Seconds later, the order was carried out, and two halogen floodlights were extinguished over a section of pipes and hissing flow valves.
   “Now, move sniper five into that pocket of shadow,” instructed Teague, a forty-one year-old African American. His bald head and stern features reflected tension in the greenish glow from the screens.
   “Yes, sir,” responded the communications officer.
    Camouflaged to look like a utility shed complete with oil drums and discarded forklift pallets, the command center was in fact a customized semi-trailer full of enough computers and communications equipment to coordinate a full-scale military invasion. But the command center had a different purpose tonight. Tonight it was the brains of an operation designed to capture or kill the terrorist, Abu Nazer, when he attempted to assassinate Rolf Gerhard, CEO of the San Gabriel Industrial Fuel Depot.
   With his snipers in place, Teague had just walked to the front of the trailer for a sandwich when his cell phone rang. He checked the caller ID and lifted the phone to his ear.
   “You there yet?” he asked.

   “Almost…I think,” analyst Zoë Gustaves answered from an SUV eighty miles to the south. With spiked raven hair, half a dozen earrings and three tattoos, Zoë enjoyed being anachronistic, both to her conservative parents and the Washington establishment. Piercings and tattoos aside, she had been a straight-A psychology major at Columbia who spoke four languages and topped her class in marksmanship.
   With the headlights on high, Zoë slowed her vehicle and squinted at an address marker posted on a stretch of winding highway in the forested Rancho Santa Fe hills. On the seat beside her sat a laptop computer.
   “I still think you’re wasting your time,” Teague said, unwrapping a sandwich.
   “I know he’s involved. I can feel it,” said Zoë.

   “You’d better have something more than feelings for the FBI, I can tell you that right now.”
   “You did clear me to see the Senator though, right?”
   Teague did not reply.
   “Sir, you did clear me to see the Senator, didn’t you?” Zoë asked again.
   “Not exactly.”
   “What do you mean, not exactly?”
   “It means I tried but was reminded in no uncertain terms that kidnapping is not our turf.”
   “Did you tell them about Abu Nazer?”
   “Tell them what, exactly? Look Zoë, as much as I respect your gut instincts, the FBI does not want us snooping around. Not without some kind of hard evidence linking Abu Nazer to the disappearance of the Ashford kid.”
   “Her name’s Amy.”
   “And she’s thirteen years old, five-two, last seen wearing a plaid skirt and dark green blouse – yeah, I got it. Point is, without some kind of hard evidence linking Abu Nazer to Amy’s disappearance, they’re not going to let you through the door.”
   “Isn’t that why I’m making this trip? To ask questions? Look around?”
   “I’m not the one you need to convince. The Fibbies are. And they pretty much said what I’ve been telling you all along: we just paid Abu Nazer a million dollars to assassinate Gerhard, so that’s where his focus will be. In their minds, any attempt to connect him with the kidnapping is a waste of time.”
   “I think he’s playing us. I think his real aim in accepting the assignment was to get close to Amy.”
   “And you’ve got nothing to back that up.”
   “Then why didn’t Abu Nazer carry out the assignment last month when Gerhard was at their refinery in Venezuela?  Security down there’s a joke, so the job would have been a cakewalk. But no – he insists on carrying it out up here, in the heart of Homeland Security, where people like us can surround the place and wait for him. Why would he do that?”
   Teague started to reply, but Zoë cut him off.
   “I’ll tell you why!” she said. “To get even with the Senator for locating and freezing his financial assets. Think about it. Nancy Ashford’s estate is just ninety miles from the fuel depot. Amy goes missing the day before Abu Nazer’s supposed to assassinate Gerhard. He’s behind the kidnapping, I can feel it!”
   “How many times do I have to say this? You’ve got no proof. In fact, nothing in Abu Nazer’s profile even remotely suggests that he would be involved in a kidnapping. You, of all people, should know that. You wrote the thing!”
   “Like I said, Senator Ashford has been hitting him where it hurts – in the wallet. She got the Swiss to close down several of his accounts. She located his Asian assets and had them confiscated. Abu Nazer has got to be feeling the pinch. Which gives him motive for kidnapping Amy.”
   “It also gives him motive for wanting our million dollars. So I repeat, with Gerhard arriving here soon, this is where his focus will be.”
   “Then why hasn’t he accepted our payment?” asked Zoë, sliding her laptop toward her. “I’m online now and can see the money still sitting there in the account.”
