"What do you know about combat, sir?"

"Depends on what you mean," Ryan replied.

"Combat is when people with guns are trying to kill you," Zimmer explained patiently. "It's dangerous."

"I know. I've been there a few times. Let's not dwell on that, okay? I'm already scared." Ryan looked over his gun, out the door of the aircraft, wondering why he'd been such a damned fool to volunteer for this. But what choice did he have? Could he just send these men off to danger? If he did, how did that make him different from Cutter? Jack looked around the interior of the aircraft. It seemed so large and strong and safe, sitting here on the concrete floor of the hangar. But it was an aircraft designed for life in the troubled air of an unfriendly sky. It was a helicopter: Ryan especially hated helicopters.

"The funny thing is, probably no sweat on the mission," Zimmer said after a moment. "Sir, we do our job right, it's just a flight in and a flight back out."

"That's what I'm scared of, Sarge," Ryan said, laughing mostly at himself.

They landed at Santagueda. Larson knew the man who ran the local flying service and talked him out of his Volkswagen Microvan. The two CIA officers drove north, and an hour later passed through the village of Anserma. They dallied here for half an hour, driving around until they found what they wanted to find: a few trucks heading in and out of a private dirt road and one expensive-looking car. CAPER had called it right, Clark saw, and it was the place he thought it was from the flight in. Having confirmed that, they moved out, heading north again for another hour and taking a side road into the mountains just outside of Vegas del Rio. Clark had his nose buried in a map, and Larson found a hilltop switchback at which to stop. That's where the radio came out.

"KNIFE, this is VARIABLE, over." Nothing, despite five minutes of trying. Larson drove farther west, horsing the Microvan around cow paths as he struggled to find another high spot for Clark to try again. It was three in the afternoon, and their fifth attempt until they got a reply.

"KNIFE here. Over."

"Chavez, this is Clark. Where the hell are you?" Clark asked, in Spanish, of course.

"Let's talk awhile first."

"You're good, kid. We really could have used you in 3rd SOG."

"Why should I trust you? Somebody cut us off, man. Somebody decided to leave us here."

"It wasn't me."

"Glad to hear it," came the skeptical, bitter reply.

"Chavez, you're talking over a radio net that might be compromised. If you got a map, we're at the following set of coordinates," Clark told him. "There's two of us in a blue Volkswagen van. Check us out, take all the time you want."

"I already have!" the radio told him.

Clark's head spun around to see a man with an AK-47 twenty feet away.

"Let's be real cool, people," Sergeant Vega said. Three more men emerged from the treeline. One of them had a bloody bandage on his thigh. Chavez, too, had an AK slung over his shoulder, but he had held on to his silenced MP-5. He walked straight up to the van.

"Not bad, kid," Clark told him. "How'd you know?"

"UHF radio. You had to transmit from a high spot, right? The map says there's six of them. I heard you one other time, too, and I spotted you heading this way half an hour ago. Now what the fuck is going on?"

"First thing, let's get that casualty treated." Clark stepped out and handed Chavez his pistol, butt first. "I got a first-aid kit in the back."

The wounded man was Sergeant Juardo, a rifleman from the 10th Mountain at Fort Drum. Clark opened the back of the van and helped load him aboard, then uncovered the wound.

"You know what you're doing?" Vega asked.

"I used to be a SEAL," Clark replied, holding up his arm so that they could see the tattoo. "Third Special Operations Group. Spent a lot of time in 'Nam, doing stuff that never made the TV news."

"What were you?"

"Came out a chief bosun's mate, E-7 to you." Clark examined the wound. It was bad to look at, but not life-threatening as long as the man didn't bleed out, which he'd managed not to do yet. So far it seemed that the infantrymen had done most of the right things. Clark ripped open an envelope and redusted the wound with sulfa. "You have any blood-expanders?"

"Here." Sergeant Le n passed over an IV bag. "None of us knows how to start one."

"It's not hard. Watch how I do it." Clark grabbed Juardo's upper arm hard and told him to make a fist. Then he stabbed the IV needle into the big vein inside the elbow. "See? Okay, I cheat. My wife's a nurse, and sometimes I get to practice at her hospital," Clark admitted. "How's it feel, kid?" he asked the patient.

"Nice to be sitting down," Juardo admitted.

"I don't want to give you a pain shot. We might need you awake. Think you can hack it?"

"You say so, man. Hey, Ding, you got any candy?"

Chavez tossed over his Tylenol bottle. "Last ones, Pablo. Make 'em last, man."

"Thanks, Ding."

"We have some sandwiches in the front," Larson said.

"Food!" Vega darted that way at once. A minute later the four soldiers were wolfing it down, along with a six-pack of Cokes that Larson had picked up on the way.

"Where'd you pick up the weapons?"

"Bad guys. We were just about out of ammo for our -16s, and I figured we might as well try to fit in, like."

"You're thinking good, kid," Clark told him.

"Okay, what's the plan?" Chavez asked.

"It's your call," Clark replied. "One of two things. We can drive you back to the airport and fly you out, take about three hours to get there, another three hours in the airplane, and it's over, you're back on U.S. territory."

"What else?"

"Chavez, how'd you like to get the fucker who did this to you?" Clark knew the answer before he'd asked the question.

Admiral Cutter was leaning back in his chair when the phone buzzed. He knew who it was from the line that was blinking. "Yes, Mr. President?"

"Come in here."

"On the way, sir."

Summer is as slow a season for the White House as for most government agencies. The President's calendar was fuller than usual with the ceremonial stuff that the politician in him loved and the executive in him abhorred. Shaking hands with "Miss Whole Milk," as he referred to the steady stream of visitors - though, he occasionally wondered to himself if he'd ever meet a Miss Condom, what with the way sexual mores were changing of late. The burden was larger than most imagine. For each such visitor there was a sheet of paper, a few paragraphs of information so that the person would leave thinking that, gee, the President really knows what I'm all about. He's really interested! Pressing flesh and talking to ordinary people was an important and usually pleasurable part of the job, but not now, a week short of the convention, still behind in the goddamned polls, as every news network announced at least twice a week.

"What about Colombia?" the President asked as soon as the door was closed.

"Sir, you told me to shut it down. It's being shut down."

"Any problems with the Agency?"

"No, Mr. President."

"How exactly -"

"Sir, you told me you didn't want to know that."

"You're telling me it's something I shouldn't know?"

"I'm telling you, sir, that I am carrying out your instructions. The orders were given, and the orders are being complied with. I don't think you will object to the consequences."

"Really?"

Cutter relaxed a bit. "Sir, in a very real sense, the operation was a success. Drug shipments are down and will drop further in the next few months. I would suggest, sir, that you let the press talk about that for the moment. You can always point to it later. We've hurt them. With Operation TARPON we have something we can point to all we wish. With CAPER we have a way of continuing to gather intelligence information. We will have some dramatic arrests in a few months as well."