there was no keyboard here to use to crack into Shawn. Besides, with only a few minutes to go until the a.s.sault there was no time to crunch pa.s.scodes and try to take control of the machine.

"I'm going to shut it down," he said.

But the detective could find no obvious way to do that. He searched again for a power switch and couldn't locate one. He looked for an access panel that would let him get to the power cables under the thick wooden floor but there was none.

He looked at his watch.

Three minutes until the a.s.sault. No time to go outside again and look for power company transformer boxes.

And so, just as he'd done six months ago in an alley in Oakland when Tremain Winters lifted a Remington twelve-gauge to his shoulder and aimed it at Bishop and two city cops, the detective calmly drew his service weapon and fired three well-grouped bullets into his adversary's torso.

But unlike the slugs that sent the gang leader to his death these copper-jacketed rounds flattened into tiny pancakes and bounced to the floor; Shawn's skin was hardly dented.

Bishop walked closer, stood at an angle to avoid ricochets and emptied the clip at the indicator lights. One green light shattered but steam continued to pour from the vents into the cold air.

Bishop grabbed his cell phone and shouted to Mott, "I just emptied a clip at the machine. Is it still online?"

He had to cram the phone against his ear, half-deafened from the gunshots, to hear the young cop at CCU tell him that Shawn was still operational and on line.

d.a.m.n...

He reloaded and poked the gun into one of the back vents and emptied this clip as well. This time a ricochet - a bit of hot lead - struck the back of his hand and left a ragged stigmata in his skin. He wiped the blood on his slacks and grabbed the phone again.

"Sorry, Frank," Mott replied hopelessly. "It's still up and running."

The cop looked in frustration at the box. Well, if you're going to play G.o.d and create new life, he thought bitterly, you might as well make it invulnerable.

Sixty seconds.

Bishop was wracked with frustration. He thought of Wyatt Gillette, somebody whose only crime was stumbling slightly as he'd tried to escape an empty childhood. So many of the kids Bishop had collared - kids in the East Bay, in the Haight - were remorseless killers and were now walking around free. And Wyatt Gillette had simply followed the fairly harmless path that G.o.d and the young man's own brilliance had jointly directed him down and, as a result, he and the woman he loved, and her family, were going to suffer terribly.

No time left. Shawn would be sending the confirmation signal at any moment.

Was there anything he could do to stop Shawn?

Maybe burn the d.a.m.n thing?

He could start a fire next to the vents. He ran to the desk and threw the contents of the drawers onto the floor, looking for matches or a cigarette lighter.

Nothing.

Then something clicked in his mind.

What?

He couldn't remember exactly, a thought from what seemed like ages ago - something Gillette had said when he'd walked into CCU for the first time.

The subject had been Fires in a computer room.

Do something with that.

He glanced at his watch. It was the deadline for the a.s.sault. Shawn's two remaining eyes flickered pa.s.sionlessly.

Do something...

Fire... with that.

Yes! Bishop suddenly turned from Shawn and looked frantically around the room. There it was! He ran to a small gray box with a red b.u.t.ton in the middle - the dinosaur pen's scram switch.

He slammed his palm against the b.u.t.ton.

A braying alarm sounded from the ceiling and with a piercing hiss, streams of halon gas shot from pipes above and below the machine, enveloping the room's occupants - one human, one not - in a ghostly white fog.

Tactical agent Mark Little looked at the screen of the computer in the command van.

RED CODE: (Mapleleaf) This was the go-ahead code for the a.s.sault.

"Print it out," Little said to the tech agent. Then he turned to George Steadman. "Confirm that Mapleleaf green-lights us for an a.s.sault with Level 4 rules of engagement."

The other agent consulted a small booklet with a Department of Justice seal on the front cover under the word CLa.s.sIFIED written in large block letters.

"Confirmed."

Little radioed to the three snipers covering all the doors. "We're going in. Any targets presenting through the windows?"

They each reported that there were none.

"All right. If anyone comes through the door armed, take them out. Drop 'em with a head shot so they won't have time to push any detonator b.u.t.tons. If they seem to be unarmed use your own judgment. But I'll remind you that rules of engagement've been set at Level 4. Understand what I'm saying?"

"Five by five," one of the snipers said and the others confirmed that they understood too.

Little and Steadman left the command van and ran through the hazy dusk to their teams. Little slipped into a side yard to join the eight officers he was leading - Alpha team. Steadman went to his, Bravo.

Little listened as the search and surveillance team reported in. "Alpha team leader, infrared shows body heat in the living room and parlor. The kitchen too - but that might just be cooking heat from the stove."

