Hollywood was still close to the man’s ear. He smiled a kindly smile. Conceivably he was someone’s grandfather. “Number one or number two?” he asked.

The prisoner shook his head briefly, then refocused his fatalistic gaze straight ahead on the wall.

“Fair warning,” Hollywood said as he and Bugs ambled across the room and opened the door. As they stepped into the hall, Bugs called out, “The A Team is off the court, you can bring in the bench. Oh, and he wants to go to the john.”

“Rashid, my man! The Gucci Terrorist-actually you don’t look so bad, considering how your day has gone completely to shit.”

Hearing his name, Rashid looked up and for a fraction of a second lost his concentration and fixed his gaze on Major Nina Pryce as she walked into the hotbox room. She came straight at him; no frills, no wasted motion, no bullshit. She was a rangy, athletic thirty-five years old and stood five feet nine inches tall and weighed one hundred and forty-three highly trained pounds. Dressed down for the heat, she wore cut-off Levis and a ribbed tank top.

Rashid was trying to force his stare back to its meditation on the bare patch of wall when their eyes met. Nina raised her arm and ran her fingers through her short flame-red hair. Rashid’s eyes followed the movement and became tangled in the interesting play of flesh on her bare upper arm. He noticed that the lobe of her left ear was missing, just a shrivel of scar tissue. A skull-and-crossbones tattoo grinned on her left shoulder like a memento of a wild youth. He saw the old-fashioned 1911 model Colt.45 automatic jammed into her waistband.

Finally, he yanked his eyes away from her flaunted American body. The light in the depths of Nina’s gray-green eyes adjusted as she noted the way he stared at her bare arms. Her tanned forehead, which was sprinkled with copper freckles, frowned slightly. Uh-huh. So you’re one of those guys.