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Kendall is weak?"
    The odious Grange had sneered and replied, "Give that girl a prize."
    Despite all of that, Reynolds took the offer because she loved her country, and she saw the post as a stepping-stone to the White House. Her husband, a medical researcher at Rice in the forefront of novel cancer treatments, was eagerly welcomed at NIH. Then a funny thing happened. The press and public liked her so much that Kendall, albeit reluctantly, had to make her seem like a part of his team, or risk having her take the nomination away from him at the end of his first term. So here she was sitting at one end of the table.
    At the other, with a thin pair of glasses resting halfway down on his nose, was Warren Doerr, the secretary of state, who viewed the job as a great learning experience that would make him a better teacher when he returned to Princeton. Reynolds, who had a sharp tongue, referred to Doerr as "the professor" in her increasingly frequent one-on-one conversations with Joyner.
    Joyner nodded to the others and sat down next to the vice president.
    "Chip, you wanted to open this up," Kendall said, looking across the table at the portly defense secretary.
    "Yeah. There's a new development," Morton replied, his voice brimming with enthusiasm.
    Joyner wasn't surprised that she was hearing about this for the first time in the meeting. Ever since McCallister's plane had been shot down, Chip had been engaged in a turf battle with Joyner to take charge of the rescue effort. Arguing that the life of a military man was at stake, Chip, with the tacit acquiescence of General Childress, contended that DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, should take the lead, and Joyner's CIA should merely provide assistance when asked. For the first two days Joyner had fought Chip tooth and nail. She didn't give up the battle until the president had taken her aside after one of the team meetings. With Grange standing next to him, he told her, "Back off, Margaret. Let Chip and General Childress run with the ball. It's one of their boys who's down."
    All eyes were focused on Chip. He paused, coughed, and cleared his throat, drawing out the suspense.
    "For chrissake, spit it out already," Kendall said.
    Undeterred, Chip began speaking slowly. "We have been carefully analyzing satellite photos and communications Lieutenant McCallister had before his plane was shot down. Those all clearly point to the Turks being the perpetrators."
    Kendall leaned back in his chair and gave a deep sigh. "Jesus, they're our ally."
    "It's possible," the conciliatory Doerr interjected, "that one of their guys with his finger on the button in a SAM battery got trigger-happy."
    Kendall ignored the words of his secretary of state, as he often did, and turned back to Chip. "Do you have any information about the pilot?"
    Chip coughed again. "Following the decision at yesterday's meeting, we put a six-man special-ops unit commanded by Major Davis on the ground in the area where the plane went down. It's remote, mountainous terrain. Lots of caves. Very little vegetation. Only a couple of small, isolated villages, one with a name I can't pronounce, in the immediate area. Davis has been interrogating people."
    "Any confrontation with Turkish or Kurdish forces?" the president asked.
    Chip turned to General Childress, who picked up the briefing in a heavy Alabama accent. "No engagement as of an hour ago, sir."
    "Good. What have they learned?"
    Childress reached down to the floor and brought up a cylindrical silver tube. From it he extracted a map, which he spread on the table. "Outside of this village," he said, pointing, "is where Major Davis and his men found pieces of the plane. What they've learned is that Turkish soldiers seized Lieutenant McCallister. They had to pull him away from an angry mob. After that, they drove him off in an army truck."
    "Bastards," Kendall muttered. "How do we know all this?"
    "Major Davis has bought an informer from the area with cash and a promise to