"Oh, My God, They're Killing Themselves!" -- FBI agent Bob Ricks

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It seemed at times that Koresh was playing with them. His mother had hired a fancy lawyer for him, and just as the feds were deciding they had to move, Koresh was deciding that he was eager to talk. Dick DeGuerin is a renowned defender of infamous Texans, a lean, boyish-looking ex-prosecutor known among defense lawyers as "Clint Eastwood" for rescuing high-profile figures from impossible fixes. He has a gift for winning his clients' trust, and it seemed to be working with Koresh. They talked for hours inside the compound, sharing chicken a la king and apple juice and macadamia nuts, for which Koresh had developed a taste during his days recruiting followers in Hawaii. DeGuerin told his client that the government did not have much of a case against him -- an impression the negotiators did not contradict. What they heard from the lawyer helped convince them that the Davidians wanted to come out. All the FBI needed was to open the door and yank.

A frontal assault was out of the question. They suspected that the entire place was booby-trapped; they knew the sect had powerful weapons and night- vision scopes, sentries guarded the windows around the clock, and whenever agents approached in tanks, cult members held up the children in the windows. The strategists talked about using a water cannon, but rejected the idea. First, they didn't have an armored fire truck. Second, the blast of water was as strong as a wrecking ball and might cause the building to collapse on the children inside. Finally, water would destroy evidence.

The idea, instead, was to pump in the gas and create enough chaos to distract anyone intent on either firing back or orchestrating a mass suicide. Perhaps those who were wavering would come out.

That was the plan FBI Director William Sessions and his top deputies put together for Reno on Monday morning. She wanted to see everything, asked hundreds of questions: Why go now? What is he likely to do? Is this the best way to go? On Wednesday night she called in members of the Army's elite Delta Force to ask their opinions. Her questions always came back to the children. FBI officials explained that the longer the siege lasted, the more the children would suffer. "Children are like hostages," Koresh had told one negotiator, "because they're too young to make decisions."

And indeed he seemed prepared to treat them that way. When negotiators asked him to send out videotapes to show the youngsters were safe, Koresh was happy to oblige. The tactic worked brilliantly for him. Agents were wrenched by the pictures, and even more profoundly engaged after Koresh began putting the children on the telephone. "Are you coming to kill me?" a tiny voice would ask. "Those kids' faces, you can still see them," says FBI agent Bob Ricks. "They are precious, innocent children, controlled by a madman."

Koresh would use food as a weapon, even on his own children. The cult had stockpiled enough Army rations to last for months, but Koresh dispensed them all. His favorites usually had the first claim, like the members of his rock band, and his Mighty Men, the term referring to the warriors who fought under King David in the Old Testament. So for the ultimate task, the fight to the death, the warriors would be fed. The weak, the vacillating and the helpless would grow weaker and weaker, unable to split off if given the chance.