Final epidemic
by
Earl Merkel


FINAL EPIDEMIC

by Earl Merkel

A SIGNET BOOK

SIGNET

Published by New American Library, a division of
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First published by Signet, an imprint of Ne\v American Library, a
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First Printing, October 2(K)2 10 987654321

Copyright Earl Merkel, 2002 All rights reserved

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Again, for my family

WASHINGTON (WNS)--Citing a growing number of experts in international
terrorism, a federal interagency commission will be established within
the next six months to deal with what one prominent official termed
"the virtual certainty" of an attack on the United States by terrorists
using lethal viruses as biological weapons.

William MacKenzie Carson, the White House national security advisor,
said the need to prepare for such an attack is "both real and
urgent."

"In February 2000, more than 300 physicians, scientists, public
officials and law enforcement agents gathered to discuss strategies for
dealing with a potential biological attack," Carson said. "That was
more than a year and a half before the World Trade Center fell, more
than a year and a half before anthrax became a threat to anyone who
received mail.

"Yet it is an undeniable conclusion--we remain ill-equipped to deal
with such potentially cataclysmic assaults," Carson said.

Said the presidential advisor: "I can do no more to illustrate the
danger than to quote Donald A. Henderson, the former director of the
Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies, who warned this
nation in 2000 that is was not a question of an attack will occurit
is only a matter of when it will happen here, among our citizens."

Carson noted that Henderson's statement, which received wide attention
after the events of September 2001, concluded with both a warning and a
probable timeline.

"In 2000, Henderson warned that the United States was likely to see an
attack within the next five years," Carson said. "By that prediction,
we are now alarmingly overdue."

--Washington News Syndicate Release Date: January 18

"I know how not to get AIDS. I don't know how not to get the flu."

--Alfred W. Crosby,

historian and author of
America's Forgotten Pandemic:
The Influenza of 1918

Prologue.

Selitova Island, Siberia January 10

Another blast of frigid air swirled across the tundra, chilling flesh
even through the layers of insulated garments they wore under their
heavy arctic parkas. Occasionally, it was strong enough to rock anything
merely human that stood in its path, particularly when weariness had
brought on the mind-dulling blankness so common to cold-weather
exertion. In this environment, a diet carefully planned to provide a
daily minimum of nine thousand calories scarcely provided sufficient
energy to fuel both the arduous work of excavation and the equally
important task of maintaining a core temperature capable of sustaining
life.

Anji Suzuki shivered involuntarily. He was born on Kyushu, one of the
Home Islands far to the south. In the eleven days he had been here, on
this godforsaken outcropping of frozen tundra and rock a few degrees
above the Arctic Circle, he had never imagined anywhere so cold and
desolate.

I will be glad to be gone from this terrible place, he thought, pressing
his body weight hard against the pneumatic drill. He much preferred
operating the ground-penetrating radar equipment. With the air drill,
the vibrations shook him
so harshly that his vision blurred each time the auger bit into the
permafrost. After a few seconds, he released his grip on the trigger
lever and leaned against the heavy tool.

On the barren tundra, near the mogul-like dome tents and stretched
tarpaulins that served as housing and equipment shelters, almost two
dozen parka-clad figures labored. A few worked with surveying transits,
others strained against the weight of equipment-laden sledges; but most
were engaged in the backbreaking work of driving hollow steel core
sampling rods into the ever-frozen earth along a geometric grid marked
by yellow plastic cord. The heavy hammers rose and fell, but not even
that tumult reached Anji's ears. The only sound not drowned by the
banshee howl of the bone numbing gale was his own labored breathing.

He was middle-aged, and the years he had spent in biogenetic research
laboratories were proper preparation for neither the manual labor nor
the environment. Nor was the more recent confinement he had endured,
even if it had been in a facility the medical staff had insisted on
calling a "rest haven." There had been no rest there, not even during
the sessions when he had been sedated.

In dreams, he could still recall the worst of it: the smooth, slick feel
of unyielding nylon restraints; the cold electrodes taped to his
temples; the taste of the rubber block they would force between his
teeth; the acid sting of the sedative injection. Then the voltage would
hit him, a vibrating fire that alternately paralyzed and convulsed his
body. The sedative modulated the seizure, of course. Externally, it
appeared little more than a ripple across his face. But inside, a
terrifying electrical demon raged, slashing and ripping and throwing
Anji against the walls of his very skull.

Anji's skin still prickled with the remembered horror, even if it had
been the price of his Enlightenment.

"Hail" a deep voice boomed, not far from his ears. As Anji turned, a
heavy hand clapped him on the shoulder.

Fusaka Torji grinned at him, his stained and crooked teeth
a pedigree of childhood privation. Under the heavy quilting of his
cold-weather gear, Fusaka's legs were short and bowed. But the man's
upper body was barrel-chested and thick with muscle. Among the group of
Aum faithful who had come to labor at this dismal site, he alone seemed
tireless and unaffected by the climate.

Which made sense, Anji thought; the man was an Inuit, what the less
enlightened still called an Eskimo--at least, his mother had been, and
her genes had evidently dominated over those of his Yokahama-born
father--and his earliest years had been spent on a cold and wind-swept
island not wholly unlike the one where they now labored.

The two men leaned together so that the snorkel hoods of their parkas
almost touched.

"Bring the drill," Fusaka shouted above the wind. He gestured to a
figure behind him, which knelt beside a shallow excavation in the frozen
ground. "One of the Initiates has found one, he believes."

Together, the two men wrestled the drill to the new location, its
cold-stiffened pressure line dragging sullenly behind them. The young
man on the ground stood up, his face a beatific smile.

"Here," he said, pointing his leather mitten to indicate the spot.

"Quickly!"

This one is a True Believer, Anji thought, and smiled to himself. As are
we all now, those of us who remain. I, most of all.

When the Sensei had chosen him for this assignment, Anji had bowed with
the proper dignity--as had they all, Anji thought; even Fusaka, for
once, had not committed some oafish breach of manners. But alone of the
Select, Anji's mask of impassive devotion had almost slipped. His face
had glowed when, with a touch on his forehead, the Sensei had selected
him. Since the expedition had arrived here, he had been the most driven
of the team, constantly urging them to arise earlier, to skip rest
periods, to work harder. Some of his
comrades had grumbled aloud, though most had contented themselves by
staring at Anji behind an impassive mask that itself spoke volumes.

Like me, they are also Aum Truthseekers, Anji chided himself--he hoped
sincerely. That makes each of these men forever my brother, my cohorts
in the Sensei's consciousness. But, oh--I have given much to ensure this
hour will come to pass. I have sacrificed even the man I once was.

Together, Anji and Fusaka positioned the drill where the younger man
indicated. For several minutes they worked without speaking, the chatter
of the tool and the wind rasping past their hooded heads competing in
volume.

Suddenly, Fusaka grabbed Anji's arm and shouted something
unintelligible. Anji cut the airflow to the drill and dropped to his
knees, pawing with mittened hands at the loosened chunks of permafrost.

Fusaka knelt close beside as the bio geneticist gradually exposed a
mounded outline. Frozen hard to the ground was a rough-woven canvas form
bound with hemp ropes.

"I told you," Fusaka said, poking Anji with an elbow. "This was where
they placed the bodies. My mother's mother would tell her how they were
sewn into sailcloth when there were no more sealskin robes." He looked
around the flat tundra. "There will be several dozen more nearby. They
were buried in a single trench. A meter or so below the surface, perhaps
a little more."

Anji only grunted, watching closely as Fusaka pulled off his leather
mittens and opened a pocket knife. Carefully, he worked the blade
against the stiff cloth, cutting a semicircle that he peeled back with
difficulty.

Underneath was the face of a young woman. Her features were the mix of
Oriental and Indian that distinguishes the Komaji from other Inuit
peoples. It was an unmarked visage, almost childlike, peaceful in repose
in a way that belied the manner of her death.

Anji looked at her, filled with a reverence that came from
far more than a cultural respect for the dead. His awe was not for the
individual woman before him--how could it be? She was insignificant,
merely one of the tens of millions who had died with her. No, Anji's awe
was reserved for the instrument of her death, which the bio geneticist
fervently prayed still lived on inside her, waiting to be awakened from
a slumber of almost a century. Waiting, he remembered the Sensei saying,
for a man of Anji's unique skills to help it do so.

Now it begins, Anji thought, as the other members of the party began to
prepare this first corpse for the journey it would take. He stood for a
moment longer, his eyes locked on the long-dead face swathed in its
sailcloth cocoon. Unbidden, a phrase came to his mind.

/ am Shiva, destroyer of worlds.

He shivered again, this time in a way that had nothing to do with the
cold.

Six months after the team's return from the expedition, Anji Suzuki left
for the United States. He worked hard to keep his face stoic- as stoic
as any of the other Japanese on the plane. It was difficult, because his
entire being was aflame with the joy of having been selected--by the
Sensei himself! Anji remembered, in awe--for this final, divine mission.

Since the expedition to the frigid Arctic almost half a year before,
Anji had made this trip several times to meet with the ganjini, the
godless barbarian crazies that the Sensei had ordered him to find and
cultivate in America. He had performed this duty well, finally selecting
two of the ganjini private armies--they called themselves militias, he
reminded himself--one near the East Coast, one in the American West. He
had supplied them with the unique weaponry from the Aum arsenal and
instructed them in its use.

In the coming days, he had been informed, it will be a useful diversion.

It will be as if angry wraiths, swarming from every crevice, seek to
overwhelm them, the Sensei had told Anji.

Then shall come the final darkness, from which there will be no escape.

Anji savored the image with the zeal of a True Believer.

They had prepared, and waited. Among the Aum, some still held hope that
the unbelievers--the subhumans who had mocked their Truths, the mindless
beasts who had harried the Divine Aum Asahara mercilessly before finally
removing him to their corrupt courtrooms--would somehow find their own
Enlightenment. They had steadfastly held to that hope for several
years--preparing for the worst, but betraying to the world nothing save
a sense of their own harmlessness. So the Sensei had counseled them,
with a wisdom that had sustained them since the Divine One had been
seized.

All the while, the rituals of a sham justice painted their leader as a
murderous madman rather than a savior.

And then, only a few weeks before, their judges had condemned Aum
Asahara--condemned the Divine One to what they, in an unenlightened
ignorance, considered the ultimate punishment. And in so doing,
unwittingly condemned themselves as well.

They will now learn, Anji pledged. If the Truth of Aum is to pass from
existence, so too will the unworthy who rejected it. And so too will we
all.

Hidden in the erstwhile bio geneticist waistband was an American
passport that had once belonged to an Aum recruit; the photo likeness
was close enough to pass scrutiny, as it had on the previous trips.

Again, for safety Anji took the soft route, flying first under his own
name to Mexico City. There he would change his plane and his identity
for the flight to Denver, while the original flight continued on to
Miami.

His mission was not dissimilar to those of his countrymen now filing
aboard this aircraft: sent by their corporate masters to do battle with
the outside world, to best it on its own turf.

They wage a war of economics, Anji mused, and carry as
their weapons briefcases stuffed with contracts, business plans,
proposals. So petty, so parochial in their limited aims.

His own war was much more direct; the weapon he carried was not in his
briefcase, but inside his body--even now multiplying and girding for the
final battle, the Great Apocalypse. He had, Anji knew, done his work
well.

There were no symptoms to betray him, not yet; he had, in accordance
with the incubation tables he had carefully calculated, waited until
just before boarding to use the nasal inhaler. But soon, in a matter of
days, he would become the first to take the path the Divine One had
dictated for all the world to follow. By then, he would have cast the
seed he carried so widely that none would be able to stay its
destruction.

On the flight to Mexico, Anji flew tourist class, assigned to the aisle
seat.

Despite the close quarters, it was an uneventful trip. Anji slept most
of the way, as did his seatmate. To any who might notice, the pair was a
study in contrasts: one a middle-aged Japanese with thick dark hair and
the studious appearance of a man who had become accustomed to careful,
intricate work; the other, an eight-year-old American girl.

Her name was Emily Sawyer and she had been visiting her father, an Air
Force E-6 stationed at a base in Japan. Emily shifted as she slept, for
a while leaning against the snoring man in the seat beside her. Her
blond hair moved slightly in the fitful breeze of his breathing.

Under the watchful eye of the flight attendant--a scrutiny that, in the
end, was unequal to a danger far too minute to be seen--Emily was
returning to her mother's home in Milton, a small town a few miles from
Fort Walton Beach, Florida.

It was an easy landing at Denver International Airport, a smooth glide
toward the geometric concrete ribbons and graceful white-tented canopies
of the sprawling complex. The connecting flight from Mexico City had
been uneventful. Around the cabin, a Babel of English and Spanish rose
in volume as the plane descended. Through the plastic window, blurred by
the crosshatching of the inevitable fine scratches, Anji saw the
purple-and-brown majesty of the Rockies jutting into a pale blue summer
sky. In comparison, Denver itself--thirty-odd miles in the
distance--appeared a jumble of children's blocks, carelessly strewn.

Denver's old Stapleton Airport is only a memory now, closed since the
mountain metropolis greeted the new millennium with this
five-billion-dollar, technology-laden facility. It is a much longer
drive to the city now, and the traveler no longer gets a bird's-eye view
of the city's streets and buildings that Stapleton's close-in location
offered. But landing at Denver International Airport no longer requires
visitors to the Mile-High City to endure sharp banking turns and steep
descents on final approach, or the often-jolting touchdowns that were
the inevitable result.

Neither are they required, as before, to look down upon the industrial
expanse of the old airport's closest neighbor, the Rocky Mountain
Arsenal; like Stapleton, the arsenal too is now closed, though
spacesuited workmen still swarm over its otherwise idle grounds.

Here, the aggressive re mediation program has not removed a stubborn
plutonium contamination, the legacy of half a century of nuclear weapons
assembly and storage. The radioactive mega-tonnage that passed through
the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in its heyday could have exterminated
humanity many times over.

Had Anji considered all this--had he not been distracted, first by the
bilingual tumult of his fellow passengers, and later by the lengthy
delay as he waited in line at the car rental counter--he might have been
struck by the irony.

Finally, his suit bag over a shoulder, Anji struggled across the tarmac
of the massive parking lot. He studied the numbers on the rental
agreement he held, scrutinizing the rows of freshly washed autos through
which he passed. He also wondered if his shortness of breath was the
result of the thin mountain air or a first symptom of the lethal destiny
he carried.

Thus distracted, the Japanese did not notice the figure that followed
him, moving quietly without appearing to do so.

Anji stopped short, and dropped his suit bag to the pavement.

It was a Lexus, a pale gray mount for his final ride. As he fumbled with
the keyring, Anji glanced over his shoulder in the direction from which
he had come. There was no one to be seen.

He turned the key in the lock, and the trunk popped open. It was, he
noted idly, surprisingly spacious.

"Excuse, please," a voice said from behind.

Anji spun, startled as much by the trace of a Slavic accent as by the
interruption itself. For a split second, what might have been a smile of
beatific delight flashed across his Asian features.

My Sensei! his mind cried out, knowing at the same instant it could not
be.

And it was not.

He did not know the man who stood carefully outside Anji's attack radius
with a genial smile on his clean shaven face.

Anji's eyes dropped to an object the stranger held, waist high. It was
oddly shaped--an awkward black metal protuberance, vented on the sides
and with what looked like a strip of masking tape affixed across the
front of the tube. He had just recognized it as a weapon when the tape
abruptly blew apart, leaving its edges frayed and tinged with black.

There was no sound, but Anji felt the shock of impact against his
sternum. He staggered, catching himself for an instant; then his knees
gave way and he felt himself tumble backward. He crashed onto metal, his
head bouncing hard against what felt like thin carpet. There was still
no pain, but
when he willed his hand to touch his chest, it came away warm and
dripping.

The world swam redly for a moment; when his eyes cleared again, he was
looking up the pale blue sky framed by the inside of the open trunk lid.
A face moved into his vision, peered down at him without apparent
interest. Then it disappeared, and he felt his legs being lifted and
folded into the trunk where he lay. They seemed very far away, no longer
a part of his body.

Then the trunk lid slammed shut, plunging Anji into a semidarkness that,
a few seconds later, became final and complete.

Day One: July 21

Chapter 1.

Fort Walton Beach, Florida July 21

Breakfast today was an apple, a bright red Macintosh, and Dr. Carol
Mayer bit into it with the aggrieved attitude of a hungry woman deprived
of a decent meal. It made a satisfying crunching sound and tasted
delicious and sweet. But it was still an apple, and as such, a woefully
insufficient substitute for a real meal.

Her jaw working busily, Carol popped another chart from the ready-rack
behind the reception counter and scanned it quickly. She frowned,
pursing her lips.

Another upper-rez complaint? the young physician said to herself.

Third one I've fielded this morning.

It was shaping up into a busy day, and the non-physician side of Carol
sighed in disappointment. It was a beautiful day outside, and the waters
of Choctawatchee Bay--her bay: the expanse of living waters that she had
first seen on the incoming flight when she interviewed for the job here,
the bay with which she had fallen into thrall from that instant
onward-would be blue and inviting.

The emergency room at the Rossini-Evans Clinic was crowded--not unusual
for a Tuesday during the summer season, when it seemed that every other
tourist, traveler or
random visitor to the Emerald Coast ran afoul of the perils of vacation.
It might be sunburn, cherry red on newly arrived flesh unaccustomed to
the searing rays of the Redneck Riviera. It might be jellyfish stings,
or fishhook impalements. It might be cracked bones or abrasions on
visiting skateboarders, whose chronic attitude of terminal teenage
boredom was at least temporarily on hold.

But it's not often summer colds, Carol told herself. At least, not this
many.

"Room Three," Latonya Ferris said, interrupting the physician's musings.
She was a large black woman in nurse's garb who ruled the clinic's
immediate care operations with an iron hand. "But when you're finished
there, honey, take a look at the boy in Five. He's wearing a cast that's
past due the time to come off." She chuckled. "And the fragrance is
something else, I want to tell you."

Carol Mayer checked to make sure no patients were watching. Then she
stuck her tongue out at Latonya. Both women laughed at the same time,
and Carol was still grinning as she strode down the hallway to the
examining room. She took a final bite of her apple, dropped it in the
side pocket of her lab coat, and knocked once on the closed door.

Carol was all efficiency when she opened the door and stepped in.

Seated on the exam table was a woman who could not have been far out of
her teens. She was wearing a multicolored tube top and white shorts, and
on her feet were bright red canvas Keds. Like so many of the girls who
found their way to the sugar white beaches here, she had long blond hair
and the body of a dancer. A sea-horse tattoo, acquired recently enough
to still look raw on the margins of the ink lines, decorated the inside
of her left thigh.

A young man in a faded Auburn T-shirt and cutoff Levi's sat on the table
beside her, holding her hand and looking uncertain.

"How are we doing today"--Carol glanced at the name on the insurance
form--"Ms. Atkins, is it?"

Ashley Atkins, whose sophomore year at Ole Miss. had ended three weeks
before she had informed her parents of the plan to summer on the beach,
blew her nose in the handkerchief she held. Her eyes were red and puffy.

"Not so good. I truly feel like hell."

"She's been throwin' up all morning, Doctor," the young man interjected.
His voice was worried. "I think she's running a fever, too."

"Let's take a look." Carol snapped on fresh latex gloves from a box on
the countertop. She slipped a plastic sleeve over the sensor of an
electronic thermometer and placed the tip in the younger woman's ear
canal.

"Yep. You're elevated, a bit. I want to look at your throat, please."

There was inflammation. It was not major, and certainly fit the
diagnostic profile Carol was building. Northwest Florida in July was an
oven, which meant that air conditioners were working overtime in every
motel room, beach house and condo. That kept the inside air dry, which
dried out throat and nasal membranes; viruses tended to thrive in that
kind of environment. Add to that the closed-circuit recirculated air in
movie theaters, restaurants, rave halls and barrooms--well, Carol
reasoned, it's a wonder everybody isn't nursing the summer sniffles.

She scribbled a note on the form. "About how long have you been feeling
ill, Ms. Atkins?" she asked, without looking up.

"Day ' yesterday, she started sounding all clogged up," the young man
said. "I don't think she got much sleep last night, either."

"It wasn't bad until this morning, Bobby," Ashley protested. "Doctor,
you got something I can take to feel better?" She blew her nose again.

"Penicillin or something? I tried Contac, but it didn't do any good."

Carol shook her head sympathetically.

"I'm afraid you've picked up a bad cold," she said. "Antibiotics don't
work on a virus. I'm going to take some swabs and have a nurse draw a
blood sample--don't worry, Ms. Atkins, you'll hardly feel it. We'll run
some tests. There are a few medications that can help with the symptoms,
and we'll write you up a prescription." She stood, peeled the latex
gloves from her hands and tossed them into a wastebasket.

"I'll be back in a minute."

Carol closed the door behind her. It was a routine case, a summer cold,
and Ashley Atkins was an otherwise healthy young woman. Strictly
speaking, Carol could prescribe two antivirals, amantadine and
rimantadine, though it was probably too late in the cycle to do much
good. In addition, the medical journals were all agog about
neuraminidase inhibitors like zanamivir and oseltamivir, though the
results were still less than predictable. There were also even newer
formulations, most of them still in the pre-brand-name stage and tagged
only by alphanumeric identifiers; sometimes they worked, usually they
did not. Worse, the cost was horrendous; few HMOs or insurance companies
would pay for what they termed such "experimental"

treatment.

All you could really do was wait it out. A week, ten days at the most,
and Ashley Atkins would be back on the beach without a care in the
world. Carol fished the apple from her pocket and nibbled at it.

She was approaching the reception counter to order the tests when she
heard a loud hacking from the waiting room. It rose above what suddenly
seemed to her a cacophony of lesser coughs and a chorus of snuffling
noses.

On a hunch, she walked around the counter and looked out at the waiting
room. Of perhaps fifteen people there, she estimated a dozen were
exhibiting the sniffling, flushed-face presentation she had already seen
three times today.

As she watched, one of the waiting patients began to cough again. It was
loud and phlegmy and extended, racking
the middle-aged man's beefy body. It was also evidently painful, bending
him forward from the waist as he sat. When the man finally regained
control, his eyes were watering profusely. He wiped at his mouth with a
handful of paper tissues, and Carol saw the bluish cast of his lips.

My God, she realized, he's cyanotic.

She was just starting forward when the man's eyes rolled upward and he
fell forward. He crashed heavily to the floor and lay motionless. In an
instant, Carol was crouched over him, oblivious to the screaming and
commotion in the room. Her fingertips were still wet with the juice of
the apple now rolling into a far corner, and she pressed them firmly
against the man's carotid. She concentrated hard, only vaguely aware of
a figure that was now kneeling beside her. It was one of the nurses,
Jerry-something-or-other, who moonlighted at the clinic when not on duty
at Eglin Air Force Base hospital.

"There's no pulse," she told him, and began chest compressions as Jerry
bent to clear the airway. They worked as a team, with Jerry timing his
mouth-to-mouth ventilation to Carol's pace until Latonya sprinted up
with a bag and oxygen mask.

For the next few minutes, the waiting room was chaos. Other physicians
and nurses rushed in, some of them herding the waiting-room occupants
away from the tableau on the floor. Patients, themselves alarmed by the
clamor of the frightened crowd, peered from behind half-opened doors of
the treatment rooms; several emerged to see better, adding to the press
of humanity in the room.

Carol noticed them only peripherally, all her attention focused on the
medical crisis. The portable electroshock kit was up and charging in
seconds, but even repeated hits from the paddles caused no change in the
unit's monitors. She heard somebody, a woman, asking loudly for an
ambulance; if Carol had not been so fiercely focused she might have
laughed.

Ambulance? This is a clinic, lady. He's already up to his butt in
doctors.

She said nothing, except to call for syringes of adrenaline,
bicarbonate, TPF--the full arsenal that modern medicine provides to
restimulate cardiac activity.

But not even the most sophisticated treatments can reanimate dead
tissue. After almost twenty minutes, Carol waved Jerry away from what
was now only a bundle of slowly cooling meat. She looked at her
wristwatch, trying to ignore the film of tears that blurred the digital
numbers.

"Time of death," she said in a low voice, "nine-fifty-four
A. M."

Around the room, there was a hushed silence from the medical staff and
the patients alike.

But only for a moment.

Then a woman standing wide-eyed amid the other stunned patients began to
cough, loudly and painfully. She was bent forward at the waist when
Carol looked up, and had it not been for the fresh sea-horse tattoo she
would not have known who it was. The paroxysm rocked Ashley Atkins's
body, and she leaned heavily against the young man who held her arm.

There was an instant's hesitation before one of the clinic staff moved
toward her. In that brief moment, the other patients already had begun
to shrink back--all but one, whose own sudden racking cough ended in a
projectile gush of bright crimson blood.

What the hell? Carol Mayer asked herself. What the hell is going on
here?

She felt a shiver pass along her spine, and recognized it as fear.

Chapter 2.

Atlanta, Georgia July 21

It was clearly not politically correct, but whenever Beck Casey landed
in Atlanta there was a part of him that missed the Old South. He would
look at the plastic kiosks advertising Japanese laptops, cellular phone
services, the everchanging and still-unmet promises of a dot-com
technology, and wonder where the hell Scarlett O'Hara had gone.

At those moments, the historian in Beck would try to envision that world
through the eyes of a Robert E.-Lee or Jefferson Davis: vast feudal
plantations doomed by the flaws and inequities that defined their
agri-economic system but alive with the elegance that the system propped
up. Beck saw the aristocratic young bloods, equally at home on horse and
behind dueling pistol; and the proud Rebel beauties, as refined as they
were fiery in their own varieties of passions. It was a romanticized
imagery, and Beck knew it. But in recent years the picture had become
increasingly difficult to summon, even though the capital of the New
South took pains to remind all corners of its heritage. It had taken
Beck several trips to understand what was wrong.

The problem, he had come to see, was in the sanitized version that was
now being offered for public consumption.

Hartsfield Airport was now the nation's busiest; gone were the
Confederate battle flags, the faux-lithograph postcards portraying
red-clay fields of cotton, even the mural recreating the Baltic of Stone
Mountain that had greeted travelers of an earlier year. All these had
been replaced by ubiquitous photo posters of Southern belles carefully
posed in hoop-skirted coquettish ness on the immaculate lawns of
restored antebellum mansions. Today the Stars and Bars had been recast
as a racist symbol; the plantations raised only tourist dollars; the
coterie of modern Scarletts featured a more or less equal mix of races,
skin hues and, presumably, creeds.

It was, he supposed, social progress of a sort--though Beck often
wondered if blatant historical revisionism caused more problems than it
cured. Better to embrace the past, or at least acknowledge its mistakes,
than to remanufacture a homogenized history from random bits and scraps
that survived the censor's scissors. All this was the Disney version of
the Old South; and even as an unreconstructed Yankee, Beck felt the
poorer for it.

He was jostled from his thoughts, bumped from the front by a woman in a
rumpled business suit; then, almost simultaneously, from behind by a man
in wilted shirtsleeves whose coat was draped over an arm. Both muttered
their automatic pardons, their minds already otherwise occupied, before
pushing past in opposite directions.

As always, the airport was chaotic. If you fly anywhere in the South,
you change planes in Atlanta. The terminal was packed with throngs of
the harried, the overwrought, the perplexed. Beck moved as quickly as
possible through the gate area, pressed forward by his fellow arrivals
still filing down the jetway behind him. Together they formed one of the
countless tributaries that merged into a constant flow of humanity
pouring through the airport terminal. Beck spotted an eddy, an empty
space along the wall. He claimed it for his own, planting his bag at his
feet.

"Dr. Casey!" The voice came from behind, and as Beck
turned he found himself face-to-face with a young woman almost as tall
as himself. She was dressed in a light summer suit that was cut
severely, almost like a uniform. Dark hair fell just short of her
shoulders before curling slightly inward; it framed a face attractive in
what Beck considered a serious scholar sort of way. But her hands were
delicate and lovely, not needing the adornment of jewelry and sensibly
displaying none, and her eyes were a startling green.

"Dr. Casey?" This time the voice was interrogative. "Dr. Beck Casey?"

"Maybe," he said. "If I am, do we know each other?"

"Pardon me," she said, a hint of impatience in her tone. "I'm supposed
to meet a Dr. Casey arriving from Chicago on Delta." She looked over her
shoulder at the few Chicago passengers still milling about the gate
area.

"Guilty as charged," Beck said, and grinned. "Let me guess: Larry
Krewell sent you here, right?"

She nodded, and held out her hand. "I'm Andrea Wheelwright, Doctor.

From CDC. Dr. Krewell had an unexpected schedule conflict, and I
volunteered to meet your flight. You, uh ... fit the description Dr.
Krewell provided."

"And Larry's description said what, exactly?"

She colored slightly. "Well--tall. Dark hair." She smiled. "He described
your age as--I'm quoting here--'either a well-preserved forty or a
dissipated-looking thirty-five." And he said you probably wouldn't be
dressed like a doctor."

Beck looked down at an Iowa State T-shirt that had once been black,
tucked into faded denim jeans. On his feet were salt-stained Top-Siders,
no socks. On the carpeted floor beside them, an oversized gym bag that
had seen better days bulged with Beck's traveling kit.

Only the laptop Power Book, slung over his shoulder in its spotless
black ballistic nylon case, seemed out of place in an appearance that
might, with extreme charity, be described as casual.

"Nailed it, didn't he?" Beck said, laughing.

The crowd jostled them again, and Andrea Wheelwright
scooped up the gym bag with an ease that belied its weight. "I have a
car outside," she said, and--using the bag as a ram--led the way. She
pushed through the throngs with enthusiasm, and forced a passage for
herself and Beck on the crowded tram to the main terminal. There, she
surged ahead to a long escalator that led upward to natural sunlight.

He followed in the wake she left, deferring to what he recognized as an
expert pathfinder.

Outside, an illegally parked Ford Mustang pressed against the curb under
a sign that read tow away zone. It drew annoyed glances from the airport
traffic police, but little more: a printed card propped inside the
windshield said cdc
CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL--OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT

vehicle in large letters, above an impressive block of smaller type.

The woman beeped the door locks and moved quickly to the driver's side.

Tossing the bag in the seat behind her, she slid in and the engine
roared to life. Before Beck could completely close the passenger door,
she was pulling into the passing stream of vehicles.

"Pretty handy, I bet." Beck nodded at the card. He pulled the seat belt
around himself and locked it with a click, just as his driver cut hard
into a faster lane. He heard the sound of brakes squealing and
involuntarily braced for an impact that did not materialize.

"Are we in a hurry?"

"Actually, Dr. Casey, " she began, "I just assumed--"

"Please, let's drop the ',"" Beck interrupted. "Why don't you call me
Beck? Then I can call you Andrea."

"Andi, if you please. Only my mother uses the other name. Pardon me, but
you're not a doctor?" She pulled from the airport ramp onto the
expressway and accelerated in a manner that pressed Beck into the seat
back.

"My doctorate is in history. And sociology."

"Ah, a professor."

"Yes and no. Having dual specialties seems to annoy both the sociology
department and the history department at most
universities--at least, it sure pisses off their tenure committees."

"Really. I had no idea."

"I'm glad you saw that truck," Beck said, trying to sound unconcerned.

"So I've become a professional visiting academic. I've worked on four
campuses in three years. Right now I'm a guest lecturer at the
University of Chicago--or will be when the term starts next month." He
glanced pointedly at the speedometer. "If I live that long."

"Dr. Krewell seems to know you well. Have you worked together?"

"I met Larry years ago, when I was living in D. C."

He noticed her eyes flicker toward him momentarily, and he was careful
to sound casual. "Georgetown, on a nice little government grant. I was
working on my master's then, and was still afflicted with literary
ambitions. So I was trying to research a book."

"Really? What was the subject?"

Beck flinched as a minivan changed lanes in front of them; Andi's
Mustang swerved around it tightly and expertly.

"Looking back, it was a little pretentious. A history of the impact of
pandemic diseases on world history. You know-the Black Death. Cholera.

Smallpox. Plague books were considered sexy for a while back then. I
thought I'd cash in on the trend and maybe start building a reputation
at the same time. I interviewed a lot of people. Larry was sort of the
Army's up-and-coming resident expert."

"He would have been at USAMRIID--or was it still called Fort Detrick,
back then?"

Beck smiled, but said nothing. In the circles he had once traveled, it
was considered bad form to mention that someone had been posted to
Detrick, despite the new reputation the military installation had spared
no effort to build for itself. At least USAMRIID--the acronym for the
U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, where today
the work focused on vaccines and treatments--carried
fewer connotations of the biological weapons that was once Detrick's
sole reason for existence.

"So, was your book a success?"

Beck made a show of scowling darkly, then grinned in unison with his
driver.

"Took too long to write it," he said. "By the time I finished, public
tastes had moved on. But at least I didn't have to give the grant money
back."

And that's not exactly a lie, Beck thought.

In fact, ultimately the book had been published, though distribution had
been limited to a small, select audience--all of whom received salaries
from the United States government. It had also led to a job offer, then
a career, in a profession he had once thought existed only in fiction.
But he could think of no reason to proffer this information to Andi
Wheelwright, or to anyone else who did not carry the requisite
clearance.

After all, he thought with a flash of bitter regret, he had not offered
it to Deborah--at least, not during the years when it might have made
the difference to both of them. And by the time he might have been ready
to do so, the information had already been devaluated, torn from him by
violent strangers whose calculated interrogations had been more intimate
than anything he had shared with his wife. In the aftermath, Deborah had
no longer seemed inclined to know.

He shook off the dark thoughts and turned to his driver.

"So, Andi--is it Dr. Wheelwright, or Ms. Wheelwright?"

She looked at Beck briefly, and--he thought--speculatively. "I'm not a
doctor," she said, easily, her eyes back on the traffic. "Most of my
work involves public information."

"Aha--we're both in the same business," Beck said, and was puzzled at
the look she shot him. "Writing and teaching, I mean. Do you always
drive this fast?"

"Uh-huh." Another lane change snapped Beck's head sideways. "Beck, could
we talk when we get to CDC? I'm
sorry, but I kind of need to keep my mind on the road right now."

"No problem," Beck assured her, the cars outside a solid blur in his
peripheral vision. Unconsciously, he drew his knees closer to his chest.
"Absolutely. You go ahead and concentrate. Please."

The Centers for Disease Control are just what they sound like, a
collection of six red-brick structures in Chamblee, just north of
downtown Atlanta. Viewed from Clifton Road, which it faces, the complex
is deceptive; built into one of the rolling Georgian hills, the bulk of
the complex is actually underground. The overall appearance is not
unlike the headquarters of a medium-sized corporation, though not a
particularly prosperous one. This similarity continues into the various
lobbies and reception areas, each comfortably appointed with an
intentionally understated restraint. The effect is one of both
scientific efficiency and a casual, almost folksy sense of welcome to
the public.

The latter ends abruptly immediately inside the doors on the north side,
where a lobby branches into an atrium. Those doors mark the outer
boundary of Building Fifteen, officially designated the Viral and
Rickettsial Diseases Lab. This is home for the
CDC's Special Pathogens
Branch, and the sunny visages with which staff greets most visitors
elsewhere are conspicuous in their absence. Here, the uniformed guards
take their jobs seriously indeed; the sidearms are clearly not for show.
Here, a special system of fans maintains an air pressure that is
slightly lower than the world outside; the negative air pressure ensures
any exchange of microscopic life-forms will be in only one direction. It
also causes a slight hiss that soon becomes unnoticed white noise.

Andi Wheelwright handed her laminated identification card to one of the
guards, who passed it through what looked like an electronic credit card
validator. He carefully studied
the image that popped up on his computer monitor before returning the
card.

"This is Dr. Beck Casey," Andi said, a hint of emphasis on the
honorific. "He's on Dr. Krewell's access authorization. This morning's
list."

The guard punched in a series of keystrokes.

"I'll need to see a photo ID, Dr. Beck."

"Sure," Beck said, and reached for his hip pocket and stiffened.

The wallet he always carried there was gone.

"Looks like we have a slight problem," Beck said.

"One of us does," said the guard. He glanced at Andi Wheelwright, who
answered with a slight nod. Before Beck could speak, she was already
heading down the hall.

"Can't admit you without an ID," the guard said. "But Ms. Wheelwright
might be able to do something. It'll probably be a few minutes, though."

"I'll bet you have a little room where I can wait," he told the guard.

"While all this gets straightened out."

"Uh-huh," the guard said, trying to keep a straight face. "I'll even
keep you company."

Less than twenty minutes later, the guard escorted Beck past the lobby
checkpoint. There was no ID check this time, and no sign of Andi
Wheelwright. Instead, Beck walked in lockstep with the guard through a
labyrinth of corridors. Occasionally, people passed them, traveling in
the opposite direction. No one spoke.

Finally, they stopped outside one anonymous set of closed doors. The
guard knocked once. He winked at Beck and gestured, palm up, at the
door.

Inside, seated at a hardwood desk that butted against tall firing
cabinets, was Larry Krewell. Spread out on the desk in front of Krewell
was Beck's wallet and the contents thereof.

A man's history, or at least a significant part of it, is contained in
the things he carries. Old business cards, receipts, the type and number
of credit cards, a phone number scribbled on a napkin: each item adds
another handful of pixels to the overall picture. Krewell had made an
untidy pile: a commuter ticket, a prepaid phone card, an American
Express and a Mastercard, five twenty-dollar bills and a similar number
of singles. Apparently, Krewell had already read whatever stories they
told and dismissed them as irrelevant.

All save the driver's license, which he was examining with a skeptical
expression.

"Damn it, Beck--you trying to tell me you still weigh one-ninety?"

Krewell raised his eyes, tracked up and down on his visitor. "Okay," he
said grudgingly. "Maybe. You must have a lot of free time to spend in
the gym, though." He tossed the license onto the pile of other official
detritus. "By the way, my paranoid of' buddy--whoever did up the other
two licenses for you does good work. But where did he come up with the
names? You just don't look like a Wayne or a Bu ford."

"Hello to you too, Larry," Beck said. "Don't lose the Metra ticket.

It's a monthly pass, and I'll need it when I go back to Chicago." He
pulled up the visitor's chair and crossed his legs. "Which will be on
the next flight, unless you can explain why you had that pair of
boosters lift my wallet."

Krewell grinned. "Bullshit. No way you made '." He thrust an impressive
jaw at the monitor that occupied a corner of the desk. "I saw your face
when you reached for your wallet, of' buddy. About fell out of my chair
laughing."

The door opened and Andi Wheelwright entered. In her hand was a sheaf of
what looked like photos, which she laid in front of Krewell.

"You know, you should consider a cleaning service," she said to Beck,
her impassive expression leavened by the hint of humor in her tone.

"Your apartment is rather a mess, even for a bachelor."

Krewell glanced at the top photo--actually, a fine detailed laser
printout, a vast improvement over the fax images it had replaced. It
showed a small kitchen table that evidently doubled as a desk; paper
Starbucks cups and opened take-out containers with Chinese characters
badly printed in red shared the tabletop with textbooks butter flied
open. Krewell flipped through the printouts rapidly, pausing only at a
picture of a bedside table in the middle of the stack.

A head shot of a smiling girl in her early teens filled the right side
of a hinged photo frame; the left side was conspicuously empty.

"How is Katie, by the way?" Krewell asked, still looking at the photo.

"She's what now--fifteen?"

"Fifteen, going on thirty," Beck said. "She spent two weeks in Chicago
with me last month--most of it, I think, on the phone talking to her
girlfriends back in Virginia. Mainly about boys, from what I could
overhear."

Krewell grinned. "Daughters are God's way of punishing fathers for the
sins of their youth. At least she's not driving yet."

"Driver's ed starts in September," Beck replied. "Katie already has her
learner's permit, courtesy of the Commonwealth of Virginia."

"Wait till she asks for a car."

"Already asked and answered." Beck shook his head. "No way, even if I
had the money. So we compromised--I taught her how to drive a stick
shift. By the time she went back home, my Beetle needed a new clutch."

"Back home." Krewell nodded, making it sound casual. "How's everybody
adjusting? To the divorce, I mean."

"Katie's fine."

"Good to hear. And Deborah? Is she fine, too?"

There was no answer. When Krewell looked up to repeat, he saw Beck
staring at him, unblinking. Krewell held Beck's eye for a moment, then
tossed the photos on the desk as if they had no significance.

"Well, I hope you're getting a break on the rent," he told
Beck. "Looks like a bomb went off in your bedroom--and this was taken
before our people searched the place."

Andi chuckled.

"You work in public information, you say?" Beck said to her, eyebrows
raised in polite inquiry.

"Yes," Andi said. "Except my job is usually to prevent information from
becoming public."

"Find anything interesting?" Beck asked. "In my wallet or my place?"

"Well, I for one find it interesting that your bank balance can be so
low without knocking your credit rating all to hell," Krewell
volunteered.

He smiled at the expression on Beck's face and shrugged in a way meant
to convey good humor. "Oh, grow up. You know how the game is played.

Of course we looked at your finances. Heck, ole' buddy, we turned your
life inside out-did a pretty good job, given the time limitations."

"Behave, gentlemen," Andi said. "We didn't find anything incriminating
or even mildly suspicious." She tried to look apologetic, and failed
utterly. "Sorry. You never know until you check, and there wasn't time
to go by the rule book."

"Andi is our security director here, Beck," said a grinning Krewell.

"And since yesterday afternoon, it has been her people that you didn't
see following you around. C'mon. Admit it, of' buddy. It'll only hurt
for a minute."

"I may be out of practice," Beck conceded. "A little." He twisted to
address Andi. "Congratulations. Your guys are pretty good at the bump
and lift. Dog and cat team at the airport gate. Right?"

Andi nodded. To Beck, she looked more than a little smug.

"Mario Andretti couldn't have beat your time getting out here, so I
assume the dip handed off my wallet to you right there. What, ten feet
from where I was standing? Nice touch."

"I like to get in a little fieldwork every now and then," Andi said.

"Keeps my tradecraft from getting too rusty."

"Touche," Beck said. "Okay. What's this about, Larry? I gather all that
sugar on the phone this morning was just bullshit to get me down here.
All you had to do was ask me."

"You're wrong, my friend. I am indeed about to offer you a consulting
contract. But not to research the history of the CDC, or whatever the
hell I told you."

Beck frowned. "Why the cover story?"

"We have a for-real, double-barreled public health emergency," Krewell
said, "and you've been drafted." He made a gesture with his thumb. "I
have a roomful of silver backs down the hall. Right now, they don't know
how to do anything but bare their fangs and growl at one another.

And throw dung, when they get the chance. They are one scared pack of
old gorillas, I kid you not. But they're the ones who will have to go
back to the President, damn soon, and give him our official
recommendation."

"The President? Larry, what the hell is going on?"

"All that stuff you wrote for the Company on epidemics, pandemics, bio
plagues remember? The disruptions, the riots--hell, the whole ball of
social breakdown they could create? I'll tell you--you painted one hell
of a picture. Scared me, when the CIA sent over a copy."

Beck looked at his friend blankly. He realized that his heart had begun
to beat faster, and that his face suddenly felt numb.

Krewell looked at his wristwatch.

"As of seventeen hours ago, ole' buddy, you officially became a
prophet."

More than a dozen people were seated around the polished mahogany of the
circular conference table, and as almost as many were in the
theater-style chairs behind them. Each principal had been allowed only
one aide; some, recognizing the sensitivity of the subject matter, had
elected to come alone.

It was nearing lunchtime, and the meeting evidently had been going on
for some hours. Plates and saucers, some bearing scraps of long-cold
scrambled eggs and crusts of toasted muffins, still littered the table.

The breakfast crockery had been pushed to the side to clear a space for
legal pads or laptop computers, depending on each participant's
note-taking preference. Only two or three people were squinting down,
Beck noticed, trying to decipher the undersized screen of a Palm Pilot.

Audio recorders might have been useful to these unfortunates; given the
nature of the subject matter and its potential political sensitivity,
these were strictly prohibited.

Despite an efficient air-conditioning system, the tang of burned coffee
lingered in the air.

It mingled with a tantalizingly familiar odor that at first Beck could
not place. Then it hit him: it was the smell of tobacco, and that fact
alone confirmed to Beck that this was no ordinary meeting. Whoever was
smoking had reached a stress level high enough to need a cigarette;
needed one badly enough to ignore this most sacred of federal
regulations.

And, Beck thought, has the clout to get away with it.

"Mr. Secretary, I would suggest that our most urgent need is to
determine if we are indeed facing a threat. We should not forget the
swine flu debacle that Jerry Ford initiated under much the same
circumstances. More people died from the vaccine than even caught that
flu."

The voice came from the far edge of the table, from the only person in
the room who was still wearing a suit jacket. He was clearly not the
smoker. Unlike the others, he appeared sleek and composed, and his eyes
were bright as a ferret's. From television, Beck recognized him as the
junior senator from Pennsylvania.

"Oh, for God's sake, Fred. That was 1976," another voice objected.

"Mr. Secretary, rehashing what happened more than two decades ago is not
a valid comparison. At least the Ford administration wasn't afraid to
act when action was
called for. I'd remind the gentleman that our science has come a long
way since then--as has our ability to identify, and respond to, a
critical danger to public health."

"Fine," the senator fired back. "You tell that to the President.

Better still, tell the people of the United States they have to line up
and get injected with some goddamn witches' brew--one that doesn't even
exist yet."

Next to him, a woman in a tailored suit nodded in grim agreement; Beck
recognized her as the surgeon general and assumed that a similarly
serious-looking woman seated alongside was her aide.

Beck frowned, calculating the collective stature of the people at this
table. Health and Human Services was Cabinet level, the surgeon general
only a half-step below; add to that at least one senator, an assortment
of expensive Brooks Brothers suits, and an impressive number of
uniformed military, none of them below flag rank.

The heavy hitters were here in force, he realized.

A thin blue plume rose from one of the chairs, catching his attention.

The occupant was facing away from the door where Beck, Krewell and
Wheelwright had entered. Only the balding dome of the back of his head
was visible, but Beck felt a sudden flash of recognition.

Carson, Beck thought. Of course, it would have to be Carson.

As if he heard Beck's thoughts, Billy Carson, national security advisor
to the President, swiveled to look back at the entering trio. His face
showed no sign of greeting, though his eyes locked on Beck's for what
seemed like a long moment.

Then he turned away, leaning toward a stocky man in a short-sleeved
white shirt who sat to his right. He murmured what might have been
advice or instructions, then raised his voice to address the rest of the
room.

"If I may. Please."

As always, Beck found the tone surprisingly mild, matching an appearance
that would have better fit a stereotypical
midlevel bureaucrat than the de facto head of the U.S. intelligence
community. It was easy to underestimate Carson on the basis of how he
looked and acted; in Beck's personal experience, a number of people had
done just that, to their regret. In one notable instance, an
undersecretary of defense had wondered aloud how "such a goddamn
shoe-store clerk" could have risen so high in the intelligence
community.

The remark had since become famous in the upper circles of government.

The undersecretary had seen neither the intellect nor the fierce pride
that burned behind Carson's calculatedly mild demeanor. Only when the
hapless official had found himself quietly outflanked and outmaneuvered
had he looked closer, and by then it was too late to salvage his own
career. The erstwhile undersecretary had left government, ironically to
join a corporation that supplied footwear to the Army.

Beck had heard the story any number of times, even after he had left the
job that kept him in regular contact with Carson. It had become a
legend, and even the incumbent President was among those who regularly
repeated the story. But rumor said he was the only one who did not smile
when he told it.

Now Carson's quiet tone sliced through the debate like a bayonet.

"Thank you," he said. "Dr. Porter tells me he is prepared to address the
nature of the situation we are facing. It might be valuable to hear him
now."

Krewell touched Beck's arm. "Ray Porter heads CDC's Bio-Pathogen
Forensics," he said in a low voice. "Knows his business. This guy,
believe what he says about anything medical." They moved to the chairs
behind Carson, where Wheelwright was already seated.

Porter fiddled with the keyboard, and an image lit up the room's large
screen. It was a gray-and-white photo of what looked like fuzzy cotton
balls, each corralled by a thick variegated circle. There were a number
of them lumped together
so tightly that some of the circles had flexed into the shape of hens'
eggs.

"What you're looking at is an electron microscope's view of what we're
calling HIN1-Florida," he said. "It's a virus culture sent to CDC by a
pathologist in Niceville, Florida, down in the Panhandle. Patient was a
thirty-six year-old male, a limousine driver who had been hospitalized
for a case of severe pneumonia. He died on the ninth of July. The sample
was logged in here on July 11, and two days ago was assigned to a lab
tech for A and I--analysis and identification."

"Thereby wasting almost two weeks," a woman sitting stiffly at the table
did not quite mutter. The blue-black jacket draped over her chair back
bore the gold shoulder boards of a Navy vice admiral and the bright
silver caduceus of the medical corps.

Porter reddened, but his voice was unfazed.

"We get about a hundred and fifty culture samples here every working
day," he said. "More on Mondays. You do the math, okay?" He pressed
another key and a new image appeared along side the first.

"I'm not an expert," the ferret senator said, "but I don't see a
difference."

"Genetically, there isn't one," Porter replied. "They're the same bug.

Except this one came from in from a pathology lab in Mary Esther,
Florida. An eight-year-old female presenting what the clinic's attending
described as ' flu like symptoms." That was last week--the sixteenth, I
believe. We were sent the culture on July 18, the day the girl succumbed
to severe respiratory failure."

Porter blew out hard. "Okay. We have a middle-aged male with pneumonia,
which isn't all that uncommon even in the summer. This guy had all kinds
of risk factors: he was a smoker, grossly overweight and in a sedentary
job--"

He shrugged.

"Well. And sad as it is, sometimes when a kid catches the
flu, or even a common cold, there's a toxic-shock reaction. So the
cultures came in. The first thing our people do is look over the
paperwork that comes with '. Seemed routine. The clinical symptomology
didn't raise any red flags, right? They had to wait in line for A and
I."

"We all understand," the senator growled. "Your ass is covered. Get on
with it."

Porter ignored the interruption.

"We ran the standard virological tests on the sample from the limo
driver. It was an A-rype, but we couldn't get a match on the strain.

Wasn't Victoria, wasn't PR-34, wasn't WAS. Then the lab tech ran an
ELISA--that's shorthand for ' linked immunosorbent assay'--and got some
very confusing results. We seemed to have some kind of swine flu virus,
non-type specific. That rang some bells--enough so the tech fast-tracked
it to genetics for comparison.

"Yesterday, the computer came up with a hit--a form of Type A influenza,
Hin1. Not an exact match; there are some very interesting antigenic
shifts in the hemagglutinin protein that have us puzzled. But it was
close enough for identification. More than close enough to make us start
re screening the paperwork backlog, looking for any cases with similar
symptoms. That's how we found the other one, the girl."

He touched the keyboard again, and a map replaced the virus images. It
was a detailed section of Northwest Florida, the stretch that ran along
the Gulf Coast from the bulge of Applachicola to Mobile Bay in the west.
Porter did something to the laptop that caused the display to zoom in,
centering on the large patch of blue that was Choctawatchee Bay.
Touching the northern shore was the town of Niceville; to the west, Mary
Esther. Over both, a large red
"I" was superimposed.

Between them, on the left side of the bay where the blue of the gulf
touched a forest green shoreline, lay the city of Fort Walton Beach.

There, on the display monitor, a large yellow "4-?" blinked
relentlessly.

There was a stunned silence for a moment. Then the significance of what
they were seeing dawned on those seated around the table, and several
voices started to speak simultaneously.

Porter's next words rolled over the commotion like a tank.

"Approximately two hours ago, CDC fielded a call from a general
practitioner in Fort Walton, which is on the coast about ninety miles
west of Tallahassee. The physician--a Dr. Mayer--was reporting the death
this morning of a fifty three-year-old male who collapsed in the clinic
where she works. Dr. Mayer indicated that the dead man presented with
symptoms consistent with those of three other patients she had already
examined this morning."

Porter paused for a moment.

"And here's worse news, people. Dr. Mayer says her waiting room was full
of people with upper-respiratory complaints --an unusually high number,
she believes."

The surgeon general spoke up.

"Can we confirm it's our virus?"

Porter shrugged. "I've got a team in the air now"--he glanced at the
wall clock--"and they should be landing in a few minutes. We'll get
swabs of the dead man and the three other patients, and run a field
antibody test. My prediction is it's H1N1. If that's the case, I have no
doubt that we will find others. It's only a matter of time."

From the chair beside Beck, Krewell's voice was hard, uncompromising.

"Time," he said, loud enough for the room to hear, "may be what we have
the least of."

All eyes swiveled to Krewell. There was a silence for a moment, an
appraisal of sorts. Then the senator spoke.

"Dr. Krewell, with all due respect, we're aware of your position. I'm
certain the Special Pathogens Branch is sincere in its concern. But
three or four cases of the flu--most of them not even confirmed--don't
make for an emergency."

"This isn't just ' flu," Senator," Krewell said. "Not this variant of
H1N1."

"Pardon me." Beck spoke up, feeling like a man come late to the party.

"I don't know anything about this ... H1-what ever."

"Sure you do," Krewell said. "Maybe not by that name."

"The form of H1N1 we're looking at doesn't exist in nature," Porter
said. "At least, we believe it hasn't for more than eighty years. But
when it was making the rounds, back in 1918, it was called the Spanish
flu. And now it's back."

"Jesus Christ," Beck said softly. "My great-grandfather died from that."

"Really?" Porter said. He spoke in a voice intended to carry throughout
the room. "So did forty million other people."

Chapter 3.

Fort Walton Beach, Florida July 21

It was gloriously hot on the beach, moderated only slightly by the
steady breeze that blew in from the sea. Gulls swooped in, hovering to
investigate a scrap of bread crust on the sugar white sand before
banking away in search of fresher sustenance. A sandpiper, either
hungrier or less choosy than his larger cousin, darted in comically on
its stiff bird legs and snatched up the morsel in his beak. Outside the
surf line, fifty yards from shore, the occasional mullet broke the
sun-dappled surface in fancy or in flight.

Katherine Casey--Katie to her friends--stretched languorously in the
bright sunlight. She lay on her back, eyes closed, one knee carefully
bent in a way she hoped displayed her fifteen-year-old charms to her
best advantage. This, despite the fact that there were no teenage boys
within view and only a handful of older male specimens in evidence. And
most of them must have been thirty, maybe thirty-five--if not absolutely
ancient, she told herself, then at least teetering on antique.

Still, Katie thought, savoring the sensation of warm sun on mostly bared
flesh, it doesn't hurt to practice.

"Sure beats hanging around Arlington, doesn't it?"

The voice came from Early Holmes, who at seventeen constituted the adult
supervision for the trio. Early had the car, a Chinese red Lemans; she
had the credit card, a Gold American Express belonging to a mother both
absent and indulgent; and she had the supreme self-confidence that came
of past consequences habitually avoided. In this, she was the most
experienced among her companions. It had been Carly's grand plan that
brought them here, to the Florida Gulf Coast, in the first place.

"You said there'd be guys. Lots of guys."

The tone was not quite accusatory, not quite a question. It belonged to
Jayne Lynn Soratelli, "J. L." to her close friends, "J. L.-bait"

to the more literal-minded of her male classmates. Having just turned
sixteen, J.L. was ready to prove her sophistication was at least the
equal of her older friend's. Even without opening her eyes, Katie knew
J.L. was propped up on her elbows, as if impatiently scanning the beach
for likely prospects.

It was largely an act, and all three of the girls knew it. Of the trio,
only Early would be bold enough to initiate contact with the random
passing male; she was also the only one of them who might take such an
encounter to its logical conclusion.

Still, Early had missed her only chance so far. When they pulled up
outside the beachfront hotel late the night before, she had popped
inside to see if there was a vacant room. Through the large glass lobby
doors, Katie and J.L. had watched Early lean over the counter, close to
a skinny boy who was working the night desk. They saw Early smile and
pass her hand a little too casually through her blond mane. The clerk
had nodded back at her, and the pair had talked for a moment before
Early had motioned her friends inside and unsheathed her Amex card. But
the fates had intervened; it was close to three a. m." and even Early
was too bushed for more than the cursory flirtation. Worse, at close
range the
boy's appeal was somewhat muted by the rheumy cough of a bad summer
cold.

Welcome to Florida, Katie thought to herself, remembering. This morning,
when they had entered the lobby to walk to the beach, to her relief the
desk was staffed by a large woman in a denim shirtdress.

"Oh, give it a chance," Carry was saying, listless in the morning heat,
to J.L. "Most of the guys here don't even wake up before sundown."

"So why are we up at noon?" J. L."s voice was now frankly challenging,
as if she sensed an inconsistency that boded worse revelations.

"Fourteen hours on the road! God, I'm still beat." Katie felt a sandy
foot kick against her extended ankle. "Hey, Kates--you alive?"

"It's still better than hanging around at home," Katie said, eyes still
closed. She hoped she sounded more enthusiastic than she felt.

"It's better than hanging around at your summer house, too," Early said.
"Sorry, Katie, but I hate that place."

"We used to have fun there," J.L. objected. "All of us."

"We were kids," Early said, with less energy than Katie had become
accustomed to when Early was on the subject. "Now it's like going to
kiddie summer camp. I have had my fill of hiking in the piney woods,
thank you very much. I want to have some fun, and this is the place."

There was a pause, and Katie could sense Early working up her trademark
wicked grin. "Come on. We're hot. We're three killer babes on vacation."

Still on her back, Katie raised her clenched fist in salute.

"Killer babes, on the beach," she said. "Get on board with it, J.L."

"Well," said J. L."

"if I get caught, my folks will kill me."

"Look--nobody's going to get caught." Carry's voice was exasperated.

"What're they going to do anyway? Call the cottage? There's no
phone--right, Katie? So they'd have to call my cellular number, and then
they'll get my voice mail and
leave a message. You just block the number when you call back, that's
all. I've done this before, dammit. It's foolproof."

Katie knew better, just as she had known better in the first place than
to sneak away on what Early described as "a little road trip." The
parents of all three girls had agreed--albeit reluctantly, in the case
of Katie's and J. L."s--to what was described to them as an extended
weekend sleepover at the rural Virginia summer cabin Katie's mother had
kept after the divorce. Had they been aware of the real plan, at least
two of the young women involved would not have been allowed out of their
respective rooms for the balance of the decade.

Hence Carly's precise timetable, under which they would be back home in
Arlington, Virginia, after three days of nonstop sun-and-sand, extreme
partying on the Redneck Riviera. With, presumably, no one the wiser.

Katie still felt guilty about the deception, though not as guilty as she
had imagined she would. She had been nervous at first, particularly when
Carly's Lemans had crossed the state line into North Carolina. But once
her initial anxiety had cooled, she had analyzed her situation with all
the logic of her years and experience.

/ might as well enjoy myself now, Katie reasoned to herself
philosophically. Because when Mom finds out about this, I'll be grounded
until I'm thirty.

It was eerie, the way Deborah Stepanovich -she had dropped her married
name, with an almost unseemly haste, after the divorce from Katie's
father---could divine events that involved her only child. Perhaps it
was her trained legal mind--Deborah was a lawyer on the partner track at
a D.C. firm that specialized in representing the interests of obscenely
large multinational corporations, and as such, accustomed to all manner
of deception. Perhaps it was simply the finely honed instincts of every
working mother.

Or maybe she's just a witch, with a "w," Katie told herself cattily, and
bit off the thought as unworthy.

But whatever the skill, talent or supernatural power involved, there was
no doubt in Katie's mind that her mother would, ultimately, discover the
truth. It was a thought that surprised Katie with its mixture of
apprehension and satisfaction, in roughly equal proportions.

The clashes were coming more and more frequently these days, and
Katie
admitted that it was usually her fault. She was tempted to attribute it
to her parents' divorce, a still-raw wound that all three of the
concerned parties pretended bled but a bare trickle; but instinctively
Katie knew the conflict had far more elemental roots. Frequently, she
found herself driven to challenge her mother even in matters where,
secretly, they might have agreed.

It was as if someone else lived inside her, a malevolent being that
automatically bristled at any suggestion, comment, observation
or--especially--directive that came from Deborah. Invariably, Katie
would respond, flint against her mother's steel. Then the sparks would
fly, ignite the under of two women living in close proximity and raise a
firestorm that indiscriminately blistered both of them.

The anger was automatic, virtually out of control, and in a very special
way it frightened Katie--mainly because she could see the power she had
to hurt her mother. But she could not stop, either. It was as if she
were fiercely determined to prove that her mother had no answers, or at
least not the right ones; at the same time, she was petrified at the
prospect that this might be true.

