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The houseguest was told to make his bed under the stars because the power had gone out and it was too hot inside without air conditioning. From the rooftop balcony of the two-story house in northern Tikrit where he sought refuge early last week, Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, the fourth-most-wanted man in Iraq, had a panorama on a life come undone. To the south he could make out the sprawling family farmlands where he used to spend weekends with his boss and cousin, Saddam Hussein. A few miles up the road stood the ex-regime's garish presidential palaces, now occupied by soldiers of the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division. And to the north Mahmud could survey the open desert plains just beyond the city and ponder how to make a great escape.

But he never got the chance. Just before 1 a.m. last Tuesday, three U.S. attack helicopters swooped toward the house, where Mahmud had been staying for two days; the owner of the home, Kaffia Awad, told Time that she had taken in Mahmud as a favor to a family friend, who initially did not reveal the guest's true identity. According to Awad, Mahmud's brother, father and son visited him at the house on Monday afternoon. Hours later, the Americans, who had been receiving intelligence on Mahmud's movements for weeks, moved in with a force of 30 soldiers, including special-ops troops. They shot out the locks of a side door and stormed inside. According to residents of the house, the soldiers quickly moved into the living room and forced six men who were sleeping there to the ground, tying their hands behind their backs and covering their heads with nylon bags. "Where's Saddam?" several soldiers yelled, apparently optimistic about whom they might find as they raced upstairs, tossing 15 stun grenades ahead of them. Perhaps sensing that capture was inevitable, Mahmud came in from the balcony. After an Iraqi interpreter for the soldiers recognized Mahmud's countenance--now gaunt and covered by a white beard--as that of the ace of diamonds in the Pentagon's deck of the 55 most-wanted Iraqis, a soldier seized Mahmud and led him out of the house. At a location just south of the target house, Army First Lieut. Christopher Morris, who was conducting reconnaissance for the raid, received word on his radio that the mission was complete. "We got the guy," a commander told him.

Well, not the guy but certainly the guy they expected to find and who, they hope, will lead them to the guy. After Mahmud's arrest, say U.S. officials, he was taken to a site near Baghdad International Airport, where military and intelligence investigators began pumping him for information on the whereabouts of Saddam, his two sons Uday and Qusay, and the 23 other top henchmen still at large. As Saddam's closest adviser and consigliere--a source close to the family told Time that even Saddam's sons needed Mahmud's permission to meet with their father--Mahmud is one of the likeliest figures to have remained in contact with Saddam after he disappeared two months ago. Indeed, U.S. sources say Mahmud has begun to talk of his travels with Saddam's sons in the days after U.S. forces tried to decapitate the regime with air strikes. U.S. officials last week were more confident than at any time since the end of the war that they may soon snare their main prey. "Our operations are making it very difficult for him to sleep at night, if he is still alive," says Colonel Stephen Hicks, the chief operations officer in Iraq.

Even if Mahmud's interrogation sheds no light on Saddam's whereabouts, it might be useful to the U.S. in other ways. "He holds the key to all the locked doors," including details of Iraq's weapons-of-massdestruction program, says a businessman who has met repeatedly with Mahmud in recent years. This source believes Mahmud represents a real danger to Saddam--and an asset to the Americans--because he "likes to talk too much."

U.S. officials hope Mahmud's apprehension and the additional captures to which it may lead will serve another cause as well: the stifling of armed resistance to the American presence in Iraq. Four U.S. soldiers were killed by enemy fire across Iraq last week; since May 26, the tally is 15. Pentagon officials say they see no evidence that attacks by what they call noncompliant forces are directed by Saddam.

But Hicks says the attacks have been coordinated by "tier one" officials from Saddam's intelligence services, as well as senior members of the former Iraqi army's elite Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard, who are galvanizing loyalists to try to drive out the Americans. "There are people out there who are thriving on the thought that Saddam is still alive," says Hicks. By aggressively pursuing and detaining leaders of the former regime, a campaign being carried out by a special unit called Task Force 20, the U.S. intends to demoralize the diehards and prove to ordinary Iraqis still wary of openly cooperating with Americans that Saddam's rule is truly over. "We are absolutely focused on making sure that we can capture all the individuals on the blacklist," General Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, told TIME.

While much of Iraq is subdued, resistance to U.S. forces there remains fierce north and west of Baghdad in a triangle of territory dominated by conservative tribes adhering to Islam's Sunni branch, to which Saddam belongs. Though sporadic gunfights are to be expected in a country where AK-47s are standard home furnishings, the combatants in recent weeks have used more sophisticated weapons such as rpgs and land mines. An rpg was used to kill a U.S. soldier south of Baghdad last week a day after two Iraqis died in the capital when an American soldier fired on a crowd of unemployed Iraqi military officers protesting the U.S. dissolution of their army.

While the Pentagon urged Americans to keep the casualties in perspective, at the White House, Bush aides fret that the President's re-election prospects may be damaged by mounting U.S. casualties. "People here are more concerned that our guys keep dying in Iraq," says a White House official. "More people may die in keeping the peace than in the war. That's the big concern."

The move to go on the offensive was what Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called "a three-minute decision. The first two are for coffee." The raid that netted Mahmud was part of an Iraq-wide campaign, Operation Desert Scorpion, aimed at rooting out ex-regime leaders and commanders. The best harvest last week came in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, where, apart from Mahmud, U.S. forces rounded up more than 50 suspected members of Saddam's military, intelligence and paramilitary services. Desert Scorpion was modeled after an earlier operation, Peninsula Strike, in which 4,000 troops, drawn mostly from the 4th Infantry Division, launched a midnight assault on 75 homes suspected of harboring Baath fugitives in the town of Duluiyah. Military officials believe much of the resistance in the region has been coordinated in Duluiyah, where locals say senior members of Saddam's regime were frequently seen in the aftermath of the war. Since the beginning of Peninsula Strike, Hicks says, "we have already seen a downturn" in the frequency of attacks on U.S. soldiers.

The new counterinsurgency campaign seemed to provide a jolt of resolve for U.S. commanders. "We are going to crush these folks," says Lieut. Colonel Nate Sassaman of the 4th Infantry Division's 3rd Brigade. At the same time, there is a new sobriety at the Pentagon concerning the tasks ahead in Iraq. Senior Pentagon officials did not quarrel when a lawmaker publicly suggested last week that U.S. forces are likely to remain in the country for a decade, a far cry from the Administration's prewar implication that troops would not stay long. "As long as we are here," says Hicks, "we expect to continue to have violence against the coalition at some level, but we also expect it to go down significantly as we learn about how they attack and as we kill them."

Eager for help, the U.S. is scrambling to put together a multinational peacekeeping force of 20,000 troops for Iraq. Aside from coalition members Britain and Poland, potential contributing countries include Spain, Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands and Pakistan. An international force would not only lighten the load on U.S. troops but also diffuse responsibility for Iraq's well-being. "Expanding the sources of credit--or blame--helps us," says a State Department official. It's not clear, however, who would fund the peacekeepers. "We're not going to foot the bill," says the official. The U.S. has asked Qatar and other gulf states to pay for the effort, but negotiations are going on. As a result, the State Department doesn't expect new forces to be ready before September. Notes the official: "That's a lot of time for things to come unraveled."

• Romesh Ratnesar/Tikrit