"Copy, Echo One. I have your team at yellow. You have compromise authority and permission to move to green."

"Copy that, TOC." Merritt gave his men the thumbs-up signal. They returned it.

Waucheuer, the breaching specialist, flipped up his face mask and grinned. "Hey, Trip, why do we need guns? Sobol's already dead."

"Cut the chatter, Wack. Dead or not, Sobol managed to kill some good people here. Stay alert."

Waucheuer shrugged, then nodded sharply, causing his face mask to flip back down.

Merritt stood and looked over the cab of the truck as it advanced slowly across the wide lawn of the estate. They were coming up on the burnt-out hulk of the automated Hummer now.

The other men stood to lean against the railing as the Hummer came up on the right-hand side. The truck slowed, then stopped about twenty feet from the wreckage. Two county SWAT team members were in the truck cab. The passenger kicked on a side-mounted searchlight, focusing it on the still smoldering remains. The Hummer was definitely nonoperational. The wheels were just blackened hubs, and the interior was gutted.

"Those marines ever hear of a little thing called evidence?"

Merritt could practically hear Waucheuer grinning behind his mask. Merritt ignored him. He spoke into his headset. "Echo One to TOC. The Hummer is nonoperational. Proceeding to green. Out." Merritt pounded the cab roof twice. The truck lurched forward toward the mansion some one hundred yards away.

The truck searchlight swung toward the house. A three-foot-high terrace wall surrounded the mansion at a distance of about two hundred feet. The terrace leveled out the hilltop for the lawns around the pool and patio. The wall prevented the truck from driving all the way to the house, but Merritt agreed with the SAC that driving along the front entrance or rear service road was a bad idea; it was a chokepoint and could be booby-trapped.

Instead, the truck turned in front of the wall, then backed up; the ridiculous beep-beepof the backup warning filled the tense silence.

It looked like it was going to work out. The tailgate now stood about two feet off the ground as the truck backed up to the terrace wall. It would be easy to unload the scaffolding and tools. But first, they needed to scout ahead. Merritt shouted to the driver, "Cut the engine and the lights."

Relative silence suddenly prevailed. The sound of crickets returned after a few moments. The only lights visible were the work lamps of the besieging FBI at the estate fence line-about three hundred yards away. Merritt swung down his night vision goggles and powered them up. His men did the same.

Merritt spoke into his bone mic. "Leave the scaffolding. Let's make sure we have a clear path to the objective." Merritt gave a hand signal, and his men fell in line behind him.

The plan was to circle around to the front of the house and enter through the open front door. They were on the east side of the house right now. So they were looking at a 150-yard infilover manicured lawns and gardens. Aerial radar had revealed no hidden pits or other apparent traps on the estate grounds to a depth of ten meters, but the approach to the mansion wasn't what concerned Merritt. He was worried about entering the house itself-especially considering what happened to the last people to do so. Merritt stepped off the truck tailgate and started moving through the night. He felt and heard his men moving close behind him.

This wasn't a hostage crisis. A flash-bang grenade wasn't going to stun anyone here. Overwhelming firepower wouldn't intimidate the opponent. This was a new situation.

Merritt turned and put a hand up to halt his men. "Wait here. I'm going to scout ahead. If you lose contact with me, pull back to the estate perimeter. Understood?"

They exchanged concerned looks. This went against everything they'd trained for. They were a team. Even Waucheuer had no wisecracks.

"That's an order. Assume a defensive posture and wait here." Merritt turned and moved cautiously toward the house.

Hundreds of yards away at the FBI Command and Control trailer, the SAC, Steven Trear, stood gazing through a FLIR scope at the distant figures of the HRT unit. He could see one moving ahead of the others-moving toward the side of Sobol's mansion. Trear muttered to himself, "What's he doing?"

One of the agents from the Command Trailer emerged and called to Trear. "Sir, a Special Agent Kirchner on the line for you. Something about Sobol's purchase records."

Trear didn't look up from the night vision scope. "Kirchner's heading the audit team?"

"I believe so, sir."

"Tell him I'll call him back."

"He says it's important-"

Another Command Center agent pushed his head out through the doorway. "Sir! I'm picking up noise from the parabolic mics. Noise from inside the house."

Everyone stopped and looked at the guy with something resembling terror. Trear started walking toward him. "What kind of noise?"

"It sounds like a pump motor, sir."

"Get those men out of there!"

About sixty feet ahead of his men, Merritt heard the click and stopped cold. His men did likewise. They'd all heard it, too, and they instinctively spun to face every direction-training their weapons. Against what, they didn't know.

Suddenly Merritt's radio crackled. Someone shouted in an urgent voice over the channel, "Echo One, abort immediately! Repeat, abort immediately!"

Before he could react, Merritt heard a disquieting hiss start to emanate from the ground. Just as suddenly the air around him sprang to life, and he and his men nearly jumped out of their skins.

Retractable lawn sprinklers popped up and started spraying the lush terrace lawn with cold water. His team burst out laughing as they stood getting soaked by the lawn sprinklers.

Waucheuer shielded his night vision goggles and shouted the distance to Merritt. "Shit, Trip, I just aged ten years!"

Even Merritt smiled behind his mask this time. "You heard 'em. Pull out!"

Then something changed. Suddenly Merritt was aware of an overpowering odor. His eyes narrowed behind his goggles. The sprinklers were no longer spraying water.

He looked to his men and shouted, "Gasoline!"

Before they could turn and run, a high-precision motor whirred in the distant cupola tower. A deep choom sound issued from it, and the last thing Merritt saw through his goggles was a blinding green flare arcing over the distance between him and the tower.

The rolling fireball lit up the sky for a mile around. Its dull roar echoed off the side of the trailer, and the orange light illuminated three hundred horrified faces. Trear still held the radio in his hand. He stood paralyzed as shrieks of agony came over the radio channel. All around him men raced into action-or anarchy, it was hard to tell.

"Get the fire trucks over there!"

"Ambulance! Bring up an ambulance!"

"We've got agents down!"

The fireball climbed to the sky, and in its stark light Trear could see the lawn sprinklers surrounding it still running. They were spraying water-to contain the fire in the precise spot where the HRT unit had infiltrated. Trear felt like he was watching something on TV. It had the surreal feeling of the impossible. People were grabbing him, shouting at him. He couldn't take his eyes off the raging fire and the wildly thrashing dark forms dancing in the flames like damned souls-then falling. The ten-ton truck was burning like a Texas AM bonfire.

Someone shouted in his ear about radio transmissions, and Trear absently looked down at the radio in his hand. Only static hissed out of it now. That's when it happened.

Suddenly all the lights went on in Sobol's mansion, glowing with a frightful intensity. Then lights kicked back on all across the estate. An audible groan ran through the ranks of the besieging agents.