Several years before, the senator had lost her own teenage daughter in a brutal murder in Paris. Hood had expected her to respond with compassion and to give her support to the personnel who were still in the field.

She did not. The senator was furious.

"Op-Center took too much responsibility in this operation," the woman charged.

"The other intelligence agencies should have been involved to a much greater extent." "Senator, I told the CIOC that we have a crisis requiring immediate attention," Hood said.

"I said we were involving the NRO and the NSA to the extent that time and onsite manpower permitted. You did not object to our handling of this at that time."

"You did not outline the specifics of the danger," she replied, "only the gravity of the threat."

"We did not know the specifics until we were in the middle of this,"

Hood pointed out.

"Which is exactly my point," she replied.

"You sent resources into this situation without adequate intelligence.

And I mean that in every sense of the word, Mr. Hood."

The interoffice line beeped again.

"Do you want me to pull the remaining assets out?" Hood asked the senator. Hell, he thought. If she was going to criticize his judgment he might as well leave the rest of the mission in her hands.

"Is there another way of resolving the crisis?" she asked.

"Not that we've come up with," Hood replied.

"Then unfortunately we are married to the scenario you've mapped out," the senator said.

Of course. Hood thought. It was now a no-lose situation for the politician. If it worked she would grab the credit for involving the CIOC at this juncture, for saving the lives of the rest of the Strikers as well as countless Indians and Pakistanis.

If the mission failed Hood would take the full hit.

This was not the first crisis the two had been through together.

But it was the first one of this magnitude and with this high a price tag. Hood was disappointed that she was looking for a scapegoat instead of a solution.

Or maybe he was the one looking for someone to blame, he thought. What if the senator was right? What if he had fast-tracked this operation simply because Striker was enroute and it seemed relatively risk-free at the onset? Maybe Hood should have pulled the plug when he learned how risky the jump itself would be. Maybe he had let himself become a prisoner to the ticking clock he feared instead of the things he knew for certain.

The interoffice line beeped a third time.

Years before. Chad Malcolm, the retiring mayor of Los Angeles, gave Hood some of the best advice he had ever received. Malcolm had said that what any good leader did was take information in, process it, and still react with his gut.

"Just like the human body," the mayor had said.