Automatic gunfire erupted outside, and, with a piercing crack, a frame charge ripped a large hole in the flimsy side of the trailer. Tear gas canisters rolled inside and filled the room with unbearable fumes.

Despite the near blindness and the fire in his lungs, Middleton lunged for Jana. Her hands were cuffed but her feet weren’t shackled and, though she was as impaired as the rest of them by the CS gas, she’d noted exactly where the rent in the trailer wall was before the cloud filled the room. She stumbled to it and flung herself out—into the waiting arms of the rescue party.

The band of insurgents loyal to Archer, unaware of Jana’s betrayal, laid down covering fire as they retreated.

Middleton and Barrett-Bone struggled outside, crawling from cover to cover. More tear gas clouds were rising and none of the Indian or SAS troops knew what was going on.

Middleton finally spotted a group of a dozen people vanish into a clearing, where a helicopter was waiting. He didn’t see Jana, but he knew this had to be the raiding party; as one man stepped through a band of sun, Middleton saw a golden flash off his wrist.

Its source, he knew, was a copper bracelet.

What was about to happen had been a long, long time coming.

This was the thought in the mind of the slim woman walking down the busy street of an overcast London. Autumn wind swirled grit and papers and crisp leaves around her.

At a street corner she paused and pulled her overcoat more tightly around her. She oriented herself and spotted her destination: the Tufnell Park mosque.

Someone jostled the briefcase she carried, but Jana Grover kept a firm grip on it. No enemy knew she was here—it was just a teenage girl obliviously on a mobile—but had a mugger tried to take the case from her, she would have killed him in an instant.

Yes, the briefcase was that important.

Indeed, its contents were the centerpiece of Devras Sikari’s ultimate plan.

She glanced down at the street and saw the faded white-painted message “Look Right.” A warning to pedestrians that traffic could come barreling along from an unexpected direction.

This amused her a great deal. The light changed and she started across the street, toward the mosque.

Trying to imagine the consequences of what was about to happen.

Monumental.

Dodging the stream of pedestrians. Some were Anglo: girls and boys in school uniforms or hoodies, delivery people, stiffly dressed businessmen, solid women navigating shabby perambulators. Mostly, though, Arabs, Iranians, Pakis . . . A few Sikhs and Indians, too.

London, what a melting pot.

Jana was wearing Western clothing, but pants. Also, of course, a head scarf. She had to blend in.

And she thought again: a long time coming.