"Being New Yorkers, how did you ever hook up with the senator?" Rodgers asked. "You said he was an old friend of your father. . . ."

"Army days. They drifted later, but never far or for long. When my dad was on the police force, he helped set up a program called Vacation Swap, when kids from the city went to some other place and vice versa," Kat said. "He and one of their other army buddies, Mac Crowne-a Park Avenue dentist, fittingly-took kids out to the Orr Ranch a couple of times a year. They were as different as could be, which is probably why they got along so well."

"Did you ever go?"

"A couple of times," she said. "Good thing, too."

"Why?"

"Senator Orr says he would never entirely trust a person who was uncomfortable around horses," she replied.

"The admiral does not strike me as an equestrian," Rodgers noted.

"He isn't. But he hunted sperm whales as a teenager in Newfoundland, before it was banned. That registered big on the Orr machismo scale."

"I hope the senator realizes I have nothing to offer along those lines-"

"But you do," Kat commented. "Tanks. Big beasts, difficult to tame. To the senator, tank warfare is like a medieval joust. Very manly."

"I see," Rodgers said.

Kat was absolutely a good person to have on the team. Experienced, enthusiastic, energetic. It was not just Kat, though. The entire conversation felt good. It was full of insights and compliments, camaraderie and hope. When it was over, Rodgers decided to go back to Op-Center and clean out his desk. Though he was still technically on the payroll, he wanted no part of the organization. He did not want to hold on to the anger Hood had made him feel. He would say his good-byes to those who wanted to hear them, and then Mike Rodgers would do exactly what Kat Lockley was doing: use the considerable experiences of his lifetime to look ahead. Rodgers could not imagine that Paul Hood would want or need him for anything over the next few days.

He walked Kat back to the office building, then drove out to Andrews Air Force Base-possibly for the last time. Mike Rodgers was not sentimental that way. Yet he did wonder if, on the whole, this had been a positive experience. So much good had been done but at an extraordinary cost. For himself, the sadness of the people he had lost would probably be stronger in his memory than the goals they had achieved. He also believed, as he had since Op-Center was chartered, that he would have done a better job running it than Hood had done. He would not go so far as to say that good things had happened in spite of the director. But he would say that Hood had not been as proactive as he would have been.

h.e.l.l, I was the one who a.s.signed myself to the North Korea mission, Rodgers thought. Rodgers thought.

If he had not, Hood might have refused to let Striker act as aggressively as it did. His CIOC-friendly methods may have allowed Tokyo to vanish under a barrage of Nodong missiles. Waiting for approvals and charter revisions was the way to build a legal and clean-living ent.i.ty, not necessarily the most effective one. It would be like soldiers in the field asking the president or secretary of defense to okay each maneuver. Rodgers always felt it was better to ask for forgiveness than for permission.

The air force guard standing near the elevator saluted smartly. Rodgers saluted back. Nothing in the young woman's eyes betrayed knowledge of what had gone on below. Perhaps she did not know. Op-Center's grapevine tended to grow, and remain, underground.

The initial discomfort of employees in the executive section had pa.s.sed. They greeted Rodgers warmly as he made his way to his office. Rodgers told Liz Gordon and Lowell Coffey that he had decided to accept Senator Orr's offer and would be working on the campaign. Both wished him well. Rodgers did not know how he would respond to Hood if he saw him. The general could-and would-ignore his replacement, Ron Plummer. The political liaison had not won that job, it had been granted to him by default. That made Plummer neither enemy nor rival, just a man with a catcher's mitt. Paul Hood was a different matter. He was the one who had made the default call. Rodgers imagined everything from ignoring him to grabbing the front of his lightly starched white shirt, slamming him against a wall, and spitting in his wide, frightened eye. What stopped him, when they did meet, was the realization that Hood was finally doing what Rodgers had wished he would do for years: telling the CIOC to screw its own rules and doing what he thought was best for Op-Center. It was only too bad his newly found courage came at Admiral Link's expense.

Hood was talking to Bob Herbert in the intelligence chief's office. The door was open as Rodgers walked by. He offered only a peripheral glance inside. Eyes on the future, Eyes on the future, he reminded himself. Now that he thought of it, that mantra would make a terrific campaign slogan. he reminded himself. Now that he thought of it, that mantra would make a terrific campaign slogan.

