"Does anyone else need to hear more? Or is my word good enough?" the Wolf asked. "Do we move on to the next important phase of our war against the West?"

No one said a word.

"Good. Then we move on to the next phase," said the Wolf. "This is exciting, no? Trust me, we are winning. Allah Akbar." God is great. And so am I.

I was feeling relatively peaceful at 6:15 in the morning, driving to work along Independence Avenue, coffee cup in hand, Jill Scott singing on the radio. Suddenly my cell phone went off and I knew that all was lost.

Kurt Crawford was on the line and he sounded excited, wouldn't give me a chance to get in a word. "Alex, Geoffrey Shafer was just spotted on a surveillance tape in New York City. He visited an apartment that we were watching before this mess even began. We think we've found the cell that might be ready to strike in Manhattan.

"They're al Qaeda, Alex. What the hell does that mean? We want you in New York this morning. We're holding a seat for you, so get on your horse out to Andrews."

I grabbed the "bubble" off the passenger seat and slapped it on the roof of the car. It felt a little like my old D.C. PD days.

I headed out to Andrews Air Force Base, and less than half an hour later I was on board a jet-black Bell helicopter bound for the Downtown Manhattan Heliport on the East River. As we flew over the city, I imagined New York in full panic. We had to face one real problem: it was physically impossible to evacuate everyone in the target cities. They were just too large. Plus, we had been warned. If we attempted an evacuation, the Wolf had promised to strike immediately. So far, word of the Wolf's threat had not leaked to the media, but the strikes in Nevada, England, and Germany had the whole world on edge.

As soon as I arrived at the heliport on the East River I was rushed to the FBI offices in lower Manhattan. Tense high-level meetings had been going on there since early that morning, when someone looking at surveillance tapes recognized Shafer. What was he doing in New York now? And visiting with al Qaeda? Suddenly the rumors about the Wolf's travels in the Middle East made some sense. But what was going on?

Inside Federal Plaza I got a quick, thorough briefing about a terrorist cell that was staying in a small brick building near the Holland Tunnel. It wasn't clear whether Shafer was still inside. He had entered at nine the night before and no one had seen him leave.

"The others are clearly members of al-Jihad," I was told by Angela Bell, the information analyst assigned to the counterterrorism squad in New York. She said that the decrepit, three-story structure where the cell was holed up was shared by a Korean import-export business and a Spanish-translation business. The terrorist cell was posing as a relief charity called Afghan Children Assistance.

Based on the surveillance reports we had in hand, there were several indicators of terrorist planning and activity around New York. Chemicals and mixing apparatuses had turned up in a self-storage space in Long Island City. The place had been rented by an occupant of the property near the Holland Tunnel; a pickup truck owned by a cell member had been modified with heavy-duty springs to handle a very heavy load. A possible bomb? What kind of bomb?

That morning plans were being coordinated for raids on the Long Island storage facility and the walk-up near the Holland Tunnel.

Finally, about four in the afternoon, I was driven to TriBeCa to join the strike team.

We had been warned not to do this. But how could we obey? What's more, how could anyone expect us to obey when so many lives were in danger? And maybe we could argue that the raid was solely a hit on al Qaeda and had nothing to do with the Wolf. Hell, maybe it didn't.

The apartment where the terrorists were staying, and where Geoffrey Shafer might still be, was a fairly easy one to monitor. The front of the redbrick building had only a single entrance. The rear fire escapes emptied onto a narrow alley where we had already put closed-circuit wireless cameras. One side of the building abutted a textbook printer; the other opened onto a small parking lot.

Was the Weasel still inside?

An HRT assault force and a SWAT team from the NYPD had taken over the top floor of a TriBeCa meatpacking plant a couple of blocks from the Holland Tunnel. We assembled there, fine-tuning the assault, waiting for word to come about whether the attack would happen or not.

HRT wanted a go, and they were pushing hard for an assault between two and three in the morning. I didn't know what I would do if it were my call. We had a cell of known terrorists, and possibly Shafer, in our sights. But we'd been warned about the consequences. It could also be a setup, some kind of test for us.

At a little before midnight word began to circulate that HRT surveillance had turned up something else. About one in the morning I was called in to a small bookkeeping room that was serving as headquarters. It was getting close to put-up-or-shut-up time.

Michael Ainslie from our New York office was the senior agent in charge. He was a tall, reed-thin, good-looking man with loads of experience in the field, but I had the distinct impression he would have been more comfortable on a tennis court than in the middle of a dangerous mess like this one.

"Here's what we have so far from surveillance," Ainslie told the group. "One of HRT's snipers picked up a couple of images and then we shot some more. We think it's all pretty good news. Take a look for yourselves."

The visual images had been downloaded to a laptop, and Ainslie played them for us. The video stream was a series of wide and tight shots showing half a dozen windows on the east side of the building.

"We were concerned that these windows haven't been covered up," Ainslie pointed out. "These little shits are supposed to be smart and careful, right? Anyway, we've identified five males and two females inside the building. I'm sorry to say that Colonel Shafer hasn't shown up on any of the surveillance tapes. Not so far, anyway.

"We don't have anything on him leaving the building, either, just going inside. We're using thermal imaging to see if we might have missed him or any others." The Washington PD hadn't been able to afford thermal, but I'd seen it work since coming to the Bureau. It picked up heat variances, hot spots, which allowed surveillance to see right through walls.

Ainslie pointed to the close-up shot that was on the laptop screen now. "Here's where it gets interesting," he said, and froze a shot showing two men seated at a small table in the kitchen.

"On the left is Karim al-Lilyas. He's number fourteen on Homeland Security's hit list; he's definitely al Qaeda. Suspected of involvement in the 'ninety-eight bombings of our embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi. We don't know when he arrived, or why, but he sure as hell is here now.

"The man beside al-Lilyas, Ahmed el-Masry, is big number eight on the list. He's hot. He's also an engineer. Neither of these bastards was on earlier surveillance tapes.

"Both must have just snuck into town. For what reason? Under ordinary circumstances we'd be in that kitchen with them right now, making mint tea for everybody, getting ready for a nice long chat.

"They have these same pictures downtown and in Washington right now. We ought to hear something soon, one way or the other."

Ainslie looked around the room and finally cracked a smile. "For the record, I recommended that we go in, make some tea, have that chat."

The small room broke into loud applause. For a brief moment there, it was almost fun.