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STORM

On reaching the top floor Anders wasted no time. He found the stairwell to the roof and quickly made his way up. At the top he came to a door and tried the handle. It was locked. Through a tiny pane of glass he could see handrails, another short flight of steps, and the darkened sky. He knew that he could probably have kicked it down. But he was banking on the element of surprise, and was not prepared to give himself away just yet. Instead, he wrapped his oversized wet fingers around the handle and pushed his flesh against the slippery metal.

The pain set in quickly. He tried to ignore the discomfort when the shrill ache appeared first in his palms, then spread to his forearms as he added the weight of his body. The rain water on his arms drained to his hands and from there down the side of the door. His mouth twisted down­ward as he endured the agony of metal biting into his flesh. But he contin­ued pushing, grunting as he levered his body over the handle. Several seconds passed as he remained frozen in this determined embrace with the door, and it seemed that nothing would happen. But then the metal began to creak. And slowly the handle turned. Suddenly it gave way, ripping away from the door and taking part of the locking assembly with it. Anders gashed the knuckles of his left hand on the shredded metal remaining in the door.

He dropped the handle. It jangled on the concrete floor before coming to rest. Then he took the handgun from his belt and leaned his shoulder against the door. It opened. A blast of cool air swept past him as he hurried up the stairs.

He came out on the roof facing south, away from the Marriott. The rain was still coming down, and the wind whistled in his ears. He turned around. Behind him was a fenced-off transformer housing and a large air-conditioning duct. He went right, circling around them to the north side of the roof, moving toward the voices of the two men he’d come for.

“ — damn like to know who took that bullet,” one of them shouted to the other.

“He’s not one of our guys.”

A gust of wind whipped noisily across the rooftop.

“ — be one of theirs either. Here, take a look…”

Anders spied the missile launcher. It lay on top of a closed case beside the two Secret Service men. With their backs to him, neither man was in a position to notice him approaching.

“Maybe Gallagher was right. He did say this trip was an accident wait­ing to happen.”

With his thumb Anders slipped the safety off the Beretta semi-auto­matic. “An agent with the gift of prophecy,” he said, revealing his pres­ence. The two men spun around in surprise. “Funny,” he said. “I would have thought that useful in your line of work.”

Agent Gallagher introduced himself as Montoya stepped from the elevator. “Ma’am,” he said. “If you’ll wait one moment I’ll let the President know you’re here.”

Gallagher disappeared down the hall, leaving her alone with his part­ner — a much younger black man. He was staring at her, so she glared at him. “Yes?”

Suddenly he appeared flustered. “Nothing, ma’am. It’s just… well, for a corpse you look awfully good — if you’ll pardon me saying so, ma’am.”

Montoya grunted — a mild reproach on her part — and stepped around him with a dismissive movement of her body. He made no attempt to stop her as she wandered over to the window and gazed down into the street. She looked east where the shooting had taken place at the opposite end of the building. But the weather and the beads of water on the window obscured the view.

A flashing red light appeared below — an ambulance approaching from her right. It wound through the street and disappeared into a red blur at the corner of the window.

Montoya lifted her head. On the roof of the building across from her she glimpsed a solitary figure. She caught the movement as he stood upright, his shadowy silhouette breaching the roof-line. But he remained indistinct. She couldn’t even determine whether he was facing her or had his back turned. A moment later he had crouched and disappeared from view again.

“Who’s that?” she said nodding across the way.

The young agent smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re everywhere.”

Anders attached the grip stock to the missile housing and secured the latch. He set the assembly back down on the case, which he had already flipped open, exposing the three missiles inside it.

The two frustrated agents sat back-to-back on the ground by the outer wall. Anders had used their own handcuffs to join them, right hand to left. They looked panic-stricken as they shuffled about attempting to coordinate themselves enough to stand up. Neither one attempted to call out — it was a waste of time; Anders had taken the precaution of rolling their black ties into two thick knots which he then stuffed inside their mouths. The pair almost managed an attempt at standing, but Anders stepped forward at the last moment and used a foot to send them sprawling.

“Relax,” he told them. “Else you’ll miss the show.”

Raising the binoculars, he checked the windows of the top floor of the hotel. At the west end he saw two figures, one tall, the other short. As he watched, someone else appeared. The two larger figures had to be the agents he’d dealt with earlier. The third person disappeared into the corri­dor, but he could not decide whether it had been Montoya.

