"That's too early for the President," said Dan Fawcett. "I've seldom known him to be in bed before two in the morning."

"0025: A light mist drifts in from the northeast. Followed at by a heavy fog caused by two Navy surplus fogging generators concealed in the trees one hundred and sixty yards upriver from the Eagle."

"They could blanket the entire area?" Oates asked.

"Under the right atmospheric conditions-in this case, no wind the units left on site by the kinnappers can cover two square acres."

Fawcett looked lost. "My God, this operation must have taken an army."

Emmett shook his head. "Our projections figure it took as few as seven and certainly no more than ten men."

"Surely the Secret Service scouted the woods surrounding Mount Vernon before the President's arrival," said Fawcett. "How did they miss the foggers?"

"The units weren't in place prior to 1700 the night of the abduction," replied Emmett.

"How could the equipment operators see what they were doing in the dark?" Fawcett pressed. "Why weren't their movements and the sound of the generators overheard?"

"Infrared night visual gear would answer your first question.

And the noise made by the equipment was muffled by the mooing of cattle."

Brogan gave a thoughtful twist of his head. "Who would have ever thought of that?"

"Somebody did," said Emmett. "They left the tape recorder and an amplifier behind with the foggers."

"It says here the only thing the security people noticed was an oily aroma to the fog."

Emmett nodded. "The fogger heats a deodorized kerosene type of fuel to a high pressure and blows it out a nozzle in very fine droplets, producing the fog."

"Let's move on to the next event," said Oates.

"0150: The small chase boat moors to the dock because of limited visibility. Three minutes later the Coast Guard cutter notifies agent George Blackowl at the Secret Service command post that a high-intensity signal is jamming their radar reception. They also apprised agent Blackowl that before their equipment went blind the only contact on their oscilloscope was a city sanitation tugboat and its trash barges that tied up to the bank to wait out the fog."

Metcalf looked up. "Tied up how far away?"

"Two hundred yards upriver."

"Then the tug was above the artificial fog."

"A crucial point," Emmett acknowledged, "which we'll come to later."

He turned to the blackboard and wrote in another time sequence.

The room fell quiet. The men seated around the long table sat in rocklike stillness waiting for Emmett to reveal the final solution to the presidential abduction.

"0200: The agents moved to their new guard posts. Agent Lyle Brock took up station onboard the Eagle after agent Karl Polaski relieved him on the pier entrance. What is most important is that during this time the Eagle was hidden from his sight. He later walked to the boarding gangway of the yacht and talked to someone he thought was Brock. Brock by now was either unconscious or dead. Polaski did not notice anything suspicious except that Brock appeared to have forgotten his next Post."