It would have been useful to talk about what she was experiencing, Katie
told herself; but to whom? Her mother was out, definitely; even on the
days when an uneasy peace prevailed, the subject matter involved was
decidedly too incendiary. It was, Katie believed, virtually guaranteed
to bring about a less-than-fruitful exchange of ideas. There were, of
course, the guidance counselors at school--a prospect Katie immediately
rejected; only dweebs and losers went to them with their concerns, which
were invariably passed along to the relevant parental unit anyway.

/ wish I could have talked to Dad about it, Katie thought. In early
June, she had spent two weeks with him in Chicago, where he was getting
ready to work for a semester or so. But he made it pretty dear that it
was never quite the right time to bring up anything about Mom--exactly
like she does, when I'm with her.

Katie stopped short, surprised at the intensity of the sudden animosity
she felt.

At both of them, dammit, she realized.

Katie understood that she was the fulcrum of a natural alliance that
could pit one parent against the other; she could shift her allegiance
between the two adult antagonists as her own necessities dictated. That
fact, she reasoned, gave her a large measure of power--and should have
given her, at least, a small measure of satisfaction.

Instead, it merely made her feel even more alone.

"Hel-l-lo--Earth to Casey. Anybody at home in there?"

Katie opened her eyes, squinting against the glare of the day.

"Carry's bailing on us," J.L. told her.

"I said, I'm going to call it a morning." Early was standing, and
despite the warmth of the day had pulled the large beach towel close
around her shoulders. "I think maybe I've had too much sun. I'm going to
go back to the room and sack out."

"What--you make a date with the front desk guy?" J.L. chided. Early
tried to smile, and for the first time Katie saw how tired her friend
looked.

"Want us to come along?" Katie asked.

"No," Early said. "You guys figure out where the parties are going to be
tonight. I'm just pooped. Plus, I'm all achy from sitting in the car too
long."

"Well," said Katie, "feel better."

"I just need to rest up." Early added, "We've got a big night ahead. I
guarantee it."

Chapter 4.

Columbia Falls, Montana July 21

The damnedest thing about the goddamn crazy Jap--the term Orin Trippett
invariably used when referring to the emissary with whom he had met--the
damnedest thing about him was that he had been so ... so ... Well,
"helpful" is the only word that comes right to mind, Trippett told
himself. Acts like he's Santy Claus and it's Christmas Eve. If Christmas
came in July, that is.

He had been suspicious initially, and he had not been alone. Orin had
taken it to the leadership council, and just about everybody in the
Mountain Warriors' Posse had been convinced that it was a government
sting--a plot by the FBI or atf. or even those bastards from Internal
Revenue, all aimed at undermining yet another citizens' militia.

And it would be just like Cousin Dickie to step into that kind of shit,
Trippett thought sourly. He's never been the sharpest pencil in the box.

Early on, there had even been talk of bundling the lone Japanese into
one of the panel trucks and taking him high enough into the mountains
that no one would ever find the body. It had happened before, when the
Posse had decided there was even a remote threat to the group.

But in the end, what the Japanese had been offering was simply too
enticing to pass up. For the Mountain Warriors, it was the answer to
their prayers. Nerve gas--sarin, the real thing. And another tantalizing
prospect that the visitor would only hint at, but which--if true--would
give Trippett's militia a capability beyond his very dreams.

They knew about CBW, of course- at least, the ones among the Posse who
had been military or who used their home computers for more than hunting
up porn sites on the Internet. To Orin Trippett, the idea of the
Mountain Warriors posing a credible chemical and biological threat was
enough to make him salivate.

But it was only when he had verified some of the Jap's claims that he
began to consider the possibility was real.

That had come a month earlier, in late May, when Orin finally had
decided to meet with his cousin in person. Dickie Trippett was an
officer of the Empire State Legionnaires, a militia group in upstate New
York. Despite his intellectual shortcomings, he was a man Orin trusted
as much as he trusted anyone: they had done time together on a state
weapons charge before Orin moved west in search of what remained of the
real America. Now Orin had reestablished contact, and the two of them
had met midway in an Iowa City motel.

"Way cool, man," Dickie had told him, a grin stretching across his face.
"I couldn't believe it, y'know? This damn Jap--talks like some kind of
egghead or something, doncha think?--anyways, he brings us this shit
and, like, shows us exactly what to fuckin' do with it. I mean, we took
those spray cans and laid the stuff anywhere there was lots of birds.
Out in the woods, ' anywhere you got crows and jays--hell, one guy even
drove into the Big Apple and sprayed it at the zoo. In the damn bird
house, can ya dig it?" He laughed at the memory.

"You sure it was the real stuff?" Orin had asked.

"West Nile," Dickie had said, nodding. "It's a virus. Birds
get it, pass it to mosquitoes. They go bite people and presto!

Encephalitis. Don't you read the papers, man? We got the stuff in, like,
a year ago April. By the end of summer, people was comin' down with it
all over the place. It's damn near everywhere in the country now." He
had smiled thinly. "I'll give you two words: bug repellent.

Don't leave home without it."

Orin frowned. "You think they had something to do with this other thing?
You know, the foot-in-mouth shit over in England."

"I got my suspicions," Dickie said smugly.

Orin had been unconvinced.

"So how come you guys didn't, you know, take credit for it or
something?"

Dickie had shrugged, in a manner decidedly nonchalant. "Jap guy said it
was just a test," he had replied. "So we could see how shit like that
might work for us." He had leaned closer to his cousin, and his voice
dropped. "But now we're gonna really make some noise, man. That's why I
sent him along to you. Guy's got us something serious to work with."

"Like what?"

"He didn't tell you yet? Couple of new toys," Dickie had said, grinning.
"One of '--well, you ever hear of sarin, man?"

Orin had shrugged noncommittally. Family was family, but in militia
matters it was usually smart to listen more than you talked. That went
double when it came to chemical weapons.

"Nerve gas, something like that?"

"Got that right. He's bringin' in a shitload of it." Dickie had leaned
closer. "And he talks about having some kind of germ-warfare bug he can
get us. Anthrax, maybe--fucker is playing it real cool, you know? But
definitely military grade, can ya dig it?"

Orin had shook his head skeptically.

"Look," he had told his cousin, "how do you know this guy ain't
federal?"

Dickie had looked up at him, and there was a serious expression on his
face.

"

"Cause he brought a little sample with him, man," he had told Orin.

"Had a spray can about the size of a can of Right Guard, okay?"

"Yeah, so what?"

"So we went out and found us one of those street bums -a homeless guy,
you dig? Showed him a bottle of rye and he followed us back up an alley.
And then my little Jap buddy sprayed that shit--p-s-s-s-s-t.

Blast of nerve gas, right in his face."

"Jesus."

"It was intense, man. Fuckin' bum died hard, I'll tell you that. Glad I
was standing upwind."

Orin had been silent for a long minute.

"Look, what do these Japs want! See, that's what I don't get Dickie had
shrugged.

"Hell do I know? Like, maybe it's the emperor's birthday or something.

All I know is we get this shit, and all we gotta do is use a little of
it when they say the word. Raise a little hell. Screw with the G,
right?"

Then Dickie had gone serious again, Orin remembered, and his tone
shifted. For the first time, Orin had thought, his cousin sounded more
like a militia leader than a kid who had been offered a new toy.

"All I know is, I get it, I sure ain't giving it back. I got my own
ideas for the stuff."

That had been more than a month ago. Orin Trippett had returned to
Montana, and plans had been made.

Now, looking at the crate that had been delivered this morning--by
Fedex, Orin thought, and how's that for laughs?--Orin remembered what
his cousin had said.

He felt the same way.

Chapter 5.

Atlanta, Georgia July 21

Nominally, the Surgeon General's Office was a subordinate part of Health
and Human Services. So there was not really an ongoing war between the
secretary of HHS and the Surgeon General; it just seemed that way, which
was almost as bad.

They were both political appointments, Beck recalled-- HHS a former
California congressman who had been instrumental in the current
president's initial campaign, the SG a women's rights activist who had
lobbied hard but fruitlessly for a cabinet-level post before settling
for a position that was largely symbolic. Neither official was a
physician. But both had brought to the CDC meeting aides who were, and
that added an element of professional competition into the already
volatile mix. The key question was the same that had bedeviled them
throughout the day: Did the current situation warrant declaring an
emergency? If so, there was no shortage of plans that could be put into
action; but if they blew this call, the down side risk was, to
appointees and career bureaucrats alike, potentially cataclysmic.

There had been heated words, some shouting, and no resolution. Porter
had left in disgust, shaking his head as he stood to return to his
office.

"I'm heading down to the outbreak site," he said to Krewell in an angry
aside. "You don't need me here to deal with this crap. Not when people
are dying down there." The physician stalked out without a backward
glance.

"Damn it, Larry," Beck muttered to Krewell, who sat at his side. "He's
right. How long do we listen to politicians and bureaucrats? Somebody
has to show some leadership, for God's sake."

Krewell looked at his watch.

"The President expects a recommendation by six," he told Beck. "That
gives them no more than- whoops. Here it comes. Watch this, of' buddy."
Billy Carson had stood, and the figure he cut in his shut sleeves was
enough to draw the attention of the room.

"There really is no room for discussion," Carson said. He half turned to
address HHS. "Mr. Secretary, there is no statutory question as to your
department's responsibility in the circumstances we face. In matters of
public health, you are the lead authority. Like the rest of us here
today, the Surgeon General's Office is an advisory body only.

We have, I believe, heard its advice. It is time to act, sir."

The SG's aide, an emaciated woman who had been a family-planning
specialist in Philadelphia before assuming her present post, spoke
angrily.

"Mr. Carson, I resent the way you're--" she began, and Carson's voice
overrode her firmly.

"As Dr. Krewell pointed out, we are dealing with a matter of available
time. History alone demands that we accept Dr. Porter's analysis.

H1N1 is, potentially, a catastrophic threat to public health. Look at
the sheer numbers involved. Over the course of twelve months in 1918, at
least a half-million Americans died of influenza. One in four was
incapacitated. This disease constitutes a threat to our entire
population-more than two hundred fifty million Americans."

"History demands that we not overreact, either," the senator said, and
the SG nodded. "Do we want to risk a general panic? And as long as we're
talking about '," how about the potential for making a bad situation
worse? If we rush to produce a so-called vaccine, we're asking for a
repeat of the swine flu fiasco in '-six. More people were harmed by the
injections than even got the flu: some were in comas for months, others
paralyzed by the Guillanbarre syndrome the vaccine initiated. The
lawsuits went on for years."

"If we're going to talk about history, let's allow an expert to have a
word," HHS interrupted. "Dr. Casey, I apologize. I have not read the
complete report you prepared, but I have reviewed the executive summary.
You've been waiting patiently, and I'd appreciate your insights, sir."

"There's not much to add to my original work, Mr. Secretary," Beck said.
"The question is, do we have an emerging epidemic here? To a society,
epidemics are the biological equivalent of nuclear war. In extreme
cases, as the disease spreads through the population, social systems
break down. Plagues cause a social meltdown. The network of services and
supports that civilization depends on fail, in varying degrees."

"Based on what?" HHS asked.

"Ironically, based on the technological level the society has attained,"
Beck said. "Historically, the more complex the civilization, the worse
the collapse."

"Specifics, Doctor," the senator said.

"Specifically, Senator, the values that bind humans together
progressively dissolve during an epidemic," Beck said. "This was the
case during Europe's Black Death in the Middle Ages; the same effect
occurred in 1918, the last killer-flu pandemic.

"In the beginning, a plague engenders fear, most commonly a sort of
xenophobia. People begin to view '' as the enemy, as potential disease
vectors. They pull away for example, by ignoring people who collapse on
public streets. As the outbreak expands, they build walls to keep the
disease outside--and I mean that literally, in many cases. If you read
Poe, his
"Masque of the Red Death' could well have been written as journalism
rather than fiction. Extremes of behavior begin to occur--everything.
Riots. Drunken orgies, group suicides. Fanatical religious fervor,
complete with doomsday messiahs.

"Inevitably, as the plague expands and family members sicken and die,
the social contract breaks completely. Parents are too frightened to
care for their children, spouses abandon their dying mates.

"By then, of course, essential public systems are decimated. Health care
is overwhelmed, both through the sheer volume of cases as well as the
fact that many physicians and nurses have themselves contracted the
disease. Fire or police protection is virtually nonexistent. And with
all due respect to the representatives of our armed forces here, the
military is no better off than the rest of society. They're usually
worse off, in fact; living in barracks or on a ship is tailor-made for
widespread disease transmission."

The senator snorted. "The Black Death. Edgar Allan Poe. There's a big
difference between medieval Europe and the modern world."

"Not so different," Beck said, "if you're dealing with a disease you
can't cure, or even prevent." He looked around the room. "Anybody here
know how to keep from getting the flu?"

"Which raises the question of a vaccine." The SG spoke up. "We've been
making influenza vaccines for years. Mass immunization has been around
since the polio years."

"Assuming that this particular strain of H1N1 lends itself to
development of an effective vaccine," Carson said, "we're looking at an
immunization program that is unprecedented." He nodded in the direction
of Krewell. "CDC's Special
Pathogens Branch has the figures. Dr. Krewell, what is your assessment?
Is such a program possible?"

Krewell remained seated.

"Of course it is possible," he said. "We have a great deal of experience
in developing flu vaccines. We do it annually, once we've analyzed which
flu strain we're facing for the year. But H1N1 is not merely an
evolutionary mutation of a virus we're already familiar with; it's a
different animal entirely, and so there will be some time lost in our
learning curve there.

"The key word is '," " Krewell emphasized. "If we have enough time, we
can dissect H1N1, decode any genetic mutations, develop and test
possible vaccines. If we have enough time, the pharmaceutical firms can
gear up to produce the two hundred and fifty million doses we'll need in
this country alone. Given some breathing room, it is possible to set up
a mass immunization in every city, town and one stoplight crossroads in
the country."

"In your opinion, do we have this time?"

HHS looked worried, Beck thought. As well he might.

"In my assessment," Krewell said, "no, sir, we do not. We'd need at best
six months, more likely eight."

In his peripheral vision, Beck saw the head of the Federal Emergency
Management Agency nod grimly. Alone among the group, the newly appointed
head of FEMA had hands-on experience, in his former post as New York
City's chief preparedness official, in planning for widespread public
health emergencies. That experience had earned him his present position:
New York City was acknowledged as the place best prepared to deal with
critical situations, due in large part to the man's efforts.

In the months before he had left for his current Washington posting, he
had tackled the specter of biological terrorism in America's largest
urban center. He had written plans, devised contingencies, bullied
funding for police and health
personnel training. And then he had supervised exercises and drills to
test how effective all the activity had been.

The news reports, even as sanitized and as spun as they had been, had
been more accurate than kind, Beck recalled. It had been woefully
apparent how unprepared even all the official's efforts had left his
city.

And that was one city, Beck thought, not the whole damn country.

"This one scares me, people," FEMA was saying to the group. "Look, even
limiting our concerns to the continental United States, this influenza
is already here. And that means it's spreading as we speak."

"I concur," HHS said. "Short-term, mass vaccination is not an option.

Given that, what is our best immediate course of action?"

"The only course of action is to contain it, at least as much as
possible," Carson said. "We fight a delaying action, while we develop an
effective vaccine."

"The girl in Florida died a week ago." Krewell spoke up. "Summer is
vacation time, and people are traveling. It's reasonable to assume her
death has a direct connection to the Fort Walton cases. I have people
trying to draw up a contagion chart right now. I can already tell you,
this could turn into a nightmare."

"Explain," HHS ordered.

"The first death involved a limousine driver," Krewell said, "a
profession that has extensive contact with people who travel. Who gave
it to the driver? Okay, we have determined the girl recently returned
from a trip to Japan; if she took a limo home, maybe we've identified
our Patient Zero--the index case, or at least the first carrier we know
about. Who else did she infect? Who did the driver give it to, and did
any of them get on a plane and fly somewhere else? Nothing has shown up
in the WHO Weekly Epidemiological Record, but, believe it--we have to
assume that these are not isolated infections."

"My God." The voice belonged to an Asian woman, the assistant director
of the National Institutes of Health. "The airports. This could be
spreading itself around the world already." She spoke directly to HHS.
"The first step is for the President to declare an emergency. We have to
inform the public, let them know what they're facing and what to look
for."

"I'm inclined to agree," HHS said. "Of course, we would continue to
explore all additional avenues. If the President declares a national
health emergency, we can--"

"Start a national panic," said a man Beck did not recognize. "Two cases!
That's all we have confirmed. Let's at least wait until we get the input
from the CDC team in Florida. And before we start a worldwide panic, we
better confer with WHO and the National Institute for Medical Research
in England."

"At last, a reasonable suggestion," the senator said. "We cannot react
blindly, just because--"

A shrill electronic chirp cut through the tense atmosphere and silenced
the politician. The source came from next to Beck, and for an instant
all eyes looked accusingly at him.

Then Krewell fished the cell phone from his pocket and spoke into it.

His face stiffened, and when he spoke again it was in low and urgent
tones.

Finally he finished and looked at Carson.

"That was Dr. Porter," Krewell said, and Beck could see the ashen cast
that had spread on his features. "He was on his way to the airport when
a call was transferred to him. CDC has just been formally contacted by
its counterpart in the Russian Federation. They've had eighteen people
die in the past two days, six in Moscow alone. Some kind of flu, they
think."

Chapter 6.

28,000 Feet over Central Virginia July 21

The matter of how Beck found himself aboard the plane that carried
Carson back to Washington was not quite clear, least of all to Beck
himself. "Ordered" was too strong a word, but "asked" was too cordial to
cover it, either. However it happened, it had been some time since Beck
had experienced the almost sybaritic pleasure of top-level government
travel.

Beck had not changed from the clothes he had worn to Atlanta. The Air
Force sergeant who had escorted Beck to his seat had been unruffled, but
Beck had caught her quick appraisal of his outfit.

"You from Iowa, Sergeant?" he asked, settling against the pearl gray
leather seat back.

"No, sir. Alabama."

"Should have worn my
"Roll, Tide' shirt, then. I save it for formal occasions."

He was rewarded with a quick, surprised smile before the no-nonsense
expression of the professional soldier won out again.

"Yes, sir. I wear one under my Class A uniform, myself."

At that moment, Carson and Larry Krewell entered the cabin. As the
sergeant retreated forward, they took seats
flanking Beck. Both men snapped their seat belts tight before Carson
spoke.

"It's been a while, Beck. Dr. Krewell says you have signed on with us
again."

"It looks that way," Beck said. "You'd think I'd know better by now,
wouldn't you?"

"Actually, yes," Carson said. "When you left government service, you
didn't have much good to say about us. Though perhaps I can't blame you,
given the condition you were in." He examined his fellow traveler with a
skeptical eye. "You certainly look fit, Beck."

"Thank you. I eat a lot of roughage."

"You no longer see the Company's psychiatrist, I mean."

"I've left the CIA behind me," Beck said. "Along with everything
associated with it."

"You haven't missed it?" Carson made an impatient gesture at Beck's
expression. "I don't mean the fieldwork, necessarily. It was foolish to
play the cowboy so often; you had to know it was inevitable that the
odds would catch up to you."

He leaned forward, ignoring how his companion pulled back at the
movement. "But the analysis, Beck. The access to so much data, to the
secrets that people kill for--die for. Taking it, piecing it into a
coherent picture. In that, you were quite good indeed. Surely you miss
it?"

"Not much. I miss believing that it was worth what was expected in
return."

Carson again studied Beck wordlessly. Then he turned to Krewell. "We
meet with the President immediately; there will be a helicopter waiting
at Andrews when we land. Brief him, please."

The craft's turbines spun up with a vibration that penetrated even the
ultra efficient noise insulation of the fuselage. Outside, Beck saw a
man in Air Force coveralls, the flashlights in his hands moving as if he
were conducting an orchestra. There was only a small lurch when the
plane began
to roll. It was a tribute to the skill of the pilot and an
acknowledgment of the status of his passengers.

"Here's the thing, Beck," Krewell said. "There's no doubt now, with the
Russian outbreak and the new Florida cases, that the President will
declare a health emergency. Health and Human Services will be in charge,
nominally; I've been detached from CDC to serve as liaison, coordinator,
whatever. By tomorrow afternoon, we'll have involvement from every
federal office with a doctor on staff, and that's only the domestic
stuff."

"I know the plan, Larry; I helped draft it. What I don't know is what
you want from me."

"You wrote the book on riots and disruptions, of' buddy," Krewell said.

"With this virus on the loose, there's a potential for plenty of both.

Officially, you'll be advising the people involved with public safety
and security."

Beck caught the emphasis, and immediately understood. When he spoke, his
voice carried a trace of wariness that made Krewell's lips twitch.

"And what will I be doing," Beck asked, "unofficially?"

"Oh, hell," Krewell said. "You've been around the block a time or two,
boy. I don't guess it's a surprise to hear things are worse than you
know."

"The possibility of a killer-flu pandemic isn't bad enough, Larry?"

"We've known about the Russian outbreak for almost two days, Beck.

That's when your name first came up, of' buddy. That's when we started
the ball rolling to bring you back inside. Good thing, given the speed
this thing's spreading at."

Beck's eyes flickered for an instant at Carson, who sat impassively.

Then Beck turned back to Krewell; when he spoke, his voice had a new
edge to it, cold and hard.

"What the hell's going on, Larry? What do you want from me?"

Krewell looked at Carson.

"I think the ball is in your court, Billy."

Carson had lit a cigarette as soon as the aircraft had rotated off the
runway. He drew on it, then he carefully balanced it on the rim of the
saucer he was using an ashtray. To Beck, it seemed Carson was performing
a ritual, steeling himself. But when Carson finally spoke, his voice
betrayed no emotion at all.

"You'll be looking for the source of all this," Carson said. "You will
investigate and analyze any leads or information that will help us
determine the origin of this virus. As a first step, you will be working
on where the first cases appeared --the Russian outbreak."

Beck looked at the two men. His mouth was a hard, thin line, and his
silence spoke volumes. When he finally spoke, his voice was firm and
final.

"I'm not going back into Russia. Not now. Not ever."

"The Russians guarantee your safety," Carson said. "We've received
assurances from the highest--"

"That's final. You're wasting your time."

"We appreciate what happened to you over there, Beck," Krewell said,
careful to keep his voice neutral. "Six weeks is a helluva long time to
hold out. I don't know if I could have lasted half that long. But that
was the Mafiya, not the Russian government--"

"Go ahead, Larry." Beck said. "Educate me about the difference. I spent
almost two months becoming an expert on the subject, remember? It was a
very hands-on curriculum."

"And we got you out," Carson interrupted. "As soon as we had the
opportunity."

"Find somebody else."

"I wish we could," Carson said. "But the Russians want you."

Krewell interrupted. "Putin made the request directly to the President,
Beck."

"Putin doesn't know me from Adam," Beck retorted.

"But Alexi Malenkov does," Krewell said. "Okay, maybe you've been out of
circulation, Beck. But you have to have
heard how fast the power structure changes over there. Malenkov's not a
field operative anymore--hasn't been for more than a year. He's Putin's
director of state security now, and he is heading up the Russian efforts
to deal with this virus."

"Then he knows I'm out of the business."

"He's like every other Russian spook--he sees secret plots and
conspiracies everywhere he looks. Malenkov says, first off, he doesn't
believe you are retired, and second, he doesn't give a damn even if you
are. He says you're a wunderkind, Beck--a hotshot analyst who can see
through brick walls and jump buildings in a single bound."

Krewell grinned at the face that Beck pulled.

"Okay, but you must have pulled something serious on that of' boy back
when you were playing spy versus spy. He has Putin believing you're some
kind of genius, and Putin has the President thinking the same way.

They all want you working on this. Doesn't give you a lot of wiggle
room, of' buddy."

"Even if I agreed to go--and I'm not--you need a medical expert who
can--"

"You wrote the plague analysis," Carson interrupted flatly. "You were
one of the Company's resident experts on biological warfare. In Russia,
it's a matter of trust: we're dealing with your old contacts--you know
them, they know you. This is a matter of national survival, Beck. There
is no time to waste. If somebody drops the ball because they weren't up
to speed with the people and issues involved, millions will die."

The national security advisor looked Beck squarely in the eyes.

"I will not try to minimize what you went through," he said. "But hear
us out. You owe us that, at least."

Carson drew a thick packet from the briefcase at his feet and tossed it
on the table beside Beck. On the cover was the
presidential seal, and stamped across the bottom were the words
COROMANT/US ARMY ULTRA.

"You'll find the historical background in there," Carson said.

"Essentially, what we are now calling H1N1AK--the original Spanish flu
of 1918--was recovered by an Army medical expedition in 1951. In Alaska,
hence the suffix. The expedition mission was to obtain any samples of a
particularly virulent influenza virus. The theory was that the virus
might be recoverable from corpses preserved in the permafrost."

"Whatever my opinion of the Army," Beck said, "it doesn't dig up dead
Eskimos just for exercise."

"There was a weapons-development component," Carson admitted
reluctantly. "But, in the event, that was deemed secondary to the
potential for developing new vaccines."

"Because CIA had just stumbled onto Stalin's germ warfare project,"
Krewell interjected. He did not waver under Carson's hard stare.

"Let's not pretend humanitarian motives here, Billy. Nobody in the room
is a virgin."

Carson took a final pull on his cigarette before mashing it in the
makeshift ashtray.

"I suppose not. By coincidence, a civilian research project along much
the same lines was also undertaken that year," he continued. "In that
case, they found that the bodies had been buried too close to the
surface. Over the decades, there had been enough thaw-and-freeze cycles
to allow at least partial decomposition of the corpses. That was
certainly enough to kill any viruses, and none were found." Carson waved
a hand dismissively. "Their project was severely underfunded, and--if I
may say--rather amateurish in approach. They simply did not look in the
right places, and finally ran out of time and money. The Army had no
such problems. It also knew to look farther north. The expedition
targeted villages that had been on Army survey maps in 1906.

They just had to identify those that had completely disappeared on maps
drawn in 1925."

"The official story is that the Army mission was a failure," Krewell
said. "The Army, of course, encouraged this point of view. But in point
of fact, a live virus was captured by the expedition."

"Did we release this thing?" Beck demanded. "Was there some kind of
accident, or--"

"No," Carson said. "Not by us. As Dr. Porter told the group, the samples
from the most recent victims show some specific, unusual genetic
markers. They do not match the viral coding of the Army's virus. That's
a definite, Beck."

"But we have the genetic map, the genome sequences," Beck pressed. "You
can use it to develop a vaccine."

"HINl-Florida, the new one, is a not a natural mutation of the base
viral codes," Krewell said to Beck. "It is not what we call a wild
virus."

"Not wild?" Beck repeated, puzzled. "How does a virus like this incubate
if it doesn't--"

"It is a chimera--a genetically engineered virus," Carson said. "Is that
simple enough? HINl-Florida was created in a laboratory, intentionally.
Whoever designed it grafted other genes onto the base influenza
virus--genes that are specifically intended to increase the virulence
factors."

Beck was stunned. "It's a weapon."

"Legally, a weapon of mass destruction," Carson said. "Release of which
constitutes an act of war. Well, it's been released, and it's been aimed
at us."

"A bio weapon particularly one as contagious as this one, cannot be
'aimed' with any degree of precision," Krewell corrected. "The number of
people infected will grow exponentially, in an ever-widening circle.

Even under the most draconian quarantine measures, it is a virtual
certainty that the disease ultimately will spread to the aggressor's
population. Unless those who deployed it have already developed a
vaccine, it is a suicide weapon."

"That would be insane," Beck said.

"No," Krewell interjected. "Just incomprehensible. At
least, to us. At Detrick, we were under a strict standing order. No chem
or bio weapon could be developed unless there was a vaccine or antidote.
But other folks didn't play that way, of' buddy. For example, the old
Soviet program took the position that the best bio weapons were those
with no cure. Hell, by the late ', they were basing new biological
weapons on multi-antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains, just so
existing treatments would be worthless."

"Which might explain why the Russians are asking for assistance," Carson
said. "The fact that they have an outbreak does not automatically clear
them of responsibility or guilt."

"Are you saying the Russians started this plague? Without developing a
cure for it?"

"What the national security advisor is saying," said Krewell, "is that
at this moment we do not have a workable vaccine. Whether we can use
what we know about the original I'll I'll to come up with one--" He
shrugged. "Frankly, we don't know."

"Why the act? Why pretend this is a natural outbreak?"

"Because the President actually read your report--the whole thing, not
just the executive summary," Carson snapped. "He was particularly
impressed by one of your conclusions. You cited evidence indicating the
more violent upheavals in the social fabric--the rioting and vigilante
activities, for instance--are less likely to occur immediately in
so-called natural disasters than when the cause is a deliberate enemy
action."

"He's trying to buy time, Beck," Krewell said. "At minimum, the time it
will take to get troops and medical support where they'll be needed.

And to come up with some kind of viable treatment."

Beck shook his head. "He'll need days just to start mobilizing, let
alone--"

"The call-up began two days ago, when CDC finally got an ID on the
Florida virus," Krewell said. "By tomorrow-day after, at latest--we'll
have units in the major urban centers. With a little luck, by the end of
the week the President can declare martial law and have it mean more
than just national panic."

"Not enough time, Larry," Beck said. "Not with a contagious, airborne
agent."

"That's why we must find who is behind this, and do it quickly," Carson
said. "The Russians have been aggressively investigating since their
outbreak began. Go there and assist. Your job is to find out who has
declared biological war on the rest of the world. Whoever is responsible
may have a vaccine."

"What if they do not?" demanded Beck. "What if they are madmen?"

"Then," Krewell said calmly, "the computer projections tell us to expect
millions of people to die. Very likely, hundreds of millions."

Chapter 7.

Chicago, via Fort Meade, Maryland July 21

The telephone rang, and eight hundred miles away one of a row of
computer screens in Fort Meade, Maryland, flashed an advisory to the
technician on duty. He swiveled to the proper monitor and studied the
lines that scrolled across the display. His fingers tapped on the
keyboard; satisfied the call was being digitally recorded on the hard
disk, the technician settled back to listen in real time.

The answering machine had no recorded salutation, instead greeting
callers with a loud beep after the requisite four rings.

"Is she there?"

The voice was unmistakably that of a woman, and was unequivocally
furious,. The tech grinned in sympathy; the computer had already
identified the caller's telephone number and location, cross-referencing
that information against the known profile and calling pattern of the
recipient.

"Poor guy," the tech muttered. "First he gets himself on a Priority
Alpha watch status. Now he's got his ex all over his case, too."

He leaned back in his chair and popped a stick of gum in his mouth, idly
wondering if this was a drug case or some thing to do with the latest
terrorist threat. No matter. Surveillance like this was child's play,
provided you had the right toys.

Here at the National Security Agency's Maryland headquarters, they did,
if most of them were kept in specially constructed rooms with
electronically baffled walls.

A number of these super-secret systems exist, some known and some only
rumored. One of the former--Echelon, a spy system of satellites and
listening posts that can intercept millions of telephone, fax and e-mail
messages--had long been a source of concern to European governments, who
believed at least part of its electronic product was turned over to U.S.
corporations for competitive advantage. Overall, Echelon and its
lesser-known sister systems constituted a technology that allowed the US
A to pluck virtually every signal from every subdivision of the world's
communications spectrum.

It did not do this, of course; the staggering volume of signals traffic
generated by today's world would have made this an impossible task, even
had the NSA wanted to do so. But if a NSA client--say, the FBI, the CIA,
or even the President's national security advisor--knew what to ask for,
the NSA could quickly narrow its focus to envelop the target in an
all-encompassing electronic bull's-eye.

The system had proven adept in counterespionage and the incidental
guns-for-cocaine operation, and in the current crisis was now proving
its capabilities in domestic surveillance. It would have all been quite
illegal, had it ever come to the attention of a federal judge.

The voice--now logged by the computer as that of Deborah Stepanovich,
intercept number 351-29, cross-referenced to a dozen other strings of
databank entries--had paused, presumably to see if anyone would pick up
in the apartment. Now it resumed, with no loss of its initial heat.

"I am going to assume that this was not your idea, Beck-that you had
nothing to do with this little deception. If the
three of them are in Chicago with you, please know they did not have
permission to leave this state. Katherine lied to me, Beck, and I am
very angry. I want her to call me immediately."

The phone slammed down with a bang in Arlington, Virginia --ironically,
only a few miles from the monitoring center where the technician
cross-checked the standing orders for this particular "account." He then
punched in the number of Andi Wheelwright's pager, followed by a series
of letters and numbers that would be meaningless to anybody without the
key.

Then, as he had done with the two previous calls that had gone to the
apartment in Chicago, he tapped in the code that erased the message from
Beck Casey's answering machine.

"Sorry ' that," he quietly apologized to the erstwhile recipient, "but
orders is orders."

In Arlington, Virginia, Deborah Stepanovich slammed down the receiver
with enough force to rattle the tasteful side table on which it sat.

Her hand trembled, she was so angry.

/ should have guessed, she seethed, for the first time since the divorce
wishing that she still smoked. A sleepover, for God's sake.

Teenage girls don't have sleep overs anymore.

The problem was, of course, that she had wanted to believe Katie.

Increasingly, their relationship had foundered in shoal waters over the
past year or so--probably, she did not doubt, a combination of the
aftereffects of her divorce from Beck and the natural antipathy between
mothers and daughters of a certain age. Any kind of interaction between
the two of them risked turning into a conflagration of mysterious
origin, and the result had been that both of them avoided any but the
most mundane discussions.

No big surprise there, she thought. Kids learn from watching how their
parents act, don't they?

But when Katie had raised the subject of spending an extended weekend
with J.L. and Early at the cabin--foolishly Deborah had ignored all the
warning signals that had begun blinking deep inside her head.

It had seemed so ... so damned touching, at the time. Over the years,
she and Katie and--well, Katie's father-had spent no small amount of
time together in the rural Virginia setting. Deborah had told herself
that Katie was craving the simple nostalgia of it, and convinced herself
that this was a good sign.

And so the trio of girls had left, driving off in the scarlet Lemans
that Carly's mother had bought the girl the year before, and which
always seemed to Deborah to be its own sort of warning flag. Uneasy
thoughts had nagged at her all morning, even distracting her during a
meeting with an Egyptian industrialist who had run afoul of U.S. import
regulations.

Finally, she had excused herself and gone to her private office. Then
Deborah had punched in the number she had been given, the cell phone
Early swore would always be with her.

No luck, that time or during the three subsequent calls she had made to
it. Each call elicited only a vaguely female, automated cyber-voice
advising the caller that--here, Carly's own voice supplied her name--was
unavailable but would accept a recorded message.

Exactly when she had known--known completely, without doubt or
equivocation--not even Deborah could have said. There had been no
growing suspicion, no litany of the other possible circumstances in
which Katie might have chosen to become involved. Deborah had simply
known for an incontrovertible fact that her daughter had not gone where
she had said she was going, and that it was time for a mother to act.

She had immediately telephoned J.L.'s parents, whom she once considered
close friends; since the divorce from Beck, she had watched all parties
reassign the relationship to a far more casual level. They too were
concerned--no, they
had not had word from J. L." and yes, they too had left a message with
the cyber-femme--but they had not Deborah's capacity for the gestalt
leap to what was truly going on.

A call to Carly's mother was, as Deborah suspected, a complete waste of
time; Joyce Holmes was not even in town, let alone working the telephone
to get word of her absent daughter. Deborah had no doubt she could track
the woman down, if it proved necessary; but for the moment, there were
other options and priorities.

Deborah Stepanovich was not without resources, nor without
resourcefulness when the situation required it.

First things first: a very businesslike call to the office of the Van
Dale County sheriff, where she took pains to assure that official that
she was not merely a suburban hausfrau fretting over a tardy child. In
her legal practice, Deborah Stepanovich dealt with corporate leaders and
the international power elite; she could, when she wanted to, command
respect not unlike that accorded to the heads of minor governments.

Within the hour, the deputy dispatched to the cabin was back on the
phone with Deborah: there was no sign the cabin was occupied or had been
visited in the previous month.

That her next reaction had been to call her former husband was, to
Deborah, somewhat unnerving; that she had actually gone ahead and done
it, extremely disturbing; that her automatic first words to him--rather,
to his answering machine --had been harsh and accusatory, almost a
relief. She had gone through too much, made too many hard decisions, to
get to where it proved she now was. And to where Katie still adamantly
refused to go.

Deborah had no doubt that the three girls, with Katie as their
ringleader, had plotted this ... this outrageous expedition. And whether
Beck was privy to the plan or not-probably not, Deborah decided; not
even Beck would be that irresponsible--the fact is that once more they
had somehow succeeded in making her the outsider.

She almost got away with it, too, Deborah told herself, and as it had so
many times before, the anger rose anew.

Secrets. She had lived most of her adult life on the wrong side of that
wall, trying to accept that there were things she should not know, that
she and her daughter needed to turn a blind eye toward.

And so she had tried.

Ultimately, it had all come crashing down on her anyway, and the price
had been far too high to ever pay again. And now her daughter--her only
child!--had chosen to follow the same hateful path.

And that made it hurt all the Oh hell, Deborah thought, feeling the hot
sting of tears she had not known she still possessed. Damn him, anyway.

She froze, suddenly aware of the pronoun she had used.

In Washington, Andi Wheelwright replayed Deborah Stepanovich's call
again and again.

One missing fifteen-year-old, she told herself. Not a major priority,
when the whole damn country's about to go up for grabs.

Andi was still surprised at herself when she found herself punching in
the numbers and giving the order.

"There's three of them," she said, hearing herself add the professional
toughness to her voice. "I imagine at least one of them is using a
credit card on the parental account. I want to know where they are and
what they're doing."

She listened for a moment to the voice at the other end.

"Do it anyway. This is no time for a damn road trip. God knows what kind
of trouble they can get themselves into."

Chapter 8.

Columbia Falls, Montana July 21

An instant before the staccato chatter of the assault rifle cut through
the sounds of the night, FBI special agent April O'Connor realized that
everything had gone terribly wrong. She saw it in the face of Orin
Trippett, the shipping clerk--in the sudden way his eyes narrowed, his
expression hardened.

The metamorphosis had been swift and unexpected. A moment before,
Trippett had shown the kind of behavior most people did when law
enforcement credentials are held before their faces: startled, then
ingratiatingly submissive.

Trippett had been standing on the shipping docks when they arrived, his
breath making wispy clouds in the high mountain night air. Hadley and
Morrisee, the other pair on the FBI-atf. tactical team, had elected to
wait in the relative shelter of the car. That left April and Jesus
Robles, a burly, dark-eyed agent from atf..

And that's just dandy with me, she thought. For an atf. cowboy, Robles
isn't all that bad.

She had been working with Hadley and Morrisee for almost a week,
tracking a shipment of M-16s stolen ten days earlier from a National
Guard armory in Missoula, Montana. In that time, she had learned much.

She had, for example, learned that she did not want to work with Hadley
and Morrisee ever again.

She was no stranger to crude jokes, and even in the "new" FBI,
suggestive language was not uncommon. During her four years in the
field, April had learned to deal with it; in most cases, she could
establish a working relationship with even the most recalcitrant
chauvinist. Robles, at least, had waited almost two days before
propositioning April. Unlike the two FBI men, he had accepted her
refusal with a good natured grace and gotten on with the job.

When Robles held up the search warrant for his inspection, Trippett had
waved it away with a thin, polite smile. After Robles had disappeared
down one of the long passages between the storage racks, Trippett nodded
in the direction of the warehouse office.

"Cold night out here," he said in a mild country twang. "Lowlander'd
never guess it was July. Cuppa coffee, ma'am?"

In any other circumstance, she would have smiled. But not tonight, not
while serving a search warrant and not while feeling, after the week she
had spent, a million years old.

Ma'am? April thought, and had been inwardly amused at the honorific.

Is that cowboy charm, or do I look as old as I feel?

She declined the offer.

They stood for a moment in awkward silence.

"Whacha'll looking for, anyway?" he asked.

"It's on the warrant," she said in her best official tone, then relented
slightly. "It's just routine, Mr. Trippett. Agent Robles will be back in
a moment."

Trippett shrugged, smiling as if to apologize for some slight. Another
long moment passed between them.

"That y'all's car?" he said finally. "Reason I ask, see, it's blocking
the loading dock. Maybe you could ask them two fellows to move it."

"Agent Robles will be back soon," April repeated.

"Well, truck there's wanting in," Trippett said, looking past her
shoulder. April turned to look.

In that instant, as her eyes slid past his face, she saw his features
change from prey to predator. She stepped backward, automatically,
trying to put some distance between the two of them.

The instinctive reaction probably saved her life.

Trippett grabbed at her, missing as April twisted sideways and smashed
the heel of her left hand hard against his cheekbone. She backed away
farther, her hand dropping to her waist, clawing to reach the weapon
underneath her light leather jacket. Then she had it, the butt of the
automatic hard in her hand as it cleared the holster and leveled on
target.

"You move, you die!" April screamed, and she could hear the rage and
fear in her own voice. Trippett froze, the muzzle of the Glock two feet
from his head. Slowly, his hands rose.

The shots came from outside, a burst of three. Another. Then, much
louder, a heavier automatic weapon firing in a sustained burst.

From the street, fifteen yards away, a pickup truck squealed to a stop.

Whoever was driving had immediately recognized the car parked at the
curb as a government vehicle. Before the first of the attackers even
jumped to the ground, at least one automatic weapon had opened up at
full tilt. Palm-sized blotches of fresh metal, each centered on its own
bullet hole, stitched crookedly the length of the sedan. Where a bullet
hit glass, the window spider webbed into a creamy opacity.

Other weapons began to fire in staccato bursts. One of them sighted on
the streetlight outside, which shattered and flared before going dark.

April heard someone shout commands, followed by the clatter of armed men
moving quickly.

Gunfire walked its way across the loading dock, geysering chips of
concrete along its path. April threw herself flat. Bullets, the sound of
angry hornets, passed inches over her head.

When she looked up, Orin Trippett was no longer in sight.

Through the cacophony of shots all around her, she could barely make out
the sound of running footsteps deep in the warehouse. She raised her
head, looking in the direction Trippett had fled, then at the car where
she had left Hadley and Morrisee. A fresh fusillade pockmarked the
concrete near where she lay, making the decision for her. April rolled
hard to the lip of the ramp and slid down into its relative cover.

In a crouching run, April sprinted up the sloping concrete ramp. She
reached the head of it just as one of the dark figures outside wrenched
open the passenger door of the ruined car. Somehow, the dome light had
survived the hail of bullets. It still worked, illuminating the carnage
inside.

Ten feet away, FBI special agent Michael F. Hadley slumped crookedly
against the steering wheel, staring with unseeing eyes at the
red-spattered windshield. Special Agent Thomas A. Morrisee lay crosswise
on the seat. His face was out of sight, snugged intimately into the lap
of the dead man beside him. What had been the back of his head was now a
shattered exit wound; already, a thin wisp of steam rose from the gore
into the cold night air.

The man at the door poked at Hadley's body with the muzzle of the M-16
he held. It was Vietnam-era issue, the old Al model with the Buck Rogers
forestock, and April immediately realized it had to be from the National
Guard inventory. She centered her sights on the man and opened her mouth
to announce herself and order him to drop the weapon.

At that instant, another figure stepped around the car.

Had he shot from the hip, April would have had no chance. Instead, the
second gunman had raised his weapon to aim. It was a costly mistake.

April's first shot struck just below his Adam's apple, passing upward
through his brain stem. The second shot of her double-tap lodged in his
upper chest just left of midline, though it was doubtful he felt its
impact.

By then it was also too late for the first shooter, whose weapon was
partially blocked by the open door of the ruined car. He sealed his own
doom when he spun toward April and
tried to fire the M-16 one-handed. The twin blasts of her second
double-tap were swallowed in the long chattering burst from the assault
rifle as his finger locked in a death spasm on the trigger.

Then the rifle's magazine ran dry, and in the sudden silence April heard
the scream of tires. An instant later, too quickly for her to have
reacted, a late-model pickup truck flashed past the bloody tableau and
sped into the night.

Rapidly, she checked both of the shooters.

These guys are down for good, she thought, neither boasting nor
apologizing. I need backup, fast.

She leaned into the ruined car, feeling the blood and broken glass that
littered the dashboard. No good: the radio in the dash was shredded.

Robles had the handheld with him.

At that instant, she heard the shots from inside the warehouse.

April O'Connor turned, gripping the pistol with which she had just
killed two men, and sprinted back up the loading ramp into the
warehouse. In a moment, moving serpentine to use what little cover there
was, she was deep inside the cavernous building. She slid against what
felt like a wooden box and waited.

It was even darker here, and the cold sharper. A steady draft blew
toward the rear of the warehouse. April felt the chill through her
leather jacket, felt it seep through the Kevlar vest she wore
underneath. Even so, she was perspiring from the exertion of her run;
the sweat that trickled between her breasts felt slick and clammy. The
sounds of her breathing rasped loud in her ears, punctuated by the
timpani of her heartbeats.

April had lost her White Sox cap shortly after the first shots had been
fired. A strand from the ponytail she wore during her duty shifts
brushed against her cheek, and she took one hand from her weapon to push
it behind her ear. Momentarily, she worried whether, there in the dark,
her blond hair made her a better target.

From the darkness to her left came a sudden crash, the sound of
something hard and heavy smashing on a concrete floor.

Every sense heightened to an unnatural pitch, April stared into the dark
as if she could, by sheer force of will, force her eyes to penetrate the
inky blackness. She shifted her position slightly, aiming at where the
sound had come from. April braced her gun hand on the crate and waited.

She stayed that way for several long minutes, unmoving, feeling her
muscles stiffen. There was no movement, no sound except what she
fashioned in her own mind.

As she pressed her body even closer to the rough wood of the shipping
crate, she heard, or thought she did, another sound to her rear. Then
April sensed Trippett's presence behind her, imagined that she felt the
muzzle of his pistol brush against the back of her head.

Her head snapped to look, and she saw the dark form. It was crouched,
arms extended in a two-handed Weaver stance, not more than ten feet
away.

April O'Connor spun around and fired two shots into the third man she
would kill that night.

That was how a tactical response team from the Columbia Falls police
found her, seven minutes later. April was kneeling on the hard concrete
floor beside a torn and bloody figure, her pistol within reach on the
unfinished surface. Despite being near exhaustion, she was still
performing cardiac compressions on a body the team leader could tell,
with a single glance, had been dead before CPR started.

Wide in a surprise that would last forever, the already clouding eyes of
Jestis Robles stared transfixed on a horrible emptiness.

For an instant, April fought the hands that tried to pull her away from
Robles's body. Then she accepted what she too had known all along, and
allowed one of the TRT members to half-walk, half-push her toward the
outside. They followed the cold strong draft that blew in from the front
of the
warehouse. As they moved, April felt something heavy in her hand; it was
her pistol, and she realized that she must have snatched it up without
conscious thought.

When April was gone, the team leader, a lieutenant, squatted behind the
same wooden box that had shielded April. He was armed with a shotgun,
which he trained into the darkness. Around him, he saw his tac team in
similar positions.

"We still have a suspect in here, and he may be armed," the team leader
said. "Where the hell are the damn floodlights? Get ' fired up, fast."

When they were mounted on their tripods, he made a thumbs-up gesture.

Immediately, the cavernous warehouse lit up with several million
candlepower of white light.

Of Orin Trippett, the lieutenant saw no sign. But movement on the floor
next to a small packing crate that had smashed on the floor caught his
eye.

"Hell is that?" he muttered to his second, a sergeant. "Looks like a
rat, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," the sergeant said. "What's the matter with it? Damn thing's
having a fit or something. Shit. There's another one."

The team leader squinted at the convulsing rodents. They reminded him of
something, and he frowned in concentration, trying to Then it hit him,
and the hairs rose on the back of his neck.

"Red ball, red ball!" His voice was unnaturally shrill as he called the
code to abort. "Everybody! Pull back to the cars outside. Leave the
fucking lights, dammit! Everybody move, now!"

As he moved, counting the heads of his team as they retreated, the
lieutenant thumbed the microphone clipped to his shoulder.

"Eleven-Bravo--be advised, I got a haz-mat alert," he said, and he
wondered if his voice broadcast how shaken he felt. "This is not,
repeat, not a drill. I think we're dealing with some kind of poison gas
here."

Day Two: July 22

Chapter 9.

52,000 Feet over Northern Spain July 22

Beck shifted, uncomfortable in the nylon webbing, Nomex flight suit,
G-pressure pants, life vest, parachute strapping, oxygen mask and flight
helmet into which he had been inserted. He tried his best to keep his
eyes down, fixed on the green hues of the instrument panel. He rarely
succeeded for more than a few minutes at a time. Then Beck would look
outside the acrylic-composite canopy, at the dizzying blackness where no
visible point of reference existed, and feel the wave of vertigo wash
over him yet again.

Right then, the world tilted sharply, a fact felt by his inner ear if by
no other sensory organ, pressing him sideways against the five-point
harness. He felt the air bladders inflate against his legs as the
pressure suit automatically worked to squeeze his blood back to where it
was needed.

The voice of Major Carl Frankel, USAF, crackled in his headphones.

"Uh, just a minor course correction there, Dr. Casey," he said, and Beck
wondered if all jet jockeys were sent to a secret school where they
learned to talk like Chuck Yeager. "Madrid's got a little more
turbulence than usual, so we're being vectored to new refueling
coordinates south of Len."

They had been in the air for slightly more than four hours, and Beck was
no longer certain he could feel his own feet. In Washington, he had
traded what in retrospect had been Cleopatra's barge for travel
accommodations that were far more Spartan, though incomparably faster.

At first, it had sounded interesting--exciting, even--to be flown across
the nighttime Atlantic to greet the morning sun as it rose over Europe.
Beck had logged an impressive number of flight miles in his time, more
than a few of them in small aircraft. But he had never before flown in a
F-15J Eagle, the latest two-seater version of the Air Force's first line
fighter. It was capable of speeds in excess of Mach 2. Significantly in
excess, particularly when afterburners were engaged--a fact that Major
Frankel seemed intent on proving to his passenger.

But what they gained in speed, they lost in fuel efficiency. They were
coming up on what was the last of three scheduled in-flight refuelings.

During the first two, Frankel had nudged the fighter in what to Beck
seemed an alarmingly close proximity to the KC-135 tanker, itself
visible only as a looming shape slightly blacker than the surrounding
night sky. The tanker trailed a stinger like retractable boom that ended
in a ridiculously undersized docking coupling; he knew this because of
Frankel's running commentary, not because any part of the fueling
appendage was visible without the night-vision goggles the pilot had
donned.

The Eagle's refueling probe lifted from a hatchway behind the cockpit,
which gave Beck a ringside seat to the intricacies of docking. It seemed
to him a perilous sort of mating dance. Nor was he comforted by the
thought of thousands of pounds of flammable jet fuel pulsing over his
head into the Eagle's tanks.

Presumably, they had been over terra firma for some minutes. To Beck,
that was mere rumor, optimistic conjecture that he suspected was the
pilot's attempt to soothe his passenger's nerves. When Frankel had
announced landfall, Beck looked outboard, expecting that even from
fifty-two thousand feet the vast geometric grid lights of modern cities
would be visible. No such luck; a strong low-pressure wave off the
Atlantic, unusual at this time of year, had socked in the larger part of
Spain. They were approaching French airspace, and according to the pilot
no break in the thick cloud cover was expected soon. That, and the fact
that the sliver of new moon provided virtually no ambient illumination,
only added to Beck's disorientation and jet-lag gloom.

He reached down to the panel and gingerly thumbed the only button he
knew how to use. The omnipresent crackle in his headphones flattened,
and he spoke.

"What's our time to Russia, Major?"

There was a slight dead-air pause until he remembered to release the
intercom switch.

"--so our ETA is about seventy-two minutes, give or take." Frankel's
voice came in mid-sentence. He chuckled. "I don't imagine Moscow logs
many F-15 landings, Dr. Casey. Hope they remember we're friendlies.

You let me know if their SAM batteries light us up, will you? It'll give
me a chance to go evasive."

Beck hoped he was kidding.

There was a burst of static over the radio, and a woman's voice came in
loud enough to make Beck wince.

"Uh, Night Rider, this is Auto Club," she said, and Beck wondered if
Yeager had a daughter--make that a granddaughter --in the service. "We
have you on scope as range oh-three-seven, two-two-five relative. You
wanna take your foot off the pedal, we'll get set for a fill-up. Uh,
while we're at it, you want us to check your oil?"

"Hang on, Doctor," Frankel said, and once more the Eagle banked hard
right. "Guess you know the drill by now. This won't take long. Next
stop, Sheremetyevo International Airport."

Moscow, Beck thought.

His stomach lurched again, though this time not entirely because of the
aerial maneuver. The only heartening aspect was a thin sliver in the
darkness, still too weak to be called daylight, that was etching its
faint line on the far horizon.

Mockba, it looked to Beck, the Cyrillic script disorienting in its
dyslexic mix of forward and backward lettering. He remembered the sign
on the main terminal, but much else had changed since his last visit.

When the Eagle had nosed down into its prescribed landing pattern, his
rear-seat vantage point had given him a panoramic view of the
metropolis. Here, it was already late morning; sunlight reflecting from
the streets and buildings made the city glitter.

Muscovites enjoy reminding their visitors that, like Rome, Moscow is
built on seven hills. This is difficult to prove. Only the most expert
eye can detect more than one or two of these, the topographical
formations themselves having long ago surrendered to maniacally fanciful
czarist architecture and the bleak geometric designs of socialist
progressivism. Throughout much of the ', when every available ruble was
being thrown into a desperate attempt to match Western arms
expenditures, there had been little left over for construction. There
was even less after the Soviet system skidded into virtual bankruptcy.
Neither had the boom times of the ' found its way into construction of
anything except Mafiya-owned dachas and walled compounds. This had
brought an exhausted monotony to the Moscow cityscape that Beck had
found somehow comforting.

No longer.

To the north, urban sprawl had settled in; towns and what looked like
private estates had sprung up in what had, the last time Beck had been
there, been open fields. The activity showed no signs of slowing; in the
distance, along the route to St. Petersburg, he could see bright yellow
earth moving vehicles scraping the curves of new residential roadways.

Beck also was surprised at the number of shopping malls; some of them
were as large as their American counterparts, though with far fewer cars
parked in far smaller lots. They flew over near the city's center, above
the open expanse that was still called Red Square, and Beck sighted the
Golden Arches of Mcdonald's. Just east of the triangular walls and
minaret spires of the Kremlin, the F-15 had swept over what from the air
looked like a Pizza Hut.

And in the final approach, as the F-15's wheels thudded into
lowered-and-locked position, Beck looked closer at the glut of
billboards he had noted from high overhead. They were also new and
prolific as mushrooms after a spring rain. They advertised a cornucopia
of Korean electronics, American cigarettes and Western European consumer
goods. Capitalism, in all its forms and variations, clearly had come to
the former workers' paradise.

By now, they had received instructions. Frankel taxied the fighter away
from the main Sheremetyevo II terminal, bouncing over occasionally
cracked or weed-tufted concrete toward a hangar undistinguished save for
its sheer size. It was unmistakably military, and the ground personnel
who swarmed around the Eagle as it braked were efficient as army ants,
carrying tire chocks and wheeling out a green cherry picker.

The latter had been spray-painted either inexpertly or carelessly;
faintly, just below the fresher tricolor ensign of the Russian
Federation, Beck could still discern the single red star.

Frankel opened the canopy. Beck caught the usual airport scents of
scorched rubber and burned kerosene, and more: a smoky, earthy, semi
acrid tang that his memory immediately recognized as uniquely Russian.
While the Air Force major supervised the fighter's shutdown, Beck
submitted meekly as a blond man in military-style coveralls disentangled
him from the straps and wires he had worn for hours.

Within moments, Beck found himself hustled inside the hangar. He had
left the helmet in the Eagle, but his Power Book and canvas carryall bag
dangled by their respective straps from either hand. His body was stiff
from inactivity and his gait bowlegged from the awkward embrace of the
tightly laced G-suit. He looked like the world's most miserable tourist;
as he walked, he waddled like a wounded duck.

"Ah, Beck Casey! You have injured yourself, my friend?"

Alexi Malenkov, wearing a Russian Army uniform, stood in jackbooted
splendor near the open rear door of a Zil sedan. His tone was
solicitous, but too much so; his face was split wide with a grin.

"Hello, Alexi. No, just not as flexible as I used to be." Beck eyed the
collar insignia on the crisp uniform. "A General, I see. Last time I saw
you, weren't you a Lieutenant Commander? In the Russian Navy!

Alexi looked down at his tunic, and shook his head mock sadly.

"True. And I much preferred the Navy's taste in fashion. But what is
there to be done, my friend? In our business, I have found it valuable
to stay flexible."

He made a gesture, and the blond Russian quickly helped Beck strip off
the G-harness. Malenkov watched with polite interest as Beck unzipped
the Nomex flight suit, peeling himself out of it like an arthritic snake
shedding skin.

"Iowa State," " Malenkov read aloud, and pursed his lips theatrically.
"Perhaps I could lend you something a little more formal, my friend?" He
shrugged at Beck's expression. "No matter, eh?

So. Your pilot will stay here; there are accommodations waiting. We have
business to do. Come."

As Beck settled in to the rear of the auto, Malenkov spoke to the driver
in Russian.

"Yehat ' Kremlin," he said.

Beck automatically translated: To the Kremlin.

The trip from Sheremetyevo to the center of Moscow is no more than
twenty miles, but it can take as long as two hours--unless, that is, one
is a passenger in a state vehicle
equipped with a siren. Cars swerved aside to let them pass, some with
alacrity and others with a studied indifference to the show of official
impatience.

The back seat of the Zil was spacious. Beck stretched his legs, feeling
his muscles threaten mutiny as he did. Outside on the right, they were
passing what appeared to be a forest of massive concrete obelisks:
concrete antitank hedgehogs arranged as a monument to the
counteroffensive that sent Hitler's supermen reeling more than a half
century earlier.

"I have missed you, Beck," Malenkov said.

"Three years is a long time, Alexi. Director of state security; you've
done well for yourself."

"Bah." Malenkov tried to look humble, and failed utterly. "I have become
a bureaucrat--the type of person that as field operatives, we both loved
to hate."

There was an extended silence that threatened to become awkward.

"Your last visit to my country--" Malenkov frowned and shook his head.

"Well, it is of no matter now. Necessary evils, eh?"

He lit a cigarette, without which no Russian feels complete. It was a
Russian brand, the kind with the long cardboard tube that serves as a
holder. Malenkov inhaled deeply of the fragrant smoke, and blew it
toward the roof with obvious satisfaction.

"I myself have always feared torture," Alexi continued conversationally.
"I knew that I would be unable to resist. In the end, one always talks,
yes?"

"Of course you talk," Beck said tightly. "You answer every damned
question they ask. If you don't know, you make up the answers that you
think they want to hear. And finally, when they run out of questions,
you tell them everything else ... you can think of."

"Ah, Beck--you are upset. I apologize. I thought it would be perhaps
therapeutic, to talk of these things. And I

am frankly curious. Few men survive an abduction by the Mafiya."

Beck looked out the car window.

"Alexi, we've known each other a long time. I even enjoy your company.

Sometimes, you're so affable that I tend to forget what I know about
you."

"And that is?"

"That you were a KGB thug before you started shaving. You're old school,
Alexi--we both are, so please don't tell me how uninformed you are about
the Mafiya. Half of the people who wired me up like a science project
were working in your Direktorate back in the early 'nineties. Now
they're Mafiya."

"Yes," Alexi agreed. "A sad commentary, how many of these criminals are
former KGB men."

"And so convenient. They have such excellent contacts throughout your
armaments industries. Even in those parts of it that make biological
weapons."

Malenkov shrugged expansively.

"It is difficult to restrain commerce, my friend. Many countries seek
such items. It is unrealistic to think that the less idealistic of my
countrymen would not attempt to fill this demand. That they did so as
... private businessmen--well, neither is that particularly difficult to
understand. The state could no longer afford their services, so they
became entrepreneurs."

"It's always valuable for a government to stay close to its business
community. To work in each other's interests, so to speak. Of course,
the relationship was very fortunate for me."

"Beck, we bought you from them," Alexi said, as if he was explaining to
a child. "You awakened in a Moscow hospital. Did you think the gentlemen
of our Mafiya were so considerate?"

"I always wondered about that," Beck said. "It wasn't as if the CIA was
working overtime on my behalf."

Alexi laughed, and to Beck it sounded like genuine amusement.

