James Patterson: London Bridges

I hung up the phone, then let out the sigh I'd been holding in. I was blowing it again, wasn't I? Hell, yes, I was. Why would I do such a thing?

I went downstairs and ate a double-size piece of corn bread that Nana had made for the next day. It didn't help, just made me feel even worse, guilty about my eating habits. I sat on a kitchen chair with Rosie the cat in my lap, stroking her.

"You like me, right? Don't you, Rosie? I'm kind of a nice guy?"

The phone calls weren't over for the night. Just past midnight I received a call from one of the agents I'd worked with out in Nevada. Fred Wade had something he thought I might find interesting. "We just got this from Fallon," he told me. "Receptionist in a Best Inn there was raped and murdered two nights ago. Her body was left in the brush near the motel parking lot. Like we were supposed to find it. We got a description of a guest who could be your Colonel Shafer. Needless to say, he's long gone from Fallon."

Your Colonel Shafer. That said it all, didn't it? He's long gone from Fallon. Of course he was.

I didn't sleep much that night. I think I had awful nightmares about the Weasel. And about the holocaust in Sunrise Valley, Nevada.

Early the next morning I had to sign permission slips so the kids could go on a field trip to the National Aquarium in Baltimore. I signed the slips at four-thirty before they were up and while the house was still dark, then I had to sneak off to work. I didn't get to say good-bye, and I don't like that, but I left love notes for Jannie and Damon. Such a nice pops, right?

I drove to work with Alicia Keys and Calvin Richardson on the CD, good company for the trip and whatever lay ahead.

These days, Major Threats was being run out of FBI headquarters in D.C. Since 9/11, the Bureau had shifted dramatically-from what some people felt was a reactive, investigative organization to a much more proactive and effective one. A recent addition, a $6 million software package at the Hoover Building, included a 40-million-page terrorism database dating back to the '93 bombing of the World Trade Center.

We had a blizzard of information; now it was time to see if any of it was worth a damn.

About a dozen of us met on the subject of Sunrise Valley that morning in the Strategic Information and Operations Center command on the fifth floor. The obliteration of the small town had been listed as a "major threat," even though we had no way to tell whether it was. So far, we didn't have a single clue as to what Sunrise Valley was really about.

There still hadn't been any contact with the bombers, not a word from them.

Surreal. And probably scarier than if we had heard from them.

This particular conference room was one of the jazzier and more comfortable ones: lots of blue leather armchairs, a dark wooden table, wine-colored rug. Two flags-an American and a DOJ-lots of crisp white shirts and striped ties around the table.

I had on jeans and a navy windbreaker that read,FBI TERRORISM TASK FORCE. And I felt that I was the only one dressed correctly for the day. This case sure wasn't going to be business as usual.

The room was loaded with heavy hitters, though. The highest-ranking person was Burt Manning, one of the five executive assistant directors at the Bureau. Also present were senior agents from the National Joint Terrorism Task Force, as well as the top analyst from the new Office of Intelligence, which combined experts from the Bureau and the CIA.

My partner for the morning was Monnie Donnelley, a superior analyst and a good friend from my time at Quantico.

"I see you got your personal invitation," I said as I sat down beside Monnie. "Welcome to the party."

"Oh, I wouldn't miss this. It's like sci-fi, or something. It's so weird, Alex."

"Yeah, it's all of that."

On the screen at the front of the room was the special agent in charge from the Las Vegas field office. The SAC was reporting in about the mobile crime lab that had been set up inside the town limits of what had been Sunrise Valley. She didn't have much new, though, and the meeting quickly moved on to threat assessment.

This was where everything got a lot more interesting.

First, there was a discussion of domestic terrorist groups such as the National Alliance and the Aryan Nations. But nobody really believed those simpletons could be responsible for something as well planned as this. Next up was the latest on al Qaeda and Hezbollah, the radical jihad movement. These groups received a solid couple of hours of heated discussion. They were definitely suspects. Then formal assignments were given out by Manning.

I didn't get an assignment, which made me wonder if I would be hearing from Director Burns soon. I didn't particularly want to hear from him on this one. I didn't want to travel out of Washington again, especially back to Nevada.

And then it got really wild.

Every pager in the conference room went off simultaneously!

Within seconds, everybody had checked his pager, myself included. For the past several months all terror threats got flashed to senior agents, whether it was a suspicious package on a New York subway or an anthrax threat in L.A.

The message on my pager read:

TWO SURFACE-TO-AIR MISSILES MISSING AT KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE IN ALBUQUERQUE.

CONNECTION TO SUNRISE VALLEY SITUATION BEING INVESTIGATED.

WILL KEEP INFORMED.

No rest for the righteous, read a placard on the wall near the canteen and soda machines. At 5:50 that night, we were called back to the conference room on the fifth floor. The same august group as before. Some of us were guessing that the Bureau had finally been contacted by whoever was responsible for the bombing of Sunrise Valley. Others thought this might have to do with the missile thefts from Kirtland.

A few minutes later, half a dozen agents from the CIA arrived. All in suits with briefcases. Uh-oh. Then came half a dozen hitters from Homeland Security. Things were definitely getting more serious now.

"This is getting hinky," Monnie Donnelley whispered to me. "It's one thing to talk the talk about interagency cooperation. But the CIA is really here."

I smiled over at Monnie. "You're sure in a good mood."

She shrugged. "As General Patton used to say about the battlefield, 'God help me, I do love it so!'"

Director Burns entered the room precisely at six. He walked in with Thomas Weir, the head of the CIA, and Stephen Bowen from Homeland Security. The three heavies looked extremely uneasy. Maybe just being there together did it-which succeeded in making all of us nervous, too.

Monnie and I exchanged another look. A few agents continued to talk, even as the directors took their places in front. It was the veterans' way of showing that they'd been here before. Had they? Had anyone? I didn't think so.

"Can I have your attention," Director Burns said, and the room immediately went quiet. All eyes were glued to the front.

Burns let the quiet settle in, and then he continued.

"I want to bring you up to speed. The first contact that we received on this situation was two days before the bombing in Sunrise Valley, Nevada. The initial message concluded with the words 'it is our hope that no one will be injured during the violence.' The nature of 'the violence' wasn't revealed or even hinted at. We were also instructed not to mention the initial contact to anyone. We were warned that if we did, there would be serious consequences, though these consequences were never spelled out for us."

Burns paused and looked around the room. He made eye contact with me, nodded, then moved on. I wondered how much he knew that the rest of us didn't. And who else was involved? The White House? I would think so.