"To what?"

"Another break in the rock."

"When you reach it use the stones. See what you get."

Miguel took a breath and looked at Hap. Then they waited.

Three full minutes passed. Finally they heard it.

CLACK, CLACK. CLACK, CLACK. CLACK, CLACK.

Amado was hitting two stones together in the shaft below, making a sound that would carry a great distance through the rock openings and hopefully into the hard surface of the tunnel underneath.

CLACK, CLACK. CLACK, CLACK. CLACK, CLACK.

Amado tapped the stones again.

All five held a collective breath listening for a return signal.

Finally they heard Amado's voice. "Nothing."

"Again!" Miguel demanded.

"No! No more!" Hap said sharply. "That's the end of it!"

"Why?" Miguel stared at him in surprise, "How else are we going to find them in an endless tunnel?"

"Miguel, the Spanish police, the Secret Service, the CIA. They will have brought in all kinds of listening and night-vision devices. If the president and Marten can hear those rocks, they will too. They find us, we will vanish. All of us, the boys, you, me. Then the president is dead."

"So what do we do?"

"Find a way into the tunnel and walk it."

"Walk it?"

"Flashlights. Mark where we came in, mark our trail along the way so we can get back. Amado and his friends know their way inside these tunnels. That's why we're here, yes?"

Miguel nodded.

"My men don't know those shafts, and I'm betting the Spanish police don't either."

Miguel's face twisted up in anguish. "We're five against all that. It's not possible."

"Yes it is. We just have to do it better and faster and very, very quietly."

"Hap, you are in no shape to climb down in there. Stay here, I'll go with the boys."

"Can't."

"Why?"

"I don't know the exact satellite positions. But at some point soon they will be directly overhead. When they are they will provide thermal images of the heat radiated by bodies on the ground. The authorities know who their men are, where they are, and how many."

"You mean they will be able to see us."

"They'll see whoever's out here that isn't one of theirs."

"Then I think you better go down into the shafts."

"Right."

• 9:03 P.M.

Jake Lowe and Dr. James Marshall stood just outside the Chinook helicopter looking toward a rocky flat where Bill Strait's Secret Service team and Captain Diaz's CNP unit had set up work lights and were cutting their way down through the soft sandstone with power saws.

Behind them, inside the Chinook, a medical team-two doctors, two nurses and two emergency medical technicians-made preparations to receive an injured president. Thirty yards away Bill Strait, Captain Diaz and a seven-man team of Secret Service, CIA, and CNP tech specialists worked to set up a command post from which they could coordinate the activity of the teams in the field.

Lowe glanced behind them to make sure they were alone, then looked at Marshall. "The Spanish police could be a real problem if the president is alive and says something," he said quietly.

"We can't very well send them home."

"No, we can't."

"Jake," Marshall stepped closer and lowered his voice. "The police believe what everyone else believes, that the president is either dead, the captive of Marten or a terrorist bunch, or simply stumbling along mentally ill. If they bring him out alive anything he says will be taken as the ramblings of a man who has undergone major psychological trauma. In minutes he'll be here and in the Chinook and then we're gone."

"It's still too damn iffy. Too much can still go wrong," Lowe looked off, clearly troubled, then abruptly turned back to Marshall. "I'm just about ready to put the brakes on Warsaw. Call it off. I mean it."

"Can't do that, Jake, and you know it," Marshall said coolly. "The vice president has given the go-ahead. Things are moving forward and everyone knows it. We pull it back now we show major weakness, not only with our people but with our friends in France and Germany. So relax, we're the ones in control. As I said before, have a little faith."

Suddenly there was a scurry of activity at the command post. Bill Strait was standing up, talking animatedly into his headset. The others had stopped to watch him, Captain Diaz included. Lowe and Marshall started toward them on the run.

"Repeat that please," Bill Strait said, his hand to his headset trying to hear clearly while still monitoring the tense communication between his own teams using other broadcast channels. "Good! Damn good!"

"What is it?" Lowe asked quickly as he and Marshall came up. "Your tech guys hear something? Pick up sounds? Is it him? POTUS?"

"Not yet, sir. A CNP team has broken into the main tunnel this side of an underground landslide near the monastery. CIA unit is going in now."

"Agent Strait," Captain Diaz pulled off her headset. "Our team at this end," she nodded toward the lighted work area in the distance, "has just cut through. Six men are on the floor." Abruptly she looked to Marshall and Lowe.

"The old maps gave us a tunnel length of approximately twelve miles. That length is now proving correct, which means the maps are reasonably accurate. A team somewhere near the halfway point has located a chimney and is working down it. Another team is working through a fissure toward one of the side tunnels. Drilling units seven and four have reached soft stone three miles apart. How long it will take them to get into the main shaft we can't know. For the teams that are already inside and those to come afterward everything depends on what they find there. If it's open all the way or if rock falls or landslides block the way."

Lowe looked to Bill Strait. "How many men do we have in the tunnels now?"

"About sixty. Another thirty or so when the other teams crack through. That many more when the rest of Captain Diaz's team and our ops hit the tunnel floor over there. The CIA ops from Madrid are on the ground now and have been assigned coordinates along the top of the main shaft. Agentes Rurales teams who know the area are assisting them to find other ways in. Satellite coverage for digital visual photographic and thermal imaging won't happen for another ninety minutes until the satellite is overhead. With the night and this weather we're not going to get much if anything from the visual imaging. It's the thermal imaging, the heat signature coming from bodies on the ground or exiting the shafts, we will be looking to recognize."

Lowe was openly upset and raising his voice. "So basically this whole operation is at the mercy of a few drilling machines and several hundred men with microphones, night goggles, and picks and shovels."

"I'm afraid we're in a hot pursuit situation here, sir. You run with what you have, lots of bodies and old-world technology."

"Where the hell are those hundred more Secret Service people coming from Paris?"

Strait looked from Lowe to Marshall. "On Spanish soil now. Wheels down here at new ETA 9:40. Gentlemen, every team here is professional, CNP, CIA, USSS. If the president is down there he will be found."

"I'm sure he will. And thank you," Marshall said, then took Lowe by the arm, and they walked off toward the Chinook.

"You're pushing it, Jake," he said firmly. "Take it easy, huh? Just take it easy."