"No, except for the usual inquiries between diplomats, the CIA was
surprisingly inactive. While there were those in my government who
wished simply to let the filthy govnos leave your body in Gorky Park,
your survival was the result of Russian humanitarianism."

"I'm honored."

"You should feel so. Though, I admit, we did purchase several hours of
audio recordings made during your ... interviews. There was some
official curiosity as to your presence in my country, you see. After
all, my friend--a year earlier, you did arrange the defection of Comrade
Alibelikov."

"He defected on his own, Alexi."

"If you say so. Still, it was quite embarrassing--having the head of our
bio weapon program suddenly surface in Langley, telling your CIA all of
our little secrets. Some of my people blamed you. Some continue to do
so, I fear."

He lit another cigarette from the still-burning ember of his first.

"Now, your family. Your daughter, how is she?--young Katherine. Little
Katie--but no. She can be no longer little. She must be what now?
Fourteen years?"

"Fifteen," Beck said. "She lives with her mother. In Virginia, across
the river from D. C."

"Yes. Your divorce is known to us. So sad. I am divorced myself--two
times, and I do not expect my current wife to be my last. It is the
nature of our business, no?"

"I don't believe in divorce, Alexi."

"Nor did my first wife, my friend. But only one of the two parties is
required to do so, yes?"

"Perhaps."

"Ah, I see." Alexi nodded. "When I heard that you had left the employ of
the CIA--well, had I believed it to be so, I would have been much
saddened. Do not smile; in truth, our
profession is populated with so many unimaginative brutes. On both
sides, do you not agree? They see only what is on the surface; so
superficial, so boring. You were so ... so unpredictable, my friend!"

He leaned forward confidentially. "You will enjoy this, Beck: I was once
told, in all seriousness, that you were believed to be possessed of
psychic abilities. This, in an official KGB assessment. Ah, you laugh.
So did I. I told them, no-Beck Casey is no wizard. He is merely a
genius, I said, adept in analyzing what to most would be meaningless
trivia. And in jumping to the most startling conclusions--many of which
happened to be frighteningly accurate. I told them that you were most
likely an idiot savant--that it was doubtful you yourself understood the
mechanics of what you did. Oh, yes. You were quite a puzzlement to us,
Beck."

Alexi sat back, a doleful expression on his features.

"And now you are--what, teaching history to children? A man with your
gifts, a man with such value to his government. I am to seriously
believe this?"

"Please don't tell me that you people stopped keeping files," Beck said.
"That would truly break my heart, Alexi, lying to me like that."

"Files," Malenkov said, and waved his hand dismissively. "We need no
files to tell our stories. We know each other too well. I still do not
believe you are '," but it is a path you should consider with much
seriousness. No, my friend, do not look at me like that. To play this
game of ours, one must be ruthless and single-minded. This, you were
never. Competent, yes. But not without scruples, and that is your
failing."

Beck smiled. "After all we've been through. I'm hurt, Alexi, deeply
wounded."

The Russian laughed. "I do not complain about this defect of yours,
Beck. Had you been ruthless, you would have killed me. Remember? As you
did poor stupid Borelovich, four years ago."

"Yes," said Beck. "At the cemetery."

"Did you know that those cemeteries grew out of another plague?" Alexi
Malenkov asked. "Yes. In 1771, almost sixty thousand Muscovites died of
the Black Death. It was forbidden to bury the victims within the city
limits, so the bodies were taken to fields forty kilometers from the
Kremlin's walls. Thus were established Danilovskoye, Kalitnikovskoye and
Vagankovskoye. Our three great cities of the dead."

He drew again on the cigarette, and exhaled a prodigious amount of
tobacco smoke.

"Well. Now Moscow may surpass them all, if what I am told about this
virus is accurate. Since last we spoke to your CDC, we have confirmed
another thirty-six cases of this '." That makes seventy-seven cases in
all, and the number of deaths is now up to twenty-two."

"We have two deaths, out of two confirmed cases."

"Pardon me, but it is now three deaths and six confirmations. So far.

We received word while you were in the air."

"Bad time to be in Florida," Beck said, and paused. "Or Moscow. Alexi,
did this thing start here? Is this virus one of yours?"

Malenkov shook his head.

"Our virologists say no," he said. "The genome sequencing is wrong.

There, you see, I have no secrets from you. I have admitted that my
country possesses such things. This is not a time for the usual games,
you see." Outside the window, the roadway was now lined with ugly
apartment buildings that resembled badly molded children's blocks. Beck
could see that they were making good time. Moscow sits within five
concentric rings of roadways, like a bull's-eye with the Red Square at
the center; this was the first ring, and very soon they would traverse
to a four lane they would follow to the Kremlin. As if reading his
thoughts, the Zil turned right onto a ramp that curved to meet yet
another roadway. At this rate, Beck knew they would be at their
destination in less than fifteen minutes.

Malenkov crashed out the cigarette, then leaned toward Beck and patted
his knee.

"It has been too long, my friend," Alexi Malenkov said, "And what a hell
of a way to renew our acquaintance, is it not?"

"I am very happy that you are not hiding anything, Alexi. But I do have
one concern."

Malenkov shook his head in mock disappointment. "And that is?"

"You've assured me that this virus isn't one of yours," Beck said. "But
why aren't you asking me if it is one of ours?"

Chapter 10.

Moscow July 22

The Zil swept into the Kremlin, avoiding the main Trinity Gate used by
most visitors in preference for a more discreet entrance closer to the
Presidium, which houses the Russian governmental offices. Slowing only
slightly, the vehicle turned right, past the great bell towers and
cathedrals and armory.

Immediately, Beck could sense the tension that gripped the vast fortress
of the czars. Normally, on a fine summer's day like this, throngs of
tourists would be milling about the various courtyards and parade
grounds in T-shirts and shorts, buying photo postcards or admiring in
various languages the eighteen minarets that stood graceful sentinel
around the triangular walls.

Today, no tourists were to be seen.

Instead, there were armed men everywhere--not the ceremonial guards
dressed in Cossack costumes for the benefit of the foreign tourists, but
soldiers in full battle dress whose posture and attitude displayed the
casual toughness of the professional warrior. Nor were any pikes, ornate
sabers or even fancifully engraved matchlock rifles in evidence: each of
these troopers, Beck noted, carried the far less elegant but
much faster firing AK-47. In addition, from each web harness hung a
ceremonial knife, a stiletto with an ornate haft.

And that spells elite unit, he thought, probably paratroop or even
Spetznaz.

Alexi Malenkov saw Beck's eyes scan the courtyard and correctly guessed
his thoughts.

"Yes, there are more soldiers here than is usual," Alexi said.

"Officially, the large number of soldiers throughout the city has been
attributed to ceremonial requirements. Today we have yet another
anniversary of the Great Patriotic War; Putin even placed a wreath
somewhere, I believe."

"You can't believe you can keep this a secret, Alexi."

"There has as yet been no official announcement of the situation, and
our media is being uncommonly cooperative in--how did I phrase the
directive? Ah, yes--'in not spreading rumors that might encourage civil
disruption." All has been very orderly, so far. But even so--yes, there
has been talk in the streets. The kettle is boiling, and it is always
best to be prepared."

They turned a corner and the car skidded to a stop on the cobbled
pavement. Opening his door, the Russian motioned for Beck to follow.

The location was correct for the presidential residence. But instead of
the expanse of yellow-white marble and faux Romanov architecture, a vast
olive green canopy of rubberized fabric was tented over the entrance. To
Beck, it looked not unlike the massive shrouds used in the States for
building fumigation.

Two no-nonsense guards, assault rifles at the ready, flanked a clear
plastic flap that served as the only entry. If they noticed Alexi's
badge of rank, they gave no indication of deference. One of them
carefully checked Malenkov's ID against a computer-printed list, then
keyed a radio handset.

As they waited, Beck noticed the sign affixed to a stanchion.

construction--keep away, it said in five languages, with the Russian
added seemingly as an afterthought--it
was, he thought, at best a transparent attempt to explain away the
extraordinary activity.

Finally, the radio crackled with words too low for Beck to hear, and the
soldier gestured the two men inside. They ascended the stairs, walking
against a slight draft that blew toward the outside.

Upstairs, they passed through a foyer where throngs of Russian Army
personnel were engaged in chaotic labor.

"Consider yourself fortunate," Alexi muttered to Beck. "Had we not come
directly from the airport, neither of us would have been admitted.

Perhaps not even with a good scrubbing down from these people."

He sidestepped two sweating soldiers who were unrolling heavy black
plastic sheeting to cover the floor; others were draping the same
material over the walls or affixing it to the ceiling. Electrical cables
and rubber hoses twined with each other before branching off to conduits
and brass manifolds around the large expanse.

The devices and apparatus being wrestled into place looked vaguely
familiar, though it took Beck a moment to recall where he had seen this
before.

Then he remembered: Israel, during the Gulf War.

Here, in the middle of the Russian Kremlin, a mobile decontamination
station was being erected.

Beck had expected another meeting, perhaps even a mirror image of the
bureaucratic free-for-all in Atlanta with which the day--no, he
corrected himself mentally, that was already yesterday--had started. He
had not taken into account the Russian disdain for group decisions,
which roughly translated into an affinity for authoritarian rule.

Only one man was in the ornate room. His back was to the door, away from
the large television and VCR that stood between two low sofas. He was
staring out a window that looked out over the Kremlin's walls; in the
summer sun, the cityscape of Moscow glittered like a jewel.

The bright back lighting made him a silhouette, and to Beck he seemed to
stand extraordinarily still.

Then the figure turned, and Beck recognized the thin, almost skull-like
face of Vladimir Putin, president of the Russian Federation.

"I know you, Dr. Casey," the Russian president said, as Beck's mind
automatically translated the Russian. "You have visited my country
before." Beck heard neither threat nor admonition in his tone, and
wondered if it was intentional. Putin gestured at the sofas, and Beck
and Alexi settled on either side of the video screen. The Russian
president handed the latter a sheet of thick, crisp paper, which Alexi
scanned quickly before folding it into a pocket of his uniform.

"Vy gava ' pa-Rooski," Putin said, his inflection not as a question.

"Not as well as you speak English," Beck said.

Putin nodded.

"I have conferred with your president," he said in the unaccented
English his files said he learned in a KGB training academy. "We agree
that our two countries are both in mortal peril; we have both pledged
unconditional cooperation in this matter. Our medical authorities are
exchanging what little information there is. At present, our official
position is that this is a medical emergency, not an ... attack. That
may provide us time to determine who has done this. You wish to see the
face of this atrocity?"

Without waiting for a response, he moved to the videotape machine and
pressed a button. The screen flickered to life. It showed a
head-and-shoulders close-up of what could have been a fully spacesuited
cosmonaut. Any facial features were obscured by the blue-white flare of
overhead fluorescent tubes on the helmet's plastic faceplate.

As the camera pulled back slightly, Beck could see that the figure wore
a gray coverall, shiny with its rubberized coating; black gloves covered
his hands, and what looked like double wrappings of duct tape sealed the
wrist against
the protective suit. The corrugated hose of a self-contained breathing
supply snaked over his shoulder.

"This was recorded earlier today," Putin said, his words curiously flat.
"At our Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology. As you see, it is
much like the most stringent containment facilities at your Fort Detrick
or your CDC. I believe you call these
"Level Four' facilities, where the most hazardous organisms are
contained."

On the videotape, the cosmonaut now was walking down a corridor toward a
steel door that looked like the hatch of a submarine. The camera
followed him through the second door of the airlock, the man momentarily
passing out of the camera's view. For an instant, the picture shimmied
into a blur.

When the focus again steadied, it was on a scene of sheer horror.

Around the room, arranged like a dormitory from hell, were row upon row
of hospital cots; at least two dozen, Beck estimated. Under sheets now
stained and matted, human forms writhed and struggled--some frantically,
fighting for breath with the panic of the drowning; others fitfully,
feeble in their dying efforts to drag oxygen past bruise-blue lips. In
several of the beds, the patients were in the midst of fevered seizures,
mad convulsions that tore the intravenous tubes from their bodies and
rocked the cots wildly. Everywhere, the floor was vile with puddled
bodily fluids, skid-smeared where the spacesuited attendants had passed.

Beck watched wordlessly as the camera walked down the line of cots, the
picture jerking and unsteady with each step of the operator. Face after
doomed face passed in close-up, features contorted with pain as
uncontrollable coughing ripped the tissues of their lungs. A number of
the victims dripped a thick, bloody phlegm from their noses and mouths.

Too weak to even lift their hands, only their eyes still looked human in
faces ravaged by the virus's assault.

"The first case was reported three days ago--in Tuvelov. a village just
outside this city," Putin said in the same curiously detached voice.
"The first death came one day later, the same day we discovered it had
spread to Arkadi, a neighboring village, and then to Moscow itself.
Since then, our physicians have had no success in discovering a viable
treatment. There are more than seventy identified cases, and our medical
experts estimate that those already infected but still without symptoms
number twenty to thirty times that figure. The contagion expands
geometrically; within ten days, all of Russia could be infected. At
present, our projections indicate the virus will be lethal in slightly
fewer than eighty percent of all it infects."

The Russian president stopped, his eyes locked on the video screen.

There, a young boy perhaps nine years old twisted in agony; frantically
his hands clawed at his own throat, leaving red lines against the
bluish, oxygen-deprived flesh.

Mercifully, the camera moved on; and Putin shook himself, as if to force
his words to continue.

"Our attempts to contain this disease have fared little better," Putin
said. "Last night, I ordered troops to cordon off the western quadrant
of the city, well outside the area where this influenza already is
found. Because Tuvelov and Arkadi have reported cases of this disease,
they also have been sealed. No one is being allowed out, or in. No one.
The units were ordered to employ lethal force."

He turned to face Beck and Malenkov directly.

"Already, this has been necessary," he said. "Perhaps fifty have been
shot, maybe more. I have ordered that the bodies remain where they fall,
in full view of others who might attempt to cross these lines."

Beck looked at Putin, thinking of bullet-torn bodies lying in a Moscow
street. Unbidden, his mind's eye superimposed another image, another
place, over the carnage.

"We too have considered containment," Beck said. "In Florida."

"I have advised your President that containment is at best a temporary
measure," Putin said. "I am told, for instance, that
parts of Moscow's sewer system do not exist on our maps; these will
serve as an avenue of escape for some. Others will finally fear the
disease more than bullets; they will merely overwhelm the soldiers at a
given place in the line--overrun them, as you say. Is this not true,
Alexi Malenkov? Or does my senior security advisor now have new counsel
for me?"

Alexi stared back at him--without expression, but also without the
proforma respect that usually accompanied such an exchange. There was a
hard tension between the two men that was obvious even to the American.

Finally Putin shrugged--rather bloodlessly, Beck thought.

"Inevitably, someone will elude our cordon," Putin said. "If I allow
that to happen, this death will spread beyond all hope of stopping.

There is but one manner of perhaps preventing this, and it is at best a
doubtful proposition."

He looked at his watch, and raised his eyes to focus on a far wall above
Beck's head.

"I have ordered my military to sterilize the areas where this virus is
known to exist," Putin said.

Beck felt the skin at the back of his skull tighten; beside him, Alexi
sat in his own stunned silence.

"In less than an hour, approximately one hundred helicopters will fly
over western Moscow and the villages of Arkadi and Tuvelov. Each
aircraft is equipped with aerial spraying devices, with which they will
release chemical agents. This will be repeated as many times as is
necessary. We are fortunate; the winds are favorable, and outside the
sterilization zone deaths caused by our nerve gases will be minimized.

I have been advised that by tonight at the latest, no one in the
affected areas will remain alive."

"How many, sir?" Beck asked.

"Perhaps two hundred thousand," Putin said. "History may say it was a
small enough sacrifice to save one hundred and fifty million other
Russians. If this virus does not somehow outsmart us."

"Soo'kin sin," breathed Alexi.

For a moment, Putin seemed not to have noticed the vulgarity. "Do not
pretend such surprise, General Malenkov. You pressed hard enough
for--how did you put it? "Decisive action," I believe you wanted."

Alexi stared at his president wordlessly, but with eyes that spoke
volumes. The two Russians' stares dueled for a long moment, before Putin
turned to Beck.

"I have been waiting to hear the sounds of the helicopters," Putin said,
and his voice was remote, distant. "There is a possibility, of course,
that my order will not be obeyed." He suddenly smiled, as if in
comradeship with the American seated before him. "Or that they will
decide to release their weapons here, over the Kremlin. I have been
wondering which choice I would make, were I one of the pilots. In truth,
I cannot make up my mind."

The smile faded as quickly as it had appeared.

"I have given Alexi Malenkov my signed authorization to provide you with
any information or assistance you need. He will accompany you to
Lubyanka. There is an interrogation under way there--a cultist, one of
the fanatics the FSB has had under surveillance for some weeks. Since
before this virus appeared. I am told he may prove valuable to us."

The three men stood. No one offered to shake hands.

Putin's voice followed Beck to the door and stopped him there. When Beck
turned, he saw that the Russian president was again at the window,
looking out at the city.

"Four days ago, there was no sign of this virus in my country. Now I
must sacrifice many lives, with no certainty it will prove successful."

"Russians have died for Russia before," Beck said, and Putin replied
without turning.

"Americans may soon follow our example, Dr. Casey," he said. "I spoke to
your president, to make him aware of what I must do here, to Russians.
He is weighing the advice of your own experts even as we speak. This
very same option, I believe, had already been suggested to him."

Chapter 11.

Moscow July 22

The car carrying Beck entered Lubyanskaya Plaza, past the empty spot
once occupied by a massive statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the man tasked
by Lenin to create history's most draconian secret police organization.

Until August 22, 1991, Iron Felix had stood in stern bronze vigilance,
overlooking the yellow-brick headquarters of the KGB.

Beck remembered the day. He had been in the midst of the crowd of
Muscovites numbering in the thousands who surrounded the monument. They
had cheered as cranes toppled both the statue and, they thought, the
system of terror it had represented. Some of the crowd--as giddy with
vodka as with the prospect of democratic rule--performed various
indignities on the statue as it lay facedown on the ground.

Beck had looked up at the windows overlooking the scene, noting the
senior KGB officers who had watched patiently from their office windows.
Afterward, pragmatic in their understanding of Russian history, they had
had the statue removed to a warehouse and cleaned.

Many believe it remains in storage, waiting. But Beck, like other
professionals who had watched Russia's subsequent mutation, knew better;
like the institution founded by
Iron Felix--in its most recent incarnation, now known as the Federal
Security Bureau--the statue had been quietly reerected. Lenin's dark
angel again stands proudly, now in a park far from the eyes of the
Russian public. Similarly, his legacy to the Russian national character
is once again busily engaged in its traditional pursuits.

It had been a short trip from the Kremlin. Alexi Malenkov had said
nothing during the two-block drive; nor had Beck encouraged
conversation. Instead, both men stared straight ahead, each pretending
not to be listening for the sounds of helicopters in the distance. No
one challenged Alexi as he led Beck past the guards and checkpoints
inside.

Only in the small elevator that Alexi had activated with his own key did
he begin to speak.

"Madness," Alexi said, his voice barely under control. "We are attacked,
and the only response our '' can devise is to massacre our own people."

"Putin has tough choices to make, Alexi. It's what a leader does."

"A leader," Alexi repeated. "Is that what he is? Perhaps. In Russia, you
see, we have created a new ruling class. It is made up of capitalists,
our so-called oligarchs. Billionaires, all of them--and advised by your
own very capable American public relations firms. These are the people
who rule in Russia today, my friend."

"Putin was elected, Alexi. As was Yeltsin before him."

"Yes, please lecture me on the beauties of democratic government," Alexi
retorted, sarcasm dripping. "Yeltsin was unstable. Even in his
occasional lucid moments, he scarcely had the wit to dress himself, let
alone provide leadership. A faction of our billionaires' club tired of
his antics; they wanted more stability than could be provided under a
manic depressive alcoholic. So they found Putin."

He snorted. "Our wealthy ruling class thought he was merely an
ambitious, midlevel KGB apparatchik. Ambitious, he certainly was. I fear
they underestimated the rest of
his personality--rather badly, no? You have perhaps heard the definition
of an honest Russian politician? He is a man who, when you buy him,
stays bought."

"You didn't make that up," Beck said. "I've heard it in Chicago."

"You know of the very public arrests my president has ordered recently?

One was a Russian media baron, I believe you would call him; the second,
an industrialist who has perhaps been too open in his views."

"They got rich by robbing your country blind," Beck said. "Come on.

They share the blame for what happened in Russia. Maybe Putin does too,
but there's a lot of blame to be shared."

"Now they are finding that President Putin is much like other leaders my
country has had: disinclined to share anything, especially power."

Alexi fell silent for a few paces, his brow dark with words unsaid. "If
there is much of anything to share after this virus has done its work."

Beck said nothing.

"I have always been suspicious of the obvious," Alexi said after a
moment. "The rational person does not wish to die; this is obvious.

Who, then, would unleash a disease that kills so efficiently, spreads so
rapidly and defies all efforts to discover a cure? What kind of person
would be so irrational? Perhaps it is my early education as a good
Communist, but to me the answer is obvious."

Beck looked at him patiently.

"A fanatic," Alexi said. "More specifically, a religious fanatic, who
seeks his reward in the afterlife."

"And that narrows it down, does it?"

"As it happens, my friend, we have a number of quite fanatical religious
cults in Russia. But I know of only one that has a previous record of
chemical and biological terrorist acts."

The American frowned. "The Asahara cult? Aum Shin rikyo?"

"Of course, you would know of these Aum, as they call themselves," Alexi
said to Beck. "Have we not all studied their murderous farce?

Please, let me play the professor here: in the not-so-distant past, they
released a quantity of nerve gas in the subway of Tokyo. They believed
by so doing, they would trigger a worldwide religious uprising. They did
not, though they succeeded in killing perhaps a dozen of their
countrymen. Do you know why it failed?"

"The sarin contained impurities," Beck said, watching his companion
closely.

"Ah, that is what the Japanese authorities announced. But it is not
accurate. We have tested samples from that attack-no, do not ask how we
obtained it, please. The nerve gas was quite adequately formulated.

No, it was the delivery system that was faulty. In the subways, Aum
soldiers had simply concealed sealed plastic sacks containing the gas
inside briefcases, purses--even paper bags. At a prearranged time, the
weapon bearer punctured the plastic and fled the scene."

Alexi smiled, grimly. "Even as a kamikaze delivery system, it was
spectacularly unsophisticated," he said. "People died, surely; but only
a handful, nowhere near as many as had been hoped for. Still, had the
gas been delivered from pressurized containers in a properly coordinated
assault, the results would have been far different."

Alexi looked as if he had tasted something foul, and shook his head in
disgust.

"Idiots. After this lethal farce, the Japanese police supposedly
arrested those responsible. I say '' because, after the Japanese
government courteously agreed that the peaceful rank and file of the Aum
was no longer a public danger, they allowed it to continue in existence.
This, despite the fact that sizable quantities of rather dangerous toys
were found in their possession. I speak, of course, of the sarin. And
also of biological cultures that, upon analysis, were determined to be
anthrax."

Alexi shrugged, and was not quite capable of keeping his anger from
emphasizing the gesture.

"Certainly, in the case of the anthrax, it was not that growing the
organism was exceptionally difficult--early in World War Two, the
British succeeded by using five interconnected metal milk cans and a
simple vacuum pump. No, what we found impressive was the sheer energy of
these Aum. They appear quite determined, once they have set themselves
on a task. Do you know that some years ago they sent--you will perhaps
enjoy the irony--a ' mission' to Zaire? Not by coincidence, it was
during an outbreak of Ebola. They wished to obtain a sample of this
particularly nasty virus, and failed only because they could not reach
the site of the outbreak in time.

"And so. The cult is Japanese in origin, supposedly formed by a
half-blind leader said to have had an exclusive relationship with the
Almighty. Since his imprisonment after the botched gas attack, he is now
considered by his remaining followers as a god himself. In reality this
Asahara was a petty thief, an embezzler who stumbled onto the far
greener pastures of religious mysticism. He attracted unstable elements
among his people, who made a practice of turning their own property over
to their leader. Some of this wealth he decided to use in my country."

The elevator stopped and they exited into a subterranean level lighted
by modern fluorescent strips. To Beck, it looked much like the
windowless clerical areas of a large insurance operation.

"We have become very good capitalists," Alexi said. "We sold these
fanatics air time on our most powerful transmitters, so the rantings of
their insane leader could infect more and more Russian minds. We turned
into what Lenin called your countrymen: merchants who would sell the
rope to their own hangman."

He stopped at a door that looked far too heavy for an office or
storeroom.

"Perhaps twenty or thirty thousand of my countrymen were gullible enough
to adopt this Aum foolishness. Allow me to introduce you to one of
them."

He waved Beck into a large room lit by powerful lights on the upper
walls and ceiling. The brightness was dazzling, and Beck's eyes squinted
against it. It took a moment before he could make out the three figures
near the far wall. Two of them were in uniform, and their eyes were
masked by the dark glasses they wore.

"I present Il'lych Valeri Davidovich." Beck heard Alexi sniff at the
stench of urine and feces that hung in the air. "Do not stand too close.
I believe our guest has become somewhat incontinent."

The prisoner was Slavic in his features and complexion-or would have
been, had his hair not been matted with dirt and blood and his face not
mottled with bruises. His eyes were mere slits, though whether because
of the bright lights or the effect of physical abuse Beck could not
discern.

Then Beck noted the curious pattern of angry red blotches, always in
pairs, wherever the man's skin was exposed.

"What the hell, Alexi?"

"As a Russian citizen, Mr. Davidovich has constitutional rights that we
have honored," Alexi said with sarcasm. "That is why he is here, rather
than at Lefortovo Prison. He is freely assisting us in our
investigation."

"I know electrical burns when I see them," Beck said.

"There is no virus here, and no nerve gas to fall on him from above,"
Alexi retorted. "Most of the persuasion we have employed has involved
drugs and the deprivation of sleep. He is fortunate."

"Ask him if he thinks so," Beck said.

Alexi shrugged carelessly, his eyes on the scene.

The man swayed on his feet, and the inquisitor who stood behind him
jabbed his kidney with a balled fist, hard and expertly. When the
prisoner staggered, the interrogator to his
front seized him by the windpipe and held him up. The uniformed man
leaned close to the prisoner's face and said something sibilant and
hard. When he released his grip on the. man's throat, the prisoner sank
to his knees.

He muttered something in Russian that was too low for Beck to hear.

The response was a vicious kick to the small of his back that sent the
man writhing to the floor.

"Come." Alexi gripped Beck's upper arm. They turned and left the room.
As they again walked down the corridor, Beck found his own fists were
balled. "Damn you," he spat at Alexi. "Why did you show me that?"

"Because there is no time for anything else," the Russian said.

"Because you must understand that what I tell you now is true. Seven
months ago, the man in that room attempted to bribe a senior Army
officer, who happened instead to be a patriot. Our guest has been under
surveillance ever since. He offered first eight million U.S. dollars,
then increased it to ten million. Do you wish to know what he considered
worth this vast sum?"

Beck said nothing, feeling his pulse pound angrily in his temple.

"He wished to purchase from us a biological weapon," Alexi said. "A
virus."

Beck stopped short.

"You told me it was not one of yours, Alexi."

"And it is not. He did not acquire what he sought, not from Russia and
not from your country. As a result of the interrogation methods to which
you object so passionately, we have ruled this out completely."

"Have you?" Beck heard the anger in his own voice. "Then what does he
know about the virus? Who engineered it? Where was it acquired?"

"My friend," Alexi said, "at this moment it does not matter how they
obtained this virus. Perhaps through our old
friend Saddam. Or perhaps an organization that has ten million dollars
to spend can afford its own bio geneticists no?"

"It matters if someone has a vaccine."

"Had he known anything about a vaccine, he would have already told us.

This, I assure you."

"What other evidence do you have," Beck asked, "aside from the statement
of a man under torture?"

Alexi snorted impatiently.

"Do you think he is the only member of this murderous cult we have taken
into custody? No, my friend--in Russia, a group that engages in chemical
warfare does not escape our attention. Certainly not if there are
thousands of them inside our borders."

"I know how the Federal Security Bureau works, Alexi. People tend to
disappear into the system, and many of them never emerge. I'll ask
again: Do you have any hard proof that Aum is behind all this?"

"Do not play the lawyer with me, my friend. It is not a role that suits
you. We have a man who is a member of a cult that has previously tried
to wage biological warfare. He attempts to buy a deadly viral weapon. A
few months later, people in both our countries begin to die from a virus
we know is an engineered weapon. I need nothing more."

"It may be a smoking gun, Alexi. But it's not conclusive."

"When we have finished our interrogation," Alexi said, "we will know all
that he does. He will wish only that he had more to tell us."

Beck bit off the retort that came to his lips. The two men walked on in
silence for several paces before Alexi spoke.

"Beck, six weeks ago the Japanese convicted this Asa hara, this cult
leader. He was sentenced to die- a quite reasonable decision for a
Russian court, though something of a surprise to come from the Japanese.
They are, I fear, far too pliant, far too often."

"The Armageddon syndrome," Beck said. "As a cult, they believe their own
annihilation is at hand, and they've decided
to take the rest of us with them. This is what you believe has begun?"

Alexi nodded, and his expression was deadly serious.

"Report back to your president," he said. "Tell him that these fanatics,
these Aum, are our most obvious--call them suspects, if you must. I
would use a much more definitive description. We have gathered some
intelligence on this group independently, and will share it with you.
They are apparently led now by various people they call teachers--in
Japanese, sensei. Who these sensei are, we do not yet know. But your
people are much closer to the Japanese government than are mine, is it
not so?"

Alexi reached out and gripped Beck's arm in a grip that was almost
painful. "Understand, please. We must obtain all information on this
cult immediately."

"What we have, you will have."

Alexi smiled coldly. "We cannot afford games in this, Beck."

"What are you saying, Alexi?"

"Your people already know much about this Aum, my friend. Your people
infiltrated them some time ago."

Beck looked skeptical.

"And just how would you know this?"

"The man in the room--the one whose well-being you are so concerned
about. He is Aum, certainly. But he is also one of yours. He is
CIA."

Chapter 12.

Moscow July 22

The first line of the helicopters--thirty Mi-24 Hinds, each adapted with
aerosol spraying apparatus that protruded sideways from the landing
skids and accentuated their insect like appearance--swept in low over
the target perimeter. They were no more than seventy feet above the
street level, and the people below were easily visible as individuals to
the two man crews.

The words crackled in the headphones of Pilot Officer Yuri Gretnik, who
recognized the voice of his squadron commander.

"Ajax Leader. This will be our orientation pass. Maintain formation
throughout. Ajax-Three, tighten up." Yuri winced at the rebuke. He eased
the collective, tweaking his craft back into alignment.

Below, there were no more barricades in place. When, a few minutes
before, the cordon of troops had pulled back to the far side of the
broad boulevard, the crowd had surged forward and crumpled the
red-and-white-painted fencing. Yuri could see that the only obstacle now
holding back the mass of humanity was the line of soldiers three deep
and seventy yards away.

The margin of the crowd was dark and irregular against the lighter
pavement of the street; seen from above, the scene looked not unlike the
ebb and flow of waves upon a beach. Here and there, the white puff of a
tear gas canister blossomed near the front ranks, and the people in the
area scattered like birds disturbed in a park. Then the cloud would waft
away, and the hole it had made would again fill with people, like a boot
mark in a muddy field.

Before his conscription, Yuri, twenty-two, had been a literature student
at Ekaterinburg University.

You are a master of descriptive language today, Yuri Gretnik told
himself. Perhaps you can use pretty words to describe what we do now.

"Murder" sounds so ... crude.

"Ajax Cadre, prepare to deploy."

The protective suits and masks they wore made everything more difficult.
Though they had drilled in them many times before, it was never
pleasant. They were hot, hard to move in, and limited one's vision like
a horse's blinders.

In fact, the only thing less pleasant would have been to be without
them, Yuri thought, darkly. Like those below. He shook the black
thoughts from his mind and focused on his flying.

He could see through the plastic windscreen and read the instrument
panel; but unless he turned his head awkwardly, the copilot who sat
behind him was out of vision's field. Warrant Officer Josef Pelov,
riding in the helicopter's midline above and behind the primary pilot,
might as well have been in Petrograd as far as Yuri was concerned. No
matter. All Pelov had to do was trigger the spraying apparatus at the
command and monitor its largely automatic operation.

The flight had linked up with the other squadrons now, and when he
turned his head Yuri could see the line of helicopters stretching in
precise formation to his right and left. Altitude was thirty meters,
airspeed only high enough to provide sufficient control of the aircraft.

"Ajax Cadre, deploy at my mark," the headphones crackled, and a yellow
ready light flashed on the dash: Pelov had heard, and was prepared.

No more than a dozen meters separated him from the helicopters on either
side, demanding his full attention. Yuri kept his eyes level, forced
himself to think of nothing but his flying. For that reason, the pilot
did not see the small, almost palm-sized video camera that Pelov now
raised to his goggled eye.

It had been an extravagance, a costly toy. When Josef Pelov had shown it
to his family and told them what it had cost, they had been uniform in
condemning his wastrel ways.

All except his brother-in-law, a former Pravda journalist who now
freelanced for the various American news organs that maintained Moscow
bureaus. He alone had shown respect and even suggested a few ways that
the camera might pay for itself. Since then, Pelov and his sister's
husband had split the profits from the occasional snippet of video shot
during select military operations.

But none had been like this one. The audacity of what he risked made
Pelov's hand tremble.

At the same instant, the words came: "Deploy weapon ... mark."

With the hand not holding the camera, he flipped up the safety shield
and pressed the button it had covered. A red indicator light flashed on
and glowed steadily, and a new vibration --so slight as to be almost
unnoticed, had he not been listening for it--mingled with the rest of
the helicopter's din.

Atomized droplets hissed from the tubular spraying gear of a hundred
aircraft.

Pelov twisted in his seat, the video camera silently recording.

Distanced by the viewfinder, Pelov could see it all happen objectively,
even dispassionately. The spray itself was only visible for the brief
instant when it flashed from the row of
aerosolizing nozzles. Then it became invisible, a lethal cloud of mist
released into the warm summer air.

Pelov tracked downward, imaging the path of the deadly cloud as it
trailed in the helicopters' slipstreams. He held the moving shot for
several seconds, then pressed the mini button that operated the zoom
lens. As if he were dropping toward them, the crowd mushroomed in his
eye.

They fell as wheat under the scythe of an invisible hand-not singly, but
as a rolling wave that trailed the shadows of the helicopters.

He imagined they screamed in their agony. The convulsions turned each
figure into something clearly no longer human: a madly twisting creature
tormented by some invisible fire that had ignited their flesh.

Pelov ratcheted back, and the dying humanity he saw through his lens
became a wider shot: a single writhing mass that tore at itself, an
immense rag doll in the jaws of a particularly frenzied, though unseen,
beast.

Pelov stared in terrified fascination at the scene below until Yuri's
voice blared in his ear.

"Acknowledge, please. We are ordered to prepare for another pass."

"Da, Pilot Officer," Pelov responded. With his gloved left hand, he
pressed the switch that cut off the flow of the nerve gas and prepared
to reset the arming system. The palm-sized video cam he slipped into the
map pouch affixed to the aluminum bulkhead. He would risk it, he thought
silently, risk recording at least one more pass over the streets of
death below.

He was certain his brother-in-law--the one who freelanced for the
Americans journalists--could help him find the highest bidder.

Chapter 13.

Fort Walton Beach, Florida July 22

The spacesuited figure stood in the doorway, a stocky, bearlike form
whose helmet had r. porter stenciled above the bubble of his faceplate.

"Dr. Mayer, I need your help for a moment."

The voice was oddly muffled through the acrylic bubble. Without waiting
for a reply, he was gone.

Carol Mayer looked up from the computer screen, a frown pulling lines on
her face. Aside from the CDC team, which had its own priorities, she was
the only physician still on site. When Porter had arrived from Atlanta,
Carol had volunteered to stay at the Rossini-Evans Clinic, arguing to
Porter that she would be needed for the occasional walk-in that somehow
missed being directed to newly established primary triage locations.
Spreading the infection, if indeed she carried it, was a moot point: in
actuality, if still unofficially, anybody who entered the clinic was
taken into custody for quarantine.

Carol had examined five or six people, the first few under the critical
eye of the CDC official. Then, his judgment made, the CDC physician had
turned to areas where his supervision was actually needed.

The clinic was too small to assign each physician his or
her own office; like the rest of the junior staff, Carol shared both the
cubbyhole and the computer with two other doctors. Had this been a
normal day, at least one of them would have been lurking over Carol's
shoulder in an unsubtle reminder that others might have a need for word
processing or Med Net data searches.

Today was not a normal day, nor had been the day before.

Had she needed any reminder of that, the sight of Porter and his field
team from CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service would have proven
sufficient. Since the first units had arrived, its number had swollen to
more than a dozen; Porter himself had shown up only an hour or so after
the first EIS technicians.

The Rossini-Evans Clinic was now being used as a headquarters --more
accurately, a command center. From it, the CDC specialists were
coordinating an expanding network of screening and evaluation, providing
overall direction to what now threatened to turn into a quarantine of
statewide proportions.

They had swept into the clinic the previous afternoon like an army of
invading aliens-and looked that way too, Carol groused to herself, with
their Tyvek coveralls and damn Star Wars helmets. What with the slight
hiss of the HEPA-filtered air and the voice-deadening effect of their
thick plastic visors, they even sounded a bit like Darth Vader.

The analogy brought a tight twist to her lips. Carol had been surprised
to realize just how deep her resentment went. Of course she understood
the reason for the protective gear; of course she wished that she too
was sheathed head to foot in a sterilized-air, germ-free mini
environment And of course she resented the forced change in her status
from physician to--what?

Not patient, she thought. Maybe lab rat.

All this Carol knew, at least intellectually.

She also knew that it was not her intellect that drove her
anger; it was her emotions--specifically, her fear. She had to work hard
to conceal it.

So she watched Ray Porter. From the moment he arrived, the man had been
everywhere, never appearing to move hastily or without purpose.

Carol had watched him supervise the lab setup, lean over another CDC
physician to observe the exam, choreograph the doings of a dozen complex
tasks.

Most impressively, Carol had seen him nod patiently inside his helmet,
coolly waiting for an animated Sam Evans to run out of steam. Carol's
boss looked old enough to have been in med school with Pasteur. He had
been a Navy combat surgeon with the Marines in Korea before establishing
this clinic. He knew all the words, and permutations thereof, needed to
express his outrage in stentorian tones. But Porter had simply waited
him out, impervious to his heat, and proceeded with the task at hand.
Carol, who had herself occasionally felt the sting of her boss's
displeasure, was grudgingly impressed.

The CDC field team, Carol had to admit, didn't fool around. They were
efficient past the point of rudeness and had simply commandeered the
clinic when they arrived. They gathered up the entire clinic staff as
well as the patients still in the waiting room. Then each subject was,
politely but firmly, probed, swabbed, examined and categorized. Their
various fluids were placed by double-gloved hands inside tightly sealed
specimen vials. From there, they were carefully walked to the portable
laboratory that had been set up in Evans's private office, using his
well-appointed wet bar for running water.

The initial examinations had taken almost two hours, and waiting for the
lab results about the same. To all of this, for the most part, the
patients and staff had submitted meekly.

The trouble began afterward, late in the day, when they found out they
would not be allowed to leave--at least, not for their homes.

Carol had noticed the vehicles' arrival some time before:

several large yellow vans with Ryder emblazoned on the side, the drivers
also dressed in anti contamination gear. The vans idled at the curb,
presumably to allow the air conditioning to mitigate the Florida heat,
but also suitable for speedy departure.

Finally, Porter had explained the drill.

"My name is Dr. Porter, and I'm a physician with the Centers for Disease
Control. I want to thank all of you for your cooperation," Porter had
said, as if he were addressing a Rotary Club meeting. "I have some news
that I'm afraid you will not enjoy."

Around the waiting room, people had turned to look at one another. Some
of the faces were puzzled, confused; others looked combative.

"Until we know more about the nature of this illness, we cannot risk
your health, or that of the public. Those of you without symptoms--this,
I want to reassure you, includes most of you--will be temporarily taken
to a place we've leased for you." Porter carefully had not called it an
isolation center. "A Ramada Inn, located not quite on the beach. There
is a pool, all the amenities. After a period of a few days, my hope is
you could all go home."

There had been silence for a moment, then a murmur that rose in volume.

Above the buzz came a male voice.

"The hell with that. What about my kids--and my job? I run a charter
fishing boat, and this is when I earn out for the whole year!"

Porter had raised a hand placatingly.

"Sir, your family will be allowed to join you. As for your business, the
government will reimburse you for any lost income you may incur.

That goes for all of you here."

The physician had paused to let that sink in.

He then continued. "A few of you are experiencing elevated temperature,
some level of inflammation or respiratory distress. We need to transport
you to a mobile treatment facility so we can keep you under observation
and, if necessary, provide medical treatment. One has been set up at
Fort Walton High School, in the stadium there."

A heavyset woman, her face flushed, had raised her hand as if she were
in a classroom.

"What do we have?" she had asked, her voice husky and congested. "Are we
going to be all right?"

"You know we would not be here, wearing all this"-Porter had gestured
down at his spacesuit--"if we felt that the situation was not
potentially serious. We believe it is a form of the flu, but as for how
contagious it is, or how severe an illness it might cause ... "

He had paused, and his helmet had moved slightly as he shook his head
inside it. "Right now, we just don't know."

The man who had spoken earlier, the charter-boat owner, looked aghast.

"You don't know?" His voice had been loud, infuriated. "You want to lock
all of us up, along with our families--no, you listen to me\ You wear
those damn things so you don't have to breathe the same air, and you say
you don't know how bad it is?"

He had looked around at the others.

"Stay if you want," he had said. "He's lying. I'm getting away from
here."

He then pushed past to the doorway and stepped through. Neither Porter
nor any member of his team had moved to stop him.

But outside the glass of the entry door, two previously unseen figures
had converged on either side of the fisherman. They were dressed in
olive exposure suits and wore military helmets over the gas masks that
covered their faces. The civilian had snatched his arm from the gloved
hand that gripped it and cocked his fist. Before he could swing, the
soldier's twin had moved.

To the others watching from inside, it had appeared that the second
soldier merely jabbed a closed hand into the fisherman's chest. But the
effect was extraordinarily out of proportion to the apparent action.

The fisherman's entire body had stiffened, and his head had arched back
so abruptly that the tendons in his neck were stretched tight. He had
stood frozen for a long moment, eyes clamped shut and his lips in a
rictus that showed his tightly clenched teeth almost to the jawline.

Then the soldier had withdrawn the military-strength hand stunner. Had
not both men supported him, the fisherman would have collapsed to the
ground.

Porter had said nothing, allowing those in the clinic to focus their
full attention as the soldiers half dragged the inert figure to one of
the waiting vans. Then, other soldiers who had waited unseen moved into
position along the walkway. In addition to the full chemical-bio
protective gear, each wore a sidearm holstered within easy reach. "I'm
very sorry," Porter had said to the now-quiet group. "There really is no
other option. We appreciate your cooperation."

Summoned, Carol Mayer shut down the computer.

Not much to do on it anyway, she thought, irritated. Electricity had
already flickered twice, forcing her to reboot each time. Worse, without
Internet access--in fact, she had discovered that all phone
communications outside the immediate area code were down--there was
little new information available to research.

She moved easily, unencumbered by protective gear. Pragmatically, there
would have been little to be gained from it anyway, Carol knew; there
was little doubt that she had already been exposed, if not during her
cardiac resuscitation efforts the previous morning then by one or
another of the patients she had seen since. She had prepared a cocktail
of the antiviral meds available in the clinic and injected herself with
it; for good measure, she followed up with a bolus of gamma globulin. It
was unlikely, she knew, that either of the
injections would prove prophylactic. But it made her feel as if she was
doing something, was not a passive victim waiting for the onset of the
symptoms.

Still, Carol admitted, as she walked toward the front of the clinic, it
would have been nice if somebody had offered a gas mask.

By now, despite his all-encompassing protective suit, she could
recognize Ray Porter from all angles--including from the rear, which is
how she came upon the CDC physician.

"You rang?" Carol said, her voice unnaturally cheery.

Porter turned, and Carol saw that the clinic had visitors.

Three young women--girls, actually, Carol noted--stood awkwardly, two of
them pretending not to notice the otherworldly aspect of the figures
that surrounded them. The third, slumped between the pair, did not have
to pretend. She was in no condition to notice anything outside the
feverish universe she now inhabited.

"Can you help my friend?" Katie Casey said to Carol, her voice tight,
only partly with the strain of holding Early upright. "She's awfully
sick."

Chapter 14.

Office of the National Security Advisor, the White House Washington,
D.C. July 22

The satellite phone connection went through immediately, and the White
House switchboard had obviously been alerted to treat it as a priority.

In less than a minute, the national security advisor came on the line.

If Beck had expected Billy Carson to express shock, or even surprise, he
was grossly mistaken.

"It's the kettle trying to call the pot black," Carson said, his voice
tinny from the scrambling software. "Malenkov knows that. Have we
cultivated sources inside groups like Aum? Of course we have; so have
the Russians."

"Alexi didn't say Davidovich was an informant," Beck said. "He called
him CIA--'one of yours," is what he told me."

"Don't read things into it that aren't there," Carson said. "Malenkov's
a professional. He may have motives that have nothing to do with the
present situation."

"Meaning what, exactly?"

Over the sat phone, Beck heard Carson sigh theatrically.

"Look, Beck--ask Malenkov about a private security
company called Aum Protect. It's an Aum front they set up in Russia,
ostensibly to provide bodyguards and industrial counterespionage to
executives and companies operating over there. As staff, Aum recruited
as many so-called former KGB thugs as it could find. It gave Aum
connections in the Russian intelligence community, and through it to the
military."

"So?"

"So we've been recruiting among the same people for years," Carson said.
"Malenkov knows that, and knows FSB is compromised at least to some
extent. All right--so he pulls in a suspect and puts him through the
wringer. A plausible scenario is that Malenkov discovers this Davidovich
used to work down the hall from him at Number Two Lubyanskaya. Perhaps
Davidovich was RIF'ed out of the spook business during one of the
Russian financial crises and ended up taking whatever work he could get.
With Aum-maybe with us, and that might be what Malenkov is trying to get
you to confirm."

"We don't have time for this spy-versus-spy nonsense," Beck said. "The
Russians are as frightened as we are about this virus. Good God--you
know what Putin intends to do; I don't know, it may have already started
by now. They want to cooperate; we need them to cooperate, and that
means the Russians have to trust what I say. Is Davidovich
CIA?"

He had to wait for the reply. When it came, it was in measured tones
without a trace of concession.

"Yes," Carson said. "He's a contract agent. We recruited him a year
ago--rather, he came to us. By trade, he's a journalist. The product he
gave us was strictly routine--interviews with politicians, economic
reports, production statistics."

"What about the Aum connection?"

"We had no idea he was associated with Aum in any way. If it's true, we
need to know the specifics. I already have our people interviewing his
case officer: either he dropped the
ball when he missed Davidovich's Aum relationship, or Malenkov is
misleading you. We're also backtracking the other details- including who
was involved in approving Davidovich's recruitment. Tell Malenkov he'll
have what we find later today."

"What are you going to do about Davidovich? You can't simply leave him
in a torture chamber."

There was silence on the line for a moment. When he spoke, Carson's
voice was patient--almost, but not quite, solicitous.

"Beck, I understand how you feel," he said. "God knows, you have good
reasons for it. But if Davidovich is involved with the virus--well, it
doesn't matter what else he is or is not. He's the enemy. We need every
piece of information we can get, any way we can get it. Right now, that
includes Malenkov's way."

"For God's sake, Carson," Beck argued, "a person will say damn well
anything when he's being tortured. We're acting as if we know this Aum
group released the virus. What if we're wrong?"

"We're working to confirm that now," Carson replied. "Hold on." There
was a muffled conversation that Beck could not decipher, then Carson
came back on the line. "The President already has reached out to the
Japanese--he's spoken directly to their prime minister. I'm informed
that we've been promised full cooperation. They will direct their
security forces to raid the known Aum facilities immediately. The prime
minister assured the President that his forces will exercise all due
restraint, consistent with the situation. It appears that they have not
forgotten the Aum nerve gas attack in their country."

Beck frowned. "What does that mean?"

"It means," Carson said, and the tone in his voice raised the hairs on
Beck's neck, "that they'll try to take them alive. At least, the
important ones."

Chapter 15.

The White House Washington, D.C. July 22

TRANSCRIPT, POTUS ADDRESS TO NATION

Network feed pool camera.

White House Press Office.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE--NO EMBARGO ON

AM OR PM OUTLETS

**************

TO' ACCREDITED WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS FROM' NEWS OFFICE
DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS (The following is a transcript of remarks
made by the President of the United States and televised from the Oval
Office 10:30 AM EOT, 7/22.

NOTE: Media briefing is scheduled for 11:00 AM EDT in the Press Room.

POTUS will be present for questions.)

"Good morning, my fellow Americans.

"In the history of our country, we have often faced challenges that
have, in the final analysis, only made us stronger as a nation. Today I
come before you to speak of another challenge that has arisen, and which
as a nation we must now address.

"I have been informed by the Department of Health and Human Services
that a number of persons in the state of Florida have become ill as a
result of an influenza outbreak. This flu has been severe enough to have
caused several of those afflicted to succumb to respiratory failure. I
am further informed that some cases of this flu have been reported in
the Russian Federation, and that its leaders too are treating the matter
as a potentially serious situation.

"As all of us know, influenza is a contagious disease. It spreads
between individuals through close contact. We've all picked up a case of
the flu because we've exposed ourselves to someone else who had it.

"This influenza comes at a time of year when many of us are taking
well-deserved vacations. That's unfortunate, because it makes it harder
to keep from picking up this bug. At the same time, it makes it much
easier for the virus to move around. In addition, the timing creates
difficulties for our pharmaceutical companies. Flu season is usually in
the fall and winter months, which allows drug manufacturers more time to
prepare and make available the vaccines we've all become accustomed to
having on hand.

"I won't mislead you--for all these reasons, this influenza is
potentially quite a serious health threat. It is a strain we have not
seen for a number of years, and that means that more people are
susceptible to it. It is prudent to do whatever can be done to limit the
spread of this influenza.

"For that reason, I have been advised to declare a public health
emergency. This morning, I signed an executive order to that effect.

"This order puts into effect a number of steps. They include:

"First, throughout the country I am asking for a voluntary, temporary
suspension of all large public gatherings. This includes sporting and
entertainment events, public meetings and gatherings.

"Now, if you're a baseball fan--as I am--please do
not worry. We do not anticipate more than a few days' suspension of
games, and I intend to ask the commissioner of baseball to extend the
season. I'm certain he will agree, and that all games will be played.

But at least for a while it is wise for people to remain close to the
comfort of their own homes.

"Second, I am asking for all Americans to temporarily postpone any
vacation plans that involve travel outside their immediate home
communities. We want to limit any opportunities for this influenza to
spread before we have completely assessed the situation and determined a
full course of action. To this end, effective immediately, I have
ordered a suspension of operation by most public carriers--airlines,
rail and bus.

"In addition, gasoline supplies are being placed on a temporary
rationing system. The final details of this program--which, I again
stress, is temporary in nature-are being hammered out now. They will be
announced in the next day or so, but until then I have ordered all
private gasoline sales be suspended, except in cases of demonstrated
emergencies.

"Third, I am placing under federal control all National Guard and state
militia units to assist as necessary throughout this period.

"And finally, I am ordering the creation of what we have designated the
Florida Quarantine Region, an area currently limited to northwest
Florida adjacent to Alabama and Georgia. This is where the influenza has
been reported, and it is here that we will focus much of our activity.
My intention is to ensure that health care and related services are not
hindered unnecessarily until we can finish our assessments. Effective
immediately, all travel into and out of this area will be restricted.

"My fellow Americans, it would be unwise indeed to minimize the serious
nature of this situation. But at the same time, I do not want to create
undue concern. The situation is being vigorously addressed by your
government.

"Within a few days, I am confident that we will know
much more. We may well find that we have overreacted. If so, as your
president I will have no apology to make. If we err, I want to err on
the side of caution.

"I will be briefing the media after I speak to you, where I will try to
provide whatever additional information I can. I assure you, my fellow
citizens, that I will do my best to see that your questions and concerns
are fully addressed, as information becomes available.

"For now, thank you. May God bless our country."

-end transcript Jason Sorenson, White House correspondent for NBC, had,
like the rest of the journalists waiting in the briefing room, read the
transcript a dozen times in the quarter hour since it had been broadcast
to the nation. Like his brethren, he had scribbled notes and
questions--his, onto the canary yellow legal pad he preferred over the
more compact notebooks carried by the majority of the White House press
corps.

It was partly for show, but mostly for necessity--Sorenson was more than
moderately nearsighted and had never been able to tolerate contact
lenses. When the cameras were on, he invariably slipped his wire-frame
glasses into a pocket. Only the dimensions of his notepad and the
proportional size of his precise handwriting allowed him to see the
questions he always prepared.

This morning's presidential address had taken the news corps by
surprise. The formal request for air time had been made only an hour
before the scheduled broadcast time, making all of them scramble. The
usual press secretary backgrounder was conspicuous in its absence, and
neither threats nor cajoling shook anything loose from their usual
sources in the executive branch.

And now it's time for the cattle call, he thought sourly.

Unlike many of those who covered the White House, Sorenson detested the
press conferences that were so much a staple of the beat. For one thing,
he was far more driven than
was considered seemly in a TV journalist; competitive by nature, he
gauged his success on the job by the number of times he had scooped not
only his electronic-media cohorts, but trounced the more
rough-and-tumble news hounds of the print side. This approach required
an aggressive tenacity that had given NBC both headaches and plaudits
during Soren son's tenure at 1600 Pennsylvania; wisely, the president of
NBC News considered the former a fair price for the latter.

But today, it availed the journalist nothing. If anybody knew more about
this flu outbreak, they were not talking to Sorenson. It had been
embarrassing to admit, but they had the lid clamped tight on this one.
And now broadcasting a live press with no time for the newspeople to
properly prepare their questions: few of the news pundits would relish
looking as if they didn't already know the details, which virtually
ensured a session that would be fast and relatively tame. The White
House press people were professionals-manipulative, devious,
truth-twisting bastards, Sorenson thought, most of '. But clearly
professionals.

He had just settled into his seat near the front of the room--TV jocks,
many of them mini celebrities in their own right, got the prime seats
and the best camera angles--when his cellular phone vibrated. The
built-in caller ID showed an extension number at NBC News's Manhattan
headquarters. It could only be one person.

"Talk to me, Dara," Sorenson said, without preamble.

"Did they start yet? No, don't talk--just listen." It was the voice of
Dara Chadwick, a former on-camera talent until she succumbed to the
enticements of a network V.P.'s title. Now she managed international
news operations--as much, Sorenson thought, as anyone could supervise
that bunch of hard-news cowboys.

"You won't believe what we have," Dara said, stuttering slightly in her
excitement. "Or how much we're paying for it. We just took the satellite
download from Moscow. We have
tape, Jase. The quality's for shit, but that just makes it more
effective. God, Jase. It's killer television--"

"Take a deep breath," Sorenson said. "Then start over, slower."

"The President--he mentioned Russia has this flu? Well, he's got that
right, Jase. And you won't believe what the cold-blooded bastards did
about it this morning."

Sorenson listened to her description, scribbling fiercely all the time.

"How many?" He waited impatiently. "Then an estimate, damn it."

Another pause, longer. "Holy shit," he breathed. "And we've got all this
on tape?"

There was a sudden movement as, around him, the assembled journalists
rose to their feet in a gesture of respect, if not to the incumbent,
then to the traditions of the room. Automatically, Sorenson whipped off
his glasses and rose with them.

On the raised dais, in front of an ornate backdrop that read the white
house, the President of the United States walked with a purposeful
stride to the lectern. He nodded to the senior journalist from the
Associated Press, and the session began.

"Cue it up," Sorenson muttered to Dara, ignoring the frowns this breach
of etiquette elicited from the reporters seated on his either side.

"Just make sure it's ready. You'll know when. Be set to roll when he
calls on me." He listened for a moment. "Good. Uh-huh. Stand by."

He raised his hand, waited impatiently as the President instead chose
the CNN reporter, raised his hand again. Finally, after several cycles,
the President nodded to him.

"Sir, I have a question about the severity of this outbreak, here and in
Russia," Sorenson said. "Particularly as to the options open to both
countries."

"Jason, I've already responded that we're still assessing the
situation," the President said smoothly. "President Putin and I are in
agreement that we act vigorously, but I can't yet
comment on the specific steps we'll take in our two countries."

He started to call on another reporter, but Sorenson's voice rose.

"A follow-up, Mr. President," he said, still standing. For once, let New
York be on the ball, he prayed silently.

"Mr. President, at this very moment, viewers tuned to NBC are watching
videotape shot this morning in Moscow. It shows Russian helicopters
releasing what appears to be nerve gas on a crowd there. These people
had been cordoned off earlier by armed troops--because, we are told, a
deadly disease was raging in this section of the city."

There was a sound as if an entire roomful of people had suddenly
inhaled. Then the assembled journalists began to murmur, a buzz rising
around the briefing room. Only Soren son was silent, his eyes locked on
the man at the lectern.

"I--I don't know that I can--"

Sorenson's voice overrode the suddenly ashen President.

"Our analysts have reviewed the videotape, Mr. President. They project
that on the tape, sir, at minimum tens of thousands of people are being
subjected to a lethal gas. Tens of thousands dead or dying, on the
streets of Moscow.

"And my question, Mr. President, is this: What made the Russians decide
they had to murder their own people? More to the point, sir--exactly how
bad is this influenza virus?"

Chapter 16.

Kamikuishiki Village, Yamanashi Prefecture Central Japan July 22

More than two hundred specially trained members of the Koan Chosacho,
the agency of Japan's national law enforcement responsible for public
security, surrounded the walled Aum compound in the postmidnight
blackness. They moved, quietly but quickly, through the light
undergrowth that was, aside from the dark night, their only cover.

Group Lieutenant Hideo Hayakawa felt on his forehead the cool tang of
the air that flowed from the heights of Mount Fuji. It was the only part
of his body not covered by Kevlar, ballistic nylon or the heavy black
twill of his assault coveralls. Even his hands were covered by tight
black gloves. Unconsciously, the index finger of his right hand tapped
lightly against the trigger guard of a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine
pistol strapped across his chest. Two flash-bangs- small explosive bombs
designed to disorient defenders with their intensity of noise and
light--were clipped to his belt.

Through his earpiece, clear as if the man were standing beside him,
Hideo heard his unit commander's voice.

"Thirty seconds."

Hideo lifted his hand from his weapon and tapped twice
against the side of his head; the earpiece doubled as an induction
microphone, picking up the vibrations and sending a wordless response
that acknowledged the command. His left hand held the detonator, and a
hair-thin wire leading from it to the puttylike substance pressed
against the hinges of the compound gate.

It was not the policeman's first visit to the Kamikuishiki compound.

The previous had come several years before, two days after the fanatics
inside had attacked the Tokyo subway system with poison gas. It had been
a night raid then, too, and Hideo remembered the way the crickets had
filled the air with their ceaseless, ancient melodies.

Then as now, the police units were accompanied by biochemical-warfare
experts from the Japanese military. The sight of the soldiers, whose
protective gear appeared to be far more cumbersome than the body armor
Hideo and his team wore, was not reassuring to the policeman. If
anything, it was an unnecessary reminder of what they might indeed face
in the next few minutes.

In their briefing, the Koan Chosacho assault teams had been told of the
urgency of the situation. The Americans, they were informed, had made
their request to the highest level of the Japanese government. They
required all information on the Aum without delay; even more
desperately, they needed information that only Aum leaders could be
expected to have--particularly the person, or possibly group of persons,
who might be called sensei. And they needed the information immediately.

It was not necessary to provide details of whatever dilemma the
Americans faced; as professionals, the Koan Chosacho needed none. But
they were also policemen and trained in both investigation and assessing
motive. Nor had Hideo and his compatriots forgotten the incident in the
Tokyo subways. Without fanfare, the more curious among them immediately
began to tap into the network of mentors, proteges
and other contacts that exists in every law enforcement operation.

It was not long before the exact nature of the Americans' concerns was
common knowledge among the Koan teams. This time, it was said, the Aum
fanatics had attacked both the Americans and the Russians--not with
poison gas, but with some kind of untreatable incurable plague germ.

