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and he didn’t bother to disguise the reluctance in his voice. “For starters,” he continued inside the FBI’s makeshift command post, where equipment was still being dragged in, “we’ve got five perps armed with automatic weapons holding thirty-seven hostages on the observation deck. Our thermal scan was positive for explosives, most likely C-4, enough to blow the tip of the monument into orbit. The leader says he’ll detonate in just under three hours if he doesn’t receive twenty million dollars.”
    “Any ID on the leader?”
    “His voiceprint’s not in our files.”
    “What about photo reconnaissance?”
    “He hasn’t given us a clear look. He’s bald, that’s all I can tell you so far.”
    “Not very much.”
    “The money’s twenty minutes away,” Kirkland said, “if it comes to that.”
    “What about Hostage and Rescue?”
    “Ten minutes away, with a response plan drawn up no more than one hour after that,” Kirkland said, trying to sound confident.
    “Then they’d better draw up new specs for the Monument while they’re
at it, Mr. Assistant Director. The observation deck windows are too thick to shoot or crash through, and my guess is the elevator has been disabled. Think your men can cover ninety flights of stairs and still take these bastards by surprise?”
    Kirkland met McCracken’s eyes for the first time, liquidy spheres that looked like miniature black holes. “You got a better idea?”
    Blaine focused his gaze on the tip of the Monument. “Just one.”

TWO
    “ T his the FBI I know we’re talking about?” Buck asked disbelievingly, still treading water. “I can’t see these keep-it-in-the-house sons of bitches opening up their doors to an outsider.”
    “Hank let a few people know I was on the scene; they took care of the rest.”
    “Too bad.”
    “Wrong place at the wrong time.”
    “Then or now?”
    “Why don’t you tell me?”
    Buck finally pulled himself onto the dock and sat on its edge next to McCracken. His huge forearms pulsed slightly with exertion and his black t-shirt clung to his barrel chest like a glove. Blaine couldn’t say Torrey was still muscular; he was just big—everywhere. His face was block square, his jawline so angular that it lent his expression a perpetual menacing glint. His jet-black hair showed some streaks of gray now and it was longer than Blaine had ever seen it. His face, though pitted and pockmarked, was strangely gentle, that of a man who could hug a person as easily as break him in half.
    Buck Torrey’s career had been that of a textbook hero until the relatively recent past. As sergeant major of the elite troop Blaine had been selected for in the early seventies, Torrey had designed the program that separated
the good from the great among Special Forces personnel. This and subsequent work led to a steady rise for him through the Special Forces as it eventually became umbrellaed under the Special Operations Command based in Florida. Torrey, it was said, was being groomed to take over the post of Command Sergeant Major upon the retirement of the legendary Hank Luthie.
    Everything changed on a single ragged morning in Somalia, when an army Ranger detachment was dispatched to “acquire” a Somali warlord. The operation went off without a hitch; the detachment was pulling out when one of its choppers was hit by an RPG. The chopper went down and the result was a pitched battle that rivaled any on record for ferocity and violence, ending with Ranger troops fighting with bayonets or hand-to-hand through an impossibly long night. The Rangers took three dozen casualties. The Somalis took over a thousand.
    For Buck Torrey that was small consolation. He had written a half-dozen memos on the need of armored support for his men dispatched to that godforsaken country. Because they had gone unheeded, on-site Special Operations Command was helpless to mount a rescue or send in proper reinforcements. Torrey’s men—and he saw them all as his