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He made a gesture to someone off camera. The screen went blank.

Albertson’s face glowed with a sheen of sweat. He put his sweaty hands on the table. He was trying hard to look like he was in control — trying, and failing miserably.

“Admiral Porter,” he said. “If Murray’s people fail, what do you think we should do?”

The admiral sagged in his chair. “I’ve been in this game for forty years. I never thought I’d say something like this, Mister President, but it’s my recommendation that we join the Russians.”

Albertson closed his eyes. “All right. I need some time to think. I need a few minutes of sleep, maybe.”

He stood. As Murray and the others watched, the president of the United States of America walked out of the Situation Room to take a nap.

FROZEN FOOD

The bodies of the two policemen were gone. Probably hauled away, probably eaten — an ultimate dishonor that wouldn’t have happened if Paulius hadn’t killed them.

He wondered, briefly, if the cops were taking their revenge from the grave. He and Bosh couldn’t find a way into the firehouse. The windows and doors weren’t just boarded up, they were blocked by sheet metal that had been bolted in place from the inside. The public transit bus remained embedded in the firehouse door; the cops had even secured the area around it, blocking any way in. The bus’s smashed-in front end meant no one was going through it without a blowtorch.

Paulius and Bosh knelt in the shadows of the firehouse’s small backyard, out of sight from the main road. An eye-high wall — made of the same gray stone as the firehouse — lined the yard, providing a place to stay out of sight. It also gave some shelter from a constant wind that rattled a single, bare tree. Decent cover for now, but they had to find a way inside before they were seen.

The cold had finally got to Bosh. He couldn’t stop s.h.i.+vering.

“What’s next, Commander? Shoot through a door?”

Paulius’s toes felt numb.

“Too much noise,” he said. “If we can slip in unseen, we’ll have more time. We don’t know if the engine is damaged, or if it even runs. You said you saw the cops come out of the back of the bus?”

Bosh nodded. “We’d checked it minutes earlier, and it was empty. The cops must have seen the Rangers, then come out of the firehouse and into the bus to stay under cover while getting a better look.”

“Could they have come through the bus?”

“Maybe,” Bosh said. “I looked inside, but we were advancing so I just gave it a quick once-over.”

“Let’s check again.”

Paulius moved to the corner of the firehouse, looked along the building’s west wall out onto Chicago Avenue. Across the demolition derby of a street, a hospital: THE ANNE AND ROBERT H. LURIE CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL OF CHICAGO, said the big white letters above the gla.s.s building’s front entrance.

He saw no movement. He advanced. Bosh followed, covering him. Paulius moved to the rear of the bus. He hand-signaled Bosh to stay put, then entered the open door halfway down the long bus’s right side.