Don stretched, reaching long arms toward the ceiling, pulling muscles back into alignment. It had been a long day, starting too early, and it was going to end too late into the night. David was scheduled to take over guard duty at two AM, and Don was looking forward to the next hour flying by.

Who knew that Charlie would head back to the computer instead of his bed like any sane man at eleven o'clock at night? Well, yeah, after so many years of growing up with his brother, Don ought to have known better. How many times as a kid in school had Charlie been caught with a flashlight, working out just one more problem? Some kids read comic books under the covers when they were supposed to be sleeping. Charlie did math. From some of the things that their mother had said when she'd called home while Charlie was at Princeton, he figured out that Charlie had pulled plenty of all-nighters, not because he had to but because a challenge had intrigued him.

So, yeah, Don should have guessed that after the game was over Charlie, unlike any sane man, would head back to see how the computer was coming along with its part of the deciphering process instead of taking a break and heading off to bed to get a fresh start in the morning. The sheer quantity of calculations, Charlie told him, was enough to make a Cray shudder in fear. He hadn't thought that the answers would come through until sometime around four, but he'd been wrong. These DOD computers, not having anything better to do with their electrons, had poured their little electronic hearts into the task and had come up with the answers in record time.

Except it wasn't the answer; not quite, Charlie told him. It was just half of the answer. That was what made it asymmetric. Which didn't mean much to Don except for not finished yet, and that Charlie was diving in yet again.

At midnight. When all good little mathematicians ought to be asleep, so that Don himself didn't have to pretend to be interested in what Charlie was doing. The subject was awake, so the FBI team was on duty. When the subject retired for the night, the FBI team could stand down and let the Army perimeter guard take the forefront. It was a lot easier to hang out around a sleeping Charlie's door than it was watching the man pour over the computer print outs. Don stretched again, willing himself to keep his eyelids open. Bed was looking better and better.

"Don."

"Charlie?" Don came awake. There was that note in Charlie's voice, the sound that said this is important. "What is it?"

"Don, this is big stuff."

"We already knew that, buddy—"

"No, I mean really big, Don." Charlie paused, gathering his thoughts. "Does the name Achmed bin Muzawin mean anything to you?"

Don felt his blood run cold. He gulped. "You might say that." Only the third most wanted terrorist in the world. Said to be the mastermind behind half the attacks in London, and responsible for setting up at least two-thirds of the terrorist cells currently operating inside of US borders. The man was also the genius behind most of the financial dealings that supplied fully one quarter of the funding that kept the Middle East terrorists in business. Every FBI office in the country had Muzawin's picture posted prominently in each and every office, promising rewards, bonuses, and promotions to whichever agent was clever or lucky enough to bring him in, and there was an entire CIA task force dedicated to trying—and failing—to bring the man to justice. "Are you telling me that this code you're deciphering is about him?"

Charlie frowned. "I'm not sure. There are still some parts that aren't clear. It might be."

Don took a deep breath. "But what does it say, Charlie?" Keep it calm, Eppes. Charlie doesn't realize how big this is.

Or maybe he did. Charlie looked him straight in the eye. "Don, I can't be certain, but I think this may be from Muzawin. I think it might be his travel itinerary. And maybe some other stuff."

Oh, yeah, this is big. This could be call-up-the-president big. Don tried to decide what to do with this intelligence.

No, not intelligence yet. There was still more work to be done. Charlie himself said that there was more to be deciphered, and that he wasn't quite certain of the contents. And there was a mole in the NSA, which meant that sharing this little piece of intel with them might be a quick way to get blown up and buried in this bunker if the NSA hadn't yet cleaned house. "How much longer before it's time to share, Charlie?"

Charlie shrugged, trying to keep his nerves under control. "Best guess, another six hours or so. Maybe longer. It'll depend on if I get lucky, and guess which short cut works." He glanced at the clock on the wall. Military time was easy to decipher at one AM, not that Charlie had any trouble in that arena. It was a number. It was part of him. "Guess I'm going to be up for a while longer. Don't think I could sleep at this point." The dark circles under his eyes and the haunted look he wore suggested that his words were something less than accurate, and that the last forty eight hours had not been easy ones.