The other windows on the floor he checked one by one. None revealed any sign of Coleman’s delegation. Except the last. The light in that room was switched on and Anders spotted someone approach the window briefly before moving away.

“Bingo.”

He stepped over and took the earpiece from one of the two agents. With his knee on the man’s chest, he carefully removed the microphone from the lapel of the agent’s suit. He then plucked the tie from the man’s mouth. The Secret Service man coughed and looked wild-eyed at Anders. “Pal, you are so dead!” He blinked several times. “Unless you release us right now.”

“All right,” Anders said. “I’ll let you go.”

He was met with a look of bewilderment.

“But first I’m going to put a big hole in the corner of that building over there. That is where I’ll find the President, isn’t it?”

“You can forget it,” he was told. “He’s long gone.”

“Really?” Anders said skeptically. “Well, we’ll find that out soon enough, I guess… But just to show you how good a sport I am, I’m going to let you even the odds slightly. It’ll be more fun that way — don’t you think? Here…” Anders held out the agent’s microphone, placing it near the man’s face. Then he keyed it.

His gesture was greeted with suspicion.

“Last chance,” Anders whispered. “We don’t have to warn him, you know.”

Anders waited a moment and then pretended to lose patience. His ploy worked. Fearing that the opportunity was indeed about to slip away, the agent lunged toward the microphone.

“Breach on the South Roof! Get CANNONBALL out! Get him out now!”

Anders stuffed the tie back into the man’s mouth.

“Cannonball?” he said raising his eyebrows. “I never would have guessed that.”

He reconnected the battery wire to the microphone, which he had unplugged thirty seconds earlier without the agent’s knowledge. He saw the look of anguish on the other man’s face.

“You’re right,” Anders said. “That was a dirty trick.”

As the door to the room opened, Stark looked up expectantly — only to see a Detail member take a step inside. The man informed the President that Montoya was waiting at the end of the hall.

“For God’s sake,” Coleman blurted out. “Get her down here!”

Stark hurried out into the hall and stared anxiously in the direction from which Montoya would be coming. He saw someone striding down the corridor toward him. A woman certainly, but he couldn’t make out her face. So he turned for his evaluation of the woman’s identity to her flam­boyant stride. There was not the slightest doubt that he had seen it before.

Stark’s heart jumped in his chest. Thank God. He leaned back into the meeting room, where Coleman had been keeping an anxious eye on him from his spot near the corner of the couch.

“Well?” Coleman asked.

Stark nodded happily. “It’s her.”

The President turned. “Jeremy?”

“It’s done,” Williams said. He was dialing Holloman before Coleman had even stepped into the hall.

The sudden crackling sound in Gallagher’s ear caused him to pull off his earphone and tap it. He was surprised to see Snyder doing the same. “You too?”

Gallagher refitted the device and caught the end of a transmission. It was barely audible. “This is the West Wing,” he said. “We didn’t catch that. Can you repeat?”

Once again the message was preceded by some type of electronic inter­ference. It sounded like hot oil sputtering in a frying pan. Snyder cupped his ear and gave Gallagher a sharp look, as if to say, What is it with this thing?

They heard a voice come through the background crackle. “I said, What the hell is going on over there?” It was faint, the words barely audible. “We’ve got some guy on the radio saying that CANNONBALL is in the lobby right now meeting with Montoya.”

“Negative,” Gallagher replied. He looked down the hall to where Coleman and Stark had stopped to meet Montoya. “He’s still up here.”

“And Montoya?”

“She’s with him now.”

Then quite suddenly — as if the conversation had ended prematurely — the crackling noise vanished. And it was this, more than the conversation itself, that Gallagher found just a little odd.

Anders dropped the mylar candy wrapper which he had crinkled to simu­late electronic interference in his exchange with Gallagher. The wind carried it over the edge of the roof and it fluttered down to the street.

With the location of his target confirmed Anders moved fast. It was four minutes to ten and he was not about to let either Coleman or Montoya stop him now. He grabbed the missile launcher and lifted it to his shoulder.

“Sir, I can’t do that,” the Commander at Holloman told Williams. “You’ll have to issue those directives directly to the pilot.”

