"The Monocle. I sent my chief of staff there instead."

Aabad looked nervously back and forth between Lonsdale and Rapp and Nash. "I know my rights. I demand to see my attorney."

Lonsdale suddenly reached out and slapped him across the face. "He was my best friend."

Aabad looked up in shock and in a more pleading voice said, "I am an American citizen. I have a right to see my attorney."

"If you are an American citizen, then you are a traitor," Lonsdale hissed, "and I will do everything in my power to see that you are executed."

Rapp, who was still standing by the door, thought he heard a noise. He looked to Nash and they exchanged a quick glance. The noise came again. It was distant. Muffled.

"Are those gunshots?" Nash asked.

Rapp was about to open the door, when there was a much louder noise. The room shook just slightly. The one thing about combat was, you only had to go through it once and you were left with the sound, feel, and smell of battle for the rest of your life. Rapp had been in more than his fair share of dustups. He looked over at Nash, his face showing a deep concern. "I think that was a hand grenade."

"I think you're right," Nash agreed.

Rapp reached for the door and asked Nash, "Do you have any flex cuffs on you?"

"No."

Rapp opened the door, his primal instincts screaming that something bad was on the way. He glanced at the big screen and wondered briefly if the rumble of noises had come from some audio that they had just obtained. Without warning, the main door to the Operations Center was blown open. A split second later, a man dressed in full SWAT gear stepped through the cloud of dust and debris, his weapon raised. He pointed it straight ahead where the two Secret Service agents who had delivered Lonsdale happened to be standing with their arms tentatively raised in the air. Without provocation the man in the SWAT gear shot both agents in the head.

Rapp flinched as his brain tried to reconcile the irreconcilable. A second and third man in SWAT gear followed the first man through the door and began shooting analysts who were diving to get out of the way. Rapp's left hand was already wrapped around the hilt of his gun. With the rifle shots ringing out from below, Rapp turned to Nash and screamed, "Knock him out!"

At the sound of rifle shots, Nash was already reaching for his gun. He'd been in combat with Rapp before and trusted him completely. He drew the heavy .40-cal from his holster and cracked Aabad across the temple with the weapon. The man fell out of his chair and tumbled to the floor.

"Senator," Rapp yelled, "get in that far corner and stay there!"

Nash joined Rapp at the door. Both men had their guns drawn, and as they looked down at the floor, they watched the lead man in the line stop and look over his shoulder. He raised his right fist up in the air and paused for a moment. A final shooter joined the line, making it six total. The lead man motioned forward with his hand and the group began to move as one, shuffling forward into the room, unleashing a torrent of bullets. They were in a textbook raid line. Rapp and Nash had watched the drill hundreds of times. The first man is responsible for the first slice of pie immediately in front of the group. The second man takes the next slice on the left, and the third man takes the first slice on the right. They alternate their way back to the sixth man, who is responsible for all six.

The entire group opened fire, but it wasn't the undisciplined fire of poorly trained insurgents shooting from the hip. These guys were firing only one or two rounds at a time.

"It's got to be them," Rapp yelled.

"Let's take them out!" Nash shouted back, and began to move.

Rapp held him back. "They've got body armor on." He surveyed the situation. The men were moving roughly from right to left in front of their position. If they started taking shots at them from up here, they'd be lucky to get two or three before the others returned fire. With almost no cover, the rifles would shred them.

"I want you to crawl up to the edge of the balcony and sight in the first guy. That's their weak point. You drop him, and I can run right down their throat."

"You're going to charge them." Nash was shaking his head. "That's fucking crazy."

Rapp ignored him. He could see it all in his mind's eye. Lifting his right elbow up, he tapped his own side and said, "Put the first one into his helmet and then aim for the weak spot in his body armor. Right here on his side." Rapp pushed Nash toward the floor and then got into a crouch and ran along the wall.

Nash crawled to the edge of the balcony, mumbling to himself. In the middle of something like this, there wasn't enough time to question and dissect a plan. You simply had to go with it and hope it worked. He wedged himself up against one of the vertical supports and leveled his sight on the first man.

