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The short SEAL looked at Bogdana.

“Frank, keep the package right here until I call for you,” Ramierez said.

Then Klimas moved silently past. Ramierez slid around the front of the overturned car and followed his commander into the shadows.

KNOW YOUR ENEMY

Paulius and Ramierez approached a small firehouse. The building looked medieval — two stories of grayish-tan granite with small, faux turrets on the second-story corners. Its red roll-up door looked just large enough for one fire engine to enter or exit, but nothing was going in or out thanks to the long, white public transit bus that had smashed into it at an angle.

At the bus’s rear end, almost to the sidewalk, stood two cops — one black, one white — both dressed in heavy blue coats, their fingers laced behind their heads. Their breath billowed out in expanding clouds that glowed thanks to a nearby streetlight. The men looked both hopeful and afraid. A black XDM automatic pistol lay on the snow in front of each of them.

They had their hands on their heads because two SEALs — Bosh and Roth — had M4s at their shoulders, barrels aimed at the cops’ chests.

Paulius slung his own M4. He drew his sidearm, a 9-millimeter Sig Sauer P226 already fitted with a suppressor. He aimed it at the two cops as he came up on Bosh’s right.

“Bosh, report.”

“I saw these two exit the bus’s rear door,” Bosh said. “Thing is, advance recon looked through the bus to make sure there weren’t any bad guys hiding there that could fire on the column. When they checked it, the bus was empty. Five minutes later, Rangers march through, these guys come out of it.”

Paulius glanced at the bus. “There a hole in the front of it that leads into the firehouse?”

“I checked,” Bosh said. “Didn’t see any openings. I also did a walk around the firehouse, couldn’t find a way in or out. The place is locked up tight, Commander.”

Paulius glanced at the building’s red-framed windows. In every one, behind broken gla.s.s he saw the dull glint of metal. The cops had fortified the place. Paulius had to keep his men moving — every second they spent here was a second wasted.

He looked at the cops. “What do you two want?”

The cops looked at each other, then back at Paulius.

The black cop spoke. “We want you to get us the f.u.c.k out of here. We’ve been in there” — he tilted his head toward the firehouse behind him — “for two freakin’ days.”

They looked normal, but the mission was here to rescue one man and one man only.

“We haven’t seen anyone but you,” Paulius said. “Why didn’t you come out sooner?”