“Then you’d better get us connected. And quick.”

Williams took a deep breath. Come on… Come on… With his chest tightening, he twisted the phone cord in his hand and began to pace.

Hank Gordon could see little as he approached his release point over Mexico City. The cloud layer six kilometers beneath him continued to obstruct his view. It also interfered with the operational capability of the F-117’s forward-looking infrared display, which was unable to fully pene­trate the oblique line of water vapor between the aircraft and the ground ahead. Instead the pilot relied on the moving-map display to provide him with an electronic image of the elevated Mexican landscape below. Nor was there particularly much for Gordon to do in the remaining seconds as his aircraft approached the launch window — the plane’s onboard IBM mission computer took care of that.

With an electrical whir the motorized doors of the weapons bay pulled apart and a succession of targeting information, including GPS time, posi­tion, and velocity data, was downloaded by wire to the bomb’s internal circuitry through a high-speed data bus. The Aurelia’s tiny but capable brain had received its last-minute flight instructions.

Gordon was now seconds away from the predetermined release point.

Who’s voice had they heard? Gallagher asked himself, walking across to the window. “And since when,” he muttered, “do we take time out to listen to the radio?”

Snyder looked puzzled. “What?”

The transmission had been faint, but Gallagher was no longer sure whether the voice they’d heard only seconds ago belonged to either of the two agents assigned to the South Roof sector. Yet it was familiar. So why didn’t he —

Then it hit him.

“Fuck!”

Dumbstruck, he stared out through the window. There, on the roof across the way he could see the imposing figure of the man they had released only minutes earlier. Gallagher was looking right at him as he sighted the Stinger SAM launcher on his shoulder, pointing it in the direc­tion of the hotel’s East Wing where the President was standing in the hall.

By the time Snyder understood what was happening, Gallagher was already in full flight down the hall, screaming at the top of his voice.

Kirby had searched almost half the rooms on the top-most floor of the SCI building before realizing that Anders had headed for the roof. When he finally got up there, he was stunned. Ten meters away was Anders. He stood at the edge of the roof aiming what looked like a missile launcher at the next building. The two agents lying by the outer wall, and the open missile case, left no doubt as to what he was up to.

“Eugene!”

Kirby went across the roof slowly, the rain pelting his face as he tried to catch his breath. Anders had to take his eye away from the bore-sight to look at his old friend. Kirby saw the patch over his other eye.

“Well,” Anders said. “If it isn’t the man of the hour. Tough luck, Won­der Boy. This time, you’re too late.”

Anders rolled his head back. Then, with his thumb, he flicked down the lever to activate the missile, and fired it. The Stinger burst out of the launcher, a white plume of gas erupting from its tail as it streaked toward the hotel. All Kirby could do, was watch.

Gallagher almost slammed into the group and sent it sprawling. The two agents stationed outside the meeting room went to high speed, instinctively grabbing Coleman and Stark and shoving them back toward the east stair­well at the end of the hall. Gallagher scooped up Montoya, set her moving in the same direction, and turned back for the Secretary of State.

“Mr. Secretary!” he shouted, flinging himself through the doorway.

When Gallagher spotted him, Williams had a phone in one hand and was trying to pick up the briefcase to which it was connected. Even with his back to the window, the Secretary appeared startled when he looked up at Gallagher — as though he could read in the man’s eyes what the agent had no time to convey.

Though the window behind Williams, Gallagher saw an elongating plume of smoke suddenly rise from the roof of the opposite building and stretch toward them with blinding speed. With a silent cry for mercy, he had just enough time to close his eyes. His last thought was that Williams had been lucky. At least he would never know what had hit them.

She was watching the ambulance race along the road — its sirens fading as it carried Rawley away — when a sudden flash of white light appeared overhead. A moment later the street was rocked by the force of a tremen­dous explosion. A sound like thunder reverberated between the buildings. Cassie’s first reaction was to grab Parker’s arm. Like most others around her, she had attributed the bright flash to a lightning strike. But someone else was yelling that a bomb had gone off in the Marriott.

Cassie looked up.