Off to his left he heard Rapp scream, "Now." Nash placed his sight square on the man's helmet and squeezed off his first round. The muzzle jumped an inch and came right back down. Nash lowered his aim a touch and squeezed off another round. He was going to zipper this guy right down his left side. After his fourth shot the sight came down and the guy was crumbling to the floor. Nash went to sight in the second guy and found himself staring straight down the hot muzzle of an M-4 rifle.

Rapp bounded down the steps two at time. There was only one way to do this, and it wasn't complicated. It was a full-on blitz, and it was the last thing these guys would expect. Rapp hit the floor and charged forward at a near full sprint, his left hand extended with his Glock leveled right down the axis of the shooters. He knew Nash was doing his job, because the lead guy was looking to his left instead of straight ahead. Rapp closed in with lightning speed. At fifteen feet he squeezed off his first round, hitting the lead man in his goggles.

The second man was turned to the side and looking up. From ten feet away Rapp sent a round into his exposed throat. The third guy sensed the motion and was beginning to turn on him, but while he could swivel his head to face the threat almost immediately, he had a harder time bringing his muzzle to bear. Rapp shot him from six feet away, right in the bridge of his nose. He stepped over the first guy as he shot the fourth guy twice in the neck and then the fifth guy in face.

The sixth and last guy had his back to him. Rapp saw him reaching into his vest with his right hand for a fresh magazine, oblivious to the fact that the rest of his line had fallen. Stepping over the next two bodies, Rapp grabbed the back of the guy's vest, stuffed the muzzle of the 9mm Glock into the man's lower back, and shot him twice through the spine.

CHAPTER 73

THE only thing Farid noticed before it happened was that, for a split second, it seemed as if everything had gone strangely quiet. The initial push into the building had gone perfectly. He'd taken out the three security guards at the turnstiles and led the team straight to the staircase, where he flipped positions and provided rear security. He fell slightly behind on their climb to the sixth floor when he had to stop and kill two women and a man who had stumbled upon them. By the time he reached the lobby on the sixth floor, the ribbon charges had already been placed on the cipher lock. Hauling seventy-eight pounds of gear plus yourself up six flights of stairs was no easy thing, but they could rest in paradise. In a few minutes it would all be over.

They knew their prize lay in the big room on the other side of the door. Karim had estimated that somewhere between two hundred and three hundred men and women would be in the Operations Center managing the crisis, trying to find out who was behind the attacks and coordinated the collection of evidence. Karim said they would represent the heart and soul of America's satanic war on Islam. It may have seemed as if it was the American military who doggedly pursued them with unmanned aerial drones through the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, but they were merely the instruments. These people were the thinkers, the trackers, the investigators. Their collective wealth of knowledge was America's greatest asset in their war. They had more planes and tanks than they could ever throw into a hundred battles. If they lost one, they simply put another into service. That would not be the case with these people. It would take America years to replace them, and it would give al-Qaeda the time they needed to rebuild.

This is what Karim had preached to them for months, and Farid believed every word of it, but he couldn't help think that his capable commander was withholding one aspect of the operation from them. Zachariah, Zawahiri's nephew, had sensed it as well, and he had been the first to openly complain. He told the other men, and they had taken to grumbling about it when Karim was not around. Farid went to Karim with the problem. Zachariah was telling the men that while the martyrdom mission was honorable and would strike at the heart of the enemy, it would undoubtedly also make it far easier for Karim to escape. Two days later Zachariah was dead.

Even before the confrontation with Zachariah, Farid could see Karim was beginning to worry about certain people's devotion. They had practiced the assault for months on end, and Farid was always at the vanguard. He was to lead them into the building, up the staircase, and into the Operations Center. They were to stop for nothing. If targets presented themselves, that was fine, but they were not to pause to engage a threat. The prize lay on the sixth floor. So, Karim ordered that once they reached the stairwell, Farid would cover their entry, and then take up the position at the rear of the attack.

