Calvin Mohammud continued up the steep hill toward Wall Street. He was hardly noticed. But then the messenger caste usually wasn't. They were invisible men, props only.

Today, like every other workday, Calvin Mohammud wore a thigh-length, pale gray clerk's tunic with a frayed armband that read VETS MESSENGERS. On both sides of the words were fierce Eighty-second Airborne Division eagles.

But none of that was noticed, either.

Calvin Mohammud didn't look like it now, but in Vietnam and Cambodia he'd been a first-rate Kit Carson army scout. He'd won a Distinguished Service Cross, then the Congressional Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry at the risk of his life. After returning to the United States in 1971, Mohammud had been further rewarded by a grateful society with jobs as a porter at Penn Station, as a delivery boy for Chick-Teri, and as a baggage carrier at LaGuardia Airport.

Calvin Mohammud, Vets 11, slung his heavy messenger's bag off his shoulder as he reached the graffiti-covered news kiosk at the corner of Broadway and Wall. He tapped out a Kool and lit up behind a plume of yellow flame.

Slouched in a nearby doorway, Vets 11 casually reached into his shoulder bag and slid out a standard U.S. Army field telephone. Still concealed in the deep cloth bag was a sixteen-inch machine pistol, along with half a dozen 40-mm antipersonnel grenades.

“Contact.” He moved back into the cold building shadows, then whispered into the field telephone. “This is Vets Eleven at the stock exchange. I'm at the northeast entrance, off Wall… Everything's very nice and peaceful at position three… No police in sight. No armed resistance anywhere. Almost looks too easy. Over.”

Vets 11 took another short drag on his dwindling cigarette. He calmly peered around at the noisy hustle and bustle that was so characteristic of Wall Street on a weekday.

Broad daylight. What an amazing, completely unbelievable scene-what an apocalyptic firefight would be coming down here at five o'clock. He began to smile, exposing crooked yellow teeth. This was going to be so sweet, so satisfying and right.