Squires smiled as Mike Rodgers came around the side of the building. The tall man's arched nose-- broken four times in college basketball-- high, intelligent forehead, and light brown eyes that seemed almost golden were a welcome sight.

"I hope I'm glad to see you," Squires said, saluting the two-star General. When Rodgers returned the salute, the men shook hands.

"That depends on whether or not you were getting bored."

"Does diet Coke fizz? Yes, sir, we're ready for action."

"Good. Because I radioed the chopper: get one through eleven ready and have Krebs bring an extra grip. We leave in five minutes."

Squires knew not to ask where to or why only eleven men instead of the full Dirty Dozen were going-- not while they were out in the open where their wives or children might hear. Innocent remarks, made over unsecured lines to friends or relatives, could be disastrous. He also knew not to ask about the small black bag Rodgers carried, or why there was a sewn-on design of what looked like a weed growing out of concrete. When and if the General wanted to tell him about it, he would.

Instead, Squires said, "Yes, sir," saluted again, and jogged back to the picnic table. The dozen other men were already on their feet and ready to go, the hostilities and disappointments of the morning's sport quickly forgotten.

After a word with Squires, eleven of the twelve men jogged to their homes to get their gear, none of them stopping to say good-bye to their wives or children: a sad face or teary eye might come to them when they were called on to risk their lives, cause them to hesitate. It was better to leave cold and make up later. The one man who hadn't been picked sat and hunkered down over his paper plate: this was not Private George's morning.

Like each man, Squires kept his grip handy and within four minutes they were running across the field beyond the fence, toward the Bell Jetranger that was being fired up for the half-hour ride to Andrews Air Force Base.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Tuesday, 7:30 P.M., Seoul

The sound truck looked like a gutted avocado, blasted panels peeled back by the force of the explosion, with only scraps and slag in the center.

For over an hour, Kim Hwan's team had picked over those scraps, looking for any leads. There were traces of plastic explosives stuck to the bottom of what used to be the sound panel, and those had been sent to the laboratory for analysis. Other than that, there was nothing. Nothing but the increasing numbers of victims being moved from the ranks of the injured to the list of the dead. The men on the rooftops had seen nothing unusual, one of the two video surveillance cameras they had placed on a rooftop was destroyed by shrapnel, and the other had been trained on the podium, not the crowd. TV cameras were being collected, their tapes studied, to see if they had recorded anything unusual. Hwan doubted they would help, since it seemed as though all of them had been facing in the same direction: away from the truck. And his computer expert doubted that any of them had caught a useful reflection of the truck in a window, one large and complete enough to be enhanced and studied.