Neither man called after him nor hurried into the hallway. Rodgers felt relieved for a moment. There would be no confrontation with Hood. He would not have to listen to Herbert explain why he had joined the a.s.sault. Then Rodgers felt offended. Who the h.e.l.l are they to ignore me? Who the h.e.l.l are they to ignore me?

He should have known Pope Paul better than that. The man was a diplomat, and diplomats could not leave situations unresolved. Even without the blessings of their governments, they usually employed back-channel routes to try to defuse crises. Maybe they needed to do good. Maybe they needed to meddle or to be loved. The motives were too complex for Rodgers to fathom. All he understood was soldiering. Until he came to Op-Center, that was all Rodgers needed to know. Inevitably, after the talks had broken down or bought only a temporary respite, it took spilled blood to grease the wheels of civilization.

Hood knocked on the open door as Rodgers was taking citations and photographs from the wall.

"I would like to change the date when I'm officially relieved of all responsibilities to Op-Center," Rodgers said. He did not look at Hood.

"When do you want to leave?"

"Today," Rodgers said. "Now." He put the framed pictures and doc.u.ments on the desk then went and got two shoulder bags from a small closet in back. He stood behind the desk and carefully placed the mementos inside. He did it without sentiment or nostalgia about leaving. A soldier's life should be portable. The only item from his tenure here was a photograph of himself with Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Squires and Striker. It was taken after the team had been a.s.sembled, about two months before they went to North Korea.

"Is this how you want it to end, Mike?" Hood asked.

"You mean, without a parade or a twenty-one-gun salute?"

"I mean with this barrier between us," Hood said. "I want to give you that salute, Mike. Not just because you deserve to be honored but because Charlie once told me why it was created. Weapons were discharged to show that the military was granting safe pa.s.sage to a trusted visitor."

"I told him that," Rodgers said wistfully. He could still see himself and the strapping officer sitting by the pool near the Striker quad when he asked about that. They had just come back from drilling and had heard a volley in the distance. "Twenty-one guns for the number of states in the union when the navy began the tradition. An old military tradition, just like something you reminded me of yesterday. Something I had overlooked for years."

"What was that?"

"We called it 'the faith and bullet rule' in Vietnam," Rodgers told him. "When you meet a politician, only put one of those in him."

"You know, Mike, tactics are easier when the objectives are clear, when you know what hill or town you have to take and what resources are available to do it. Politics is a war without rules of engagement or the immediacy of gun-fire. Sometimes you don't realize you've been hit until days later or until you read it in the newspaper."

"I guess I should be grateful my executioner looked me in the eyes when he pulled the trigger," Rodgers replied.

"I did not say that," Hood insisted.

"Then I'm confused," Rodgers told him. "Are we talking specifically about us or are we having a philosophical discussion about what my grandfather used to call 'follytics'?"

"I'm trying to apologize," Hood said.

"For what? Firing me? Placing my new boss under a magnifying gla.s.s?"

"Neither. We've been over those. I'm sorry there's nothing I can do about any of it."

Rodgers buckled the first bag. Before he loaded the second, he regarded Hood. "That's another difference between soldiers and politicians," he said. "No can do "No can do is not in our vocabulary. Neither is is not in our vocabulary. Neither is surrender." surrender."

"That may be," Hood said. Now there was a bit of steel in his voice. "I'll tell you this, though, Mike. If I had made a stand on these points that obviously offend your sense of honor, the battlefield would be hip deep with corpses. And I still would have lost the battle." Hood extended his hand. "I won't be offended if you don't shake it. I'll only be sad."

Rodgers had not yet started loading the second bag. He began putting the keepsakes inside.

"I can't," he said.

"You mean you won't," Hood said.

Rodgers snickered. "Politicians play with words, too." He held up his right palm. "I mean this hand just took down a photograph of a man who gave his life for this place. It can't, and won't, clasp the hand of a guy who was afraid to lose his job. And by the way, Paul. A battlefield littered with war dead is not the same as a job market having to absorb some bureaucrats. Don't ever compare them."

"I wasn't," Hood said. "I was only trying to connect with you somehow."

"Well, you failed."

"I can see that." Hood lowered his arm. "If you change your mind, the hand is still extended."

"I appreciate that."

"And I do wish you well," Hood added.

"I appreciate that, too," Rodgers said with a little more formality.

Hood left, shutting the door behind him. Rodgers looked around. The office seemed both bigger and smaller because of the naked walls. Men are small, but their deeds are large.