Don had to agree with the thought, but for himself and not for his brother. The sleepies had just vanished, and Don wasn't ashamed to admit that he was thinking of calling for additional troops for more firepower until he could hand this hot potato back over to the NSA. A few more FBI types? A possibility, but requesting additional personnel would surely be a red flag for whoever was watching this week end get together. It would be a signal that Charlie not only had succeeded at his task but that he—and Don—recognized how important it was. "You gonna be able to keep going? You've been at it a long time. You look tired, buddy. Take a break."

Charlie looked at Don with a strange look. "Don, this is important. I have to keep going."

"Sure, but that doesn't mean that you have to go at it twenty-four/seven, Charlie. Take a break. You'll be able to think better in the morning."

"Morning?"

Don grinned. Yeah, it would be tough to realize exactly what time it was in here. Lack of windows tended to do that. And since Charlie had just looked at the clock, saw that it was one AM and never actually inhaled the information…"Morning, Charlie. As in, it's after midnight right now. You've been working at this for more than twenty-four hours. You try to go without sleep for too much longer, and you'll fall over in your tracks."

Charlie looked around himself, as if just now realizing what kind of place he'd been in for the last two days, working almost non-stop. "Yeah. Well, maybe not."

Don pushed. "Sleep would be a good thing."

"There's always caffeine."

"There's always bopping you over the head, Chuck."

Crooked grin. Weary sigh. Charlie gave in. "G'night, Don."


All right, so Don was getting paranoid. Given the circumstances, who wouldn't? Don turned David away from the cameras that the army types were manning and put his mouth close to David's ear. "Charlie's making progress."

"And?" At two in the morning, with the resident genius finally asleep on the bunk in his quarters and the changing of the FBI guard outside those quarters, David could figure out in a flash that there was something big happening. After all, he was an experienced investigative agent.

But two in the morning didn't lend itself to humor, and neither Don nor David was in the mood for laughter.

"It's big, David."

"Didn't figure it would be anything small. How big?"

Don made certain that he couldn't be heard by anyone else. "Muzawin big."

Sudden intake of breath. "Charlie's sure?"

"Not yet, but he's getting there."

"No wonder the NSA's antsy over this. Any mole gets hold of this, we're finished." David rocked back on his heels, thinking. "Charlie know how big this is?"

"Not completely, but he's not clueless, either. He's been involved with this kind of crap for years. They don't call him in for the little stuff." Don looked around, as if there might be someone prancing down the corridors that they wouldn't hear. Sound echoed through these concrete bunkers and didn't stop until it flopped onto the floor in exhaustion. "And if the NSA is worried about a mole…"

"Yeah." David too scanned the corridors. A useless gesture, but instinctual. "What do we know about Foster?"

"Next to nothing. I'd like to think that the NSA would only send out someone that they know is beyond reproach. They must have had an inkling as to what was going on. After all," and Don waved at the solid walls surrounding them, "we're here behind a dozen feet of concrete and a mountain."

David nodded slowly. "So where do we go with this?"

"For the moment, we sit tight. We let Charlie keep working, keep solving the puzzle. Once we have more answers, we'll know who we can trust."

"You're paranoid; you know that?"

"Yeah. But we're alive."


Yeah, it was good coffee and it was nine o'clock in the morning and Don was much more awake after six hours in the sack. Scuttlebutt was right: the food sent over by the area resort was top notch, and Don sipped at the scalding hot brew, feeling it scorch the taste buds off of his tongue and replace them with scar tissue. Lt. Bakker's men had returned not twenty minutes ago with the day's rations. Nuking them in a microwave wasn't the way to improve the flavor but it didn't do too badly and Don wasn't complaining. He'd eaten plenty worse in his day.

He waited for the communications console to fire up. "Megan?"

"Good morning, Don. It's a balmy seventy four degrees here and, as usual, little to no humidity. I enjoyed walking in from the parking lot. I even gave a couple of pigeons my last crust from the pretzel vendor outside on the walk."

"Here the pigeons are hawks, there's frost on the ground, and the pretzel stand is manned by a pack of wolves. Bakker's boys told me that they nearly skidded the jeep off the road on an ice patch while fetching our food. What do you have for me?"

Megan grew serious. "We got back the results on the names that you sent over from that little 'hunting party' in the woods. Don, there's almost a dozen men with the same names for each of them in your area and none of the socials match. We can run them all down, but it will take time and manpower; lots of it. And that's assuming that one or more of your party actually goes by those names."

