"I think before we do anything we need to confirm that this is really the case."

"Oh, its for real," moaned General Flood. The bear-size warrior had his elbows on the table and his face buried in his hands. "They would never send Ben Freidman all the way to Washington if it wasn't. Besides, we know how eager Saddam is to get his hands on one of these things. He's just found a way with the help of the North Koreans to cut a few years out of the process." "Michael?" asked Hayes.

The national security advisor replied, "We need to make sure this time line is correct, and then we need to get a guarantee from the Israelis that they will not act before we have time to come up with a solution."

"General?"

Flood lifted his face from his hands."I hate to say it, Mr. President, but we need to level this facility, and my guess is Tomahawks aren't going to do the job. We are going to have to put planes over Baghdad. We might lose some people, but they are definitely going to lose people. I mean they put the damn thing under a hospital for a reason. They don't think we have the stomach for it." Flood was extremely concerned. He had been warning everyone who would listen about the problem of nuclear proliferation for years. He leaned forward and looked at the President's chief of staff. "I'm telling you right now' Valerie I know how your mind works. You ten steps ahead of the rest of us. You're thinking of the political fallout this will create. You imagining the reporters standing in front of the hospital while they pull the twisted bodies of children from the rubble. Well let me replace it with some different pictures. Imagine an entire U. S. Navy carrier battle group patrolling the Persian Gulf. Now blink your eyes and they're gone. Over seven thousand men and women vaporized. Imagine a nuclear warhead exploding over the oil fields of Saudi Arabia. Now imagine the entire world economy plunged into a depression because those oil fields are rendered useless for the next hundred years due to radioactivity."

Flood paused just long enough to catch his breath. "That's just for starters. Now imagine Saddam throwing two of these things at Israel, figuring he can wipe them off the map before they have the chance to retaliate. Theres only one problem with that plan. The Israelis aren't stupid. They keep their nukes spread out in secure underground hardened bunkers. Some of those weapons will survive, and whoever is left won't hesitate to return the favor to Saddam. We'll have a full-scale nuclear war in the Middle East. The initial blasts will kill millions. God only knows how many more will die from the fallout, but it won't be pretty. The region will shut down, oil production will screech to a halt, and the economic tidal wave will make the Great Depression look like a hiccup." The President had stopped pacing halfway through the general's rant. Looking at the military's top officer, Hayes was slightly unsettled by the fact that he agreed with everything the man had just said. So much so that a brief shiver ran down his spine. Finally looking to Kennedy he asked, "Irene?"

Kennedy also agreed with everything that had been said so far. "They want us to take care of the problem for them."

"You mean Israel?"

"Yes." Kennedy folded her arms across her chest. "But make no mistake about it--if we don't act, they will."

"Shit." The President walked back to his chair and sat. He tried to decide on a course of action. Leveling a hospital with God only knows how many innocent civilians inside was not a pleasant thought, but taking no action at all, and being confronted with one of the scenarios that General Flood had described, was horrific.

For the first time in his presidency he was honestly scared. He would have to call the Israeli prime minister at some point, but that could wait for a day. The list of people he would have to tell domestically was long, but due to secrecy concerns, most of them would have to wait until the last possible moment. The best move right now was to delegate and manage.

As if he were pulled out of a trance, the President lifted his head and said, "Irene, I want you to take Freidman back to Langley and debrief him personally. Get as much information as you can from him, and then as quietly as possible try to confirm it. But, before you bring any of your people in on this, I want you to call me and tell me what you've learned"

Pointing at the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the President said, "General, put your best people on this, and give me some options. I want to be prepared to move at a moment's notice if needed."

"Whoa," cautioned Valerie Jones. "Lets slow down a bit. Don't you think we should explore some diplomatic options? We've made a lot of progress with the North Koreans lately. Maybe we could put some pressure on them to pull their people out. I mean, hell, we have an awfully big aid package we can hold over their heads." Jones stopped when the President started shaking his head.

"We're not going to call North Korea, we're not going to call Saddam, the Jordanians or the Saudis, and we most definitely are not going to call the U. N. If Saddam gets the slightest whiff that we're on to him, it's over. He'll move those bombs, and we're back to square one." The President shook his head. "No. We've given him enough chances. He's been told to stop pursuing weapons of mass destruction, and he has ignored the international community at every turn. This time he gets no warning. Those bombs have to be taken out."

Maryland, Tuesday morning

Congressman Albert Rudin walked through the men's locker room of the Congressional Country Club with a white towel thrown over his shoulder and a pair of shower sandals on his feet. Rudin grew up in the days where swimming at the YMCA required literally nothing. Swimsuits were not just optional, they were forbidden. A towel was for drying oneself, not wearing. Consequently the sixty-eight-year-old politician from Stamford, Connecticut was not shy about parading through the locker room buck naked. Gravity had taken its toll over the years, and his skin hung loose from his bony runner's body. It was not a pretty sight.

Rudin normally worked out at the congressional gym on the Hill, but today he wanted to talk to one of his colleagues from the Senate, and he wanted to do so in private. That was why he had requested that his friend meet him in the steam room of the golfclub. The locker room was a virtual ghost town from November to March every year, and that was what Rudin wanted. A recent string of events in his life had caused him to reassess who his allies were. Rudin opened the door to the steam room and stood there for approximately five seconds. His purpose was to let enough steam out and make sure no one was lurking in the room.

Finally satisfied that he was alone, he entered the room and laid his towel down on the tile bench. With great deliberation he began kneading his loose skin as if he were working some lethal poison from his pores. Representative Albert Rudin was a cranky, crass old politician who was having a very bad year. The worst he could remember in a long time, and it was all the fault of a centrist President who had turned his back on the base of his party. Albert Rudin had been a loyal soldier to the Democratic Party for over thirty years, and this just wasn't fair. All he was trying to do was his job.

Rudin was the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. It had been his one request for all of his hard work. It was not much to ask for. The House Intelligence Committee wasn't one of Washington's glory jobs. Most of their meetings were conducted behind closed doors, and rarely were cameras ever allowed in the hearing room. If Rudin had been greedy like the others he would have asked to sit on the Appropriations or Judicial committees. But he hadn't. He had simply asked to run the Intelligence Committee. All he wanted to do was serve his party. It was Albert Rudin's goal in life to see the CIA shut down and dismantled. In his mind there was no bigger waste in the federal budget than the black hole that was known as Langley.