"I'll do that now, Mrs. Gander," the dispatcher replied. "Until then, the MPs-"

"Back them off," Megan said, watching as one of the MPs started up the fire escape. "If they try to come up after him, he's threatened to jump."

"Ma'am, I haven't confirmed who you are or what the situation-" "Do you want to confirm all that after he's jumped?" Megan interrupted with desperate anger.

The brief pause that came after her challenge seemed elastic, like it would stretch on forever. Then he said, "All right, Mrs. Gander. You've got a point."

Listening closely, her eyes on Gerry, Megan heard the dispatcher order the MPs stand down. The transmission through the MPs radios came from below, lagging a half second behind the cell phone connection.

"Gerry," she said, turning back to the boy. "They've stopped. See? You're in control here. We're going to do what you want to do." God, please give me the time and the skill to convince him that he wants to live. I've asked You for a lot in the past, but I really need Your help here. She stepped toward the edge where the MPs could see her.

Their flashlights played over her. Light seared into her eyes and she turned away. The MPs pointed their lights to the side. Looking down again, she experienced immediate vertigo. How far up was four stories? She didn't know. But she was certain that the height was more than enough to kill an eleven-year-old boy.

"Step back away from the building," Megan called down to the MPs.

The young soldier leaning out the window of his apartment remained in that position below. The rap music continued to blare. Unbelievably, the soldier held a small camcorder in his hands. The intense light sprayed through the dark night, mixing with the blinding glare of the spotlight.

"Mrs. Gander," one of the young MPs said. The tone indicated that he wanted verbal confirmation.

"Yes," she answered in a firm voice. "I need you to step back. Please."

"Yes, ma'am. If you need any help, just let us know." The MP stepped back from the building. He cupped the walkie-talkie microphone clipped to his right shoulder and spoke briefly.

"I will. But I think Gerry and I are quite capable of getting ourselves out of this situation." Megan looked at the boy. Tears still cascaded down his face. "We can handle this, can't we, Gerry?"

Gerry didn't answer.

Megan waited, then talked more softly, as if she didn't want the MPs to hear. Actually, she intended the effort to bring Gerry and her together, to let the boy know he was helping someone else. Sometimes by helping someone else, a person better learned to help himself.

"They need to hear you, Gerry," Megan said. "They need to know that you're in control of the situation. They have to tell the dispatch officer that they're confident that you know what you're doing."

Gerry didn't move, didn't speak.

"Gerry, I need your help. They need your help. I've got to try to do my job, and they've got to try to do theirs."

The boy swallowed hard. "It's okay. Me and Mrs. Gander are gonna talk."

Thank You, God, Megan thought. But she knew the quick response on her part was just lip service. She didn't believe God had anything to do with the present situation. She didn't see how. If God were paying attention, He would never have allowed Gerry Fletcher up on the roof.

"That's fine," one of the MPs called up. "You guys talk all you want to. But if you could move away from the roofs edge, it would help."

Megan looked at Gerry, putting the response back onto the boy.

"No," Gerry said. "I'm not leaving, Mrs. Gander." He wiped his face with a shaking hand. "I'm going to jump. I really am."

United States of America Columbus, Georgia Local Time 1:12 A.M.

"So, you and your mom."

Joey braked to a halt at a stoplight that had turned red right before he reached it. He turned to look at Jenny McGrath in the passenger seat. Since they'd left the club, they hadn't talked much. During his cell phone conversation with his mother, he had noticed Jenny was being really attentive while trying not to get caught eavesdropping.

"Yeah?" Joey prompted.

Jenny looked at him. The stoplight threw red light over her face, revealing her right profile in red highlights and leaving the left side of her face buried in shadow. It was like she was trapped between two worlds.

Joey didn't know where the impression had come from, but once the thought had come to his mind he couldn't get rid of it.

"You and your mom are close," Jenny said.

"Yeah. Mostly."

"Mostly?"

Joey looked away, aware that the young woman's eyes were boring into his, seeming to see past so much of the image that he had built up to impress her. "I kind of blew curfew tonight. Not exactly a step designed to build closeness."

Surprisingly, Jenny laughed. "No," she agreed. "Definitely not."

"What about you?" Joey said, thinking that if an opportunity presented itself he should capitalize on it.

"What about me?"

"Are you close to your mom?"

Jenny looked away. "She's dead."