Far above the street, smoke and flames were billowing from the corner of the top floor. She saw people nearby tuck their heads under their arms and run for shelter as a shower of broken glass and flaming debris came down. She and Parker did the same. A few bold TV cameramen on the other hand — whom Cassie judged more foolhardy than brave — tried to continue filming from the center of the street. Solano was still lying hand­cuffed on the sidewalk, his bodyguards having lost all interest in him as they sprinted toward the hotel to determine whether Montoya was all right. Even the drivers of the two Navigators — one of whom had been turning the car around — stopped what they were doing and then tried to follow their colleagues into the building as a crowd of anxious hotel patrons streamed out from the lobby.

Parker pulled Cassie toward the nearest Navigator where they crouched on the far side, away from the hotel. As she looked out over the car’s hood, Cassie began to panic.

“Where’s Richard!”

“It’s all right,” Parker said. She pointed to the insurance building on their left. “He went in there.”

Across the street, the TV vans parked outside the hotel entrance were being pelted with debris. Suddenly one started up. The person behind the wheel jammed the gear stick in reverse and roared backwards down the road. As he went, a mass of cables still plugged into the rear of the van snaked across the road, pulling taut. They whipped the legs out from under the cameramen who had remained in the street filming the devastation. One man was dragged directly into the path of the reversing van as several cables wrapped around his legs at the same moment and snapped him across the road.

The driver of the van must have seen this, because he pulled hard on the steering wheel to avoid running over the cameraman. He missed him, but in the process the van came up on the sidewalk, clipping a fire hydrant which set the vehicle off balance. The van toppled onto its side as it over­shot the sidewalk and slid out onto the crossroad at the west end of the hotel. Seconds later the surprised driver crawled out through the driver’s window onto the top of the van, stunned but apparently uninjured.

Kirby gaped at the scorched and twisted metal across from him. Part of the roof had collapsed inward where the missile had burrowed its way into the hotel. Flames gulped air at the side of the building, transforming it into dense black smoke, and shattering the remaining nearby windows with the intense heat. Kirby felt the warmth on his face as several balls of fire burst away from the wreckage, punching through the roiling smoke that cloaked the roof-line.

Only subconsciously was he still aware of Anders, as the big man lowered the missile launcher to the roof and then cupped a hand over one ear.

The scene before Kirby had an air of unreality about it. In the time it took him to blink, he had convinced himself that the probable target of Anders’ wrath had been Montoya, and that this time he had succeeded in killing her. Suddenly it was as though an internal release valve had burst somewhere deep inside him. Kirby felt the rage welling up.

“Shit,” he heard the other man say. He saw Anders rip a wire away from his ear and hurl it to the roof. Anders glanced at Kirby for the briefest moment, before quickly squatting to retrieve the missile launcher. It took another second for Kirby to realize that there were two more warheads visible in the open case.

Anders had missed his target!

Kirby knew then that he could not allow Anders the chance to reload. Before Anders had even managed to disengage the grip stock, Kirby braced himself and sprinted forward across the roof holding his breath. But before he came close enough to tackle Anders, the man jumped up to meet him, drawing a pistol from his belt as he stepped forward. One of the constrained Secret Service agents grunted as he swung a leg out into Anders path, attempting to trip him. The big man merely stumbled. But it was enough to ensure that he would not get off a shot before Kirby could get to him.

Still, the sight of the handgun had unnerved Kirby, because unlike his earlier confrontation with Rosen, there seemed little doubt that Anders actually intended to pull the trigger. When Kirby saw the glint of stainless steel — the barrel coming up to meet him — so much adrenaline dumped into his system that when he struck the man he was sure he had done lasting damage. But Anders hardly seemed to notice the impact. Instead of being sent reeling, he shook it off with a shrug. Then he opened his hand and swung the chamber of the gun into the side of Kirby’s face, as though swatting a fly.

Kirby felt a searing pain on the left side of his face as his head snapped sideways, dragging his entire body toward the roof. It was like having been hit by a telephone pole. His world collapsed inward to a single point of light. He became aware of stars. They swarmed before his eyes.

Somehow he avoided passing out. Perhaps it was the reviving effect of the rain, or the water from the roof that splashed in his face when he fell. Either way, it was enough to keep him from slipping under, and he man­aged to haul himself onto an elbow. But his head was spinning. And it pounded — so much so that his sight seemed to come and go with every throb of pain.

