A sudden perversity struck her, watching the multiple television images of the disaster, that this was happening just minutes away. She'd been on Oxford Street the night before, Selfridges and the Marks amp; Spencer, before heading home.

By tube, of course.

"Who's claiming it?" Chace asked.

"No one," said Poole. He looked at her with a grim smile. "Yet."

She nodded slightly, scanning the wall, searching for any new facts to absorb. There were none, and she realized that both Poole and Lankford were watching her, waiting for the next move, the next step.

"We won't have marching orders until Crocker's done with C," she told them. "And probably not even then. Crisis call, they brought us in while waiting for another shoe to drop."

"Follow-up strikes?" Lankford asked.

"Well, that's one possibility, isn't it, Chris?" she said. "Three in one go, there could be more waiting in the wings."

"Immediate panic dies down, then everyone holds their breath waiting for the next one," Poole agreed. "Could be tomorrow, next week, who knows."

"If there's more coming at all."

Lankford scowled at Chace, then Poole, then at the plasma wall. "So what do we do in the meantime?"

"Nothing," Chace said.

"Nothing?"

Lankford stared at her, and Chace wasn't certain if it was outrage or simple impatience she was seeing in his expression. She wasn't certain she cared, either. All of twenty-six, an inch or so taller than Chace's five foot ten, black hair and blue eyes that combined with a lack of distinctive features to make him a perfect "gray man," as they were called in the trade. Nothing about Chris Lankford leaped out upon first impression, or upon fifth, for that matter. But he had the energy about him, not of youth, but rather of inexperience. It charged him, made his engine race, made him want to leap into the breach, and might, Chace mused, get him killed sooner rather than later.