Code Alpha [046-011-066-4.9]

By: Joseph Massucci

Synopsis:

Since it's unauthorized "birth, " the virus known as Saint Vitus has
been the U.S. Army's best-kept secret--until its theft. In the hands of
the Mid East's most dangerous terrorist, Saint Vitus becomes a weapon
with unlimited potential for destruction. With the fate of the world
hanging in the balance, a desperate President orders all military
resources directed at the virus's destruction--even if that means
meltdown.

To Patricia

A LEISURE BOOK" February 1997

Published by Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc. 276 Fifth Avenue New York,
NY 10001

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware
that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and
destroyed" to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher
has received any payment for this "stripped book."

Copyright 1997 by Joseph Massucci
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher,
except where permitted by law.

The name "Leisure Books" and the stylized "I" with design are trademarks
of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

Printed in the United States of America.

Prologue.

U.S. Army BL-4 Biological Laboratory Fort Detrick, Maryland

Monday, January 11

"We've got a breach!"

A horn blared in the lab's staging area, synchronized with a flashing
red light. Both technicians were on their feet, checking the rows of
screens on the tactical console. "Do we have contamination?"

"Checking."

There came a high-pitched whine, followed by a metallic click. "Autolock
sequence complete."

"Jesus, he's sealed inside."

Burns, the center's chief engineer, pushed his wire frame glasses up the
bridge of his nose as he spun around to one of the computer monitors.
"Talk to me, Ricky; what kind of situation do we have in there?"

Rick, the youngest technician to be assigned to Fort Detrick's maximum
containment laboratory, jabbed one reset button after another, checking
and rechecking the readouts. "I'm not getting anything."

Burns switched on the scanner. "Air particulates?"

"Zero. The air's clean. Whatever's happening in there is not in the
air."

"He hit the manual alarm--must've torn his suit." Burns checked the
video monitor and saw Dr. David French inside the BL-4 "hot suite"
hunched over a lab bench like a nearsighted jeweler. He appeared to be
cradling his arm, but Burns couldn't be sure because of the camera's
angle. He punched the intercom. "Doctor, talk to me."

No answer. "Jesus," Rick said, "he isn't moving."

"I want you to get the colonel down here fast." There was genuine fear
in Rick's eyes as he bolted from the lab's staging area, his footsteps
echoing down the cinderblock corridor. Burns pulled the receiver to his
ear, nearly ripping the cord out of the wall. ' "Security, we have a
Code Seventeen SIGMA alarm in BL-4. Repeat, a Code Seventeen SIGMA alarm
in BL-4. Auto containment procedure completed."

Burns could hear a thin voice on the other end asking questions, but the
siren masked the meaning of the words. He put a finger into his left ear
and shouted, "I can't hear you. We have a Code Seventeen down here. Dr.
French needs assistance, for chrissake. He may have breached his suit."
Burns glanced up at the closed-circuit monitor. One of the cameras was
still trained on the lab bench, but he could not see Dr. French. "Get
Colonel Westbrook down here now!"

Julie Martinelli burst into the staging area, her white lab coat flowing
behind her like a cape, her hard-soled shoes pounding the grated
flooring. "What's happened?" she shouted over the siren. "Where's Dr.
French?"

"Inside," Burns said. "He's locked inside."

Julie scanned the monitors and checked the readouts. "There's no air
contamination. What the hell is he doing in there?"

"He hit the alarm," Burns shouted over the din. "I can't hear a thing."
Julie punched a console button and silenced the siren; the red light,
however, would keep flashing until the center's commander reset the
security system. "I don't see him." Julie panned the lab's two cameras
first one way, then the other. "Where the hell is he?"

Burns shrugged. "He was at his lab bench a moment ago."

"David?" Julie said into the intercom. "Can you answer me please?"

Still no answer. "I've got a bad feeling about this. I don't like the
way he's been acting--that detached look of his, always in his own world
like he's plotting something." Julie zoomed one of the camera's lenses
in on Dr. French's lab bench and panned slowly. She could see the active
gamma radiation unit ...  the beakers ... the vials labeled group a
streptococcal virus. ... "David, you stupid son of a bitch." Julie
removed her lab coat and opened a suit locker with a bang. Burns reeled
away from the console. "May I ask what you're doing?"

