Trear pushed forward. "What just happened?"

Garvey's hands hovered over the useless controls, his mouth open in shock. He turned. "I don't know. I…"

"Do we have any signal from the robot?"

Garvey and his assistant checked the console and shook their heads. Everyone was talking again.

Trear shouted, "Quiet down! Everyone shut up." He turned back to Garvey. "Play back the video-in slow motion."

Garvey nodded, then rewound the video. All the monitors flickered, then a still image came up again: the mansion side hall.

"Roll it forward slowly."

On- screen, frame by frame, the robotic arm grabbed the door handle and pushed down.

"There."

Garvey stopped the image.

There was an unmistakable gap in the floor toward the bottom of the frame. The floor looked like it was opening up.

"Okay, advance it slowly."

Garvey hit a button.

The gap expanded. In a quick succession of frames, the door handle pulled from the robot's grip, and the entire machine slid down a chute that opened beneath it. Its mercury lights illuminated the dark hole, revealing a cinderblock-lined pit-the bottom of which was filled with water. Successive video images showed the water washing up onto its cameras and the robot shorting out. The entire process took about one and a half seconds.

Sidebar conversations filled the trailer.

Trear clasped a hand on Garvey's shoulder. "It's all right. That's why we have robots." Trear looked unruffled, almost serene.

He turned to the assembled agents. "I think we've established that there's no power in the house." He pointed to some techs sitting at a frequency-scanning console. "And there's no radio transmissions emanating from the house, correct?"

The techs nodded.

Trear continued. "What we're looking at here is a simple pit trap. Sobol's high-tech weaponry is down. He's gone medieval on us. That's great news."

Garvey turned from the robot command console. "That's our last robot. We'll have to send back to L.A. for another one."

Trear nodded. "Bring in several. Fly them in if you have to. But we need to get our hands on Sobol's personal computers as soon as possible."

There was silence for a moment in the trailer.

Garvey hesitated, then asked, "Meaning that we…?"

"Send in the Hostage Rescue Team. Have them go in as far as the pit. I want the area around the cellar entrance ramped over by the time we get the extra robots here."

Wyckoff looked surprised. "Sir, are you certain that's a good idea?"

"Certain? No, not certain. But Sobol's home computers might hold the key to destroying this monster. That's what we came to do. So let's do it."

Everyone murmured in agreement.

Someone in back asked, "What about the Hummer, sir?"

"Pull out the wreckage and ship it down to the L.A. lab. Cover it with a tarpaulin before pulling it out. I don't want to see any more pictures of the 'death machine' on the front page tomorrow." He clapped his hands once. "Let's get moving, people. The world's watching."

Special Agent Michael Kirchner sat poring over financial documents with five other agents in an unassuming accountant's office in Thousand Oaks. The desks were littered with open folders, receipts, tax returns, and ledgers. Another agent was busy imaging computer hard drives. Kirchner, a CPA and a tax attorney, believed that he and his team did more to fight crime than any field office in the bureau. Organized crime couldn't accomplish much without money.

They had spent the last eight hours scrutinizing the detailed financial history of Matthew Sobol. It was quite a trail. Sobol was an officer in thirty-seven corporations. He had three sole proprietorships, two partnerships, eleven LLCs-and a slew of international business corporations, holding companies, and offshore trusts. Tons of financial activity over the last two years, with equipment purchases, wire transfers, professional and consulting fees. It was a rat's nest. The finances of the rich usually were.

Kirchner reviewed a report of the largest capital expenditures. Technical components from the looks of it. Purchased by one company but shipped to Sobol's Thousand Oaks address.

Kirchner looked up at his partner, Lou Galbraith, who was sifting through filing cabinets nearby. "Lou, you lost money in fuel cells a few years back, didn't you?"

Galbraith stopped, raised his reading glasses up onto his forehead, and gave Kirchner an impatient look. "I don't want to talk about it. Why?"

Kirchner held up the printed report. "Sobol made some big purchases that I thought you might be interested in…" He leafed through the report. "Here, identical hydrogen fuel cell power units purchased by two separate holding corporations, both shipped to his estate. $146,000 a pop."

"Tax dodge?"

Kirchner frowned. "We're not trying to nail him on tax evasion, Lou." He looked down at the report. "Fuel cell power units? Things like that really work?"

"I wasn't an idiot, Mike. Of course they work. Hospitals and big companies use them to generate electrical power from natural gas. You know, where the electrical grid is unreliable or too expensive. It was supposed to be huge. Just before its time, that's all, and-"

"These things were shipped to Sobol's estate." Kirchner looked even more concerned.

"What's wrong, Mike?"

"Call the SAC at the Sobol estate. I want to make sure he knows about this."

Agent Roy «Tripwire» Merritt took a deep breath, gathering in the last of the night air, redolent with moist earth. A sliver of moon hung just above the horizon, silhouetting the tree-dotted hills. He scanned the terrain without night vision gear, taking joy in this simple pleasure. It reminded him of the Basque region of Spain by moonlight-or South Africa's Transvaal. He'd seen a lot of the world by night, and usually from behind third-generation night vision goggles.

The predawn air was crisp and cool on Merritt's face as he stood in the payload area of an army ten-ton truck. Its powerful diesel engine labored in low gear as it climbed through a bulldozered breech in the estate wall. The canvas top had been removed, leaving it open to the night sky.

Merritt slung an HK MP-5/10 over his shoulder, then looked back toward his FBI Hostage Rescue Team. Six of the best-trained operators in the bureau sat on either side of the cargo bay, swaying in unison as the truck lurched over mounds of dirt and rock. These were hismen, and they were intimidating as hell. Clad in black Nomex flight suits, body armor with ceramic trauma plates, Pro-Tec helmets, night vision goggles, and bulletproof face masks, they made Darth Vader look like a Wal-Mart greeter. But of all the missions they had carried out together-from Karachi to the wilds of Montana-Merritt had never had more misgivings than on this one. During the mission briefing he kept thinking that this was a job for the bomb disposal teams or the demining experts. It kept coming back to urgency. Six officers were dead, nine more injured. No one had any answers and time was apparently of the essence. Still…

Merritt looked down at the metal and wood scaffolding materials lying on the floor space between the benches. Four toolboxes lay there as well. His highly trained rapid response team was going to bridge a pit in a hostile environment. He wondered what sort of fuck-up happened upstairs to make this come about.

Merritt glanced over at the mansion three hundred yards away. No lights had appeared in it since last evening. Radio communications had been back up for the last hour, ever since the ultrawideband transmissions from the house died.

Merritt spoke normally, knowing his headset mic would pick it up. "Echo One to TOC. We're at yellow. Request compromise authority and permission to move to green."