   “Obviously because he hasn’t completed the job yet. And you sure as hell better not be driving a vehicle while reading a laptop!”
   “I think he knows it’s a trap. He knows we set the whole thing up.”
   “There’s no way Abu Nazer could know anything other than that a group of left-wing environmentalists hired him to assassinate an industrial polluter.”
   “I know he’s behind the kidnapping!”
    Teague noticed his assistant, April Delgado, waving a phone at him.
   “That possibility – however remote – is why you’re down there,” Teague told Zoë. “But you sure as hell better come up with something more convincing than what you’ve been telling me. Wayne Hall’s in charge, and he’s not exactly the warm-and-fuzzy type.”
   “How can I give them evidence before I’ve had a chance to look for it?”
   “I’m just telling you the way it is.” To April: “Who is it?”
   “Congresswoman Gustaves. She wants to know how Zoë is doing.”
   “Tell her we’re in the middle of an operation!” To Zoë: “Like I said—”
   “Come on, sir! We both know Abu Nazer doesn’t leave breadcrumbs lying around. He’s like a phantom, a ghost. Sure, I’ve compiled the only profile anyone has on him; but all we have are patterns of behavior. That’s why I need to be making this trip – to sniff around, ask questions, look for clues.”
   “And I’ll say it again, the Fibbies are not going to let you through the door without proof of Abu Nazer’s involvement.”
   “Which I can’t give them without knowing what happened!”
   Three workstations away from Teague, a technician named Tony Cooke noticed a triangular blinking dot on the right side of his radar screen. His eyes locked onto the flight number: XXX-00. In other words, the aircraft had no registered flight number and Air Traffic Control did not know who it was. Tony angled his microphone nearer to his mouth.
   “COMRAD to Team Leader,” he said quietly.
   “Go ahead, COMRAD,” Team Leader replied.
   “We have an unidentified airspace intrusion at forty-two degrees east. Can you get me a visual?”
   High on a darkened catwalk rimming one of the depot’s massive LPG tanks, Team Leader trained his electronic binoculars on the eastern horizon. A numerical reading along the bottom indicated the directional bearing, based on the user’s global position.
   “I see a low-altitude point of light at forty-one-point-seven degrees east,” he replied. “It appears stationary, so it’s heading toward us, but it’s still too far away to tell whether it’s fixed wing or rotor.”
   “Stand by,” Tony answered.
   Knowing that military, commercial, and private aircraft were being diverted around the depot’s airspace, Tony entered some commands that accessed the Air Traffic Control database, where he saw flight XXX-00 blinking in relative position to all other flights in and around Los Angeles. He beckoned to Teague.
   “What is it?” asked Teague.
   “We’ve got an unidentified aircraft moving toward us from the east,” Cooke replied.
   “Did you check with Air Traffic Control?”
   “Yes, sir. Their database confirmed everything’s being diverted. Nothing should be entering our airspace.”
   “ETA?” asked Teague.
   Tony clicked an icon, calculating air speed.
   “Eleven minutes,” he answered.
   Teague glanced at the clock on the wall. Gerhard was due here in twelve.
   “Sir, if Abu Nazer’s launching an air strike, one missile is all it would take to detonate the depot’s fuel tanks.”
   When Tony made that statement, all breathing in the command center seemed to stop. Anxious eyes focused on Teague, whose attention was on XXX-00 moving slowly across the screen.
   “April, get General Ramsey on the line,” Teague said, tossing his sandwich in the trashcan. He lifted his cell phone to his ear. “We’re in crisis, I gotta go.”
   “An air strike by Abu Nazer?” Zoë asked, having overheard the conversation.
   “Possibly. Our airspace has been penetrated, but it’s too early yet to determine who it is.”
   “Want me to head back? If I push it, I can be there in an hour.”
   “Aren’t you nearly at the estate?”
   “Five minutes, give or take.”
   “Follow that through and find out what you can. I can’t ignore the possibility that Abu Nazer may be involved.”
   Teague ended the call and looked again at the bogey blinking on the monitor. Nine minutes and counting.
   “Sir, General Ramsey’s on the line,” April said from the other end of the command center.
   “Okay, people, we are taking this to active status!” Teague called out. He reached April’s desk and she handed him the receiver.
   “General Ramsey, this is Jackson Teague.”