She stepped into the one-piece, full-body polyurethane laboratory suit,
a second skin she always called her prophylactic overcoat, and pulled it
up to her waist. "I'm going inside."

"You're not going-anywhere," Burns said. "Only the colonel can reset
that door. Besides, security's on its way."

"I'm not waiting."

Burns stood defiantly in her way. "You don't have much--"

"Excuse me, please." Julie pushed past him and took a seat before one of
the three computer workstations and brought up the lab's security
interface. ACCESS CONTROL CODE?

"Don't even think about it," Burns said. "The colonel gets a little
testy when grad students start decompiling his security system's
computer code."

She began typing, then entering, typing, entering. LAB ACCESS DENIED
More typing. MACRO COMPILED--PROCEED?

"Yes, please," she said to the screen, then jabbed the enter key. PLEASE
WATT "Julie, you're making me very nervous," Burns said, watching her.
MACRO COMPLETED "Piece of cake," she said, then entered a final command.
AUTHORIZED "Yes!"

"You're going to get my ass canned," Burns said. Julie pulled the lab
suit over her shoulders and thrust her arms into the sleeves, then
fumbled to put each finger into the proper glove digit. Finished, she
put on the hood and sealed it. She spun the releasing wheel on the
vaultlike door until it pulled forward with a loud hiss. "If the colonel
ever gets his ass down here, tell him I've got one huge problem for him
to handle."

"Are you going to clue me in on what's--" Julie closed the
fourteen-inch-thick, two-ton, stainless-steel door behind her with a
mechanical click. Burns shook his head and said to no one in particular,
"You're a very dangerous young woman."

Inside the lab, Julie attached her suit to one of the springcoiled air
hoses hanging from the ceiling. The air supply hissed loudly in her
ears, and the magnified view through her face shield distorted objects
beyond arm's length. The maximum containment laboratory was a
claustrophobic compartment of centrifuges, incubators, freezers, benches
and computing workstations. Cluttered, but very high-tech. Her eyes
scanned the lab and saw no one. Above the even rhythm of her amplified
breathing, she could hear Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 22 flowing from a
dictating cassette recorder. "David?"

No response. Julie stepped awkwardly to the lab bench. Her deep brown
eyes scanned the bench's culture dishes, beakers ...  the active gamma
radiation unit ...  the syringe ... then across the rack of vials
labeled group a streptococcal virus and a second labeled tetrodotoxin.
She began sweating inside the suit. "God Almighty--" "My ... head
hurts."

Julie whirled with a start. She recognized Dr. French's features inside
his suit--his shaved head, his magnificent handlebar mustache. But
something was wrong; she could see his contorted expression beneath his
magnifying face shield, which made his eyes look like a pair of poached
eggs. Her anger swelled. "You son of a bitch. You did it, didn't you?"

She expected him to begin reciting one of his world-class philosophical
lectures about stretching the limits of the scientific envelope. But he
said nothing to her. Julie began shouting at him, "David, you made me a
promise. ..."

She grew suddenly quiet. Her wide eyes stared at the drop of blood
beading atop the fingertip of French's white polyurethane glove. A shot
of adrenaline rushed through Julie's arteries, exploding in a tingling
sensation at the roots of her hair. Was he even aware? she thought.
"Your finger ..."

He held out his finger to her as though it belonged to a helpless lab
animal he had just infected. "Stupid ... so stupid ...  a small
distraction ... I never felt the needle."

Julie touched his shoulder. "I'll take you into deconnnnnnn ..."

A ringing in Dr. French's ears made Julie's voice sound as though it
came from the far end of a deep tunnel. His vision blurred and a wave of
nausea swept through him. Sweat drenched the inside of his suit. He
forced a pathetic smile. "There's an army of red ants burrowing through
my brain."

"Davvviiiiiddddddddddd ... ?"

