BEFORE A THIRD of the crowd squeezed through the exits, people started to come back to life. Secret Service agents recovered enough to hustle the president through the tunnel players usually run out from.

     Dignitaries summoned their limo-drivers to whisk them away.

     The networks kept running footage of Secret Service agents dropping, dignitaries slumping, VIPs dominoeing, crowds frantically fleeing, and close-ups of the president squatting down, then standing back up again, looking bewildered and alone -- the last man standing in a sea of collapsed bodies. Then they’d cut to the scoreboard, as that haunting message typed out one character at a time.,

     The president was livid.

     Tidwell dialed Vanderwaal.

     “Can you get hold of that Phillips guy? We’re gonna need him.”