Hideo shivered. He was a brave man and valued his honor highly. But he
did not relish wading into a den of religious death-seekers, to face
weapons for which there was neither defense nor cure. Better to stand at
a safe distance--which, for the MP5, was anything up to thirty
meters--and blast away all remnants of this black-minded cult. Sensei or
not.

"Ten seconds."

The voice sounded inside his skull, as if his conscience were chiding
him for his attack of cowardice. It steeled him. He glanced at the
others on his team, dark shadows pressed against the lighter stone wall.
All professionals, all prepared to follow him to whatever waited inside.

"Three, two, one--detonate."

The C-4 exploded with a noise that was somehow both sharp and flat,
silencing the crickets as if a switch had been thrown. The acrid smell
of pyrotechnics and scorched metal filled the night air, and the planned
chaos of the attack surged forward.

Two of his men formed the vanguard, kicking past the collapsed gate and
rushing across the courtyard inside. Simultaneously, another assault
group appeared from the far side of the expanse, pince ring with Hideo's
men on the main building. There, an ornate mahogany door proved no match
for the solid-slug shotgun blast that shattered the lock set In a
choreography precise in its execution, the invaders moved through a
series of unlighted and unoccupied rooms. They charged down a wide
corridor toward a wall of modern glass doors that opened, Hideo
remembered, to a large auditorium. He skidded to a stop behind an
arching free-form sculpture of
heavy polished wood. From there, his submachine gun commanded both of
the corridors as well as the auditorium entrance.

"Kami-Six actual," Hideo whispered, confident that the induction
transmitter was picking up every word. "Main building access achieved.

No resistance encountered."

His team now flanked the auditorium entrance. Hideo's second, a sergeant
who had also been present on the first raid here, made an interrogative
gesture with his black-gloved hand. In it he held the gray canister of a
flash bang
Hideo shook his head once. His weapon at the ready, he spun around the
statue in a crouching run. In an instant he had joined his men,
flattening himself against the flanking wall. The policeman listened
closely; aside from the noise of the other Koan attack teams across the
courtyard, he heard nothing.

"Kami-Six actual," he whispered. "No hostiles encountered. Entering
auditorium."

He signaled to his sergeant to follow, and eased open one of the glass
doors.

The stench that rose to greet him was horrendous, and unmistakable.

Mingled with it was the still-lingering, smoky perfume of a hundred
candles.

Hideo risked a quick look inside, holding his breath as he did so.

A few of the larger candles, once tall as a man but now reduced to
guttering stubs, still burned. They cast a flickering light,
illuminating the carnage that covered the floor like a thick, uneven
carpet.

Chapter 17.

Moscow July 22

"They were all dead?" Alexi Malenkov's voice was carefully neutral. If
it was an attempt by the Russian to mask his own turmoil--to push it
aside simply in order to allow himself to function--it was done with a
competence that Beck envied.

Beck nodded, also carefully professional.

"Not the flu, thank God. The Japanese police believe it was poison, a
mass suicide. There were three hundred and seventeen bodies. All had
been dead two, perhaps three days when the raid occurred."

"This does not help us, my friend," Alexi said. "It tells us nothing."

"At the very least, it confirms your theory about where this virus
originated," Beck said.

"To confirm what we already knew is but cold comfort, Beck."

"It tells us is that the Aum felt there was a pressing need to
self-destruct," Beck argued.

Alexi shrugged, and Beck saw defeat in the gesture.

"You wish to use logic on those whose actions defy it," the Russian
countered. "Allow me, also. They fear the death
they have unleashed--so they kill themselves?" He laughed bitterly.

"Maybe they did it to escape capture," Beck countered. "Maybe they did
it to protect their last secret."

"I believe you try to convince yourself that there is still some chance,
some small possibility, that we can coerce an antidote from these
murderous madmen. This will not happen. Accept it. There is no antidote,
no vaccine, because none was ever developed. The Aum saw no need for
one. This lunatic act of self-immolation proves it."

And he's probably right, thought Beck.

He berated himself for not having foreseen it: the long trial of
Asahara, the death sentence with which it had recently culminated, the
final Gotterdammerung of the faithful themselves --all fit the
traditional pattern that doomsday cults tended to follow. Beck disagreed
with Alexi, but only as a matter of semantics: for the Aum, mass
destruction was logical, simple and direct. The outside world was poised
to destroy its Divine Leader, which meant that it intended to destroy
Aum. For the cult, there was no recourse other than a preemptive action,
and to make that action an Armageddon for all.

Alexi's voice broke into Beck's thoughts.

"And so--where does this now leave us?"

"It leaves us with Davidovich," Beck said.

"Ah, yes--the CIA's man inside the Aum," Alexi said mockingly. "Or is it
the other way around? No matter. Have you now rethought your prejudice
against our methods of interrogation?" He stopped abruptly.

"I am sorry, Beck. At times, I speak before I think."

Beck fixed him with a level gaze. When he spoke, it was in a
conversational voice that betrayed no sign of emotion.

"CIA records indicate Davidovich, described as a Russian national, was
an agent-in-place here in Russia. He was covered as a journalist, Carson
says. He insists that the only
product Davidovich delivered was basic, low-level political and economic
intelligence. Is that accurate, Alexi?"

"That is perhaps what he delivered to CIA," Alexi said. "In part. But it
was not the activity in which he was engaged, either as CIA or as an
Aum."

"Then what, Alexi? What was his assignment?"

"For the cultists, he was engaged as a provocateur. His instructions
were to find and offer assistance to the various extremists that exist
in the Rodina, in Russia."

"He was talent scouting," Beck said, and Alexi nodded grimly.

"I will provide you with the transcript of his interrogation. It is
interesting reading. Our friend was to find in Russia those who oppose
the direction our society has taken. Such people can be useful to groups
like Aum, which deal in terror. We are today a turbulent nation. There
is no shortage of ideologues who would embrace violence."

"Yes. Some of them with their own private armies. Like our militia
movement in the States."

"We too have paramilitary organizations in Russia, my friend. They are
no less crazy than your militias--and, I fear, ours are far better
armed. Some of them are clearly fascists, others seek a return to
socialist values. A few even wish to restore the czar."

"And the CIA?"

Alexi shrugged. "Your good associate was ordered by the CIA to report on
these elements. To get close to the leadership. If possible, to become
part of the movement. This he did very well. With great enthusiasm, in
fact."

"And they knew he was Aum."

"Probably not," Alexi said. "Just as the Aum probably did not know he
was affiliated with the CIA. But, my friend, I find it somewhat
improbable that your people were unaware of his, shall we say, religious
persuasions. I have not found CIA case officers to be totally
incompetent; they certainly research the background of agents they
recruit."

The Russian shook his head. "No. My belief is that your people thought
that by recruiting Davidovich, they expected that they also acquired a
window into this interesting little cult."

"So Carson lied," Beck said evenly. "Davidovich was providing
information on Russian opposition movements, perhaps even channeling CIA
assistance to them. And he was providing information, real or not, on
the Aum." He looked up at the Russian, and his tone was chiding.

"Unless you're lying to me now. Are you, Alexi?"

"Perhaps a little," Alexi admitted. "Old habits are hard to break. One
must balance discretion against the requirements of our profession. For
instance, it would be indiscreet to tell you that our people have agents
in place close to your own paramilitary extremists. But of course, we
do."

Beck nodded, filing away the information and wondering why it had been
offered.

"And all the while, Davidovich was acting as an emissary for the Aum. I
imagine he was very generous to your extremists."

"Yes, indeed," Alexi said. "He extended to them an assistance that far
surpassed their own capabilities. Our friend Davidovich offered to
provide them with nerve gases, which excited them greatly. And he hinted
to them of even more interesting toys with which they might play."

Beck looked up. "Not this virus?"

"It is one possibility. I fear the Aum were disinclined to share the
specific nature of this other plaything, even with our friend
Davidovich," Alexi said. "Davidovich claims he does not know. Perhaps he
is truthful in this."

"And your people were following him all the while," Beck said.

"Watching and waiting."

"We waited perhaps not long enough," Alexi replied. "We took Davidovich
into custody six days ago. It was a stroke of very bad luck. A day
later, there was a visitor at his apartment. When he found no one at
Davidovich's apartment, he
knocked on the door of the building superintendent and spoke to the man
who answered." Alexi snorted. "A Japanese --very polite, as they so
often are to one's face. Our so called building superintendent said he
spoke abominable Russian. Very difficult to understand. It might have
been because the man appeared to suffer from a bad cold." Alexi had the
dark look of a man who wished he had someone to hit, hard. "Had we the
wit to arrest this visitor, we might have been spared much sorrow."

Beck felt his heart beat faster.

"Now, how do you think we obtained this extensively detailed
information?" Alexi's voice was mockingly professorial. "You will
approve, my friend. No physical coercion was involved. Do you wish to
guess?"

He waited for the briefest of moments before continuing.

"The superintendent was not the real superintendent! He was FSB, one of
my oh-so-expert surveillance specialists. He made his report on this
visitor--fortunately, by telephone-the day before he began to display
symptoms of influenza. He died the next day."

Alexi took a deep breath; he did not look at Beck.

"You have, of course, guessed the final piece of this puzzle: Davidovich
lived in Tuvelov, where the infection began."

"I want to talk to Davidovich," Beck said.

"The conversation would be a trifle one-sided, I fear. Like his fellow
believers, Comrade Davidovich is no longer in a condition to discuss
anything."

"You killed him?" Beck was aghast. "My God, Alexi. He could have--"

"No, my friend, though I certainly would have done so with pleasure. He
saved us the effort. Last night, he did the job himself."

Chapter 18.

Helena, Montana July 22

"Provisionally, I'm going to rule it a clean shooting," said Frank
Ellis. "Under normal conditions, you'd be placed on administrative
duties pending a formal hearing." The Helena special agent in charge
looked up at April O'Connor and eyed his subordinate steadily. "These
are not normal times. I need you on the job."

April nodded. She did not need to say anything; disclosure that the
Florida outbreak was a terrorist attack had galvanized the Bureau.

Every available agent was called in, pulled away from any other
assignments and targeted on this terrible new threat.

April had been filled in at the emergency midmorning briefing, piped by
video feed to all FBI field offices in the United States. Every
available agent was called in for the event. Attendance was mandatory,
as was evident from the large number of agents who crowded into the
Helena office: financial and white-collar crime specialists, RICO task
force teams, even a number of agents pulled from deep-cover assignments.
April had been painfully aware of the low buzz of comments that had
circled the room when she took a chair. She had seen the surreptitious
glances they had sent her way
and ignored them. Instead, April had donned an ice queen demeanor,
narrowing her focus tightly on the FBI director's image on the oversized
monitor and the procession of speakers who followed him.

Along with the others in the room, she listened with a growing sense of
horror. The litany of the mortality rate, the projected spread, the lack
of a viable response--all struck each agent like a physical blow.

The additional updates focused on the mushrooming turmoil that was
spreading its own wildfire in virtually every major city. When the
teleconference was over, April walked down the hallway in a state near
shock--a state mirrored on the faces of her FBI colleagues.

Now she was seated in her SAC's office and granted absolution, at least
the official kind, for the previous night's tragedy. It was a relief, as
well as a surprise. She had been certain she would be
dismissed--transferred, at the least-and was not yet fully convinced
such an action would have been unjust. Certainly, Robles's death weighed
on her mind; she knew she would relive every moment for a long time. But
from a professional viewpoint, she had come to grips with the killing as
an accident of war. She was certain she could tough out any
psychological aftereffects--without outside assistance, if possible.
With it, if the Bureau insisted, as she assumed it would.

Ellis quickly disabused her of that notion. All the usual rules were
off.

"Do you think you need a psychologist?" Ellis's voice was that of a man
who did not brook fools well, or easily. "Neither do I. When this is
over, we'll see if we're both right. Until then--hell, no. I need you to
stay on the job you've been doing. Find Trippett. Track down this
paramilitary group he's part of."

April was startled, and it showed on her face.

"You have a problem with that, O'Connor?"

"No, sir. I just assumed every agent would be working on the virus
outbreak."

"That's right. You are."

The SAC pushed a thin sheaf of computer printouts across the desk to
April. "Washington says there's a Japanese connection in the Florida
virus. We've got one here also. The nerve gas in the warehouse--the
manifest had it down as ' supplies--pesticide." Shipped in by Federal
Express yesterday morning, an international delivery from Kamikuishiki,
in Japan. The town is headquarters for a religious cult called Aum.
They're the same bunch that released nerve gas in the Tokyo subways a
couple of years back."

April scanned the top sheet, a frown lining her features. "This cult is
sending nerve gas to terrorists in the United States?"

"Looks like it," Ellis said. "Here's the thing: Fedex and Customs ran a
search on every shipment that came out of this Kamikuishiki place and
into the United States over the past six months."

"Let me guess," April said. "There were more of them."

"Yeah," Ellis said. "In addition to the container delivered yesterday
morning to Columbia Falls, there was another sent to an address in
upstate New York. Same size, same weight as the package that went to
your warehouse."

"God, Frank," said April. "There's more of this out in New York?"

"No." Ellis smiled coldly. "We got lucky. Fedex tried to deliver
yesterday morning, but nobody was around to sign. So it came back to the
terminal. It was sarin, the same kind of nerve gas we found here."

"New York pick up the addressee?"

The SAC shook his head. "Alias. Probably used the foyer scam."

April nodded. It was a tactic common to credit card crimes. The perp
uses stolen card numbers to make a purchase by phone, gives the number
of an apartment building, and pays extra for next-day delivery. By ten
o'clock, he is waiting in the foyer when the delivery arrives--to all
appearances just one more overeager consumer.

"Here's the bad news," Ellis said. "Those two were only the most recent
deliveries. Ten days ago, both addresses took receipt of another
shipment. Manifest said it was food products, canned soup."

"We have any ideas what was really in there?" April asked.

"All we know about is the boxes it came in," Ellis said. "They were
bigger, April. And heavier."

He straightened in his chair, assuming an almost formal posture.

"Start looking for Orin Trippett," Ellis said. "This Mountain Warrior
bunch he's involved with had M-16s from the National Guard break-in.

Trippett himself gets sent nerve gas from some crazy religious cult--the
same one that may have let loose germ warfare on us. The thought of what
else he may be carrying around now scares the hell out of me."

April stood. "Who do I work with, Frank?"

"Start solo. I'm trying to find you some help," Ellis said. "I'm working
with Andi Wheelwright--used to be Bureau, now she's something or other
with National Security. Washington's got her coordinating the security
side of all this. She wants to send out a guy, an expert on terrorist
groups, biological warfare. A professor--but apparently he used to work
with the intelligence people."

"He's a spook?" April asked.

"Odds are good." Ellis's face twisted unpleasantly. "He's on his way
back from that god-awful mess in Russia. I guess he was helping them,
too."

April matched his expression.

"If that was his idea of help," she said, "we don't need him."

Chapter 19.

Washington, D.C. July 22

Larry Krewell slumped in the borrowed chair that sat behind the borrowed
desk in an office normally reserved for the use of visiting dignitaries.
Health and Human Services was a typical government bureaucracy, housed
in a typical government building built and furnished to typical
government specifications.

Translated, that meant it possessed an empty ambiance that was so
blandly regimented, so sterile as to be disorienting to anyone
unaccustomed to such surroundings. Krewell, at heart an unrepentant
elitist, firmly believed that it contributed heavily to brain rot; he
attributed the current state of American democracy to the absence of
individuality every bureaucracy represented.

Today, he was certain that he was its most recent victim. He felt
drained, helpless and worse: useless.

Krewell had considered relocating his office to Fort Detrick, or even
returning to Atlanta; in both locations, teams of research specialists
were frantically working to dissect and decode the carefully convoluted
secrets someone had built into HIm-Florida. In either location, he
would have felt
closer to the efforts being made than he did here, in his borrowed HHS
office.

He turned to the computer and his fingers tapped out an access code.

Thanks to the miracle of modern electronics, he was able to track
everything that was happening across the country, as well as the larger
part of the world. In the former, there was a firestorm of bad news,
tempered only by a weak glimmer of good.

The CDC teams in Florida reported the present death toll at one hundred
and forty-six, with current confirmed cases now numbering almost two
thousand persons. More than three times that many were confined under
armed guard-these persons still asymptomatic, but determined to have
been in close contact with the infected. Soon there would be too many to
guard, and at that point Krewell knew that all hell would break loose.

On the computer, Krewell called up the outbreak graphic, surveying the
numbers that flashed above the communities. About half of the total
caseload was in or around Fort Walton, though the contagion had now
spread to a half-dozen surrounding communities in Northwest Florida.

Panama City, fifty miles to the east, now reported twenty-three deaths
due to the virus. Worse, three additional flu cases had been found
outside the state--two in Mobile, the other in southern Georgia. The
borders of the now-misnamed Florida Quarantine Region had been moved
back accordingly.

He selected another item from the screen's menu, and a list of the
latest reports from the medical research staffs appeared.

At present, there was no progress on vaccine development, despite the
herculean efforts under way.

And there was one new, chilling report: at Johns Hopkins, virologists
studying HIM -Florida had theorized that it had the potential to cross
species--most likely to infect swine, but possibly also able to spread
to avian species.

If accurate, it was a nightmare scenario: even if by some miracle they
could contain the current outbreak in the south, the virus could become
endemic in pigs and birds. One could, conceivably, slaughter every pig
in North America. But what did you do about billions of birds, forming a
constantly moving reservoir of contagion?

There's no shortage of bad news, Krewell thought, though to his mind it
still failed to encompass the full scope of the developing catastrophe.

The good news was that, as yet, no cases of the killer influenza had
been reported elsewhere in the country.

As yet, Krewell repeated silently. It was inevitable, only a matter of
time. Flu respected no boundaries, natural or manmade. But if we can
slow it down, even for a few days--well, who the hell knows?

With the singular exception of the Russian Federation, the situation was
the same elsewhere in the world. Thus far, no flu cases had been found.

Uniformly, the governments involved were determined to keep it that way,
by any means necessary.

Virtually all international travel had come to a halt that was as sudden
as it was complete. Taking their cue from the American action, foreign
governments severely restricted civilian travel inside their borders at
the same time they slammed shut all the doors into their countries. As
an island, England drew into itself and halted all incoming travelers,
including their own citizens returning from abroad.

Stung, the Irish quickly followed suit.

In most countries, police preemptively scoured their databases to
identify any persons whose travels had taken them to Russia or the U.S.
within the past two weeks. These persons were visited by medical
personnel, usually accompanied by armed escorts. Entire families were
quarantined or, in some instances, removed to isolation facilities.

In some cases, enforcement was even more draconian: in one of the Balkan
states, Krewell read, unconfirmed reports
said that guards had opened fire on a caravan of Roma that had
attempted, as was their routine, to slip across the border. According to
rumors that had reached the embassy, there had been no survivors among
the gypsy band.

Russia was, officially and ominously, silent. Since NBC had aired the
videotape of the massacre, virtually every news organ in the world had
broadcast pirated copies; newspapers printed stop-action frames, blurry
in a way that did nothing to mask the horror. The Russian response, both
to the world and to its own population, had been--nothing.

Krewell knew that Putin had been in contact with the President before
the massacre. Presumably, he was still -but Krewell had as yet heard
nothing about whether the mass killing had accomplished its mission,
even as a stopgap measure. Had Putin burned out the contagion, or were
new cases even now spreading elsewhere in Moscow and the rest of the
country? There was simply no information.

And that may well mean the Russians don't even know themselves.

Krewell shook his head.

The most surprising aspect of the entire situation was the fact that
this virus was mimicking a natural outbreak. The flu had appeared in
only two locations: Florida and Moscow. In a biological attack, which
this surely was, one would expect outbreaks of the disease to occur
almost simultaneously in multiple, probably widespread locations.

That was indeed puzzling, and Krewell frowned as he contemplated.

What are we missing? he wondered, not for the first time.

Word of the Aum mass suicide had been bitter news to all of them, but it
had hit Larry Krewell particularly hard. Krewell had not realized how
much he had counted on their ultimate rationality, on the hope that
nobody would unleash a certain death without first securing a way to
save themselves.

The realization there would be no answers from the Aum
had shaken him profoundly. He had been unable to keep it from his voice
when Beck Casey, seeking instructions, had called from Moscow on the
satellite phone.

"Come home," Krewell had told him. "Billy Carson wants you back here.

You'll probably end up advising on the riots. They want to develop a
strategy they can use while the cities burn. Right now, the only idea
anybody has is to hand out matches while we wait for the epidemic to
spread."

"What do you mean?"

The realization that he had said too much came to Krewell at the same
time he realized he did not care that he had.

"The Russian solution, Beck. The President is being told that he has to
sacrifice Florida--that it's the only way to buy time, to come up with a
viable plan to save the rest of the country. With every new case that
gets reported down there, more people in D.C. agree. And we're getting a
lot of new cases now."

Krewell laughed bitterly. "Hell of a note, of' buddy. All that's left is
for you to come home and help us play Nero. Say, you know how to play
the fiddle?"

There was a silence on the line for a long moment.

"Good luck, Larry."

"You too, Beck. You too."

The line went silent, dead.

Larry Krewell was not a religious man. But at that moment, he felt an
urge to pray.

And did.

Chapter 20.

Jersey City, New Jersey July 22

The way Dickie Trippett saw it, back when he first considered bio war
against the United States, the most difficult part of the mission was
going to be purely technical--that is, an overly complicated task that
involved calculating wind direction and velocity, the optimal height of
the release, even the relative humidity of the air itself. And these
were only a few of the factors that, his helpful Japanese teacher had
cautioned, would influence the dispersion of the biological agent.

Learn, Anji had counseled the American; only then would the bio weapon
be delivered to him.

The condition for delivery had been an unhappy surprise for Dickie. His
original plan had been to select a suitable place and time--say, upwind
of Rockefeller Center a few minutes past noon--open the sealed
containers and shake them empty. To discover that considerably more
preparation was required for effective dispersal of this particular
weapon ... To Dickie, it was very disheartening.

It's like getting a damn electric guitar for Christmas, he thought,
finding a simile in his own soured experience. Yeah--that's when they
tell you that you gotta take lessons. In his own case, the unforeseen
prerequisite had sharply curtailed his musical career: he had attended
the guitar class two or three times, learning a few basic chords before
boredom drove him away.

The pattern was not much different with the bio weapon though Anji's
dogged persistence made it seem longer. Dickie was not a details sort of
guy.

In the eyes of the man from Japan, the American failed to appreciate the
sheer elegance of the weapon itself--a form of anthrax, he had told
Dickie, deadly to those who breathe the spores but incapable of
human-to-human transmission. The perfect weapon for the oppressed, the
Japanese had termed it--but only if it is used wisely. Patiently, he
explained to Dickie that one does not merely scatter such a material
artlessly. That might kill only thousands, whereas a more scientific
approach could take a toll tenfold higher.

The more Anji pressed, the more Dickie resisted. Mathematics had never
been his strong suit, and even with the aid of the calculator his
visitor had thoughtfully provided, Dickie found it a tedious process
indeed. But Anji had persevered. Only when he was satisfied that Dickie
had mastered at least the rudiments of basic biowarfare had he relented,
assuring his student that it was all child's play from there.

Child's play. Uh-huh.-- Dickie threw up his hands in frustration.

Ever since that asshole in Washington had gone on TV, the hardest aspect
of the mission suddenly had become simply getting to the target area.
The executive order had literally closed down the majority of
transportation options. For the Empire State legionnaires, most of whom
were located far enough upstate to place Canada closer to them than
Manhattan, it posed a sudden, critical logistical problem.

Dickie felt the urge to hit someone, anyone.

He looked at the three metal containers in the nylon athletic bag on the
seat beside him. The Japs were damn clever, Dickie had to admit it. The
canisters even looked like soup cans, he thought, even to the
red-and-gold label with
"Camp bell's" in ornate letters and the pull-tab, peel-back tops. Easy
to carry, easy to use, in a handy soup-for-one size that belied their
lethal potential.

Threefuckin'cans, he raged internally. More than enough to fuckin'
annihilate every kike, nigger, spic, rag head-Mentally, he sputtered to
a halt, frustration blocking his otherwise impressive capacity for
racial and religious invective. And take down every faggot New York
yuppie asshole along with ', too.

Except the trains were stopped and the airports shut down, almost
completely. The restriction on gasoline purchases--a deviously clever
ploy, Dickie had to admit--created more than the obvious problem, too.

You could always steal gas from somewhere, and usually a vehicle to go
with it. But for Dickie's plan, the worst practical impact of the fuel
restrictions was to grossly reduce traffic volume on the highways
leading to and from the Big Apple.

The law was taking advantage of the situation in a big way: on the
radio, Dickie had already heard that roadblocks were being manned by
police, sometimes backed by troops. Ostensibly, it was to screen for
potential flu carriers.

Dickie snorted out loud. Flu, Dickie told himself bitterly, as if that
wasn't some kind of damn government ploy, too. He was not surprised; the
government couldn't afford to let people know that the revolution had
finally begun.

He had expected some kind of government disinformation when the attacks
began. His Japanese mentor had warned him that, when the patriots
struck, the federals would devise some lie as an excuse for despotic
oppression against them. The militia leader had no doubt the government
was using the opportunity to detain or search cars and occupants and
confiscate whatever it might find.

So far, Dickie had been lucky, motoring along in his Ford pickup at just
under the legal limit. Figuring the majority of the attention would be
on interstate routes, he had stuck as much as possible to the secondary
roads that wound south ward toward New York City. At first, in the rural
upstate region, that had not been difficult. He had a good set of USGS
charts and a hand-held global positioning system receiver that gave him
a constant update on his location. His progress was slow, but relatively
steady.

Dickie skirted population centers like Syracuse, where he expected the
authorities to give a high level of scrutiny to anything moving on the
road. It was a good strategy. Dickie had been stopped only once, by a
county deputy who had been manning a crossroads blockade west of
Middletown. With a suitably abashed smile, Dickie had shown the
policeman his license and insurance cards; his other hand--the one
holding the nine-millimeter Taurus automatic--was out of sight low
against the door. It helped that the deputy stood at arm's length, and
declined to touch Dickie's ID. Without comment, the deputy had accepted
Dickie's cover story of working an upstate construction job and rushing
home to a wife worried about the flu scare.

Dickie found himself enjoying the trip: the rolling countryside, dotted
with farmhouses that looked abandoned, and sometimes should have been;
the almost-empty two-lane highways that curved and climbed over the
wooded Alleghenies; even the increasingly industrialized landscape that
began immediately after the foothills flattened. It had given him a good
feeling to see what he considered the "real" America, and he found
himself humming along to the tunes on his radio.

That is, until he had neared the Jersey shore. Here, even the sparse
traffic had gradually slowed and thickened; before Dickie fully realized
it, he found himself inching along in an improbable gridlock.

He flipped through the dial until he found an all-news radio station.

It was as bad as he feared: the Holland and Lincoln tunnels, the bridges
and even the ferries- all were closed. Decisively so, according to the
newscast: at each, the imposing bulk of a buttoned-up Abrams tank
straddled the traffic lanes. One particularly breathless reporter noted
the sandbagged automatic weapons positioned to support the flanks; she
waxed poetic about the insect like visages of exposure-suited troopers
and the perverse grace of the helicopter gunships that flitted like
lethal dragonflies overhead.

New York was under martial law and effectively quarantined.

It could have been music to Dickie's ears--Babylon was crippled,
bleeding--had it not underscored one unimpeachable truth: the doors had
all been slammed closed and nailed shut, with Dickie and his anthrax on
the outside.

He worked his way farther south, through Hoboken. On the other side of
an expanse of cocoa-colored water, the New York skyline was a gray range
of craggy man-made peaks. It would have been a spectacular vista, for
one more appreciative.

Briefly, Dickie considered the feasibility of attacking New York City
from his location across the bay. No. Even if the wind direction was
right, he could never find a place high enough. Without a lofty starting
point, particularly at this kind of distance, the majority of the
spores--conceivably, Anji had warned, all of them--would merely settle
onto the intervening water.

It would be, Dickie decided, a criminal waste of the weapon's potential.

He could, of course, find an acceptable place and pop the top right here
in New Jersey. Anthrax was decidedly democratic and cared not a bit
whether the lungs where it would spawn inhaled the aromatic Jersey air
or the sour tang of a Big Apple alley.

But the more Dickie pondered it, the more the idea seemed to him
unworthy--even shameful. Normally, he would have had no qualms about
inflicting a plague on the Garden State, starting with the grittier
industrial sections. It was a job somebody would have to get to anyway,
sooner or later. Another idea was that he could keep driving south;
Philadelphia, or perhaps even Washington, might prove a more accessible
target.

But now, with the New York skyline seemingly close enough to touch,
anything less felt like a cop-out, the worst kind of compromise.

He stared at the wall of towering structures for several moments, a
modern-day Moses barred from his promised land.

Finally, after what seemed an interminable period, Dickie pulled off the
turnpike and found a place where he could stop and consider his
situation. In the foreground, the brown water was marked by whitecaps
from a freshening sea breeze. It rocked the small forest of masts that
jutted like leafless saplings above the low buildings at the waterfront
before him, raising a chorus of clanking halyards that to a less
preoccupied ear might have sounded musical. To Dickie, trying to think
through his dilemma, they just sounded irritating, just sounded like a
bunch of fuckin' Boats Of course.

It was a converted cabin cruiser reconfigured as a fisherman, complete
with a tuna tower made of welded aluminum tubing. The name Corazon was
hand lettered across the stern, in paint that once had been the color of
fresh blood.

Eddie, Corazon's owner and at twenty-two the elder of the two brothers
aboard, squinted up at the man standing on the pier. It was tempting:
with this stupid flu scare, nobody was going to be out charter fishing
for a while. But he did not like the look of this one, either---the
words he spoke were a little too glib, the smile a little too slick. He
knew no newspaper people, but this person clearly did not fit Eddie's
notions of one.

Besides, what kind of man asks to be taken to a place where things were
being done--very serious things, indeed --to keep people out?

"I dunno, man," he said, a trace of San Juan accenting the words.

"Coast Guard was pretty clear about it. They don't want nobody crossing
over to the city, or coming out of it."

"C'mon. Five hundred bucks," Dickie said, an encouraging smile on his
features. Fuckin' spic's not going for it, he realized.

He showed Eddie a cheap plastic camera he had dug from his glove
compartment. "Look--how's this instead? You just take me over to where I
can get a couple good pictures for the newspaper. Then we're back here.
No harm, no foul. Whaddaya say?"

"Six hundred." It was the younger brother, Toma's. He was seventeen,
lean and fit, and on his shoulder an ornate tattoo of a unicorn cantered
sinuously as he coiled a length of line. "Six hundred, cash up front,
you got yourself a boat ride."

Dickie pretended to consider the offer. It was more than he had in his
wallet. But he did not intend the transaction to be any more than
temporary in nature.

"Six hundred," he said. "Half now, half when we get back. Deal?"

He looked down at Eddie, who nodded. Tomas broke into a wide smile.

"Let's go out on the salt, amigo."

They were less than a football field's length from the narrow shoreline
of Battery Park, beneath the towering mass of concrete crags and
glittering glass of the city's skyline. On shore, a crowd of perhaps a
hundred had formed, a testimony to the ineffectiveness of the
prohibition against public gatherings. It had watched Corazon's
approach; now it was a moving, gesturing mass. Some of its members
shouted words that were lost in the stiff sea breeze and the crash of
waves that flung themselves headlong against Coraztfn's hull, atomizing
into high-flying spray.

"I guess they don't want us here." Eddie grinned, his right hand
expertly jogging the throttle to keep the craft in position against the
surging currents. "Either that, or they want us to get them the hell out
of New York, eh?"

They had left the Jersey shore, moving in a wide circle that skirted
Staten Island before curling north, their speed slowed to a crawl to
minimize any wake that might be spotted by the helicopters that
periodically flitted across the horizon.

To port was the Statue of Liberty, torch high in what was, given the
circumstances, an ironic beckon. To starboard was Brooklyn; Dickie was
certain he did not want to land there. Behind the cruiser was an expanse
of open bay that merged into the Atlantic, its cooler air rushing
unimpeded from the south toward the upward convection of the warmer
land.

Now the bow of Corazon pointed directly at the jutting point of lower
Manhattan. Here, the swirl of currents from the Hudson River tumbled
headlong into the stiffening winds from the south. Without the wind
shadow of the shore as a buffer, Corazon danced with the stiffening
breeze in a reckless tango.

"Take it in closer," Dickie said. "I want to get a tighter shot."

The two brothers exchanged glances.

"Can't do it, man," Eddie said. "We ain't supposed to be here at all.

Cops get our hull number, we could lose the boat."

"I'm paying to get close to the action, friend."

"You get your pictures from here, okay?"

"Closer," Dickie insisted. "Newspaper'll pay if anything happens."

"Bullshit." Tomas spoke up. His voice, skeptical before, was now plainly
mocking. "Wha'chu up to, anyway? You ain't no newspaper--not with that
piece'a shit camera." The younger sailor stood easily in the cockpit,
shifting his balance effortlessly as the swells lifted and dropped the
craft. It was an intentionally casual posture, but from a lanyard around
his left wrist a stubby fish billy dangled, its sweet spot stained dark
with dried fish blood.

Uh-oh, Dickie thought. Little bro wants to show off his cojones.

"Chill out, man," he told Tomas. "I write the fuckin' story, then I sell
it to the paper. They pay more if I get pictures." Dickie's annoyance
was rising steadily, but he made an effort to sound reasonable. "Look,
I'll even put your name in it. You like that? Get fuckin' famous? All
you gotta do is take me a little closer to shore."

He shot a quick look at Eddie. The older brother was still at the
controls. But something in his attitude had changed too; a message had
passed between the two brothers, and Dickie had no doubt that the
content involved him.

Time to stop dickin' around with these two, he decided.

"Look--you want a bonus, right? Hey, no fuckin' problem. Whatddya say to
a little something extra, right now?"

He smiled broadly, ingratiatingly, and reached under the shirt he wore
untucked over his pants.

Tomds winked at his brother, and grinned.

Then Dickie's hand emerged, and the smile faded on the younger man's
lips. He opened his mouth to speak just as Dickie fired, a single shot
that took Tomas high in the forehead and pitched him hard over the side
as if he had been thrown. There was a heavy splash that Dickie heard
rather than saw as he turned toward the other brother.

Eddie had not moved, except for his head. He stared first at where Tomas
had stood an instant before, then swiveled to the man who had killed
him. On his face was an expression that to Dickie looked more indignant
than shocked.

Before Eddie could say anything, Dickie spoke.

"You know," Dickie told him conversationally, "it don't look so hard. I
think I'll drive the fuckin' boat now." He pulled the trigger once, then
again.

It was not as easy as Eddie had made it look. Without a skillful hand on
her controls, Corazon grew balky and willful. As Dickie knelt beside
Eddie's body to retrieve his three hundred dollars, she swung about on
her stern, then wallowed wildly as she came crosswise to the waves. It
almost knocked Dickie to the deck.

He clutched at the steering post while Eddie's corpse slid across the
cockpit. It thudded against the gunwale, a red streak marking its path.

Dickie clawed himself upright. When he arose, he found the craft
significantly closer to the shore than it had been only a few moments
before. He was near enough to easily make out individuals, some of whom
were moving in his direction. Dickie had no doubt that his shots had
been easily heard by those on shore, and some had probably seen Tomas go
overboard. It might be only a matter of minutes before one or another of
them decided, martial law or not, to try for the good citizenship merit
badge.

It was time to go and find another place to enter New York.

Gingerly, he advanced the two large chrome levers on the console.

Immediately, the engines that had been bubbling in idle deepened their
volume. Corazon settled at the stern, digging in and moving forward.

A wave, its strength multiplied by the increased speed, foamed into the
boat's bow with a hard blow, staggering Dickie. He had the bare presence
of mind to turn the wheel to the right, into the sea, only to have
Corazon nose deeply into an oncoming breaker.

The craft shuddered, pitching forward and throwing Dickie painfully into
the wheel. Simultaneously, a storage locker near the cockpit door flew
open. Amid the fish gaffs, mops and boat hooks that crash-bounced to the
fiberglass deck was the athletic bag he had stowed there, the one
containing three containers of anthrax spores. It skidded across the
cockpit sole, finally coming to rest against Eddie's inert form.

"Shit!" Dickie wrestled with the unfamiliar controls, realizing that the
boat was almost into the surf line.

Less than twenty yards away was the crowd, some of the more foolhardy
among them even venturing out onto the jagged concrete blocks that took
the shuddering force of the crashing waves. One person, his arm locked
around a wooden piling that disappeared from sight with every breaker,
was only a few yards away from touching the side of the insanely
pitching boat.

The bag, and the anthrax, knocked and rolled against Eddie's lifeless
body, out of Dickie's reach. Still at the boat's wheel, he cut it hard
away from the beach and the bow shouldered hard against the now-white
surf.

Too slowly. Now more of the crowd had clambered down the slope of the
rip-rapped shoreline, some shouting what could have been warnings or
threats. The latter, Dickie had no doubt: he was certain they intended
to swarm on board, whether to seize the boat or to wreak some vigilante
justice.

For an instant, he had an image of being pulled away from the wheel,
beaten and kicked, thrown into the churning waters to drown.

Near panic, Dickie reached under his shirt, his fingers clawing at the
butt of the heavy Taurus automatic, clearing it just as the boat hit a
deep wave trough and bounced, hard and viciously. The black automatic
slipped from his grip, skidding out of sight under the bench seat.

He bellowed in anger and fear; no longer tentative, his hand slapped
hard at the throttle quadrant.

Immediately, the engines roared, belching black exhaust as Corazon
muscled itself from under the punishing seas. The boat pounded ahead for
several seconds before Dickie looked toward the stern. He was out of
range, safe for the moment from both the jagged lee shore and the New
Yorkers.

"You crazy fuck heads Dickie Trippett screamed at them, his rage and the
residual fear making his voice break like that of an adolescent.

"You--" He found himself unable to speak. He looked furiously around the
cockpit sole, in tending for a moment to recover his pistol and empty it
at the mass of humanity.

At that moment another wave hit Corazon, rocking the boat madly and
sending the half-opened athletic bag skidding within Dickie's reach.

If he momentarily thought of all Anji's patient instruction, he gave no
outward sign.

The wind was blowing inland, toward the objects of his rage.

"Hey, all of you!" he shouted. "Breathe deep, you motherfuckers!"

Trippett peeled back the tin disk that sealed the metal can that held
the light, dusty power he had been told to expect inside.

Instead, the can hissed loudly in his hand.

For the briefest part of an instant, he felt a cool moistness on his
face that evaporated immediately in the wind. Startled, Dickie dropped
the canister to the deck, where it sprayed its contents for a moment
more.

"What the fuck--" He stared at the red-and-white container as it rolled
with the pitching of the boat.

Unseen, the atomized particles rode the wind--ethereal as they spread
upward and outward. Some certainly drifted harmlessly onto the ocean.

But much of it would hang in the ah" for a long time, weightless, moving
with the salty smells of the ocean through the crowd.

Even beyond.

In that moment, Dickie understood.

At that instant he heard the helicopter, overhead and closing fast.

Chapter 21.

12,000 Feet over Chesapeake Bay July 22

Beck Casey had long since lost track of how many time zones he had
circumscribed in the past two days.

By now, the sense of exclusivity that came from having a
forty-eight-million-dollar taxi at his disposal was long gone. In its
place rode the mother of all jet-lag headaches, which not even the pure
oxygen he was breathing could burn through. Despite the discomfort, he
had slept most of the way back from Moscow deeply and profoundly, even
missing two of the F-15's in-flight refuelings. There had been five on
the return leg, reflecting the headwinds that are routine in east
to-west transatlantic flight.

Still, he snapped to consciousness when Frankeps voice crackled in his
earphones.

"Sorry to wake you, Dr. Casey. We're ten minutes out of Andrews AFB, and
it looks like we part company when we land."

"Don't take this the wrong way," Casey said, wondering when sensation
might return to his feet, "but if I never fly again, it will be too
soon."

Frankel chuckled, a deep baritone rumble over the intercom.

"Sorry to hear that, ' it looks like you won't be on the ground long.
You're heading out to Montana, Doctor."

"Montana?" Beck repeated, wondering if he had heard Frankel correctly.

"Why would I want to go to Montana?"

"I was hoping you could tell me, Dr. Casey," Frankel replied. "Got the
word while you were back there sawing z's. Sorry. I'm just the messenger
here."

Beck's inner ear felt the F-15 tip forward for the descent.

"Tray in the upright position, please. And on behalf of your flight
crew, thank you for flying Eagle Air."

Andi Wheelwright was waiting when the fighter eased to a stop at the
ready-line in front of the airfield hangar. She waited while the ground
crew disentangled Beck, relieved him of the flight equipment and
deposited him on the tarmac. When she approached, Beck was eyeing a
nearby Learjet with CDC markings.

She grinned at the expression on his face. Before he could speak, she
did.

"We have a lead in Montana, Beck," she said. "Local militia there
received a shipment of sarin, sent from Japan. That's confirmed, and
it's one more finger pointing at your Aum. FBI field office says there's
evidence of another package that we suspect may contain something even
worse."

Beck frowned. "What am I supposed to do in Montana?"

"You're an expert in biological terrorism, or used to be," Andi said.

"Work with the local Bureau agents. If there's one band of crazies with
this stuff, there may be others; we may be facing biological attacks in
a multitude of locations around the country. Advise, observe, assist.
Maybe it will help us anticipate what these bastards might do next."

"If they're playing with this virus," Beck said, "what they'll do next
is die."

"These militia people may be looney-toons politically, but they're not
usually suicidal," Andi said. "If there's any chance they were provided
a vaccine, or some immune factor --"

She shrugged, trying to put optimism into the gesture.

"Again, why me?"

Andi made her voice exasperated. "Because Billy Carson said so, how's
that? Maybe he thinks your finely honed mind--pardon me while I
salute--might be of more use there than sitting in a D.C. bunker."

"I'm not an investigator," Beck insisted.

"Well, I am," Andi shot back. "And I'm ordered to sit behind a desk at
Health and Human Services while the world goes up in flames. Count your
blessings and shut up. You take off when the Learjet's been refueled."

While Andi left to check the flight crew status, Beck turned to more
mundane tasks. As he sat in the spartan passengers' lounge, he pulled
from his computer bag the satellite phone Billy Carson had ordered
issued to him, what seemed like a long time before.

There were no messages on his apartment answering machine --not
particularly unusual, though Katie usually called once or twice a week,
just to talk. Summertime, Beck thought. Or maybe a new boyfriend's
keeping her time filled.

He checked his watch; it was late, but with the new semester looming,
the college office kept long hours. Beck direct-dialed the office he had
been provided at the University of Chicago. Instead of the voice-mail
recording he expected, a crisply efficient human answered.

"History department, Ms. Tercella. How may I help you?"

"This is Dr. Casey--Beck Casey? I'm a guest lecturer for the semester."

As always, he felt the usual vague embarrassment; visiting faculty were
academia's transients, and dealing with the permanent staff at most
universities was uncomfortable at best. Beck had become accustomed to
always being the new kid on the block, the one that more established
members of any given academic community eyed quizzically, neither
knowing his name nor appearing particularly inclined to learn it.

There was a pause of perhaps ten seconds, during which time Beck
envisioned the secretary scrolling through the computerized faculty list
to confirm his existence.

"Yes. Dr. Casey. How may I help you?"

"I can't seem to connect to my voice mail," he said apologetically. "I
don't expect any messages, but--"

"That's because you have not yet been activated, Dr. Casey. I see here
that you have neglected to return the office registration forms you were
provided."

"I've been out of town," he began, "but I promise--"

"One moment, Dr. Casey."

He waited on hold, listening to Ravel's Bolero build through its second
orgasmic movement, until she returned to the line.

"Since your office voice mail has not been activated, we have had to
take your messages here, Dr. Casey. By hand." Her voice was accusatory,
chiding.

"I'm sorry."

"Yes. You have two messages, both of which were received yesterday
afternoon. Both of them are from the same individual. A Ms.
Stepanovich."

Beck felt his stomach drop. One message from Deborah might be anything;
two in the space of a single afternoon signaled potential cataclysm.

"Dr. Casey?" The voice was impatient. "I said, do you have something to
write with?"

"Yes. Please go ahead."

"Message one: "Please call me immediately." Time stamped at 1:18 p. m."

The voice was openly disapproving now. "Message two, 2:07 p.m. "Tell him
his daughter is missing, and he must call me immediately." Do you need
the number, Dr. Casey?"

He clicked off without responding, and looked up to see Andi Wheelwright
looking at him curiously.

"It's my daughter," Beck said, his mind churning. "Her mother says she's
missing."

He stopped, frowning at the expression that suddenly appeared on Andi's
face.

"We should talk about her," Andi said. "About Katie, I mean."

He called Deborah's numbers, both home and office, while Andi stood at
his shoulder, voicing quiet objections.

"No answer," Beck said, only partly to the woman beside him. "What's the
flying time to get down there?"

"There is no commercial air traffic in or out of Florida," Andi reminded
him, grateful that Beck was once more addressing comments to her
directly. "And don't start thinking you could get into Fort Walton,
anyway. Not without official sanction. I'm sorry. Beck.

Montgomery is as close as they'll let anybody get."

He nodded. On the map he had examined, Montgomery, Alabama, was perhaps
one hundred fifty miles north of the Gulf Coast; there was no direct
interstate route to Fort Walton Beach, which in the current
circumstances was probably fortunate for the Alabama capital. He had
traced down the various primary routes and two-lane blacktops that
spider webbed southward from Montgomery.

Andi read his mind.

"Use your head, Beck. They're not at the motel anymore, and there's been
no activity on the credit cards we know the girls have. They may not
even be in Florida anymore."

"If you think I'm going to play spy in Montana when my only child is--"

"We've put out an urgent request to all our CDC teams in the Quarantine
Region. They have Katie's photo and the names of all three girls. You
want to locate her, that's the only way to do it."

"Do you know where Deborah is?" He did not turn to look at her.

"We've confirmed she is still in the Arlington area, Beck. We've
monitored several phone calls she's made today. There's no reason to
believe she even knows Katie has been in Florida. And as long as Deborah
stays in Virginia, she'll be as safe as anyone else."

"Thank you. I appreciate all your ... efforts."

"Damn it, Beck! I'm sorry we--I--kept you in the dark about your
daughter. But you know as well as anybody what it's like in there right
now. If I had told you, you'd have done just what you're thinking about
doing now. And that won't do Katie, or anybody else, any good."

"Don't," Beck said with heat. "Don't pretend you care about my daughter,
or anything else that wasn't in your case orders."

"I made a decision, Beck."

"What does that mean, Andi?"

She kept her eyes locked on the terminal window; outside, the CDC
aircraft waited.

"You're a valuable asset. During this emergency, we need your skills,
the things you know how to do. Don't be so eager to go wandering around
in a contagion zone."

"My daughter is more important than--"

"Than working to stop this plague?" Andi's voice was hard. "Use your
head, if you still can. Even if you find Katie in that madhouse down
there, what happens next? There's no cure for this disease, damn it!

What does that mean, Beck? Think!"

In her peripheral vision, she could see the impact her words had on her
companion. But her next words were still anything but sympathetic.

"I want us to save Katie, and all the other Katies out there. I just
think you might prefer not to die foolishly trying."

"I've done enough for my country, for too many years," Beck said, his
voice tight. "Now it's time to think about--"

"Unless this virus is stopped damn soon, it will keep spreading," Andi
interrupted. "Your daughter--and millions of other daughters; the whole
country, Beck, maybe the whole damn world--in all likelihood will be
dead. Within ten days, maybe less."

Beck stared at Andi for a long moment. Then, with a violence that
startled her, Beck Casey spun away; his fist hammered against the wall,
leaving a pockmark deep in the plasterboard. As she watched, Andi saw
him slump as if all strength had drained from his limbs. He leaned his
forehead against the wall, his eyes shut tight.

She resisted the impulse to speak, waiting.

"What do you expect me to do?" Beck said through gritted teeth.

"Go to Montana," Andi said, her words level and without emotion. "Get us
whatever information there is, Beck. It's all you can do right now."

Chapter 22.

Fort Walton Beach, Florida July 22

The football stadium was a scene that would have rivaled the best of
Dante, or perhaps the worst; certainly, it was as close to the lowest
circle of hell as Carol had ever imagined.

Across the expanse of summer-burned grass, huge tents had been erected;
their sidewalls were rolled high for ventilation, leaving the rows of
cots open to view. All were occupied, save for those only recently
vacated by one of the increasing number who no longer required it.

These cots then quickly refilled, the process not unlike some perverse
assembly line.

Had she the strength or the leisure, Carol Mayer would have been
appalled. As it was, she merely filed it deep in her subconscious,
displaying only the absent demeanor of those preoccupied with more
pressing matters.

They were dying at a steady pace, almost like the workings of a clock.

Carol wondered when she would become numbed to it all. She hoped it
would be soon.

Carol wiped the perspiration from her forehead. The heat rose steadily
throughout the day, but aside from the thundershower that rumbled
through almost every afternoon during the summer months, the weather, at
least, was cooperating. It was a small mercy, and one that was noticed
only vaguely by the majority of those whom the virus had felled.

She was tired--no, exhausted, she corrected herself.

Aside from herself, there were only a relative handful of health-care
personnel attending almost four hundred desperately ill patients. This,
despite the presence inside the stadium of a dozen exposure-suited
physicians from Ray Porter's CDC contingent. They moved about
purposefully, but their activities were focused not on treatment;
rather, they concentrated solely on the larger picture of analyzing the
viral outbreak with an eye to containment strategies. Once Carol had
even buttonholed Porter and demanded he order his team to help; Porter
had listened, curtly refused and moved on.

What help Carol did have came from a surprising source: the two teenage
girls who had carried their friend into the Rossini-Evans Clinic.

She looked around for the two volunteers and spotted them working in the
semi shade of the large canvas tent fly that shielded a block of filled
cots.

Right now, Carol noted, the one called Katie was gamely holding the
shoulders of a thickset black man. He was convulsing, vomiting violently
into a stainless steel pannier being held by her friend, Jay-something.

The three teenage girls had been the last patients to come to the
clinic; the one who had presented with acute symptoms had been, Carol
knew immediately, beyond hope. But the other two had refused to leave
her with the CDC team, fought off the suggestion they go anywhere but
with their friend. Finally, all three had been ordered transported to
the Fort Walton Beach High School football stadium.

Almost as an afterthought, Ray Porter had ordered Carol along.

It was just as well: throughout the morning, electrical power had become
fitful and petulant. Then it had died completely, and did not return. As
a medical facility, the clinic had been summarily shuttered.

It was a short trip to the stadium, scarcely half a mile. But to those
who traveled it, the journey took them into a different, terrifying
universe. There, several hundred of the most critically ill victims had
been sent.

The sick girl--Carly Holmes was her name, Carol remembered suddenly,
just a seventeen-year-old girl who had the bad fortune to vacation in a
plague zone---was in agonal convulsions when she was carried to the van.
When the spacesuited soldiers lifted the stretcher into fittings that
locked it to slots in the floor, Carly's limbs began to flail; to the
uninitiated, it appeared as if she were fending off an assault by unseen
demons.

It took a determined effort on Carol's part--the soldiers had pulled
back, though whether in shock from the violence of the young girl's
seizure or in simple resignation, the physician could not tell--to
secure the nylon restraints around Carly's arms and legs. It did little
good; Carly's entire body was now convulsing madly, thrashing inside the
straps. Her eyes were open wide, and her teeth gnashed and clacked as
her jaw muscles went into spasm.

"What's happening?" J.L. had screamed. "What's happening to Early?"

Before Carol could answer, Carly's body arched bowlike inside the
embrace of her restraints. A sudden geyser of phlegm and bloody fluids
burst from her mouth in an impossible volume. Carol fought, only partly
successfully, to keep Carly's face turned during the paroxysm.

The other teenagers looked on in something akin to horror.

Then J.L. began screaming in hysterics, adding to the chaos.

"Can you quiet her?" Carol snapped at Katie. Another thick stream of
vomit gushed from the thrashing girl whose head she held steady, clamped
beneath her arms and body weight.

Katie Casey reached out to J. L." who turned and clung tightly to the
younger girl. She buried her face against Katie's shoulder, muffling the
short screams that her fear and revulsion still wrenched from deep
inside.

"What are you doing to my friend?" Katie asked, her voice unsteady.

"I'm trying to prevent her from aspirating the discharge," Carol said,
most of her weight now pressing Carry's head against the stretcher's
edge. She shifted Carly's position, trying to clear the airway. Then she
raised her voice. "Driver! Get this thing rolling, damn it! I can't do
anything for this girl without assistance!"

Carly's body again bucked madly, and Carol rode the violent convulsions
like a rodeo cowboy. When the seizure finally subsided, Carly's face was
bloated and blue. Her breath came in short, rapid wheezes--not enough,
never enough even to partially fill her ravaged lungs.

"Can you help her?" Katie's voice was a whisper, barely audible over the
sobbing of her companion. "Please."

Carol looked up at Katie. She said nothing, but shook her head once, a
hard negative.

The van lurched into movement.

A few minutes into the trip, Carry Holmes had died, mercifully.

Her friends had been too stunned even to cry at first.

That would come later, Carol knew, as she covered the body, tucking the
sheet under straps that fought the jouncing of the transport van. If,
she thought, there is a later.

By then, of course, it was too late to alter the destination of the
other two.

When she arrived at the stadium, Carol discovered she was one of the few
doctors in what had become a vast charnel house of the dead and dying.
As in most epidemics, physicians and nurses had been among the earliest
exposed to the virus; they had died, most of them, only shortly after
the patients who had infected them. Among them was Latonya Ferris, who
had so effectively managed operations at Carol's clinic. She had been
delirious, fighting for air when Carol found her, by accident, among a
row of other fevered victims.

It had been a brief reunion.

Latonya had died, quickly and painfully, despite all of the frantic
efforts Carol had thrown against the viral invader. Like the majority of
the flu victims, Latonya had drowned, a victim of her own fluids
flooding into lungs torn and damaged by the virus's onslaught. Neither
the oxygen Carol had intubated into Latonya nor the Lasix with which she
had injected her had any but the most temporary of effects; the progress
of the disease simply had been too swift and devastating.

It had been the same with other patients over whom Carol had labored.

Both O2 and Lasix were now in short supply; so too was almost every
other basic commodity.

It did not matter, really. There was no effective treatment. As it was,
the shortage of nurses was more critical than that of then- physician
colleagues, since a kind hand wielding a clean handkerchief at least
provided a temporary comfort to the stricken.

Carol heard news, in scraps and tiny morsels. Rumors, rather--in the
chaos of the outbreak, there was no reliable way to discern fact from
fiction.

She heard that the pestilence had spread as far north as Birmingham and
as far to the west as New Orleans; nobody really knew for sure. She
heard that at Eglin Air Force Base, which occupied an area the size of
Rhode Island from Fort Walton almost to Pensacola, the virus had spread
like wildfire; she remembered Jerry-the-Moonlighter at the clinic,
working alongside her to breathe life back into the victim at the
clinic. She even heard that the Russians had come up with some kind of
cure, or at least a treatment that kept the disease from spreading; this
could not be confirmed either, and Carol was too busy to allow herself
the luxury of hope.

She worked throughout the day, losing track of time in the mind-dulling
rounds amid the dying. At some point, a generator chugged to life and
the bulbs strung between the tent poles cast their yellow light on the
scene. When next she noticed, outside the yellow glow the night was dark
and still.

In one of the faded gray tents along the perimeter of the treatment
area, Carol had commandeered a corner for herself and her two charges.

It was there that she retreated, collecting Katie and J.L. as she passed
through the crowded triage area. By the time they arrived at their
refuge, the fatigue was acute enough to leave Carol lightheaded, though
she felt anything but ready to sleep.

Neither did the two teenage girls, though initially they seemed equally
adverse to any kind of discussion. They jury rigged one of the olive
gray blankets over a rope, darkening the corner. It was too warm to
sleep covered, though they stretched out on cots Carol hoped had not
been recently used.

Still, Carol found sleep elusive.

So she prodded Katie and J.L. to talk, asking them questions until they
began to respond. It was the only palliative she could offer two young
women who had been thrust deeply into this pact with death.

J.L. was quiet, almost sullen, and spoke mainly in monosyllables. She
stayed close to the other, Carol observed, the one named Katie. But she
had done her share, even through the tears that had washed tracks down
the grime on her cheeks. For her own part, Katie Casey was dealing with
the shock of Carly's death by plunging into the far larger cauldron of
suffering she found everywhere around her. She had cried too, if her
reddened eyes were any evidence. But when, Carol could not say; each
time she had glanced at Katie, the girl had seemed calm and
competent--even resourceful. If the teenager was frightened by her
situation, she gave no outward sign.

For a while they spoke about meaningless subjects, tacitly avoiding the
world outside their small corner. Carol told them about her job at the
clinic, about the incongruities of living in an area where most people
come to play, about the largely absent social life of a single,
overworked physician. She described her infatuation with Choctawatchee
Bay in terms that might have embarrassed a human lover, mercifully
missing the eye-rolling glance J.L. shot Katie. She mentioned that she
had purchased her first vehicle only a few months before, and admitted
it was a pickup truck, now parked back in the clinic lot.

"Stick-shift transmission," she volunteered. "That marks me as a real
player, at least down here. Do either of you drive stick?"

"I can," Katie said. "My father taught me. But I just got my learner's
permit. I'm not supposed to drive without an ... adult supervising me."
She sounded rueful, but to Carol's ears insufficiently so.

Carol grinned wickedly. / still remember ... "But I'll bet you do it
anyway. Am I right?"

There was a rustling, as if Katie might have shrugged. Silence settled
between them.

"You're doing a good job out there," Carol said finally. "Both of you."

Again, there was no response, and Carol was about to abandon the effort
when Katie spoke.

"All these people," Katie said to Carol quietly. "They're going to die,
aren't they?"

The question took the physician by surprise, and she hesitated for only
an instant. But it was answer enough, and all three of them knew it.

"Why don't we have it?" J.L.'s voice was hard, demanding. "We were
around Early when she was sick--I mean, if she caught it in Florida, we
were with her the whole time. So why aren't Katie and I--"

Her voice caught, broke.

"I don't know," Carol said "I don't know why I'm not displaying
symptoms, either. Possibly the virus takes longer to manifest itself in
some people. Or it could have something to do with the way our
individual immune systems are working."

Katie frowned. "You mean, there's a chance we won't catch it?"

When she spoke, Carol was careful to keep her voice neutral. "That's not
likely, I'm afraid. We don't know--/ don't know anything about this
virus, except that it's a very contagious variety of the flu. Most
people are vulnerable to influenza."

"But it's possible?"

"Anything is possible."

"Not if we stay her et J.L. interjected. She looked around the football
field and shook her head in a hard negative movement. "Not in here."

"The entire state is quarantined," Carol said. "There are police and
soldiers on all the roads--certainly the main ones, I guess. There's no
place for you to go. They can't allow the infection to spread."

"But we don't have it," J.L. repeated stubbornly. "I'm sorry."

Again, silence. This time it lasted longer.

"Do you have anybody you can call?" Carol asked suddenly, realizing even
as she spoke that the question was inane. During processing, she had
discovered that all contact with the world outside was 'temporarily' out
of service. It made sense, from the point of view of those trying to
keep the genie in the bottle: had word of the conditions here migrated
outside, widespread panic would have been inevitable.

"We kind of--well, sneaked down here," Carol heard Katie say. "The ...
three of us." She took a deep, shuddering breath. "Right now," Katie
said, "nobody even knows where we are."

There was nothing Carol could think of to say. In a short time, she
found herself drifting off, finding sleep at last.

She snored, rhythmically but lightly.

It was then that J.L. and Katie began to talk again, in voices pitched
low and secretive.

Chapter 23.

Fort Detrick, Maryland July 22

Fort Detrick is forty-eight miles away from the White House, as the crow
flies. There was a time when any crow unwise enough to fly over the base
ran a substantial chance of falling from the sky, the victim of birdshot
from guns wielded by PFCs charged with keeping the skies clear of avian
intruders.

This was not because of any particular malice toward crows, or birds in
general. Rather, it was the fear that some random feathered interloper
might become an inadvertent vector for one or another of the agents
undergoing testing at the site.

The Crow Patrol is a legend of the distant past at Detrick now, ever
since chemical and biological weapon development was officially ended by
Richard Nixon in the late sixties. Today it is the home of USAMRIID, the
Army's infectious disease research branch. As such, Fort Detrick has
been officially rehabilitated. The research there now focuses on
studying antidotes, vaccines and other treatments or preventatives
involving CBW. Officially, its former black arts are no longer practiced
there.