Dr. French stared at her, his lower lip quivering. The sublime beauty of
Mozart's concerto turned to discordant banging in his ears. "Julie, my
head hurts--" His chest tightened as though in a vise, and he coughed,
speckling his face shield with blood-laden mucus. He reached for a row
of bottles on the table and realized to his horror that his hand no
longer was his own. Julie stared transfixed at his trembling and
twitching fingers. His arm began to undulate, wavy movements like those
of an inept exotic dancer. He had lost all muscular control. "Gancie ...
gancic ... gancic  ..." He couldn't form the word. Julie grabbed the
doctor firmly by his shoulders and tried to ease him back onto a lab
stool. The violent energy flooding his body caused him to lash out at
her, catching her Plexiglas face shield at the chin. The blow drove her
backward onto one of the lab's two scanning tunneling microscopes,
rocking the seven-hundred-pound instrument. He could only watch,
astonished, at what he had just done; he felt no exertion at all. French
collapsed in a heap, his face a grimacing mask of agony, his arms and
legs flailing in a thrashing dance of death. He grabbed his suit at the
neck and pulled it downward as though it were a bib, splitting the
material. "The heat ...  the awful heat!"

Julie, incredulous, watched as radical dehydration shrank the biochemist
into a wizened caricature of his former self. Ruptured capillaries
turned his skin black and blue. Patterns of bodily decay were
exacerbated and accelerated, as in a timelapse film, detailing the
organism's utter devastation. She stepped timidly back. "David ... you
stupid son of a bitch ..."

Finally Dr. French grew still--it was over. He lay heaped in a twisted
pile, the air flow from the ceiling-mounted hose giving his pulsating
suit an illusion of life. Red and yellow sap oozed from the suit's tear,
forming a loathsome puddle around him. Julie knelt down and, breathing
deeply, peered through the face shield at what was left of the doctor's
face. His eyes flared open and gazed up at her through the magnified
face shield. Those eyes! His face--a visage bubbling with
secretions--had forfeited any claim to humanity. Dr. French had
literally melted inside his suit. His rubber hand grabbed her wrist with
fingers that still possessed surprising strength. As she watched in
horror, the ravaged flesh parted where the mouth should have been and
tried to form words, failing miserably. The foul moan that erupted from
his throat sounded like the last breath of a dying wolf. Julie cried
out. No sound at all penetrated the lab's fourteeninch-thick metal
walls.

PART ONE The Winds of Death "I thought we had banished forever what we
all saw only a few months ago--a mother trying to protect her child,
waving her arms against the invisible winds of death." --President
George Bush

Chapter One.

Kumar, Iraq

Tuesday, January 12

Five miles outside the settlement, Tarra saw the first signs that
something had gone terribly wrong: the fine bleached sand, swept up by a
caravan of vehicles, veiled a procession of people and machines
withdrawing from what could only be a battlefield. She drove past the
surviving settlers--a few old men and motherless children, their heads
swathed in cloths. Some of them wept bitterly; most simply walked in
stunned disbelief. She drove past the soldiers dragging their rifles,
retreating from an enemy their weapons could not touch. Finally her Jeep
swept past the doctors and engineers, their solutions all proven
impotent against the invader. But this was not war. Tarra drove on. She
knew the desert well and navigated the Jeep with precision across its
uneven roads. The desert was her home, and the price she had paid for
growing up a rebellious desert child was the loss of her femininity to a
tigerlike constitution. She negotiated the trail's curves too fast,
chasing knots of dazed refugees up the dunes. She laughed at them all.
Some men found her attractive--and so she was, with seductive features,
short black hair and deep green eyes that could impale you. Tarra's
attraction was not the allure gallant men dueled over; her beauty
mirrored a feline in the wild, an animal that could not be tamed. Nor
would any want to--her vicious contempt for men was legend in the
region. Tarra jerked the Jeep to a halt at the edge of the settlement, a
collection of meager huts hastily cordoned off with thick spools of
barbed wire and splashes of red paint denoting some cryptic Arabic
warning. She dared go no farther. Tarra turned to her lone passenger and
smiled at him, her piercing eyes eager. For this lone man she harbored
no contempt, only unyielding loyalty. He was a giant, intimidating to
look at, dressed in a tailored silk suit and a civil red tie that set
apart a dark face bloated by hatred. He responded to her mischievous
smile with un-Arabic frigidity. His name was Banna, and his interest in
the settlement was more than morbid curiosity. He stood, peeled off his
aviator-style sunglasses and raised a pair of high-powered binoculars to
his dark, distant eyes. He could hear wailing in the distance, a far-off
echo of mourning, but could not discern if the sound was human or
animal. He scanned the settlement, searching for clues to the tragedy.
To him this assessment was a game, a war exercise. At first he could see
nothing unusual, just neglected wood-and-straw structures that had
fought a generation-long war against the encroaching desert. Scores of
huts, undamaged, stood empty. He saw no people, no activity of any kind,
only sand; sand that lay in dunes and in rivulets; sand piled high
against buildings. He zoomed in on the dirt road that cut the settlement
in two. And then he saw them. Bodies. Dozens of them. Women huddled in
doorways clutching their children, men draped across the road reaching
futilely to help them. Carcasses of mules and dogs lay between them.
Kumar had become a settlement of corpses. Banna removed the binoculars
and let his war-trained mind consider how this could have happened.
Poisoned water?

