Breaking into the bunker had been the easy part. He'd taken two shots at the door locks with the machine pistol and made not so much as a dent in the steel. That left only Foxx's BlackBerry-like device.

Marten had been correct when he'd told Hap "You would've been schooled in some of this stuff." He had. Before joining the presidential detail he'd been in charge of the Miami field office of the Secret Service's electronic crimes task force, where he was an expert in advanced electronics-based crime. Examining Foxx's hand-held gadget he'd quickly recognized that it was more a computer than a simple communications tool. A closer look suggested it was some kind of miniature superprocessor, one that most probably utilized synthetic flawless diamonds that generate relatively no heat to enable ultrafast computations in so small a machine. He had worked with similar laboratory prototypes before and believed Foxx's device was little different. He'd been right. It had taken him only seven tries to break Foxx's encrypted code and get the bunker door open.

"Finally. Damn," he breathed as the last screw came loose and he slid the covers back. At first glance the inner workings of both machines were extremely complex, yet the hard drives of both were clearly accessible. Still, he didn't like it.

"Mr. President, I'm sure these drives are password-protected. I pull them without using it and there's every probability they'll be permanently corrupted if not just blank. We're fast out of time here. I either pull them right now and take that chance or we just leave them and get the hell out of here. You decide."

"Pull them, Hap," the president said. "Pull them now."

• 9:19 A.M.

José was nearly to the front of the stage. To his left and behind him he could just see Marten moving toward the women. Suddenly José froze. Beck was crossing the stage, coming directly toward him. Instantly he stepped back. At the same time Beck stopped and addressed the congregation.

"Friends," he said in English, "we have a simple power failure, nothing else. Bear with us a few moments more while we attempt to resolve the problem."

A loud uneasy murmur passed through the two hundred.

"Hey, you!" A male voice commanded in Spanish. José whirled to see two of the black-robed monks jump up on the stage and start toward him.

"Who are you?" the first monk spat in Spanish. "What're you doing here?"

José glanced to the side and saw Beck looking in his direction. Immediately he turned on his flashlight.

"Maintenance," he said in Spanish. "Here to find the trouble."

"Who sent you? How did you get into the building?"

Sig Sauer in one hand, the tin snips in the other, his hair and clothes still wet, Nicholas Marten moved like a shadow across the stage behind the fires. Two seconds, three and he reached them. Demi was less than six feet away on the far side of the flames; Cristina was the same distance to her left. The discharge of heat was horrendous and both women seemed to be in a stupor.

Marten could see José near the front of the stage talking with the monks. He saw Beck move toward them, then suddenly stop and look in the direction of the women. As quickly he looked past the flames and directly toward Marten. In the next instant their eyes met and Marten saw total surprise register on the minister's face. As quickly the emotion became recognition of what was happening. Immediately Beck turned and disappeared into the darkness.

Marten looked back to the women. He took a deep breath and held it, then threw up an arm to protect his face and stepped through the fire.

• 9:20 A.M.

Beck rushed off the stage and started down a hallway just off the nave, fully determined to execute a long-planned action.

"Reverend," he heard Luciana call after him.

He whirled. She was a dozen feet down the corridor behind him. "Inform the congregation the service is over," he said. "The power outage will have released the locks. Everyone is to leave the building and board the buses immediately. Make certain the monks let no one in from the outside."

"What is it?"

"One score and five," he said then turned and walked quickly down the corridor, the way he had been going.

"One score and five," Luciana knew what had happened and what was soon to happen. It would be one score and five, twenty-five years, Foxx had told them, from the day construction began-of the resort, the tunnels, the monorail, the underground labs, the church, everything-to when it would be shut down and destroyed.

Today, on this date exactly, one score and five had passed and everything would be ended. Rightly so from Luciana's view. The coming of Demi Picard had signaled it. Her undying love for her mother had been a curse. One far worse than any of them had imagined. She'd known it the moment she'd seen her.

• 9:21 A.M.

"Demi! Demi!" Marten commanded, trying to shake her from her stupor. He saw her eyelids flutter. "It's okay. Don't move!" he said quickly, then had the tin snips at the heavy strap that bound her throat to the Aldebaran cross. His face and hands glistening with sweat, the searing heat all but unbearable, he was trying not to breathe at all. "Don't move!" he exhaled and closed the snips. Nothing happened. He pressured the cutters again and this time the teeth caught and the material gave. Demi's head fell forward, then she recovered, and he saw her look at him in disbelief.

"Mr. Marten!" José shouted from somewhere on the far side of the flames. He looked up to see Luciana cross the front of the stage, heard her start to say something to the congregation.

Then he saw two monks coming right at him through the flames, one behind the other, machine pistols in their hands.

Boom! Boom!

Marten fired the Sig Sauer point blank. The first monk's face exploded and he slammed backward through the fog.

Boom! Boom!

Marten fired again. The second monk twisted away in the dark.

Marten heard the congregation scream as one.

"José! José!" he yelled, then cut the straps at Demi's wrists and feet. Her knees buckled as he pulled her from the cross. He got one hand under her waist trying to steady her. Then José was through the fire, his hair and groundskeeper's shirt burning.

Suddenly there was a burst of machine-pistol fire. A bullet nicked Marten's ear. A second seared his cheek. A half dozen more shot up the cross where Demi had just been.

Boom! Boom!

Marten fired blindly through the flames. The spit of the machine pistol continued. Rapid-fire hell coming through the flames.

Boom! Boom!

He fired again and the shooting stopped. He twisted around, shoving Demi at José.

"Go!" he yelled. "Go! Go! Go!"

He caught the briefest glimpse of José wrestling Demi through the flames to the stage behind them, then whirled to free Cristina. As he did, the innermost gas jets ignited, and he was suddenly standing in the center of a blazing inferno. He screamed out loud and made a wild reach with the cutters, trying to find the straps that bound her.

Then he froze.

Most of Cristina's head was gone, chewed up by machine pistol fire. In the next instant her great mane of jet-black hair burst into flame. For a millisecond Marten's eyes registered sheer horror. Then, his own hair on fire, his hands and face scorched, he turned and leapt out through the conflagration.