   Teague’s conversation with the general took fifteen seconds. Twelve seconds later, claxons were sounding at Edwards Air Force Base, seventy-five miles to the north.
   “Go, go, go! This is not a drill!” shouted Colonel Susan Chapman, wing commander of the 95th Tactical Air Defense Squadron. Eight pilots sprinted past her, flight helmets in hand.
   Crossing the darkened tarmac toward their waiting F-15 Eagles, several of the pilots glanced at the galactic glow of Los Angeles illuminating the western horizon.
   This is not a drill, the colonel had said. Did that mean one of them would be shooting Abu Nazer out of the sky? Who wouldn’t like the honor of vaporizing that bastard? Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, the U.S.S. Cole – Abu Nazer had been linked with those and a host of other atrocities requiring skills he both possessed and offered for hire.
   But to shoot him down over Los Angeles? The thought made each of them shudder.
   And yet there may be no other choice. For Abu Nazer could, at this very moment, be flying a plane directly toward the San Gabriel Industrial Fuel Depot.
   Because their squadron had been placed on standby alert earlier that day, the F-15s were already fueled and armed with Sparrow, Sidewinder, and Python air-to-air missiles.
   The pilots climbed into the cockpits, strapped themselves in and began flipping switches, bringing an array of instruments to life. Ninety seconds later, the high desert reverberated as the squadron of Eagles pulled onto the taxiway in a staggered single file column, their powerful twin engines lighting the night with ferocious, fiery eyes.
   “Sir, we are ready and holding,” Chapman told Ramsey over the phone.
   “Your green light is confirmed, Colonel. Get ’em in the air!”
   The order was relayed and the first jet pulled onto the runway, the point of its nose aimed between the parallel rows of white lights stretching into the darkness.
   Suddenly, two cones of fire thundered out of the F-15’s engines, and 47,000 pounds of thrust catapulted the jet forward, vibrating the concrete beneath it. The Eagle climbed steeply upward and banked to the west, just as the next jet pulled onto the runway.
   In the Rancho Santa Fe hills to the south, Zoë slowed her vehicle. Up ahead loomed the adobe wall of Senator Ashford’s estate.
   At the gate, Zoë was stopped by a team of agents. One of them inspected her ID, then waved her through.
   Zoë steered her SUV along a manicured gravel lane, curving its way through a grove of well-tended orange trees.
   “Probably writes the whole thing off as an agricultural enterprise,” she muttered.
   Fifteen seconds later, the lights of a house came into view.
   Senator Ashford’s lavish hacienda was alive with activity, and Zoë had trouble finding a place to park among the marked and unmarked police cars and government Suburbans. Teams of agents wearing FBI jackets patrolled the grassy lawns, while near the front walk, several uniformed officers stood chatting quietly.
   Zoë squeezed her SUV between two of the Suburbans, then climbed out and made her way toward the house.
   “Man, the Feds get all the hot ones,” one of the policemen remarked, eliciting grunts of agreement from the others.
   They watched her climb the flagstone steps onto the covered verandah. Subdued lights complimented lanky trails of magenta bougainvillea, giving the home a welcoming feel.
   Special agent Wayne Hall pulled open the front door, truncating that feeling.
   “So you’re Gustaves,” he stated rather than asked, his akimbo stance filling the doorway.
   “And you must be Hall.”
   Zoë and Hall exchanged unflinching stares.
   “What can I do for you?” asked Hall.
   “I’m here about the Senator’s daughter,” replied Zoë.
   “Why is that? Kidnapping isn’t your turf.”
   “It is if Abu Nazer’s involved.”
   Hall’s eyes narrowed. “Are you saying he’s responsible?”
   “That’s what I’m here to find out.”
   An agent named Bill suddenly touched Hall on the shoulder.
   “A tactical defense squadron’s been scrambled out of Edwards,” the agent murmured.
   “What for?” asked Hall.
   “An unidentified aircraft just entered restricted airspace around the San Gabriel Industrial Fuel Depot.”
   “The alarm’s ours,” said Zoë. “We’ve got an operation going on.”
   “I know,” said Hall. “Which makes me question why you think Abu Nazer’s involved in a kidnapping when he’s supposed to be assassinating your target.”
   “Proximity, timing, and the fact that Senator Ashford has been after him like a bloodhound.”
   “In other words, you’ve got no evidence.”
   “I just gave you evidence.”
   “You gave me conjecture.”
