"Could be our teammate warming things up," Luis said. The line was quiet for a moment. Then Luis came back on. "Coach says to go to second base and put on your uniforms. He'll call the upper deck to see what they know."

Second base was the dungeon directly below the Hall of Tapestries. The upper deck was the spotters.

"Excellent," August said. "We're on our way." He turned the phone from ring to vibrate and returned it to his pocket. He told the other Strikers to follow him and then he raised his arm for Pupshaw to see. August crossed his second and third fingers.

The young private extended two crossed fingers and waved back. The two crossed fingers meant to put the aglets together.

August led his team quickly toward the sewer on the northwest corner of the Plaza de Oriente. They had videotaped the manhole cover when they'd first arrived and studied the playback as they stood around. Corporal Prementine and Privates David George and Jason Scott had their Walkman headsets in hand, ready to slide into the holes in the cover and lift it up. The headsets were actually made of titanium and would be able to handle the weight of the iron lid.

August put his arm around Sondra DeVonne as though she were his traveling companion. The two laughed as they walked. But when August looked at her he was actually looking past her at the traffic. It was virtually nonexistent due to all the military activity in the area. When Sondra looked at August she was keeping an eye on pedestrians. Like the streets, the sidewalks were relatively deserted.

They reached the corner and waited. Pupshaw had run over and caught up to them. No sooner had he arrived than the middle of the street erupted into a bright billowing cloud of orange smoke.

The wind blew the smoke toward them, which was why they had selected that site. Before it arrived, George, Scott, and Prementine had walked into the middle of the street. They stopped and knelt and pointed toward the smoke with their right hands. As they did, they lowered one end of the headphones into the manhole cover holes. A few seconds before the smoke reached them, they hoisted it up and moved it aside. Sondra whipped a palm-sized flashlight from the pocket of her windbreaker and shined it down. The light was not only for illumination: once the operation was underway, hand signals and on/off signals from flashlights would be their normal form of communication.

As the Interpol street plans had indicated, there was a ladder just inside. She went down quickly, followed by August, Aideen, and Ishi Honda. The other four men went down next, the burly Pupshaw waiting on the ladder to pull the lid back over the hole.

The entire operation took less than fifteen seconds.