"Beautiful," Ali repeated.

"Stretch out. Look at all this leg room, little man. This is an automobile."

A salesperson named Laurie Berger had been at our side the whole time without being pushy or unnecessarily obtrusive. I appreciated that. God bless Mercedes.

"Questions?" she asked. "Anything you want to know?"

"Not really, Laurie. You sit in this R350, you want to buy it."

"Makes my job kind of easy. We also have one in obsidian black, ash upholstery. They call the R350 a crossover vehicle, Dr. Cross. The station wagon meets the SUV."

"And combines the best of both," I said, and smiled congenially.

My pager went off then, and I groaned loud enough to draw stares.

Not on Saturday! And not during car shopping. Not while I was sitting in this beautiful Mercedes R350.

"Uh- oh," said Ali, and his eyes went wide. "Daddy's pager!" he called loudly across the showroom to Damon and Jannie. "Daddy's pager went off."

"You squealed on me. You're a dirty, rotten squealer," I said, then kissed him on the top of his head. This is something I do at least a half a dozen times a day, every day.

He giggled and slapped my arm and giggled some more. He always got my jokes. No wonder the two of us got along so well.

Only this pager message probably wasn't funny. Not in the least. I recognized the number immediately, and I didn't think it would be good news.

Ned Mahoney from Hostage Rescue? Maybe inviting me to a barbecue and dance out at Quantico? Probably not a barbecue though.

I called Ned back on my cell. "This is Alex Cross. I got your call, Ned. Why did I get your call?"

Ned got right to it. "Alex, you know Kentucky Avenue, near Fifteenth in Southeast?"

"Of course I do. It's not too far from my house. But I'm out in Arlington right now. I'm with the kids. We're looking to buy a new family car. Can you say family, Ned?"

"Meet me there, Kentucky and Fifteenth. I need your help, your local knowledge. I don't want to say too much more on my cell." Ned told me a couple more details – but not all of it. Why was that? What was he keeping to himself?

Oh man, oh man, oh man. "How soon? I'm with my kids, Ned."

"Sorry about that. My team will be there in about ten, fifteen minutes at the most. I'm not kidding, all hell's broken loose, Alex."

Of course it had. Why else would the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team be involved inside Washington city limits? And why else would Ned Mahoney call me on a Saturday afternoon?

"What's up?" Ali looked at me and asked.

"I have to go to a barbecue." I think I'm the main course on the spit, little man.

I PROMISED LAURIE BERGER I would be back for the crossover vehicle soon; then I drove the kids home, and they were quiet and cranky for the ride. Same as me. Most of the way I was behind a station wagon with the bumper sticker First Iraq, then France. I'd been seeing that one all over Washington lately.

Hoobastank was blasting irritatingly from the CD player, so that kept everything near chaos, and in perspective. They were the kids; I was the father; I was abandoning them to go off to work. It didn't matter to them that I needed to earn a living, or that I might have a serious duty to perform. What the hell was going on at Kentucky and Fifteenth? Why did it have to happen today – whatever it was? Not something good!

"Thanks for the great Saturday, Daddy," Jannie said as she was getting out of the car on Fifth Street. "Really good. A memory." Her uppity, sarcastic tone of voice kept me from apologizing, as I'd planned to do for most of the ride home.

"I'll see you guys later," I said instead. Then I added, "Love you." Which I did – intensely.

"Yeah, Daddy, later. Like maybe next week, if we're lucky," Jannie continued, and flipped an angry salute my way. It went like a spear through my heart.

"Sorry," I finally said. "I'm sorry. Sorry, guys."

Then I headed over to Kentucky Avenue, where I was supposed to meet up with Ned Mahoney and his crack team from Hostage Rescue and find out more about whatever emergency was going on there.

As it turned out, I couldn't even get close to Kentucky and Fifteenth. DC police had every street blockaded within ten blocks. It certainly looked serious.

So I finally got out and walked.

"What's going on? You heard anything?" I asked a man loitering along the way, a guy I recognized from a local bakery, where he was a counterman and where I sometimes bought jelly doughnuts for the kids. Not for myself, of course.

"Pigfest," he said. "Cops everywhere. Just look around you, brother."

It occurred to me that he didn't know I'd been a homicide detective, and was FBI now. I nodded at what he said, but you never get used to that kind of resentment and anger, even if sometimes it's justified. "Pigs," "bacon," whatever some people choose to call us, we put our lives on the line. A lot of folks don't really understand what that's like. We're not anything close to perfect and don't claim to be, but it's dangerous out here.

Try getting shot at on your job, bakery-man, I wanted to say to the guy, but didn't. I just walked on, sucked it up one more time, played the Happy Warrior again.

At least I was worked up when I finally spotted Ned Mahoney I flashed my FBI creds so I could get closer. I still didn't know what the hell was going on, just that unidentified hostages had been taken inside a dealer's lab, where drugs were being manufactured and cut. It didn't sound half as bad as it looked. So what was the catch? There had to be one.

"Now aren't you a sight for sore eyes," Mahoney said as he saw me heading his way. "Alex, you're not going to believe this shit. Trust me, you're not."

"Wanna bet?" I said.

"Ten dollars says you haven't seen this one before. Put your money up."

We shook on it. I really didn't want to lose this bet.

NED SCRATCHED and rubbed at his blondish day-or-two-old facial stubble while he talked in his usual animated nonstop nobody-else-gets-a-word-in manner. I couldn't help staring at his chin. Ned is fair-skinned, and I think it impresses the hell out of him that he can grow a semblance of a beard now that he's in his forties. I do like Ned Mahoney obnoxious as he can be at times. I like the man a lot.

"Some guys, maybe a half dozen – well armed – came down here to rob the dealer's lab," he said. "They ran into some major problems, got hung up inside. Also, there are some neighborhood people who work in the lab, around a dozen or so from what we can gather. They're trapped in there too. That's another problem we have to deal with eventually. Then -"

I put up a hand to stop Ned's hyperintense ramble.

"The people you mentioned who work at the lab? People who package the drugs? They would be mostly women, mothers, grandmothers? That the case? Dealers like workers they can trust with the product."

"See why I wanted you here?" Mahoney said, and grinned – at least he showed me his front teeth. His tone reminded me of Jannie's rant earlier. A little bit of a wiseass masking his vulnerability about being such a "man's man."

"So the drug hijackers and the drug dealers are trapped inside? Why don't we just let them shoot each other?"

"Already been suggested," Mahoney deadpanned. "But now we get to the good part, Alex. Here's why you're here. The very well-armed guys who came to jack the lab are DC SWAT. Your old compadres are the other bad guys in today's episode of 'Anything Can Happen and Probably Will!' You owe me ten bucks."

I felt sick again. I knew a lot of guys with SWAT. "You're sure about this?"

"Oh, yeah. Couple of patrolmen heard shots in the building. They went to investigate. One uniform got gut-shot. They recognized the guys from SWAT."