Rodgers did not regret what he had just done. Unlike Hood, he did not even feel sad. All he felt was a sense of pride that he had lifted himself from the battlefield and soldiered on. He finished packing the second bag, then went to his desk and removed the few personal items that were still there. A leather bookmark with the NATO logo, a letter opener from the king of Spain in grat.i.tude for the way Striker had helped prevent a new civil war.

A memorial card from the service of Ba.s.s Moore, the first Striker killed in action.

Rodgers was convinced that he had done the right thing by rejecting Hood's hand. As he left his former office, the general was convinced of something else. That there was probably nothing on G.o.d's sweet earth that would ever make him rescind that decision.

THIRTY.

Washington, D.C. Tuesday, 2:18 P.M.

Though the military police would never acknowledge it, security was rooted in the two Ps: preparedness and profiling. It had to be done that way. The kids manning the gates and checkpoints at bases around the world lacked street smarts and experience. They required checklists.

Jacquie Colmer did not fit any of the terrorist profiles. She was fair-skinned, and she was a woman. That eliminated religious extremists and white supremacists. She was also disarming. She smiled a great deal, which terrorists tended not to do. Most were anxious young amateurs, fearful of being captured and disappointing their sponsors. Jacquie was not a novice. The key to successful penetration of an enemy target was what Jacquie had always called the seduction factor. seduction factor. Her job was not to muscle people into submission but to coerce them. She used femininity, compliments, small talk, and invigorating observations to make herself welcome. Her job was not to muscle people into submission but to coerce them. She used femininity, compliments, small talk, and invigorating observations to make herself welcome. "Look "Look at that sky!" she would say, or " at that sky!" she would say, or "Smell that rain!" She drew attention to the moment to hide what lay beyond. that rain!" She drew attention to the moment to hide what lay beyond.

While the Herndon Road Services Company was not the usual Country-Fresh Water Corporation vehicle, she had the proper doc.u.mentation. The Andrews Air Force Base guard went through the antiespionage checklist, which he knew by heart. There were only containers of water in the back, and the front-to-back mirror view of the underside revealed nothing. The young, expressionless guard looked under the hood with a flashlight. He saw only the engine.

Jacquie was allowed to drive on.

The woman parked her van away from the sight line of the base sentry. She withdrew a hefty five-gallon container and hoisted it onto her right shoulder. She saw through the tinted gla.s.s that the guard booth inside the lobby was on the left side. She had made it this far. The guard by the elevator at the National Crisis Management Center would not give her much trouble. Especially a woman holding a large plastic bottle of water. A bottle that was tinted deep blue to make the water appealing.

And to hide what was in the neck of the bottle. What the tint did not conceal, Jacquie's glove and the bottle's neck did.

The sentry was a husky woman who held the rank of corporal. Her name tag said Vosa.

"Corporal Vosa, did you know that water coolers consume four billion kilowatt hours a year, which produces an annual level of pollution equivalent to the emissions of three-quarters of a million cars?" she asked the guard.

"I did not, ma'am," said the NCO.

Playing the nerd was also a useful tactic when one wished to get in and out of a place quickly. No one liked to talk to a chatterbox. They liked it less when they were addressed by name. It made the individual feel as though their privacy had been invaded even more.

The guard checked her papers quickly.

"It says here you have a delivery of eleven bottles," the corporal said. "You only have one."

"With me, right now," Jacquie replied. "The cart only holds ten. I figured I would take this one first, then go back for the rest. Easy before hard, that's my motto."

The guard called down to Mac McCallie in Ed Colahan's office. The CFO's group was in charge of supplies and the scheduling of deliveries. McCallie informed the guard that CFWC was indeed expected. The sentry used the remote keypad at her station to summon the elevator.

"That four billion kilowatt hours a year is three hundred million dollars worth of utility bills," Jacquie added. "You ought to mention that to your superiors. Not that I want to see these guys lose business, but I'm a taxpayer, too. Maybe we can help cut the military budget by eliminating water coolers."

"It's a thought, ma'am," the guard said charitably. She wrote out a pa.s.s and handed it to Jacquie. The delivery woman slapped the sticky ID on her Herndon Road Services delivery uniform.

The elevator door opened. Jacquie saluted casually with her left hand and walked on. "See you in a few minutes," Jacquie said.

The elevator took the woman downstairs, where she was met by McCallie. A former marine, judging from his posture. No one stood as straight and tight as the semper fi boys. He also offered to carry the bottle, another giveaway. She declined. He took Jacquie to the water cooler and stayed with her the entire time. She put the bottle beside the cooler, then went to go and get the other ten.

