Murdock took a quick look around to make certain that everything was ready. As a final touch, he quietly picked up the low coffee table from its place in front of the sofa and positioned it carefully about two feet from the door. Then he took his place in the northwest corner — well out of the line of fire, he hoped — took out a stopwatch with one black-gloved hand, and switched on his radio.

"Okay, MacKenzie. Ready."

"Yes, sir. Blue Squad Stand ready... go!" Murdock hit the stopwatch timer button. Almost simultaneous with the word "go," he heard the deep-throated boom of Higgins's Remington shotgun, the snick-snack of a manually pumped round, and a second boom as thunderous as the first. The door's hinges, impacted by one-ounce slugs, disintegrated into bits of metal, loose screws, and splinters, and the door smashed back into the room an instant later. A small, black object the size and shape of a cardboard toilet-paper tube bounced across the floor, then gave off a loud crack, a simulation of the flash-bang grenade that would have stunned and blinded everyone in the room if it had been real.

The SEALs came through before the simulator's echoes in the small room had died. Roselli was first, "button-hooking," or rolling around the door frame to the right, toward the southwest corner; Brown was a split second behind him, button-hooking left as Garcia came through the center, vaulting both the coffee table and the wreckage of the door as lightly as any world-class gymnast. Gunfire crashed in tight groups of three, so quickly triggered they sounded like full-auto shots. The terrorist in the southeast corner jerked and spun on his wire, half of his head blown away by three fast shots from Brown; Garcia, far enough into the room to see past the female hostage, took down the man with the AK, while Brown pivoted into the southeast corner, aimed across the room, and put three rounds into the female terrorist behind the sofa. Roselli shot the terrorist behind the table, spun, and put three more rounds into the female terrorist an instant behind Brown's shots, blasting the mannequin's head to fragments and severed it from its wire. A piece of the mannequin's head, a clump of curly yellow hair still attached, bounced off Murdock's flak vest. Garcia leaped across the sofa, checking behind it for any nasty surprises — a hidden terrorist, say — then spun with his Beretta still extended rigidly in front of his body, shifting from corner to corner of the room. "Clear!" he yelled.

"Clear!"

"Clear!" Brown and Roselli chorused in almost perfect unison.

Higgins, crouched in the doorway behind the coffee table, his shotgun covering everyone in the room, joined in. "Clear!"

Murdock's thumb came down on the stopwatch button.

"Five-point-one-eight seconds," he said, reading the numerals off the watch. "That's still slow, people. Damned slow. We can do it in four and a half easy!"

Collectively, the SEALs sagged as they came down off their combat high. Thumbs dropped half-loaded magazines into gloved hands, and then slides were ratcheted back, expending chambered rounds that clinked on the concrete floor. MacKenzie and Ellsworth stepped into the room, squeezing past Higgins and the ruin of the door.

"Assessment," Murdock snapped. He walked over to where the female hostage was slowly turning on her wire. Her right shoulder had been neatly popped from its socket, and a bullet hole showed in her sweater. "Let's take a look at what went wrong. Garcia, I think you cut it a little close on this one. You killed the tango but you also crippled his hostage."

"I was a little rushed, Lieutenant. I was a bit off balance after jumping that fucking table, and I triggered while I was still bringing my aim up."

"I also noticed you turn away from Tilly the Terrorist over there behind the couch. Didn't you see her?"

"I saw her, Sir," Boomer said. "But I thought the guy with the AK, coming in behind the girl, was the bigger threat. His gun was up, Tilly's was down. Besides, she had a hand gun while he had an assault rifle."

"She was also right next to a hostage and she was the last one to die. How could you have taken her down faster?"

The analysis went on for several more seconds before it was interrupted by a sharp, steady beeping. Murdock reached down to his harness and thumbed off the pager. "Excuse me, people. Duty calls. Master Chief, walk them through again, will you?"

"Aye, aye, sir."

Making his way out of the killing house, Murdock walked across the barren dirt outside to a small command center, where a telephone had been set up. Punching in a number, he held the receiver to his ear. "Murdock."

"This is Doubleday in HQ," a voice said. "Sir, you have a visitor here."

"Who? Oh, never mind. I'll be right up." He sighed as he cradled the receiver. Probably Captain Mason and someone from the Pentagon, with the final word on Sun Hammer. What was he going to tell him, that the men were ready? That they could take down a ship at sea loaded with two tons of the deadliest poison known to man?

Ten minutes later, he walked through the front doors of SEAL Seven's headquarters, his boondockers tracking the recently mopped and waxed linoleum deck. He felt sweaty, grimy, and tired, and if this was some bigwig from Fort Fumble, as the Pentagon was sometimes called, he hoped he wasn't being graded for neatness.

He recognized his visitor's back as soon as he walked into the officers' lounge, and felt a sharp twist in his gut. This was no Pentagon VIP.

The man, an old, white-haired, craggy-faced version of Murdock, turned, his back as ramrod stiff, as unyielding as the younger man remembered. "Hello, son."

"Father! What the hell are you doing here?"

"I heard you'd been transferred. I thought I'd come down and look you up." He looked around the lounge, at its peeling paint and shop-worn, fifth-hand furniture, nodding as though it met all of his expectations. "This is where you work now, eh?"

Murdock's lips compressed into a tight white line. "I was seriously wondering if you had anything to do with this. They yanked me out of the middle of a Phase One class in Coronado, had me about bust a gut to get out here."

"And you thought I arranged it to get you back to the East Coast?" The older man shook his head. "I'm afraid not. I could arrange a transfer, you know.

"We've been over that ground, Father. You know how I feel."

"Yes. You seem to have this idealistic notion about your career path. Damn it, Blake, didn't anybody ever tell you that these special-forces units like the SEALs are a dead end career-wise?"

"It's what I want. I'm very good at what I do. Sir."

"Um. I daresay you are." He looked Murdock up and down. "You're looking fit enough. Nice southern California tan."

"What did you want to see me for, Father? My platoon has a heavy training schedule today."

"Well, actually, I heard you might be going overseas soon. On, ah, business."

Murdock glanced about the empty room. Even here in SEAL headquarters there were things that weren't openly discussed. And he wasn't sure what his father's security clearance was.

Hell, the man was a member of Congress, for God's sake, and on the House Military Affairs Committee to boot. Still, the reserve that had built up between the two men, an impenetrable wall for the past five years, remained. Murdock did not immediately reply.

"Look, Blake," the older Murdock said. He spread his hands, as if to demonstrate that he was unarmed. "I know this must be a bad time. But I wanted... I wanted to see you once, before you left."

"I don't know that I'm leaving, sir." He was dying to know what his father knew... and unwilling to be the one to ask.

"Son, this mission coming up is going to be dangerous. And thankless. Definitely a case of damned-if-you-do-and-damned-if-you-don't."