No--death had come too quickly, too completely. An air strike? There
were no craters. The railroad. Banna focused the binoculars on a stretch
of open track atop the far ridge three hundred yards upwind of the tiny
settlement. Through the distant curtain of dust he could see the outline
of a diesel locomotive pulled to a halt and several derailed cars lying
in its wake. One was an overturned tank car for transporting hazardous
liquids, its lethal contents long emptied. The people of Kumar had been
unlucky. Their homes stood in the path of a wind that carried with it a
death far more lethal than an advancing army. He grinned, finding
amusement in this absurd tragedy; a man-made folly. "Abdul Banna!" a
voice called out to him. Banna whirled to see who had shouted his name
so openly. What he saw made him laugh loudly. There, walking toward him
along the barbed-wire barricade, were several soldiers dressed in
horrid-looking suits that allowed them to fight in a contaminated
environment. Their suits were thick and bulky, with gloves and boots to
match, each bearing the markings of Iraq's elite Republican Guard. But
it was those gas masks with their extended snout and large glass eyes
that would send children screaming for their mothers. The lead soldier
ordered the others to halt, while he alone approached the Jeep. The
soldier removed his mask and let out a weary sigh. He was sweating
terribly, the heavy suit consuming what little energy the day's events
had not already taken from him. It had been a long day, worse than any
he could remember in war. Banna knew this soldier. His name was Lt. Gen.
Wafiq Sabri, Iraq's military chief of staff. Banna could see that the
specter of another conflict with the West was killing him. "I do not
envy you, Sabri," Banna called down to him in Arabic. "But why do you
summon me here? This is not my problem."

General Sabri climbed into the back of the Jeep and sat down heavily
beside Banna, producing a cloud of dust from the leather seat. He
ordered the woman behind the wheel to leave them, more curtly than he
intended. Tarra looked questioningly at Banna. "She will stay," Banna
said. The general, not comfortable in the presence of a woman, nodded
wearily. He could not argue in the desert heat. "Tonight this settlement
will be buried and with it all that has happened here today. By morning
the train will finish its journey."

Banna shrugged. "Then what do you want from me?"

"Operation Harness. He wants it done just as you planned. Allah has
given us a unique opportunity. You are to begin immediately."

Banna allowed a wry smirk. "I admire the president's conviction. He has
conceded that his weapons and troops are useless to him."

"Your plan has given him new hope," Sabri said. "He will risk another
holy war. Another air attack is imminent, yet we cannot fight the
bandits in the sky and we have no navy. Our tanks are lost, our soldiers
beaten. Now the murderers will strike again, this time to destroy our
laboratories, which cannot yield enough uranium to power a clock. But
you--"he thrust a finger at Banna--"you are his secret weapon. You can
do what an army cannot. And may Allah save mankind from your wrath."

"I am only interested in his ability to pay."