"Roger." Then Little announced into his radio, "I'm taking Alpha up the operation-side right of the house. We'll saturate with stun grenades - three in the parlor, three in the living room, three in the kitchen, thrown at five-second intervals. On the third bang Bravo goes in the front, Charlie in the back. We'll set up crossfire zones from the side windows."

Steadman and the leader of the other team confirmed they'd heard and understood.

Little pulled on his gloves, hood and helmet, thinking about the stolen cache of automatic weapons, hand grenades and body armor.

"Okay," he said. "Alpha team forward. Go slow. Use all available cover. Get ready to light the candles."

CHAPTER 00101101 / FORTY-FIVE.

Inside the Papandolos home - the house of lemons, the house of photographs, the house of family - Wyatt Gillette pressed his face against lace curtains that he remembered Elana's mother sewing together one autumn. From this nostalgic vantage point he saw the FBI agents start to move in.

A few feet at a time, crouching, cautious.

He glanced into the other room, behind him, and saw Elana lying on the floor, her arm around her mother. Christian, her brother, was nearby, but his head was up and he looked with bottomless anger into Gillette's eyes.

Nothing he could say to them by way of apology would even approach adequacy and he remained silent, turned back to the window.

He'd decided what he would do - decided some time before actually but he'd been content to savor these last few minutes of his life in proximity to the woman he loved.

Ironically the idea had come from Phate.

You're the hero with the flaw a" the flaw that usually gets them into trouble. Oh, you'll do something heroic at the end and save some lives and the audience'll cry for you...

He'd walk outside with his arms up. Bishop had said they wouldn't trust him and think that he was a suicide bomber or had a hidden gun. Phate and Shawn had seen to it that the police were expecting the worst. But the officers were human too; they might hesitate. And if they did they might trust him to call Elana and the others out.

But you 'll still never make it to the final level of the game.

And even if he didn't - if they shot and killed him -they'd search his body and find that he was unarmed and might think that the others would be willing to surrender peaceably too. Then they'd discover that this was all just a terrible mistake.

He glanced at his wife. Even now, he thought, she's so very beautiful. She didn't look up and he was glad for that; he couldn't have borne the burden of her gaze.

Wait until they're close, he told himself, so they can see you're not a threat.

As he stepped into the hall to wait beside the door he noticed on a desk in the den an old IBM-clone computer. Wyatt Gillette reflected on the dozens of hours he'd spent online in the past few days. Thinking: If he couldn't take Elana's love to his death, at least he'd have those memories of his hours in the Blue Nowhere to accompany him.

The tactical agents of Alpha team crawled slowly toward the stuccoed suburban house - hardly a likely setting for an operation of this sort. Mark Little signaled the team to take cover behind a bed of spiny rhododendrons about twenty feet from the west side of the house.

He gave a hand signal to three of his agents from whose belts dangled the powerful stun grenades. They ran into position beneath the parlor, living room and kitchen windows then pulled the pins of the grenades. Three others joined them and gripped billy clubs, with which they'd shatter the gla.s.s so their partners could pitch the grenades inside.

The men looked back at Little, awaiting the go-ahead hand signal.

Then: A crackle in Little's headset.

"Alpha team leader one, we have an emergency patch from a landline. It's the SAC from San Francisco."

Special Agent in Charge Jaeger? What was he calling for?

"Go ahead," he whispered into the stalk mike.

There was a click.

"Agent Little," came the unfamiliar voice. "It's Frank Bishop. State police."

"Bishop?" It was that f.u.c.king cop who'd called before. "Put Henry Jaeger on."

"He's not here, sir. I lied. I had to get through to you. Don't disconnect. You have to listen to me."

Bishop was the one they'd decided might be a perp inside the house trying to distract them.

Except, Little now reflected, the phone lines to the house and the cell were down, which meant that the call couldn't be coming from the killers.

"Bishop... What the h.e.l.l do you want? You know what kind of trouble you're going to be in for impersonating an FBI agent? I'm hanging up."

"No! Don't! Ask for reconfirmation."

"I don't want to hear any of this hacker c.r.a.p."

Little examined the house. Everything was still. Moments like this summoned a curious sensation - exhilarating and frightening and numbing all at the same time. You also had the queasy sense that one of the killers had itchy crosshairs on you, picking out a target of flesh two inches off the vest.

The cop said, "I just nailed the perp who did the hacking and shut his computer down. I guarantee you won't get a reconfirmation. Send the request."

"That's not procedure."

"Do it anyway. You'll regret it for the rest of your life if you go in there under Level 4 rules of engagement."

Little paused. How had Bishop known they were operating at Level 4? Only someone on the team or with access to the bureau computer could have known that.