He dressed quickly, putting on climbing boots and pulling two hundred-foot lengths of nylon rope from a knapsack in the trailer's corner. Rope in hand, he looked down, brows knitted, at the small desk and telephone. Then he dropped the ropes on the bunk and sat in the chair to write a letter to his wife and son, in case he did not make it back. That took five minutes. He was still ahead of schedule, so he spent five more minutes carefully shaving, making sure every long bristle on his neck was scraped off: military clean. He brushed his teeth and combed his hair meticulously, glancing at the letter. Unhappy with the wording, he quickly recopied the message onto a fresh piece of paper, signed it, folded it into an envelope, and posted the envelope on his message board with address and instructions.

At four-thirty he descended the trailer steps and stood in the bitterly cold desert darkness, a steady wind dragging at his coat and pants legs. At the east end of the camp was Senator Julio Gilmonn's car, in a fenced-off square reserved for the munitions locker. Gilmonn himself stood with two aides, a handsome, stern-looking middle-aged black woman and a young white male, bulky and clean-cut, near the inner gate leading to the rock.

"Good morning," Rogers said as he approached. Gilmonn extinguished a cigarette after taking one last frowning, concentrated drag and shook Rogers's hand.

"There are still a few Forgers out there," the senator said, pointing to the outer-perimeter fence. "Have you made any plans for clearing them?"

Rogers nodded. "In fifteen minutes we'll set off a siren and announce an emergency situation. Nothing specific. Then we'll evacuate the camp through the corridor. If the Forgers haven't cleared out by then . . ."He shrugged. "The hell with them."

"That could alert the . . . bogey," the young aide said.

Rogers acknowledged that possibility. "It hasn't done anything for months that we know of," he said. "We'll just take the risk. There are about a thousand people out there now."

The woman regarded Rogers with an expression between severe doubt and motherly concern, but said nothing.

"Who else is involved?" Gilmonn asked.

"I'm having two of my staff officers help me carry the weapon to the entry. They'll evacuate at that point. And there's your expert, of course. Where is he?"

Gilmonn pointed to a figure walking through a spotlighted area a few dozen yards away. "He's coming now."