"That's the only place?"

"That's it. It's debt or nickels and dimes everywhere else."

Kennedy shook his head. How goddamn ironic-the money to save the city was available only because someone had cut corners and landed the administration in the middle of a huge scandal.

"Jerry, this is ridiculous," Lanier said. "Even if they get these men somebody else could try the same thing next month. Never deal with terrorists. That's the rule in Washington. Don't you read Department of State advisories?"

"No, I don't," Kennedy said. "Nobody sends 'em to me. Wendy, get started on that money. And Agent Lukas… go catch this son of a bitch."

The sandwich was okay.

Not great.

Gilbert Havel decided that after he got the money he was going to the Jockey Club and having a real steak. A filet mignon. And a bottle of champagne.

He finished his coffee and kept his eye on the entrance to City Hall.

The chief of police of the District had come and gone quickly. A dozen reporters and camera crews had been turned away from the front door, directed toward an entrance on the side of the building. They hadn't looked happy Then a couple of what were clearly FBI agents had disappeared into City Hall some time ago, a man and a woman, and hadn't emerged. It was definitely a Bureau operation. Well, he'd known it would be.

So far no surprises.

Havel looked at his watch. Time to go to the safe house, call the helicopter charterer. There was a lot to get ready for. The plans for picking up the $20 million were elaborate-and the plans for getting away afterward were even more so.

Havel paid his check-with old, crumpled singles-and pulled his coat and cap on again. He left the coffee shop, turned off the sidewalk and walked quickly through an alley, eyes down. The Judiciary Square Metro stop was right beneath City Hall but he knew it would be watched by police or agents so he headed for Pennsylvania Avenue, where he'd get a bus down to Southeast D.C.

White man in a black man's 'hood.

Life sure is funny sometimes.

Gilbert Havel emerged from the alley and turned onto a side street that would take him to Pennsylvania. The light changed to green. Havel stepped into the intersection. Suddenly, a flash of dark motion from his left. He turned his head. Thinking: Shit, he doesn't see me! He doesn't see me he doesn't-

"Hey!" Havel cried.

The driver of the large delivery truck had been looking at an invoice and had sped through the red light. He glanced up, horrified. With a huge squeal of brakes the truck slammed directly into Havel. The driver screaming, "Christ, no! Christ…"

The truck caught Havel between its front fender and a parked car, crushing him. The driver leapt out and stared in shock. "You weren't looking! It wasn't my fault!" Then he looked around and saw that the light had been against him. "Oh, Jesus." He saw two people running toward him from the corner. He debated for a moment. But panic took over and he leapt into his truck. He gunned the engine and backed away then sped down the street, skidding around the corner.

The passersby, two men in their thirties, ran up to Havel. One bent down to check for a pulse. The other just stood over him, staring at the huge pool of blood.

"That truck," the standing one whispered, "he just took off! He just left!" Then he asked his friend, "Is he dead?"

"Oh, yeah," the other man said. "Oh, yeah, he's dead."

Where?

Margaret Lukas lay on her lean belly on a rise overlooking the Beltway.

Traffic sped past, an endless stream.

She looked at her watch again. And thought: Where are you?

Her belly hurt, her back hurt, her elbows hurt.

There'd been no way to get a mobile command post near the ransom drop zone-even a disguised MCP-and not be seen by the extortionist if he was anywhere near. So here she was, in jeans, jacket and cap turned backward, like a sniper or gangsta, lying on the rock-hard ground. Where they'd been for an hour.

"Sounds like water," Cage said.

"What?"

"The traffic."

He lay on his belly too, next to her, their thighs nearly touching-the way lovers might lie on a beach watching the sunset. They studied the field a hundred yards away. They were overlooking the money drop near Gallows Road -yes, "Gallows," an irony so rich that not one of the agents had bothered to comment on it.

"You know how that happens?" Cage continued. "Something gets under your skin and you try not to think about it. But you can't help it. I mean, it sounds like water."

It didn't sound like water to Lukas. It sounded like cars and trucks.

Where was the unsub? There's 20 million bucks there for the taking and he's not taking it.

"Where the hell is he?" muttered another voice. It belonged to a somber man of about thirty, with a military hairstyle and bearing. Leonard Hardy was with the District of Columbia police and was part of the team because, even though the Bureau was handling the operation, it would look bad not to have a District cop on board. Lukas would normally have protested having non-Bureau personnel on her team but she knew Hardy casually from his assignments at the Bureau's field office near City Hall and didn't mind his presence-as long as he kept doing what he'd done so far: sitting quietly by himself and not bothering the grown-ups.

"Why's he late?" Hardy mused again, apparently not expecting an answer. His immaculate hands, with perfectly trimmed nails, continued to jot notes for his report to the District chief of police and the mayor.

"Anything?" She turned her head, calling in a whisper to Tobe Geller, a curly-haired young agent also decked out in jeans and one of the same navy-blue, reversible windbreakers that Lukas wore.

Geller, in his thirties too, had the intensely cheerful face of a boy who finds complete contentment in any product filled with microchips. He scanned one of three portable video monitors in front of him. Then he typed on a laptop computer and read the screen. "Zip," he responded. If there was any living thing larger than a raccoon for a hundred yards around the ransom bags Geller's surveillance equipment would detect it.

When the mayor had given the go-ahead to pay the extortion money, the cash had made a detour en route to the drop. Lukas and Geller had had Kennedy's aide shepherd the money to an address on Ninth Street in the District-a small, unmarked garage that was up the street from FBI headquarters.

There, Geller had repacked the ransom into two huge Burgess Security Systems KL-19 knapsacks, the canvas of which looked like regular cloth but was in fact impregnated with strands of oxidized copper-a high-efficiency antenna. The transmitter circuitry was in the nylon handles, and batteries were mounted in the plastic buttons on the bottom. The bag transmitted a Global Positioning System beacon cleaner than CBS's main broadcast signal and couldn't be shielded except by several inches of metal.

Geller had also rewrapped forty bundles of hundred-dollar bills with wrappers of his own design-there were ultrathin transmitting wafers laminated inside them. Even if the perp transferred the cash from the canvas bag or it was split among accomplices Geller could still track down the money-up to a range of sixty miles.

The bag had been placed in the field just where the note had instructed. All the agents had backed off. And the waiting began.

Lukas knew her basic criminal behavior. Extortionists and kidnappers often get cold feet just before a ransom pickup. But anyone willing to murder twenty-three people wasn't going to balk now. She couldn't understand why the perp hadn't even approached the drop.

She was sweating; the weather was oddly warm for the last day of the year and the air was sickly sweet. Like fall. Margaret Lukas hated autumn. She'd rather have been lying in the snow than waiting in this purgatory of a season.