Officially, they are practiced nowhere in the U.S. military.

It was late, even for a military operation, but few at Detrick had left
their research stations since word of the first case in Florida.

It was almost midnight when a figure in a Class IV exposure system--the
staff called them "Mr. Bubble" suits, for the obvious reason--had torn
her eyes from the blue glow of a computer screen at which she had been
staring intently. She clicked the mouse with an awkwardly gloved hand,
toggling between two not dissimilar displays that she studied with equal
intensity.

"I'll be damned," breathed Barbara Jones, who in addition to carrying a
Ph. D. in biogenetics from Johns Hopkins was a major in the United
States Army. She was "Dr. Jones" to the rare outside visitor, "Major
Jones" to the enlisted personnel, and "B. J." to her close colleagues.
But never, never was she "Major Barbara."

She reached around the controls of the electron microscope and pressed
an oversized switch. Immediately, a voice rasped from the intercom
speaker.

"What's up, B. J.?"

It was the voice of the man who had, almost singlehandedly, overseen the
biowarfare research at Fort Derrick, Maryland, for the past three
decades. For the past two and a half of them, the program's very
existence had been classified "Ultra D"--an infinity above the merely
"top" secret.

"I've been playing around with a sample of Agent VTX," Barbara answered.

For a moment, her supervisor was dumbstruck.

"Good God. Why are you even handling that stuff?"

B.J. screwed her face into an expression that would have been better
suited to a much younger female; she did not like her work questioned,
even by someone she respected as much as she did this man. "The genome
is pretty close to the killer flu. So I kind of played a hunch."

B.J. was famous for her hunches, and wore the idiosyncrasy as a badge.

"And?"

"I think I found something," she said, and this time her mentor heard
the edge in her voice. "I think maybe I found something important."

Chapter 24.

Arlington, Virginia July 22

Deborah Stepanovich stared at the television screen, appalled by the
events of the past twenty-four hours, by the sequence of shocks that
threatened now to spin completely out of control.

When she had left her law offices in the District yesterday evening, all
had been well--at least, as well as they could be when one's teenage
daughter had taken French leave to a still-indeterminate location.

But Deborah had awakened today to find the capital in complete chaos.

Things were still reasonably quiet here, across the river; but Deborah
had decided that she wanted Katie home, immediately.

Not for the first time this morning, she wondered why Beck had not
returned any of her calls from the previous afternoon. Whatever his
faults or failings, Deborah did not doubt Beck's love for his daughter.

For a long moment, she eyed the telephone, debating whether to try him
in Chicago one more time.

Instead, she reached for her bag and removed the Palm Pilot in which she
kept her records, notes and the telephone numbers she seldom felt
inclined to call.

Deborah Stepanovich squeezed the telephone handset hard enough to feel
the plastic flex beneath her fingers. Had the other woman been present
in the room, instead of at the other end of a long-distance connection,
Deborah was sure that by now she would have throttled Early Holmes's
mother.

"Joyce," she said, careful to keep her voice level. "Just tell me."

She could hear Joyce Holmes's sigh of exasperation, and seethed silently
while she waited for a response.

"Mah Gawd. Theah' just out havin' some fun, Debbie. Ahim sure the ah
just fine."

Joyce Holmes's Southern accent was a relatively recent acquisition,
Deborah realized; not too many years ago, when Katie and Early had
played on the same soccer team, Joyce's pronunciation had been the more
clipped tones that reflected her upbringing in a Cleveland suburb.

Around the time that Carly's father had moved in with a real estate
agent from Silver Springs, Joyce's almost severe suburban-mom persona
had begun a marked evolution to that of flirtatious Southern belle. Now
she sounded as if she had never ventured north of the Mason-Dixon line
and that her worst fear was the dreaded return of Sherman's raiders.

There was more rustling, as if quantities of paper were being riffled
near the distant mouthpiece.

"Heah it is. Carly's using mah American Express--they send the bill
right to her father, thank Gawd. Still and all, Ah just don't know about
givin' out the numbers to just anybody, Debbie."

Joyce paused, and in the loaded silence Deborah envisioned a cat lazily
toying with a fieldmouse. This time, Deborah could hear the handset
creak with the intensity of her own grip. She forced herself not to
speak.

"Oh, well--seein' it's you, darling'." Joyce Holmes read off the credit
card numbers, and added, "Now, don't you go shoppin' with mah card
numbers, heah?" The giggle made Deborah's skin crawl. "Course, I'm
jokin' with you, Debbie. Say in to the girls for me, '?"

Deborah was still livid by the time she got through to American Express,
negotiating through the electronic menu until she reached a live
operator. She bullied her way to a supervisor, then another; over the
next quarter hour, she had been bumped in slow sequence again and again
to whoever was next highest in the Amex pecking order.

She had lost track of names and titles by the time she reached what she
sensed was her last hope. The voice was female and sounded both
competent and unbending.

"Ms. Stepanovich, surely you understand that we cannot --"

"Look," Deborah said, and was surprised to hear her own voice sound
reasonable. "I don't want you to violate any laws. I don't want any
personal or confidential information on this account. All I want to know
is where the card was last used, and how long ago."

She took a deep breath and played her last card.

"You know about this flu out there: I am just trying to find my
daughter. She's fifteen. Please help me."

There was a momentary hesitation, and with a sudden sinking in her
stomach, Deborah knew her appeal had failed. Then the voice spoke, in a
tone crisp and professional. "Hold, please." A pause. "That card was
last used--Island Resort Properties, apparently a motel ... yes. Two
days ago. In"--there was a sudden hesitation, as if the speaker had been
taken aback--"in Fort Walton Beach, Florida."

"Florida," Deborah repeated, her throat suddenly tight and dry.

For a moment, the fear rose within her and she could not speak.

"Hello? Are you still on the line?"

Deborah shook herself. "Yes. Thank you very much."

"Please don't mention it," the voice said, then dropped to a
conspiratorial level.

"To anybody, if you catch my drift. My prayers are with you; I've got a
teenager too."

Chapter 25.

Washington, D.C. July 22

In retrospect, Larry Krewell realized, it had been foolish to expect
that New York City would be any better prepared to deal with a
biological attack than anywhere else in the country--indeed, in the rest
of the world.

It was not, despite the millions that had been spent on training and
drills and equipment. Not even the imposition of martial law made a
difference. A trooper could shoot a rioter, perhaps; but no number of
soldiers could impose its will on a lethal, untreatable microbe driven
by an almost supernatural impulse to spread.

Less than an hour before, a Coast Guard helicopter had swept down upon a
boat that had ignored repeated hailing calls to heave to for boarding.
It had sped on heedlessly, until a Coast Guard marksman had fired a
single three-round burst from his M-14 into the bridge, then stitched a
longer burst along the deck that silenced the boat's engines. The
helicopter circled overhead until the Zodiac arrived with a boarding
party, each member of which wore the full exposure suit that had been,
only that morning, ordered mandatory in such circumstances.

Three hooded and goggled Coast Guardsmen clambered aboard, one tripping
awkwardly against the first of two bodies they would find in the
cruiser's cockpit.

As Corazon wallowed in the waves, a red-and-white can skittered back and
forth across the blood-slick decking. It was ignored initially by the
Coast Guardsmen, until one picked it up in his gloved hand, half
intending to pitch it overboard. Inside his mask, he did a double take.
Then he dropped the canister as if it were white-hot, and he pawed at
the microphone clipped against his rubberized tunic.

The cargo found on board Corazon was ominous in its implications.

Neither Krewell nor General S. V, "Swede" Brandt, the Army brigadier who
had set up command headquarters at One Police Plaza, held any doubt as
to what the opened canister had contained; few soup cans come from the
factory complete with a pressurized atomizing apparatus inside.

Though New York City was already under martial law, civilian government
remained in charge, albeit unofficially, of everything not directly
related to administering troops on the city's streets. That included
public health, and it took Krewell less than two minutes to get his
counterpart in the New York City Department of Health patched into the
emergency conference call. In turn, that municipal official had insisted
on adding one more participant to the discussion.

Now there was a momentary burst of crackling static, followed by a voice
Krewell recognized from newscasts. Almost immediately, Krewell found
himself metaphorically nose-to-nose with the city's mayor, an intense
and demanding personage who was obviously unaccustomed to the
desperation he now found his city facing.

The news Krewell delivered left the mayor at first stunned, then
infuriated.

"So what the hell is supposed to happen now?" demanded the mayor, an
angry and disembodied voice that crackled from Krewell's speaker phone.

"You expect me to seal off the southern tip of Manhattan? It's too late.
How many of those people do you think are still there? They went back to
work, or took a cab to some other part of the city."

"With all due respect, Mr. Mayor." Swede Brandt's tones were firm,
measured. "It is no longer your decision to make."

The speaker box went silent for a moment.

"Jesus, this is a nightmare."

Krewell forced himself to stay calm. No drills, no academic course of
study could have prepared a normal human being for the situation they
all faced. Larry felt sympathy for the New York mayor: the man was a
former prosecutor, and a tough-minded one at that. He had used the same
approach as mayor, and was credited with spurring a renaissance in the
city's quality of life.

But nothing in his experience could have been adequate preparation for
the single harsh reality of biological terrorism. The concept was, under
most circumstances, unthinkable: triage, on a massive scale.

Those who could be saved had to be identified and selected; the others
written off, coldly and deliberately. After a bio weapon had been
deployed at a target like New York City, the question was no longer how
to prevent deaths--widespread mortality had already become inevitable.

Instead, the question became who must be left to die, so that others may
live.

In Russia, Krewell knew, Putin had understood that truth instinctively;
he had acted ruthlessly, but with a cold-blooded pragmatism. Not so in
New York; its officials were still thinking of how to save everybody,
and that was impossible.

Krewell understood.

Most people don't think that way, he told himself. Firemen run into
buildings because they need to believe they can save everybody. Well,
this time they can't. The fire is about to burn very brightly in New
York City.

"We will proceed on the assumption that the virus has now contaminated
an initial core group in New York City." In contrast to the mayor's,
Brandt's tone was unemotional.

He could have been reading from a printed card. "Pending orders from the
Joint Chiefs, I will--"

"Damn it, General. Dr. Krewell, you don't even know what was in those
cans."

Krewell hardened his voice. "You're right, Mr. Mayor," he said. "We
won't have confirmation from the lab for another five hours, at best.

By that time, the majority of the people who were standing downwind on
that shoreline will have infected whoever they've been in contact with.

And those people will be incubating their own virus load, passing it to
others."

"So what the hell do I do?"

"Mr. Mayor, we are still developing a ... proactive course of action,"
Krewell said, wondering how much of his implied optimism either Brandt
or the city official actually believed. "But the immediate response has
to be containment. Slow down any spread of contagion for as long as
possible."

"The city is already quarantined," the mayor said. "Your people have
tanks blocking the bridges and tunnels, for God's sake."

"I'd suggest you clear the streets," Krewell said. "The less contact
people have with others, the less their chance for immediate infection
with the virus."

The mayor's voice was harsh and scornful. "A curfew," he said. "We have
rioting in all five boroughs, and you think you can impose a curfew.
What--you expect that I can just get on a bullhorn and convince people
to go home?"

"We can order the streets cleared, Dr. Krewell," Swede Brandt said,
ignoring the mayor. "Get everybody inside. Make certain nothing moves on
the streets--no cars, buses, trains. I have sufficient assets in troops
and helicopter gunships to enforce this order--at least, throughout most
of the area of operation. But I must be authorized to employ lethal
force." Both men knew that was a presidential decision, but one that had
already been tacitly made, if not yet officially communicated.

"I concur, General," Krewell said.

"You're threatening to gun people down?" The mayor's voice was
accusatory. "On the streets of New York?"

Krewell bit off the obvious rejoinder. "Mr. Mayor, all I can do is give
you my advice as an epidemiologist," Krewell said. "My belief is that
your city now has been exposed to this virus. Until a treatment strategy
has been developed, the only option is to slow the spread of the
contagion. By whatever means necessary."

"Like the Russians did?" The mayor's voice was furious. "Is that what's
next? This is still the United States of America. This is New York City,
man!"

"Yes, Mr. Mayor," Krewell heard himself saying. "But right now, it's
also under attack. You're standing on a battlefield, at ground zero."

"God help you if you're wrong."

"No, sir," Brandt's voice corrected the mayor. "God help us if he's
right."

Day Three: July 23

Chapter 26.

Columbia Falls, Montana July 23

They had streaked west for another two hours, passing high above the
Continental Divide; had it been daylight, Beck knew, the awesome brown
and white spine of the Rockies would have stretched past the horizon on
either side. Instead, only the occasional twinkling of mountain hamlets
marked where the ground began.

Beck forced himself to read the thick sheaf of briefing documents Andi
had provided, burying himself in the details of the American fringe
groups who had been tracked and monitored as potential domestic security
threats. The specifics of the various Montana militia organizations
alone comprised almost sixty single-spaced sheets.

For almost a decade, the trend line of violence had been rising on an
ever-steeper slope, though much of it had occurred below the radar scope
of the general public. Many Americans believed that the tragic events of
September 11, 2001, had constituted the climax of terrorism on U.S.
soil. It had not, as the litany of antigovernment conspiracies through
which Beck was plowing showed vividly; it had been only the most
dramatic, at least thus far. Since then, several hundred major bombing
or other terror plots--generally unknown to the public at large--had
been short stopped by the intensive efforts of the FBI and other police
agencies throughout the United States.

It had become a savage game of odds and numbers, Beck realized. Even in
the most draconian police state, no government could stymie every terror
plot; the difficulty was a magnitude harder in a democracy that
protected the constitutional rights of even the most cold-blooded
criminal.

Inevitably, the statistics dictated, terrorists would slip past the
cordon of American law enforcement and win another one.

As they had now, Beck thought--and was surprised at the warning light
that flashed deep inside his mind. Almost against his will, he felt his
mind shift into a pattern that had once been familiar--one segment of
his intellect logically analyzing, calculating, assessing the matter at
hand; in the background, another simultaneously churned like a computer
multitasking, more ethereal and far more subject to flashes of deductive
insight that always seemed outside his command.

After his own experiences as a prisoner, Beck had learned firsthand not
to trust the fruit of any interrogation based on torture. But as a
paranoid sometimes has real enemies, sometimes a torture victim tells
the real truth in lieu of merely what he thinks the torturer wants to
hear. The Aum had tried both chemical and biological terrorism in the
past; they had joined in a ritual suicide, among cults typically an act
of final defrance, contempt and oblivion.

There was still no real proof, no evidence that was anything but
circumstantial; no court in any civilized country would convict on such
a flimsy basis. But all signs pointed to the cult. If Alexi was right,
the Aum had initiated a suicidal war against all humanity and enlisted
American militia groups as their allies.

Direct, logical and straightforward, the logical part of Beck's mind
argued. Yet ... How, then, had the Aum persuaded the militias to join
them in certain death? The Aum might hold self-immolation both a virtue
and a virtual sacrament; in Beck's experience, few American militia
groups held suicide in the same awed esteem. Had the Aum held out a
promise, a vehicle of salvation that in the midst of plague would spare
those engaged in spreading it?

Was there a cure, a treatment, a vaccine? Did the militia Beck now
hunted possess it?

Again, the images on the videotapes he had seen--both the death rained
on crowds from helicopters and the rows of dying flu victims in a
Russian contagion ward--elbowed to the front of his thoughts.

But in his mind's eye, each of the victims bore the face of his
daughter.

And Beck flew on, west into the night. Had either of the pilots looked
back, they would have seen a man seemingly absorbed in the study of the
documents piled on the seat beside him. Beck looked calm, focused.

Inside, he raged at his own helplessness.

At last, Beck felt the Learjet turn in a wide arching curve to the
north, vectoring into the airspace over Kalispell, Montana.

"Nothing else flying," the pilot's voice crackled in Beck's earphones.

"Looks like we have the approach path all to ourselves, Doctor. We'll be
on the ground in a few minutes."

With a stomach-dropping maneuver, the plane nosed over into the sweeping
descent of its landing pattern.

April O'Connor stood on the darkened airport apron and watched them
touch down, suitably unimpressed at the expensive transportation that
was delivering her new--what? she asked herself. Observer? Partner?

Supervisor?

April was unclear as to the role her visitor was intended to play, and
the uncertainty did not ease her mind. She had worked with the CIA
before, and like most FBI agents had found it an awkward pairing. With
spooks, one was never sure what priorities had been set, what plans had
been made, what agenda was being followed. Invariably, it made for
casework that to a law enforcement professional felt extremely loose--at
times even inept, and one was never quite sure if it was intentionally
so.

In the past few hours, April had wasted no time. She had run Orin
Trippett through every electronic database available --not just the
National Crime Information Center computer banks, but through systems
that NCIC and the Bureau normally could not access directly: NSA and
DIA, to name but two of the super-secret information banks that lurked
behind the intelligence community's black firewall. Barriers that were
normally insurmountable had melted away like frost under the midmorning
sun, a fact at which April marveled.

And all it takes, she told herself, is a killer plague that threatens to
destroy world civilization.

In the end, with one notable exception, it had availed her nothing.

Most of the yield from the government's electronic cornucopia was little
more than a compilation of Trippett's arrests and convictions, which
April already had. The remainder was a collection of conjecture, myth
and sheer rumors from the variety of informants that would make even a
rookie cop scoff.

So much for modern criminology.

April had retreated to the tried-and-true: pulling out-of date hard-copy
files, sending e-mails and faxed inquiries to select local and county
law enforcement agencies, working the telephone to tap into the network
of colleagues and sources that every cop guards jealously--all of which,
she thought sourly, / could be doing right now, instead of waiting for
this guy to show up.

The single notable exception to the dearth of information had involved
Dr. Beck Casey. While her boss Frank Ellis had been unable to provide
additional detail on Casey, April had found a number of cryptic,
sometimes intriguing nuggets among the NSA archives.

The Middle East, she thought, impressed despite herself, both Iran and
Iraq. North Korea? And Russia. Lots of Russia, right up until Three
years ago, according to the files, Casey had been tracking a Russian
informant's story involving a lost shipment of precursors--chemicals
that were used in the manufacture of one or another lethal brew--said to
have been diverted to a rogue North African country. He had followed the
trail as far as Ekaterinburg, to a city that even April knew was a
virtual fiefdom of the Russian Mafiya.

And then Beck Casey had gone missing.

Six weeks later he turned up in a Moscow hospital, a torn and scarred
skeleton from the effect of the physical abuse and the drugs that had
left him virtually psychotic. He was turned over to American authorities
and subsequently repatriated to the United States. There, the record
stopped abruptly. The final entry was the dates of his admission and
release from Walter Reed Army Hospital, near Washington.

They were, she saw, nearly eleven months apart.

"Nice shirt," April said, after the ritual of introduction was complete.
"Did somebody walk off with your luggage over there, Dr. Casey?"

Beck forced a smile onto his face.

"You can drop me off," Beck said. "Somewhere with room service and a hot
bath. I slept on the plane"--he grinned, a little too brightly--"but I'm
feeling a bit gamey right now."

"Place in Columbia Falls I know," she said. "Should do you until
morning."

They climbed into her car, a Bureau-issued Crown Victoria. For several
minutes, they drove in silence. Then Beck spoke.

"Maybe you can tell me why I'm here, Agent O'Connor."

April cocked an eye at him. "You don't know?"

Beck shook his head.

"You're supposed to help me find a man named Orin Trip pett," she said.

"He's Montana militia--you know, camo clothes and an AK-47 under the
floorboards. But he's tied in with the Japanese who started all this
insanity. They gave him a load of nerve gas he didn't get a chance to
use. But we think he may be carrying something else they sent him.

Something very bad."

"I guess we know what that means," Beck said. "The Russians say that the
Aum dangled the same promise in front of some Russian extremists."

April nodded grimly. "I saw the transcript from their prisoner."

"Now we have our own loonies to worry about." Beck was silent for a
moment. "Look--I'm not a cop. I'll help any way I can, but you need a
trained investigator, not a historian."

"Couldn't agree more. No offense."

"None taken."

They fell into silence again, and Beck found himself lulled by the
passing miles. He dozed, chin drooped upon his chest.

He awoke twenty miles later, as the sedan eased to a stop under the
canopy of an unpretentious motel. April watched without comment as Beck
climbed out, hefting his computer and traveling gear. For a moment, he
leaned in the passenger window, tentative in posture.

Finally, he aimed a thumb over his shoulder at the lobby.

"Let me try to catch up with the geniuses in Washington. That will keep
me out of your way for a while. If you get a lead on this Trippett guy,
I'll be glad to watch your back." He smiled--to April, it seemed an
apologetic gesture. "If you want, I'll even carry your handcuffs for
you."

"Fair enough," said April evenly. "I saw the videotape from Moscow. If I
need any help like that, I know where to call."

Without waiting for a reply, she stepped on the gas. From the look on
Beck Casey's face as she drove away, April had no doubt that he had
understood exactly what she meant.

Chapter 27.

Columbia Falls, Montana July 23

It was almost two a.m. when April O'Connor punched in the telephone
number of the motel where she had deposited Beck Casey.

It had been a toss-up. No FBI support was yet available locally, and
this was not an assignment to handle solo. Worse, her supervisor also
had his orders from on high; he had ordered April to make the pairing
more than a marriage of convenience. She had little desire to be chained
to a spook, and even less inclination to deal with the shadowy
motivations Casey might bring to this case. There were lots of reasons
not to want She forced back the sudden memory of Jesus Robles
illuminated by the muzzle flash from her weapon; April also did not want
the responsibility that wet-nursing Beck Casey would inevitably entail.

But in the end she had decided: she had her orders, any backup was
better than none, and Casey had been her luck of the draw.

For more than five hours, she had been asking, cajoling, threatening and
otherwise gathering information from the various offices and enforcement
agencies with which Trip pett had run afoul during his life. Armed with
this background, she had checked Trippett's fairly impressive criminal
record, selecting as most promising a number of arrests outside the
Columbia Falls area.

After several dead ends, she hit pay dirt.

According to state records she obtained from a computer sited in the
Montana capital of Helena, Trippett had been arrested for felonious
assault in White Bison County, a largely mountainous region seventy
miles southwest of Columbia Falls. He was listed as a resident of White
Bison County, a fact that caused April to sit upright in her chair. Then
she reached for the phone and somehow talked the White Bison court clerk
out of bed and into the office.

There, the court records told April that the original felony had been
negotiated down to a misdemeanor, and the fine had been suspended.

Trippett obviously had a gift for slipping through the system.

But it was here that she also struck gold, in the form of the name of
the arresting officer. She thanked the clerk, sent him home and kept
digging, working the computer and her telephone deftly as she slogged
through layer after layer of the bureaucratic machine. And by half-past
one--after working her way through an ascending hierarchy of third-shift
line sergeants, lieutenants, shift commanders and captains -April had
finally gotten to Senior Deputy Carl Mcguire of the White Bison County
Sheriff's Department.

She spoke to him in the jargon that makes up the lingua franca of the
law enforcement profession. She tinged it with the codes and key words
that communicate both the urgency and the importance of such inquiries
to police brethren who are too often inundated by their own caseloads.

And when she hung up--after long minutes of waiting while Mcguire
consulted his own notes and memories as well as those of his
colleagues--she looked at the descriptions and directions she had
scribbled and blew out a long breath.

She passed along the relevant information to Frank Ellis in Helena.
Ellis relayed it to an assistant United States attorney who already
waited, cellular phone at his ear and the proper paperwork in his hand,
outside the home of a federal district judge. Less than fifteen minutes
later, April had the confirmation that the warrant had been issued and
was being faxed to her immediately.

Then April dialed one more number.

The phone rang at the other end, and she heard a familiar voice.

"Yo." There was a television in the background.

"O'Connor. You doing anything special right now?" she asked without
preamble.

"Oh, hell yes," Beck Casey replied. "They have cable TV. I found one of
those Funniest Videotapes shows. They had a guy playing catch with his
kid in the yard--he turns his head to look at something, kid throws the
ball. Hits him ... well, in the crotch. Then they showed somebody else
trying to climb a tree--I think his kite was stuck in it." April smiled
at Beck's dubious tone. "Anyway, he's climbing up, slips, comes down on
a tree branch. Guess where it catches him? Right in the crotch."

"I think I'm beginning to sense a theme," April said.

"Yep," Beck observed, "it's a scream. Right now, there's this fellow
trying to impress his girlfriend by walking tightrope on top of a
chain-link fence." There was a moment's pause. "Ouch, that must have
hurt. So if I can tear myself away from all this must-see TV, what do
you have in mind?"

"I've got a possible location for Trippett, and the paperwork is
arriving on my desk even as we speak," she said. "I was pretty sure you
wanted to go along."

"Good deduction," Beck said. "Am I going as an official observer?"

"Depending on whether we find him there," April said, "I suppose we'll
figure out how official you are as we go along."

Chapter 28.

White Bison County, Montana July 23

"You're sure, this time?" Beck's voice was doubtful. "I don't know how
much more my kidneys can take. Probably less than the suspension on your
car."

In the driver's seat next to him, April O'Connor peered out the window,
and then squinted as she reread the notes she had taken earlier. The
notebook pages glared brightly in the beam of her pocket light,
rendering useless what was left of her night vision. She inched forward,
turning slightly so that the headlamps illuminated a gravel road that
led away from the blacktop of this rural county two-lane.

"Hell, I don't know," April muttered, only partly to Beck.

Who would have figured that the street sign hadn't made it out here in
the sticks yet? she thought, with an irritation made worse by the fact
that she suspected her companion was somehow laughing at her.

"The odometer says we've driven a mile and a quarter from the bridge,"
she said louder. "This could be the road."

"It's possible," Beck replied unhelpfully. "Of course, the last two
could have been."

He looked down the bright tunnel the car's lights bored into the night,
then back at April.

April shrugged and stepped lightly on the gas. The car dropped several
inches as each set of wheels left the county roadway, and the crunching
of tires on a graveled surface mingled with the engine sounds. She
accelerated slightly, but the weathered surface of the road was like an
old washboard. An unhealthy vibration tried to tear the steering wheel
from her hands. April eased back on the gas until the alarming shaking
subsided to a thudding bounce that was merely maddening.

"Watch the ditch," Beck advised unnecessarily.

For Beck, the ride had been a replay of the night flight to Moscow, a
disorienting ride in the dark. He enjoyed the mountains--by day, that
is; at night, and with a relative stranger behind the wheel, they struck
him as a particularly perilous place in which to wander. For no
particular reason, he was now certain the road was flanked by sheer
precipices littered with the rusted hulks of cars that had already taken
the plunge.

"You think anybody's been down this road recently?"

Intent on her driving, April shook her head. "Can't tell a damn thing,"
she said. "For all I know, this could be what they consider an
expressway out here. Thousands of people maybe use it at rush hour. Or
this might be rush hour out here." She leaned forward, surveying the
road through the windshield. "Look like it's getting narrower to you?"

"You want me to drive?"

"With all due respect, Dr. Casey, blow it out your--"

Abruptly, the road rose and dipped, curving to the right as it sloped
downward. A quarter mile beyond and below the range of their headlights,
specks of reflected starlight rippled over a dark area perhaps the size
of a football field. April quickly reached forward and snapped off the
car's lights.

"This is the place," April said. "See--that's gotta be the old quarry
the deputy described. Trippett's trailer should be off to the left of
it. In some trees." Once again, she squinted into the night. "You see
anything?"

Beck shook his head.

"Uh-uh," he answered. "But if he's there, I vote we leave the car here
and go in quiet."

April nodded, and switched off the engine. Before she could prompt him
to do so, Beck reached above the rearview mirror and snapped the switch
of the dome light to off. It was the action of a man who had done this
sort of thing before, and for a moment it gave April pause. Then she
opened her door carefully, stepped outside and gently pressed it closed
until the latch engaged with an almost inaudible click.

Outside, the noises of the night filled the chill mountain air. Cicadas
and other nocturnal insects crooned their ceaseless choruses of sex and
procreation, sometimes enticing a willing mate, sometimes merely
attracting the notice of a hungry predator. High overhead, shadowy forms
darted in erratic flight, as sonar-guided bats zeroed in on unsuspecting
targets. Motionless in the trees lining the road, great horned owls
focused their night eyes in the low grasses, alert for the tiniest
movement of some doomed prey.

Their heads close together, April and Beck spoke in low voices that
carried even less than whispers would have.

"No flashlights," April cautioned. She looked up at the sky. Far from
the light pollution of any city, the sky was a heavy black velvet
curtain gleaming with uncounted blue white pinpoints. The moon was a
thin Moorish crescent almost directly overhead, exceptionally decorative
but decidedly nonfunctional as illumination. April decided that was
lucky.

"We follow the road down to the quarry," she told Casey. "Stick to the
left side of the road, and stay close enough that we know where each of
us is. Once we get down there, we ought to be able to see Trippett's
trailer. If anybody's there, we take him down, fast. If there's any
surprises, I want them to come from us."

"Fine with me," Beck volunteered. "You want to flip a coin to see who
goes in first?"

She shook her head. "I'm FBI," she said. "In case you've forgotten the
story you told me, you are a historian working for the CDC. Let's
pretend to believe that for now, shall we? I go in first, you stay
behind me. You know the standard entry drill?"

He nodded--a little too quickly, April thought.

"I'll sweep the left arc with my flashlight; you take the right. If
we're lucky, Trippett's in there sawing wood; all that happens is he
gets what you might call a rude awakening. We take him down, toss the
place, bring him in. But if we run into somebody else--or if somebody
else is in there with him-stay out of the line of fire, right? This case
has enough bodies hanging on it."

"Just don't shoot me," Beck said. He saw the look that crossed her face,
and frowned, puzzled. "Sorry. It was a joke."

"Then get serious, fast," April said.

An image rose in her mind, and she pushed it down.

"Just a minute," April said. She stepped to the car's trunk and fumbled
with the key in the dark. Then she eased up the hatch, removed an object
as long as her arm, and closed the trunk silently. She came back to
Beck, who looked at her with what she could barely make out as a frown.

"You think you'll need that?" he asked.

April O'Connor hefted the object she had removed from the trunk, holding
it firmly in two hands across her chest. It was a Mossberg shotgun, the
12-gauge pump model commonly issued to police tactical units. It was
fully loaded with five rounds of double-ought buckshot, each shell
packed with nine 32-caliber lead balls. At close range, she knew, its
blast could cut a human being almost in half.

"The last time I ran into this guy, his friends were carrying automatic
weapons," she said grimly. "You didn't see what happened next. I did."

They covered the quarter mile to the edge of the quarry in less than ten
minutes, moving through the grass alongside the road as quietly as if
they had been in a church. Twice, April had stopped short as something
substantial had scurried out of her path; once, she had even seen a
flash of movement in the grass, and wondered what variety of venomous
snake called this region home.

She had not looked back, but she knew Beck was behind her. She could
hear his soft footfalls occasionally; once, when he stepped too close to
the soft incline of the drainage ditch, she heard his sharp inhalation
as he slipped and caught himself. She even imagined she could hear the
regular timpani of his heartbeats, though she knew it was more likely
she was listening to her own.

A few yards away, the water slapped at the banks of the quarry, loud in
the night. April dropped to one knee. In a moment, Beck was next to her.
She pointed into the night, and he strained to see.

It was there, a patch of darkness thicker than that which surrounded it.
April could make out the lines of a trailer, the kind with flat aluminum
sides and top, engineered more with economy than stylishness in mind.
She discovered that she could see the object better by not looking at it
directly. In her peripheral vision, it contrasted more clearly from the
copse of cottonwoods that framed it at a short distance.

April felt Beck's hand touch her shoulder lightly. She looked at him and
saw him point to his eyes, then toward the trailer and lift his palms in
a doubtful shrug. She mimicked his gesture; April, too, could see no
sign of human presence.

They could have been playing musical instruments, these two whose
approach he had heard long before he saw their silhouettes against the
lighter crushed stone of the roadway. Such a clatter they made, each
step rasping through the grass in a boringly regular pace that stood out
starkly against the natural sounds of the night. Twice he had heard the
one in front halt, then resume the approach; the one in the rear, he had
decided in a flash of wit, either had a physical defect involving his
equilibrium or was simply unnaturally clumsy.

Whoever they were, they approached this place in a manner doubtless
meant to be of stealth. But the pair was without adequate training and
devoid of natural skill.

And now, he thought with a shrug, they will die.

For a moment, he toyed with the idea of feeling sorry for them; it would
not alter the fate he would deal them, but he had been raised by a
grandmother who took upon herself the teaching of a faith that was
officially discouraged, if not banned. Despite his experiences since
then, and particularly since reaching the age when military service was
compulsory, he occasionally found himself pondering such half forgotten
concepts as mercy and compassion. But only briefly, and certainly not in
this matter.

No, he decided--though deep inside, he also understood the decision had
been made all along--they will die. One of them may even be the person
we seek. If so, all the better. If not, I may keep one alive long enough
to find out why they, too, have come here.

The thought filled him with something he might have described as joy.

Okay, April O'Connor told herself, let's keep this simple. One: I move
to the trailer door; Dr. Casey will be two steps behind, on my right.

Two: I kick the door and that cheap piece of tin will pop open like a
beer can. And three---well, once we're in, we'll see if there is a
three.

A sudden foreboding chilled her, and she felt her hair prickle along her
neck. She recognized it as fear, and the realization startled her.

April looked at the shotgun she held, then once again eyed the trailer
doorway. Shit, she thought, that's one narrow looking door. And I'm
going to barge in there carrying this goddamn clumsy blunderbuss? She
pictured trying to swing the shotgun around in what were bound to be
close, confined quarters; she had an image of the barrel hanging up
against a wall while somebody carefully sighted on her.

That was the clincher. April softly laid the shotgun on the grass and
drew her Glock. She checked the action by feel, and fished a small,
powerful Maglite from her side pocket. This too she examined by touch,
running her fingers lightly along the metal tube until she found the
rubber thumb switch in its base.

Still April hesitated, and realized suddenly that she was dragging out
the moment intentionally. What's the matter? she chided herself
silently. Hell of a time to turn chicken, lady ... Beck watched her,
waiting for her sign. She pointed one forefinger toward her chest, held
it upright and then jabbed it in the direction of the trailer. As one,
they rose and rushed at the trailer door.

Despite the advantages he held, the speed with which the two figures
moved surprised him. Almost before he realized they had risen, they were
halfway across the space between the road and the concrete block being
utilized as a front step.

Mi ' mat, he thought, falling into his native tongue at the surprise,
the one in front runs like a woman!

He felt as if he had been given a very good, and very unexpected,
present.

Perhaps it was the memory of the warehouse, or perhaps it was the rush
of adrenaline that coursed through her body. It may have been the shout
of "FBI!" she gave, loud as any explosive scream from a martial arts
master as every available erg of energy is focused on the target.

It may even have been the fact that the trailer was not new, or that
April O'Connor had spent hours in the gym to develop lower body strength
even more impressive than what was already granted to her gender.

For whatever reason, the kick April delivered to the trailer door did
not cause it to pop open like a beer can. Instead, it tore the hinge
strip completely out of the light frame of the doorway and sent the
entire assembly skittering across the inside width of the trailer. It
smashed against the far wall and toppled to the side with a crash of
metal and glass.

More important, it left no obstacle to delay, even momentarily, the
entry of April and Beck.

"FBI! Nobody move!" April shouted again, and thumbed on her pocket
flashlight. At that instant, she saw the movement on her left. She spun,
her pistol in a right-handed grip and the flashlight in her left locked
under the gun hand's wrist. In the circle of light at the end of her
extended arms, the sights filled with the chest of a man wide-eyed in
surprise, seated less than a dozen feet away in a folding chair. As he
jerked his own gun upward toward her face, she could see the cylinder in
his revolver already rotating and knew she was about to die.

April pressed her own trigger.

The room lit up as if from a photographer's strobe, the two flashes so
close they appeared as one. Simultaneously, the concussion from the
shots, vicious and flat, pressured her eardrums painfully as the pistol
recoiled against her hand. Without conscious effort, as April O'Connor
had learned in long hours on the firing range, she absorbed the recoil's
energy in her forearm, letting the force of the slide as it snapped back
to battery help her again center the sights on her target.

There was no need. His shot had missed, gone off to who knows-where in
the objective precision of ballistics. Hers had not. The bullet had torn
into the man's left shoulder, and the impact jerked his body to the
side. At the same time, the pistol flew from his right hand, clattering
on the stained carpeting. The first pulse of blood jetted crimson from
the wound.

"Freeze, you son of a bitch!" April screamed, her voice blazing with
what felt like rage. "Do not move or I will shoot!"

Through the ringing in her ears, she heard Beck step up close behind
her.

"I've got this guy," she said, her heart still racing. "Shine your light
on the rest of--"

Something hard exploded into the side of her head, and the man behind
her--the man who was not Beck Casey, the man who had waited motionless
from the shadows outside as she and Casey approached--now watched her
fall heavily to the floor.

Chapter 29.

White Bison County, Montana July 23

Real life is seldom like the movies. In the movies, a blow to the head
of the hero results in what appears little different from a brief nap.

A short time later, the hero awakes, shakes her head to clear the
cobwebs, and proceeds to analyze the intricacies of motive and
opportunity.

The reality of April O'Connor's situation was starkly different.

Despite the crushing force, she was never completely unconscious from
the impact to her head. She could still hear, though the ringing was
magnified far beyond what had been caused by her shot. She could even
see her flashlight where it lay on the trailer floor a few feet from her
head, though now there were two flashlights, one slightly overlapping
the other, and both moving sickeningly in and out of focus.

Against her cheek, she could feel the rough nap of the carpeting that
covered the floor; she was even aware of the sour smell of mildew it
gave off.

But she could not move, not a muscle; not even when two black
shoes--boots, really, ankle high and with nylon zippers along the
side--stepped close to her face. She had no strength in her body, not
even to react when she felt a sharp poke against one of her buttocks.
Then a face, its identical twin again superimposed by the double vision
of the concussion she had suffered, filled her field of view. April felt
a thumb on her eyelid, the one that was uppermost as she lay, and then a
light brighter than the midday sun exploded in her face and was gone
again.

His tests completed, the man who had come up behind April straightened.

He felt an irritated disappointment, as if he had broken a favored toy.

/ struck harder than I intended, he thought, perhaps too hard.

He had seen people die before from a single blow to the head, their
bruised brain seeping blood inside until all function stopped; he had
even killed once or twice this way himself.

But her pupils still respond to light, so we will see. And if she does
not--well, I still have the other.

He knelt beside the motionless woman. With the efficiency of an expert,
he collected her weapon, field gear and personal effects. With a
careless flip of his wrist, he opened her badge carrier.

She is FBI, he thought, unimpressed. Their training leaves much to be
desired, I believe.

A few feet away, the idiot he had brought with him to bring back this
Trippett--American hoodlums have too much muscle, the dark man thought
with scorn, and not enough brains--lay in his own blood, moaning and
muttering in a low voice. His right hand was locked over the wound, and
had stoppered the pulsating arterial bleeding into a slower trickle that
seeped through his fingers. With irritation, the dark man remembered how
his companion's single wild shot had hissed close past his ear. He
stepped over April and bent over the man.

Even in the near-darkness, he could see the black stain that was
spreading from under the man.

/ have no time for fools, the dark man thought, mentally addressing the
moaning figure. If by some miracle you do not die, that will teach you
to sleep when you should be working. He reached into the wounded man's
jacket and removed a set of car keys. Thank you. I will drive myself
now.

Again stepping over the motionless FBI agent, he moved through the hole
where the door had been. Sprawled on the ground outside, one foot still
on the concrete block step and the other folded under at the knee, Beck
Casey lay where he had fallen.

Almost nonchalantly, the man grabbed Beck's shoulder and rolled him
roughly onto his stomach. The flashlight reflected wetly from the blood
matting the hair just above the nape of Beck's neck. The dark man
repeated the test he had made on April, jabbing one forefinger hard
against a cheek of Beck's posterior.

A person can feign unconsciousness in a number of ways. But long ago, in
a dirty little room in Chechnya, he had learned from a battle-hardened
sergeant that no truly conscious person--even one trying to gain a
momentary respite from the interrogator's harshest methods--can refrain
from involuntary tensing the gluteus muscle against such a jab.

As Beck did, though sluggishly. And when the Russian thumbed up an
eyelid to test pupil response, Beck groaned and weakly pulled his head
away.

Satisfied, the Russian squatted and searched Beck, methodically pulling
each pocket inside out. He made a small pile of the contents, examining
each in the flashlight's beam. There was surprisingly little, though
what there was told the dark man the most important fact.

Ah, he said to himself, am I to believe most Americans carry two--no,
make that three--different sets of identity papers? He studied the
photos on each of the driver's licenses and compared them to Beck's
features. So. Without doubt, he is a government operative. I would guess
CIA, and--he fingered the two twenties and a single five-dollar bill in
Beck's wallet--certainly an underpaid one. He smiled at his own joke and
stuffed the money in his own pocket.

And now, my heavy-footed little friend, it seems that the idiot who
drove me here is feeling unwell. Perhaps you could provide me with
directions? Never mind--/ have a good map. He dropped the wallet
carelessly to the ground and picked up one of the other items April had
carried. Well--let us begin, eh ? You have things to tell me before I
go.

Beck Casey was aware that he was being pulled by his arms over what
felt, and tasted, like mud and weeds. His head ached agonizingly, limply
lolling facedown and occasionally bouncing against the uneven ground.
Once, when he mustered enough strength to lift his head a few irritated
inches, he found himself looking at the slightly scuffed, pointed toes
of what appeared to be black leather shoes. He noted, with a remote
curiosity, that they had no laces.

His head fell forward again, and all he could see was the damp grass
over which he was sliding, sliding, sliding, his hands held high in some
powerful grip. His eyelids drooped, and Beck drifted away.

And then they stopped, and he felt himself being lifted like a large,
inert sack, held on his own unsteady legs by pressure against his chest
while something cold tightened around first one wrist, then the other.

Beck's eyelids fluttered open, and he looked into eyes as empty as
death.

He was not quite hanging from, not quite leaning against, a metal
framework. Despite all the rust he could feel powdery against his bare
arms, the frame was unmoving and solid. Beck tilted his head back,
wincing from the sharp pain as his wound pressed against the slightly
inclined I-beam support. Above him, handcuffs that could have been FBI
issue were locked around his wrists, threaded over and around a short,
horizontal length of angle iron. Whatever they used this for, Beck
realized, it had been built to last.

His mind was beginning to clear slightly, and he realized his legs had
also been secured to the steel frame. The dark man who had dragged him
here straightened and stepped back. Then the stranger reached around to
the small of his back and pulled out an object that glinted even in the
light of the thin moon.

"I'm a police officer," Beck said, pushing each word past a tongue that
felt thick and only partially under his command.

"No," said his captor, in a voice that, despite the accent, sounded
almost cheerful to Beck. "I do not believe you are."

He moved closer and bent in a casual manner. Beck felt a tugging at his
waist and the coolness of the predawn air on suddenly bared flesh.

The dark man again stepped back and held the knife close to Beck's face
so that it filled his vision. The blade, Beck could see, was honed razor
sharp, scalloped with serrations almost to its needle-tipped point.

"You must tell me about yourself. And about other things as well."

April O'Connor felt a terrible urgency, though she could not remember
why. It did not matter. She had vomited, and the acid of it still burned
her throat; it did not matter, either. Almost nothing mattered, except
for the voice inside her head, urging her to stand, to kneel, to crawl
if she must--but to go, to get out of this dark and evil-smelling place
now.

Her fingers scrabbled for a hold, and she pushed with first one leg,
then the other. In front of her was only more darkness, punctuated with
an occasional pained sound that she had thought was hers until now.
Something made noises, moved fitfully over there; April did not want to
go in that direction.

She rolled her head, feeling the starburst of more pain as she did,
until she was facing her other side. A rectangular patch--actually, two
of them, though April had begun to understand she was seeing double--was
slightly less dark than its surrounding blackness. It was, the voice
inside told her, a way out; the thought spurred her to increase her
efforts.

By inches at first, she crawled. By the time she got to the doorway, an
infinity later, she had mustered enough strength to push herself to her
hands and knees. She almost decided to rest there awhile, head hanging
and mouth open, until a surprisingly vivid picture came unbidden to her
mind. It was of an olive-skinned man, his shut torn open and two ragged
rents weeping blood, lying open-eyed on a cold concrete floor. She saw
hands that may have been her own frantically pushing hard against the
unmoving chest.

It was, for some forgotten but very important reason, an image that
shamed her and mocked her desire to rest. She pushed herself through the
doorway.

There was a drop of perhaps two feet, and she was barely able to break
her fall with her hands. A concrete block lying on its side scraped her
palms, dripping another measure of pain into the already full bucket of
her agony.

The sky was still alive with stars, though on the far horizon a thinning
of the darkness implied rather than indicated where the sun would
ultimately emerge. Still, it gave April an objective, a direction away
from the blackness she was fleeing.

Her mind was gradually clearing, April realized, at least to a certain
degree. She remembered in snatches of clarity, like seeing individual
scenes from a movie. She recalled approaching the trailer in the night,
kicking through the door. She could picture a man lifting a gun toward
her, and the bright flash seen past her gun sights illuminating
everything for a frozen moment. She remembered calling back to Dr. Casey
to check Casey She stopped short, suddenly frantic. Ignoring the renewed
pain it caused, she swiveled her head in every direction, trying to
probe the darkness surrounding her. The historian had been with her, and
now he was not. That realization, more than any other factor, cut
through the patches of fog that still clouded her mind. It fired April,
fueled her to push herself upright on her knees and then, haltingly, to
her feet. She stood, swaying, and strained her ears to hear around her.

There was something, a sound that did not fit with the other sounds of
the night. It came from her right, somewhere past the slapping noise of
water against rock. April lurched in that direction, unsteady on her
feet.

She had gone only a few yards when she heard it again, much louder this
time and with an undercurrent of agony that raised goose bumps on her
arms. And, separate from it, a low droning voice that sounded almost
conversational. Dimly, she thought she could see the outline of a man
standing in front of what looked like a framework scaffold. A shape she
could not see clearly twisted against the uprights, arms high, hanging.

She took another step, stumbled and then fell again to her hands. Help
him! her mind screamed, and she scrabbled forward again crabwise in the
grass.

Her hands touched metal, a pipe of some sort, and she seized it,
intending to rush forward swinging with all her strength. And then she
felt the grooved foregrip beneath the barrel, and the smooth wood of the
shotgun's stock lying in the grass where she had left it. She snatched
it up in both hands.

Still on her knees, April O'Connor racked the pump action, back and
forward. Using the butt stock to support her, she pushed to her feet.

From her throat burst a wordless scream of fury and challenge and
perhaps terror defied. She staggered toward the figures to her front.

Except now there was only one, hung by the arms from a framework pylon
at the edge of a flooded quarry. April stopped next to it, shotgun at
her shoulder. She saw Beck Casey's eyes look at her wildly, and then
blink in disbelieving recognition. The sound of something heavy, moving
fast, crashed through the underbrush thirty feet away.

April fired into the sound, worked the action of her shotgun and fired
again. The sounds of flight continued, fading with distance. Then she
heard a car motor start up, out of shotgun range, and she fired once
more. She was answered by the sounds of wheels spinning on a gravel
road, speeding away.

She turned to the hanging figure. He was naked from the waist down, and
a trail of blood flowed steadily to the ground down his right thigh.

Before she could speak, he did.

"Get me down from here," Beck said, his words clear through clenched
teeth.

"He's in treatment now," Andi Wheelwright said, the strain in her voice
evident despite the professional tone she affected. "They're stitching
up the knife wound."

She paused, taking a deep breath.

"I guess we're lucky the guy was such a sick son of a bitch," Andi said.
"It's a puncture wound--moderately deep, but not a long slash.

Beck said he stuck the knife into his thigh and just left it there.

He'd ask a question, and give the blade a twist. Patient guy. He
expected to have a long time alone with our boy. I don't want to think
what would have happened if O'Connor hadn't gotten there."

"How's she doing?" Larry Krewell asked. He had not intended to limit the
question to the FBI agent's physical injuries, but he found that he was
relieved when Andi chose to interpret it that way.

"She has a concussion, the doctors say," Andi replied. "The X ray didn't
find any skull fracture, but they're doing an MRI right now.

She'll be in the hospital for a while, but it doesn't look like anything
permanent. Thank God." There was a pause. "The two of them dragged each
other back to their car--a quarter mile over a gravel road. It took an
hour, and Beck says then she argued over who'd make the radio call."

In her tone was grudging admiration.

"So what now, Andi?"

"The second man in the trailer--a local thug, the cops say; probably
just beef hired for the occasion--bled to death before the ambulance
arrived. That leaves Casey as the only one who even knows what Knife Man
looks like. I'll check with the Bureau to see who they can assign to
Casey. With her head injury, I'd guess that O'Connor's out of the game."

"I see."

"Look--suddenly, we're not the only ones who want Trippett, Larry.

Who's the psychopath with the knife? He's the wild card in all this.

He's looking for Trippett, who is out there somewhere carrying around a
bottle full of virus. And I'm sitting here, wasting oxygen. We need to
find that filth."

"And we need Casey, specifically, to look for it. Does that sum it up?"

"Casey will be in pain, but the doctors say he's ambulatory."

Wheelwright frowned at Krewell's expression. "There is no time to shed
tears, Larry. Casey has to do what he has to do."

Krewell nodded.

A slow flush colored Andi Wheelwright's face. "I've read his files,
Larry. Of course I have--look, they brought him out to the Farm to
lecture a class of trainees. He obviously doesn't remember it, but I was
one of them. He was good, Larry. Even after what happened in Russia, he
still is. He' knows biological weaponry; he understands terrorists. We
need his mind on this. All of his mind."

"It's a fine plan," Krewell said, watching her closely. "But what about
his daughter? Are you going to tell him?"

"He can't help her," Andi Wheelwright said. "Nobody can."

Chapter 30.

The White House Washington, D.C. July 23

The President was in his shirtsleeves when Krewell and Carson were
ushered into the Oval Office.

They were not alone. A constant flow of people moved through doors
normally closed, carrying folders, individual sheets of paper, even what
appeared to be rolled-up charts. At the far end of the room, a cadre of
advisors were intent, their faces reflecting the flicker of computer
screens and television monitors around which they worked.

The President waved the two newest visitors to the sofa that covered the
right corner of a large, deep-blue carpet on which was centered the
presidential seal; he sat, with obvious weariness, in the red leather
wingback chair nearby.

The chief executive wasted no time.

"Okay," he said. "Let's hear it."

Carson spoke first. "Mr. President, are you familiar with the acronym
VIX?"

"No. What is it?"

Carson nodded to Krewell, sitting stiffly beside him.

Krewell said, "Yes, sir. VIX stands for Viral Influenza/ Experimental.

It is a prototype bio weapon that was developed in the mid-sixties, only
a few years before President Nixon officially shut down our CBW program.
Agent VIX, as we call it, was--is--a viral weapon based on the same
general viral strain that is today being used against us."

"The United States developed a weapon based on the Spanish flu?" The
President's voice was incredulous and tinged at the edges with fury.

"Not as a lethal agent, Mr. President," Krewell said. "VIX was
intentionally--well, dumbed down, so to speak. Genetically moderated."

"Exactly what is that supposed to mean?" the President demanded.

"As a weapon, VIX was designed solely as an incapacitating agent,"
Carson said. "It was not intended to kill."

"Exactly, Mr. President," Krewell said. "Our scientists used the 1918
virus, yes. But that was largely because, unlike other influenza
strains, it did not lend itself easily to a vaccine. Also because the
target population--combatant soldiers --generally had no acquired
immunity to the strain. They were too young to have been around in
1918."

"Unbelievable," the President said, his lips tight. "Un
^wcfaing-believable."

"Sir, VIX conformed to our standing bio-agent development orders in
place at the time," Krewell protested. "It is not persistent: the virus
was engineered so that ultraviolet radiation from sunlight destroys it
within three to five hours. Most important, it a self-correcting agent.
It acts to trigger an aggressive immune response in those exposed to it.
With VIX, you're sick as hell for a day or so--but then the symptoms
generally subside. By design, it's merely a very bad twenty four-hour
flu."

"Which the United States of America turned into a weapon," the President
said bitterly. "And which we have apparently maintained, in violation of
international treaties that we as a country proposed and signed!"

"As a weapon, VIX has some very attractive features," Carson said. "It
has an extremely high contagion factor.

Physiologically, it spreads through the human body with an impressive
speed. The onset of symptoms is within a twenty- minute time frame-
that's comparable to some of the slower-acting chemical warfare agents.

The psychological impact adds to the effectiveness of VIX. You can
imagine the demoralizing impact of seeing the disease spread almost
before your eyes."

"Billy, the last thing I want to hear right now is how great any of this
filth is," the President said. "I simply cannot understand the reasoning
behind this kind of insanity--particularly now, when it looks as if it
may well destroy all of us."

He gestured at the far end of the room. "See those people down there?

That's the United States government, helpless to stop this country from
disintegrating. Since the news from Russia got out, all hell has broken
loose. We have major riots in New York and Chicago, and martial law has
been completely ineffective. Civilians are taking the law into their own
hands, and we can't stop them. Barricades are up around Salt Lake City
to keep ' carriers' out, manned by regular citizens carrying shotguns
and rifles. They've fired on police who ordered them to disperse. Los
Angeles is being patrolled by the National Guard.

There are all kinds of rumors going around about the Florida outbreak,
and it's got people acting insane. An hour ago, a crowd in Detroit
surrounded a tractor trailer with Florida plates; they set it on fire
and shot the driver when he tried to get out of the cab. It is getting
worse by the minute. God help us if--when--flu cases start showing up in
New York."

The President's voice had risen throughout the tirade, and now it fell
abruptly. "We need a vaccine, dammit--a cure, not another weapon."

"That is the point," Carson said. "VIX and the new virus come from the
same root. They're related--cousins, if you will. But not kissing
cousins."

"I'm too tired for riddles, Billy."

"An hour ago, I received information that an Army researcher had found
something that may be vital. She was comparing VIX with
HINl-Florida--the lethal one."

"And?"

"There may be a way to use VIX to fight it. It's theoretical, but
possible. Dr. Krewell can explain the details better than I."

"Mr. President," Larry Krewell began, "the human immune system uses
three lines of defense against viruses: macro phages antibodies and
killer T-cells. The first two go after the virus itself; they're like
bodyguards, sir. But when the virus gets inside a human cell and takes
it over, macro phages and antibodies are helpless. T-cells are not; they
are ruthless and kill the infected cells. But if the virus spreads in
the body too quickly, T-cells can cause a path of destruction while
never catching up to the disease itself."

"That's what happens with HINl-Florida," Carson added. "Most victims die
of respiratory failure or secondary infections due to the massive tissue
damage. But VIX has been engineered to accelerate the immune process. In
essence, it shortstops the virus before it can cause extensive tissue
and organ damage."

"What does this have to do with the Florida virus?"

Carson took a deep breath, and wished he could light a cigarette here.

"In humans, Mr. President, VIX triggers a sharply accelerated immune
response. Specifically, it combats the infective process with hyper
production of macro phages and antibodies. Essentially, VIX stimulates
the body to successfully fight its own infection--for the most part,
before T-cells go into action and cause further damage."

Carson took a deep breath to add emphasis. "And that response, Mr.
President, also appears to effectively act against the HINl-Florida
virus."

The President looked at Carson with unblinking eyes. When he spoke,
there was a new inflection in his voice.

"Do I hear you right? You're saying this VIX cures people who have this
new disease?"

Krewell answered first, shaking his head firmly. "Mr. President, we
don't know that," he said. "There has been no clinical testing--and,
sir, there is not time for anything that would give us a conclusive
answer to that. People already infected with the killer virus may be
beyond any help. But VIX may give you a chance to save those who are not
yet infected."

"It does appear likely that the two strains cannot exist in the same
body," Carson added. "Not simultaneously. VIX appears to overwhelm the
flu--to crowd it out, as it were."

"Can we use it as--I don't know, as a kind of vaccine?"

"It may confer some degree of subsequent immunity," Krewell said
cautiously. "Certainly, antibodies are generated, in prodigious volume,
during an acute VIX infection. H1N1 is an engineered virus.

It's been artificially enhanced and modified, but some of the VIX
antibodies might act against it." He made a gesture that conveyed, for
an instant, his own frustration. "At least, that's one theory. The
research simply isn't there, Mr. President."

"It may not be a cure or a vaccine, but Agent VIX might work as a
firebreak," Carson insisted. "Herd immunity isn't a theory." The
national security director turned toward the President. "We think VIX
gives a fighting chance. Perhaps our only chance."

"You have a recommendation." It was not a question.

Carson nodded. "You order an intentional, widespread release of VIX--as
a first priority, in a broad, concentric ring moving into the Florida
Quarantine Region. We would then do likewise around New York, in both
cases using existing VIX stocks." He looked at the President with steady
eyes and admitted to the violation of international law.

"There are limited supplies available for this purpose--here and at
Porton Down, in England. Enough to initiate the VIX infection, at least.
If successful, it will then begin to spread on its own."

"Explain to me--precisely--how this will stop the epidemic."

"Sir, a virus cannot live outside a host--in the case of the killer
virus, an unprotected human," Krewell reminded him. "Unless it finds new
hosts to infect, it burns out and is gone. That's what vaccination does.
It takes people out of the pool of vulnerable hosts, which breaks the
chain of contagion. Even if you can't immunize everybody, it makes it
much harder for the virus to get to the unprotected ones.

That's the herd immunity Mr. Carson referred to."

"If we release Agent VIX," Carson said, "we believe it will, at the very
least, slow down the wildfire we're facing in Florida. The way you
contain a forest fire is with backfires, and that's what we can do with
VIX."

"It's a race, Mr. President," Krewell added. "If we can get enough
people infected with Agent VIX, in a broad enough band around the foci
of contagion, we believe that we can set up a herd immunity scenario."

"If they are infected with VIX," the President said, "they can't get the
influenza."

"In a nutshell, Mr. President, that's it."

The President thought for a moment. "Forest fires can jump over backfire
zones. What if the virus jumps past our band?"

"Very quickly," Carson said, "there would be no such band, sir. Agent
VIX is highly contagious, Mr. President. That was the major reason it
was considered experimental. No vaccine or antidote was successfully
developed to prevent it from spreading to our own troops, which made it
impractical as an operational weapon. If we release it, we must assume
it will spread very quickly throughout the United States. On its own."

"In essence, you're recommending we use VIX to infect the entire
country?"

Krewell and Carson exchanged glances.

"Yes, Mr. President," Carson said. "If it is going to be done, it has to
be done quickly, before the killer virus spreads further. As Dr. Krewell
said, we cannot know for certain that VIX will save people who are
already infected. Plus, there's reason to believe the flu virus has the
ability to jump species, into pigs and migratory waterfowl. If we don't
act, they could form a reservoir of contagion from which we may never
escape."

"How quickly can this be done?" the President asked. "If I concur."

"We're making the arrangements now," Krewell said. "Contingent on your
authorization."

"My authorization," the President repeated. "Give me the down side.

What haven't you told me?"

"First, VIX is so contagious that it could easily spread outside the U.
S.," Carson said. "Frankly, I believe this is desirable. But even if we
made the attempt to minimize this, the possibility is there.

Technically, Mr. President, it would be illegal. In effect, we'd be
using a biological weapon in violation of numerous treaties and
international law."

"The flu is highly contagious too," the President said. "If it's between
H1N1 and VIX, I think most governments would make the obvious choice."

"The choice isn't quite that simple, sir. VIX was designed as an
incapacitating agent against military targets," Krewell said. "Mainly
young, healthy people whose immune system could deal with the overload.

Even so, in tactical situations where we would employ VIX, our
projections indicate a fatality rate of about two percent."

The President looked at Carson with hard eyes. "You're saying that if we
use this, we intentionally kill two percent of the American people?"

"More," Carson said, and his voice was unflinching. "Widespread use will
carry VIX infection far beyond its originally intended targets. To the
elderly and the very young, persons with compromised immune systems.
Other population groups probably have risk factors we can't even
envision yet. When you factor in these groups, the projected percentage
increases."

"How much?"

"Statistically, between four and seven percent," Krewell said. "As a
realistic working percentage, we're using five percent."

The President sat very still, and Krewell could almost see him working
the math in his mind, over and over. Krewell had done the same himself,
done the horrific sums, the coldblooded division, the ruthless
subtraction.

