He waved it away. "I know."

After a few moments she turned and for the third time headed for the door. "Good night, Mr. Ross."

"Good night, Dr. Philips."

Philips didn't look back until she'd closed the door behind her.

Chapter 41:// The New Social Contract

A bleak dawn radiated over a tract home lost in the grid of a lower-class subdivision. Inside, a Nigerian immigrant stood guard in front of a stark steel door tagged with graffiti and patches of peeling gray paint.

He had the lean, wiry frame of someone raised on significantly less caloric intake than the average American. His skin was almost literally black, and he attentively watched a grainy security monitor focused on the street outside. He was attentive in the way that only a recent immigrant from an impoverished land can be. Grateful to be in Texas, America.

He considered for a moment the money he was earning-what it meant to his extended family back in subSaharan Africa. He kept calculating and recalculating how long it would take him to save enough money to also bring his sons to America.

A stubby AK-47 variant with a folding stock hung from a strap on his shoulder, its fore grip wrapped in duct tape. It was his job to identify people seeking entry to the cutting house. He took his job very seriously.

The sounds of people talking and shouting echoed from rooms deeper inside the building. A smattering of tribal languages. The place was bustling with activity. Just another day in the heroin trade. He despised drugs, but economic realities were economic realities.

He noticed the security monitor flicker for a moment. After that, the image skipped vertically. He frowned at it and played with the vertical-hold dial. In a moment the image stabilized, and he nodded in satisfaction.

Then the steel door exploded, sending redhot metal fragments into his stomach and throwing him down the hall.

A dozen armed men in black full-body armor and ballistic helmets issued through the opening, shouting, "POLICE! FREEZE!"

The initials DEA were stenciled in bold white letters on their breastplates. Shouting filled the back of the house. They were entering back there as well.

"POLICE! FREEZE!"

More shouting. The steel bars were ripped from a picture window by cables linked to trailer hitches. DEA agents jumped through the empty frame, rushing forward shouting, "THIS IS THE POLICE! PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS!"

A dozen half-naked men and women scattered, screaming and running to flush bags of heroin stacked on tables in a bedroom.

One of the dealers rolled out into an interior hallway with a pump twelve-gauge shotgun. He turned just in time to see the iridescent faceplate of a body-armored DEA agent blocking his exit. The dealer cut loose, blasting the agent into the narrow closet door at the end of the hallway.

Women started screaming.

The dealer pumped another shell into the chamber. "Ya'll some badass motherfucker now, huh?"

He leveled the gun and blasted the nearby door frame as another DEA agent leaned out. The wood frame and a chunk of drywall disintegrated.

But the first agent he shot was getting up.

The dealer chambered another round and blasted the man again, sending him back into the closet door.

Click- clack. He blasted him again.

Click- clack. Then again.

He watched in amazement as the agent struggled back to his feet. The dealer raced to find shotgun shells in his pockets. The DEA agent leveled a multibarreled pistol at him.

Braaappp!

The dealer looked down at his white T-shirt. A rapidly expanding bloodstain swept across it. He crumpled to the floor, shotgun over his knees.

The other men in the house threw down their weapons as the agents barked commands at them to get on their knees with their hands over their heads.

Another set of agents moved among them with plastic hand ties, lashing hands behind backs.

But the majority of the DEA agents were still thundering through the house, overturning the drug tables and pushing aside the stacks of money-frantically searching for something. The agents never said a word to each other; instead, they moved as if they were a single entity, searching methodically from behind their mirrored helmet faceplates.

They came up from the basement, in from the garage, down from the attic, and rifled through every closet. They tore open the kitchen cabinets and aimed weapon-mounted tactical lights inside. It was there they discovered two terrified black boys-about seven years old-hiding beneath the sink. They dragged them out screaming.

The search abruptly stopped. Agents gathered around the boys, who clutched each other and stared in fear up at the mirrored faceplates staring back down at them. They were more than mirrored-they had the complex iridescence of mother-of-pearl. Their appearance changed as the men turned.

Still without speaking, the agents pried the boys apart, holding their arms back. One agent knelt down and extended a fingerprint-capture pad toward one boy. He forced open the boy's hand and pressed the kid's thumb against the pad-then checked a display reading. A pause, then he repeated the process with the second boy-once again consulting a display.

The agent nodded and pointed to the second boy.

The other agents zipped hand ties on the first boy and tossed him, crying, in with the rest of the prisoners. The second boy they held on to, and the group of agents parted to reveal a tall, broad-shouldered officer, also in black body armor with a mirrored faceplate. He strode forward.

The boy, already scared, now cowered in fear, tears streaming down his face.

The big agent grabbed him under the shoulders, plucking him up off the floor. The boy struggled, but the man's viselike grip was unshakeable. They walked out the shattered front door of the house and into the street-where a black Chevy Suburban pulled up to meet them. The side door opened, and the big agent pushed the boy inside-following close on his heels. The door thumped shut behind them as the remaining DEA agents poured out of the house, climbing into their black vans.

Inside the Suburban, the boy curled up on the opposite end of the bench seat. The large DEA agent sat on the far end, staring from behind his mirrored helmet at the terrified boy as an agent in the front seat drove, beyond a tinted glass partition.

The big agent brought his hands to his helmet, released twin catches, then twisted, removing it.

Charles Mosely wiped sweat from his face, placed his helmet on the bench seat behind him, and turned again to face the child.

The boy now had a look of utter terror on his face, and he curled up harder against the armrest, covering his head as though he was about to be beaten.

Mosely made a cryptic gesture with his right hand, causing the white DEAletters on his chest plate to slowly fade away. He looked back up at the child. "You remember me, Raymond?"

The boy robotically nodded his head, visibly trembling.

Mosely's hard face softened. He leaned closer. "It's all right. I won't hurt you."

The boy didn't relax one bit.

"I'm sober now."

The boy had his face buried in the seat cushion.

Mosely looked down. Complex emotions knotted his face. "I came up here to say I'm sorry. For all I did-and for all I didn't do." He was lost for a moment, but then his resolve returned. "I heard your momma died a couple years back."

When he looked up, Mosely noticed one of the boy's eyes peering out from under his arm, watching him.

"I thought about you all the time in prison-about your mom dyin'. You all alone."

The boy stared with his one exposed eye, unflinching.

Mosely sat back again. "You weren't easy to find. You ran off from that foster home. Can't say I blame you. Bad people. I met 'em. But I had real good private detectives searching for you. The best." He looked Ray straight in his one exposed eye. "I'm sorry."