Anders had disappeared. Kirby rolled over and looked toward the opposite end of the roof. He spotted him again. Anders was now some distance away, screwing out what looked like a coffee can from part of the disassembled launcher. The canister came free and he tossed it aside. He grabbed another “coffee can” from the open case by his side and screwed the new one in place.

With his head still spinning Kirby tried to sit up, but his arm buckled beneath him and his face was suddenly back in a shallow puddle of water on the concrete. It was hard to tell which way was up. He was like a swimmer being pounded beneath the waves. He felt helpless. And all he wanted to do was drift into a deep, deep sleep.

For a moment his radio crackled, and then went silent again. Gordon won­dered about this, but then was distracted by a high-pitched beeping from his console. The mission computer was reminding him that he had now entered the drop zone.

Four seconds to release.

Two seconds.

The computer prompted Gordon to execute the bomb-release maneuver. He depressed the weapons release on the control stick and the bomb dropped free of the aircraft. “Bomb’s away,” he whispered.

The doors to the weapons bay closed and for the first time since leaving Holloman Gordon took control of his plane. Switching off the autopilot computer, he banked the aircraft a full ninety degrees until its wings were vertical, and turned his head to look out through the window in search of the bomb.

To his surprise, he had no trouble finding it. The sun’s reflection gen­erated a thin but bright orange line along the length of the outer casing. Damn, he thought. If that thing isn’t lit up like a neon tube!

Not that it mattered up there. There was nobody else around to see it.

Gordon rolled the F-117 back to horizontal and re-engaged the autopi­lot. It was time to head out to the Pacific and join up with the KC-10A for refueling. His job here was done.

The street was in chaos. From where they crouched behind the car, people could be seen running in every direction. Vehicles were being turned in tight circles in an attempt to vacate the area, and the few who had been injured were now being dragged to sheltered doorways amid shouts of frustration and anger.

Nobody knew what had happened.

High overhead the fire had begun to spread though the top floor of the hotel, unabated by the rain which had now begun to ease up. With water trickling off the hood of the car beside her, Parker nudged an elbow in Cassie’s ribs and nodded toward the pavement. It was then that Cassie noticed Solano lying there handcuffed. The man was babbling gleefully in Spanish as water dripped from his face.

Solano fixed his eyes on them. So excited at the turn of events was he, that he practically panted with every word. “Ooohh, Yes!” he screamed out. “Got the bitch.” He moaned openly with pleasure at the thought of it. “Fried her ass!”

It would have been impossible for anyone to know it, but Cassie’s eyes had begun to brim with tears. She shook her head as she looked back into the street.

“Bastard,” Parker said.

Cassie wiped her face with the back of her hand. “I hope to God he’s wrong,” she whispered.

Back down the road, the screeching of tires could be heard at the west end of the hotel. The TV truck that had overturned a minute earlier was blocking the President’s cars. These had been parked in a side street off the main road, and now they could not get around to the front of the hotel. Two agents abandoned the limos and headed up the street on foot toward the hotel entrance. They rushed inside the building about a third of a block away from where Cassie and Parker were squatting. The two women found themselves watching through a thin veil of steam as rainwater evaporated off the hood of the still-warm Navigator.

“I don’t believe it,” Parker said suddenly jumping up. “In the alley. Look.”

Cassie followed Parker’s line of sight and looked across the road. A narrow alley ran down the east side of the hotel, separating it from the next building. It ended in a cul-de-sac where the two buildings shared a com­mon wall. And there, standing in the middle of the alley, was Montoya. Coleman was with her. The two were looking up the side of the building, surveying the damage on the roof. There were three others with them, three men, the last of whom was coming out of a small doorway that led down from the hotel into the alley. The two men forward were bearing weapons. One pushed the President toward the wall of the hotel. To his partner he yelled, “Take point!” The second man ran forward up the alley, stopped, and scouted for signs of danger. With a small machine gun extended he yelled, “Clear!”

Satisfied that there was no immediate danger to the President, the first agent reached for the microphone inside his lapel, tucking his head down to meet it. “Taylor! Wilson! Where the hell are those cars?! CANNON­BALL waiting for transport in the East Alley. C’mon, move it!”

On hearing this, Cassie turned to attract the attention of the pair of agents she had seen going into the front entrance of the hotel. But, in the confusion, they had vanished inside the building already, inadvertently leaving their principal and his party vulnerable on the street outside. Cole­man’s men looked up the alley at the two women, but stayed where they were.