The result always came out the same. The population of the United
States, rounded off, came to about two hundred eighty million persons;
world population was six billion souls. Five percent of those totals
came to' Three hundred million people," the President said. "If I order
this, the chances are that I will kill three hundred million
people--fourteen million of them Americans."

"If you do not," Carson said, "you doom the rest."

Krewell spoke up. "There is something more to consider," he said. "The
symptoms of both diseases are virtually identical. For HINl-Florida,
we've seen some wide swings in the incubation period between infection
and the onset of symptoms --for some people, it's days. Others seem to
succumb in eight hours or less. There's a possibility the flu has
already spread and is simply incubating in many people who have not yet
shown symptoms."

"And?" The President seemed not to understand.

"Well, sir," Krewell said. "If we release VIX on a widespread basis,
we're certain to see flu like cases spring up all over--certainly in the
U.S. and very likely elsewhere if it does spread to other countries.
Millions upon millions of people will become ill within a short time
span. We'll incapacitate whoever is still working in emergency services
and the health system--doctors and nurses will be as sick as anybody
else. Same with law enforcement, the military. VIX will literally shut
everything down, very quickly. But--" His voice trailed off.

"But what?"

"Well, Mr. President," Krewell said, "as I said, the symptoms and
antibody signatures of both are identical. We won't know which virus is
activating the disease, the VIX or the killer flu."

The President clearly did not understand the implications. After a
moment, his national security advisor spoke up.

"What Dr. Krewell means, sir, is that we won't know with certainty if
the plan is working," Carson said. "Not until it's too late to do
anything else. Except die."

Outside Helena, Montana July 23

His leg, where one of the shotgun pellets had torn out a chunk of flesh,
stung under the dressing he had improvised. He had easily stopped what
little bleeding there had been. But now, after two hours spent parked
casually in the vast parking area of a modern-looking rest stop, the
wound had stiffened somewhat.

It hurts, he thought, but worse- it is embarrassing. Forced to run like
a rabbit, by a woman whose brains were all but pouring out of her ears!
Ah, Ilya--it is well your old comrades are not here to see this, and to
laugh at your ineptitude.

He had been caught up in the dance of interrogation, too preoccupied in
planning the rhythms and the choreography of pain to pay attention to
the noises she must have made as she approached the tableau. Only the
sound of the shotgun's pump mechanism--hear that once, and survive it,
and you never forget again, he told himself wryly--only that sound had
penetrated the exclusive relationship he had begun to establish with the
man. He counted himself lucky to have escaped through the low underbrush
with only this scratch as a souvenir.

The car was back on the interstate now, cruising at a speed only
slightly above the posted speed limit. It was an untroubled drive on a
fine road--particularly, he thought, one built through these most
impressive mountains. Ilya considered himself a fair person, and
ungrudgingly admired the quality of the highways he had found in this
country. With the possible exception of the Autobahn, which he had
driven a few months earlier while on another assignment, he had never
seen finer roads.

Ilya regretted the lack of time with the man. He had resisted strongly,
though the Russian had anticipated this from a fellow professional. But
the breaking point certainly would have come; both of them knew it, he
was certain. It was this shared knowledge, this ... intimacy that had
accounted for his inattention to his surroundings.

Unfortunate. He nodded silently. On so many levels.

Still, he now knew--almost for certain--that the CIA was working
hand-in-glove with the federal police. This, he knew, was unusual for
Americans. With only a few exceptions, they typically performed as
wolverines locked in the same cage. Cooperation was rare, mutual
animosity usually fierce.

So this Trippett and his play-soldier militia must have great
significance to them too, he thought. Even more interesting, if they are
looking for this man, it is because they themselves do not have him. He
is still a viable threat, and my assignment is still unresolved.

No matter. He would look, and he would find Trippett. And then he would
ask him the questions his employer wished answered. Ilya had no doubt
the man would gratefully provide the information that was required, at
some point in their conversation.

In his experience, almost everybody did.

State Hwy. 241 Mielcarz, North Carolina July 23

For Deborah Stepanovich, her eyes burning and her hands shaking in near
exhaustion, the four hundred-plus miles she had traveled in the past
seven hours had been a trip through hell.

It had not lacked for demons--many of them, she understood, of her own
imagining, though that made them no less frightening. Neither had it
lacked for sulfurous flames, a particularly vivid, dark orange corona
against the black summer sky over several of the cities she had skirted.

Since leaving Virginia, Deborah had scanned the radio frequencies. Most
were static filled, or--to her mind, worse--dead air. The few radio
stations that were still broadcasting told tales of martial law, of
riots breaking out even in smaller cities. There was little about the
flu that she considered "news"; but the broadcasters still on the air
made up for that shortage with an excess of rumors and wild conjecture.

Deborah had consulted her road atlas frequently, avoiding the main roads
and skirting any city of significant size. She had skimmed the eastern
edge of the Alleghenies, and their imposing bulk seen through her
passenger window felt comforting and serene.

She had felt herself in personal danger only once, when halfway across
North Carolina a two-vehicle covey had suddenly appeared in her rearview
mirror. The first, a rust dappled pickup truck, had spun from a side
road seconds after she had sped past. Behind the pickup, a Firebird had
fishtailed onto the pavement in turn, their wheels spitting gravel and
dust.

Her stomach had dropped as the vehicles mushroomed in her mirrors, and
for the first time Deborah wished she possessed a gun, even a knife.

She pressed harder on the accelerator, but when she looked up again the
pickup was so close she could read the letters on its grille: F rd, it
read, the missing letter like a gap-toothed leer.

And then the truck swerved to the side and roared past with a
broken-muffler flatulence that she felt even through her closed windows.
Before her mind could register this fact, the other car shot past; from
the Firebird, a girl who could not have been older than twelve waved
excitedly from the passenger seat.

Deborah Stepanovich blew out the breath she had not realized she was
holding, and willed herself to stop trembling. There was a moment of
elation that flooded through her; then she felt the old anger rise--not
surprisingly, at Beck.

Her temper flared. Damn him!

For an instant, she thought about what could have happened, what she had
expected was about to occur; vivid images, some of them pornographic in
their violence, flashed across her mental cinema.

He should have been here to help. But he never was, not when I needed
She stopped short.

"Is this what it felt like, Beck?" she said aloud. "Is this what is was
like out there in your world? Every day, every minute?"

She had seldom thought about that side of it.

But Katie is in danger and IAgain she stopped herself.

I've spent my adult life without his help.

"And I did pretty fucking well on my own," Deborah said, again aloud,
and was surprised at how much she savored the profanity. Despite
herself, she smiled. "All on my fucking own."

She drove on, not knowing there was a smile on her face.

Deborah saw only a few other cars before dusk fell, and none of them
took any notice of her.

Outside Gaffney, South Carolina, Deborah filled her fuel tank at a BP
station. There, she found that an executive order prohibiting fuel sales
simply translated into a per-gallon black market price that roughly
approximated that of single malt Scotch.

The terms were non-negotiable: cash in hand. Deborah did not flinch as
she handed the attendant two hundred dollar bills, which he folded into
his pocket with a nervous grin. But she supervised, tight-lipped and
intent, as he filled the tank. She spoke sharply at the end, and glared
until he topped off the last few ounces. She even pretended not to hear
what he muttered as he replaced the hose in the pump.

Then she drove off, her stomach fluttering and her heart pounding madly.

Deborah swung far to the east of Atlanta, figuring to avoid whatever
structures might be in place there, whether by law enforcement or those
who defy it.

But even the most reasoned plans go awry in the face of reality; none of
the alternate routes she traced on her map took her toward her
destination. She pressed on for a while on roads that ran, more or less,
due south; twice she found herself lost, even with her map open on the
passenger seat beside her.

Finally, just before the nighttime darkness grew complete, Deborah
looked up through her windshield and mentally sighed. Above her idling
Mercedes, the sign at the crossroads intersection pointed west. A
blue-and-white shield gleamed in her high beams.

Interstate 85 it is, I guess, she told herself. Here goes nothing.

Ninety minutes later, she was one of the handful of vehicles speeding
along the concrete ribbon of the interstate. To the north, a faint
flickering glow marked where the skyline of Atlanta should have been;
apparently, electrical power had failed, at least in the central
business district. Her detour had added a hundred miles, and brought her
only a dozen or so miles south of the metropolis.

But Deborah was past Atlanta now, and closer to where she knew, in her
heart, Katie waited for her arrival. She sped up, slightly, at the
thought.

She glanced at the sign as it flashed past.

MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA, it read, 192 MILES.

Chapter 33.

Fort Walton Beach, Florida July 23

If he pulled back the black-out drape slightly, Ray Porter could look
out over the football field a scant fifty yards away. Occasionally he
saw movement, dim figures moving ghostlike amid the canvas village.

Most then disappeared into the darkness of the field, bearing what he
assumed were stretchers.

Briefly, Porter wondered whether what they carried was alive or dead.

He could not tell. The lights that the engineers had strung between the
tents hung like a pale yellow necklace carelessly tossed, its weak glow
waxing and waning with the fitful surges of the generators.

Here, in the elementary school gymnasium they had converted into a
testing facility, illumination was anything but scarce.

No, Porter thought, and behind the acrylic face shield of the
physician's breathing apparatus his lips twisted wryly. That's not quite
accurate.

It was light that was plentiful--an otherworldly blue white light that
filled every corner of the gymnasium with a cold glare. As for
illumination--well, he thought, we'll see how much of that we have here
soon. Very soon. Porter let the curtain drop, snapping the dark UV
shield back over his helmet's faceplate before he turned back to the
room.

"Dr. Porter? We're ready to start."

The voice was pitched low, but even so the physician could hear the
near-exhaustion in the tone. It was not, Porter knew, a good sign. The
whole team had been working nonstop, first on outbreak evaluation and
then--after CDC had been advised that Fort Detrick was sending a very
special package for Porter's people to live-test--on preparing a
jury-rigged containment system. They were all tired.

And tired people make mistakes.

Which we damn well can't afford, Porter reminded himself wordlessly.

Certainly not with this damnable stuff.

Porter had been briefed on the virulence of VIX and on the potential it
carried for both good and ill. Of course he knew "Major Barbara"

Jones--biological research and epidemiology are part of the same elite
circle; everybody called her that, albeit behind her back--and during
the conference call they had patched between Washington, USAMRIID,
CDC-Atlanta and here, the Army researcher had been unable to keep the
excitement from her voice.

"The lab work is sound, Ray," Jones had insisted. "VIX will definitely
stimulate the immune system in any subject, even one already infected
with your H1N1-Florida virus. You should see hyper production of
antibodies within an hour of VIX exposure--and because the base virus
was the parent organism for both VIX and your killer flu, the antibodies
should be effective on both."

Ray Porter had grunted, a noncommittal response he hoped sounded
professional. But when he spoke, he had carefully avoided the word
"cure."

"As a theory, I concur," Porter said. "As a treatment therapy,
Barb--well, I have concerns. VIX may work or it may not. But if it
escapes and makes it into the general population ." He paused, leaving
the words unsaid. "A live subject test in the kind of field conditions
we face here is very, very risky."

"Riskier than what? Than flying an infected subject out of the contagion
zone to test up here?"

"That's simply not going to happen, Doctors."

It was a new voice, one that Ray Porter had known belonged to the only
person with the power to make this decision final. The voice spoke
firmly, in the manner of one accustomed to commanding others.

"Dr. Porter, you will devise a suitable containment there, in Fort
Walton Beach--one that will prevent VIX from posing an immediate threat
outside. No, please don't interrupt, Doctor. You will receive a
sufficient supply of VIX to test its effectiveness on persons already
infected with the killer flu; you will use as many subjects as needed to
obtain results that will be representative of the U.S. population as a
whole."

The voice had softened, and for a moment Ray Porter felt a twinge of
profound sympathy for its owner.

"People will die as a direct result of your tests, Dr. Porter. For that,
I accept complete responsibility." Then the tone hardened again.

"You have your orders. Make the arrangements, and proceed."

"Yes, Mr. President," Porter had said, but the connection had already
been broken.

Now, only a few hours afterward, Ray Porter turned from the shrouded
window to survey the school gymnasium his team had labored to turn into
a microcosm of Level 4 containment. The ultraviolet lights had been
commandeered from tanning salons they had found in the Yellow Pages,
rewired and configured in a ring around the gym's center court.

The lights surrounded a bubble of clear vinyl that in its original
incarnation had been designed as a low-cost greenhouse; it had come from
a garden supply store a few blocks south, as had the hand-pump sprayers
now being used on its exterior surfaces. Empty gallon jugs of household
bleach littered the far reaches of the parqueted floor.

Other elements --ductwork, blowers, and more--had also been
incorporated, Rube Goldberg-like.

It was an ingenious design, readily duplicated in field conditions
anywhere. Or so the team hoped.

Inside the bubble, a half-dozen camp beds held the forms- some
thrashing, some moving only feebly--of what were now the most important
people on earth. Like worker bees attending a comatose queen, members of
Porter's team moved among them, testing and measuring.

And waiting.

"Dr. Porter."

Ray tore his attention from the tableau and turned to the spacesuited
figure who now stood at his elbow.

"There's a woman outside--a Dr. Mayer--who insists on talking with you
immediately. She says it's urgent."

"What do you mean, gone?" Ray Porter's voice was frankly skeptical, even
a little suspicious.

Carol took a deep breath, wishing she felt less like a traitor.

"I mean gone," she repeated. "Missing. Nowhere to be found. Out of
here."

Porter snorted, the sound odd from behind the Plexiglas face shield "Not
likely, Dr. Mayer. Not from here."

"Look," Carol said. "They're two teenage girls. They were showing no
symptoms; they are not incapacitated in any way."

She waved her arm, a broad gesture that covered the entire grounds of
the stadium. Outside the illumination that dappled the canvas treatment
tents, an unyielding blackness reigned. Only a thin slice of the
stadium's perimeter fencing could be seen.

"Those are chain-link fences. There's not even much of a moon tonight.

Where are the guards? The only ones I've seen here are stationed around
your incoming operations. The people here are too sick to want to
escape."

Carol forced herself to remain calm.

"Correct me if I am wrong, Dr. Porter. My guess is that you did not
choose a high school football field with the intention of preventing
someone from going over the wall-certainly not two kids who think
they're healthy and feel like leaving."

Porter looked hard at Carol. "You're certain they're not still here,
somewhere?"

"I'm certain I can't find them," Carol retorted, "and I looked. If I
were you, I'd start looking too. And you should ask someone to look in
the parking lot of the clinic. That's where I parked my pickup."

"You're worried about your truck?"

"No, Dr. Porter. I'm worried about the spread of this virus. You see, my
keys are missing too."

Chapter 34.

Helena Memorial Hospital Helena, Montana July 23

The two of them looked a mess.

The back and right sides of April's head were heavily bandaged; bruises,
abrasions and deep scratches on her face, arms and hands were scabbing
souvenirs of her crawl through the brush and rocks. Beck's head was
bandaged too: an X of adhesive tape held the gauze pad over the shaved
patch where the doctors had taken six stitches. He sat in the visitor's
chair, his heel resting on the foot of April's hospital bed. His pant
leg at the thigh was tight over its thick cocoon of bandages. Gauze and
tape also covered his wrists, where the weight of his body had forced
the handcuffs to bite deep into the flesh.

Frank Ellis would have felt even more responsible than he already
did--should have known pairing O'Connor with this damn CIA spook was
asking for trouble, he berated himself-except both of his charges were
in such high spirits that at first he wondered if they had been given an
excess of painkillers. Then the realization hit the FBI supervisor:
April and Beck were simply glad to be alive. Not many hours before,
neither had expected to be.

"She snores," Beck bitched happily. "And not a dainty little whistle,
either. The damn windows rattle."

"Nobody forced you to sit there," April countered. "You could have hung
around the cafeteria, tried hitting on the nurses. Play on their
sympathy, maybe."

It had been like this in the room since Ellis entered almost a half hour
before. He understood the two were performing --partly for him, but
mostly for each other. It was the same kind of postgame bravado that
surfaces in any contest where the underdog pulls out a close,
come-from-behind victory. There was no mention of the dark man they had
both survived, and Ellis understood that too.

The only break had been right after his arrival. April had introduced
the two men, and Beck had immediately asked for the status of the search
for his daughter. Ellis had looked perplexed --no request for status and
location of the missing girl had been relayed by Andi Wheelwright--then
covered with professional ease, citing a litany of treatment centers and
CDC field facilities where the name of Katie Casey had not shown up on
any lists.

"That's good news, Dr. Casey," Ellis had insisted, remembering from his
training classes at Quantico not to put too much obvious sincerity into
his tone. "It improves the chances of her being outside the contagion
ring. Your daughter may even have made it out of the state before the
quarantine was ordered."

Beck had eyed Ellis without expression, though the FBI man imagined he
could see the wheels spinning behind Casey's impassive demeanor. In his
peripheral vision, he noted the way April O'Connor captured it all, her
eyes flickering between the other two.

Finally Beck spoke. "You'll keep looking?"

"Every agency involved will keep looking," Ellis had replied, and
realized that he meant it. Mentally, he made a note to alert every FBI
facility to press hard to locate this man's daughter; he made a second
note to find out why Andi Wheelwright had not already done so.

At that moment, the telephone on the table between the beds rang, and
the shrill sound shattered the somber mood that had descended.

Beck won the almost-adolescent race. He snatched the phone from under
April's reaching fingers, and grinned in giddy triumph.

"O'Connor's Seafood Shack," he said into the instrument. "You got the
time, we've got the crabs." He ignored April's mock-enraged hiss and
listened to the voice at the other end. "Hey, Larry." He winked at
April, careful to hold the phone out of her reach. "Nah -we're fine.

Be out of here in no time." He listened for a moment. "Yeah, they're
both here."

A pause, and then Beck broke into a broad grin. "Sure, I'll tell her.

Hold on."

He cupped a hand over the receiver, then turned to April. "Dr. Krewell
says some county cop named Mcguire's been calling in every half hour,
trying to find you," Beck said, and watched as the FBI agent's ears
turned pink. "Aha. April's got a boyfriend," he crooned in a mischievous
singsong, then raised his hands in mock-terror as she groped for
something to throw.

"Sure, I'll tell her," Beck said, sounding stronger than Krewell had
expected. "Hold on." As he waited on the line, Krewell half-heard the
buzz of conversation in the background. Then there was a loud clatter,
almost like a lamp falling to the floor, and the unmistakable sounds of
laughter.

"You behave, dammit," Beck's voice came over the line, sounding stern,
"or I'll have them tie you to your bed." Then he also laughed. It had
been days since Krewell had last heard genuine humor in Beck's voice.

He regretted being the one to crush it.

"Yeah, Larry," Beck said. "I'm back."

"When things are bad, they just get worse. We have a re port from New
York City. They caught a guy in a boat on the Hudson, figured he was
trying to hightail it out of town. He tried to make a run for it, and a
police sharpshooter in a helicopter had to put a round in him."

"Dead?"

"Yeah," Krewell said. "They searched the boat and found a bunch of
pretty vicious pamphlets in a bag on board. Seems the guy was a member
of one of those militia outfits--something called the Legionnaires of
the Empire State. The guy's name was Dickie Trippett."

"I don't suppose that's a coincidence."

"He's Orin's cousin."

"Uh-huh. So?"

"They found something else too. Three pressurized cans, one of ' open.
Looks like the virus has made it to New York. And I'd bet that Orin is
carrying the same package his cousin had. CDC's field lab in New York is
testing the contents now."

"Why bother?" Beck asked, and there was bitterness in his voice.

In the silence that followed, he sensed that Krewell wanted to confide
in him. He waited for what seemed like a long time.

"We may have a chance--maybe," he said. "One of the voodoo priests out
at Fort Detrick has come up with an idea. It sounds dicey, but it's the
only one we have left."

After Ellis left, April and Beck returned to something closer to their
normal personalities. The banter slowed, and finally ground to a halt as
the two retreated into their own thoughts. April surprised herself: she
found herself thinking about Beck's antics, and didn't know whether to
be touched, amused or alarmed. There was nothing sexual about the way he
treated her--nothing overtly so, that is. In her experience, few
people--none of them male--could make the jump to inter gender
friendship without at least a brief sexual speculation.

Still, it would be good to have a friend.

"You asleep?" Beck's voice startled her.

"Just thinking," she said, and was silent for a minute. "Leg hurt much?"

Beck grunted, his mind obviously elsewhere. "The guy, the
Russian--obviously, he was waiting for Trippett."

"Yeah. Probably. So?"

"So the guy wanted to know who I was, who sent me-why I was with an FBI
agent. He had a lot of questions, but he didn't ask the obvious one."

"Which is?"

"He didn't find Trippett at the trailer. So why didn't he ask if I had
an idea where to look next?"

Beck frowned, as if wrestling with a stubborn mathematical equation.

"He already knew," he finally said aloud. "Or he thinks he knows where
Trippett is now." He rubbed his eyes in frustration. "I'm not getting
it. My head's still fogged from these pills they gave me."

"I'm kind of blurred over, too," April admitted. "You're trying too
hard, Beck. Relax, and it'll come to you. Drift for a while."

"Uh-huh," Beck said, doubtfully. He did not want to relax; he did not
want his mind to drift. He did not like the thoughts it drifted toward.

When Beck had been in the hands of the Russian Mafiya, what had
sustained him longer than he had thought possible was a single belief:
that within the vast apparatus of the organization for which he worked,
wheels were turning. A rescue was--had to be--both inevitable and
imminent.

What had finally broken him had been neither the psychoactive drug
injections nor even the often-hideous pain his captors had inflicted.

It had been the realization that there could be, would be no rescue. The
revelation that, in the end, nobody was out there to come for him.

Before his capture, he had believed that he had two families. One was
his wife and child, the other the CIA.

By the second week in the hands of the Mafiya, he no longer believed he
would ever see Deborah and Katie again. In his guilt and shame, he told
himself that was even for the best: he had long been too careless with
their love, he knew, drawing on it like a spendthrift draws on a shared
account until it is bankrupt.

Finally, when the interrogation had been at its most violent, he had
pushed Deborah and Katie outside the torture chamber, locking the door
behind them and shattering the key. It was an act of simple
self-preservation: their very existence made Beck excruciatingly
vulnerable to both hope and despair.

As for the CIA, which had asked for his loyalty and trust, which had
demanded so much from him--he had waited, with the inculcated faith of
the professional. In the end, the Company had coldly given back ...
nothing. At that moment, under the renewed attentions of the Mafiya
technician, he realized that he had lost both of his families.

Since then, he had been empty, unwilling or unable to regain either of
them.

Yes, and that's why you would have cracked like an eggshell this time--a
lot faster, too, Beck told himself acidly. Admit it--you were ready to
tell him anything to keep it from happening. And would have, if she
hadn't come stumbling out of the dark with that beautiful gun in her
hands.

Beck glanced at April, and saw her staring fixedly at the ceiling above
her head.

He wondered if, in her mind's eye, she too saw a thin Moorish moon in a
black sky. And whether she too heard, mingled with the slapping of water
against rock, a merciless voice offering the urgent, yearned-for relief
of a quick death.

He hoped not; he would not wish that on anyone else.

Then the bedside telephone rang again. This time, April answered. She
spoke--at first, with a wary expression. Gradually, her features
relaxed, then brightened. And after a few moments more--during which she
laughed three times, by Beck's count--April pushed the receiver in
Beck's direction.

"It's for you, double-oh-seven," she said. "Remember my '," Deputy
Mcguire? Said if we still want to find Trippett, maybe he can help.
Wants to know if we're still interested."

As Beck snatched at the receiver, she plucked it back out of reach.

"I said we were," April told Beck. "Please note the pronoun. We're going
out of here together, even if I have to commandeer a wheelchair."

Chapter 35.

Denver, Colorado July 23

Orin Trippett knew better than to call any of his contacts directly,
even from a pay telephone. He, like all members of his militia, was well
briefed on the dangers associated with any form of electronic
communication.

"NSA's been intercepting every phone call in the continental United
States for more than fifteen damn years," he had told his people,
reciting the information he and the other platoon officers had culled
from various newsletters and militia-oriented Web sites. "Same with
fax--and now, email. It all goes through computers looking for key words
they've got flagged."

He had cocked his head quizzically at the group.

"You want to have the atf., the FBI, maybe even the goddamn Boy Scouts
show up at your door?" he asked. "Well, then--all you gotta do is use
the words '' and '' in the same phone call. I guarantee y'all have
company real quick."

The line never failed to bring down the house. Everybody always seemed
honestly amused, if in an outraged sort of way. Widespread illegal
surveillance, electronic or not, was just more proof that "the G" was
capable of any abuse.

Hell, it might even be true, he thought to himself. But this sure ain't
no time to find out.

Now, still tired from the circuitous drive along backcountry roads that
had avoided any police roadblocks, Orin wedged the car between two
similarly battered-looking vehicles. The sun was a half hour away from
rising, and he walked down a still-darkened street on Denver's gritty
southwest side.

It was a neighborhood of dirt driveways and rusted pickup trucks, with
the occasional chrome-laden Harley secured by a chain to the porch.

These were working-class houses, their windows darkened hours before by
residents who were usually awake to greet the dawn from jobs on the
early shift. Occasionally, a dog barked at the echoes of Orin's
footsteps on concrete chipped and cracked.

Midway down the block, he climbed the steps to an asphalt-shingled
bungalow fronted with a weather-grayed porch. He knocked--softly at
first, then with a louder impatience. Finally, a light deep inside the
structure snapped on and Orin saw movement behind the door's curtained
glass.

"Orin? That you, boy?"

"Let me in, Cappie."

The door opened, wide enough for him to slip into the house.

Inside, a heavyset man in a soiled green T-shirt and boxers broke into a
wide grin. He shifted the pistol he held, a blue steel Colt Python, to
his left hand and extended his right.

"Damn, boy--we've been wondering if you got out." Cappie dropped his
unshaken hand, awkward under Trip pett's unblinking eyes. "I guess you
heard. They kilt Bobby. Gil, too."

"I was there, Cappie."

"Sure. Sure, I know you was. Hey, you want a beer? Some coffee?"

"What I want, Cappie--what I dearly want, more than anything else in the
fucking world--is to find out how the goddamn feds knew to come lookin'
in the warehouse."

"How'm I supposed to--"

"Bitch had a fuckin' warrant, Cappie." Orin's voice was still low, but
carried the intensity of a laser. "She and that spic waved it right in
my face. Somebody's talking. They knew where to look for the '16s."

"Bullshit," Cappie said, and now his voice was angry too. "If somebody
talked, why would the feds come looking now? Damn, boy--we moved them
guns outta there three days ago!"

Orin was in no mood for his subordinate's logic. "And then we lose the
Jap nerve gas, too," he said. "Fuck did you go off to? Gil and Bobby go
down, so you just take the hell off?"

"I was shooting too," Cappie protested. "I had my Russian AK. I burned
up two full clips, all I had, out the side window. Damn, same time's I
was trying to drive the truck, boy! Then you was gone, and I seen Bobby
and Gil take it. All the shooting, you knowed the cops had to be on the
way. What'd you want me to do? Wait around and surrender to '?"

"Seems that's what you wanted me to do."

Cappie threw up his hands, the gun still gripped in his left. "Jesus
Lord! Okay, I'm sorry you got left. I'm sorry I ain't got X-ray eyes so
I coulda seen the Spanish guy hadn't shot you dead."

There was a noise from the back of the house, and Trip pett's head
swiveled so quickly the tendons popped loudly. His eyes, narrowed to
mere slits, darted to Cappie's face.

"Fuck you got back there?"

"Jesus, Orin--it's just Lubella. Lubella Tompkins. Bobby Touchette's
cousin, okay?" He raised his voice. "Honey? C'mon out here and say in to
Orin."

A woman of perhaps thirty, her features sharp and feral, stepped from
the bedroom darkness into the-long living room. She wore a man's pocket
T-shirt that fell just below the junction of her thin legs; as she
moved, the small cones of her breasts bounced against the fabric. She
stared at Orin for a long moment, her expression cold; then she moved to
the dining table and picked up a pack of cigarettes.

"What you say, Orin? You want Lubella to fix up something to eat? She
don't mind--right, baby doll?"

The match flared, and the pool of light it cast around her face caught
her in an eyes-tight grimace as she brought her cigarette to the flame.

Lubella drew the smoke in deeply, and exhaled it with a sibilance that
was sharp and disapproving, "Cook your own damn food," she said.
"Lincoln freed the slaves, or ain't ya heard?"

Cappie colored. "Damn it, Lubella, I said to--"

"Up yours," Lubella overrode him. "I'm going back to bed. You make a
mess, I ain't cleaning it up tomorrow." She took several steps, then
turned at the door. "Whatever you two got in them pea-brains of yours,
leave me the hell out of it," she said evenly.

"You don't know nuthin' ' it," Cappie said.

"I know I ain't gonna get killed like poor Bobby," she said. "You take
your machine guns and your poison shit somewheres else."

Both men watched the door close behind her, and heard the sharp click of
the lock.

Cappie stood for a moment as if pole axed.

"I'll be damned," he said. He looked at Orin, a helpless expression on
his face. "Fuckin' women. She don't know shit ' it, Orin. Hell--I don't
know shit, either. "Cept that I'm on your side, man. You know that."

"Somebody tipped the feds," Orin repeated. "You got any thoughts about
that, Cappie?"

"Yeah, but you ain't gonna like it. They went to the warehouse because
they knew you was workin' there. They was fishin', man. Somebody pushed
a button on some damn computer, and your rap sheet popped up.

Uh-uh, Orin, If they'd been tipped guns was there, they'd of sent a lot
more than four people."

After a moment, Orin's own features relaxed.

"The spic guy was atf.," Orin said finally. The hostility with which he
had entered had evaporated, and in its place was an attitude of casual
calm. "When I got free of that fed bitch, he was inside on his
little-bitty walkie-talkie yelling for help. Shit, I almost run right
into him in the dark. Knocked the flashlight right out of his damn
hand."

"I heard some shooting in there."

Orin shook his head in contempt. "I got out the back ' he even drew his
gun, man. Heard him stumblin' round in the dark. That musta been when
the fucker knocked over the crate with the nerve gas."

Cappie forehead furrowed. "I heard he got shot by one of his own."

"Maybe. But by then, he was a dead man walkin'."

"Damn," Cappie said. "Think I'd rather catch a bullet."

Orin shrugged. "Probably never knew what hit him."

"Too bad about the sarin, though. Coulda come in handy with the Denver
thing."

"Yeah, well. Can't cry over spilt nerve gas, huh?" Orin chuckled at his
own joke. "

"Sides, gotta figure it took down one fed. And, hell--we still got that
other shit the Jap brought. Gets down to brass tacks, a little bit of
anthrax goes a long way."

"You still good to go?" Cappie asked. "When you want to do it?"

Orin pulled up a chair and settled into it. "Well, boy-what you say we
have some of that beer, first. Maybe get a little shut-eye too. You
still workin' at that movie theater?"

Cappie nodded. "Damn flu thing's got it shut down, though. Don't know
how long."

"Good. Nobody'll be around." Orin thought for a moment. "Okay.

We'll use the movie place as a ... a rallying point. Need to, that's
where we'll tell our people to meet. I'm staying here till we do it, and
I don't want nobody to know where I am." He nodded in the direction of
the bedroom. "You keep her shut up about me, hear?"

Orin put his feet on the kitchen table, and one hand curled into the
pocket of his jacket. It came out holding what to Cappie looked like a
small red-and-white labeled can. Orin set it on the table carefully.

"Then--if you think Lubella'll let you, that is--we'll saddle up about
noon, and go wipe out Denver."

Chapter 36.

Tallahassee, Florida July 23

At first, Katie had found it rather exhilarating, racing along graveled
roads and two-lane blacktops in a stolen pickup truck. She had driven
throughout the night, trusting both to luck and the surprisingly
detailed road maps J.L. had found in Carol Mayer's vehicle. It seemed
almost heroic--the two of them on the run, armed with a learner's permit
and dodging whatever authority might still be hunting them. She
envisioned herself and J.L. as a latter-day Thelma and Louise, though
far younger and more attractive.

But the closer she got to her objective, the harder it had become to see
the situation as anything but what it was. They were alone, possibly
infected with some kind of germ that had already killed one of their
friends and traveling through what had become a frightening, virtually
lawless land. It got worse the closer they got to Tallahassee, when they
traded the largely rural Florida landscape for the city's outskirts.
Soon they were motoring through what was an unmistakably urban area, its
atmosphere one of tired neglect.

For Katie, it was unfamiliar territory--progressively tougher-looking
neighborhoods populated by progressively harder-looking residents.

While few other vehicles were moving on the streets Katie drove, people
were. The closer she got to the city center, the more crowds she
encountered --first in knots along the sidewalks, gradually in larger
numbers that spilled into the street. Some were profoundly drunk, others
plainly predatory. One of the latter, a man with dirty blond hair and a
Seminole tattoo on his bare shoulder, cupped his hands and shouted an
obscene invitation as Katie motored past. Other men had similar notions,
also appearing to find a pickup truck occupied by two teenage girls a
focus of increasing interest. Katie found herself frequently cutting
down side streets and alleys to avoid the growing throngs in the street.

After a while, Katie no longer knew in which direction she was driving.

The crowds were getting thicker where she now drove, and angrier.

Debris littered the street, and once she had to steer around a brace of
tires that had been set afire; sullen orange flames vomited an evil
black plume. A bottle arched through the air to shatter on the pavement
a few feet in front of her vehicle. A block or so farther down, the
crowd had spilled from the sidewalks and completely blocked the street.

There were no police to be seen.

"Let's get away from here," Katie heard J.L. say in a tight voice.

She turned left onto a cracked and pitted roadway, and a smile spread on
her face.

There, the distance foreshortened by the low perspective, was the
skyline of downtown Tallahassee.

Katie slowed, her attention momentarily fixed on the target finally
before her.

Distracted, she did not notice anything amiss--not until the chunk of
concrete starred her windshield, a shattering supernova that peppered
both of them with small rounded fragments and turned the safety glass
opaque.

"J. L.!" she screamed, her heart in sudden tachycardia.

At the same time, the truck rocked to the side and some thing, a short
length of pipe, smashed through the driver's window next to her head.

More fragments exploded against her, these sharper ones that stung into
her face and neck.

A muscular arm reached through the hole, fingers extended toward the key
ring that hung from the ignition switch. Katie struck at it with a
closed fist, seeing for the first time the other figures converging
toward the slowly moving vehicle. A hailstorm of hard objects noisily
dented the hood and sidewalls. She heard shouting from immediately
outside her window, angry and demanding words that in her terror did not
register as language.

"Go, go, go!" J.L. screamed from beside her, and Katie jammed her foot
hard against the firewall.

The pickup lurched forward, tires squealing and raising a thick curlicue
of smoke. She felt a muffled bang as something substantial hit hard
against the passenger door and spun away; she barely heard the curses
shrieked in her wake. Through J.L.'s window, Katie saw other figures
sprinting toward their vehicle, and she wrenched the wheel back and
forth to scatter them.

The disembodied hand was now clutching frantically at the steering
wheel, and Katie fought it for possession. It would not release its
desperate grip, not even when the vehicle swerved sharply, bouncing over
the curb and speeding toward the lamppost.

There was a loud screeching noise--possibly the scream of metal scraping
against metal, or possibly something more human--and the arm disappeared
back out the window with a horrifying abruptness. Katie, too terrified
now even to scream, cut hard back toward the street, leaning forward to
peer around the spiderweb of the ruined windshield.

And suddenly she was clear.

Katie sped on for a few seconds before the realization rose sufficiently
to smother the fear. She felt a rush of exhilaration, of triumph even.

Oh, that dirty bastard, she told herself, her thoughts a disjointed
ramble, he thought he could get to the key and he won't try that anymore
Oh God. I think I killed somebody.

Without knowing why, she stood on the brake pedal, locking the wheels
and again raising smoke from the tires. Then she ripped the door open
and stood, breathing in rapid gasps and with one foot still in
the-truck.

Thirty yards behind her, the milling crowd she had driven through still
roiled like an angry storm cloud. People, some burdened by double
armloads of clothing or expensive-looking consumer electronics, stumbled
along the sidewalks. A tendril of smoke wafted from a shattered display
window, and a flickering light fitfully dappled the otherwise darkened
interior of the store. In the distance, Katie could hear sirens and the
vicious, flat cracks of what might have been gunfire.

Closer to them, a man lay facedown and spreadeagled on the sidewalk, a
few yards past the crumpled half comma of the streetlight stanchion.

Aside from a dark pool slowly spreading from under the figure, there was
no other movement there.

Katie stared in horrid fascination, unable to tear her eyes from the
scene.

J.L. was near hysterics.

"Katie, get back in!" She reached over and pulled hard at her friend's
wrist, tugging until Katie finally climbed back inside the cab.

"Keep going," J.L. said. "We've got to get away from all this." Her head
swiveled back to her friend, and she saw the streaks of tears on Katie's
face.

"Are you all right? Did he hurt you?"

Katie shook her head. She wiped angrily at her cheeks, both sides, with
the heel of her hand. To J. L." it appeared that she shook herself
physically.

"Damn."

"What?"

Katie pointed to the dashboard.

Near the fuel gauge, an indicator had flickered to life. low fuel, it
said in unequivocal crimson letters.

"I'm going to try to get as close to downtown as I can," Katie said.

"Maybe there's no rioting there; it might be safer. We'll be out of gas
soon."

"Great," said J. L." trying to pretend that she had recovered from their
experience. "Then what?"

"Then," Katie said, frowning in concentration as she peered through the
starred windshield, "I guess we walk."

Chapter 37.

Columbia Falls, Montana July 23

Carl Mcguire was dying for a cigarette.

At least, that's what his doctor told him three weeks, five days, two
hours and--he checked his watch--eleven minutes ago, following the
annual physical examination required of all department heads in the
White Bison County Sheriff's Police.

"Look at the goddamn numbers, Carl," Doc Bartfield had told him. "Your
lung capacity looks like hell. Another year, and you'll be at the
official disability level. And that is a half step away from having to
pull an oxygen bottle behind you." The physician snorted in disgust. "

"Taper off," my ass. Listen to me, and listen good. As far as you are
concerned, smoke another cigarette and you will die."

So he didn't smoke. For a man who barely remembered his childhood
catechism classes, it was as close to a religion as he had had in almost
four decades. It had as its central article of faith a simple dictum
voiced by a high priest who carried a stethoscope. It had as its primary
sacrament the foil-wrapped wafers flavored by Wrigley's, with which
Mcguire celebrated communion frequently. It even had a demon
bitch-goddess, sold twenty to a pack and omnipresent as a temptress--a
profane seductress who was patiently waiting for him to commit the sin
that would be, literally, mortal.

And of course, it had a hell. Every waking minute of every infernally
endless day.

He told himself he could take it, would take it--even if it meant facing
the devil of nicotine withdrawal every day for the rest of his life. He
had taken it all his life.

Mcguire had grown up a tough kid--not so unusual in backcountry Montana,
where the dream of every other teenage boy is to escape to the rodeo
circuit as a bull rider But Mcguire had been exceptionally tough, even
in that environment.

A hitch as a Marine, where he had picked up three ounces of shrapnel as
well as a three-pack-a-day habit, had only seasoned the already
case-hardened leather of his character. He had come back to a job where
carrying the badge often required him to exercise a judicious, if
unofficial, violence. He could have been elected sheriff, or so it was
said, if he had wanted to ride a desk instead of a cruiser.

By the time that seemed a reasonable compromise, Mcguire found himself
too settled in his ways for the politics such a move would have
required. He settled for an appointment as senior deputy, in charge of
investigations, and told people he was waiting to see which would get
him first, forced retirement or the cigarettes to which he remained
wedded.

It was a cocky performance, full of the bravura on which he had built a
reputation for being a hard-ass. And it had all changed when, after Doc
Bartfield's pronouncement, he found out that he indeed did want to
live--even if it meant living with the claws of his devil-monkey sunk
deeply into his back.

But Mcguire had not spent a lifetime hiding from any of the devils he
had encountered.

And so it was that every morning of every day, before he settled behind
the desk he now rode, Mcguire followed a set ritual.

Almost solemnly, he would remove an unopened pack of Winston cigarettes
from his shirt pocket and place it within easy reach. Then, at the
frequent moments of stress throughout the day, he would pick up the
pack, think about what was inside, and replace it firmly back on the
desktop-a devout act of faith not unlike that of a zealot handling live
vipers.

But his new faith had not brought him peace, a fact he had taken no
pains to conceal. Since his Conversion, anyone who had the misfortune to
cross his path had been fair game for energetic, sometimes blistering,
abuse.

Hell could not be avoided, but it could be shared.

"Well, thanks for sharing that with me, Deputy Mcguire," Beck Casey
said, looking across the desk at the county officer and wondering what
he had done to piss him off so quickly and so thoroughly. "I just
thought you may have known this Trippett fellow pretty well at one time
or another."

"I'm really sorry if I've offended you," Mcguire said, not looking sorry
at all. "And I apologize for the ' of a bitch' comment, Agent O'Connor.
Don't usually talk like that, ' around a lady.

Guess I'm a little edgy these days. Anyway, Orin Trippett ain't from
around White Bison County--hell, he ain't even from Montana. The sorry
bastard blew in from out east six, maybe seven years ago. Can't say I'd
be brokenhearted to see him go away on a federal rapHe looked up from
under impressive silver eyebrows, thick and untamed.

"Agent O'Connor--you gonna be okay?"

April touched the dressing that wrapped around her forehead. "Mild
concussion, the doctors say. I've had worse headaches, Deputy."

"Glad I could finally get through to you on the phone." Mcguire nodded
approvingly. "You sound like a tough lady.

Had a helluva week so far, as I understand." He turned and eyed Casey.
"You too, by the look of it. Don't guess you get much of this kind of
thing--'specially since, like you say, you're just a college teacher."
Mcguire's tone was bland, but his eyes studied Beck carefully as he
spoke.

Beck nodded. He shifted in the chair, his leg throbbing with a dull
ache. The hospital had provided him with a cane, an aluminum model that
made him feel foolishly conspicuous. He had left it in the Crown
Victoria, preferring to limp along under his own power.

"All of it related to Orin Trippett," Beck said. "You told her you had a
lead on him?"

"Maybe. Like I said, he's pretty much a newcomer around here. Fish out
of water, so the son of a bitch worked overtime to pretend like he
belonged." Mcguire shook his head disgustedly. "For a while, the silly
bastard took to wearing an oversized Stetson and a pair of them cow
boots with the extra-high heel. "Bout couldn't walk without falling."

Beck glanced at April, wondering where the conversation was going.

"Anyway, he got himself tied in with some good of' boys who liked to
drink beer and cuss out the IRS. Called themselves a militia. Ever' so
often, they'd go off upcountry to drink and shoot off their damn guns.
Pretty harmless bunch of pecker less yahoos, mostly. But not all of '."

Mcguire pushed a file folder, dog-eared and covered with penciled
notations, across his desk to his visitors. He opened the folder,
revealing a stack of official-looking pages. Stapled to the top sheet
were the full-face and profile poses of an arrest photo. Mcguire fanned
the stack like a deck of oversized cards, revealing other photos and rap
sheets underneath.

"These boys here, they're the ones I kept an eye on." He fished two from
the pile. "Gil Sweeney. Bobby Touchette. Them two--well, I always
figured I'd have to shoot one or the other someday. Bad apples, the both
of '. They're the pair that Agent O'Connor kilt two nights ago outside
the warehouse.

Did everybody a favor, my opinion."

Mcguire leaned back in his chair. Beck watched him pick up an unopened
pack of Winston cigarettes, toy with it for a moment with a thoughtful
expression, then place it firmly back on the desktop.

"So late last night, Agent O'Connor here called me wantin' to know where
maybe Orin Trippett might want to hide out. It's vacation time, so I was
fillin' in on the late watch. It was comin' on midnight, and I guess I'm
turning into a fat, lazy bachelor. I remembered the damn old trailer
Trippett used to own, and I told her how to get out there."

Carl Mcguire shook his head, and looked as if he wanted to spit. "And
then I went home, and had me my TV dinner. Went to bed right afterward,"
Mcguire said, looking Beck full in the eye. "I got a bad case of the
guilts, sending the two of you up to that goddamn trailer alone. Hell, I
knowed I should have gone along. And maybe what happened to the two of
you wouldn't have happened. I'm sincerely sorry, the both of you."

Before either Beck or April could respond, Mcguire pushed a card from
the stack. The attached photo showed a heavyset man with what appeared
to be a permanent five o'clock shadow blue against his jowls.

"That's Cappie Arnold--Henry Capshaw Arnold's his legal name. Used to
run with Trippett and his bunch. "Bout six months ago, I stopped seeing
him around the county. Turns out he picked up and moved--good riddance
to bad rubbish, but he and Orin Trippett were always thick as thieves."

He pushed the card to April, who studied it before tucking it into her
inside pocket.

"Any idea where Arnold went, Deputy Mcguire?"

"After I heard what happened to Mr. Casey and you, I ... kinda asked
some people." Mcguire had a look on his face that Beck would not have
wanted aimed in his direction.

"Called in some favors, you might say. Seems Cappie went on down to
Denver, got him a place down there."

"Thanks," April said. "We'll check with the Denver PD, see if they have
an address on him."

"They don't; I already called. But I convinced a guy here to come up
with one. Wrote it on the back of the picture. Don't think he's got the
stones to lie to me--but if it ain't the right one, I'd appreciate you
lettin' me know."

Once again, Mcguire picked up the cigarette pack. His fingers caressed
it almost teasingly, Beck noticed, before returning it to its place.

"Ask me, that's where I'd start looking for Trippett. Who knows? Maybe
run across the guy who done that to your friend's leg too."

Mcguire looked at Beck, a pointed look on his features.

"And, my advice? This time, college teacher or not, take along a gun.

You get the chance, sir, you use it."

Chapter 38.

Denver, Colorado July 23

They parked several houses away from the address Mcguire had provided in
a tough-looking neighborhood on the southwest side of the city. It was
almost one p.m. by now. There were few locals in evidence, and those who
were looked knowingly at the Crown Victoria before walking on.

"Maybe we should just hang out a sign," April muttered to Beck. "This
damn thing screams out ' car." At least to these people."

She looked at her companion.

"We can wait here and give everybody a chance to figure out which house
we're watching," April said. "Or we can go up and kick the door right
now."

"You decide." He gestured at his leg. "You'll have to do the kicking."

April frowned at the house, pensive.

"Rental agent says a woman signed the papers," April reminded Beck
finally. "And those flowers on the porch don't look like something a man
would do."

"Okay. So?"

"So let's try the direct approach. You wait here and I'll go knock. If a
woman answers the door--or even some bozo who works the late shift--I'll
play it by ear. If it's Trippett or this Cappie Arnold, I take him down,
hard."

"It doesn't sound too gallant of me, sitting in the car while a lady
with a concussion does the hard work." Beck grinned at the look April
shot him. "Great plan. Go ahead."

She exited the car quietly and walked the distance to the porch, making
it look casual. Beck watched April climb the stairs, lift her hand to
knock--and then stop, bending close to the wooden door as if to study
its grain.

She looked toward the car and beckoned him.

When Beck reached the porch, gamely trying to keep his limp to a
minimum, April spoke in a low voice.

"Somebody else had the same idea about kicking doors," she said. "Looks
like they got here first."

Beck bent low. The wood around the lock set was splintered, and a piece
of the broken hardwood trim had been carelessly attached on the jamb.
"That'll sure keep out the lowlifes," April murmured. She took a deep
breath. "Okay-let's do this."

She raised a closed fist and knocked hard, once.

The impact opened the door a half inch before something solid stopped
it.

Beck sniffed the air, suddenly tense. There was a faint bathroom smell,
and something else--a metallic odor that was tantalizingly familiar to
him, almost like the scent of fresh copper pennies.

April looked at Beck and reached to the small of her back, her hand out
of sight under her jacket.

"Ms. Tompkins!" she said, in a voice meant to sound firm and
authoritative. "Lubella Tompkins--are you there?" Nobody answered; the
apartment was silent in a way that raised the hairs along the back of
Beck's neck.

"We've got trouble here," April said in a low voice. "You smell it?"

He nodded.

She drew her hand from under her jacket, producing a surprisingly large
automatic pistol.

It's like a replay of yesterday, she told herself, recalling the
trailer's ruined door. Beck's probably wondering if women go through
doors the normal way anymore. Irrationally, the thought almost made her
giggle.

Instead, she raised her voice and said loudly, "This is the FBI, Ms.
Tompkins. We're coming in now," and with her shoulder pushed hard
against the door. Something broke with a loud snap, and the door lurched
open another half foot.

"Hell with this," April muttered, and slammed her body hard against the
wood. The impact forced the door open enough for her to squeeze through.
If somebody's waiting with a gun, she thought bitterly, I'm dead meat.

She pushed hard with her legs, and heard more sounds like wood breaking.
With her shoulders and upper body through the opening, the added
leverage allowed her to push through completely. The copper-penny smell
was much stronger here, as was the stench of feces.

As she cleared the stubborn doorway, her arms came up extended, and she
swept the room in an arc through the sights of her Clock.

Sunlight streamed through the large side window, dappling the bare
wooden floor through curtains that had seen better days. April's
peripheral vision noted the chair that had been jammed against the
inside doorknob, broken from the force of her entry. Her eyes swept past
the low pile of matted, stained rags heaped on a kitchen table in the
center of the room, and she felt a wave of relief that the house was
empty.

Then her mind registered what her eyes had seen, and it recoiled in
horror and disgust.

"Jesus," a voice breathed from behind her. Beck was staring at the pile
of rags that were not rags, his mouth slightly open and his eyes almost
expressionless in disbelief.

Don't lose it now, April's mind ordered her, and she spoke roughly as
much to herself as to Beck.

"If you're going to be sick, do it outside in the yard," she growled,
and Beck looked at her as if she were a stranger. But she didn't notice,
because the floor and the walls and the ceiling had now caught her full
and undivided attention.

"Oh, my God," she said.

The wooden floor under the table had drawn much of the fluid into
itself; the walls bore red-brown stripes of varying length and weight
where gravity had tugged at the flying drops. She noted all this, almost
academically.

But it was the ceiling that held her gaze.

From a fixture that hung over the torn remains of Lubella Tompkins,
partially congealed drops of blood dangled like miniature, brown-red
stalactites. Until now, April had never realized how much blood a human
body held.

"I don't want to do much guessing," April O'Connor said into the
telephone she held to her face. "But, unofficially, it appears she died
sometime this morning."

"She was tortured?" Frank Ellis's voice, as it came over the receiver,
was pitched unnaturally high. Shock, maybe, April thought, and felt a
flash of anger. I'm the one who had to look at her, dammit ... "Yes,"
she said instead. "Whoever it was had rigged up a kind of gag he could
push deep down her mouth, or pull out a little. She could talk when he
let her, but not scream. It looks like the son of a bitch took his time
with her. And when he was done, he took a little more so he could really
enjoy it as she died. Probably took a last look at his work before he
went out the door."

The professional demeanor of her voice faltered, for just a moment.

"Frank, this was one sick bastard. I've never seen anything so
sadistic."

There was silence on the line.

"Is your Dr. Casey there? Rather, is he still functioning?"

April looked over her shoulder. "He's doing fine," she lied.

"Yeah." Her SAC's voice was unconvinced. "Okay. Stick with him until you
hear different from me. I'll give you a few minutes, then alert Denver
PD. It sure isn't protocol, but unless you two want to hang out with the
Denver homicide squad for the foreseeable future, you better secure the
place and be gone. Trippett is still out there. I need you looking, not
filling out reports for the local cops.

And O'Connor--watch your back, and his. Stick to Casey like glue."

April closed her cellular phone with a snap that was brisk and
authoritative, wishing that she felt like either. She turned to Beck,
who stood nearby. His eyes were studiously avoiding the table and the
burden it bore.

"Let's go, Beck. My boss is calling the locals, and we'll just confuse
them if we're still here."

He acted as if he had not heard her. When he spoke, his voice was
intense with emotion.

"April, this guy enjoys what he does--I could tell when he had me
hanging by my wrists," Beck said. "But he isn't totally out of control.
He tortures when he wants information. He knew to come here looking for
Trippett; he needed to know where to look next."

Beck looked at the torn figure on the table, and April could see the
effort it took.

"Beck, we have to--"

"If this woman knew anything, trust me--she told him."

Beck looked around the room and stiffened.

"Or showed him," he told April. Beck crossed the wooden floor, careful
to avoid the blood smears that traversed it in parallel tracks. Then he
bent, and when he came up there was the weighty thickness of a telephone
directory in his hands. Beck held the directory up to April.

"Look at this."

On the cover was the red-brown imprint of three fingers.

There were smudges inside, randomly spaced as if by fingers desperate to
find the proper listing. The last stain was on a page diagonally
bisected by a jagged rip; the bottom of the page had been torn from the
book. Only a corner of the display all that had been the focus of such
frantic interest was still visible.

"Something called the Mile-Hi," April said. "It's a theater."

It was 1:11 p.m. when April and Beck arrived at the Mile-Hi Theater; it
was also already too late.

On a normal midsummer afternoon, even the Mile-Hi would have been
thronged with teenagers, seniors looking for the matinee rate, bored
housewives. Not today; today, there were virtually no witnesses at all.
Because of the flu, movie theaters had been shut down along with every
other form of group entertainment. All they had, as they pushed through
double doors and into the theater lobby adjacent to the men's room was a
fourteen-year-old freshman at Denver Central High School.

His name was Danny Carroll.

Thus far in his young life, Danny had identified two overwhelming
passions. One was film: Danny loved movies. His room was festooned with
marquee posters and books filled with cinematic lore. He had seen most
of the films made by Spielberg--at least once; had worn out a pirated
director's cut of Apocalypse Now; and had memorized every cut and arcane
camera angle in Psycho--the Hitchcock original, of course.

His single other passion was a slightly less complicated attraction to
the Big Gulp soft drinks he habitually bought at a 7-Eleven convenience
store near his home.

The former passion had driven him to the Mile-Hi this afternoon for the
same reason it did every afternoon: in exchange for old posters and a
permanent pass for free admission, Danny handled janitorial tasks at no
charge.

But it was the latter passion--indulged freely, possibly excessively,
prior to his arrival at the movie house--that compelled him directly to
the men's lavatory immediately after he had unlocked the lobby doors.

According to the statement he later made to police, Danny Carroll had
noticed a smoky, slightly sweet odor when he entered the men's
room--"kind of like after you set off a Black Cat, you know, or a bottle
rocket. I figured somebody had been screwing around, like maybe lighting
a match for a cigarette or something."

Whatever his theories, the inherent internal pressures of sixty-four
ounces of Pepsi Cola outweighed his immediate curiosity. It was only
when he finished dealing with this first priority and was turning from
the urinals that Danny noticed the pool of bright red on the white-tiled
floor. It was slowly spreading from under the half-closed door of one of
the stalls.

Danny Carroll bent slightly, low enough to see the pair of shoes
flanking the toilet's base, long enough to note the drips that fell,
regular as a leaking faucet, on one shoe's instep.

"Hey," Danny called tentatively. "You okay in there?" There was no
answer. Carefully, the boy pushed against the stall's door.

Inside was Orin Trippett, sitting half-slumped on the toilet. His eyes
were open wide, and a trail of blood was still oozing from a neat,
perfectly round hole precisely in the middle of his forehead. On the
wall behind his head, a much less precise splatter of congealing blood,
bone and brain formed a madly abstract pattern.

Remotely, in a deepening state of shock, Danny noticed something else.

The side pocket of the jacket the dead man wore had been ripped away
violently. It was as if someone had been impatient to take possession of
whatever had been carried there.

Chapter 39.

Denver, Colorado July 23

Ilya threaded his way through the traffic as carefully as possible. He
was uncertain about who he was following, though he was very clear about
what had just taken place.

The theater had been quiet when he arrived a few minutes before one
o'clock. He had expected to buy a ticket, intending to pay for it with a
twenty-dollar bill because the price of things American still
occasionally surprised him. Ilya made a practice of paying with larger
bills, on the theory that a man who received change was less memorable
than a person whose under payment was called to attention.

But there had been no one at the ticket window.

He wondered if the woman called Lubella had lied to him. He thought not:
she had seemed, ultimately, quite cooperative. At one point, on her
hands and knees, she had even scrambled across the bare wood floor of
the living room to where the telephone directory was kept: eager--in
fact, by then desperate--to find for Hya the movie theater's address.

In her wake, she had left red-brown streaks of her own blood to mark her
path.

No, he was sure: she had told him what she had believed true. By now,
Ilya had an instinct for such matters.

So he had finished with her--not hurriedly, but in a manner befitting
the relationship they had developed. And then he had left, taking
nothing but the scrap of paper she had provided. That, and his memories.

All he had to do was to come here and find a way to persuade the man to
leave with him--quietly and willingly, if possible, though the latter
was a secondary consideration. He did not anticipate significant
difficulty in this.

But outside the theater, he had immediately sensed something was amiss.

And so he waited and watched from his parked automobile, trusting the
unerring instincts that longevity in his particular profession had
fostered.

Finally, there had been movement from inside the theater. He had zeroed
in on a gut-heavy man wearing a faded camouflage jacket at the far side
of the lobby. The man had just pushed through a set of double
doors--leading, Ilya presumed, to one of the viewing rooms. Even at the
distance, Ilya noted that the jacket was bulky and loose fitting.

That, and definitely too heavy for the midsummer weather.

But clearly, Ilya thought, it is the kind of apparel a man might wear if
he had something he wished to conceal beneath. And the man is being
cautious as he crosses the lobby--trying, a bit too obviously, to look
casual about it.

He watched as the thickset man walked across the expanse of empty marble
flooring, his left elbow pressed against his side. To Dya's not inexpert
eye, the jacket seemed to hang awkwardly there; the warning bells
sounded even louder in the Russian's mind.

He is hunting, Ilya decided.

And so he waited. From the corner of his eye, he saw the man enter the
lavatory. No more than a minute later, he heard it. Few "silenced"
weapons are worthy of the name: even from his car, the muffled pop was
unmistakable to one familiar with the technology. And that was more than
enough. Ilya did not believe in coincidences.

The Russian already had his engine started by the time the unknown
assassin exited the Mile-Hi and climbed into his own vehicle, parked
well down the street. Ilya carefully pulled into position behind it.

And now, more than a half hour later, Ilya had made his decision.

This man I am following has secrets I need to share, he thought. He is a
man I must meet. And now it is time.

He began to look for a suitable place.

Twenty yards ahead, the vehicle--a light truck, the Russian thought,
what they call here a "pickup"--slowed as it turned a corner onto a
tree-lined residential street.

Ilya followed, whistling a tuneless melody of anticipation.

He was certain now. The trailing vehicle had swung in an arc, settling
again in his rearview mirror as the car behind him straightened. It was
the same car, a dark green Chevy Malibu and it had been behind him for
the past twenty minutes --hell, Cappie thought, maybe even since I left
the damn theater.

He was puzzled, but not worried. Cappie Arnold had been playing a double
game for almost a year now, working closely with Orin at the same time
he kept the militia's Jap patron appraised of what was happening behind
the scenes. It was a situation that would have turned a more
stress-prone man into a basket case; ironically, Cappie's lack of
imagination had only served to sustain him.

/ mean, hell--even a damn Jap got a right to watch his back, dealing
with the likes of--Cappie chuckled, dimly aware of the irony
involved--well, of guys like Orin and me. Just shows he's a careful
kinda guy.

Most recently, Cappie had tipped his Asian benefactor to the theft of
the M-16s--not the feds, never them, though what the Jap subsequently
did with the information was certainly none of Cappie's business.

Cappie was a pragmatist: it was not so much spying on his old friend as
it was helping his new one stay on top of things. Why not? The Jap had
been grateful for the heads-up--guy knowed right away that the feds
would be lookin'into that kinda shit, Orin noted, suitably
impressed--and had been suitably generous in return.

Cappie was genuinely sorry about Orin, too. Sort of.

"Course, once he started thinkin' about it, sooner or later he'd of
knowed it was me talked, Cappie mused. He shrugged off any regret.

Fuck it; it was him or me. He touched his pocket, felt the weight of the
can he had torn from Orin's jacket. There's people who'd pay boo-coo
bucks for something like this. "Sides, I got nuthin'against Denver. And
when you get right down to it, Orin was an asshole anyway.

So much for memory lane; Cappie returned his attention to his rearview
mirror.

