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radiation monitor on this bridge. An ASP. I need to check it out.”
    “There’s no ASP on this bridge.”
    Jim was practiced at concealing surprise, but not this time, and he hoped that the flush he felt surging up his neck would not be visible in the parking-lot lights. “Are you sure?” It was all he could think to ask.
    “I work here.”
    “What about the Camino Bridge?”
    “Mister, there’s nothin’ like that on either bridge.”
    “Are they out for maintenance?”
    “Look, there are no ASPs here. None whatsoever. Do you get that? The number is zero. And you’re double-parked, Sir. If we need to go hunting, we gotta scramble these vehicles.”
    Jim watched him. Why was he so defensive?
    “Sir?”
    “That’s okay, Kenneally. I’m moving out.” A tingling crept through his body, his muscles tensed. He returned to his car, backed out, turned around, and drove into town. It was hard to stay on the road, hard even to think clearly. He recognized that he was panicking. But he had a major problem here, no question.
    Homeland Security had placed ASPs on every bridge that crossed the Rio Grande. They had been problematic at first, but as improved devices became available, the bridges had been high priority. He’d been shown the deployment records by Cynthia Spears. But the records were wrong, which meant only one thing—at some level, there had been sabotage. Either the devices had never actually been deployed or they had been removed.
    Was it local? Did that account for Officer Kenneally’s manner—he knew that the monitors had been ditched, and therefore was part of some sort of illegal group, probably accepting bribes to allow trucks to pass without proper search? Or was the problem farther up the line, in Dallas, where the deployment of the ASPs had been managed, or even in Washington, where the whole national program was directed?
    This felt an awful lot like what had happened in southern Russia, when Jim discovered that facilities listed as secured by the National Nuclear Security Administration were, in fact, not secure at all. And then—because of what was going on with Brewster Jennings and possibly the NNSA itself—his reports would sink into the system and die.
    This had to be reported, of course, and maybe with the same lack of effect, but his mission wasn’t to fix the problem on the bridge or even investigate it. It was his job to find what had already been brought in, and he needed to remain focused on that, because lack of information about when the truck had crossed was going to be a serious challenge.
    The mere fact that this had been done to these bridges increased his conviction that this was not about X-ray isotopes.
    Time was the enemy now, and he drove harder even than he had coming down. He would return not to Dallas but to San Antonio, where he would engage the FBI as fully as he could manage. He didn’t have proof, but he certainly had evidence enough to justify an investigation of what was going on at those crossings and an extensive search for any possible nuclear devices that may have been allowed into the country.
    In addition to the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of Emergency Operations needed to be informed, and OEO needed to deploy all thirty-six of their teams to this region, armed with all possible radiation-detection and explosive-suppression equipment. The two FBI teams that specialized in disabling firing systems would need to be put on full alert. The staff at G-Tunnel, the five-thousand-foot-deep shaft where the device might need to be detonated, had to be warned that they were liable to receive a hot nuke within hours.
    He was out on the highway now, driving into the dark, heading for San Antonio as fast as he could go, and it was here that the car took the first blow.
    For an instant it shot forward; then there was another crash from behind as he instinctively hit the brakes. Struggling for