“What are they waiting for?” Parker said.

Cassie glanced back up the street to where the dark limos had been abandoned. They’re waiting for a car. Then she noticed the steam rising off the hood of the Navigator beside her. The motor was still running.

“Get in the car!”

Cassie reached in through the open window and pounded on the horn. The sound attracted Montoya’s attention, and Cassie waved to her. Then she got in behind the wheel. Parker pulled the passenger door shut as Cassie craned her head through the window in Solano’s direction. “I hope you don’t mind,” she yelled to him. “But I believe this belongs to someone else.” She turned back to Parker as she put the car in drive. “Grab some­thing and hold on.”

Cassie yanked the steering wheel to the right and hit the gas. The tires spun, then screeched as they caught the road and the car accelerated away from the curb, arcing across the road toward the slim alleyway between the buildings. Seconds later the car left the road and they sped down the alley.

As they approached the cul-de-sac Coleman’s men had their weapons drawn, leveling them at the car as they tried to determine whether it repre­sented a danger to the President.

Montoya wasted no time setting them straight — scolding the Detail pair as Cassie slowed the car to pass them. She spun the wheel again at the end of the alley, turning the car around. Then she came back in the other direc­tion. When the car stopped, Montoya flung open the rear right door and climbed in. The agent with Coleman pushed the President through the door behind her. Then he approached Parker’s door.

“Sorry, Lady,” he said waving a hand frantically in the direction of the street. “I need you out of there!”

“Screw you.” Parker released her seat belt and moved away from the door as he tried to pull her out.

The other agent, the one with the machine gun, ran around to Cassie’s side of the car. But she locked her door before he could get there. Machine Gun wasn’t forcing her out of the car. As soon as she’d done that, Cassie heard a noise behind her and turned to see a third person climbing into the rear of the car. When he was in, he pulled the door shut behind him.

Cassie did not recognize him. But he was a small-framed man with blonde hair who appeared extremely agitated. Seemingly without taking notice of her, he lurched forward between the front seats looking for something. “The phone,” he yelled. “Where’s the phone!”

Outside Cassie’s window Machine Gun pounded on the glass to get her attention while the first agent jumped in beside Parker and pulled the passenger door shut. He grabbed the seat belt and buckled himself in.

“Lady,” he yelled over Parker to Cassie. “If you aren’t getting out, then move this damn car. Now!”

Montoya put a hand on Cassie’s shoulder and squeezed it. “Let’s go, Cass.”

The image of the Jeep appeared in the viewfinder. Anders worked quickly to bring the cross-hairs over the hood: the warmest part of the car. A shrill tone started up from the infrared seeker head, indicating that he had acquired a lock on the target. But it was by no means certain the missile would maintain that lock once the car began moving; smoking debris cluttered the alley, providing too many competing heat sources to guaran­tee that. He had to hit it now.

Anders touched the trigger of the Stinger missile launcher. But the Navigator disappeared from view. He had to look away from the missile housing to locate it again. The car was roaring up the alley toward him. Behind it an armed figure attempted to give chase on foot. Anders had missed his opportunity.

One story below him, mounted on the side of the building, was an advertising prop used by the SCI insurance house — a full-scale trucking rig, complete with cab and trailer. Anders watched with frustration as the car disappeared somewhere beneath it. While he was waiting for the car to reappear he heard a groan.

Kirby was attempting to get to his feet.

Without bothering to set the launcher back down, Anders took several giant strides across the roof and lashed out with his left leg. He caught Kirby square in the chest. The air rushed out of his ‘old friend’ in a rapid whoosh, and he slumped defenselessly to the concrete.

“Make it easy on yourself, Richard,” Anders told him wearily. The fatigue in his own body was now showing itself in his voice. Lashing out at Kirby had taken almost everything he had left. “Just stay down.”

Anders walked past Kirby as he fought for breath. This time he went to the west end of the roof and looked down. This was where he expected the car to reappear — on the road leading away from the hotel. In anticipation of this, he swung the missile launcher to the west and waited.

This time he would be ready.

“Where am I going?”

“Turn right!”

The car slipped around the corner and they were back on the main street, headed west. People had started gathering on the other side of the road to watch the fire overhead. Except for the smoldering debris, the road was relatively free of obstacles. Cassie dodged what she could as the Navigator roared past the front entrance of the hotel.

