The game was rigged, of course. Both prey and hunters were restricted to a given area, with no real practice in the art of tracking over open ground. The ghost town, for its part, bore no resemblance to a Middle Eastern village, other than the fact that both included man-made structures baked by desert sun and cloaked in gritty dust. It would have been more helpful if the Navy SEALs were training for a trip backward in time-perhaps to face the Clayton gang at the O.K. Corral.

The sun was setting, casting purple shadows in the dusty street, bringing premature twilight to the hotel lobby where Remo stood, waiting and watching. It would take some time for the 115-degree temperature to drop out there, and even in the ancient, shady building it was hot. But at least it was a dry heat. Remo didn't sweat. Partly because he wasn't weighed down by the equipment load the poor SEALs were waddling around with. He was in khaki Chinos and a white T-shirt. His shoes were handstitched leather-he didn't give two hoots about fashion or style, but he did like his shoes to last through the weekend. Remo had proved the quality of the Italians' workmanship by putting their products through field-testing beyond the shoemakers' wildest imaginings.

Remo was bored. He'd already scoured the ghost town and had found what he was looking for. Dog poop. Well, actually, wolf poop. Specifically, poop from a genetically mutated Canis lupus baileyi, or Mexican Gray Wolf.

The wolves themselves were nowhere to be found, and by all reports this pack was nocturnal. So he had to wait for darkness, when the pack might-just might-come sniffing around. Remo wanted to be there if it did.

He had a thing or two to discuss with this particular pack of mutant, nocturnal, man-eating canines. The war games couldn't have come at a more inconvenient time. Remo had asked Upstairs to cancel the games so that he could find his wolves, but Upstairs-which had the capability to wield such far-reaching powers in the military-said no.