"Milt, can you hear me? Milt, can you hear me?" Rapp waited a couple seconds. After failing to raise Adams a second time, Rapp flipped the jammer onto its front and looked at the perforated black metal on the back. Through the cooling slats, he could see several bound groups of wire. Turning the thing off wouldn't work. He had to disable it. The key was to make it look as if it were still on.

Rapp plunged the wire cutter in between two of the cooling slats. The pointy nose of the wire cutter bent the metal.

Rapp twisted the tool back and forth several times to get more access, and then opened the snips. As he clamped down on the first group of wires, it never occurred to him to unplug the machine first. Rapp squeezed hard, and as soon as the metal jaws of the wire cutter broke the protective insulation of the wires, sparks shot up, and Rapp was knocked back onto his butt.

With tingles shooting up his right arm and feeling as if he'd lost all of the hair on his body, Rapp mumbled, "Shit." Shaking his right arm vigorously, he started to get back up. Over his headset he heard the voice of Milt Adams, and then someone else. A voice he didn't recognize.

IRENE KENNEDY sat at her elevated position in the control room with a phone to her ear. On the other end of the secure line. General Campbell was explaining Lt. Commander Harris's plan to send in a small team of demolition experts to clear the path for the strike teams. Kennedy was not excited about the plan at first, that was until Campbell explained to her that Harris and the three men he had chosen had all succeeded in accomplishing what seemed to be the most difficult aspect of the operation during a training operation with the Secret Service some eight years earlier. She still wasn't crazy about the idea, but the fact that they had already proven they could do it went a long way.

As Kennedy listened to the general fill her in on the other aspects of the plan, her concentration was broken by a flurry of motion and voices from the two rows in front of her when she looked up, she almost dropped the phone. The monitors that were showing the pictures that Rapp had already provided were now crystal clear, and smack dab in the middle of the big board was a picture of a shiny silver door that could be nothing other than the one to the president's bunker.

Campbell repeatedly called Kennedy's name. After the third or fourth time it registered, and she said into the phone, "He did it."

"Who did it?" asked a slightly irritated Campbell.

"Mitch did. We have a picture of the bunker on the board."

Kennedy paused for a second while one of her people pointed to his own headset and spoke to her. Kennedy clutched the phone and said, "You'd better get back here right away. We have Mitch on full audio from his Motorola, not the field radio. I think he's taken out the jammer. Hustle back. I have to let Thomas know." Without waiting for a response from Campbell, Kennedy hung up the phone and quickly dialed the extension for her boss. At the same time she riffled through a stack of papers.

Stansfield answered on the second ring, and Kennedy could barely contain her excitement.

"Thomas, Mitchell has taken out the jammer. We have him on full audio, and we've picked up two more surveillance feeds."

"I'll be there in a minute," Stansfield calmly replied.

Kennedy hung up the phone and put on her headset as she called out Rapp's code name over the microphone hanging in front of her lips. She came across the document she was looking for, a list of numbers provided by Secret Service Director Tracy. PRESIDENT HAYES LOOKED at his watch.

It was nearing five o'clock.

"Are you sure we shouldn't wait until it's dark?"

Jackwarch shook his head.

"I'd like to, but we don't know how much time we have."

All of the agents were either sitting or standing around the group of couches in the middle of the room. Warch had convinced the president that their chances for survival were better if they made the break.

Valerie Jones had also agreed.

Not that it made a huge difference, but at this crucial juncture the less dissent the better. After getting Jones out of the way, Warch had brought the agents in, and they were now finalizing the plan.

Warch looked up at Pat Cowley. Cowley was hands down the best shot of the group with either a pistol or submachine gun. The former Supreme Court police officer had just finished a four-year stint with the Secret Service's Counter Assault Team, where he had spent the majority of his time riding around in the back of the old, black, armor-plated Suburban that followed the president's limousine wherever it went.

These were the men that carried the big hardware. If the motorcade came under attack, it was their job to, first, cover the president's evacuation and, second, neutralize the threat if possible. Their basic doctrine was to carry enough firepower that they could enfilade the threat with a volley of bullets while the president was evacuated from the area. Warch continued going through the agents' assignments one by one. He picked two agents to leapfrog behind the point as they moved, and assigned Ellen Morton and three other agents to stay with the president at all times. The last agent was to provide a rear guard if needed. Warch himself would stay fluid and try to lead as they moved.

After all questions were answered and the evacuation routes were decided on, warch got the troops lined up. Five of the nine agents carried MP-5 submachine guns along with their SIG-Sauer pistols. The others, including Warch, were armed with their pistols only. With weapons checked and ready, Warch turned to Ellen Morton and said, "Take the president and Valerie and put them in the bathroom When we give you the all clear, you bring them out, and we move."

As Warch turned for the door, he was interrupted by a noise he had been waiting to hear for more than two days.

Simultaneously, every head in the room snapped toward the small kitchen table. On the second ring, Warch bolted toward the noise. Reaching out, he snatched his digital phone and pressed the send button.

"Hello!"

"Jack, it's Irene Kennedy."

Warch's heart was in his throat.

"Thank God!"

Kennedy spoke quickly, her eyes staring at the monitor in the center of the big board.

"How's the president?"

"He's fine… but somebody's drilling through the bunker door. What in the hell's going on?"

Kennedy took a deep breath and started in.

"Jack, we don't have a lot of time, so I'll give you the short version.

Rafique Aziz and a group of terrorists have taken over the White House.

They are holding hostages, and we know they are trying to break into the bunker."

Warch was a little surprised that Kennedy knew about the assault on the door. The president was now coming toward him from across the room.

"Well, what are you guys doing about it?"

"We're working on it, but we need to speak to the president first."

"Sure, he's right here. "Warch handed Hayes the phone, saying, "It's Irene Kennedy."

Hayes took the small gray phone and held it to his ear.

"Dr. Kennedy?"

"Yes, Mr. President. How are you doing?"

"Good!" exclaimed a relieved Hayes.

"Its great to hear your voice."

"It's nice to hear yours too, sir, but we have a lot to cover, and we're short on time, so I'm going to hand the phone over to Director Stansfield."

Stansfield and General Flood had just entered the room.

Kennedy had her chair turned around, and as the men hurriedly approached their seats, she held up three fingers.

Stansfield grabbed his phone and pressed line three. In his normal businesslike tone he said, "Mr. President, I apologize for taking so long to get through to you, but we've been experiencing some difficulties."

"What in the hell has been going on?" asked Hayes.