By now the agent in the front seat had pulled a slim cell phone from inside his jacket and passed it back to the blonde gentleman, whom he addressed by the name of “Mr. Stark.”

Stark was yelling into the phone with a sense of dreaded urgency.

“Scrub the mission!” he repeated twice. “Abort it!”

Cassie caught sight of Stark in the rear view mirror as he pressed his palm over one ear.

“No. This is Stark… Stark!”

Nervously, Stark scanned the interior of the car, his eyes settling on Montoya. He pulled his head down sharply. “No! You listen to me. That plane is to be turned around immediately. Immediately… Of course it’s a fucking Presidential order, you moron!”

Coleman reached over and grabbed the phone.

“Give that to me… Commander? This is the President. Mission is canceled. You bring that plane — ”

In the mirror Cassie saw a white funnel of smoke curling its way down toward the car.

“Incoming!” the agent shouted, and he reached across Parker and grabbed the steering wheel. “Get down!” he said as he yanked the wheel toward him.

The car lurched momentarily to the right. This was followed by a blinding white flash and a deafening boom! as the vehicle was launched forward off the surface of the road. Everything around them was set in motion.

As the car rose up the memory returned. Cassie saw herself again at the wheel of her Buick as the car spun lazily in the air above the bridge. Again she experienced the bone-jarring jolt of the car smashing against the edge of a concrete pylon, and the descent into darkness.

Only this time she stayed wide awake.

The force of the blast — which seemed to come from beneath the car — pressed Coleman back in his seat as the rear of the vehicle rose up from the road inside a brilliant envelope of fire. At the same moment the phone in his hand came crashing down against his right knee, inflicting a painful blow.

Car bomb.

Despite having been warned otherwise just a second earlier, the Presi­dent’s first thought was that someone had planted a powerful car bomb beneath them. Perhaps even buried in the road itself. His second thought was that they were all about to die. Coleman became aware of a moving line and saw that he was looking down through the windshield at the sur­face of the road. The car was traveling perpendicular to the center line! And it was still turning.

With horror he realized that he had not applied his seat belt, and quickly tried to right himself as he floated weightless inside the turning car. A moment later Stark let out a blood-curdling scream as the roof of the Navigator slammed down on the road and slid forward with a hellish metallic screech across the concrete.

Coleman was almost knocked unconscious. He took the full weight of the landing on his back. He would have passed out, but for a sharp pain in his abdomen that brought the world instantly back into focus.

The car slid along noisily on its roof for some distance, rotating slowly until it came to rest. Coleman lay there in a daze — amid what seemed like perfect silence — amazed that he was still alive.

Cassie hung upside down from her seat belt, her hands still gripped tightly around the steering wheel. As she stared out through the splintered wind­shield she found herself looking back in the direction of the hotel. The car was now facing the other way. A low ring of flames on the road marked the spot where the missile — she’d seen the thing coming at them in the mirror — had struck the road behind the car and carved a small crater at the point of impact.

Smoke was drifting up the road toward her.

Parker lay on the ceiling on her stomach, apparently unconscious.

“Get away from the car,” someone whispered. The voice was faint, yet strained. It was the agent in the seat beside her. He too hung upside down, with a pool of blood forming over his right eye. It dripped down in a thin line onto Parker’s lower back.

In the back, Stark moaned softly.

Coleman asked if anyone was not injured.

“Get away from the car,” warned his bodyguard again, turning his head slowly in Cassie’s direction. He looked as if he was about to pass out. “Get the President clear,” he whispered. Then his eyes closed, and Cassie knew that she was on her own. She punched at the release button of her seat belt and fell free of it, landing awkwardly on the ceiling.

With an outstretched arm she tried the door handle. It wouldn’t open. She swung her legs around and wedged one foot beneath the handle. With the other she tried kicking the door.

It was jammed tight. She was trapped.

On the other side of the window a thick oily solution ran down the glass, away from the bottom of the car. Where it fell on the road it burst briefly into flame and smoldered. Cassie was about to try kicking out the glass when she realized she had not yet tried to open it!

She stabbed a finger at the power-windows switch on the arm rest. To her relief, the door instantly hummed to life as the electric motor pulled the pane of shatterproof-glass back into the window housing.

