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"It's around four hundred miles, depending upon the load they're carrying." Rodgers looked back at Seden. "Why? What are you thinking?"

The Turk replied, "The only conceivable targets are several dams along the Firat Nehri--what you call the Euphrates." He pointed at the river, then traced its course southward through Turkey into Syria. "The Keban Dam, the Karakaya Dam, and the Ataturk Dam. All of them are within range."

"Why would anyone want to attack them?" Mary Rose asked.

"It's an old conflict," Seder said. "Islamic law calls water the source of life. Nations may fight over oil, but it's a trifle. Water is what stirs the blood--and causes it to be spilled."

"My friends at NATO tell me that over the last fifteen years or so, the dams of the Greater Anatolia Project have been a sore subject," Rodgers said. "They allowed Turkey to control the flow of water into Syria and Iraq. And if I'm not mistaken, Colonel Seden, Turkey is now embarked on an irrigation project in southeastern Anatolia which will reduce the water supply of those nations even further."

"forty percent less water will reach Syria and sixty percent less to Iraq," Seden replied.

"So some group, perhaps Syrians, steals a Turkish chopper," Rodgers said. "They keep the military guessing as to whether it actually has been stolen. Guessing just long enough for them to strike their target."

"The Ataturk is the largest dam in the Middle East, one of the largest in the world, General," Seden said gravely. "May I use a telephone?"

"Over there," Rodgers said. He pointed to the computer at the side of the van. "And you'd better hurry. That chopper is just about a half hour from the first of the dams."

Seden walked around Mary Rose. He went to the cellular phone, which was cradled on the side of the monitor and hooked directly into the ROC's uplink. He punched in a number. As he spoke softly in Turkish, he slowly turned his back toward them.

Mary Rose and Mike Rodgers exchanged a brief look. When Seden's back was completely turned, Rodgers tapped a few keys on the other computer. Then he turned to watch the simultaneous translation of the colonel's conversation.

* * *

NINE

Monday, 4:25 p.m.,

Halfeti, Turkey

The Ataturk Dam on the Euphrates River is named after Kemal Ataturk, the venerated twentieth-century political and military leader. The Armistice that ended World War I also ended nearly six centuries of Ottoman rule over Turkey. But because the Turks had sided with the Germans, the losing side, the Greeks and British felt free to seize portions of the nation for themselves. The Turks felt differently, and in 1922 Kemal and the Turkish Army drove the foreigners out. The following year, the Treaty of Lausanne created the modern-day Republic of Turkey.

Ataturk established the new republic as a democracy rather than as a sultanate. He instituted a Swiss-style legal system to replace the Sheriat or Islamic code, and adopted the Gregorian calendar to replace the Islamic one. Even the turban and fez were banned in favor of European-style headwear. He founded secular schools, gave women basic rights for the first time, and adapted a Latin-based alphabet to replace the old Arabic one.

As a result of his massive transformation of Turkish society, Ataturk caused significant resentment to build among the Muslim majority.

Like all Turks, fifty-five-year-old Mustafa Mecid knew the life and legend of Ataturk. But Mustafa wasn't preoccupied with the Father of the Turks. As assistant chief engineer of the dam, he thought mostly about keeping kids from playing on the walls of the dam.

Unlike the more spectacular, high-rising concrete gravity dams, or the sweeping, concave arch dams, embankment dams are long and wide and relatively low. Under the waters of the reservoir side is an upstream shoulder that slopes toward a peak like the side of a pyramid. On the top of the dam is a narrow wave wall with a walkway behind it. The walkway falls away as a sloping downstream shoulder. Typically, the downstream