Slowing in the long shadow of an office building, Sadov checked his watch. In mere minutes, he thought, the policemen would have their hands full of things to do. Whatever the final number of casualties in the bombings, this night would be remembered ten centuries later, as the world turned toward yet another new millennium, and common minds filled with dread of things to come, and the leaders of nations yet unborn wondered what sins might have inspired such awesome rage.

11:51 P.M.

On loan from the FAA at the police commissioner’s personal request, the bomb detection team had brought two of their best dogs to the scene. Fay, whose name was an obvious homage to her organizational keepers, was a five-year-old black Labrador that had sniffed out suitcase bombs at Kennedy International Airport four times in the past two years. Hershey, a Doberman retriever, had used his phenomenally sensitive nose to set off a red light at the Republican Convention the previous summer, preventing a catastrophic explosion by alerting security personnel to a chunk of A-3 plastic that had been concealed in a vase of flowers on the speaker’s platform. Though generally regarded as the smartest dog on the team, Hershey’s greatest weakness was a tendency to be sidetracked by the smell of chocolate ... hence, the origin of his name.

Agent Mark Gilmore had been with the FAA’s civil security branch for a dozen years, and had been a canine handler almost half that long. He loved the dogs and knew their outstanding capabilities, but was also highly sensitive to their limitations. And from the outset, he had been concerned that his current assignment just wasn’t doable.

The bomb dogs were most effective at searching relatively closed-in areas, or at least areas in which distractions could be kept to a minimum, such as jetliner cabins, airport baggage holds, hotel rooms, and, as in the case of the Republican convention, empty auditoriums. The more sensory input they were hit with, the greater the chance they would be fooled or simply wander off track. Large spaces with open access and lots of hubbub diminished their ability to fix on the minute olfactory traces of explosive chemicals. Times Square on a normal night would be tricky; tonight, when it seemed like a cross between a mosh pit and the Mardi gras, it would be overwhelming—a hectic, blaring jumble of sights, sounds, and odors.

Basic movement was another difficulty. Earlier in the night, when the crowd was much thinner, the dogs still had had some roving room. Now, however, the crush was all but impenetrable and they were getting stressed. Which meant keeping them on a short leash, and narrowing their range to cordoned-off peripheries, like the restricted zone around the VIP stand.