"Within fifteen minutes, I want a bus brought out to the front of the castle. One of my people will go and check it out. No harm must come to him, or some of these people die..."

The twenty-fourth Earl of Kintail was not the best man Kathleen might have picked for the task. The tall, clear-eyed gentleman from Northern Ireland had an iron will and a sense of duty to the royal family that went beyond mere patriotism.

The earl was a bastard. As an only child, his legal right to his father's title had fallen in a muddy area of British common law, and the courts had decided against him. Over forty years ago the crestfallen young man had learned of the court's decision against him in his digs in London.

In the short span of a few hours his entire life had changed. In the rigidly structured British army of the thirties, he could never hope to achieve a prominent place without the edge his title had given him. By withdrawing his title, the courts had condemned him to a middle-echelon position where his fine training and talents would be frustrated. He was an eager young man then, with a young man's ambitions.

The courts had also made him ashamed of his parents, something that, until then, Eddie had thought impossible. At school and at university, he had never endured the insults of his fellows. He remembered how the biggest boy in All Saints had called him a "shrewd little bastard" in front of his class. He heard the snickering around him and turned to face the rest of the boys. "I am a royalbastard," he said in his loudest and most precise voice. Then he broke the bully's nose.

Such moments became a source of strength for Eddie, but the news of the court's decision had made his pride disappear. He felt as he had felt as a child holding a fistful of hail pellets tightly in his hands; he remembered his disappointment as the perfect white pearls melted and dripped through his closed fingers.

"Hello Eddie," the voice had said more than forty years ago. "No lad, don't get up." Eddie had not seen the King of England since his father's funeral, but the man now stood inside the doorway of his London apartment. "I heard the news. Bad luck, Eddie, old boy. I expect you'd like to get drunk, what? Do you have any brandy?"

While sipping the liquor, the king explained that under British law, Eddie's father's estate would become the property of the British crown. In effect, the king could do anything he liked with all of the Kintail estate.

"Did you know, Eddie," the king asked, "that there have been Kintails in the House of Lords since the days of that upstart Cromwell?" The king smiled. "Of course you did," he continued. "So I think it would be a damn shame to lose a family that has been such a bear for punishment for such a long time. What I mean to say, Eddie, is that there have been Kintails in our service since the time before the Empire.

"Are you married, Eddie? No? Well, give it time. Find a fine woman, lad, someone with your mother's spirit — yes, I did know her — find that woman, lad, and give the kingdom a twenty-fifth Earl of Kintail. Oh yes, I didn't mention it, Eddie, but I'd like you to be my twenty-fourth earl. It merely involves a bit of paperwork. Are you interested?"

Later, over a second bottle of brandy, the king said, "You know, Eddie, sometimes it's quite pleasant this being a king."

When Kathleen thrust the list of instructions into his hands, the old man stiffened visibly. The Earl of Kintail knew that if the terrorists escaped Windsor Castle with their royal hostages, the queen's chances of survival worsened a hundredfold. He faced the young woman impassively and put the list back into her hands.

"I won't do it," he said. "You'll have to get another man."

"Eddie," the queen spoke gently from across the room, "do as the young woman says."

"No, ma'am," he said. The last word was drowned out by the clatter of the Uzi fired by a terrorist across the room.

Kathleen stepped over the bleeding corpse of the late earl and put the piece of paper into the hands of a horror-dazed young boy.

"Give this to the men outside," she said.

The boy who bowed to the queen and left the room, clutching the list of demands in his right hand, was the twenty-fifth Earl of Kintail.

Lyons, Blancanales and Corporal Phillips had chased Flynn through a warren of corridors. They saw him as he reached the Waterloo Chamber, but by the time they got there the battle was over. Blancanales had to restrain Lyons and Phillips as shots rang out within the room. Provocation now would only ensure the deaths of the innocents inside.

The three men waited by the entrance. When Phillips's radio intercepted McGowan's voice giving instructions, they pulled back from the entrance, ready to herd the released hostages farther into the private apartments and greater safety.

Two men appeared in the corridor. Instinctively the trio raised their weapons. Just as quickly they lowered them. Blancanales and Lyons recognized Gadgets, and Phillips recognized his CO, Lieutenant Colonel Carlton.

Phillips snapped off a salute to his superior which was crisply returned. The introductions among the five men were brief.

Blancanales placed Carlton's age at somewhere around thirty-five, but it could have been five years either way. The man was in magnificent condition. A quiet fire burned in the blue eyes and beneath the grime of combat there radiated a quiet strength.

Pol's assessment of the lieutenant colonel was cut short by the emergence of the young earl from the chamber. Carlton listened grimly to the boy's message. Then the hostages appeared through the wrecked east door. Carlton called to them and directed the released captives to go to the Green Drawing Room, down the Grand Corridor.

Then he spoke with Able Team.

"The bastards haven't given us a lot of time. I don't know where we'll get a coach on such short notice."

"If that's a bus you're referring to," Gadgets said, "there's one out front. Full of civilians."

"Christ, what the hell are they doing here?" the colonel exploded.

All five of them moved fast down the corridor toward the exit into the Upper Ward. By the time they reached it they were running flat out.

The scene that greeted them in the Upper Ward was organized bedlam. Bodies littered the courtyard — mostly British, but some terrorists as well. The dead were covered in an assortment of blankets. The living were being tended to in the darkness by a corps of civilians.

Near the collapsed Norman Gate, civilians and soldiers worked to move the rubble and free those trapped beneath it. Their efforts were directed by a figure familiar to Able Team, Geoffrey Hall.

Seeing the three Americans, the old man walked briskly over to them and nodded at the bus.

"Best that I could throw together on short notice," he announced. "After our talk this afternoon, I laid in some supplies and borrowed this motorcoach. I thought we might be able to help in the cleanup. From the looks of things, I gather it's not going too well for us."

The stench of burned flesh permeated the night air. The Americans headed for the bus.

Gadgets quickly slithered under the coach to attach something there. He emerged a moment later. "Standard tracking device," he muttered to Hall.

Only moments later Flynn appeared in the Upper Ward. As he passed by the ruins of the King George IV Gate, soldiers and civilians stopped their rescue work to stare at the strutting terrorist. He matched their stares with his own. Uneasily, the British turned back to their tasks.

Flynn reached the bus and checked it out. He put himself behind the wheel and started the engine. He checked the gauges, found a nearly full tank of gasoline.

He radioed the all-clear sign to Kathleen McGowan and the other terrorists inside the Waterloo Chamber.