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heart sank even further as the lead
    man guided the stretcher right past the ambulance to a line of
    human remains behind the emergency vehicles. The line was already too long to bear. They rolled the charred body onto the
    pavement.
    “Major, in here!”
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    He turned and saw the fire chief waving him toward the side
    of the fire truck. An enlisted man stepped in to relieve his commanding officer of stretcher duty. The major commended him
    and then hurried over to join the chief inside the cab, pulling off
    his mask as the door closed behind him.
    The fire chief was covered with soot, his expression incredulous. “With all due respect, sir, what are you doing out here?”
    “Same as you,” said the major. “Is it as bad as it looks?”
    “Maybe worse, sir.”
    “How many casualties?”
    “Six marines unaccounted for so far. Eleven injured.”
    “What about detainees?”
    “Easier to count survivors at this point.”
    “How many?”
    “So far, none.”
    The major felt his gut tighten. None. No survivors. A horrible result—even worse when you had to explain it to the rest of
    the world.
    The fire chief picked a flake of ash from his eye and said, “Sir,
    we’re doing our best to fight this monster. But any insight you
    can give me as to how this started could be a big help.”
    “Plane crash,” the major reported. “That’s all we know now.
    Civilian craft. Cessna.”
    Just then, a team of F-16s roared across the skies overhead. Navy
    fighter jets had been circling the base since the invasion of airspace.
    “Civilian plane, huh? It may not be my place to ask, but how
    did that happen?”
    “You’re right. It’s not your place to ask.”
    “Yes, sir. But for the safety of my own men, I guess what I’m
    getting at is this: if there’s something inside this facility that we
    should know about…I mean something of an explosive or incendiary nature—”
    “This is a detention facility. Nothing more.”
    “One heck of a blaze for a small civilian aircraft that crashed
    into nothing more than a detention facility.”
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    The major took another look through the windshield. He
    couldn’t argue.
    The chief said, “I may look like an old geezer, but I know a
    thing or two about fires. A little private plane crashing into a
    building doesn’t carry near enough fuel to start a fire like this.
    These bodies we’re pulling out of here, we’re not talking thirddegree burns. Upward of eighty-five, ninety percent of them, it’s
    fourth-and even fifth-degree, some of them cooked right down
    to the bone. And that smell in the air, benzene all the way.”
    “What is it you’re trying to tell me?”
    “I know napalm when I see it.”
    The major turned his gaze back toward the fire, then pulled
    his encrypted cellular phone from his pocket and dialed the
    naval station command suite.
    7:02 a.m., Miami, Florida
    Jack increased the volume to hear the rapid-fire cadence of an
    anchorwoman struggling to make sense of the image on the TV
    screen.
    “You are looking at a live scene at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay,” said the newswoman. “We have no official confirmation, but CNN has obtained unofficial reports that, just after
    sunrise, there was an explosion on the base. A large and intense
    fire is still burning, but because both the United States and the
    Cuban military enforce a buffer zone around the base, we cannot send in our own camera crew for a closer look.
    “Joining me now live by telephone is CNN military analyst
    David Polk, a retired naval officer who once served as base commander at Guantanamo. Mr. Polk, as you watch the television
    screen along with us, can you tell us anything that might help
    us better understand what we’re viewing?”
    “As you can see, Deborah, the base is quite large, covering
    about forty-five square miles on the far southeastern tip of
    Cuba, about four hundred air miles from Miami. To give you
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    a little history, the U.S. has controlled this territory