General Sabri conceded with a nod. "The first eighty million pounds has
been paid into the London branch of the Bank of Credit and Commerce
International, just as you requested. You will report to me--"

"I will work with my own people. The plan is mine, as will be its
execution. I shall divulge the details of Harness to no one, least of
all to you. Once I leave here, you will not hear from me again. Like my
weapon, I shall become invisible. There is no turning back, Sabri. Tell
him he will have his victory."

The general and the mercenary stared at each other, two soldiers with
vastly different methods of warfare. Sabri knew there was no point
debating the matter further with this man; there was nothing left to
decide. A feeling of dread swelled within the general as he considered
how the world would soon change because of the man seated next to him.
He knew Banna was unstoppable, a warrior of great resources. He did not
doubt for a moment that his terrible plan would succeed. "Then let it be
done. May Allah be willing."

Banna scoffed at the general's prayer and wiped his forehead with a silk
handkerchief. This was not Allah's affair. This was an economic
decision--the Middle East nation could not defeat the alliance of force
the superpowers had rallied against it. The inevitable strike must be
done another way--Banna's way. Sabri's eyes grew distant, as though
blinded by the sun's reflection off the white sand. For a long moment he
sat there, absorbing the heat, and said nothing. Finally Banna said,
"There is one more item that is not for negotiation: You are never to
utter my name again."

Sabri understood; from this day Abdul Banna would cease to exist. "How
will you be known?"

"I have a passion for Greek mythology." Banna replaced his aviator
sunglasses and touched the chin of his charming Tarra. "Men dare not
look her in the face, except by degrees: they mistake her for a Gorgon,
instead of knowing her to be a Minerva."

She returned a devilish grin. "I will be Gorgon."

Chapter Two.

Anne Arundel County, Maryland

Thursday, January 14

Dr. Reinhard Sterling hailed the last cab outside Baltimore/ Washington
International Airport, tossed his carry-on travel bag and satchel into
the backseat and climbed in after them. He wanted to get far away from
airports, a sentiment most likely shared by his fellow travelers that
night on Lufthansa Flight 407 from Frankfurt. The flight had arrived
three and a half hours late, thanks to a bomb threat at the German
airport. Now he had to find his way to the U.S. capital at midnight and,
worse, function coherently at a 7:30 a.m. meeting with a United States
senator. "Please take me to Washington," Dr. Sterling instructed the
driver in his German accent, still thick three decades after becoming a
United States citizen. "The Sutton House."

The driver, an affable old black man with a winning smile, nodded and
pulled his cab away from the terminal. He made a quick mental tally of
tonight's fares. Jackpot! More than $400 for the day. His smile widened;
this trip--$50 plus tip-would net him his best night this week.

"Yes, sir," the cabby said to his fare. "Pretty late to be gettin' into
town."

"Yes, very," Dr. Sterling said, his sixty-year-old face mirroring the
strain of the last twenty-four hours. The biochemist was not in a
conversational mood, something the cabby quickly picked up on. The cab
pulled onto the Baltimore/ Washington Expressway and headed southwest
toward D.C., leaving behind the glow of the airport. The traffic this
time of night was sparse, allowing them to make good time. Dr. Sterling
closed his eyes and relaxed for the first time since leaving Geneva. He
even considered dozing during this final leg of his trip. Sleep had been
elusive ever since he received the telex two nights before; in fact, the
whole mood of his trip had changed following the hasty summons by
Senator Baker. What originally began as a business visit and a brief
address at a conference of fellow molecular biologists at Fort Detrick,
now included an impossible schedule with a high-level meeting at the
capitol. All because of a lab researcher's stupid blunder. Dr. Sterling
first learned of the Fort Detrick accident in a news report along with
the rest of the scientific community. But his colleagues didn't know
what he knew. Senator Baker's telex confirmed his worst fears: the
military had played God with terrible consequences. Idiots! He had known
this day was inevitable. Soon the late-night traffic thinned to a few
specks of red taillights well ahead. The cabby tuned into an all-night
talk station, one of the many devoting its programming tonight
exclusively to news of the possibility of another war in the Persian
Gulf. "Do ya think Saddam has it?" the cabby offered over his shoulder.
"The bomb, that is. Do you think he'll nuke the Jews?"

