Once the marines were close enough, Ivan received another cue, got up and limped inside the facility.

Having seen enough from Ivan’s collar-mounted camera, Ali nodded to the handler, who then signaled the rest of the team to get ready. The dog was then sent its final cue.

Ivan bit down on a tab at his right shoulder and pulled it forward, causing the heavy vest packed with plastique and ball bearings to activate and fall to the ground. The speedy dog was halfway to the stairs before anyone inside knew what had happened.

With the deafening roar of the explosion still ringing in the ears of those not instantly killed by the detonation, Abdul Ali and his men rushed inside with their weapons blazing. They plowed a bloody trail through the odd submarine-like structure as they searched for the man al-Qaeda was willing to risk anything to recover.

But once again, it was all in vain. Not only was Mohammed bin Mohammed nowhere to be found, there was no sign he had ever been there to begin with.

When they were safely inside the Tahoes and back out into the maddening traffic, Abdul Ali quietly went over the plan for taking down their next target. From everything he had read, this one was going to be their most difficult yet, and for the first time since they had started, he questioned his team’s chances for success.

SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS

The Troll had gone through only a fraction of the information from the Geneva Diamond and Jewelry Exchange when the Lincoln Tunnel data began to stream in. It was time for another payment to Sacha’s account. The Chechen was easily worth his enormous weight in gold-especially when it was someone else’s. The fact that Abdul Ali had no idea what his al-Qaeda money was really buying made the transaction even more delicious for the Troll.

It could conceivably take a lifetime to sift through all of the information now gorging his servers. Each piece on its own had a certain amount of value, but the skill-the art, if you will-was in knowing how to join together just the right tidbits to create a true masterpiece. That was where the Troll excelled in his profession. It was quite amazing, especially for someone whose prospects in life had been seen as so negligible that even his parents had given up on him early in life.

When it became obvious the Troll was not going to grow any further, his godless Georgian parents made no attempt to find a suitable loving home for their son, nor did they try to find even a half-decent orphanage. Instead, they abandoned the boy, selling him as if he were chattel to a thriving brothel on the outskirts of the Black Sea resort of Sochi. There, the boy was starved, beaten, and made to perform unutterable sex acts that would have shamed even the Marquis de Sade himself.

It was there that the Troll learned the true value of information. The loose-lipped pillow talk of the powerful clients proved a goldmine once he had learned what to listen for and how to turn it to his advantage.

The whores, most of them life’s castoffs as well, felt a kinship with the dwarf and treated him well. In fact, they became the only family he ever knew, and he repaid that kindness by one day buying their freedom. Those who had been unkind to him were evicted to fend for themselves, a fate made even more unbearable when the Troll had the madam and her husband tortured and then killed for the inhuman cruelty he had spent years suffering at their hands.

He had indeed come a long way, and once his servers were full from this transaction, the world could go to hell, as far as he was concerned. The data he was now hoarding was the ultimate annuity. With the money he stood to make, he could do and buy anything he wanted.

As the Troll scanned the data coming in, he enjoyed a bouchée of escargots and morel mushrooms followed by a magret of Duck Martiniquaise with caramelized leg confit, all complemented by an exquisite bottle of Château Quercy St. Emilion Bordeaux from his cellar. Though many, many dots would need to be connected, if the data flow stopped right at this moment, the Troll couldn’t have been happier. The information being stored on his servers represented thousands upon thousands of man-hours, which he would never have to expend, but more importantly would never have to pay for.

Riding the heady wave of windfall, the Troll decided a little semi-retirement party was in order. There would be Kobe beef for Argus and Drako, and for himself, three of the most exquisite girls a certain mariscala he knew in Madrid would be more than happy to provide.

After e-mailing a request for the woman’s most recent catalog, the Troll placed an order for hampers full of the most outrageous delicacies London ’s Fortnum amp; Mason had to offer-caviar, aged cheeses, foie gras, charcuterie, pies, chocolate, and chutneys. It was going to be the party to end all parties. The Georgian castoff had hit the ultimate jackpot.

Except for the IDs Harvath had recovered from Geneva Diamond and Jewelry Exchange, the scene had been a complete bust. In fact it had raised more questions than it had answered, which left them with only one remaining lead-the Upper West Side location.

Since they were not that far from where Harvath had parked, they swung by to grab his bug-out bag. As only soldiers could, Cates, Hastings, and Morgan marveled at Harvath’s custom-designed, high-end Tactical Electronics pack, as well as the wide variety of goodies it held.

Dumping it out in the rear cargo area, Harvath began repacking it with just the essentials he thought he might need, only to have Bob say several times, “You won’t need that. Nope, that either.”

Finally, with Bob’s seal of approval the bag was packed and Harvath changed out of his jeans and polo shirt into a pair of 5.11 Tactical TDU trousers, an Under Armour shirt, a Blackhawk tactical vest, and his Original S.W.A.T. desert boots. He was now ready for anything, or so he hoped.

The team jumped back on their motorbikes, raced out of the garage, and headed north toward 84th Street.

Inside the Transcon building, the carnage was almost identical to Geneva Diamond. The assailants had apparently entered via two breaching points-a front and side door. The men and women who worked inside were dressed in business attire and possessed a fair amount of weaponry. The weapons, though, had done them little good. Their dead bodies were sprawled across the floors or slumped over desks that were slick with blood, while the walls were strike-pointed with multiple-caliber bullet holes.

“Jesus Christ,” exclaimed Cates as he surveyed the damage. “Who the hell is doing this?”

“More importantly, why are they doing this?” asked Hastings.

Paul Morgan looked at Harvath and asked, “What’s the connection between these two places?”

Harvath was asking himself the same question, but so far he wasn’t coming up with any answers. “Let’s split up and take a look around. If you find anything out of the ordinary, let me know.”

“Out of the ordinary?” replied Cates as he looked around. “What’s ordinary at this point? Space aliens?”

“You know what he’s talking about,” said Herrington. “We’re all equally in the dark here.”

Cates didn’t buy it. He had a feeling Harvath knew more than he was letting on, but he snapped Herrington a half-assed salute and walked down the hallway.

“What do you think?” asked Bob, once the rest of the team had dispersed.

Harvath took a slow glance around the room, the smell of blood and cordite tap-dancing a little too heavily on his already uneasy stomach. “I don’t know what to think,” he responded. “Obviously, these places were fronts for something, but what? And why are the terrorists so interested in them? After a successful series of attacks on major New York targets, why hang around to do this?” Harvath swept his arm in a wide arc, taking in the devastation around them. “It doesn’t make sense. It’s small-time, compared to what they’ve already accomplished.”