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of thing, don’t you?”
    After the suppressor was fitted,
Team Leader placed the weapon by his side so the mouth of the barrel faced the
floor.
    “At least your children will grow
up in a safe place,” he concluded. “That is something I only dreamed of.”
    At that moment he raised the
weapon and shot al-Bashrah and al-Hashrie with shots to the chest and throat.
They dropped as fast as the bullets that felled them. 
    Agent Cross’s knees buckled, his
balance wavering. The commando forced him back to stable footing. Once the
agent stood on his own again, the commando stepped back.
    “I’m almost jealous of what you
are about to become,” said Team Leader. And then he drew a silencer-equipped
pistol from his holster and shot Cross in the throat. After teetering for a
moment in a wide-eyed drunken stance, Cross fell to his knees with his hand
pressed against his neck, then fell to the floor, hard.
    While blood bubbles foamed in the
gaping hole in Cross’s neck and his eyes stared at nothing in particular, Team
Leader, after removing the suppressor, placed the pistol in al-Bashrah’s hand.
The other commando placed the Sig in the hand of al-Hashrie.
    After Team Leader removed the
suppressor from Cross’s weapon, he worked the agent’s hand around the Glock.
With what little strength he had left, Cross lifted his head slightly to see
what Team Leader was doing. His throat rattled with an awful wetness and his
eyes were beginning to lose their luster. Finally, his eyes taking on a
detached stare, he succumbed to his wound.
    Team Leader watched and listened
as Cross took his last labored breath with somewhat of a detached stare of his
own, then placed the agent’s finger on the trigger and laid his hand carefully
against the blood-soaked tile.
    Standing, Team Leader took note of
his work.
    The stage had been set. Al-Bashrah
and al-Hashrie had been killed in a fire-fight with Cross.
    “Everything secure?” asked Team
Leader.
    “Cleared and sanitized. We’re
ready to move.”
    Team Leader nodded his approval.
“All in less than fifteen minutes,” he said. “Yahweh will be most pleased.”
    The time was 0259 hours.
    #
     
    At
exactly 0700 hours Eastern Standard Time,
CNN in Atlanta would receive a call from someone claiming to be a member of the
Soldiers of Islam. The caller would clearly state that Pope Pius XIII was now
under the authority of their regime.
    It was the first step of the Final
Jihad.
     

 
     
    CHAPTER EIGHT
    Annapolis, Maryland
    September 23, Late Morning
     
    Yellow
DO-NOT-CROSS tape had been set around the perimeter of the governor’s estate.
The Forensics Unit had already staked their claim, combing and sweeping every
inch of the interior. Using high-intensity lamps, which passed varying
wavelengths and colors of light over all surfaces, the team sought to identify
latent friction-ridge prints, which could point out certain types of trace and
biological evidence.
    Other investigators used
mini-vacs, typical hand-held vacuums with sterilized bags, to pick up trace
evidence such as dust, dirt and cellular matter. In the governor’s bedroom, a CSI technician was carefully going over the area to acquire possible prints for the VMD, or
vacuum-metal deposition device. Unfortunately, in most crime scenes, more than
97% of all prints were indigenous, 2% either contaminated or untraceable, and
less than 1% traceable.
    When Special Agent Punch Murdock
of the president’s Secret Service detail was halted at the entrance door by
D.C. Metro, he flashed his credentials and was allowed to pass. He was a man of
simian build and pug-like features. His nose angled badly to one side from too
many years in the ring, something he never had corrected since it served as a
personal badge of honor and exhibited something savage about him. His eyes also
appeared wild and untamed, yet they were alert and all-seeing as Murdock
absorbed every detail of the governor’s bedroom. He made his way toward a
technician who