"Good morning, sir," the sentry said.

"Good morning," Rodgers replied. "

"Wolverine."

That was Rodgers's personal password for the day. It was left on his Govnel e-mail pager the night before by Op Center internal security chief, Jenkin Wynne. If the password did not match what the guard had on his computer Rodgers would not have been allowed to enter.

"Thank you. sir," the guard said and saluted again. He pressed a button and the door clicked open. Rodgers entered.

There was a single elevator directly ahead. As Rodgers walked toward it he wondered how old the airman first class was. Twenty-two?

Twenty-three? A few months ago Rodgers would have given his rank, his experiences, everything he owned or knew to be back where this young sentry was.

Healthy and sharp, with all his options spread before him.

That was after Rodgers had disastrously field-tested the Regional Op-Center. The mobile, hi-tech facility had been seized in the Middle East. Rodgers and his personnel were imprisoned and tortured. Upon the team's release. Senator Barbara Fox and the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committee rethought the ROC program. The watchdog group felt that having a U. S. intelligence base working openly on foreign soil was provocative rather than a deterrent.

Because the ROC had been Rodgers's responsibility he felt as though he'd let Op-Center down. He also felt as though he had blown his last, best chance to gel back into the field.

Rodgers was wrong. The United States needed intelligence on the nuclear situation in Kashmir. Specifically, whether Pakistan had deployed warheads deep in the mountains of the region. Indian operatives could not go into the field. If the Pakistanis found them it might trigger the war the United States was hoping to avoid. An American unit would have some wiggle room. Especially if they could prove that they were bringing intelligence about Indian nuclear capabilities to Pakistan, intelligence that a National Security Agency liaison would be giving Rodgers in the town of Srinagar. Of course, the Indian military would not know he had that. It was all a big, dangerous game of three-card monte. All the dealer had to do was remember where all the cards were and never get busted.

Rodgers entered the small, brightly lit elevator and rode it to the basement level.

Op-Center-officially the National Crisis Management Center-was housed in a two-story building located near the Naval Reserve flight line.

During the Cold War the nondescript, ivory-colored building was a staging area for crack flight crews. In the event of a nuclear attack their job would have been to evacuate key officials from Washington, D.

C. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the downsizing of the air force's Nurrds-nuclear rapid-response divisions-the building was given to the newly commissioned NCMC.

The upstairs offices were for non classified operations such as news monitoring, finance, and human resources.

The basement was where Hood, Rodgers, Intelligence Chief Bob Herbert, and the rest of the intelligence-gathering and -processing personnel worked.