Coffey toyed with his class ring. "That'll take time."

"I know. But we've been blindsided, and we better find out by whom."

The two men left just as Bob Herbert wheeled in. The thirty-eight-year-old Intelligence Officer was in a high dudgeon, as always. Part of him was angry at whatever had gone wrong, the other ninety percent was mad at the die toss that had dropped him in a wheelchair.

"What gives, techboy? Are we pregnant?" There were traces of a Mississippi youth still in his voice, edged with urgency born of ten years in the CIA and lingering bitterness over the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983 that had left him crippled.

"I'm checking on the degree and type of penetration," Stoll said, pressing his lips shut before he added, "Major Pain in the Ass." The dogged Herbert took that from Hood and Rodgers but not from anyone else. Especially someone who had never worn a uniform, pulled the Libertarian Party lever most Novembers, and still carried as much weight around Op-Center as he did.

"Well maybe, techboy, it'll help if you know that we weren't the only ones who got slam-dunked."

"Who else?"

"Portions of Defense went down--"

"For twenty seconds?"

Herbert nodded. "So did parts of the CIA."

"Which parts?"

"The crisis management sectors. Every place we supply with data."

"Shit--"

"Horse apples is right, boy. We knocked up a whole lot of people, and they're gonna want someone's ass."

"Shit," Matt said again, turning back to the screen as the first wave of figures stopped.

"The first directory is clean," sang Mighty Mouse. "Proceeding to second."

"I'm not saying it's your fault," Herbert said. "I'd be walking if good men didn't get blindsided now and again. But I need you to get me some intelligence from the NRO."

"I can't do that while the system is in the diagnostics mode, and I can't exit while it's in a file."

"I know that," he said, "junior technoboy Kent told me. That's why I rolled on in here, to keep you company till you get the damn system on-line again and can provide me with the information I need."

"What information is that?"

"I need to know what's happening in North Korea. We've got a pile of dead people wearing what seems to me Made in the DPRK death masks, there's a planeload of Striker boys en route, and the President wants to know what the troops up there are doing, the current status of missiles, if anything is happening at the nuclear power plants-- that sort of thing. We can't do that without satellite surveillance, and--"

"I know. You can't do that without the computers."

"The second directory is clean," Mighty Mouse reported. "Proceeding to--"

"Cancel," said Matt and the program shut down. Using the keyboard, he exited to DOS, entered the password to go on-line with the National Reconnaissance Office, then folded his arms, waited, and hoped to God that whatever had invaded the computers hadn't gotten through the phone link.