   “It’s evidence when it comes to Abu Nazer. I should know. I wrote his profile.”
   “Spare me the infomercial. Without some kind of proof that he’s responsible, I’m not letting you upset the Senator any more than she already is.”
   “I can’t give you proof if I don’t know what happened. Five minutes, that’s all I ask.”
   “No way.”
   “Then at least allow me to read your reports.”
   “Like I said, this isn’t your turf.”
   “Who cares about turf? We’re talking about Abu Nazer here!”
   “Bill, please escort Agent Gustaves to her car.”
   With a roar of frustration, Zoë whirled away, just as a FedEx delivery truck skidded to a stop. The driver jumped out and passed Zoë on the steps.
   “What have you got?” asked Hall.
   “A package for Senator Ashford.”
   “I’ll take it.”
   “Not without a signature.”
   Hall grabbed the clipboard, scribbled a signature, then exchanged it for the package, which he handed to Bill.
   Zoë watched Bill take the package to a black van. Meanwhile, the FedEx driver dashed back to his truck, jumped in, and sped back down the lane.
   Climbing into her SUV, Zoë opened her laptop and accessed the Agency intranet.  She checked her inbox and saw an e-mail from an informant named Toy Soldier. She read the message, then dialed Teague.
   “Gerhard’s limo just pulled off the 710,” the communications officer was saying when Teague’s cell phone rang.
   “Is our blackout still in effect?” asked Teague.
   “Yes, sir, but I don’t know how long it’ll hold. Sooner or later we’re going to have to start answering questions.”
   Teague put the phone to his ear. “What’s up?”
   “Have you seen the latest e-mail from Toy Soldier?” asked Zoë.
   “I’m kind of busy right now.”
   “He says Abu Nazer wants information on an ancient Egyptian tablet, and that someone named Tariq Yassin will be delivering it to him tomorrow in Saudi Arabia.”
   “Saudi Arabia? Abu Nazer can’t be in two places at once!”
   “No kidding.”
   “Maybe the meeting’s with one of Abu Nazer’s confederates. Toy Soldier didn’t say the meeting was actually with Abu Nazer, did he? Only that information on this tablet will be delivered to him there.”
   “I guess you could take it either way.”
   Teague stopped and looked again at XXX-00 blinking its way across the screen. “Hang on a sec,” he said, lowering his cell phone. He picked up the red receiver that was the live connection with the wing commander at Edwards. “Colonel, how soon ‘til your squadron gets a visual on that inbound?”
   The Eagles were thundering across greater Los Angeles when the question was radioed to the squadron leader. Sitting in the glow of his cockpit instrument panels, he checked the digital map on his screen and saw XXX-00 in relation to their rapidly approaching formation.
   “Thirty-five seconds,” he replied.
   Chapman relayed the information to Teague.
   High on his darkened catwalk, the CIA sniper team had their binoculars trained on the inbound blinking light.
   “No wing lights, must be a chopper,” Team Leader said to the others.
   “I’ve got him in my sights,” one of the snipers replied, his black cap on backwards as he peered through the powerful scope on his rifle.
   “Keep him there,” Team Leader replied.
   He notified Teague, whose eyes were darting from the radar screen to the various other monitors.
   “I need to go,” said Teague.
   “One more thing,” said Zoë. “Toy Soldier said Abu Nazer’s been collecting information on a journalist named Rutherford Tyler. Isn’t he the guy who interviews celebrities, kind of like Oprah?”
   “He interviews a lot of people.”
   “Why would Abu Nazer want information on Tyler?”
   The communications officer waved to Teague.
   “Later, I gotta go,” said Teague. He ended the call and stepped over to the communication officer’s desk. “What have you got?” he asked.
   “Team Leader reports a visual on a helicopter,” she said.
   “Get Colonel Chapman on the line.”
   At that moment, the pilot of the helicopter pointed toward the giant LPG tanks up ahead. Most were illuminated. A few were not.
   “Everything looks peaceful,” he said into his microphone. “I’ll circle around and come in from the rear.”
   Back at the Ashford estate, Zoë heard a door slam. She turned and saw Bill step away from the van and meet Hall on the gravel, near the steps.
   “This is what x-ray showed,” Bill said, handing a cell phone to Hall. “There’s also a note.”
   “What’s it say?” asked Hall.
   “It’s from the kidnappers. They’ve instructed the Senator to wait for their call. They promise that if she does exactly what they say, her daughter will not be harmed.”
