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Should that third option fail, the president would have no choice but to authorize what had been dubbed simply Option Number Four.

And Charlie Ogden really didn’t want to think about that.

He checked his watch again. Fifty minutes. Normally he’d attack as soon as the men were in position. He could still do that if he saw the need, but this time things were going to be a little different.

This time he’d have an audience. A career-making audience, the kind that could move him from a colonel’s eagle to a general’s star.

Charlie raised the night-vision goggles again and stared at the glowing construct. He hoped Murray could keep things on schedule at his end, because in fifty minutes, president or no president, Charlie Ogden was going in.

TAD, MEET MR. DAWSEY

Tad’s s.h.i.+vering brought him out of it.

He rolled on the gra.s.s, wondering if he was already dead. His shoulder hurt real bad. He didn’t feel dead—he was still moving. When people jumped out of windows on TV, they hit the ground and didn’t move. He rolled to his b.u.t.t. Cold water seeped into the seat of his jeans.

Tad slowly stood. His legs hurt real bad, too. He took a deep breath, the rain and bits of ice splas.h.i.+ng inside his wide-open mouth. He looked up, at the second-story window open to the night sky. Weird—it seemed like such a big drop from up in his room, but from down here it was about as high as a basketball hoop.

It didn’t matter how high it was or it wasn’t. He was out. Out of the house.

Okay, so he wasn’t dead . . . but he wasn’t going back in there, either.

Tad ran. His legs hurt, but they worked, and that was enough. He sprinted out to the side of the road and turned left. He pounded down a sidewalk cracked by tree roots and slick with slush.

He sprinted hard. He looked up just before running headlong into a man.

A huge man.

Tad stopped, frozen on the spot. The man was so big that Tad momentarily forgot about the house, his mom, his dad, his sister, even little Sam.

The man stood there, lit by a streetlamp that formed a cone of mist and light and wind-whipped, streaking rain. He looked down out of glowering blue eyes. He wore jeans and a wet short-sleeved, gray T-s.h.i.+rt that clung to his enormous muscles like a superhero costume. Long blond hair matted his head and face like a mask. A big, baseball-size twisted scar marred the skin of his left forearm.

The giant man spoke. “Are you . . . ?” His voice trailed off. His eyes narrowed for a moment. Then they opened, like he’d just remembered something very cool. “Are you . . . Tad?”

Tad nodded.

“Tad,” the man said. “Do you feel itchy?”

Tad shook his head. The man turned his right ear toward Tad, tilted his head down a bit, as he might have done if Tad was whispering and he was trying to hear.

“This is important,” the man said. “Are you sure? Are you really, really sure you’re not itchy? Not even a little?”

Tad thought about this carefully, then nodded again.

The man knelt on one knee. Even kneeling, he still had to bend his head to look Tad in the eye. The man slowly reached out with a giant’s hand, placing his palm gently on Tad’s head. Thick fingers curled down around Tad’s left temple, while a thumb as big as Tad’s whole fist locked down on his right cheek.

Tad kept very, very still.

The man turned Tad’s head back and to the right.

“Tad, what happened to your eye?”

Tad said nothing.