Farid sensed there was a deeper purpose to the move, but he hadn't been a hundred percent sure until just today. After all the men had their vests on, Karim pulled him aside and handed him a master detonator. Each vest had a digital timer that was to be started when they rolled through the gate. Those timers could be shut off or restarted, should they need more time to get to their target. They had five minutes to kill as many people as possible; moving through the room laying down a 360-degree cone of fire. Thirty seconds before detonation, the men were to spread out so as to maximize the blasts that would hopefully tear the roof off the building, kill any remaining survivors, and render the entire space useless. If any of the men had second thoughts about completing their mission, or they were somehow met with stronger force than they had anticipated, Farid was to hit the master detonator.

As he lay on his back trying to piece together what had just happened, this thought was floating on the periphery of his mind. He did not understand what had gone wrong. The SWAT uniforms had worked perfectly. Every security guard and agent they had encountered froze. Just as Karim had said they would. Everyone except this man standing above him. Farid remembered the bolt on his rifle locking in the back position. His thumb hit the magazine release, expelling the empty box, while he reached for a fresh one. It occurred to him that the rifle fire had suddenly gone silent. He sensed movement behind him, and then there was the stabbing hot pain in his back. He had dropped his rifle and fallen to his left, hitting the ground and then rolling onto his back.

Now lying there, Farid realized he couldn't feel his legs. He tried to move them, but it was as if some great unseen weight had smothered them. Farid raised his head and looked at his lower body. Everything appeared to be fine. He tried desperately to move his legs again and then the harsh reality struck him that he was paralyzed. That hot pain that he had felt earlier was no doubt bullets slicing through his spinal column. Low enough, however that his arms still worked. Farid imagined himself in a wheelchair for a second, and then realized it was an extremely foolish thought. They were all wearing their vests.

Farid turned his head to the right to see what had happened to the others. All he saw was a jumble of black boots, vests, gloves, and helmets. They were all dead. The man standing above him started yelling at others, and that was when Farid remembered Karim's order. He had told him if it appeared that they would be overwhelmed, he should not take any chances. He should hit the master switch and blow all the vests. He wondered how much time had passed since they'd come through the gate. Farid tried to remember where he had placed the detonator. Everything else had been rehearsed, but this had been a last-minute addition to the plan. He reached for his vest and then realized he'd put it in the cargo pocket on his left thigh. His hand began groping for the device, when there was a loud noise and a flash followed by searing hot pain in his elbow.

CHAPTER 74

RAPP stood over the last man and surveyed the damage, his weapon trained on the blown-out main door, fearing that more men would come through at any moment. Moans and cries of pain were coming from every direction. To his right, Art Harris emerged from his office with a bloodstained shirt. He was stepping unsteadily over broken glass, but otherwise appeared fine. Rapp had one round in the breach and eight more in the grip. He popped out the half spent magazine, put it in his pocket, and grabbed a full one.

More people were up and moving now. Rapp could see a few of them had guns in their hands. "Art!" Rapp screamed. "Get some people over on that door and secure it!"

Harris started yelling orders to his fellow agents.

Rapp caught some movement beneath him. He looked down and saw the man on the floor reaching for something in his pocket. The image of a grenade popped into Rapp's mind. His 9mm swung down and he sent a round into the man's elbow socket. The arm jumped a few inches in the air and then lay flat at a slightly odd angle. The fingers twitched as the man strained to make his hand respond.

After stepping on his other arm, Rapp bent down and patted the pocket that the man had been reaching for. There was something square inside. Rapp reached in the pocket and pulled out an electronic detonator roughly the size of a pack of cards. He studied the device for a second and then looked down at the man. "Too bad you're not going to be able to use this."

"It doesn't matter," the man said in near perfect English. With a smile he added, "It would have only sped up the inevitable."

Rapp moved his gun to the man's face and tore off his goggles. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I am not afraid to die. I have already martyred myself. I have killed many Americans today. Allah will be very pleased with me."

Rapp hated that word - martyr. He'd learned long ago that guys who liked to throw it around had a particularly crazy religious bent. The fact that this guy had just had his spinal column blown out and his left elbow shattered, and was looking up at him as if he was experiencing some kind of religious nirvana, was extremely unsettling. Rapp began looking him over from head to toe. His tactical vest was packed with extra magazines for his rifle, but not much else. At the neckline, though, he saw the seam of what appeared to be a second vest under the first. Rapp stuffed the detonator in his shirt pocket and yanked at the Velcro and zipper on the man's tactical vest. The vest fell open to reveal a sight that caused Rapp's entire body to tense for a second. There was a second vest under the first, and the pockets that were designed to hold ammunition were instead filled with blocks of pasty gray C-4 plastic explosives. Like the bombs that had been set off earlier in the day, these too had ball bearings pressed into the C-4.

