"Hold it," Hap suddenly stopped them where they were and listened. There was nothing, not a sound. Something was wrong. Four special ops guys had come in. The only exit other than the front was that far door, and they had to have gone through it. If they had the president and were coming back out that same way, at least one of them should have been posted at it.

It was then Hap realized he'd made an awful mistake. The ops did have another way out and were taking it. "Christ!" he said, twisting away from Miguel, starting for the front door. In that same second a dull reverberation shook the entire building as if it were an earthquake. Hap and Miguel were knocked to the floor. An avalanche of books thundered from the massive bookcase. Choking dust and debris rained down from the ceiling.

Hap was up in an instant, unsure what had happened, trying to regain control, his 9mm Sig Sauer swinging toward Miguel.

"No! No! Don't!" Miguel yelled, throwing his hands in the air.

Just then the door at the far end of the room wrenched open and the ops came through it on the run. Broad Nose first, a second op with buzz-cut red hair and jack-etless was right behind him. Both had machine pistols in their hands. On their heels came the last two ops. They had a man by the arms between them, his feet dragging on the floor. Red Hair's missing jacket was thrown over his head to keep him from being recognized.

"Special Agent Daniels, United States Secret Service!" Hap yelled, his Secret Service ID held high in his left hand, the 9mm Sig Sauer lowered to his right side. "You're relieved of mission. I'm taking the president into custody."

"No can do," Broad Nose said with no emotion at all.

"Repeat. You are relieved of the mission," Hap showed the Sig Sauer. "Don't make it hard."

"Won't." Broad Nose and Red Hair swung their machine pistols at the same time. Hap twisted away, hitting the floor as a barrage of gunfire chewed up the wall where he had been. The other ops rushed for the door. Miguel lunged for his jacket-covered "cousin" as they went past.

Surprised by Miguel's sudden move, the ops twisted away. As they did the jacket came off and their charge was clearly seen, his body limp, his head slumped over. It wasn't the president. It was Merriman Foxx.

Now Broad Nose was at the door. "Get him out!" he shouted at the ops, then squeezed off a burst at Miguel as he dove behind the wooden desk. At the same time Red Hair swung his machine pistol at Hap. It was too late, Hap was firing from the floor.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Hap could see his slugs explode Red Hair's right arm. The gunman screamed, and Broad Nose dragged him through the front door, squeezing off a burst at Hap as he did. The others followed in a rush, throwing the jacket awkwardly back over Foxx's head, dragging him with them. As they went out Broad Nose stepped back into the doorway and sprayed the room with a final burst, making sure the men inside weren't coming after them.

Hap was on the floor but didn't know why. He had a vague memory of the motorcycle man bending over him, checking his carotid artery and shoving a handkerchief or some kind of material up under his shirt, pressing it tight against his left shoulder. Then he'd turned abruptly and left. After that things started to fade and he nearly blacked out, or maybe he had blacked out. What brought him back was the sound of emergency sirens outside and the ringing of his cell phone, which he could see clearly lying on the floor nearby alongside the Sig Sauer automatic. Slowly he moved to touch the Steyr TMP machine pistol dropped down from a sling over his shoulder that had been there all along but that he'd never had the chance to use. It was then the motorcycle man came back.

"Come on," he said, "your left shoulder, you took a bullet, maybe two. The police and fire brigade are coming. Get your feet under you."

Hap stared at him. "Who the hell are you?"

"My name is Miguel Balius. Get your damn feet under you!"

Miguel grabbed Hap's good arm and pulled him up, propping him against the wall while he scooped up his cell phone and the Sig Sauer. Then he had Hap's good arm again and was taking him fast toward the door.

Fresh air hit them and they were outside, the motorcycle right there. Miguel helped him into the sidecar, then jumped onto the seat, started the engine, and they were off and flying down the walkway as fire brigade and police units rushed toward them. A wall of uniformed men and women going door to door checking for people who might have been injured in the earthquake or whatever it had been that had so violently shaken the buildings.

Miguel reached the end of the walkway and turned the motorcycle down another. At almost the same moment a heavy, pulsating roar came from the far side of the basilica. A half second later the ops helicopter lifted up over the top of the building, hovered overhead for the briefest moment, and then flew off to the north.

• BARCELONA, HOTEL GRAND PALACE, 4:10 P.M.

Jake Lowe and Dr. James Marshall were alone in the special communications room set up in their suite. Suit jacket off, sleeves rolled up, tie loosened, Lowe paced up and down, a secure phone to his ear. Marshall, all six-foot-four of him, sat at a work desk in the room's center, two laptops in front of him, yellow scratch pad at his sleeve, a headset plugged into Lowe's secure line.

"Gentlemen," Lowe said into the phone, then abruptly paused, as if to make certain what he said next would be absolutely clear.

"This is where we stand," he said finally. "The ops have come and gone from the monastery. Dr. Foxx was found dead in one of his 'clean' labs. His remains were evacuated after a brief battle with the Secret Service. The ops did not identify themselves, nor did they identify Dr. Foxx. They left the monastery by civilian helicopter without further incident.

"There was no sign of the president. I repeat, there was no sign of the president. Earlier communication with Dr. Foxx confirmed his presence and that of Nicholas Marten at the monastery.

"Dr. Foxx's body was found in an innermost 'clean' laboratory and strongly suggests he was confronted by a hostile situation. Since neither the president nor Marten was found at the scene and because any doors they might have used for escape were electronically locked behind them, we must presume that they took the only route available, and that was the tunnel to the rear of the lab where Dr. Foxx was found.

"Very shortly after the ops arrived there was an explosion in that tunnel. Most likely, gentlemen, the result of mechanisms Foxx put in place during construction."

Gentlemen.

Plugged into the same secure transmission and scattered across Europe and in the United States were the others: Vice President Hamilton Rogers with President John Henry Harris's chief of staff, Tom Curran, in the U.S. embassy in Madrid; Secretary of State David Chaplin, at the U.S. Embassy, London; Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon at NATO headquarters in Brussels; chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, United States Air Force General Chester Keaton, at his home office in rural Virginia.

"Are we to believe the president is dead?" Terrence Langdon asked from Brussels.

"Terry, it's Jim," Marshall cut in, "I don't think we can assume anything. But based on the info received from Foxx earlier and from what the ops observed, it's all but certain he and Marten were in that tunnel when the explosion occurred. If that is the case there is very little chance-let me qualify that-there is 'no chance' either could have survived."

"We know Foxx set up a line of succession in the event anything happened to him. It was how he ran the top-secret programs in the Tenth Medical Brigade. But let me ask a very direct question. In truth, can we proceed without him?"