Dr. Sterling didn't answer. He had drifted into a fitful sleep, the
gentle drone of the road serving as a sedative for his frayed nerves.
The cabby shrugged and let his fare nap. He turned the radio low. Dr.
Sterling's nap proved to be a short one. When the cab driver glanced up
at his mirror, he saw another car approaching rapidly from behind. He
swallowed hard when the car came so close to his bumper that its
headlights disappeared below the cab's trunk. "What the hell's he
doin'?" He glanced in the mirror at his fare, who appeared to be sound
asleep in the back. A flashing blue light on the second car's dashboard
blinked on. "Shit."

The cabby glanced at his speedometer. Six miles over the speed limit--a
lousy six miles! Exasperated, he pulled his cab onto the shoulder of the
highway with a thump, gravel spraying against the undercarriage, and
stopped. So much for a jackpot night. The noise of the unscheduled stop
startled Dr. Sterling awake. "What is it? Why are we stopping?"

"Cop," the cabby said, opening his door. Disoriented, Dr. Sterling
twisted his neck around and peered through the rear windshield. All he
could see was the backlit silhouette of a hefty uniformed man wearing a
Smokey-the bear hat. "Please come back with me," the officer said. It
was a command, not a polite request. "Yes, sir." The cabby slid from the
front seat and was gone. Dr. Sterling heard the retreating gravel
footsteps as the two headed back to the patrol car. He glanced at his
watch, closed his eyes and scratched his closely cropped beard in
frustration. Would he ever get to a bed tonight?

Suddenly the cab doors flew open and three people slid neatly inside. A
powerful-looking woman with short black hair pushed Dr. Sterling roughly
to the center of the backseat and jammed something metal into his ribs.
He flinched in pain. "What is this?" Dr. Sterling said. "Who are you
people?

What are you doing?" No one answered him. He appealed to the woman for
an answer, but her amused look of contempt frightened him.

The man behind the wheel, a dark, grisly brute with a black beard and a
squashed nose, put the cab in gear and pulled onto the expressway. The
doctor's worst fears were realized when he saw the unmarked patrol car
quickly pass them. He could see the uniformed officer with his
round-brimmed hat, but no one else. What had happened to the cabdriver?
And who were these people? For God's sake, what is happening?

Tarra passed Sterling's travel bag and satchel to a
distinguished-looking gentleman in the front passenger seat. Dr. Carl
Wynett, referred to by the others as "the Businessman," could have
passed for Sterling's twin brother. Like Sterling, the man exuded an
academic aura. He was of medium height, late fifties, a healthy head of
silver hair, a large frame with an notable paunch and scientific eyes.
He opened Sterling's well-traveled satchel, snapped on a pencil-thin
flashlight and began a meticulous search of its contents. Sterling
watched him curiously. What did he want? What was he looking for?
"Someone please tell me what this is about."

Tarra slipped an arm over Dr. Sterling's shoulders and applied pressure
as a warning. "Do not ask questions." She spoke with a thick accent,
possibly Arabic, but Sterling couldn't be sure. He smelted the strangest
scent of perfume. "Let him speak," ordered the Businessman. He, too, had
an accent, which Dr. Sterling recognized as German, but the man's
careful and deliberate phrasing suggested he was a student of languages.
Tarra poked Dr. Sterling cruelly in the ribs with her Walther. "Speak to
him."

Dr. Sterling was too intimidated to speak. Tarra poked him harder.
"Speak!"

"Where ... where are you taking me?"

Without looking up from his exploration of the doctor's satchel, the
Businessman demanded, "Again."

Another vicious poke in the ribs. "You can have my money ... everything.
I am carrying one thousand dollars."

Tarra laughed wickedly. "We do not need your money--"

"Be quiet!" the Businessman ordered her. He looked severely at Sterling.
"Again!"

Sterling's breathing became more labored. He felt dizzy. "Please. I do
not want trouble. I am a doctor--a biochemist. ...  I am to address a
conference tomorrow in Maryland."