In the pocket just above the man's heart, near the neck of the vest, he found the detonator. Rapp carefully slid it out and looked down at the small digital readout as it ticked from forty-three to forty-two seconds. He resisted the urge to pull the wires from the device, knowing that it could very well trigger the explosion. Rapp looked around the room that was now swimming with the walking wounded and people crying for help. There was no way in hell he could get all of these people out of here in just over half a minute. His eyes fell on the windows that looked to the northeast. At the base of it, six floors down, was the ramp that went down into the underground parking garage.

Rapp couldn't be certain that the glass was blastproof, but it was a pretty good possibility. Then again, blastproof glass was designed to keep the blast wave of an explosion out. It wasn't designed to keep things in. Rapp quickly looked over the other five bodies. He had to assume they were all wearing vests.

Just as Nash came up, Rapp swung his pistol around, aimed it at the window, and squeezed off four quick rounds that punctured and spidered the glass but did not shatter it. Rapp started shooting again, the rounds popping off in rapid succession. In less than four seconds he emptied the rest of the seventeen-round magazine into a two-by-two-foot section of the window that was starting to give way.

The entire room had stopped to watch this one man shooting at an inanimate object as if he'd lost his mind.

As Rapp reached for his last full magazine, he screamed, "They have suicide vests! Art," Rapp yelled as he hit the slide release on his gun. "I need help with these bodies! We have less than thirty seconds before these vests start..." Rapp's words were muffled by his and Nash's gunshots as they emptied their magazines into the window.

A jagged hole had now appeared; roughly big enough to fit a garbage can through. Rapp holstered his gun and yelled to Nash, "Grab the other side."

They bent down and grabbed the paralyzed man by the legs and the side of his vest. They lifted him and started running across the room toward the partially punched-out window. Rapp began yelling at others who were standing by, watching. "Grab a body! Hurry up!"

As they neared the window, Rapp shouted, "Don't slow down."

He and Nash continued at near full speed and chucked the man headfirst into the uneven opening. The glass bent and then gave way as the body sailed past and down to the concrete ramp below. Rapp and Nash did not wait to see the impact. They turned and ran back to the floor. More men and women were jumping in to help now, some of them wounded. Rapp and Nash grabbed the last of the six men and started back across the room. Up ahead, they could see others throwing the terrorists out in the same fashion they had.

Three more bodies quickly went out the window. Rapp was beginning to think it was going to work when the people in front of him and Nash lost their grip and dropped the body. Nash started to slow and Rapp yelled, "My side," and kept moving.

They ran around the two agents, one of whom was now collapsed on the floor with blood dripping from his right arm. The hole was now much larger, so Rapp and Nash tossed their body out the window from a couple of steps away and then raced back to help the agents who had stumbled. Others were stepping in to help at the same time. Four of them ended up each grabbing a limb as they hoisted the body toward the opening, and then threw it clear into the open blue sky.

Rapp was about to stick his head through the opening to verify that the men had in fact ended up in the concrete-walled drive that led down into the parking garage, when he realized how stupid that would be. Nash grabbed him by the shoulder and began pulling him away from the window. They pushed everybody back as they went, and then the blast echoed from below, rolling up toward the shredded window.

Rapp turned to Nash, elated that they had pulled it off. He saw his friend looking down at the ground in semi-shock and followed his gaze. There on the ground with a bullet hole in her forehead was their assistant, Jessica.

CHAPTER 75

IT was almost midnight when Nash pulled into his driveway. He wedged the minivan into the garage, put it in park, and just sat there for a minute, both hands on the top of the steering wheel, his forehead resting on his knuckles. He hadn't wanted to leave the office. It had nothing to do with not wanting to see his wife and children; he just didn't want to leave while there was still work to be done. The death toll at NCTC had reached thirty-eight, with another seventeen injured, three of them critically. The only consolation was that it could have been so much worse.

