“Ought to see it coming up in a second here,” Knowles said.

Laramie saw Knowles was working the mouse again, making circles with the cursor in the upper right of the video image, where Laramie noticed something vague and orange begin to materialize. It started to look like a sign-and then the sign became legible.

“He’s going to The Home Depot,” she said.

The car-looking to be a Ford Explorer, though Laramie couldn’t be completely sure-turned into the massive parking lot. She could see the store’s rectangular building, somewhat out of focus, in the background of the shot.

“At seven A.M.,” Rothgeb said.

“That’d be the time they open in Scarsdale on Saturdays,” Knowles said. “We checked online.”

The Explorer pulled to the side of the building that appeared to house the garden supply portion of the store and parked there. Laramie saw the quick flash of the white taillight indicators signaling the driver had thrown the vehicle into Park, and then the door opened and “probable sleeper number six” emerged in jeans and a T-shirt to walk into the store.

Twenty minutes later, the sleeper and his Explorer left the parking lot-his SUV loaded with a heavy cargo of what Laramie counted as twenty-five bags of something that they were all assuming was fertilizer, or some mix of fertilizer and something else like grass seed or topsoil that might help disguise the purpose of the purchase.

He didn’t make any other stops-at least not until returning home. They had to watch from a longer-range shot but could still see pretty clearly as he pulled the Explorer into his garage, closed the door behind the SUV, then, seven minutes later, reopened the garage and pulled out again. This time he headed to a gas station-a Citgo-where they watched him fill a number of red canisters with gasoline at the pump. The private investigator’s surveillance distance was growing with every stop, presumably to keep from being seen.

“That’s about all you need,” Cole said, “for a fertilizer bomb of the yield used by Achar.”

“Correct,” Knowles said. “And we’ll have to wait and see, but I wonder whether the others do the same thing when the sun pops up in their time zones.”

“This is not a good thing,” Rothgeb said.

“No,” Knowles said. “And if there are more than six out there, it’ll start to be a much worse thing real quick.”

Laramie thought some more about the things she’d been thinking about in her room.

“Either way,” she said, “we’re going to need to get the tip phoned in.”

The major piece of the plan she didn’t like was the way Ebbers-through instructions relayed by her guide-had told them they were to “blow the whistle” on the sleepers if they spotted anything like they were seeing from sleeper number six now. Rather than order the FBI or local authorities in to apprehend the sleepers, they’d been instructed to arrange for anonymous tips to be phoned in to both the local FBI office and the local county sheriff’s or police department. The tips were to include great detail but would remain anonymous nonetheless.

Cole had expressed his reservations first, and Laramie agreed-it wasn’t even certain such tips would be acted upon once phoned in, and if FBI agents and the local cops did respond to the tip, who knew how the bust would go down? Would the sleeper panic and set off his bomb?

What was certain, Laramie thought, was that neither she, her guide, nor Ebbers were “sending in” anyone directly to apprehend the sleepers. Something was beginning to taste fishy and she didn’t like the flavor one bit.

On the monitor, sleeper number six climbed back into his Explorer and, barely visible due to the distance the surveillance man was keeping, simply returned home. Once the sleeper tucked himself away inside his garage he did not reemerge.

“In a minute,” Knowles said, “we’ll get a text message report from the tail. He’ll probably tell us pretty much what we just watched.”

Laramie looked over at her guide.

“Call it in,” she said.

He nodded and retreated to the other room.

“I take it,” Laramie said to the others, “we’re stuck at six-that you haven’t found any others in the four hours we’ve been apart.”

Cole shook his head.

“We got lucky to get these guys,” he said. “It’s a pretty safe bet from the images Knowles dug up that most or all of the sleepers, whether it’s six, seven, or fifty, got dumped here the way Castro emptied his prisons into the state of Florida. They came by refugee boat. But no way were all of ’em photographed, let alone caught on tape. I think we’re tapped out.”

“Let’s hope it’s not fifty,” Rothgeb said.

Laramie nodded. She eyed the detailed topography map of El Salvador on the widescreen monitor. There was no sign of Cooper’s homing signal.

Decision made, Laramie strode into the room where her guide was on the phone. She didn’t like the way things were going at all, and it was time to pull this charade to a close.

She glared down at her guide until he looked up from the call he was making.

“I need to talk to Ebbers,” she said.

“This is bullshit, and you know it,” Laramie said.

The electronically garbled sound of Lou Ebbers chuckling came from the phone’s tinny speaker. Her guide had set up the spiderphone in her room again. She’d asked that he leave her alone this time and he had.

“At least this time around,” came Ebbers’s voice, “I know you’re not asking me whether it’s an exercise.”

“Oh, I have no doubt it’s real,” Laramie said. “It’s all too real. That’s why I’m calling you-or calling you out, I should say. You’ve been taking me for a ride, Lou. Answer me this: why aren’t we sending in FBI arrest teams directly? By our order? Controlled by us? By you? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Ah,” came his reply.

“‘Ah’? Sir, with all due respect, please quit your ahing and give me an explanation. I just risked the life of a member of my team-a friend of mine, I might even say. In fact, I think there’s a pretty good chance I just got him killed, considering that he’s MIA as of nineteen seconds into his mission. Add to this the fact that the sleepers we’ve ID’d are kicking into gear. One of them, at any rate. The shit is hitting the fan. And I’m finally realizing you’re not being straight with me-about any of it. Please answer my question.”

More chuckling ensued.

After the easy chuckling subsided, Ebbers’s voice said, “I say ‘Ah,’ Miss Laramie, because of how well I realize that I know you.”

“You think so?”

“Yes. I do. And I’ll tell you why: I predicted, even told our mutual friend the guide, that you would put it together quick.”

Laramie didn’t say anything in the brief pause that followed.

“The answer to your question,” Ebbers said, “is, first, that we would not want the FBI to know of our operation-our ‘cell’-because we are, as discussed, running a clandestine counterterror unit, one that by its definition must remain clandestine within and without government.”

“But there could be mistakes made by the law enforcement teams raiding the sleepers’ homes if they’re not supervised,” Laramie said. “Maintaining the unit’s cover is a trivial concern when you consider what’s at stake. Among other factors, an anonymous tip does not assure us that the FBI or the local-”

“Part two of the answer is that we do not have the authority,” Ebbers said.

As soon as Laramie had digested what Ebbers had just told her, she began nodding slowly, a quiet fury welling up within.

“Let me get this straight,” she said. “You don’t have the authority to tell the FBI to conduct a series of raids-you can only do so by phoning in an anonymous tip-but you can order the assassination of a sovereign head of state?”

In Ebbers’s silence, the rest of the puzzle came together for Laramie.

“You can’t order an assassination,” she said, answering her own question.