Thank God!

With one eye on the burning oil, Cassie wriggled through the open space on her stomach. In a few seconds she was free of the car. Still lying there on the road, she looked back in the direction from which the missile had come. The smoke obscured her view, but she understood the possible danger that lurked beyond it. She also knew now that it had been no bolt of lightning that had struck the hotel.

Get away from the car.

She was panting from fear as she swiveled around on the surface of the road and reached back inside the car. Smoke flowed in through the open window as she struggled to recall the duration between the two explosions. A minute? Two minutes? She wasn’t sure. Might a third be on its way? If so, how long did she have? The smoke was acrid. It stung her eyes. She couldn’t keep them open any longer. She had to close them.

Blinded, she reached inside and swung an arm about.

Her hand touched an arm. She grabbed onto it, and began to pull.

Hank Gordon swore into his oxygen mask. He couldn’t believe what he had just been told.

Abort the mission? It was too fucking late for that now. The Aurelia was already on its way.

“Jesus Christ!” he screamed again. What sort of idiots had he been dealing with?

There was no doubt in Gordon’s mind that the latest transmission had been genuine, and had originated with the Commander in Chief himself. The voice was unmistakable.

Coleman had changed his mind. Just like that.

For some unknown reason the President had decided he did not want that bomb reaching Mexico City. But that was something now beyond the lieutenant colonel’s control.

Maybe it wasn’t his fault, he told himself, but the crappiness of this whole mission was sinking in fast, and Gordon foresaw in an instant the days to come when he would look back at this moment and languish in despair over his part in what was about to take place. After all, had he only arrived at the target on time, and not a few minutes early…

Worse, Gordon had no idea what it was he had just sent on its way. The contents of the GBU 750 Aurelia were unknown to him. And he’d really have preferred it remain that way. He had no interest in piecing together clues from news reports a month from now about what he’d set free by mistake.

“Shit,” he said into the open radio channel.

Back at Holloman Air Force Base the commander reiterated the pilot’s feelings. “Shitty’s the word, son. But it’s someone else’s problem now. Just come on home.”

Someone else’s problem? How many times, he wondered, had he used that line himself? It sure as hell didn’t feel like someone else’s problem. It felt like his.

Gordon stared at the digital readout on his avionics display. The num­bers showed the GPS coordinates of the bomb as it dropped toward the target. This information was supplied by the Aurelia itself, which, after relaying its current position back to the F-117’s mission computer, com­pared the new coordinates with those for the ideal flight path downloaded to memory just prior to launch, and automatically made corrections with small adjustments to the glide fins. Gliding down at almost 5,000 meters per minute, the GBU-750 had presently descended to an altitude of 7,700 meters when Gordon made the decision to disable the plane’s autopilot.

With his aircraft still at an altitude of 14,000 meters, he banked the F-117 hard and reversed its course. That done, he pushed the control stick forward and dove nose-first toward the ground. The aircraft’s sudden loss of horizontal velocity caused the flight control computer to issue stall warnings.

Gordon ignored them.

Seconds later the voice of a nervous-sounding petty officer from Hol­loman appeared over the radio circuit. “Greenbird, what… Uh. What are you doing? Greenbird, this is Aviary-One. We’re seeing some unusual — ”

No one involved with the mission had anticipated the current situation. With Project FAIL SAFE receiving ‘black ops’ classification — with its attendant minimal supervision — such precautionary measures as the inclu­sion of a self-destruct capability for the bomb had apparently been either overlooked or deemed an unnecessary extravagance. That now looked to have been a costly error.

Still, there was more than one way to skin a cat, Gordon decided. And he was about to put the theory to the test.

“Come on, Cassie,” she heard Montoya say. “Pull!”

Cassie blinked and saw Montoya’s face as the smoke cleared. She had managed to get her door open and was lending Cassie a hand.

Slowly, Parker slid across to the door.

Someone ran up to the other side of the car and banged on the opposite rear door. Light flooded into the car as Stark’s door was flung open and the President’s name called out repeatedly.

Stark was gasping for air between each cough. “Get me out,” he yelled. He followed this with a howling scream of pain as he was dragged from the car. “My leg! Watch my leg,” he yelled. “Aaaahhh! I think it’s broken.”

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