The silence was like a cloud in the room, a mist that veiled everything but the lack of response from the admiral. Eventually he spoke quietly, his eyes still locked on Lana’s picture, “How do we kill them?”

The colonel looked at Neal, who nodded, clearly still holding his breath. The colonel spoke, “Well, Admiral, first we have to break their key defenses. We have to destroy the satellites which they have orbiting above us. Once they are destroyed, we can start arming ourselves with the tools we will need to attack the Agents.”

The admiral nodded, “I hope, gentlemen, that you have not brought me here and thoroughly ruined my day without also having a plan for how to accomplish that.”

He turned to Neal, and he was an admiral once more. An air of confidence and leadership rising up, his spine regaining its steel like rigidity that all military leaders learn from long experience.

Almost consoled, this now left Neal and Barrett with the decision about how much of their plan to reveal to the admiral at this first meeting. Should they reveal the full insanity of their plan, with all its diplomatically and physically explosive parts? Neal thought a moment, holding the admiral’s stare, like a child thinking whether to ask for a kitten or a pony.

“Actually, Admiral, it is precisely because we have a plan that we approached you in the first place. Tell me, sir, how much do you know about the workings of the GBMD system?”

Yup, might as well go for the pony.

* * *

Shahim did not take notice of either the arrival or departure of the heavily disguised colonel and admiral through the basement entrance of the building next to Neal’s. The neighbors, and countless others that came and went on the street, were ancillary to his interests. He sat perfectly still in an apartment across the street, his face just visible in the second-floor window. He watched Neal’s house.

Knowing how much harder it would be to monitor the entrance to the Pentagon up close and personal, he had decided to watch Neal’s house instead, to get an idea of the man’s patterns of movement. Once he knew when his target typically went to work, he could follow him to work and then focus on studying the exact entrance the man used. After that he could plan his attack around that.

But as the days passed, Shahim watched his prey and he saw that something was not quite right. Neal Danielson would come home from the Pentagon or the White House, typically around 7pm. Then he would disappear for at least a couple of hours, sometimes longer. The day before he had not even gone to work, and yet Shahim had not seen Neal through any of the windows all day.