The race was on to bring the two men gloves, boots, Space blankets and piping-hot soup before the cold beat them to it. Nobody told the rescue parties-because nobody knew-that there was another man out in the wilderness that day, and he was very dangerous indeed.

The saving grace for the CIA team at the shattered Cabin was that their communications had survived the hit. The commander only had one number to call, but it was a good one. It went on a secure line to the desk of DDO Marek Gumienny at Langley. Three time zones east, just after four p.m., he took the call.

As he listened, he went very quiet. He did not rant or rave, even though he was being told of a major Company disaster. Before his junior colleague in the Cascade wilderness had finished, he was analyzing the catastrophe. In freezing temperatures, the two corpses might have to wait awhile. The three injured needed urgent CASEVAC. And the fugitive had to be hunted down. “Can a helo get in there to reach you?” he asked.

“No, sir, we have cloud right to the treetops, and threatening more snow.”

“What is your nearest town with a track leading to it?” “It’s called Mazama. It’s outside the wilderness, but there is a fair-weather track from the town to Hart’s Pass. That’s a mile away. No track from there to here.”

“You are a cover research facility, understand? You have had a major accident. You need urgent help. Raise the sheriff at Mazama, and get him to come in there for you with anything he has got. Halftracks, snowmobiles, off-roads-as near as possible. Skis, snowshoes and sleds for the last mile. Get those men to the hospital. Meanwhile, can you keep warm?”

“Yes, sir. Two rooms are shattered, but we have three sealed off. The central heating is down, but we are piling logs on the fire.” “Right. When the rescue party reaches you, lock everything down, smash all covert comms equipment, bring all codes with you, and come out with the injured.”

“Sir?”

“Yes.”

“What about the Afghan?”

“Leave him to me.”

Marek Gumienny thought of the original letter John Negroponte had given him at the start of Operation Crowbar. Powers plenipotentiary. No limits. Time the Army earned its tax dollars. He rang the Pentagon.

Thanks to years in the Company, and the new spirit of information sharing, he had close contacts with the Defense Intelligence Agency, and they, in turn, were best buddies with Special Forces. Twenty minutes later, he learned he might have had his first break of a very bad day.

No more than four miles from McChord Air Force Base is the Army’s Fort Lewis. Though a huge Army camp, there is a corner off-limits to nonauthorized personnel, and this is the home of the First Special Forces Group, known to its few friends as Operational Detachment (OD) Alpha 143. The terminal 3 means a mountain company, or A team. Its ops commander was Senior Captain Michael Linnett.

When the unit adjutant took the call from the Pentagon, he could not be very helpful, even though he was speaking to a two-star general. “Right now, sir, they are not on base. They are involved in a tactical exercise on the slopes of Mount Rainier.”

The Washington-based general had never heard of this bleak pinnacle way down southeast of Tacoma in Pierce County.

“Can you get them back to base by helicopter, Lieutenant?”

“Yessir. I believe so. The cloud base is just high enough.” “Can you airlift them to a place called Mazama, close to Hart’s Pass, on the edge of the wilderness?”

“I’ll have to check that, sir.” He would be back on the line in three minutes.

The general held on.

“No, sir. The cloud up there is right on the treetops, and snow pending. To get up there means going by truck.”

“Well, get them there, by the fastest possible route. You say they are on maneuver?”

“Yessir.”

“Do they have with them all they need to operate in the Pasayten Wilderness?”

“Everything for subzero rough-terrain operating. General.”

“Live ammunition?”

“Yessir. This was for a simulated terrorist hunt in Mount Rainier National Park.”

“Well, it ain’t ‘simulated’ anymore. Lieutenant. Get the whole unit to Mazama sheriff’s office. Check with a CIA spook called Olsen. Stay in contact with Alpha at all times, and report to me on any progress.” To save time, Captain Linnett, apprised of some kind of emergency while he was descending Mount Rainier, asked for exfiltration by air. Fort Lewis had its own Chinook troop carrier helicopter, which picked up the Alpha team from the empty visitor parking lot at the foot of the mountain thirty minutes later. The Chinook took the team as far north as the snow clouds would allow and set them down on a small airfield west of Burlington. The truck had been heading there for an hour, and they arrived almost at the same time. From Burlington, Highway 20 wound its bleak path along the Skagit River and into the Cascades. It is closed in winter to all but official and specially equipped traffic; the SF truck was equipped for every kind of terrain, and a few not yet invented. But progress was slow. It took four hours until the exhausted driver crunched into the town of Mazama.

The CIA team was also exhausted, but at least their injured colleagues, doped with morphine, were in real ambulances heading south for a helicopter pickup and a final transfer to Tacoma General.

Olsen told Captain Linnett what he thought was enough. Linnett snapped that he was security cleared, and insisted on more.

“This fugitive, has he got arctic clothing and footwear?”

“No. Hiking boots, warm trousers, a light quilted jacket.”

“No skies, snowshoes? Is he armed?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“It’s dark already. Does he have a night-vision goggles? Anything to help him move?”

“No, certainly not. He was a prisoner in close confinement.” “He’s toast,” said Linnett. “In these temperatures, plowing through a meter of snow with no compass, going round in circles. We’ll get him.” “There is just one thing. He’s a mountain man. Born and raised in them.”

“Round here?”

“No. In the Tora Bora. He’s an Afghan.”

Linnett stared in dumb amazement. He had fought in the Tora Bora. He had been in the first Afghan invasion when Coalition Special Forces, American and British, ranged through the Spin Gahr looking for a runaway party of Saudi Arabs, one of them six feet four inches tall. And he had been back to take part in Operation Anaconda. That had not gone well, either. Some good men had been lost on Anaconda. Linnett had a score to settle with Pashtun from the Tora Bora. “Saddle up,” he shouted, and the ODA climbed back in their truck. It would take them up the remainder of the track to Hart’s Pass. After that, their transportation would go back three thousand years to the ski and the snowshoe. As they left, the sheriff’s radio brought the news both airmen had been found and brought out, very cold but alive. Both were in a hospital in Seattle. The news was good, but a bit too late for a man called Lemuel Wilson.

The Anglo-American investigators of the merchant marine who had taken over Operation Crowbar were still concentrating on threat number one, the idea that Al Qaeda might be planning to close down a vital world highway by blocking a narrow strait.

In that contingency, the size of the vessel was paramount. The cargo was immaterial, save only that venting oil would make the job of demolition divers almost impossible. Inquiries were flying across the world to identify every vessel of huge tonnage on the seas.

Clearly, the bigger the ships, the fewer there would be, and most would belong to respectable and gigantic companies. The principal five hundred ultralarge and very large crude carriers, the ULCCs and VLCCs, known to the public as “supertankers,” were checked and found to be unattacked. Then the tonnages were lowered in integers of ten thousand tons fully loaded. When all vessels of fifty thousand tons and up were accounted for, the strait-blockage panic began to subside.