Some of the more devil-may-care, gung-ho guys from the Hostage Rescue Team, which is just about all of them, call this kind of dangerous operation "five minutes of panic and thrill. Their panic, our thrill." The very personal thrill for me would be bringing down Geoffrey Shafer.

HRT and SWAT desperately wanted to go into the building and were at the ready. Two dozen heavily armed, state-of-the-art warriors were strutting around the wooden floor of the meatpacking plant; they were pumped up and supremely confident in their ability to do the job right and very quickly. Watching them, it was hard not to be, and even harder not to ask to be included in the raid.

The real problem was that if they succeeded, we all might lose. We had been warned and been given dramatic lessons about what would happen if we disregarded the orders handed down by the Wolf. And yet, the men under our surveillance might be his attack team in New York. So what did we do?

I knew every detail about the job. Taking down the building would involve full-team deployment of the group, including both HRT and NYPD SWAT. There were six assault teams and six sniper teams, which HRT believed was two too many. They didn't want help from SWAT. The HRT sniper teams were called X-Ray, Whiskey, Yankee, and Zulu; each included seven members. One FBI team was assigned to each side of the building; SWAT would assist on the front and rear only.

The interesting thing for me was the certainty that HRT was the superior assault team, the opposite of what I'd felt when I was with the D.C. police. The HRT snipers were disguised in "urban hide" kits, individualized bunches of black muslin, rope, dark PVC tubing, and the like. Each sniper had a specific target, and every window and door in the building was covered.

The question remained: were we going in?

And was Shafer still there? Was the Weasel in that building right now?

At 2:30 in the morning I joined a two-man sniper team in the brownstone directly across the street from the targeted one. This was starting to get very intense and very hairy.

The snipers were holed up inside a ten-by-ten room. They had made a tent out of black muslin set back about three feet from the window. The window itself was kept closed, and I was given an explanation by one of them. "If we get the signal to go, we'll use a lead pipe to knock out the windowpane. Seems kind of crude, but nobody's come up with a better option."

There wasn't too much small talk in the cramped, hot room, but for the next half hour I got to watch the targeted building through a sniper scope from a backup rifle. My heart was starting to race pretty good now. I was searching for Shafer in the scope. What if I saw him? How could I stay up there?

The seconds were ticking away and I could just about measure them with my own heartbeats. The assault team was the "eyes and ears" for Command, and all we could do was wait for our official orders to come down.

Go.

No go.

I finally broke the silence in the small room. "I'm going down on the street. I need to be down there for this."

This was more like it.

I set up with an HRT assault team just around the corner from the terrorist hideout. Technically I wasn't supposed to be there-so officially I wasn't-but I'd called Ned Mahoney and he smoothed the way for me.

Three o'clock in theA.M. The minutes passed very slowly, without more news or clarification from Command in New York or FBI headquarters in the Hoover Building in Washington. What were they thinking? How could anybody make an impossible decision like this one?

Go?

No go?

Obey the Wolf?

Disobey and take the consequences?

Three-thirty came and went. Then four o'clock. Still no word from the higher-ups back at headquarters.

I got strapped up in a black flight suit with full armor and was given an MP-5. The HRT guys all knew about Shafer and my personal stake in this.

The senior agent in charge sat down beside me on the ground. "You okay? Everything all right?"

"I was D.C. Homicide. I've gone into a lot of places, lot of hot spots."

"I know you have. If Shafer's in there, we'll get him. Maybe you'll get him." Yeah, maybe I'll blow that creep away after all.

And then, amazingly, we got the order to go. Green light! Five minutes of panic and thrill.

First thing, I heard the snipers breaking windows across the street.

Then we were running toward the hideout building. Everybody was strapped up for war, all in black flight suits and armed to the teeth.

Two eight-passenger Bell helicopters suddenly appeared and veered in toward the roof of the brick building. They hovered and assault specialists began to "fast-rope" down.

One team of four was climbing up the side of the building, an amazing sight in itself.

Another of HRT's "go to war" slogans flashed through my head- speed, suspense, and violence of action. It was happening just like that.

I heard explosive entry charges blasting out doors, three or four different blasts within seconds. There would be no negotiating as part of this assault.

We were in. This was good-I was in.

Gunshots echoed through the dark halls of the building. Then machine-gun bursts came from somewhere above me.

I made it up to the second floor. A male with wild, bushy hair came out of a doorway. He had a rifle.

"Hands in the air!" I yelled at him. "In the air. High."

He understood English-he put his hands up and let the rifle drop.

"Where's Colonel Shafer? Where's Shafer?" I screamed at him.

The man just shook his head back and forth, back and forth, looking dazed and confused.

I left the prisoner with a couple of HRT guys, then hurried upstairs to the third floor. I wanted the Weasel so badly now. Was he in there somewhere?

A waif of a woman in black suddenly ran across a large living-room area at the head of the stairs.

"Stop!" I bellowed at her. "You-stop!"

But she didn't-she went right out an open window in the living room. I heard her scream, then nothing after that. Sickening to watch.

And finally I heard "Secure. The building is secure! All floors secure!"

But nothing about Geoffrey Shafer, nothing about the Weasel.

The HRT and NYPD SWAT teams were swarming around the building. All the doors had been blown off their hinges, and several windows were shattered. So much for "knock and announce" protocol, but the plan seemed to have worked well from what I could see so far. Except for finding Shafer. Where was that son of a bitch? I'd missed him like this a couple of times before.

The woman who'd gone out the top-floor window was dead, which is what happens when you plunge headfirst three stories down onto a sidewalk. I congratulated a few HRT guys as I made my way through the top floor; they did the same for me.

I met Michael Ainslie on the stairs. " Washington wants you involved with the interrogations," he told me, not seeming too pleased. "There are six of them. How do you want to handle it?"

"Shafer?" I asked Ainslie. "Anything on him?"

"They say he isn't here. We don't know for sure. We're still looking for him."

I couldn't help feeling a letdown about the Weasel, but I sucked it up. I walked inside a workspace that had been turned into a quasi-apartment. Sleeping bags and a few stained mattresses were strewn across the bare wooden floor. Five males and a woman sat together handcuffed like prisoners of war, which I suppose they were.

I stared at them without saying a word at first.

Then I pointed to the youngest-looking male: small, thin, wire-rimmed glasses, scruffy beard, of course. "Him," I said, and started to walk out of the room. "I want that one. Bring him now!"