Which, of course, she would not be doing.

Jacquie went to the van. She drove away, waving to the guard as she left. He would not know she had failed to complete the delivery.

As she drove away, Jacquie pulled off the blond wig she was wearing. She allowed her long black hair to cascade out. In less than one minute a wrist.w.a.tch-size timer inside the bottle cap would activate the flux compression generator that Art Van Wezel had placed in the long bottleneck. The FCG consisted of a tube stuffed with explosives inside a slightly larger copper coil. The coil would be energized by a bank of capacitors, creating a magnetic field. Five seconds later, the timer would detonate the explosives. As the tube flared outward, it would touch the coil and create a short circuit. The short circuit would cause the magnetic field to compress while reducing the inductance of the coil. The result would be an electric shock that broke free as the device self-destructed. The shock would only last a few microseconds, but it would produce a current of tens of millions of amperes.

The resultant electromagnetic pulse would make a lightning bolt seem like a flashbulb by comparison. It would turn Op-Center into an electronic graveyard. The pulse would also cover her tracks for her by erasing the videotapes fed by the security cameras. The military police and FBI would be looking for a talkative blond. One with blue eyes. She popped the colored contact lenses from her eyes and put them in the pocket of her uniform.

When Jacquie was a mile from the base, she pulled over on a narrow back street off Allentown Road. She was just a quarter mile from the Capital Beltway. It was important that she get there as quickly as possible. First, though, there were several things she had to do.

Jacquie slipped the water company signs from the sides of the van. She replaced them with signs she pulled from under the driver's side floor mat. They read, Interfaith Good News Mobile Interfaith Good News Mobile. She put a bow in her hair and a Bible on the pa.s.senger's seat. She placed a different license tag on the back of the van. The police would not think to stop her. No one would.

The wind was blowing hard, and she did not hear the blast when it came. But she knew the e-bomb had gone off. The rich blue sky over Andrews Air Force Base took on a brief, magnesium-white glow. It arced low just above and through the canopy of oak trees, a man-made aurora borealis that swiftly shaded to yellow, then green, then blue again as it vanished.

Jacquie smiled as she got back into the van. She drove to the highway, careful not to exceed the speed limit. She would return the van to Herndon, then stay in her house for several days. She would say she was sick with the flu while she waited to see the police sketch of the Op-Center bomber. She would be dieting while she was home. If the sketch happened to look like her now, it would not by the time she "got better."

Ironically, the government would benefit in one way because of what she had done.

The budget for water coolers would go way down.

THIRTY-ONE.

Washington, D.C. Tuesday, 2:37 P.M.

It sounded as though someone had popped a very large balloon. Hood's first thought was that one of Op-Center's emergency generators had exploded.

Paul Hood was sitting at his desk, his office door closed. He had been looking absently at the computer wallpaper, a crayon drawing of Los Angeles City Hall that Harleigh had done when she was four. He had been replaying the argument with Mike Rodgers, wondering if it could have gone differently, when he heard the burst from down the hall. It was loud enough to make him wince and to clog his ears for several seconds. A moment later the fluorescent lights above began to glow brightly. In front of Hood, the computer wallpaper was replaced by a strange, milky luminescence.

Hood rose slowly. As his ears began to clear, he heard coughing and shouts from beyond his closed door. He heard the people but nothing else. Not the hum of his computer nor the whir of the air conditioner or even the faint electric buzz of the coffee machine. Hood's left wrist felt warm. He glanced at his watch. The LCD was blank. So was the screen on his cell phone. He removed the watch. Faint ribbons of smoke curled from the battery compartment and also from the cell phone.

"No," Hood said. He suspected that what had hit Op-Center was not just a burned-out generator or a simple power failure.

He hurried to the door and opened it. The corridor beyond Bugs's cubicle was filled with wispy, yellowish smoke. The air was rich with the pungent aroma of ozone mixed with the foul smell of melted plastic. He later learned that these were from charred outlet plates, electric wires, and telephone lines.

Bugs was standing in the corridor, fanning away smoke, trying to see. He looked back when Hood emerged.

"What happened?" Hood asked.

"Something blew up in the lounge, I think," Bugs said. "I tried to call the gate to seal the perimeter, but the phones are fried."

"Emergency power is gone?" Hood asked.