“If you would have listened to me a week ago, we might not have had the first blast and we probably wouldn’t be running for cover now. Someone’s gonna take the fall.”

When he received no response to his third charge, David turned back to the window.

“God help us,” he mumbled. “God help us all.”

OF THE nearly three hundred million people living in the United States of America, the only ones not awake and watching the real-time satellite picture of southern Florida were those fleeing southern Florida.

It was an event that shut down the world. The cities near Miami had been deserted, the hospitals had been evacuated, and the air space had been cleared. It was a looter’s paradise down there and nobody cared. Not even the looters. They were too busy trucking north.

The talking heads hosted an endless lineup of experts who stammered their way through hours of speculation. In the end, nobody looked good; nobody looked bad. They all pretty much looked desperate.

Someone in the White House had leaked the twenty-four-hour detail and every station now had a clock on-screen, ticking down the time from the last blast. Give or take a few seconds, the clocks now read one hour, thirty-eight minutes.

John Boy sat eating a sandwich in his home in Shady Side, watching NBC’s coverage of the nation’s meltdown, shaking his head. All seaports had been closed, but not before he’d lowered anchor in the bay. The terrorists had finally done it.

John Boy’s boat, Angel of the Sea, sat in silent waters, and if anybody had been listening with a highly specialized listening device, they might have heard the faint electronic ticking in the bowels of her hull. But nobody was listening to Angel of the Sea. Nobody was even thinking of her.

Except Abdullah, of course.

And Jamal.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

LOST IN the madness, barely aware of himself, Shannon came upon the bank where he’d left the woman.

The sun was dipping in the west. Ahead lay an endless sea of foliage, rolling and climbing and falling and plunging. And under it somewhere crept a single man running from him. The Arab Abdullah. It was madness. They both were mad.

But deep in his mind, beyond the madness, an image replayed itself in an endless loop, drawing Shannon forward despite it all. An image of a thick green lawn, and on the lawn his father. And beside his father, his mother. Father was cut in two; Mother’s head was missing. And in the machine hovering over them, Abdullah was grinning. And beside the Arab, a thousand men in brown suits, with plastic grins.

The miles passed underfoot steadily, with pounding monotony. But the thoughts were anything but monotonous—they were hell.