   “What time are they going to call?”
   “Ten-twenty.”
   Hall checked his watch. “It’s ten-fifteen!”
   Eighty miles to the north, Rolf Gerhard’s limousine slowed as it approached the candy-striped boom lowered across the entrance to the fuel depot. In case approaching drivers didn’t quite get the message, an oversized stop sign had been bolted to the boom. Less obvious were two rows of retractable metal teeth angling out of the concrete below.
   Teague knew that attention to the smallest detail could make or break an operation. Hence, although he preferred to have one of his agents manning the guardhouse, he decided against it in case Abu Nazer had been studying the depot’s operational patterns. Thus, when Gerhard’s limousine stopped in front of the boom, it was the regular security officer who ambled out of the small cubicle and over to the driver’s window, clipboard in hand, cap hiked back on his head. The only difference was the thin Kevlar vest he was wearing beneath his uniform.
   In the distance, the thumping of a helicopter rotor was becoming audible.
   “I see…Holy shit!” the helicopter pilot exclaimed as four jets boomed past. “I knew we shouldn’t be doing this.”
   “Maintain current heading,” crackled the radio.
   “Are you crazy? Those jets were fully loaded, and I can see them circling back around. Get on the phone! Tell them who we are!”
   “They won’t do anything. Get down there and do your job.”
   “In about fifteen seconds, those Sidewinders will be pointed at my ass, not yours, so get on the goddamn phone!”
   Inside the fenced compound below, Gerhard’s limousine passed beneath a bridge of pipes, then followed the access road between two of the earthen dikes surrounding the massive tanks. The limo entered a small parking area, made a slow, wide circle on the oily gravel, and stopped near the command center.
   “Eagle One to Base,” the squadron leader reported into his microphone. “I have a visual on what appears to be a news crew.”
   “Come again?” asked Chapman.
   “A news crew,” repeated the squadron leader. “We’ll circle around and make another pass.”
   “Copy that,” answered Chapman.
   High on the catwalk, Team Leader watched the helicopter circle wide.
   “You see what I see?” one of the snipers asked, lifting her head away from the scope.
   “It’s a news crew!” Team Leader replied, spotting the station’s logo painted clearly on the side of the aircraft. He lowered his binoculars and relayed the information to Teague.
   “News crew?” shouted Teague. “I thought we threw a blackout over this!”
   “We did,” replied the communications officer.
   “Get them on the phone!”
   Overhead, the jets thundered past.
   Seconds later, the station manager was on the line.
   Teague grabbed, demanding answers.
   “Of course the chopper’s ours,” bleated the station manager. “We’ve been trying to get hold of the military to let them know who we are!”
   “You’re violating restricted air space!”
   “Hey, we understood this to be a general re-routing for commercial and private aircraft. No one said Tactical Air Defense was involved.”
   “That’s need-to-know. Why are you here?”
   “We got an anonymous e-mail informing us that the CIA was trying to cover up what happened at tank seven.”
   “Tank seven?” repeated Teague, motioning for someone to follow that up. “Did your informant say what he meant?”
   “Only that we should be there with a camera crew at ten-twenty. The e-mail arrived just minutes ago, which is why we sent a chopper.”
   “Get it out of here!”
   “Not with a story like this!”
   Teague responded with a threat of legal action should the news crew persist. The station manager answered that he would see Teague in court, adding how a string of editorials about the illegality of CIA operations on U.S. soil was sure to make interesting viewing.
   Teague slammed down the phone.
   “Call Chapman. Have the jets return to base.”
   “Do you want Gerhard’s stand-in to get out of the limo?” asked the communications officer.
   “No! Keep him there until we find out what’s going on at tank seven.”
   “Unit four is investigating now.”
   Rubbing his forehead, Teague paced back and forth.
   “Awaiting your orders,” Team Leader said.
   “Maintain positions,” answered Teague.
   A news blackout and yet someone tips them off. But who?
   A bizarre thought popped into his mind.
   Could Abu Nazer have alerted the media?
   “What’s the status of our million dollars?” he asked.
   “Still there,” said Cooke.
   Above tank seven, the helicopter circled in close.
   The cameraman flipped a switch and a powerful floodlight illuminated the weedless brown earth surrounding the tank.
   “My God,” the pilot exclaimed. The camera began to roll.
   Below, a team of six snipers advanced into the wash of light, sweeping their weapons back and forth as they secured the area.