Whoever was behind him had only limited practice in car tails. That
ruled out the feds, Cappie figured; certainly they had to know their
business better than the solitary silhouette in the Malibu. It also
eliminated most of the other persons, law enforcement or not, whose
attentions might alarm him. That left an amateur of some sort, and while
that made him curious, it barely constituted a concern. Whoever was
behind him was either new at this, or his experience was limited to
places where it didn't matter if the prey knew he was being stalked.

Okay, my smart-assed li'l buddy. Just keep coming. I know a place where
we can go be alone together. I got a few questions for you.

He glanced at the object on the seat beside him. Like every silenced
pistol Cappie had ever seen, the thing was a piece of crap. It was a
battered .38-caliber revolver, and looked better suited as a throw-down
piece than as an actual weapon. The front sight had been hack sawed off
and the barrel end rough-threaded like a pipe. He had bought it, along
with the bulky extension that gave the gun any utility at all, several
months before in a biker bar outside Helena.

Before he had gone to the theater, Cappie had donned latex gloves and
carefully wiped the weapon clean. It had taken only a fraction of the
precious minutes he had. He had used a few more to wrap white athletic
tape around the grip, the face of the trigger, and the bulky silencer
itself. Fingerprints were not a problem on the rough cloth texture,
unless you happened to be looking for any.

The silencer was homemade, a cylinder the size of a large soup can.

Fiberglass insulation and steel wool had been packed around a perforated
steel tube, a half inch in diameter, that was welded inside.

The end of the tube had been threaded with a hand tap, and the whole
apparatus could be screwed into the matching threads cut into the tip of
the revolver's barrel. It was as awkward as it was inelegant. Under the
best of conditions, Cappie had estimated, it would hold up for two
shots, maybe three.

As it turned out, of course, he had needed only one.

There would not be a second shot--at least, not from this gun. It had
already done the only work he trusted it to do. He had intended to throw
the pistol and its silencer---separately, of course--into a blackwater
borrow pit just off 1-70. He still would. But now there was an
unscheduled stop he had to make first.

Who knows--depending on how things work out, I might just even leave it
with the body, pistol and silencer both. The image made him smile.

Boy, that might mess with somebody's mind, he thought.

Outside, the neighborhood had turned industrial. He continued west until
he came to a gravel road rutted from weather and neglect. He turned onto
it. Ahead, he could see the dark outline of what looked like a large,
abandoned factory.

Cappie reached under his camo jacket and touched the Colt Python he
carried in a shoulder rig. Then he checked his rearview mirror a final
time.

There was no sign of his pursuer, but Cappie knew for a certainty he was
still there. He began to whistle, tunelessly, as the dark building drew
closer. Almost idly, Cappie wondered what Lubella would have on the
table when he returned home.

It was much later, almost four p.m. This had turned into an interesting
meeting indeed--one with more than a few surprises for both of the
participants.

Now it was time to leave. All that was left was the tidying up that was
always an inevitable final part of these things.

The strip of cloth he had lighted was almost fully ablaze now, almost at
the juncture where it was stuffed into the opened gasoline filler neck.
Even from where he stood, under the open sky twenty yards away, he could
see the flames licking up the rag's remaining few inches.

And then, with no further preliminaries, the fumes ignited. There was an
intense white flash, followed an instant later by a curiously flat
boom--no, he corrected himself, it was more like a deep-throated whoosh.
The shock wave was little more than a puff of warmed air he barely felt
in its passing.

The vehicle was burning furiously now, the' flames an angry
orange-black. Where various fluids escaped along the length of the
chassis, liquid drops of fire dripped to the ground. The interior, which
he had soaked with gasoline, was alive with the dancing flames, though
with nothing else. The mad dance of firelight reflected against the
walls of this ruined place, now competing with the late-afternoon sun in
intensity. Black smoke rose in a thick, rolling plume.

It was time to leave.

As he drove away, he could see the smoke and flickering of light in his
rearview mirror. He did not know if the fire would attract attention
from the curious or the concerned; he did not know who would see it, or
who might care. Regardless, even if the flames drew anyone here, it
would be too late. Whatever there had been of value, he had already
taken.

Denver International Airport July 23

The death of Orin Trippett--and the inability of Beck and April to find
the canister of the virus they believed he had possessed--had left the
pair completely without direction or intent. All they had was the
knowledge that the unknown man who spoke soft threats in a Russian
accent had been a step ahead of them again.

Aside from that, they had ... nothing.

"I'm coming back," Beck repeated, this time with more force.

"To do what, exactly?" Andi Wheelwright's voice came over the sat phone,
clear in its exasperation. "Beck, you're better off where you are. We
have chaos up and down the Eastern Seaboard now. It's even worse in
Florida. There's rioting --hell, it's more like armed insurrection down
in the quarantine zone. We've had reports of attacks on military units
down there. Some of the crazies have begun raiding bases, arming
themselves with anything they can steal. Not just small arms, either.
Mortars, heavy machine guns, even antiaircraft weapons.

It's a free-fire zone, man."

"What's happening in New York?"

"What do you think? Ten million people are caught between an incurable
plague and a curfew enforced by a shoot to-kill edict."

"You're getting reports on new flu cases there."

"Some. Okay, yes--it appears to be spreading faster than we hoped.

There are confirmed cases in Manhattan and in Queens. The Coast Guard
has had to sink a number of small craft that refused to heave to. They
were heading toward the mainland."

"Andi, you can't stop all of them. It will get worse; all it takes is
one person to get through, or one infected body to wash ashore along the
coastline."

"I know. Nationwide flu in a week. Ten days at the most."

"Then it doesn't matter where I am," Beck said. "Look, Andi--if you
won't help me, at least don't stand in my way. I've done what you
wanted; I've done all I can. Now I need to find Katie."

There was a long moment of silence.

"Beck--if you have to do something, go to Montgomery and wait. We'll
authorize a flight plan to fly you there. Go to the Capitol Holiday Inn;
I'll make sure they're expecting you." She drew a deep breath.

"I'll do what I can, but we're not getting a lot of information out of
Florida anymore."

"I appreciate anything you can do. You have CDC teams still going into
Florida. Put me in with one."

"I'll have to clear that with Billy Carson," Andi said.

"Tell Carson I'll talk to him when I land," Beck said. "If he has any
problems, he can tell me then. But Andi--one way or another, I'm going
in to find my daughter." He broke the connection.

April nodded, grimly.

"Then I'm coming along." She sounded stubbornly determined.

"Officially, I'm still assigned to you. Last thing Frank Ellis said was
to stick to you like glue. Until I check in with him, that's the
directive I'm following." She held up a hand before Beck could reply.

"And I'd like to help."

Beck looked at April, then at the waiting CDC jet.

"Plenty of room," he said. "And ... thank you."

Montgomery, Alabama July 23

While April inspected the accommodations--Wheelwright's office had
handled the arrangements directly, and in the current emergency the
hotel manager had immediately upgraded "Dr. Beck Casey of the CDC" to
the only available suite-Beck limped into the motel's dining room. He
entered an expanse of empty booths and tables that had, nonetheless,
each been set with fresh china and linen. Holiday Inn brooked no
surprises for its guests, at least none that could be prevented by the
attentions of the staff.

A smiling woman flitted to greet Beck, her pale green blouse starched
and her carefully coiffed hair a shade of blond not generally found in
nature.

Before the hostess could whisk him to one of the many unoccupied tables,
Beck surveyed the room. His double take might have been comical, had
there been an audience in the room to see it.

There at a booth, situated so that no one could approach unobserved, sat
Alexi Malenkov.

The general's uniform was gone, replaced by a tan polo shirt and khaki
shorts. He wore matching socks under the Nike-swooshed sandals on his
feet, and a pair of retro-designed Foster Grant sunglasses peeked from a
breast pocket. On the table before him, a copy of the Montgomery
Advertiser was folded to the sports section, and on his fork was
something white flecked with yellow. Alexi was studying the latter with
a perplexed look on his face. He looked up as Beck slipped onto the
bench across from him.

"Nice outfit, Alexi. How are you enjoying the food?"

"I have not before experienced the culinary pleasure of grits," Alexi
Malenkov said wryly. "They are surprisingly good, if only one can obtain
a sufficient supply of--" He paused, lost. "To be sure, of anything that
might give them some measure of flavor."

Beck laughed. "Try the honey, Alexi. Or the Tabasco, if you want a real
Southern treat."

The Russian tucked another forkful of hash browns into his mouth.

"Thank you. I will pass, for now. I have news, my friend. Your president
has announced he will k-,u Agent VIX around the Florida Quarantine
Region, and in N? ew York City."

"When?"

"They estimate perhaps this time tomorrow."

"I'll get ready to be pretty sick in the next couple of days." Or, Beck
left unsaid, one of the dead five percent.

"Yes." Alexi handed across an envelope, the size in which mail-order
catalogues are sent. "That is a gift from the Russian people to you
personally. You will appreciate it, I believe."

Beck tore across the sealed flap and pulled out a quarter inch-thick
sheaf of paper tacked together in the Russian fashion with a straight
pin pushed through the corner. He tensed when he saw the photograph that
was affixed to the top sheet.

"Ah, you recognize this man," Alexi noted with satisfaction. "Good.

That will make our task easier."

"I remember him pretty well. The last time I saw him, he was sticking a
knife into my thigh. Who is he?"

"Like so many of the people we meet in this interesting profession of
ours, he seems to have a number of names," Alexi said.

He sipped cautiously at his coffee.

His face brightened, and he tipped the cup back for a deeper draught.

"We have listed those of which we are aware. At present, he appears to
operate under the name of "Ilya," last name unknown. His vitae is on the
second page. You will please note that Ilya is both an interrogator and
an assassin. You did well to escape with only the chicken scratch you
received, my friend."

Beck did not answer, his face furrowed in concentration as he scanned
through the Cyrillic-lettered text of Ilya's file.

"I am sorry we did not have time to transcribe this information into
English," Alexi said wickedly. "Do you wish me to translate for you?"

"What you can do," Beck said, still reading, "is tell me what this Ilya
is doing in the States."

"A good question. You see that he was seconded from the Army to the
SVR," Alexi said, using the current incarnation of what was once the
KGB's foreign intelligence section. "Our friend was Spetznaz, and like
all soldiers from elite units he brought his own unique skills into his
new employment."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that you may recall that I told you we had placed SVR agents
close to your own paramilitary factions," Alexi said, chewing a piece of
wheat toast. "Ilya was one such agent. His English is as good as mine,
perhaps a little better. His Czech is excellent, and for that reason he
is covered as a former Czechoslovakia Army corporal who defected to this
country--seeking, of course, the freedom it has so unquestioningly
offered to all."

Beck looked skeptical. "A man with an Eastern European accent doesn't
usually get very far trying to join that kind of club, Alexi. Not even a
defector is '' enough."

"His story is that he became disillusioned--I believe the legend we
provided is that he had some altercation with your taxation
authorities--and became close to several of your more extreme militia
groups. Plus, our friend Ilya was able to provide his new
comrades--pardon me, ' patriotic warriors'--with a few obsolete
automatic weapons he bought from street gangs in your larger cities."

His face was impassive, though his eyes were mocking.

Beck grunted. "I'll have to introduce you to my traveling companion.

She'll find your information very interesting."

Alexi grinned hugely. "A woman? I am pleased for you, my friend. When
may I meet your girl?"

"Her name is April, and I'd recommend against calling her a girl, Alexi.
You should probably call her Special Agent O'Connor."

"Ah, she is FBI. And she has already made the acquaintance of our friend
Ilya."

Beck glanced up at the Russian. "You are surprisingly well informed,
Alexi."

"Ms. Andi Wheelwright has been quite cooperative," Alexi said. "But she
did not mention your companion. You have reason not to tell her,
perhaps?"

Beck laughed, though his eyes did not leave the Russian's face. "Alexi,
have you ever heard the phrase ' maniac'? Get a dictionary and look it
up--right next to it, you'll see a photo of your face."

"Yes, you are pleased to joke. But our friend Ilya is no product of
paranoia. He is quite a serious man, my friend."

"And what does he intend to do now? Come to think of it, what do you
intend to do, Alexi?"

Alexi motioned for the waitress--a slim girl whose smile seemed
permanently set on high--and waited until she had refilled his cup.

"The answer to both questions are remarkably similar, my friend. Our
mysterious Ilya is in your country--perhaps illegally, perhaps under
some legitimate cover. Either way, he will not be easy to find. It would
appear he is looking for one of the murderous lunatics who wish to carry
poison to your cities. For what specific reason, we do not know. And
I--an official guest whose presence was arranged by my president talking
to yours--well, I am here looking for him."

He again tasted the coffee, savoring it before speaking again.

"You see, Beck--we believe Dya is no longer acting as a Russian, much
less as an SVR agent. Did I mention Ilya had a previous posting in
Japan? It is in his record, there before you."

Beck waited, feeling the chill that rippled the back of his neck.

"We believe-," Alexi said, "that he is Aum--in fact, that he is one of
the teachers, these sensei who now lead them. His task, I am convinced,
is to ensure this virus continues to spread. He wishes, I think, to kill
millions of your countrymen."

Alexi Malenkov again sipped at his coffee, and studied Beck over the rim
of the cup.

"I am here," he said, "to help you stop him."

Chapter 42.

Montgomery, Alabama July 23

An hour later, Beck lowered himself into a lounge chair on the concrete
apron around the hotel swimming pool; as he did, he could feel every
minute of the past two days in his joints. His leg throbbed; only the
possibility that someone might hear gave him the strength to bite back
the groan.

Beck had expected the hotel to be deserted, or close to it. He had not
factored in the effect that a near-complete shutdown of transportation
would have. Across the country, a tremendous number of people were
stranded far from their own homes. Here, in the Heart of Dixie, the
Holiday Inn had assumed the role of sanctuary for a significant number
of these refugees.

One might not have known that, fewer than two hundred miles away, a
plague raged unabated.

Around the pool, a cornucopia of browning female flesh competed for his
attention. From behind the protection of his sunglasses, Beck still
found himself compelled to look, though without the component of
casually omnivorous lust he remembered from other places, other years.

For one thing, his mind was still tumultuous with concern for Katie,
despite April's frequent, reassuring analyses of why she had still not
been located. Then there was the simple requirement of staying alive;
between the dark man and the virus, Beck sensed that the odds had dipped
depressingly low. For another, Beck had begun to realize that the most
voluptuous figures--those that climbed from the water with a lithe
womanly grace that was achingly lovely, those whose lowered eyes noted
his glance with a studied, seductive indifference --were, upon closer
examination of the males who attended them, no older than fifteen.

It was a realization that might have depressed him, simply as a mature
man; as a father of a teenage daughter, it left him feeling more than a
bit like the worst kind of dirty old man. He was certain that he did not
desire the romantic attentions of a girl-child, and not simply because
he recognized both the complications and the inevitable embarrassment it
would entail.

His relationships with real women had been difficult enough, he knew; he
had not lied when he told Alexi Malenkov that he did not believe himself
a divorced man. After the decree, Beck had been surprised to discover
that casual sex held no appeal to him; on the rare occasions he had
engaged in it, the experience had left him empty and morose. In alarm,
he had realized that celibacy was possible--perhaps even preferable.

He needed no further complications to an issue that was, to Beck,
already nothing less than perplexing. Having been unable to share his
life, his secrets, his fears with Deborah, he found little hope that he
could craft a bridge to any other woman.

All this he knew. And still he looked, a bittersweet affirmation of
something in himself that he had half believed was dead, or dying.

A part of him envied the boys who attended these young goddesses--envied
them the freshness and wonder and even the pain that each young Venus
represented. But most of him simply wished them all well, hoped for them
a fortunate your they to what a lethal virus suddenly had turned into an
uncertain future.

"They're too young for you," April O'Connor said, materializing as a
dark silhouette standing next to his chair.

"No kidding," Beck replied. "You're too young for me, and some of those
kids could be your--"

"Sister," April warned. "Kid sister, of course."

"Of course," Beck agreed. "But they're all the age of my daughter.

Maybe a little younger."

April nodded, suddenly serious. "Have you heard anything?"

"Have you?

April colored. "I called Frank Ellis, Beck. He was not happy I'm in
Alabama, but I guess we'll deal with that later."

"Can he use FBI resources and pass the information to us?"

"He's agreed to do what he can. Katie is not on any of the quarantine
zone lists, Beck. It's pretty chaotic in there; she may have gotten out
before the quarantine was declared. Or--I'm sorry. You've already
thought about all the possibilities."

"Yes," Beck said. "I have."

"By the way, you might have told me you were tight with the Russian
government," she said. "Ellis says that earlier today the State
Department routed one General Alexi Ivanovich Malenkov--he is director
of Russian state security, as if you didn't already know--through
Washington to Montgomery, Alabama."

"He's still in the restaurant," Beck said, "trying to decide between
sweet and regular iced tea. He thinks we're an item. I think he's just
eager to meet a G-woman."

As if on cue, an electronic buzz rose from the bag April carried loosely
over her shoulder. She reached inside and snapped open a cellular phone.

"O'Connor," she said brusquely. She listened for a moment. "Thank you.
No--I'll come there, if you don't mind.

There's a General Malenkov in your restaurant. Would you ask him to join
Dr. Casey and me in your office?"

She folded the phone and looked at Beck.

"No rest for the wicked," she said. "Looks like CDC's tracked you down,
and they know I'm here too. There's a package of stuff waiting for us in
the hotel office, so I guess we better look at it. You want to see what
they sent, or stay here and leer at the young girls?"

Before he could answer, he saw April's eyes flicker upward and look past
his shoulder.

"I think you have company," she muttered. "Somebody's coming straight
your way, and seems upset--the look you're getting, you might want to
borrow my pistol."

Beck twisted in the lounge chair, and looked up into the face of his
former spouse.

"Hello, Deborah," he said evenly. He was determined she not see his
surprise--nor the rush of pleasure that, to his astonishment, he felt at
her presence.

"You son of a bitch," she replied. "Where is my daughter?"

Her face was flushed and animated, belying the long hours of driving
that had brought her to this place. She glared daggers at Beck, and for
a moment it appeared she was about to strike him.

"I don't know--not yet," Beck said. "You shouldn't be here, do you
understand that? You're not going to do Katie any good by catching this
virus."

"Go to hell."

Beck flared. "And that's helpful too. Look--you can't go into the
Quarantine Region, Deborah. Even if they let you pass through the
cordon, you don't know where to look. There are people already there,
trying to locate Katie. Let them do their job."

"I am going to find Katie," Deborah said. "You can either help, or stay
out of my way. Make up your mind, Beck. I don't care either way."

Deborah walked away, her normally loose-limbed stride now stiff and
angry.

"I probably should keep my mouth shut," April said, watching Deborah
disappear into the hotel. "But nobody gets that angry if they really
don't care."

"I don't know," Beck said. "She looks pretty uninterested to me."

April shrugged. "It's an act."

"Uh-huh. Well, she's really good at it."

April went ahead alone into the hotel manager's office--a glass-fronted
cubicle, really, though it had a door for the privacy she needed; Beck
lingered in the outer office to await a tardy Alexi. The manager,
unaccustomed to the ways of federal agencies, was eager to please:
before leaving, he pointed April to a shipping box the size of a ream of
paper, addressed to her and Beck and prominently hand-marked cdc:
confidential MATERIALS.

The box was sealed, reinforced with strips of cellophane tape along the
seams of the flap. April looked at it curiously. As Beck watched idly,
April produced a small penknife, working the blade under the flap and
neatly slicing the tape along the top seam. Then, seizing the loosened
flap, she pulled upward.

Through the glass of the window, Beck saw it happen.

April stiffened, her eyes suddenly wide and staring. The box fell from
hands suddenly clenched into claws. And then the convulsions began, even
as April O'Connor's legs collapsed beneath her and her body fell to the
carpet as if pole axed. A mad St. Virus's dance flung her limbs akimbo,
and her head violently twisted from side to side.

Beck rushed forward, had his hand on the doorknob when he was seized
from behind.

"Stop!" Alexi held him in a tight embrace, both hands locked against
Beck's chest. "Listen to me! We must get out side!" Alexi's voice
sounded peculiar, almost strangled. "Quickly!"

"Let me go, Alexi. We have to--"

He lifted Beck bodily and staggered backward until the far wall was
against his back. Only then did he loosen his grip, and only long enough
to push the door behind him open. Then he half pulled, half carried Beck
through.

In the hallway, Alexi slammed the door shut. "Your jacket," he demanded,
in the same tight voice. He ripped the light coat from Beck, tugging it
violently off his arms. Then Alexi bent and stuffed it, hard, against
the bottom of the closed door.

"You cannot help her, my friend. And if you try to do so, you too will
die in there."

The Russian gestured at the closed door with his head; to Beck, the
movement appeared callous and impersonal.

"Do not act the fool, Beck. You recognize the signs as well as I. It is
sarin gas."

Chapter 43.

Montgomery, Alabama July 23

Beck sat in the dark of the suite, trying not to think. His right hand
held a plastic tumbler filled with vodka and crushed ice in roughly
equal proportions. The minibar in his room, at least, was performing its
task competently; it stood at the ready, waiting to fulfill any need he
might encounter in himself.

Hours before, after the FBI hazardous-materials team had finally decided
the sarin had dissipated sufficiently to allow April's body to be
removed, he had stood in silent impotence as the double-sealed body bag
was wheeled to the waiting ambulance. He had talked with Billy Carson
three times, and Larry Krewell double that number. Neither man had
anything to add or ask, nor orders to guide Beck. Both had now refocused
their concentration on the larger decisions and actions yet to be taken.

For the moment at least, Beck was on his own.

The package, of course, was a fake. Beck had not been allowed to examine
it--the concentration of sarin absorbed by the cardboard was much too
high for him to handle it safely, they had told him--but the photographs
provided by the FBI technicians had been sufficient. The pressurized
tank, remarkably similar to a CO2 cartridge for an air pistol and no
larger than a Bic lighter, had been rigged with a simple linkage to the
box lid. Both his name and April's were block lettered in heavy black
marker on the otherwise unlabeled carton; the hotel's address was
accurate, even to the ZIP code. But there had been no postage affixed,
nor any of the various labels that would have indicated a delivery by
messenger.

Alexi, peering over his shoulder at the photos, had said it first.

"He was here, Beck--this man Ilya. He has tracked you to this place."

But for what reason, neither he nor Beck himself could envision.

Unbidden, an image of April came to his mind's eye: the gas hitting her,
the sudden, horrible realization in her expression, if only for the
split second before the convulsions began.

He shook the picture from his mind, and drank deeply.

Deborah had not answered his call to her room; like the majority of the
other terrified guests, she might have checked out, left his life as
abruptly as she had reentered it. He was surprised, then dismayed, at
his automatic reaction to that possibility; he had not realized how much
he still cared.

Maybe, he thought, / ought to have another drink.

As if to answer him, there was a quiet tapping at the door. Beck
frowned. It was too late for a call by Jehovah's Witnesses, and none of
his neighbors had the appearance of people who socialized easily or
well. He had half decided to ignore it when a voice, low and tentative,
spoke his name.

He opened the door. Even in the dim light, Beck recognized the figure
who stood there.

"All the lights were off," said a voice that had once been familiar to
him. "I wasn't sure you were here. I'm glad you're still awake. Or have
you started sleeping in your clothes?"

"Hello, Deborah, " he said. "Come in."

Deborah was dressed in a blue oxford shirt that was too large for her
slight form. He wondered if it was one of his, though a darker corner of
his mind suspected it was not. She had rolled the sleeves to just below
her elbows. The shirttail was tucked into a pair of white shorts that
emphasized her trim thighs. Many women might have pulled their hair into
a ponytail to match the ga mine look of the outfit. Not Deborah; hers
fell in a fine ashen cascade that emphasized the compact beauty of her
face. It made Beck remember how soft her hair had felt beneath his
hands.

She walked directly to the sofa and sat in a way that invited Beck to
sit beside her. Instead, he drew a chair from the suite's dinette set.

He settled across from her at what he hoped was a safe distance for both
of them.

They sat in silence for a long moment as Deborah surveyed his lodgings.

Before she could speak, he did.

"Motel decor," Beck said, trying to make a joke of it. "I've always
wondered where they found decorators psychotic enough to take on the
job."

She nodded. Beck wondered if she had noticed the vodka on his breath.

"I'm sorry," she said. "About your ... friend."

"I met her two days ago," he said. "But yes. She was my friend."

There was a silence between the two of them that was not unfamiliar, but
neither was it uncomfortable. Then Beck said the words both of them had
been thinking.

"We'll find Katie," he said. "I promise you."

"You've heard about this VIX thing." It was not a question.

Beck nodded.

He had listened to the President's speech from the hallway outside the
motel manager's office, while the technicians were still preparing to
move April's body. The chief executive had not tried to moderate the
facts of the Hobson's choice, nor attempted to sugarcoat the probable
results: one in every twenty Americans would likely die if VIX was used,
compared to at least eight in ten if it was not. He was, the President
said, in consultation with other world leaders to discuss the
international repercussions involved. But, he insisted, the decision
would be his and his alone- and he would make it soon. Possibly, it had
been rumored, within the next six hours.

The message chilled Beck. There was nothing to say. it would either work
or it would not. Either way, it sounded like less a plan than a
desperate gamble--one that was guaranteed to cost millions of human
lives. It redefined "acceptable losses" in a horrifying manner. VIX
would intentionally create a lethal pandemic in its own right,
"acceptable" only relative to the horror it was meant to combat. By any
other definition, in any other circumstances, it would constitute mass
murder on an unprecedented scale.

"And those are the people you've chosen to return to," Deborah said, and
her voice was bitter.

Beck felt his anger rise.

"It's not that simple," he began.

Her voice was mocking. "It never is, Beck. It never was."

He felt trapped, cornered--and furious, struck back.

"Let's talk about you, shall we? You look well--or is it ' look good'?"
Beck leaned back, and pretended to ponder. "Doesn't matter.

You've always looked great, as I remember. Of course, I haven't seen you
in more than twelve months. Not since the divorce hearing." Beck drew in
a breath. "For a year, we've only communicated through lawyers.
Suddenly, here you are, in my room. I have to wonder why."

She was flushed, and silent for a moment.

"I want to apologize," Deborah said suddenly.

"For what?"

"When I discovered that Katie was missing, my first reaction was to
blame you. I had convinced myself that you were somehow at fault--that
the whole damn escapade was something the two of you had planned."

Beck frowned, puzzled. "Why would we do that?"

"To spite me," she answered. "To keep me outside, both of you."

"I would never--"

"I know, Beck. I know. But I don't understand why she did this. Katie
and I ... " Her voice trailed off.

"What?" Beck pressed.

"We're all either of us have. And I think she hates that fact."

"She has me, Deborah. She has both of us."

"You think so, Beck. But both your daughter and I know it is not true.

Especially ... afterward. When they brought you back."

He felt it: the choking feeling he had whenever the horrific memories
rose inside him.

She looked up at him, and a sudden defrance was in her voice. "But it
was only a matter of degree, Beck. Nothing was really new about it.

For years, I watched you pull everything inside. Everything but me.

Me, you pushed away.

"Before Katie was born, I thought it was another woman. I wish it had
been. Even that I could have understood. But do you understand what it
was like for me to play second chair to ... to a damn job"? I raised
Katie alone, Beck.

"When you disappeared over there, I was frantic. But I had a daughter
whose father was suddenly missing. I had to be strong, even when no one
would tell me anything. We didn't know if you were still alive.

Then, when you came back more dead than alive, I tried to stand by
you--I did. But you still wouldn't bring me inside."

"Deborah, there had to be areas I couldn't discuss, secrets that--"

"It was always your secret, Beck. They were all your secrets. Well,
congratulations. Your secrets destroyed everything. They destroyed us."

"When I came home, I--"

"You never came home, Beck."

Deborah's voice broke. She bent her head and dissolved in a paroxysm of
wrenching sobs.

It's true, Beck thought, and the shame and horror again washed through
him. Whatever love we had for each other had not, could not have,
survived that collapse.

He had no excuses, and understood that she needed none of her own.

When she looked up, she had stopped crying. But the marks of her tears
still glistened on her face.

"I wanted to come here tonight," Deborah said, "to tell you that. And to
be with you."

She rose from the sofa, and stood over Beck.

"This virus--don't lie, Beck. There's not much hope, is there? For
Katie, or for any of us."

His silence was her answer.

"We were in love once," she whispered. "We were a family.

Remember?"

His voice was hoarse. "Deborah," he said.

"I need to know," she said. "If there's anything left for us. Of us."

Her hands dropped to her waist. In a moment, the shorts fell to the
floor. Her body was as he remembered: fine and delicate as a girl, but
unmistakably a woman.

With her thumbs, she eased the remaining scrap of fabric past her hips,
down her legs. When they reached her ankles, she stepped lightly out of
them. The movement revealed her inner thigh, and more. The shadows and
textures of her directed Beck's gaze to her secret places, full and
moist. He could feel the heat rise within him, and he swallowed with a
throat suddenly dry.

The cloth of Deborah's shirt had pulled tight against her chest, vividly
outlining her excitement. Her hands worked at the tiny buttons,
impatient in her own need. Before Beck could speak, the blouse came
away. Her breasts were small, rising and falling with each breath, and
tipped with nipples that were hard and erect.

Now she was nude. Deborah looked at Beck as if it was his turn to act.

"For what we had," she said, "for what we lost."

And he reached for her.

Deborah stepped close to his chair. They kissed deeply, and Beck felt
her hand move to the hardness that strained against his pants. Soon she
drew his right hand to her left breast, holding him hard against her.
His other hand stroked and explored, pleasuring her in slow circles
timed to their shared, rising excitement. Finally she rose and worked at
his belt buckle. Soon she had pushed aside all that stood between their
two bodies.

Her scent, her feel, her taste overwhelmed Beck's every sense. Deborah
pressed him back and moved over him, her feet planted on either side of
the chair. She reached between their bodies, grasping, guiding his
hardness into a place of heat and tightness. Beck's body trembled as he
slipped deep inside.

She rocked her hips, stroking, teasing. He leaned back in the chair, his
thighs straining to match her rhythm.

She rose and fell, the fine muscles of her body rippling with the force
of her effort as Beck moved in and out of her. His hands moved along her
spine--stroking lightly here, grasping hard there. When they kissed,
their tongues fenced in quick, darting thrusts and parries.

Near the end, he pulled back to look at Deborah's face. Her eyes were
closed tightly, her head twisting convulsively from side to side. The
sounds she made were soft and wordless and increasingly urgent. It was a
prayer of need and wonder, chanted just under her breath. Her hips
churned against him in a dance as old as human longing.

"Oh. Oh ... " Suddenly she tensed, her face twisted in a rictus that
could have been pain or pleasure. She gripped Beck inside her like a
hot, silky fist, and he could feel the intensity build throughout her
body. For a long moment, she was lost in the sensations, her body almost
vibrating. Then her orgasm rippled and swelled and burst upon them both.

She stared sightlessly into Beck's eyes as she came, a strained keening
rising from deep in her throat. Her entire body shuddered as if
possessed, and that drew him too over the precipice. Beck groaned loudly
as he felt his own climax flood into her. He pulled her close, pulsing
in wave after white-hot wave.

"Yes." Deborah's voice was breathy and wild, and another massive
explosion convulsed her. Then, as if sliding down a long, dark incline,
she fell against Beck's chest, spent. The mad hammering of her heart
matched the pounding of his own. They clung to each other like that for
several minutes, as their breathing-slowly eased. Soon, she shifted
slightly on Beck's lap and he felt himself slip out of her.

Only then did he feel the chill of the air on his flesh. Deborah's
weight, slight as it was, grew oppressive against his thighs. Beck
became aware of a sweaty itch wherever her flesh touched his; for the
first time since Deborah had entered his room, he felt the dull ache of
his wound pulsing in his leg. Outside, a distant siren faded into the
anonymous sounds of the night. He fought a sudden desire to look at his
wristwatch.

In the postcoital coldness, Beck held the woman he had once loved, and
who had once loved him. He felt a clarity of mind that had eluded him
since all this began. During that time, he had been waiting, though for
what he did not know.

With a sense of profound loss, he realized what he had understood all
along. Something was missing in him, in his character--perhaps it had
been torn from him in Russia, by the torturer's art. Perhaps, he thought
with something akin to horror, it had never been in him at all.

He could not bear to be alone, but he could not bear to be with anyone
else. He wondered, not for the first time, if he had gone mad.

Deborah felt the difference in him. She rose and moved away, but not
before kissing Beck's ear softly. Or perhaps sadly.

"Sex was never the problem we had, was it?" she asked, and there was
regret in her voice. "We were always good together that way."

They dressed with their backs to each other.

She was halfway out the door when Beck spoke.

"Deborah, " he said, "thank you for coming here tonight."

She stopped and looked at him as if seeing him for the last time.

"If I hadn't, it never would have happened," Deborah said. "You realize
that, don't you? No matter how much you may have wanted it.

You've diminished yourself, Beck; you've become almost completely
passive."

"That's not true--" he began.

"You've turned into a spectator to your own life," she said with a flat
finality. "Why are you so compelled to ... to accept whatever happens,
Beck? I can understand that you killed off your intellect--perhaps it
deserved to die, after the way you had used it for all those years. But
when did you lose your soul?"

His face roiled and clouded; as Deborah had always been able to do, she
read Beck's thoughts as if he had voiced them.

"It's not what they did to you in Russia, Beck. It's what you allowed to
happen afterward. You've given up, on yourself and everything else.

I don't think you even know who you are anymore. For God's sake,
Beck--come back to life, or it will kill you."

Abruptly, she turned away and opened the door.

"I want you to know"--he swallowed, recognizing the inadequacy of the
words--"that I'm very, very sorry."

"For what, Beck?" Deborah said, not unkindly. "Do you even know?"

When the door closed, he stared at it for a long time.

Chapter 44.

Montgomery, Alabama July 23

He sat in the darkened suite, in the chair where he and Deborah had
spent their lonesome passion. Only when the knock came, for the second
time that night, did Beck Casey realize that he had been expecting it.

"It's not locked, Alexi."

The door swung open, and filled with a dark, bearlike figure.

"Do I interrupt anything, my friend?" In the doorway, Alexi Malenkov's
face was split by a wide grin; he managed to look both lewd and
gregarious at the same time. "I certainly hope so."

He lifted his hand, and Beck heard the tinkle of glass against metal.

"I heard movement in the hallway, Beck. Being paranoid, both by nature
and by profession, of course I looked. You have reconciled with Deborah?
I have come to celebrate with the two of you!"

"She left. Keep your voice down, Alexi."

Alexi nodded, suddenly crestfallen.

"Of course. I perhaps misinterpreted. This business with Katie must be a
terrible strain on her--on you both. Have you any word?"

"No. Deborah intends to go inside the Quarantine Region and look for
her." He looked steadily and calmly at the Russian. "Frankly, I haven't
been able to figure out what I should do. Not even when my daughter's
life is an issue. Isn't that odd, Alexi?"

Alexi entered, closing the door behind him. Beck watched him cross the
small room and set a bottle on the dining table. The Russian reached
into the pocket of the linen jacket he wore and produced stemmed
champagne flutes. There were only two of them, Beck noticed.

"We can, perhaps, ask Deborah to join us later," Alexi said. "Her room,
I believe, is only down the hall a little way. Perhaps we can formulate
a plan together." He shook his head. "What a day we have had, my
friend."

"Why are you here, Alexi?"

"I could not sleep, so I thought to join you. Such sadness, this filthy
thing to have been done to your Ms. O'Connor."

"No. I mean, why are you here. In Alabama."

Alexi raised his eyebrows. "As I told you. To assist you, to stop this
assassin Ilya."

Beck nodded thoughtfully.

"You want to open that champagne, Alexi? I think you're right--we should
have a drink together."

Alexi grinned, and turned to the task. There was the metallic rustle of
foil being peeled back, and a soft grunt of exertion. Then the pop of a
cork, followed by the hiss of carbonation pouring into crystal.

He handed one of the flutes to Beck, and raised his own in salute.

"To luck, Beck. Your Katie will be found, and she will be well."

"Not to luck, Alexi. I don't think luck has been involved with any of
this."

"I am the Russian here, Beck. It is I who should make such enigmatic
statements."

Beck laughed softly in turn.

"Forgive me, Alexi. I guess I'm not being a good host. This is the first
chance I've had to think clearly since all this began. Maybe longer."

"It is understandable. And what have you been thinking, my friend?"

"For one thing, how easy it was to assign the guilt," Beck said. "I'm
supposed to be the expert on terrorism, and all of us '' have been
warning that extremist groups were the biggest threat we faced these
days. Particularly when it comes to biological terrorism. It was
inevitable, we said. One day, some cult would use a bio weapon to attack
a major power."

"It is a logical assessment." Alexi shrugged. "I do not think one need
be a prophet to predict this."

"My point exactly." Beck nodded. "And the Aum--well, you couldn't invent
a better villain. Of course they were responsible; of course they did it
because they were religious fanatics. How easy it was to accept: the Aum
had an end-of the-world mind-set, as well as the charismatic leader who
believed he was a god."

"Do not forget, my friend--they also had the demonstrated ability to
wage biological warfare. These zealots have previously acted on their
murderous fantasies."

Incongruously, Alexi chucked. "To act as a god--for some, perhaps this
is the same as to be God." He peered closely at Beck's expression.

"Ah. You do not think so."

"The majority of the Aum are followers," Beck said. "Follow the leader:
that's the nature of such groups. That's why it was so simple to get
them to commit mass murder. And, later, mass suicide. Asahara is in
prison, awaiting execution. So what '' were the rank and file taking
orders from?"

"They had their sensei," Alexi said. "Their so-called teachers, who led
them to these acts."

"Teachers, or teacher?" Beck asked. "In Japanese, the word means both
singular and plural."

"Yes." Alexi's voice had become impatient. "And if any Aum still lived,
we could ask them. Perhaps this man Ilya is a sensei, or the Sensei. Or
perhaps he too is a follower, and these teachers died by their own
hands. What is the point, Beck? They are all dead."

"Nicely put, Alexi. You see, that's part of my problem. The Aum are
dead. The man they used in your country-Davidovich, I mean; the same
person our CIA had employed as a Russian agent--he's dead, too. All
these people, the ones who might be able to provide answers of their
own-they all seem to be dead, Alexi."

"Less than three hundred kilometers from us, many more people are dead,
or soon will be." Alexi flushed. "My apologies --I do not mean that your
daughter--"

"It's all right, Alexi. But I can't think about Katie right now. Not if
I want to think clearly. You understand that, I believe."

Alexi nodded. His eyes watched the other man closely, though whether in
concern or something else, Beck could not tell.

"Today, April O'Connor died. Just as I would have, if you hadn't entered
at that very moment. And pulled me away."

"You were quite fortunate, but I am no hero," Alexi said, his tone
trying to lighten the mood. "It was too late for me to go back outside.
Had you opened the inner door to your friend, the gas would have killed
me too."

"I certainly understand enlightened self-interest, Alexi," Beck said.

"Bottom line, then. The Aum created a doomsday virus. They passed some
of it along to militias in America, possibly in Russia. Then they killed
themselves."

"It is quite a simple story, my friend."

"You've told me that before," Beck said agreeably. "Just as you recently
reminded me not to look for logic in an illogical act. I forgot that. I
let myself be carried along by the events, the story as it unfolded. I
didn't look for anything else."

"You saw what existed. There was nothing else to see."

Beck rubbed his eyes. "So you say. Just as you said that Davidovich was
Aum. Just as you said that this Ilya is also Aum. You told me that the
virus was brought into Russia by a mysterious Japanese man.

And earlier today, after April died, you were certainly quick to
conclude that Ilya was responsible. You see, it never even occurred to
me to wonder how he knew we were here--let alone how Ilya knew April
O'Connor's name. It was printed on the package, you know."

Beck looked up, and saw Alexi Malenkov watching him with eyes that were
carefully hooded.

"Yes," the Russian agreed. "That is a mystery, is it not?"

"I just ... went along with what you were saying. I've been doing a lot
of that lately, haven't I?"

Beck smiled at Alexi politely. "You have certainly become a central
person in this story, Alexi. As I sat here, tonight, it occurred to me:
most of what I know about any of this has come from you. Were I a less
trusting person, I might start to worry about that."

Alexi reached forward, patting Beck on his knee as an adult might
placate a child. Then he stood and stretched. "You are tired, my friend.
And worried about your daughter, in such a state, it is too easy to see
conspiracies everywhere. It is a very human reaction."

"Right on all counts, Alexi. You see, once again you have framed
everything for me, quite logically. Accept the premise, and the
conclusion is inescapable. You have convinced me that only one
conclusion is possible."

Alexi looked genuinely puzzled. "And what is that, Beck?"

"That you are the one the Aum called Sensei," Beck said.

Chapter 45.

Montgomery, Alabama July 23

There was a moment when neither man moved, nor made a sound. Then a slow
smile spread over the Russian's features, finally culminating in what to
Beck looked like a guileless grin.

"What am I to do now, my friend?" Alexi asked genially. "Am I to gasp in
shock and fear--or to produce a pistol and demand from you how you
learned this? I will do one or the other, of course, if you insist. I
have always ' a weakness for bad theater."

"No need," Beck said. "Just tell me why."

Alexi nodded sagely.

"Ah--you wish the denouement, the melodramatic confession of the guilty
party. You make an irrational accusation, Beck; perhaps you do not even
recognize how absurd it sounds. Why should I humor you in this
foolishness?"

"It's just the two of us here, Alexi. Who else is there to tell?

Besides, didn't you come in here to kill me anyway?"

Alexi studied him for a moment, as if considering what expression to
paint on his own face. Then he threw back his head and laughed,
delighted.

"Ah--this is the Beck Casey I knew from before. So quiet, but such
brilliant leaps of insight! I wish I had your gift.

Tell me truly: had you really left the CIA?"

"I had, before this--before you--brought me back."

Alexi chuckled, a rueful sound. "Beck, Beck. It seems I have worked very
hard to accomplish the exact opposite of what I intended. Perhaps you
have earned the right to know my truth."

He reached into his side pocket and withdrew a knife, its naked blade
serrated and similar in length to the one that another Russian had
plunged into Beck's thigh. He casually placed it on the table near the
champagne bottle, within easy reach.

"I have worried about you, my friend. Forgive me, but you had become
quite a boring companion. You were so ... compliant. Malleable."

"Yes," Beck said. "Deborah said the same thing. She said I had become
passive--a spectator." He spread his hands amiably. "So tell me a story,
Alexi. Tell me this story."

"Very well. Where shall I start?"

"The virus. You lied to me. It was Russian-made."

Alexi shook his head. "No. In that, I was quite forthright. This
doomsday virus was the product of a man named Anji Suzuki. He was a bio
geneticist and a member of the Aum, though his recruitment into the
group was somewhat brutish. May I smoke?"

Beck nodded, and watched as Alexi produced the flat package of Russian
cigarettes and lit one with a battered Ronson lighter. He blew the plume
of bluish smoke skyward in obvious satisfaction.

"Ah. Anji Suzuki. The psychoactive drugs you received when you were a
guest of our Mafiya--do you remember them? I doubt Dr. Suzuki did; his
treatment was weighted much more heavily toward electrotherapy, which I
understand creates a significant detriment to short-term memory."

Beck frowned. "He was kidnapped? Brainwashed?"

"In a manner of speaking," Alexi said. "He had needed skills and no
close family. It is not difficult, as you know. The Aum are--were--quite
adept at eliciting what they called an Enlightenment. The trick, as I
understand the matter, is to alter the personality--the part of the mind
that contains all the small quirks that makes one an individual--without
destroying the mind itself."

Alexi pursed his lips mock sadly. "A pity, Beck. Suzuki was quite a
talented geneticist. Afterward, I arranged for him to receive an
intensive--let us call it a tutorial- at my country's bio weapon
development center in Omutninsk. This instruction allowed him to stand
on the shoulders of giants in the field of biological weaponry, and
greatly simplified his own work on the influenza virus."

"He's dead, I assume."

Alexi shrugged, a casual gesture.

"How did you get the virus to America, Alexi? Did your Aum create
another zombie for that, too?"

Alexi smiled, pleased.

"Such a colorful term. No, Anji volunteered for that task. A quite
dedicated person, Beck--a zealot. He disappeared shortly after he
arrived in your country on his last visit. It seems likely that he was
killed by our mutual acquaintance, Ilya. He succeeded only in spreading
the infection to Florida."

"Katie is in Florida," Beck said. "My daughter, Alexi."

"In truth, Beck, the outbreak in Florida was a surprise to me. The plan
called for poor Anji to fly across your country --disembarking, of
course, in selected cities along the way. The hub cities of your major
airlines."

Alexi waved his hand, a dismissive gesture.

"It is of no matter, really. Except to Anji, of course. He was a true
believer, and would have been very disappointed to know that he
performed so poorly on his last glorious mission."

"At your orders, he was to release mass murder," Beck said. His voice
was not quite right--hoarse and distant, the voice of a man who was
trying to understand the incomprehensible. "You knew it was a virus with
the ability to kill ... billions:'

"Of course," the man who had been called Sensei replied. "I would not
have thought it could turn out otherwise. Surely you understand that.

My friend, perhaps you recall the birth of a female child in the Balkans
a few years ago? It was touted as a major symbolic event: the population
of our little planet reaching six billion people. There was already a
plague under way--a plague of people, voracious as any microbe. We can
certainly spare a few billion of them, Beck."

"That's a rather coldblooded philosophy, Alexi."

"I do not agree. Consider every problem facing the world today; the root
cause behind it is the same. Famine? Too many people. Poverty?

Too many people. War?" The Russian laughed, and shook his head ruefully.
"Well, people will always fight with one another, is it not so? But when
people seek the resources owned by their neighbors, it is almost always
because the very scarcity of those resources has made them
valuable--perhaps even essential to survival. What creates this
scarcity? Again, it is overpopulation. I do the world a service, you
see."

"Alexi," Beck said, "I find it hard to believe you've done all this
because you have become a humanitarian."

Alexi Malenkov threw back his head and laughed explosively.

"You are right to be skeptical, Beck," he said, the mirth still in his
tones. "Forgive me. I love too much the rhetorical discussion, the
debate. In truth, I do not care how many people live on this world, as
long as I am one of them. Living, of course, substantially more
comfortably than most."

"You are not an Aum, Alexi."

Malenkov looked surprised, then offended.

"Certainly not. To worship the words of a half witted madman--no, this
is not for me, thank you. But this is not to say that I do not recognize
a useful tool when it is handed to me. They have much energy, these
fanatics. And they are not without resources, of course.

"After their Tokyo farce with the poison gas, I was ordered to eradicate
the cult's Russian membership. Beck, I was appalled at the waste! Thirty
thousand Russian Aum-all of them already proven quite as gullible as
they were energetic. Several thousand more in Japan, even more
industrious and vastly more prosperous."

Alexi, still smiling, spread his hands in a what-could-I do? gesture.

"Well. Clearly, this was a valuable resource-one that had been shorn of
its previous leadership and was, metaphorically, wandering aimlessly in
the desert. I found it unconscionable to cast away such an asset."

"So you spent the past few years assimilating the Aum," Beck said. "I
can understand how you could do it in Russia, Alexi. But I'm very
impressed you were able to take in the Japanese Aum too."

"Really, it was not difficult to position myself advantageously with the
Japanese cultists," Alexi said. "I was their cohort from Russia, a
fellow Truthseeker as devastated as any of them at the plight of the
divine God Asahara." He snorted, though in derision or amusement Beck
could not tell. "And I confess, I rather liked the title of Sensei. I am
a teacher, of a sort."

"Is that where you found Davidovich? Among the Aum?"

"Davidovich? I doubt if he even knew what an Aum was," Alexi said with
scorn. "He was merely a scribbler who sought to supplement his income by
selling unimportant information to foreigners. A convenient--what is the
word? Dupe? Stooge? One might almost feel sorry for such a creature."

"Why go to the trouble of pretending an interrogation?" Beck pressed.

"Why was it necessary to torture him, Alexi?"

Alexi stitched a mock apologetic expression on his face.

"Ah, my friend--that was for your benefit. Do not look so shocked;
accept it as a compliment. I have a great respect for your intellect,
you see."

Alexi shook his head again, smiling as if sharing a joke on himself. "I
thought to distract you, playing on your unfortunate experience in my
country. He was CIA, abandoned. You also. It was most effective, was it
not?"

"Why involve me at all, Alexi?"

"A mistake. You are perhaps my private obsession, Beck Casey. This
conspiracy of the virus--it has occupied my mind for almost two years.

Each detail, so carefully planned. But all the while--I am serious, my
friend--all the while I thought of you. Of course you were still of the
CIA; of course, given your specialties, you would be targeted on any
biological threat by terrorists. As I say, I felt a need to ... distract
you."

"That's not a mistake, Alexi; that's crazy. I can't read minds."

Alexi made a dismissive gesture. "You are not psychic, this we both
know; you are a trained analyst. Your logic, I did not fear. But,
Beck--that gift you possess, that ability to transcend logic and make
the intuitive leap--no, this I have seen. This, I feared." He smiled
genially. "Well, to err is human, no? To then erase the mistake for all
time--that, my friend, is divine."

Beck swallowed in a throat achingly dry.

"I don't believe you are insane, Alexi. I really don't. But the VIX
infection has changed everything now. The game's over; you've lost."

"Your VIX deployment was unexpected, but I do not see it as an
insurmountable problem," the Russian retorted. "As I said, except as a
point of debate, I do not really care how many this virus infects. Even
supplying it to your militia crazies was merely an afterthought, you
see--insurance, as well as another distraction. If you can stop this
virus, please feel free to do so."

Beck started to speak, stopped. His mind churned. Alexi no longer cares
about the flu, one way or another, he realized. This was all about
something else entirely. Okay--if he hasn't given up on his plan, that
means' You already have what you wanted," Beck said aloud. "You wanted
Putin, on a platter."

Once again, Alexi grinned broadly at him.

"That is what I mean--you are gifted, Beck. Can anyone really think that
even Vadoly Putin can survive the mass execution of several hundred
thousand Russians? Yes, yes--in the past, it would perhaps have been
possible. After all, Stalin killed tens of millions. But not today; not
in a Russia that watched it happen on CNN."

"Yes," Beck admitted. "It might make it tough to find an impartial jury
for the trial."

"There will be no need for a trial, of course," Alexi said. "Putin will
be shot while resisting arrest." Alexi pursed his lips, pretending to
ponder for a moment. "I have not yet decided if he was also attempting
to escape."

"I think I'm starting to understand," Beck said.

"Indeed?" Alexi raised an eyebrow. "Then you know that there will be
need of a new President in Russia, very soon. A strong leader, but one
whose actions in this terrible crisis were above reproach."

"I imagine you have a candidate in mind, Alexi," Beck said.

"If nominated, I will not decline." Alexi smiled. "If I am elected, I
will not refuse to serve." He winked. "And I will be nominated and
elected. It is, as you say, already a lock."

"Your Russian billionaires," Beck said, nodding. "They've decided to
trade one ex-KGB man for another. My compliments, Alexi. You've really
come up in the world. But how do your new friends feel about having a
lethal virus set loose on them? Didn't you think they'd want a vaccine?"

"Beck, Beck--there is a vaccine, of course," Alexi said. "I have taken
it myself, as have the others of whom you speak. It is quite effective,
I assure you. Our dedicated bio genecist Anji engineered his virus with
an exceptional sensitivity to the vaccine--it provides immunity within
hours of its use."

"Does your vaccine cure those already infected?" Beck asked.

"Sadly, no," Alexi replied. "But it is available, in sufficient
quantities--at least, to immunize everyone in Russia. We have stockpiled
more than three hundred million units. The plans for mass immunization
already exist; you know of our very excellent civil defense
organization. Updating its procedures was one of the earliest tasks
assigned to me, you see--by Puthvif you can appreciate the irony."

"And you'll be seen as the savior of your country," Beck said. "That
should help you- a presidential candidate known as a great humanitarian.
Even if he unleashed a virus that would have decimated the planet."

"Your own president's plan is to save the world by setting off a second
plague that will kill millions in its own right." Alexi shrugged.

"Well, I applaud his brand of humanitarianism. After he has set loose
this VIX, we will announce that Russian research has developed a vaccine
that is effective against the original killer influenza--too late to
stop the VIX release, sadly. Still, as a humanitarian gesture, we will
make our vaccine formulation available to the world. Meanwhile, your VIX
will spread and kill--what? Five percent, three hundred million people?
Fourteen million Americans? Very poor public relations, Beck. I fear it
will be seen in a less kindly light than it perhaps might have been."

He grinned suddenly, a flash of the old Alexi.

"Perhaps you too should consider making an arrest, Beck. Imagine: our
two presidents, both arrested for crimes against humanity. How ironic,
do you not agree?"

Before Beck could answer, another voice spoke in Russian.

"It is an interesting proposition, General Malenkov. Treason, of
course--but interesting nonetheless."

Both heads swiveled to the figure standing under the arched entryway
that led to the suite's balcony.

"I fear I must interrupt," Ilya said, smiling politely. "Stand, please.
There."

He gestured with the gun steady in his hand and pointing unmistakably at
the pair. When they had moved away from the table, Ilya sidled to it. He
picked up the knife, examining it and nodding in appreciation.

"Quite clever," he said, and looked up to address Alexi. "So I was to
return tonight? To--how do you say?--finish my business with this man?"

Alexi watched Ilya with an interest that, to Beck, seemed remote, even
academic; he could have been at a zoo, looking at an unfamiliar but
mildly interesting specimen. But Alexi did not respond, not even when
the other Russian shrugged and carefully dropped the unsheathed knife
into his own pocket.

"General Malenkov," Ilya said, as if he were presenting himself in a
formal reception line. "It is a pleasure. I bring you the greetings of
President Putin, who is as concerned about the state of your health as
you are of his." His left index finger pointed to Alexi's belt.

"Please. If you continue to move your hand, I will, of course, shoot you
in the stomach."

Ilya stepped forward and deftly plucked a small-caliber automatic from
Alexi Malenkov's belt. His lip twisted in derision --Romanian-made, his
mind sneered. Such a useless toy!--as his thumb pressed a button above
the pistol's checkered grip. Ilya shook the weapon, and the magazine
clattered on the hardwood floor. Cupping the pistol, he pressed back the
slide with a single finger; his eyes flickered downward for an instant,
checking the action.

"Yes," he said, nodding. "I compliment your good sense, General. It is
much safer to carry even such a weapon as this without a cartridge in
the chamber." He threw the empty pistol into the bedroom.

Throughout, Beck noted, the intruder's own weapon had not wavered from a
point midway between the two men. Dya had climbed to the balcony, had
entered unheard, had waited patiently while Alexi had detailed the
entire plot before announcing himself and disarming his captives. It had
all been done with practiced ease, providing no opportunity for
resistance. That fact alone marked him as a professional, and Beck
calculated his own chances for survival sharply downward.

"So--you suffer no ill effects?" the man said, and Beck realized the
comment was addressed to him. "From our earlier meeting, I mean."

"I'll limp for a few weeks," Beck said, his eyes steady on the Russian.

"I hope."

Ilya grinned at the jest.

"In truth, I have no orders to kill you," he said. "Unless you are
inclined to make it necessary, of course." The pistol he held moved
infinestimally to the left. "General Malenkov is another matter. For
him, my orders are quite clear. I was quite interested to hear of his
plans to expedite my country's political process. Sadly, I cannot allow
such ambitions to be fulfilled.

"It is good to find you here, General," Dya said. "I did not wish to
miss the final act of this play. You have written it so well. Even
President Putin is impressed--no, I speak the truth. He wondered only
why the director of state security saw fit to promise American dissident
elements an illegal chemical weapon--but chose not to report this
activity to his president. I was already in this country and close to
these groups; therefore, the assignment was given to me."

"You knew about the sarin," Beck said, "and the Japanese who reached out
to the militia groups."

"For some weeks. These militia rabble cannot resist the sweet music of
their own voices. They spoke, far too often, of the gift this Japanese
visitor promised." Ilya shrugged carelessly. "An amateur, to be sure.

He traveled always using the same passport; I knew his arrival time
almost before he did. I killed him as he placed his luggage in the car
he had rented. A Japanese car--is that not ironic? He barely fit inside
the trunk where he fell."

He spoke directly to Alexi Malenkov.

"When I killed him, I did not know he carried your plague," Ilya said,
and grinned. "It is my good fortune I used a pistol and not a knife.

Had I stood as close to him as I do to you now, I doubt that I would
have survived the encounter."

Ilya looked at Beck. "You are perhaps curious why I speak so freely in
front of you? It is the expressed order of President Putin. He wishes to
leave no doubt where the responsibility for this disaster lies."

Ilya again addressed his countryman. "Alexi Ivanovich Malenkov, had I
more time to waste on a traitor such as you, I would enjoy ...
persuading you to talk in greater detail about your wealthy patrons.

But I am willing to--I do not wish to warn you again. Please keep your
hand--"

He was too late.

In his left hand, Alexi held a small red-and-white can; his thumb
pressed upward on the pull-top tab, which already flexed slightly under
the pressure.

"I leave it to you," Alexi said genially. "Please guess: Does this can
contain the influenza virus? Or is it perhaps filled with sarin? In
truth, I do not know myself. Not for certain."

He looked squarely at Ilya. "If it is the virus, please remember that I
have received the vaccine. Regardless of what else happens here, I am
immune to it. You are not. Are you willing to chance that you will not
die within the next day or two? It is a gamble, my young friend: you can
perhaps be saved by this VIX of the Americans. Perhaps not, if you are
one of those who succumb quickly."

"But you will be dead," Ilya said, and Beck heard no fear in his tone.

"This is so," Alexi admitted, and he too sounded unafraid. "But please
consider this: What if this apparatus contains sarin? In that case,
there would be no gamble. We will be dead within a few seconds. All of
us."

"Ah. So what do you propose, General?"

"At the very least, that you allow me to leave here unharmed." He cocked
an eyebrow. "Unless I can also persuade you that your own interests are
best served by not chaining yourself to Putin's future. I could find
many rewards for someone of your talents." He nodded toward Beck. "If
you find this agreeable, you would also be asked to remove any other
impediments. In whatever manner you wish to do so."

Ilya nodded judiciously. "It is a difficult decision. As you say, I must
consider my own best interests."

And then he shot Malenkov once, in the forehead.

A mist of blood and pulverized bone jetted from the back of the
Russian's head, iridescent in the harsh back lighting His hand jerked an
instant before the fingers spasmed and opened; there was a metallic
clatter, and a red-and-white labeled object spun across the carpet.

Alexi stood erect and motionless for a heartbeat, and then collapsed
into himself. The body that in life had been Alexi Malenkov twitched
furiously for a moment, its heels bouncing on the floor, and then was
still.

"I am many things, General," Ilya said, addressing ears that could no
longer hear. "But I am not a traitor."

Before the corpse had stopped moving, Beck was on his hands and knees,
scrambling after the container. He snatched it up, holding his breath
and knowing that, if Alexi's dying act had been to wrench up the tab, it
was a useless exercise.

Beck lifted the container with hands whose shaking he could not control.

The tab was bent upward at an angle--but not quite enough, Beck
realized, to have pulled the metal disk away from its seal. Relief
flooded him; he felt his heart pounding, and reveled in the sensation.

"Good shooting," Beck said, and heard the tight nervous energy in his
voice. He looked at the can he held in still shaking hands. "I'll be
interested in the lab report. It will be nice to know what almost killed
me, sarin gas or a weaponized virus."

"It is the virus," the Russian said.

He reached into his pocket and removed an identical can, the one he had
taken from Cappie Arnold before incinerating the militiaman's body.

"You see, I have one just like it." He tossed it, with a light
underhand, to the American. "With my compliments. I have no need for
such vile things."

Beck looked hard at the Russian. "Is what Alexi said true? Is there a
vaccine?"

Ilya shook his head.

"I do not know." He made a gesture toward the body on the floor. "He was
a skilled liar. But he did not appear to fear his own virus."

Beck thought furiously. "If there is a vaccine, and if there is enough
of it--"

He looked up at Dya. "We've got to contact Putin. He'll know who among
the oligarchs own pharmaceutical companies, drug manufacturers.

He'll do what is necessary. And we have to keep my people from releasing
Agent VIX."

"Why? It is good a vaccine exists--if the pig Malenkov did not again
lie, and if this vaccine has, in truth, been manufactured. But your VIX
will stop this killer virus, will it not?"

"Yes," Beck said. "But VIX will also kill millions itself.

Look--Alexi said there were three hundred million doses of vaccine
stockpiled somewhere. We can use it to selectively vaccinate around any
contagion zones. At the very least, we can set up a herd immunity that
will contain the outbreak, while more vaccine is manufactured. We can
stop this thing, without killing people with VIX."