Joey felt horrible. The night just wasn't going well at all. He felt like he couldn't do anything wrong without making a mess of things. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"No," Jenny agreed. "You didn't." Her face turned green. She waited a beat, then pointed at the traffic light. "Green. We can go."

Feeling even more inadequate, Joey took his foot from the brake and placed it on the accelerator. He sped up, following the familiar streets back to Fort Benning.

"You didn't do anything wrong by asking, Joey," Jenny said. "You couldn't know. It's just me and my father."

"No brothers or sisters?"

She shook her head, then a smile twisted her lips. "But you have a little brother."

"Chris." Joey nodded. "Yeah."

"So how old is he?"

"Five," Joey said. "And don't try to tell him any different because he can count."

"Five's a cute age."

And seventeen's not? Joey wanted to ask. But he didn't. He was afraid of the answer. Especially since he'd told jenny he was twenty-one. "How do you know about cute ages for kids?" he countered. "If you don't have a younger brother or sister?"

"Before I became a server, I worked in a child-care center. I liked working with the creepers."

"Creepers?"

"Kids ten to fourteen months old. The daycare center staff called them creepers because they just started to pull themselves up on things and walk."

"Oh."

Jenny looked at Joey and smiled again. "And you were thinking?"

"Horror movie stuff. Aliens. Predators. Creepers." Joey shrugged. "Just seemed to fit."

"So what's your little brother like?"

Joey slowed and took a left through the intersection, making certain he had plenty of room before the oncoming traffic reached them. A pang of jealousy ripped through him. Jenny didn't even know Chris and already her attention was zeroing in on him, leaving Joey way behind.

Struggling to mask his hurt and disappointment, Joey said, "Chris is great. Everybody likes him." Can't you tell?

"Must be nice."

"What?"

Jenny looked away from him, turning to play with her hair in her reflection on the side window. "Having a little brother."

"Some days," Joey admitted. "Other days, I wish I was an only child."

"Why?"

Joey shrugged. "Kinda miss all the attention." Miss it a lot, actually.

"You do, huh?" Jenny turned her attention to him.

Really regretting all the scrutiny he was getting, and feeling more than a little defensive, Joey said, "Yeah. I mean, you have to work your tail off at home to get your parents to notice you because all your cuteness points faded back in a past you can barely remember, and your little brother just has to step into the room and-pow! He's the center of attention."

"That happens a lot?"

"Yeah," Joey said. "All the time." A kaleidoscope of images swirled through his mind, stinging with each memory of how Chris had so nonchalantly taken the full attention of both parents and any other adult who happened to be around. "I mean, it's like Chris is a magnet for attention."

A brief, tense silence stretched between them. Joey had the feeling he had done something incredibly stupid, but he couldn't for the life of him figure out what it was.

"I thought you lived in an apartment with a roommate," Jenny said. Her voice turned cold and hard. She slid away from him, pressing herself up against the door. "That's what you told me at Kettle 0' Fish."

Too late, Joey realized that one of his lies had been found out. And they were all tied together. Sick apprehension filled him.

"What else have you lied about?" Jenny demanded.

Turkey 37 Klicks South of Sanliurfa Local Time 0810 Hours

Artillery fire peppered the ridge of desert rock Captain Remington had chosen as Goose's observation point. Goose braced himself a Tanaka hit the brakes. The RSOV skidded through the loose sand and broken rock that covered the area from the explosions that had turned the border region into a moonlike landscape.

Keeping his head low and his helmet cinched up tight enough to keep it on, Goose stepped from the RSOV and sprinted over to the com team Remington had waiting for him. The two men pressed themselves into the lee side of a rocky outcrop that thrust up to a broken point twenty feet overhead.

Despite the preparation he'd had for the scene and the occasional glances of the border he'd gotten while racing for the observation point, the carnage strung along the border nearly froze Goose's heart. In all his years as a soldier, Goose had never seen anything that could have left him ready for the horrible consequences of the clash that lay before him.

The Syrian infantry remained too far away to see with the naked eye. According to Remington's reports while Goose had been en route, after the initial flurry of SCUDs and FROGs had landed within Syrian occupied territory, the enemy army-at this point that was the only way Goose could think of them-the Syrians had abandoned their posts and pulled back.

If the Turkish government and the United Nations could have agreed with President Fitzhugh's desire to send the troops into Syria, a beachhead could have been established. Recon posts and maybe even search-and-destroy missions against specific targets identified from earlier intel could have been organized. But that hadn't happened. Now, if those same operations had to be done, the cost in lives was going to escalate.