Don shrugged, even though Megan couldn't see it over the comm. line. "Don't bother. It was a long shot. Even with the manpower, we'd never be able to run those guys down. It's a good bet that each one was a fake name. They weren't trying to hide that." He shrugged again. "Charlie'll have this thing decoded soon, and we can hand the whole mess back over to the NSA."

"He's making progress?"

"He's making progress," Don confirmed. "Real progress, Megan, and it's scary."

Megan gave her own unseen frown. "Don't tell me; I don't want to know. Actually, I would like to know but I'm not sure I want to trust even this secure communication channel. I'll wait for the evening news."

"With any luck, it won't end up there either," Don told her grimly.

"Wow. That big." Megan was unhappily impressed. "Then it won't surprise you that I wasn't able to find out much on Schmidt."

"Just give me what you've got."

"Born just outside of Philadelphia—south Jersey, I think, little place called Swedesboro—twenty one years old, joined the Army right out of his junior year of high school."

"Didn't graduate?"

"No, but did get his GED two years later, at nineteen. What little I have says that it was at the behest of his platoon sergeant. Did pretty well on the tests, the research shows."

"Don't tell me; let me guess. He's one of the ones with a sealed juvie record. Any luck unsealing it?"

"You'd have more chance at unsealing Larry's spinster aunt's bloomers, Don. Legal says that there's not enough evidence to ask a judge even on a whim. Investigating a soldier just because he went out alone to check up on a shadow while on a mission won't cut it, even with the weight of Homeland Security behind us."

"Probably wouldn't tell us much anyway." Don dismissed that thought. It wasn't going to happen. "What else?"

"Recently re-upped for another tour," Megan said, papers rustling in her hands. "Very little on his record. Nothing especially good or bad. Saw action in Afghanistan. Got along with the locals. Kept under the radar."

Don frowned. It all fit together neatly. Maybe too neatly? Keeping under the radar was something that any good spy or mole would be likely to do.

On the other hand, the mole was in the NSA, not the Army. Don was most likely simply jumping at shadows. Schmidt was merely doing his job, going out to figure out what caused some little blip on the internal radar, keeping the consultant safe. He had gone alone because there was only two of them on guard duty at the back door, and calling for back up was not only over-kill but meant dragging some sleepy comrade out of his nice warm blankets for something that very well could have been a coyote slinking through the underbrush.

Yeah, he was being paranoid. This mission was going like clock work, despite all the angst. Charlie was deciphering the code at breakneck speed. The suspect soldier really wasn't a suspect. The hunting party that really wasn't could easily have been a bunch of stray Canadians well aware that they had crossed over the border without bothering with Customs, and weren't about to 'fess up to suspicious authorities and cause an international incident.

On the other hand, Special Agent Don Eppes was being paid to be suspicious.

"How about the incident at Charlie's office?" he asked. "Anything more?"

"Not a thing. I talked to the professors in the adjoining offices. Professor Langton heard a scuffle, but then something called the 'Warwick Convention' dragged his attention away and he didn't think anything of it."

"Eggheads," Don grunted. "Anyone else?"

"Not a soul. Most of the professors had already skedaddled for the week end, getting an early start. Don, I looked at Charlie's office. If there was anything going on there, you couldn't tell it by the way the office looked. No furniture was overturned, no papers floating around; nothing. But there was one small item."

"What?"

"Charlie's desk. There was a bullet hole. But it looked old."

"Old? Charlie said someone took a shot at him. It should be fresh."

"Right. And this could have been someone scratching something into the desk. I'm telling you, Don, I looked at it myself, and it looked like it had been there for months if not years."

"Which doesn't make sense."

"Right. Which is why I've asked a Forensics team to go out and take a look," Megan told him.

"On a Sunday? With over time?"

"It'll be pretty late," Megan admitted, "and only if they have time to get to it. If not today, then tomorrow."

Things were not adding up, and it wasn't because the target was a mathematician. Don frowned, not caring that Megan couldn't see his expression. "Have them get out there today, Megan, on my authority. And see what you can find on our on-site NSA man, Stephen Foster."

"Like the composer?"

"The very one. And keep digging, Megan," he said finally. "Listen to the street. I want to know if there's any movement among the various government factions, anything to indicate that the subversive elements of the world are getting busy. I'm not liking this whole scenario, and I've got the feeling that there's a lot more going on than we've been led to believe."

"You got it, Don. Talk to you later this afternoon."