"I do not want trouble," said the Businessman, still rummaging through
Sterling's satchel. The timbre and tone of his voice matched perfectly
that of the doctor's. "I am a doctor--a biochemist." He even mimicked
Sterling's facial expressions down to his nervous habit of scratching
his beard. Hours of practiced skill were evident in the masquerade.
"Tomorrow I will address my colleagues at a conference of the American
Society of Microbiology convening at Fort Detrick."

The imitation was remarkable. "You have him," the driver affirmed,
grinning. Tara agreed. The Businessman closed the satchel and said, "I
see the text of your speech and a working draft of a yet-untitled paper
on enzymes. Still, there is something missing. Your secretary confirmed
for me your seven-thirty appointment tomorrow morning at the capitol,
yet I see no correspondence here related to that meeting. Surely you
would bring it with you." Dr. Sterling said nothing. "Surely you brought
it with you," the Businessman repeated tersely. Tarra grabbed Dr.
Sterling by the lapels and felt inside his suit. She retrieved a black
leather billfold and passed it to the front. Sterling saw no point in
resisting; these people would take what they wanted, with or without his
cooperation. The Businessman rifled through airline tickets, a
membership card for the National Academy of Science, a travel itinerary
that included a hotel confirmation at the Sutton House, an employee ID
for Gentech Laboratories--then he found a telex, which he read with
particular interest. "I have it," he said, directing his penlight's beam
on the half-sheet of paper. "A personal invitation to meet with Senator
Michael Baker tomorrow at seven-thirty a.m. to discuss a laboratory
accident, it says. There are no details." He directed his light into
Sterling's face. "Please elaborate for me, Doctor. Perhaps this meeting
is about an unlawful gene-splicing experiment?"

It occurred to Dr. Sterling in one, wild instant. These people are going
to kill me. The Businessman signaled Tarra with an almost imperceptible
nod of his head. She delivered two quick, hard blows with her elbow to
Sterling's ribs, cracking two of them. He shouted in agony--she
possessed the strength of a solidly built man twice her size. Tarra
poised her arm for another blow, but Dr. Sterling, winded and grimacing,
waved her off. "I know only what was in the newspapers. No one has yet
briefed me."

"You are lying."

"One mile," the driver warned, turning on the cab's inside dome light.
They were out of time. The Businessman stuffed Dr. Sterling's billfold
inside his own suit coat, then studied the doctor's features like a
plastic surgeon scrutinizing his work. "What have we missed?"

"His eyeglasses are different," Tarra noted. "Give them to me."

Tarra removed his glasses and passed them to the front. Dr. Sterling
squinted helplessly as the inside of the car became a blur. "His beard
is thinner and has more white hairs," said the driver, scrutinizing the
doctor in the rearview mirror. "Yes, yes, I will take care of it. What
else?"

"His rings and watch," Tarra said. These, too, she roughly removed and
gave to the Businessman. The cab pulled into a well-lit rest area and
jerked to a stop beside a rented black Thunderbird Turbo Coupe. There
were no other passenger vehicles parked here this time of night, just a
couple of trucking rigs idling in the outer lot. The cab had barely
stopped when the Businessman exited, taking Dr. Sterling's travel bag
and satchel with him. He leaned back through the opened window and said
to his associates, "Are you absolutely clear on your instructions?"

Tarra nodded, her feline features exuding a cool look of confidence. "No
one will find his remains."

Dr. Sterling, trembling, said in a remarkably calm voice, "I can get you
money. As much as you want. My employer will give you whatever you want.
Anything."

No one paid him the slightest notice. The condemned scientist looked
hopefully at the faces of his abductors, searching for signs of
compassion, a willingness to deal, but found only the hard, professional
expressions of people who knew what they wanted and how to get it. The
Businessman vanished from the window and climbed behind the wheel of the
Thunderbird. Less than a minute later, both cars were gone.

Chapter Three.

Iraqi border

Friday, January 15 0200 hours

"Sir, we've got a problem," said naval pilot Capt. John Barron. One of
the Marines' most experienced CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter pilots,
Barron wouldn't voice a concern for the safety of his aircraft unless he
was certain of danger. Special Forces Maj. Joseph