“Father,” Two cried as soon as the door opened onto the residential floor. She came running out of the schoolroom, a swan of a girl, absolutely human, deeply human, glowing. Behind her, One, with his heightened battlefield instincts said, “What’s wrong, Father?”

Tom did not cry. He could not allow himself any such emotion.

He took Two’s heart of a face in his hands. “I’m just working very hard. Nothing is wrong.”

As he hurried on down the hall, he heard One say to her, “That would be false.”

Tom had an ultrasecure phone system installed here, with a direct encrypted line to Emma’s lab. Her husband had been with him from the beginning, chosen not because of his undistinguished army career, but because of his wife’s stunning record at Stanford.

“Emma, big trouble this end. I need to know if Gen Three can break its programming.”

“Are you sending them into combat? At last?”

For months now, she’d wanted them put to use. Just the six of them would certainly be able to find Osama bin Laden and take the war on terror right into Al Qaeda’s spider hole, no question about that whatsoever.

“Emma, I won’t lie to you.”

“Don’t.”

“No. The committee has ordered them destroyed.”

Silence. Then a barked laugh. “They’re indestructible!”

“Will they resist?”

“Well, of course they—” Then she was silent. The silence extended. Finally she continued, “No, not if they’re so ordered by constituted authority.”

“Emma, I want you to help me with One and Two. I can’t just do this to them.”

“Hell, let’s save all of them. ‘The committee has ordered them destroyed.’ Screw that bunch of worthless sheep.”

Emma might be a scientist of the first order, but she was a soldier scientist. She understood what a soldier was, right down to his quivering, vulnerable core.

In the end, they built an inch-thick steel containment and took it on a specialty naval vessel to the Challenger Deep in the Marianas. On the voyage, the threes worked on the math of naval combat and determined that the U.S. navy could control the airspace of the entire planet with carriers on just three crucial points around the globe.

When the day came for them to enter the containment, there was no need to sedate anybody. However, as it sank, a deep booming began from inside, and continued, and could be heard even after the waves had closed over it. Heard, but only for a time.

Still pounding, they disappeared into the abyssal deep.

The hell with the ship. He was sick of it. He was sick of life and of the world. He flew back. He’d already got Emma to take One and had given Two to a trusted CIA ally, Jim Lyndon, who had been CIA committee liaison and regarded the senators as fools.