"CAESAR: Check fire, check fire!"

"Roger," the radio replied. Overhead, the horrible noise stopped. Clark hadn't heard it in a very long time. Another sound from his youth, it was as fearful now as it had been then.

"Heads up, OMEN, we're moving now, SNAKE is moving. Acknowledge."

"OMEN, this is Six, cease fire, cease fire!" The shooting from the treeline stopped. "SNAKE: Go!"

"Come on!" It was stupid to lead them with only a silenced pistol in his hand, Clark knew, but he was in command, and the good commanders led from the front. They covered the two hundred yards to the house in thirty seconds.

"Door!" Clark said to Vega, who used his AK to blast off the hinges, then kicked it down. Clark dove through low, rolling when he hit, looking and seeing one man in the room. He had an AK, and fired it, but shot high. Clark dropped him with a silenced round in the face, then another as he fell. There was a doorway but no door to the next room. He gestured to Chavez, who tossed a CS grenade into it. They waited for it to go off, then both rushed the room, again diving in low.

There were three men. One, holding a pistol, took a step toward them. Clark and Chavez hit him in the chest and head. The other armed man, kneeling by the window, tried to turn about, but couldn't do it on his knees, and fell onto his side. Chavez was there in an instant, smashing his buttstock onto his forehead. Clark rushed the third man, slamming him against the block wall. Le n and Vega came in next, leapfrogging to the final door. That room was empty.

"Building is clear!" Vega shouted. "Hey, I -"

"Come on!" Clark dragged his man out the front. Chavez did the same, covered by Le n. Vega was slow in moving. They didn't know why until they were all outside.

Clark was already on his radio. "CAESAR, this is SNAKE. We got 'em. Let's get the fuck outa here."

"Le n," Vega said. "Look here."

"Tony," the sergeant said. The only other survivor from Ninja Hill had been a BANNER man. Le n walked over to Escobedo, who was still conscious. " Motherfucker! You're fuckin' dead! " Le n screamed, bringing his gun down.

"Stop!" Clark yelled at him. That almost didn't work, but Clark knocked him down, which did. "You're a soldier, goddammit, act like one! You and Vega - carry your friend on the chopper."

Team OMEN worked its way across the field. Several men, remarkably enough, weren't quite dead yet. That aberration was corrected with single rifle shots. The captain got his men together and counted them off with his finger.

"Good work," Clark told him. "You got everybody?"

"Yes!"

"Okay, here's comes our ride."

The Pave Low swept in from the west this time, and again didn't quite touch the ground. Just like the old days, Clark . A helicopter that touched the ground could set off a mine. Not likely here, but PJ hadn't gotten old enough to be a colonel by overlooking any chances at all. He grabbed Escobedo - he'd gotten a good enough look by now to identify him - by the arm and propelled him to the ramp. One of the chopper crew met them there, did his count, and before Clark was sitting down with his charge, the MH-53J was moving up and north. He assigned a soldier to look after Se or Escobedo and went forward.

Sweet Jesus , Ryan thought. He'd counted eight bodies, and they'd just been the ones close to the helicopter. Jack switched off his gun motor and relaxed - and really did this time. Relaxation was a relative thing, he'd just learned. Being shot at really was worse than flying in the back of a goddamned helicopter. Amazing, he thought. A hand grabbed his shoulder.

"We got Cortez and Escobedo alive!" Clark shouted at him.

"Escobedo? What the hell was he -"

"You complaining?"

"What the hell can we do with him?" Jack asked.

"Well, I sure as shit couldn't just leave him there, could I?"

"But what -"

"If you want, I can give the bastard a flying lesson." Clark gestured toward the stern ramp. If he learns to fly before he hits the ground, fine ...

"No, goddammit, that's fucking murder!"

Clark grinned at him. "That gun next to you is not a negotiating tool, doc."

"Okay, people," PJ's voice came over the intercom before that conversation went any further. "One more stop and we call this one a day."

29. Fill-ups

IT HAD STARTED with the President's warning. Admiral Cutter wasn't used to having to make sure his orders had been carried out. In his naval career orders were things that you gave and that other people did, or that you did after being told to do so by others. He placed a call to the Agency and got Ritter and asked the question, the one that had to be an unnecessarily insulting one. Cutter knew that he'd already humiliated the man, and that to do so further was not a smart move -but what if the President had been right? That risk called for further action. Ritter's reaction was a troubling one. The irritation that should have been in his voice, wasn't. Instead he'd spoken like any other government bureaucrat saying that yes, the orders were being carried out, of course. Ritter was a cold, effective son of a bitch, but even that sort had its limits, beyond which emotion comes to the fore; Cutter knew that he'd reached and passed that point with the DDO. The anger just hadn't been there, and it ought to have been.

Something is wrong . The National Security Adviser told himself to relax. Something might be wrong . Maybe Ritter was playing mind games. Maybe even he'd seen that his course of action was the only proper one, Cutter speculated, and resigned himself to the inevitable. After all, Ritter liked being Deputy Director (Operations). That was his rice bowl, as the government saying went. Even the most important government officials had those. Even they were often uncomfortable with the idea of leaving behind the office and the secretary and the driver and most of all the title that designated them as Important People despite their meager salaries. Like the line from some movie or other, leaving the government meant entering the real world, and in the real world, people expected results to back up position papers arid National Intelligence Estimates. How many people stayed in government service because of the security, the benefits, and the insulation from that "real" world? There were more of those, Cutter was sure, than of the ones who saw themselves as the honest servants of the people.

But even if that were likely, Cutter considered, it was not certain, and some further checking was in order. And so he placed his own call to Hurlburt Field and asked for Wing Operations.

"I need to talk to Colonel Johns."

"Colonel Johns is off post, sir, and cannot be reached."

"I need to know where he is."

"I do not have that information, sir."

"What do you mean, you don't have that information, Captain?" The real wing operations officer was off duty by now, and one of the helicopter pilots had drawn the duty for this evening.

"I mean I don't know, sir," the captain replied. He wanted to be a little more insolent in his answer to so stupid a question, but the call had come in on a secure line, and there was no telling who the hell was on the other end.

"Who does know?"

"I don't know that, sir, but I can try to find out."

Was this just some command fuck-up? Cutter asked himself. What if it wasn't?

"Are all your MC-130s in place, Captain?" Cutter asked.

"Three birds are off TDY somewhere or other, sir. Where they are is classified - I mean, sir, that where our aircraft happen to be is almost always classified. Besides, what with that hurricane chasing around south of here, we're getting ready to move a lot of our birds in case it heads this way."

Cutter could have demanded the information right then and there. But that would have meant identifying himself, and even then, he was talking to some twenty-something-year-old junior officer who might just say no because nobody had told him otherwise, and such a junior officer knew that he'd never be seriously punished for not taking initiative and doing something he'd been told not to do - at least not over a telephone line, secure or not. Such a demand would also have called attention to something in a way that he didn't want...