Goose raked his gaze over the death and destruction that filled the border area. Artillery shelled the area, harrying the men dug in along the invisible front line. Smoke and dust swept across the land, carried in clouds that swirled slowly in the dry breeze. Exploding mortars and rocket fire hammered those clouds, blowing them to smithereens or causing them to twist in new and violent gyrations.

The dust and smoke looked like wraiths, Goose realized, and his neck prickled at the thought, though he wasn't usually prone to an overactive imagination.

Men and pieces of men were scattered in all directions. As bad as Glitter City had been, the border units had been hit worse. Soldiers hustled through the burning APCs, Hummers, tanks, and cargo trucks, all overturned and strewn about like an angry child's toys. The uninjured men were working to separate the quick from the dead. A few of the men had medical bands on their arms to identify them for and protect them from enemy snipers. However, the Syrian artillery fire recognized no Geneva Convention edicts and had no conscience, From Goose's vantage point, it looked as though the corpsmen were being targeted because of those armbands.

Three men carried a fourth to a waiting truck marked with a Red Cross insignia. Just as they reached the truck, a group of four MiGs, the Russian-made aircraft the Syrians used, appeared in the south. The jets streaked out of the blue sky, looking like camo-colored darts.

Goose switched over to the frequency used by the troops in the field. Before he could say anything, cries of, "Incoming! Incoming!' filled the headset. Knowing he couldn't offer anything more, he clicked back to the command frequency Remington had designated to him.

Below, men scattered all along the border.

The MiGs peeled out of the tight diamond formation they had been in. Looking like high-tech vultures, the jets fired a salvo of air-to-surface missiles that rocketed toward the entrenched positions of the Turkish, U.S., and U.N. forces.

The missiles struck the ground and unleashed thunderclaps of noise, as well as unbelievable destructive fury. One of the missiles struck the medical transport truck. Goose wasn't certain they'd intended to hit that target or not; with the clouds of smoke and dust and the speed at which the MiGs were flying, it was possible that the pilot never saw the truck's Red Cross markings.

The missile struck the truck broadside, piercing the ribbed canvas and not exploding till it struck the ground. Later, Goose never knew if he actually saw the missile pass through the truck in one of those moments of crystal clarity that sometimes happened on the battlefield, or if the analytical processes in his mind that he tapped into while making decisions told him that was what had happened.

In the end, it didn't matter.

The resulting explosion lifted the truck from the ground, whirling it end over end thirty feet into the air. The gas tanks ruptured and caught on fire. In the next instant, the truck was a flaming comet that descended on an M- 1A1 Abrams tank. As the twisted hulk of the truck rolled from the tank, bodies of soldiers spilled out in its wake. Some of the corpses wreathed the Abrams.

The three men who had been carrying the fourth had been blown several yards away. None of them got up.

One of the few surviving anti-aircraft emplacements opened fire. A collection of American Rangers and Turkish soldiers operated the double-barreled weapon, tracking black clouds of flak across the blue sky. In the space of three or four seconds, the AA gun crew had the MiG's range. The AA cannonfire struck the MiG like a giant's fists, crumpling the warbird. Trailing oily black smoke, the MiG turned and tried to limp back south of the border. Another salvo of AA cannonfire caught up with the jet, and the resulting explosions broke it into fiery pieces.

"Boo-yah!" Tanaka yelled a short distance from Goose. The young man stood and shook his fist at the falling debris that had been the enemy aircraft.

In the next instant, one of the three surviving MiGs wheeled in the sky, flipping over in an inversion that took it away from the AA gunners' sights. Still inverted, the Syrian pilot triggered his 20mm guns. The cannon rounds pounded the desert ground, opening harsh tears in the earth and throwing up spiraling double plumes of dirt, sand, and smoke. The pilot flipped over 180 degrees, never pausing on the 20mm cannon.

Even as they realized the danger they were in, the AA crew was struck by the hammering bursts of 20mm cannonfire. Dead soldiers dropped, torn and bloody, like rag dolls. None of the brave crew that had brought the enemy jet down remained alive.

Continuing to rain destruction down on the border, the MiGs slammed air-to-surface missiles into vehicles and groups of men. A direct hit by a missile blasted past the reactive armor covering an Abrams and tore the turret loose.

A moment later, a surviving member of the tank crew tried to scramble from the rolling stock only to get caught by the next missile that flipped the Abrams over. The small American flag attached to the radio aerial burst into flames and incinerated.