"Who told you?" Hood asked. "Someone at the base in Seoul?"

"No," said Rodgers. "I saw it on CNN."

The scowl deepened. Hood himself couldn't sleep, but he was beginning to think Rodgers didn't require sleep. Maybe bachelors had more energy, or maybe he'd made a deal with the devil. He'd have his answer if one of his twenty-year-old girlfriends ever landed him, or when another six and a half years passed, whichever came first.

Since the car phone wasn't secure, Hood had to couch his instructions with care.

"Mike, I'm on my way to see the boss. I don't know what he's going to say, but I want you to get a Striker team on the field."

"Good idea. Any reason to think he'll finally let us play abroad?"

"None," Hood said. "But if he decides he wants to play hardball with someone, at least we've got a head start."

"I like it," Rodgers said. "As Lord Nelson put it at the Battle of Copenhagen, 'Mark you! I would not be elsewhere for thousands.' "

Hood hung up, feeling strangely uneasy about Rodgers's remark. But he put it from his mind as he called night-shift Assistant Director Curt Hardaway and instructed him to have the prime team in the office by five-thirty. He also asked him to track down Gregory Donald, who had been invited to the celebration-- and who he hoped was all right.

CHAPTER NINE

Tuesday, 6:10 P.M., Seoul

Gregory Donald had been knocked down three rows from where he'd been sitting, but he'd landed on someone who had cushioned his fall. His benefactor, a large woman, was struggling to get up and Donald rolled off, taking care not to land on the young man beside him.

"I'm sorry," he said, bending close to the woman. "Are you all right?"

The woman didn't look up, and only when he asked again did Donald become aware of the loud ringing in his ears. He touched a finger to his ears; there was no blood, but he knew it would be a while before he heard anything clearly.

He sat there for a moment, collecting his wits. His first thought was that the grandstand had collapsed, but that clearly wasn't the case. Then he remembered the crashing roar followed an instant later by the hit in his chest, a rolling impact that knocked him down and out.

His head cleared quickly.

A bomb. There must have been a bomb.

His head snapped to the right, toward the boulevard.

Soonji!

Rising unsteadily, Donald waited a moment to make sure he wasn't going to pass out, then hurriedly picked his way down the grandstand to the street.

Dust from the explosion hung in the air like a thick fog, and it was impossible to see more than two feet in any direction. As he passed people in the grandstand and then in the street, some were sitting in a state of shock, while others were coughing, moaning, and waving their hands in front of their faces to clear the air, many trying to get up or down or out from under debris. Bloody bodies lay here and there, riddled with shrapnel from the blast.