Mike reached up gingerly and felt the back of his head. There was going to be a nasty lump in a few hours, but his fingers came away dry. No bleeding. Taking stock, limb by limb, he took deep breaths, pushing down the wave of impending panic.

I'm alive,

he told himself. Shaken but intact. He'd been lucky; if he hadn't changed the batteries in his keyfob remote three months ago he might have been closer to the car, or even reduced to using the door key, with fatal results. As he stood up, something crunched underfoot. Fragments from the rear window, pea-sized pellets of safety glass. Bending down stiffly, he picked up his go-bag. His leg twinged hard inside its cast. What now?

Clear the killing zone,

the instructors had insisted, years before. But they'd been talking about a different kind of ambush—a car bomb was a passive trap.

Probably they were relying on it. Probably . . .

Mike pulled his pistol from the bag and duck-walked towards the street, edging around the burning car as he scanned for threats. In the distance, a siren began to scream.

Less than twenty seconds had elapsed.

"Duty Chief? This is the major. I have some orders for you. The day code is: Echo, Golf, Zulu, Xray, five, nine, Bravo. Did you get that?"

"Yes, my lord. One moment . . . yes, that is correct. What do you have for me?"

"Flash priority message to all Internal Security posts.