That was the mantra that had been picked up by virtually everyone as a way to offer comfort to those who had gone through it. Men like Rapp and Nash, who had seen death up close were more equipped to deal with the situation, but for quite a few of the analysts who had witnessed close colleagues and friends blown away in the place they worked every day, it was too much. A few got back to work, because subconsciously they knew it was the only way they could take their mind off what had happened, but a surprising number either became hysterical with grief or went into shock.

As Nash helped move the mentally wounded to the cafeteria, the realization hit home that these people were civilians. They were not trained for combat like his marines. Langley sent over people to help, as did the FBI and other agencies. There had been a hell of an argument early on between Art Harris and another bigwig from the bureau who wanted to quarantine the entire Operations Center and treat it as a crime scene. Harris was adamant that they get the Ops Center up and running again as soon as possible. The other agent wouldn't budge, however, and ordered everyone to stop the cleanup. He wanted the bodies left exactly where they were until forensic teams showed up. The two men began screaming at each other, and then Rapp decided to settle the issue. He walked over, coldcocked the agent, and ordered everyone back to work.

Nash had talked to his wife just once. He'd called her to let her know that she might start to hear some things from the press. He couldn't talk about it, but he was fine and he would call as soon as he had a chance. Nash couldn't even remember how long ago he'd made the call. He guessed it was probably around dinnertime. Maggie would be worried sick.

He pulled the keys out of the ignition and got out. After shutting the garage door, he walked up to the house. The light over the kitchen sink was on, as was a lamp in the study. Otherwise, the house was completely black. Nash slid his key into the back door and entered the mudroom. He turned off the alarm, closed and locked the door, and turned the alarm back on. He put his gun and holster in the gun safe and made a mental note to fill the magazines for the .40-cal in the morning.

Nash took off his suit coat and set it on the back of a chair in the kitchen. He quietly walked down the hallway and looked in the study. Maggie was sitting in the big chair next to the fireplace with a blanket and a book on her lap. She must have sensed his presence, as her eyes fluttered open, and she looked up at him with a warm smile that vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. Her eyes traveled from her husband's face to his shirt.

Nash had forgotten that his shirt was stained with blood.

"What happened?" Maggie asked with concern.

Nash didn't know how much he could say, and he really didn't want to relive what had happened. "I'm fine, honey. This isn't mine."

"When you called, you said you were fine," she said as she tossed the book and blanket off her lap. "You never said you'd been in danger."

"I wasn't, honey. This is from helping with the wounded."

"That building in McLean... the one that they showed on TV with all the emergency vehicles racing in and out - is that where you were?"

Nash was hit suddenly by the bizarre requirements of his job. His own wife didn't even know exactly where he worked. She knew only that he had an office at CIA headquarters. She knew nothing about his role at the National Counterterrorism Center. She probably didn't even know the organization existed.

"I was there," he admitted, "but I can't tell you much more than that."

She wrapped her arms around him and gave him a tight squeeze. "The kids were really worried."

"I know. I wish I could have gotten home sooner but..." Nash's voice trailed off.

"You can't talk about it," she finished for him.

It was the company line. It represented the strange nonbalance of their marriage. She talked about her job whenever she wanted and as often as she wanted. He didn't speak of his even at times like this, when it would have made his life a lot easier. "How did things go with the dean and the De Graffs after I left?"

Maggie took a half step back and looked up at her husband with a proud smile. "Let's just say Dean Barnum Smith and I got the De Graffs to drop the entire matter."

"Really?"

"Yes, and Rory and I sat down and had a good talk this afternoon. I asked him if he was happy at Sidwell."

"And?"

"His answer was less than enthusiastic. So, I told him, if he stayed out of trouble for the rest of the semester, I'd let him go to Georgetown Prep next year."

"What about lacrosse camp this summer?"

"I told him that was between you and him."

Nash drew her in close and kissed the top of her head. Knowing how stubborn she was, Nash knew it couldn't have been easy for her. "Thank you, honey." He squeezed her tight and rubbed her back.

She tilted her head back and offered him her lips. "You were right. I allowed myself to get too caught up in all of it."