Ilya frowned at the American in genuine puzzlement.

"And why should I assist you? Release your VIX; we understand
'acceptable losses," Russia will be safe, whether this vaccine exists or
not."

"But will Putin?" Beck pressed. "You heard Alexi. The game is stacked
against your man, by people who have billions to spend. As it stands
now, Putin cannot escape being labeled a mass murderer; do you imagine
he can survive this conspiracy?"

"I see the point you make," Ilya said. "But he can become a hero,
untouchable--i/he makes available a vaccine that can save the world."

"We have to move quickly," Beck said. "Once the VIX is released, it's
too late. And if we find that the vaccine doesn't exist, releasing VIX
is our only hope."

Ilya looked, at Beck thoughtfully for a moment. Then he reached into his
pocket and withdrew the stiletto Alexi Malenkov had brought.

Beck stiffened, his eyes on the scalloped blade. It was only with
difficulty that he looked back at the Russian's face.

Ilya smiled, and tossed the knife onto the table. It clattered loudly in
the tense silence.

"When we last met, I had placed a blade very much like that one into
your flesh. You are aware of what would have happened next, had we not
been interrupted?"

Beck nodded, aware that his throat was suddenly too parched to speak.

"You will forgive me this question, please: Why should I believe you
hold no ... ill will toward me?"

"You're a killer, and probably a psychopath," Beck said, and was
surprised to hear that his voice sounded almost normal. "Worry about
that later, because I will come after you. But right now, there are
millions of people who will die unless we work together. One of them may
be my daughter. I want to save her, and the rest who will otherwise die
from this madness."

"So. And what can you give me? What do / want?"

"You want to save Putin. And yourself."

"Indeed," Ilya said, and smiled thinly. "It would seem that, for now, we
are on the same side."

Fort Walton Beach, Florida July 23

The stench of the unburied dead was now almost unbearable, its assault
on the senses magnified by the mingled tang of diesel fuel and burning
meat. Carol Mayer had organized the detail, finding recruits among the
relative handful of persons still strong enough to drag corpses to the
far end zone. There, a makeshift pyre vomited an evil black cloud into
the Florida sky.

But there was no way to keep up with the mortality. By her own rough
estimate, Carol had calculated that more than two thousand souls had
been brought to the football stadium. Of these, no more than three
hundred now remained alive-if one could define as "life" the state in
which these existed.

Sometime overnight while Carol slept, the CDC field team had left,
slipping away without notice or fanfare. Carol had been infuriated,
though a pragmatic part of her realized that anything else would have
been a futile gesture. There was nothing anybody could do for the dead,
and the same was true for the camp's other inhabitants.

Carol had dozed for less than two hours, poorly. She was too much the
physician not to recognize the symptoms that she too was finally
displaying.

Every joint in her body ached, a dull throbbing pain
that was mirrored in the excruciating headache with which she had
awakened. Without checking, she knew she had a raging fever. Her head
also had filled, a thick red-tinged mucus that stained the tissues she
now used almost constantly. Breathing was starting to become painful,
punctuated by coughs that ripped things deep in her chest.

Two or three others in the work crew she had gathered still appeared
without obvious symptoms, as had Carol only the evening before. By the
expressions on their faces as they looked at her now, Carol knew that
any hope they might have held was now gone.

She pulled hard at the blanket-wrapped form she was dragging, and tiny
white-hot pinpoints of light arched and wheeled across her vision. She
straightened, feeling for an instant the caress of a cool breeze against
her cheek. But when she touched her fingers to her face, the skin felt
hot and brittle.

From deep inside, she tried to conjure up a serene image, the way
Choctawatchee Bay appeared from her balcony: an expanse of blues and
slate gray, punctuated by the foamy comma of wavelets that textured the
surface of the ancient waters. But though she tried hard, she could not
hold the image for more than a few seconds before it paled and faded
from her imagination.

Briefly, she thought about the two teenage girls who had fled this place
of death. In her mind's eye, she saw them speeding along in her pickup
truck. Their two faces looked fresh and impossibly happy, and whipping
with wild abandon in the slipstream of the wind was the long dark hair
of ... of ... of the younger one.

Damnedest thing, she told herself, / can't seem to remember her name.

She swayed on her feet, then toppled to the dusty ground.

Tallahassee, Florida July 23

From somewhere close, much too close, the flat, jack hammerlike bark of
what Katie now recognized as an automatic weapon punctuated the bedlam
of lesser noise outside. She could hear faint screaming, drowned by a
second long burst; when those faded, the screams had ended too.

She peered upward though the casement window that looked out at ground
level. Now and then she caught a glimpse of running feet, some of them
in heavy boots and others bare or wearing light beach sandals. Once, the
owner of a pair of feet in white-and-red Air Jordans tripped right
outside, sliding and bouncing headlong past her vantage in a manner
almost comical. Before Katie could even smile, another pair of
feet--these, in spit-shined Oxfords below gray uniform pants--skidded to
a stop. There had been shouting, unintelligible to her but unmistakably
filled with both fear and rage. Two shots, carefully spaced, echoed
around the basement where Katie had taken refuge. Then the Oxfords
wheeled and sprinted back in the direction from which they had come.

"Katie." It was said softly, though more from lack of strength than any
awareness of the need for caution.

J.L. lay on a worn afghan Katie had found discarded in a corner, musty
with mildew and dust. The younger girl knelt beside her friend.

"I'm sorry, Katie. Oh, God. I feel so--" J.L. vomited explosively.

As the spasm racked her friend, Katie Casey held her as gently as
possible, one hand stroking J.L.'s blunt-cut hair in a soft rhythm.

When her hand touched J.L.'s forehead, the heat of the fever was like
touching a kettle.

"It's okay, J.L. We'll be okay in here." Her voice was reassuring and
calm, and unaffected by the tears that were once more tracking through
the grime on her face.

Katie fought down the raw tickle that again rose in her throat, telling
herself to ignore it, just as she was trying to ignore the headache that
was no longer merely a nagging shadow inside her temples.

"It's going to be okay," she repeated. Not for the first time today, she
wondered what it would be like to die.

Endgame: July 24

Chapter 48.

Montgomery, Alabama July 24

"You can't be serious. The President has already authorized the
mission."

The voice belonged to Billy Carson, and it was starkly disbelieving.

"Listen to me." Beck gripped the sat phone so tightly his fingers ached.
"There is a vaccine. You don't need to release the VIX, Carson."

"You think we want to? Beck, listen--the first confirmed flu cases were
reported in New York just over an hour ago. And now we're getting
reports that a mob of several thousand people tried to overrun the
military cordon at the Lincoln Tunnel. They almost made it. Next time
they probably will."

"Oh, God."

"Oh, God' is right. If the virus spreads into New Jersey or Connecticut,
we simply don't have the troops to establish a perimeter.

We don't have time to wait for the Russians to search for any vaccine.

Not one that may exist only in a murderer's lie."

"Alexi wasn't lying, Carson. He was ready to expose him self to a
canister of virus. Doesn't that prove the vaccine exists?"

"It may only prove that Malenkov was a madman," Carson retorted. "And we
already know that, don't we?"

The transmission erupted in a brief flurry of clicks and crackles, and a
new voice came on the line.

"Dr. Casey, I am talking with Mr. Putin," the President said. "He wishes
to speak to the man who shot General Malenkov."

Dya took the phone from Beck's hand, and spoke into it in a clipped,
precise volley of Russian so low that Beck was only barely able to
follow. He heard his own name once, and recognized those of several
Russian industrialists in what appeared to be a much longer list.

Finally, Dya extended the sat phone to Beck, a grim expression on his
face.

"You are a historian. You are given the opportunity to listen as history
is made--or, perhaps, ended for all time."

As he held the receiver to his ear, Beck could hear the conversation
already in progress between the presidents of Russia and America.

"There is but one way to get this information quickly enough," Putin was
saying. "Could you use such methods on your country's richest men?"

"They threaten you directly," the President said. "Those who are
involved in this plot threaten billions more."

Putin laughed, a single harsh bark. "You do not answer my question, Mr.
President. No matter. I will do what I can do. If this vaccine of
Malenkov's does in fact exist, I will ... persuade one of these men to
give it to me."

"Will you provide us with the supply we require? My advisors inform me
that we can still initiate what they call herd immunity, and that
will--"

"I too have experts," Putin interrupted, "and they too speak of this
immunity. Yes. If vaccine exists, we will share. If it does not--"

"I will have no choice but to release Agent VIX," the President said.

There was a hesitation on the line.

"I do not wish to influence your decision," Putin said. "But were this
my decision to make, I do not think I could choose to wait. As I could
not, when I was forced to use chemical weapons here." His voice again
became brusque. "I will leave you to your advisors. As for the vaccine
and this conspiracy Malenkov revealed--we will talk when I ... know
more."

There was again the sound of encryption software reprogramming itself,
and when it ended Beck heard only the end of the President's dialogue
with his national security advisor.

"Mr. President, it's your responsibility," Carson said, his voice both
urgent and intense. "The planes are probably already in the air. I can
only advise you--and my advice is to release the VIX. Only you can
decide. But you must decide now."

Chapter 49.

Eglin Air Force Base, Florida July 24

The last shipment of VIX had arrived just after dawn, in the cavernous
belly of a C-5 Galaxy with British markings, joining dozens of other
blue-gray canisters that had already arrived from Maryland. All of the
VIX containers came off the aircraft shrink-wrapped and stacked on
plastic pallets that were attended to by forklifts, quickly but with
care. Each canister was ridiculously undersized for the havoc its
contents were designed to wreak: their dimensions were those of the
propane tanks usually mounted on a recreational vehicle or outside a
fishing cabin.

Freed from their polyethylene cocoons, the pressurized units themselves
were surprisingly light. Installing them into the flight line of
assorted sprayer-equipped fighters and transport aircraft scraped
together for the mission, a single airman could easily carry a canister
in either hand--even in the cumbersome protective suit that regulations
required for the exercise.

Good thing, too, thought Colonel Peter Sivigny, watching exactly that
exercise through the polycarbonate windows of his own protective mask.

Since nobody is going to take ' off. Nobody sane, anyway.

Sivigny was sweating profusely under the impermeable membrane of his
coveralls, and grateful for the opportunity to do so. Many of those
infected in the first day of the outbreak no longer perspired; the dead
seldom do.

Despite the heat and inconvenience the anti exposure suits caused, for
the past thirty-six hours the rubberized outfits had served as the
mandatory uniform of the day for all personnel --as a safety measure for
the uninfected, even those airmen who had already been displaying
symptoms when the order was posted. In theory, any viruses being shed
were sealed inside with their hosts. Thus far, the theory appeared
sound. Several men had already died inside their rubberized mini
environment but all of them had been diagnosed before the alarm klaxons
had sounded.

Due to its proximity to ground zero for the outbreak, it was inevitable
that Eglin had been hit hard by the virus. Casualties had been
particularly high in the heavily populated central administration and
headquarters sections of the main base. There, the virus had rippled
outward from the base hospital; within a day, it had infected much of
Eglin's brass and the upper-echelon support staff that thought it
actually ran the rest of the huge installation. Some of the infected had
died within hours, others within the day. A few still staggered
on--literally, dead on their feet--inside the ring of armed and
gas-masked Air Police that they, or their late predecessors, had ordered
posted around the contagion zones. The action had been too late, of
course; the virus had continued to spread itself relentlessly.

The disease might have kept right on spreading too, had not an E-9 made
a rapid, accurate assessment of the deteriorating situation.

Eleven hours after the first case was reported at the base, the
sergeant, acting on her own initiative, triggered the base wide
biochemical alarm that sent all personnel scrambling for their anti
exposure gear. It was potentially a court-martial offense, though the
odds were better that the sergeant would be nominated for a Medal of
Honor. Certainly, she had the votes of Sivigny and the other Air Force
personnel who had heard the story through the base grapevine--and who
were still, on this third day of the bio alert without symptoms of the
killer flu. As long as they stayed inside the mini environment of their
exposure suits, they would be safe. At least for another day, Sivigny
thought, feeling his stomach rumble once more.

Four days was about the limit for living inside the rubberized cocoons.

Even under the Florida sun, one could stay hydrated well enough, using
canteens of chemically sterilized water sipped through the gas mask's
built-in straw. But there was no way to eat without removing the gear.

And as for waste evacuation Well don't stand upwind when people finally
get the word to strip these damn things off, he thought.

Still, though many parts of the base were paralyzed, the sergeant's
gutsy move had kept much of Eglin operational-including Duke Field,
where the fighter jocks went to work, and here at Hurlburt Field, where
Special Ops spookies like Sivigny did their usually covert thing.

Well, we're pretty much out in the open this time, Sivigny told himself.
He, like all the other pilots the flight surgeons had certified as still
healthy enough to fly, had listened closely to the mission briefing of
an hour before, and not just because their cumbersome exposure gear made
it harder to hear. Aside from the specifics of altitude and distribution
headings, there was little that the President had not already announced
to the nation, as well as the world at large.

Except, he reminded himself, for that one little detail.

It had come, of course, at the shank end of the briefing. The briefing
officer, a major general, had paused to emphasize his gas mask-muffled
words.

"You will release weapons"--it had sounded incongruous to Sivigny,
hearing the term used in what was officially being touted as a mission
of mercy--"at an altitude no higher than one hundred feet. At that
altitude, your aircraft will be well within range of small-arms fire,"
he said. "After the fiasco in Russia, people are understandably
sensitive about aerial spraying of any sort.

You can expect ground fire. It will at times be intense, particularly
over population centers."

One of the pilots in his section, a captain who flew the big Hercules
transports and looked to Sivigny too young for the rank, had raised his
hand.

"If people are going to be shooting at us, sir, do we have clearance to
evade?"

"Evade, hell," said one of the fighter jocks from Duke, loud enough even
through the rubber of his mask for the room to hear. "How about shooting
back!"

When the laughter had subsided, the two-star had shaken his head, a hard
negative.

"No evasionary tactics--not on the target runs," the General said.

"You'll all be flying a tick above stall speed on your approaches. Go
evasive, and you'll likely spin in." He had tried a cheery tone that, to
Sivigny and the other fliers, sounded extremely pallid. "Suck it up,
people. Fly the mission, take the ground fire. Any other questions?
Thank you. Be prepared for takeoff as soon as the VIX is loaded in your
aircraft. And good luck."

As one, the room rose to its feet and saluted.

As Sivigny gathered his notes and charts, an officer appeared at his
side. It took Sivigny a moment to recognize the mission intelligence
officer, his visage made insect like by the goggle eyes of the mask.

Like Sivigny, Chuck Mason was normally tasked to the Special Operations
squadron. "You've got the Tallahassee segment of the ring, Pete," Mason
said, his voice pitched low. "Be advised that the situation on the
ground is highly volatile, understand? Rioting, buildings burning.

It's like an armed insurrection down there--probably everything from the
Aryan Brotherhood to Greenpeace is packing heavy iron. It's out of
control, is that clear?"

Taken aback, Sivigny tried to treat it lightly. "That about covers the
whole damn state, doesn't it?"

"It's worse where you're going," the intelligence officer said. "I don't
know if you've heard. Civilian electricity's out in a number of areas
inside the Quarantine Region, including the state capital. The militants
and the crazies are blowing up transmission towers, for God's sake." He
looked around, as if he was speaking out of school.

"Thanks," Sivigny said. "I'll watch myself up there. I got the message
about the small-arms fire."

His informant shook his head ominously.

"Small-arms fire, hell. That's what I'm trying to tell you. A Florida
Highway Patrol aircraft tried to drop leaflets over Tallahassee this
morning. The aircraft went down, Pete-right after the pilot reported
that somebody was shooting the hell out of his plane. An A-10 flew over
on a low-altitude scouting mission about a hour ago. It got holed pretty
badly, barely made it back. Fifty-caliber rounds, at least; maybe even
forty millimeter--they're not sure. It must be mobile, 'cause we can't
pin down a location. But anything that flies over the city is taking
fire from it. Pete, somebody down there found themselves a damn big
machine gun, and figured out how to use it."

Sivigny pushed the big plane down the runway, watching the ground-speed
indicator ease well past V-one before he rotated off the runway.

Compared to some loads he had carried, the VIX and its accompanying
apparatus were a negligible addition to the takeoff weight; still, there
was no need to hot dog--not with twenty-two canisters of virus affixed
to tubing the length of the fuselage.

He passed over Highway 90, which separated Hurlburt from the military
housing south of the field; today, no children looked up to wave from
backyard swing sets or wading pools. Still climbing in the bright
sunlight, he passed over the thin strip of sugar white beach and above
the impossible green of the gulf before banking left on a northeast
heading.

Pete Sivigny had always displayed a light touch on the yoke, taking a
secret pride in the delicacy with which he had trained himself to handle
the huge bird even under difficult situations. It was a skill that had
come in handy during covert operations in which he had been involved. He
had been shot at from Iraqi antiaircraft emplacements, successfully
dodged a SAM in a little-publicized incident near Afghanistan, and had
his Hercules holed by a dozen heavy-caliber rounds over the high jungle
of Peru.

In none of the instances could Sivigny remember being frightened, or
even experiencing an increased pulse rate; he did not anticipate a
flight over Tallahassee would be an exception. Even wearing the bio
protection equipment--a requirement that he had heard the F-15 jocks
loudly bemoaning--did not constitute a significant problem for the
Hercules pilot. Maybe the coveralls were heavier and stiffer than the
usual Nomex flight suits; so what? But gloves were gloves, and Sivigny
found the mask that covered his face less bothersome than the
night-vision apparatus he was often required to don while on a mission.

Besides, he thought, when was a pilot ever supposed to feel comfortable?
For damn sure, not at a time like this.

Not on a combat mission.

Chapter 50.

Three Miles NNW of Tallahassee, Florida Altitude: 4,700 Feet July 24

"Holding pattern? The hell do they mean, ' pattern'?"

The voice of the crew chief was outraged. They had reached their
rally-point coordinates in less than fifteen minutes of flight time--on
schedule, maybe even a little ahead of it. The sergeant knew well the
potential of what the aircraft carried in the nylon harnesses he had
helped affix to the cargo bay bulkheads; the sooner they jettisoned the
damn stuff, the sergeant felt, the better it would be for all concerned.
Particularly himself, and the aircraft he considered his personal
property.

Sivigny was not happy with the delay, either. But it is a time-honored
tradition in the military that important bitching goes upward, following
the chain of command all the way up to the gold-plated imbecile who
issued the order initially. For that reason, the pilot's tone was mild
and conciliatory when he keyed the intercom to reply.

"Relax, Chief. Don't you enlisted personnel get paid by the hour
anyway?"

His copilot for the mission, a lieutenant, grinned behind his rubber
mask.

Patrick Mayo had not previously flown with Sivigny, but like the rest of
the squadron he had heard all of the stories. Distilled, they said this:
Pete Sivigny ate fire for breakfast, crapped smoke and sparks, and flew
the big Hercules like it was an extension of his body. He had also flown
more black ops than anybody else in the service, and it was rumored that
had he shown any inclination toward retirement, the resulting security
concerns would have forced the CIA to shoot him. If they could.

When Sivigny's usual backup pilot had been dropped by the virus's
initial onslaught, Mayo had jumped at the chance to fly left-hand seat
with him. Now Mayo's biggest concern was to avoid doing something that
might forever mark him as a hopeless rube in the eyes of his idol.

"Give me a fuel status, Mayo."

The copilot jumped, Sivigny's voice snapping him to attention. He
scanned the control console, and did a quick cross-check against the
notes he had scribbled on his thigh pad.

"Twenty-seven hundred pounds, WATO," Mayo said, "current fuel at
two-six-oh-oh-niner." What did the guy expect? he thought but did not
say. Weight at takeoff had included a full load of Jet Fuel-1; a
ninety-mile flight couldn't cut much into it, not yet.

"Thank you." Sivigny looked out at the vivid blue of the Florida sky,
accented only by the occasional puff of cloud. The delay was no problem;
with his current fuel load, he could stay up here all day, if need be.
That was, after all, why you flew with topped-off tanks.

But Sivigny could not push Chuck Mason's warning from his mind. He had
no fear of ground fire, but no one who has ever taken heavy-caliber
rounds at low altitude failed to acquire a healthy respect for it. His
bird was not designed to be agile; at the slow approach speed mandated
by the mission orders, the controls would be mushy as last week's
cantaloupe.

And if some mutton the ground gets in a lucky shot, a full load of
kerosene makes for a pretty impressive fireball on impact.

Sivigny shook the thought from his mind and focused on his flying.

Whatever the reason for the hold, at least it would let him burn off a
few extra gallons of fuel.

Montgomery, Alabama Ilya lounged in the deep cushions of his chair, idly
thumbing through a magazine he had found somewhere. Occasionally he
would stop, holding the opened page up to the light. Once, he whistled
appreciatively, and Beck looked up from the chair where he too waited,
though with far less patience.

"Playboy?"

Ilya held up the magazine; it was a copy of Motor Week.

"You have discovered my secret," he said. "I have a particular weakness
for Saab automobiles--the turbocharged models, of course. Tell me, do
you own a vehicle?"

Washington, D.C.

The telephone at Carson's elbow buzzed discreetly. He picked up the
receiver, then listened for a few moments before turning to the man
slumped behind the large desk.

"Still nothing to report from Russia, Mr. President," Carson said.

"Putin must know who the conspirators are, for God's sake. What the hell
are they doing over there?"

"It's better if we don't discuss it. That way, we both maintain
plausible denial, if we're ever questioned about it in an impeachment
hearing."

The President glared at the ceiling of the Oval Office. When he spoke,
his voice was low and furious.

"I don't have to ask, do I? Hell, I did everything but tell him to do
it." He slammed a fist onto the desk, hard. "Jesus.

The president of the United States encouraging the president of Russia
to torture information out of his countrymen. What the hell have I
become?"

He did not expect an answer, but Carson provided one anyway.

"With all due respect, you've become what you've been since all of this
began," Carson said evenly. "A man who is running out of time."

Montgomery. Alabama "You are a teacher, then?" flya's voice was dubious.
"This is truth?"

Beck nodded. "Is that so difficult to believe?"

Ilya shrugged. "It is just that I do not encounter many teachers in my
line of work. At least, not in some years."

Beck raised his eyebrows in polite inquiry, not fully believing that the
conversation was taking place.

"In Chechnya," Ilya said. "With the guerrilla bandits there. Teachers
were often officers in their ranks. Occasionally, we would capture one
alive."

He shrugged, a gesture that to Beck seemed almost apologetic.

"And I would be summoned."

Washington, D.C.

Once again, Carson hung up the telephone. He looked up at the President
and shook his head wordlessly.

For a few seconds, the President sat unmoving, his eyes focused
somewhere beyond the far wall of his office. Then his jaw hardened.

"Order the planes in," he said, still not looking at anything in
particular. "They are authorized--by direct order of the commander in
chief--to release the VIX. Now."

Approach Path, Above Tallahassee, Florida "Roger that," Sivigny said. He
keyed the intercom that connected him to the crew.

"Okay, folks," he said. "We're back in business and good to go. Chief,
final check the dispersal system and let me know when you're green
light. I will arm the aerosolizing system when we're thirty seconds from
weapons away."

He paused, then keyed the switch again.

"Let's do this right, gentlemen. Once everything is armed and ready, I
want every crew member to stand away. That is a direct order. I--and
only I--will initiate the final release. Please remember that, all of
you."

He released the intercom switch, turned to see Mayo's eyes looking
steadily at him through the acrylic lenses of his exposure mask.

"That goes for you too, Lieutenant. Unless I say differently, the only
hands on the controls will be mine."

Without another word, Sivigny pulled the Hercules into a wide sweeping
curve. When the aircraft finally leveled, it was on a heading of due
east.

Through the cockpit windshield, the cityscape of Tallahassee was a
glittering jewel. Only the tall columns of smoke that rose randomly from
the ground marred the otherwise perfect picture.

Chapter 51.

Moscow July 24

The curious aspect of all this, the interrogator thought to himself in
mild bemusement, is that none of these men expected that this treatment
would ever be accorded to them. Odd--in particular since without
exception the group was the product of the former Soviet system.

He shook his head, either in sympathy or at the folly he perceived.

They have forgotten the rules of survival that have always been uniquely
Russian. They allowed themselves to become careless, in the belief that
they were invulnerable.

He bent forward, made a minor adjustment to the intravenous drip that
originated at the now limply hanging bag of clear fluid and terminated
in the large-bore needle taped to secure it in his subject's forearm.

Carefully, as if he were indeed the physician that his lab coat and
stethoscope suggested, he checked the man's vital signs once more.

His forehead furrowed as he listened to the tachycardiac pounding of his
subject's heart. It was, of course, dangerously high; the pink flush on
the man's bare chest had spread upward, dappling the neck in darker
reddish blotches. Still, the face was not yet congested and the whites
of the eyes remained relatively clear. That was good; as interrogator,
his assignment was not to murder, though at some point the difference
became academic.

This was his second subject of the morning; the first had,
unfortunately, been unable to withstand the intensity of the session.

Regrettable, but it could not be helped--he had been told that there
were a number of subjects available, and that speedy results were
preferable to the survival of any particular suspect. What was needed
were answers--in particular, one specific answer--and without any
avoidable delay.

Briefly, he wondered who else had been summoned for this assignment.

Kadelov, probably; the Tartar they called Ghengis, almost surely.

Perhaps Ilya, though rumor had it that he spent most of his time on
foreign assignments these days, specializing in wet work.

Just as well, the interrogator thought. In truth, Ilya had begun to
enjoy this work a little too much. When an interrogator allows his
professionalism to erode in that manner, it is inevitable the product
obtained begins to slip--and we do not do this for personal enjoyment.

At least, not often.

He touched the forehead of this subject almost tenderly, gauging how
much of the man's resistance was simple intransigence rather than the
unavoidable semisrupor that the drugs and the pain always engendered.

He did not consider that the man simply had no information to share;
such thoughts tended to be self-defeating, allowing pity to enter the
equation and skew the results.

He pondered the man, naked and strapped spread-eagle on the now fouled
and stained examining table. This was a healthy man, he noted--a touch
too self-indulgent, judging by the slight paunch. Such is the penalty of
prosperity, or its reward. But there was an underlying muscle tone, too,
and the hair was black and thick, though it was plastered wetly above
eyes thatahha!

The interrogator had caught the movement, the glint of eyes wary behind
slitted lids in a way impossible for one truly unconscious.

This one is capable, and an adept play actor I was almost fooled, and
that is a compliment indeed.

He moved to a position where he knew the immobilized man could see him
clearly. Then he pursed his lips and smiled in a way that was both
chiding and conspiratorial.

"Speak to me of vaccine and viruses," he said. "And this will all
cease."

He waited a brief moment, then resumed his tasks. This time, the screams
were even louder than before.

Above Tallahassee, Florida Over the intercom, there was a sound not
unlike that of a firecracker exploding inside a steel barrel--muffled,
but resonating beyond the initial detonation.

"Another hit, dammit." The voice of the crew chief rang in Sivigny's
earphones, and sounded peeved rather than anxious. "Colonel, I'm
counting a half dozen new holes back here, case you were curious."

"Roger that, Chief. Got a couple up here too. Stand by, and keep a tight
one. Two minutes to weapons release."

It was still sporadic, the ground fire that was increasingly peppering
the skin of his Hercules. It was also unavoidable, given the
near-stalling speed and a flight path that now had the aircraft less
than a thousand feet above the rolling hills of Tallahassee's outskirts.
Rifle fire, he judged by the size of the hole above his head, where a
bright shaft of Florida sunlight now streamed through: nothing heavy,
and nothing automatic. Yet.

There were houses now, cars parked on the streets below. A few of them
appeared to be burning, as were several of the buildings toward which he
was flying. He saw the dome of the state capitol, and beyond it what
appeared as a twin towered castle surrounded by neatly mowed grassy
expanses that were themselves flanked by neatly aligned ivy-covered
buildings.

Florida State University, Sivigny thought. Go, "Noles.

He banked slightly, a minute adjustment to the target point, then
glanced at the GPS time distance readout.

"Ninety seconds," he said. His gloved hand moved to the console and
flipped up a safety shield over the weapons release switch.

Moscow "Confirm it? Of course you must confirm it." Idiot, Vladimir
Putin thought but did not say. He listened to the voice at the other end
of the line, impatience shadowing his features. "Then dispatch the
troops and confirm that he spoke the truth. Be quick, but be accurate."

He was quite aware that, on the other side of the world, the American
president was close to soiling himself in his anxiety. He--or rather,
Putin thought with a frown, his surly lapdog Carson--had called at least
a dozen times in the past half hour.

So be it, Putin thought. One confession does not an answer make,
particularly when that confession is the result of scientific
persuasion--and I am not inclined to present myself as a fool.

Arrangements were already being made to transport vaccine, if it
existed, across the expanse between the two continents. Standard
military transports would be far too slow, and like the United States,
Russia had never developed its own supersonic transport aircraft. The
Americans had immediately contacted the British and French governments,
which had offered the services of its Concorde passenger SSTs. But only
three of the dozen aging aircraft still in service were currently flight
worthy; and two of those were now at Dulles Airport outside Washington,
where they had been when the flu outbreak grounded most flights.

In the end, it had been Russian ingenuity that provided a
solution--based, of course, on the concept that had earlier transported
the American historian Casey to Moscow. The Russian Federation could
field more than two hundred Mig 27 and Su-35 fighters, each capable of
speeds approaching Mach 3. A fleet of refueling aircraft--again,
Russian; NATO air tankers lacked the requisite fuel-docking cones for
the Russian fighters--were already in the air, heading toward Western
bases from Germany to Spain. There they would be loaded with jet fuel,
and prepared to be vectored to locations where they would link up and
refuel the fighters.

It was an impressive display of aerial logistics, a proud moment for
Russian military aviation--there was a need to utilize it, of course. If
no vaccine existed, or its location could not be provided by the shifts
of interrogators working on the conspirators, it was all wasted effort.
Initially, the oligarchs had proven either surprisingly resistant, or
completely ignorant of Malenkov's claims.

Then one had broken down--Shenpeliski, himself a petrochemical tycoon,
but one who sat on the board of at least two pharmaceutical
conglomerates. He had provided several names, plausible all, and a
cold-storage warehouse outside St. Petersburg where--he had insisted,
loudly and with no small amount of desperation--proof of his statement
waited in millions of refrigerated doses.

Troops were now rushing toward the warehouse, and the interrogators
tasked to question those whose names had been provided by Shenpeliski
had been ordered to redouble their efforts. Something would happen very
soon, one way or another, and not even a dozen more telephone calls from
the White House could change the situation in the interim.

For the moment, Putin told himself, restraint is the wise man's policy.

When I know for certain, I will inform the Americans. Not before.

The telephone at his elbow rang again, loudly and insistently.

Tallahassee, Florida The loud noises from outside the basement window
shook Katie from the troubled stupor into which she had fallen. For a
moment, she wondered if the voices had been part of the frightening
dream, where she had found herself being pursued by demonic figures who
grasped and tore at her as she ran. She could not escape them, and the
terrible stench of their ruined bodies gagged her again.

No, she decided. That was the dream, because this is the nightmare.

She swallowed, wincing as she felt the burning of her vomit deep inside
the rawness of her throat.

Katie was sitting on the concrete floor, her back against the wall. J.L.
lay quietly in her lap, her breathing ragged but for the moment regular.

"Dammit, boy! Get that belt fed and locked. Do it now!"

It was the same voice that had torn through her dream. Gently, she
disentangled herself from J. L." pushing the dirty afghan tight around
her friend's shoulders. Then, swaying dizzily from the fever, she pulled
herself up to look out the casement.

The red Air Jordan sneakers were still there, partially blocking her
view of the heavy Dodge stake bed truck parked fifteen yards away.

Several men moved in a shuffling gait around the vehicle, straining at
the rope-handled wooden boxes they bore. In the bed of the truck, two
other figures serviced what appeared to be a length of black pipe that
pointed at a sharp angle into the air above their heads.

Then they moved, and Katie saw the bulk of the heavy machine gun, a
linked belt of ridiculously large cartridges dangling from it to a metal
box affixed to its side. As she watched, one of the men moved to the
back and seized two vertical handles. Almost at the same instant, three
loud explosions pressured her ears; in the echoes, she heard the empty
casings bounce against asphalt, bell-like in their pitch.

"If they'd have had one a these big bastards at Waco"-the man slapped
with hard affection at the weapon's cocking handle--"well, damn. They'd
of com holed them atf. fuckers, pure and simple!"

Then the one manning the machine gun let loose a scream, or perhaps it
was some kind of war cry--Katie did not know, nor did she care to. She
covered her ears with her hands and slid down the cool stone of the
basement wall. But even as she did, she heard the gunner shout to the
others.

"Here one comes, boys--Jesus. It's a big ', too."

Then the firing began again, claps of spaced thunder that hammered and
hammered and hammered against and into Katie's head. It would not stop,
not even when she began to scream, in protest and in terror.

Tallahassee, Florida Altitude: 300 Feet "Thirty seconds." The controls
were sluggish now, and Sivigny debated for an instant whether to nudge
the airspeed a fraction higher. He depressed the yoke almost
imperceptibly, and felt the firmness return to the stick, ever so
slightly.

"Mayo, when I give the word, bring the throttles up to fifty percent,"
he said, then twisted his head to emphasize his next words. "When I give
the word, not before."

He noted Mayo's nod, then turned back just in time to see the first of
the tracers arching up to meet him. He barely had time to register that
fact when the sound of the serial impacts --much louder than the
previous ground fire hits, clamorous in a way that signaled their
destructive power-rang through the fuselage.

"That's double-A," he heard the crew chief in the intercom.

"Antiaircraft fire, multiple hits aft--"

And then another string rose to meet him, chewing through the aluminum
skin before dancing sparks from the starboard engine cowling. The
intercom went dead, sudden as a switch being flipped. At the same time,
the yoke in his hand sagged as if lifeless. The aircraft shuddered, then
dropped hard.

"Secure for impact!" he had time to say, just before the ground
mushroomed up to fill the cockpit windshield. There was a flash, vivid
even in the daylight, and a roaring sound in Sivigny's ears that was
suddenly cut short.

Washington, D.C.

The President's hand gripped the telephone receiver so hard that, even
from across the room, Carson could see the knuckles turn suddenly white.

"You're sure?" The President's voice was loud and unrestrained. "It's
confirmed?"

He pointed to Carson almost imperiously, his index finger aiming like a
pistol. Without removing the telephone from his ear, he shouted to his
national security advisor.

"They've got it. Good God, they have the vaccine. Abort the
mission--now!"

Tallahassee, Florida The wall shook as if in an earthquake, and dust
flew from the rafters above. A scream that pendulumed madly up and down
the scale drowned out everything but its own feral cry, and a sudden
dancing glare turned the casement glass into a blossom of molten colors.

For a long moment, Katie had no comprehension of where she was or what
was happening to her. The noise was deafening and the light blinding,
and she wondered if she was already dead.

Then the smell filled the room: an oily, smothering smokiness, followed
by an intense wave of heat. It galvanized the young woman, making her
scramble across the floor to a still-comatose J.L. Katie stood, locking
her arms under J.L.'s, forcing her muscles to strain against the inert
weight. She dragged her friend backward, away from the window that now
pooled with dancing flames like mica on a furnace.

Somehow, Katie wrestled J.L. up the stairway and outside. Here, the
structure of the house shielded the pair from the inferno on the other
side, a shadow from the radiant heat that crisped and smoked the grass
and palmetto shrubs ten feet to the side. Then the wood framing of the
house burst into flames, sending a rolling wave of thermal energy that
reddened Katie's face.

We can't stay here, Katie's mind screamed at her sluggish body.

But her body, racked by fever and ravaged by the viral assault, no
longer listened. Katie sat hard, her bottom striking the ground with an
impact that made her teeth click together audibly. It did not register;
she was unable to move.

The fire had now curled around the burning building and was crackling
toward the two girls. Katie resigned herself to it, to dying in the
inferno.

Then two hands, clumsy in the gloves that encased them, grasped her
upper arms. She looked up dully, seeing first the firefighter's helmet
and then the full-face plastic visor of his breathing apparatus. His
helmet crest read: tallahassee f.d.

Vaguely, she felt herself lifted up, a split second before the world
went dark.

Chapter 52.

The White House Washington, D.C. July 24

"The first wave of Russian Sukhoi-35s are in the air," Krewell said,
trying hard not to sound as drained as he felt. It had been three hours
since Putin's troops had burst into the warehouse and confirmed the
vaccine existed; since then, there had been a frenzy of activity on both
sides of the Atlantic, with Krewell at its center.

He sat in a White House conference room that was far too large for the
number of occupants: Krewell and two other men. One of them was a White
House communications technician manning the camera for this video
teleconference. The other was Billy Carson, his attitude of outward calm
belied by the ashtray at his elbow already half-filled with crumpled
butts.

The voice of the secretary of Health and Human Services came from the
speaker phone at the center of the conference table; on the split-screen
monitor mounted on the wall, HHS looked wan and frazzled.

"Thank God they're cooperating," he said. "How much time do we have?"

"ETA at Newark is two hours, twenty minutes," Krewell answered.
"Twenty-four fighters--a total of six million doses of vaccine, give or
take. Another six Sukhoi fighters are on a direct route to Maxwell Air
Force Base in Alabama with a million and a half doses on board."

"Eight million doses? Less?" It was the voice of the junior senator from
Pennsylvania, his outrage--and, Krewell observed, his fear--clear and
evident despite the distortion of the speaker. "There's two hundred and
eighty million Americans at risk, for God's sake!"

"We don't have to vaccinate them all," Krewell snapped. "Not
immediately."

"Take it easy," Krewell heard Carson mutter. Krewell took a deep breath;
when he spoke, he was surprised to hear his voice sound almost
reasonable.

"We'll use the Russian vaccine in a two-phase program-first, to
inoculate people in a ring immediately outside the contagion zones.

We'll use them as containment, to wall off the virus from the rest of
the country. If it can't find any susceptible hosts, it can't spread
past the barrier rings. The second phase is more traditional: we send
medical teams into northwest Florida and New York City to vaccinate
everybody possible."

On the video screen, HHS looked doubtful.

"You're talking between eight and ten million persons inside New York
alone," he said.

"We don't need to inoculate them all," Krewell repeated. "Just a high
enough percentage of coverage to break the chain of contagion."

He scribbled for a moment on his notepad, then held it up for the video
camera; obligingly, the technician zoomed close on it. Drawn large on
the top sheet, perhaps a dozen circles were bunched together. One circle
in their midst was bisected by a bold "X."

"The circles represent individuals," Krewell said. "X indicates a person
infected with the virus. If the other circles are unprotected, the virus
is easily passed in sequence from one to the next. There's no magic
involved; it's a chain, a classic disease-transmission model."

He filled in half of the circles, creating a random pattern of black
spots on the page.

"The filled-in circles are persons that are now immune, due to the
vaccine," he said. He drew a line from the infected "X" to one of
black-filled circles. "A carrier comes into contact with this person,
nothing happens. Same here, or here, or here."

He tapped one of the unfilled circles. "The virus has to find one of
these before it can spread--and then it faces the same problem all over
again. That's herd immunity; ranchers have used it for decades. You take
a percentage of the potential hosts out of the contagion chain, and that
protects the rest."

"So now you're down to maybe five million in the city, and what--another
million or so in the Florida Quarantine Region?" HHS shook his head.
"It's still a hell of a big job, Dr. Krewell."

"There is precedent," Krewell said. "Back in '76, with the swine flu
emergency. In the fifties, when the polio vaccine first became
available. In the sixties, with the oral polio vaccine. In each case,
you had millions of Americans standing in line to get the treatment."

"There weren't riots going on at those times." The senator's voice was
pitched higher, tighter than Krewell remembered; he stifled the
automatic retort. Instead of responding to the politician, he spoke
directly to HHS.

"Operationally, it's a matter of organization and logistics.

Fortunately, New York has an existing emergency response plan that
divides the city into manageable areas--based, they tell me, on voting
precincts. We'll use soldiers to set up security and deal with crowd
control--Swede Brandt has been authorized to use whatever degree of
force is necessary. The actual vaccination is a fast, simple process.

Hell, you don't need a physician to handle a pneumatic needle or a
hypodermic."

Carson spoke for the first time. "Where possible, we will use doctors
and nurses from the city hospitals to supervise. General Brandt has
informed the President that he can field almost two hundred Army medics.
That's in addition to the several thousand paramedics and EMTs that can
be mobilized from inside the city itself. We can set up more than a
thousand inoculation stations, spread among the boroughs. In Florida,
we'll do the same at armories and high schools. Whenever possible, we're
using the existing local emergency reaction plans; there's a mass
vaccination component in all of them."

"How long?" HHS's voice was blunt.

Krewell shrugged. "Six hours to mobilize and get the word to the
populace. After that, it's a matter of cycling people through." He was
silent for a moment, once again doing the math. "Within twelve hours, we
should have enough patients processed to establish the herd immunity
scenario--in Florida, maybe sooner."

"This will work, Dr. Krewell?" asked HHS.

Before Krewell could respond, Carson answered.

"It will," the national security advisor said. "It has to."

Maxwell AFB The Sukhoi fighters touched down one by one, ninety seconds
apart. The flight leader was Gregori Stipilanov, a colonel who had
earned his wings long enough before to find landing at an American Air
Force base incredible, if also wryly amusing.

Stipilanov would have preferred something more showy --perhaps a
simultaneous landing in twin echelons of three planes each, a tricky
maneuver designed to demonstrate the verve and proficiency of Russian
pilots. But that would have been irresponsible, he admitted to himself,
particularly given the critical importance of the cargo they were
delivering.

The Air Force ground crew that met his flight rode in closed Humvees,
and so it was not until he had powered down on the concrete apron that
he noticed anything unusual about his hosts' appearance. The Americans
who swarmed out to place chocks around the Su-35's landing gear moved
awkwardly, clumsy in the bulk of olive-drab exposure suits.

A moment later, Stipilanov raised his canopy at the gesture of a
spacesuited crew chief, who helped him disentangle himself from the
straps and hoses of the cockpit.

"You take bo chances, yes?" Stipilanov said pleasantly, in an accent
that made the American airman smile behind his acrylic faceplate.

"It ain't nuthin' personal, Colonel." The voice, which carried
undertones of kudzu and red clay, was muffled by the full-face
protection.

Stipilanov saw the American's eyes look at the rear of the cockpit, a
space usually occupied by a weapons officer. Instead, a bubble-wrapped
bulk was wedged tight, similar to the cardboard boxes now being removed
from the cargo compartment in the fuselage. The exercise was being
repeated at each of the six Sukhoi fighters parked on the apron.

Already, the first pallets of vaccine were being rushed by Humvee toward
what Stipilanov assumed was a medical center. "Welcome to Maxwell AFB,
sir," Stipilanov heard, the Southern accent humorous to his ears. "You
don't mind me sayin'--we're surely glad as hell to see you guys."

The digital feed into the HHS's Crisis Management Office made the audio
sound lifelike--almost, Andi Wheelwright thought, as if Frank Ellis were
standing next to her desk here in Washington. She even nodded, before
realizing that he was somewhere in Montana and unable to see her assent.

"Yes," she said calmly. "I have the report on the screen now. It's
confirmed, Mr. Ellis. It was Dr. Casey's daughter." On the monitor
before her, under a large-font heading that read tallahassee contagion
site echo, several columns of names had scrolled past before stopping.
Now, highlighted, was the name she had called for in her file search.

Ellis's voice came over the line again, and Andi could hear the effort
it took him to keep it calm and even.

"Are you going to tell him, or should I?"

Andi Wheelwright stiffened, but her voice was equally professional in
reply.

"I suggest that you deal with your own responsibilities, Agent Ellis,"
she said. "We will determine when Dr. Casey should be informed of ...
this development."

"The man deserves to know that--"

Andi flared. "This crisis isn't over, Agent Ellis. Dr. Casey is an asset
we may need. Could you function effectively, given the same situation?"

There was silence on the audio feed. Then Andi spoke.

"I'll bump this up the line for a decision," she said. "That's all I can
promise."

"That's pretty cold-blooded, in my opinion," Ellis said.

"Yes," she said. "Given the circumstances, I'll take that as a
compliment."

"Mr. President, there is news," Krewell said. Across the expansive desk,
the President's eyes snapped open and he straightened in his chair. At
the same time, Billy Carson stirred in the leather chair where he too
had been unable to fend off the exhaustion that had become a palpable
presence in the Oval Office.

"Talk to me, Dr. Krewell. What is the present situation?"

Krewell rubbed his eyes; for the past fourteen hours he had been
monitoring hourly reports from the CDC field teams in New York and
Florida.

"Sir, the first consignments of Russian vaccine have reached the Florida
Quarantine Region. Immunization is under way now, focusing on a wide
band outside the contagion zone. By tomorrow we project we will have
vaccinated a sufficient percentage of the population to have created the
herd-immunity situation we need."

"And New York?"

"Essentially the same, sir. It's a bigger program, but we have a lot of
resources working there. CDC reports indicate that the immunization will
be complete in the states that border New York by midnight. We've
already begun a mass program to vaccinate uninfected persons inside the
contagion zones of Florida and New York."

"We're sure the vaccine is working?" Carson's tone was carefully
neutral.

"I have field labs analyzing the antibody counts of the earliest
vaccination subjects," Krewell said. "In each case, we're getting strong
positives. There's no reason to believe the vaccine is not effective."

The President took a deep breath, and Krewell heard the relief in his
voice. "Then this nightmare is almost over."

Krewell nodded. "The spread of the virus appears to be contained. And
with the availability of a vaccine, even if an isolated case appears we
should be able to deal with it." He paused, choosing his words with
care. "The general population should be secure, sir."

The President looked at Krewell closely. "But?"

"But the vaccine cannot help those already infected with the flu virus.

That's a core group of perhaps thirty thousand persons, maybe more.

Their only hope is the accelerated immune reaction from Agent VIX."

Carson, who had listened without comment until then, shook his head
vigorously.

"Mr. President, I see where this is going. It is only by the narrowest
of margins that we were able to avoid disaster once. Twice, if you
include the crash of the transport in Florida."

The President's face was impassive, but Carson had made a telling point.
Had the Hercules not carried a full fuel load, there would not have been
the intense fireball on impact. Instead of being incinerated, the VIX
that had been on board would have been released, triggering its own
plague. As it was, the other aircraft had been recalled only by the
narrowest of margins. It was a near miss to a catastrophe.

Carson's voice was insistent.

"We cannot risk a free release of a substance that could spread and kill
millions here and abroad."

The President eyed his national security advisor narrowly.

"Billy," he said, "I'm becoming concerned by your lack of consistency."

Carson reddened. "Sir, if the Russian vaccine had not existed --or if it
had not been acquired in time--VIX would have been the lesser of two
evils. Now it is the greater. My advice remains consistent: as
president, you must make decisions based on saving the greatest number
of people. However difficult they are."

"Yes," said the President. "And now I must decide if I will kill thirty
million, instead of three hundred million. I do not consider that an
easier choice."

Krewell interrupted.

"Sir, Ray Porter has been working with the CDC field coordinators
on-site in Florida studying the situation during the outbreak," he said.
"He's come up with an idea based on the containment strategy--"

"Which was only a contingency plan," Carson interjected, though with
less heat than previously.

"But now we're dealing with a far less widespread contagion," Krewell
said. He turned again to the President. "There are risks involved, but I
think Dr. Porter has come up with a way to use VIX effectively.

Without a free release that could spread. If so, we can save a
significant number of the flu victims, sir."

Krewell waited silently for several long minutes. Finally, he glanced
pointedly at the clock on the wall.

"What is your decision, Mr. President?"

Florida Quarantine Region July 24

The satellite phone buzzed insistently as Beck pawed through the bags
piled on the backseat of Deborah's Mercedes. They had left in the
late-night darkness, Deborah unable to wait any longer. The pair had
successfully bluffed their way past the first checkpoint, though Beck
realized that the Army sergeant who had finally waved them through did
so only because of the direction of their travel. Had they been going
north instead, he had no doubt their expedition would have ended at that
point, suddenly and without further debate: Beck had seen the two M-60
machine guns that flanked the intersection.

Deborah was at the wheel, concentrating on her driving. She had said
scarcely a word to Beck since he had appeared alongside her car, his own
luggage slung over his shoulders and two military-issue exposure masks
dangling from one hand. Since then, he had initiated most of the limited
conversation, sketching in the details of the past few hours.

Only when he told her the VIX release had been aborted did she react
visibly.

Now they were on a two-lane highway twenty miles south of Florala,
passing Spanish-moss-covered oaks that competed with rough-looking pine
and fir along each side of the road. Fort Walton was still more than a
hundred miles distant when the buried sat phone sounded.

From the corner of her eye, Deborah could see Beck--his features largely
concealed by the full mask--awkwardly hold the portable telephone to his
head. There was a moment while he listened.

Then his entire body tensed, and though the words were too muffled to
discern, Deborah heard the sudden tight intensity in her ex-husband's
voice. Before she could speak, he clicked the phone closed and began
pawing through the road atlas with which they had been navigating.

"There--take this crossroads east. Now!" Beck said, and the tires of the
Mercedes squealed as she automatically cut hard into the rum.

"Tallahassee, Deborah. Larry Krewell says he'll meet us there. He's in
the air now."

She flared into an anger that was white-hot in its intensity. "I'm not
going to--"

"It's Katie, Deborah. Larry got word: a CDC team located her in
Tallahassee. She's alive, Deborah. Katie's very sick, but she's alive."

Tallahassee/ Florida State University Campus July 24

They had commandeered the Tallahassee-Leon County Civic Center, one of
the few buildings both large enough to handle the number of active flu
victims, yet sufficiently self-contained to facilitate the modifications
and additions needed for the VIX treatment process.

Beck looked around the vastness of the field house He was frantic,
preoccupied with concern for his daughter. Still, he marveled at the
sheer scope of the work under way here, knowing the same activities were
being duplicated elsewhere in northwest Florida and in New York City.

All involved knew the risks: should the Agent VIX virus escape the
containment they were constructing, its virulence would infect anyone it
chanced to reach--and thus very likely begin its leapfrog through the
outside population with amazing speed. Almost inevitably, they would
trigger the very pandemic the vaccine had allowed them to avoid.

But without treatment with VIX, anyone infected with the flu virus was
doomed to die; current totals--mainly in Florida, but with a significant
number now reported in New York-exceeded twenty-six thousand persons.

A tight hermetic seal was impossible, of course. Instead, technicians
had hastily rigged fans and ventilation pumps to create a
negative-air-pressure system, ensuring a flow would come only from the
outside into the large building. Large diameter ductwork would move the
airflow to an industrial kiln that had been pressed into service; in it,
any organic particles the vented air might carry would be incinerated in
a twenty-two-hundred-degree inferno.

As an added safety measure, what was in effect a huge rubberized tent
was being erected inside the building, encompassing everything up to the
third tier of seats. Overhead, the cube of a Scoreboard hung suspended,
securing the steel cables that uniformed men were even now using to
affix the last of the top tenting. At mid court on the hardwood floor,
the Seminole warrior's impassive visage surveyed the beehive of activity
that was now nearing its culmination.

The olive green rubberized fabric blocked the civic center's high
windows and the majority of the overhead lighting. Instead, a large
number of stand-mounted banks of lighting panels had already been
wheeled along the perimeter of the tenting. Many were standard halogen
lamps--but a substantial number of the panels held banks of longer
lighting tubes that, as they were tested by the military electricians,
glowed with an odd blue-white intensity.

"We're trying to cover every base," Krewell told Beck, as both men
watched from the second row of seats in the cavernous field house
"Ultraviolet lights will be in alternating banks around the treatment
enclosure. The CBW people swear that it will neutralize the VIX even
faster than natural sunlight--two hours, three at the most."

The physician nodded to a line of soldiers topping off plastic canisters
from a green-painted tank trailer that had been pulled in by a Humvee.

"We've also cornered the market on liquid bleach and hand-pump sprayers,
Beck. It's not Level Four containment, but it's as close to it as we can
get in a field situation."

He looked at Beck though the full-face exposure masks both of them wore
concealed any expressions.

"How is Katie doing?" Krewell asked.

"Not good. She's in and out of consciousness, and her fever is spiking.
Deborah won't leave her side."

"It won't be long now, Beck. Ten minutes. I promise."

Krewell had taken pains to ensure Katie and J.L. were in the first bank
of flu patients awaiting treatment with the VTX. Their symptoms were
advancing ruthlessly; whether their weakened systems could deal with the
demands that were about to be placed on them was, the doctors had made
clear, an open question.

As if on cue, a parade of stretchers had begun to wind through the
entrance. They were placed in rows on the hardwood floor, and from
Beck's vantage point it looked as if a line of ants, two to a litter,
were depositing some hard-won bounty for inspection by the queen. He
scanned the lines until his eyes locked on one stretcher, this one
accompanied by a third exposure-suited figure that walked at the side,
holding the hand of its occupant.

He turned to see Krewell watching him.

"Go on," Beck heard his friend say. "Get the hell down there with her,
man."

By the time he reached courtside, the treatment had already begun. The
infective process was simplicity itself: while an assistant held the
face of a patient steady, a green-garbed medic placed the tip of an
inhaler tube against a nostril. A squeeze of the bulb, and the team
moved on to the next stretcher.

Beck reached Katie's stretcher simultaneously with the treatment team.

Deborah, sitting on the hardwood floor and white-faced behind the rubber
mask, looked up at him once. Then, still holding Katie's hand in her own
gloved one, she waited as the medics performed their ritual.

On the stretcher, Katie was only semiconscious, but she had pulled away
the inhalator tip touched her and grimaced at the puff of moist air that
followed.

Beck was staring at his daughter, hot tears on his own cheeks under his
mask, when he felt Deborah's touch. Her hand took his, forming a chain
that linked child and parents. Wordlessly, he knelt beside her.

Together, they waited.

Aftermath Washington, D.C. July 25

"You did whatt Beck's voice was dumbfounded. "He's a sociopath who
killed at least four people in this country alone. Probably more."

Carson was unmoved. "Calm down, Beck. It was a direct request from
Putin. A demand, actually. What were we supposed to do? Put your friend
Ilya on trial for murder?"

"So instead you put him on a plane for Moscow."

"We haven't forgotten what he tried to do to you. But perhaps you
should. It's history, man. Move past it." He smiled, but not as if his
heart was in it. "Concentrate on the bright side. The President wants to
make you a national hero."

"Thank him for me. I'd rather he didn't."

"You may not have a choice. He feels strongly that you were the reason
he is not facing an impeachment hearing-or worse--this very minute."

"I still don't want it. There would too many bodies draped over any
medal he could give me. I know how we got the vaccine in time--what the
President asked Putin to do over there to get the information."

"There was no choice, Beck. Not with what was at stake."

"I understand that too. That's what bothers me: I do understand it.

I'm a historian, remember? I know that the same choice has been made
before, countless times. And will be made again, the next time."

Beck's eyes looked steadily at Carson. "We're the good guys. But we
still act on our sense of expediency. We make our decisions, compromise
what we are--who we are. All in the name of the greater good. I've been
on both sides of that line now, and I don't know if I can straddle it
ever again."

Carson nodded, and shrugged.

"I'll pass that along," he said, and something in his voice made Beck
look up.

"The President and I have come to a mutual decision," Carson said. "I
will tender my resignation within the next few weeks. He will accept,
with regrets." He looked at Beck from under an arched eyebrow. "That's
still confidential, by the way."

"What are your plans?"

"I have not yet decided," Carson said. Then he smiled thinly, at an
unspoken but shared jest. "Perhaps something in the defense industry.

Selling shoes to the Army, maybe."

He stood, his hand outstretched awkwardly enough so that even if Beck
had not known him, it would have been obvious the friendly gesture was
an unfamiliar exercise.

"You could write your own ticket at the Company, you know," Carson said,
making it sound like an afterthought. "Or even here, in my old office.
The President would be open to the suggestion. National security advisor
isn't a bad job, you know."

"Thanks," said Beck. "I already have a job, in Arlington. I just have to
start doing it again. If they'll take me back, that is."

Fort Walton Beach, Florida July 29

The balcony looked out over Choctawatchee Bay and beyond, a vista that
stretched so wide and so open that it could leave those unaccustomed to
it delightfully dizzy.

Far to the east was the arch of the Destin Bridge, its simple lines
carved sharp against the slate blue sky. Southward, just over the low
swell of Okaloosa Island's sugar white dunes, was the Gulf of Mexico, an
unimpeded expanse of emerald greens and white-flecked cobalt. In the
distance, its single sharp horizon bisected the world into two distinct
realms.

But it was the bay to which her eyes always returned, whether to watch
the timeless grace of sails filling like the wings of a gull, or simply
to gaze upon a surface in ceaseless, soothing movement. The bay was a
living thing, an underappreciated artist who worked in wind and wave and
current-crafting an unending series of intricate patterns, never
duplicating the same one twice.

Carol Mayer sat unmoving, the salt breeze stirring her hair. It felt
cool and fresh against her scalp, and she savored the way it fenced with
the morning sun's warmth.

To her, it felt like life restored.

For a moment, she tilted her head back to take the full measure of the
elements in conflict. Had there been anyone to see, the hollows under
her eyes and the residual sallowness of her skin would have signaled a
woman whose convalescence was not yet complete. The hand that held the
china mug still shook, though less than in previous days, whenever she
lifted it to her lips.

But she was alive. It was a still-surprising knowledge that now made her
smile, but which had rocked her only a few days before. Then, she had
just swum to the surface of her consciousness; through fever-blurred
eyes, she had stared in confusion at the olive canopy far overhead.
Panic began to flood her when a figure in fatigues and gas mask bent
close.

"It's all right, ma'am," a soft Southern voice had said. "This here's a
hangar at Eglin we fixed up special. You're pretty sick right now, but
it's gonna be okay soon."

It was the voice of an angel, and she had believed it without question.

She had drifted away again, this time with a sense of peace.

Carol opened her eyes again, drinking in the panorama and feeling the
same peace flood into her now. The angel had spoken the truth, though as
a physician Carol knew it would be some time before her recovery would
be complete. Someday, even the memories that regularly plagued her
dreams might begin to fade.

So many had died--the figures were still uncertain, she had read, but in
Florida they were sure to exceed twenty thousand persons. New York had
escaped the worst of it; but before the vaccine and the VIX treatment
facilities had stemmed the virus, more than eleven thousand deaths had
occurred on the densely packed island of Manhattan.

As for Russia--well, nobody knew the mortality figures. The Russian
government simply would not release the numbers, though that had not
stopped the commentators in the Western press from speculating in the
mid-six-figure range.

That, not including those who had been killed in the nerve gas
cauterization of the outbreak.

It was a ghastly tally, the most devastating terrorist attack in
history. What made it all the more horrifying was a knowledge all the
world now shared: it could happen again at any time.

The thought made Carol shiver, and she fought it down to the deepest
recesses of her mind.

What was it Scarlett O'Hara said? she mused. Oh yes-"/'// think about
that tomorrow. Tomorrow is another day."

She waited, willing herself calm again. After a moment, she looked once
more at the vastness of the Choctawatchee.

A fresh swirl of breeze skipped across the waters of her bay, and the
reflected disk of the morning sun exploded into a kaleidoscope of
glittering jewels.

Carol Mayer leaned back again, and let the warmth of life wash over her.

Epilogue Arlington, Virginia July 30

Beck sat in his car, watching for the figure that occasionally moved
behind the sheer draperies that covered the picture window.

He had been there when Deborah pulled her car into the driveway. She had
taken the rum too quickly, the way she always did, and the wheels
bottomed out on the steep incline with a scraping thud. When they were
married, living in this house, the sound had been an ongoing source of
irritation to Beck. He hadn't known how much he would miss it, would
miss knowing each time Deborah came home.

Beck did not know how long he sat in his car. He did know that he almost
drove away several times, once even touching the key that hung "from the
ignition. Finally, he found himself standing on the porch, his finger
pressed against the bell.

The door opened, and she stood there as if she had expected him. Beck
hesitated on the doorstep, for a moment unable to find words for what he
wanted to say.

Then he spoke.

"I made the first move, this time."

She must have read something in his face, because she smiled briefly
before she responded.

"You better come in," she said. "Katie's still down at the mall, with J.
L." She looked at him closely, as if looking for something deep inside
him that she alone could see. Her eyes were serious, almost solemn; but
they were not without welcome. "We don't have much time before dinner."

Beck Casey stepped through the door she held wide, home at last.

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