   Walking slowly over to the tank, Team Leader lowered his rifle. On the oily ground in front of him was the twisted body of a girl. She had been shot once in the forehead. Her clothing was soaked with blood.
   He looked up. Spray-painted on the side of tank seven were these words: Nice try. Don’t fuck with me again.
   “Chief!” one of the agents called out. “There’s a hole cut here in the fence.”
   Team Leader nodded absently. With the TV helicopter hovering overhead, he brought his wrist mike to his mouth.
   Teague listened to the report, then closed his eyes. How in the hell did Abu Nazer manage to penetrate the compound with the body of a girl?
   “What do you want us to do?” Team Leader asked.
   “Maintain perimeter until—”
   Teague’s eyes suddenly flew open.
   “Give me a description of the girl,” he said.
   “Dishwater blond. Thirteen or fourteen.”
   “What’s she got on?”
   “Looks like a school uniform of some kind. Plaid skirt, dark green blouse...”
   “Son of a bitch!” exclaimed Teague, pulling out his cell phone.
   Zoë was nearly to the main road when her cell phone rang.
   “Gustaves,” she answered.
   “Where are you?” asked Teague.
   “Just leaving.”
   “I need to know what you found out.”
   “Zip,” said Zoë, hitting the brakes. “They wouldn’t let me in.”
   “I think you were right,” said Teague.
   “About what?”
   “About Abu Nazer being behind the kidnapping. We discovered the body of a girl near one of the tanks. Thirteen or fourteen, plaid skirt, dark green blouse.”
   Zoë stared out the windshield. Gravel dust floated through the vehicle’s high beams.
   “Abu Nazer must have found out about our trap and alerted the media,” Teague continued. “He killed the girl to taunt us, and wanted the media to see her body. See the message he painted on the tank.”
   “What message?”
   “‘Nice try. Don’t fuck with me again.’ He told the news crew to be here at ten-twenty with a camera.”
   “Ten-twenty?” asked Zoë, her eyes on the glowing numbers of the dashboard clock.
   “That’s what the station manager said.”
   “FedEx just delivered a package to the Senator. I overheard the FBI saying it contained a cell phone and a note instructing her to wait for a call at ten-twenty.”
   “Obviously he wanted to call her and gloat,” said Teague.
   “And allow the FBI to record his voice? Abu Nazer would never do that.”
   With the engine idling, Zoë stared intently off into the darkness.
   “My God, that’s it!” she exclaimed, jamming the gear stick into reverse and hitting the gas. Her tires sprayed gravel as the vehicle careered backward up the lane.
   “What are you talking about?” said Teague.
   “The kidnapping was his way of drawing Senator Ashford into the open!”
   “She’s hardly in the open,” said Teague. “The FBI must have turned her estate into a fortress.”
   “Which Abu Nazer just penetrated with a cell phone! That means at ten-twenty, Senator Ashford will be waiting for what she thinks is the kidnapper’s call.”
   Inside the house, a titian-haired Senator Ashford was nervously wringing her hands as she stared at the cell phone on the coffee table. If only she had not allowed Amy to remain in California to attend school. If only she had taken her back to Washington.
   “It’s ten-twenty,” one of the agents said quietly.
   Senator Ashford watched Hall and half a dozen agents gather around the phone. Plugged into one of the instrument’s tiny sockets was a wire that ran to a portable console and recorder.
   “We’re ready for the trace,” said a technician.
   Outside, Zoë’s SUV skidded to a stop. She jumped out and sprinted toward the hacienda.
   “Everybody out, it’s a bomb!” she shouted.
   “Isn’t that the Agency chick who was just here?” one of the agents by the front door asked.
   “What’s she yelling?” the other agent asked, his hand drifting instinctively toward his pistol.
   Racing between two of the parked Suburbans, Zoë shouted her warning again.
   “Did she say bomb?”
   The agents spun toward the door.
   The white flash occurred milliseconds before a massive detonation shook the hacienda. Windows shattered. The front door splintered. Roof tiles exploded high into the night sky. A thunderous fireball followed, then a blizzard of ash.
   Teague waited anxiously, phone to his ear, hearing Zoë’s shouts as she ran toward the house.
  He heard the blast, followed by static.
   Then silence.
   “Zoë?” shouted Teague. “Are you okay?”
   No answer.
   “Zoë? Zoë!”