The Devil's Pitchfork

1

Liz Vargaz leaned against the wall outside the locker room on the second floor of U.S. Immunological Research. Just off her left shoulder a sign read:

Beneath the sign, in blood red paint, was the spider-like biohazard symbol.

Liz tapped her foot and glanced at her watch. Michael was late. So what else was new? She didn’t like working with Michael Ballard in HL4, but her usual partner, Jim Scully, had called in sick.

No one was allowed to work HL4 alone. No one. And since there were only five authorized people to work HL4, five people whose ID badges would open the door to the locker room, she had needed to make arrangements. The two other people authorized had been unable to partner with her today. Frank Halloran, the head of the division, was in meetings all day and couldn’t get out of them. Nancy Latrelle turned her down. Liz was pretty sure Nancy would no longer be working HL4, the hot zone. They worked with the most dangerous and lethal infectious agents on the planet in HL4. Some people — most people with any degree of sanity — began to worry about working there. Any normal, intelligent human being began to worry about what one mistake, one slip of a glass pipette or a scalpel, might mean. Working with Ebola and Hanta viruses, Marburg, and others, the engineered nightmares, was not work for the squeamish. Nor was it work for the crazy. Crazy people weren’t afraid. Sane people… well, sane people feared the demons inside HL4.

But Nancy probably hadn’t developed that sort of problem. What Nancy seemed to have developed was far more common in hot zones: claustrophobia. In order to work in a hot zone — in HL4—you had to wear a biohazard suit, a spacesuit, and some people couldn’t handle it. And some — like Nancy — who could handle it, started to lose their grip on it and began to sweat and panic inside the suit. It had happened the last three times Nancy had suited up.

Liz was pretty sure Nancy was done with Hot Level 4. So that left Michael. Who was chronically late.

She was just about ready to drop down to his office when the elevator door opened and a short, bustling man race-walked toward her down the fluorescent-lit corridor. He flung his arms up in the air when he saw her standing there. It was exactly his fast movements and nervous energy that made Michael Ballard a liability in a hot zone.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said. “Angie called me and we got into it…”

Angie. The soon-to-be ex-wife. Yet another reason Liz didn’t like to work with Michael. All the emotional agitation was not meant for Hot Level 4. In a hot zone you needed a cool head.

“She’s starting to quibble over the boat. The boat! She didn’t want me to buy it, she didn’t want to go out on it, and now she wants to—”

”Michael! Are you ready for this?”

“Hey, sure, no—”

She came off the wall and stood squarely in front of him, tapping him on the chest, making sure she had his full attention.

“We have to do this,” she said. “But I’m not going in there with you if you’ve got your undies in a bunch. Don’t spend time thinking about Angie or your lawyer fees or your goddamned boat. Think about getting in and out of there without any mistakes. Pay attention.”

“Hey, no problem.”

Liz was an inch or two taller than Michael’s five-five. She gazed into his blue eyes and saw him take a deep breath, relaxing. Centering himself. He became visibly calmer.

“Okay, sorry,” he said. “You go in, get changed. I’ll be ready in a few minutes.”

The locker room for Hot Level 4 was uni-sex. With so few people qualified to work the space, there had been no sense putting in separate locker rooms.

“You’re sure?”

He nodded and ran his left hand through his wiry brown hair. She noticed that he wasn’t wearing his wedding band. She wondered if this was because he had taken it off in anticipation of the impending divorce or because no jewelry was allowed in the hot zone. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m sure. I’ll be fine. Go on.”

She nodded and pressed her ID badge to the reader. A green light clicked on and she pushed her way into the locker room.

Five miles away from the two-story building housing U.S. Immunological Research, three white panel vans traveled down I-695. Inside each van were four men, one driving and three in the back, waiting. They were all in contact with one another via scrambled radios. All but the drivers wore white Tyvek biohazard suits. Hanging around their necks were rubber North respirator masks with Lexan faceplates and two purple virus filters jutting out like insect mandibles. They were seven minutes out.

The locker room was tiny. It contained half a dozen metal lockers, a bench to sit on, a mirror and shelves. Liz opened a locker and stripped naked. She took off her Timex Indiglo and her earrings and a gold chain she wore around her neck and placed them on the top shelf of the locker. She twisted her diamond ring and wedding band. The diamond definitely had to go. It was impossible to wear a diamond ring under rubber gloves and the risk of the diamond cutting the thick rubber was too great. She took off both rings, her heart thudding in her chest. Her husband, Alan, had died two years before in a motorcycle accident and she still wore the rings. She hated to take off the wedding band. Usually she did, just like the rules said. But she also knew that most everybody took some sort of good luck charm into the hot zone. Level 4 pathogens did that to seemingly rock-steady people. She put the diamond ring on the shelf, but slipped the simple gold wedding band back on her finger.

Quickly she pulled on a set of green surgical scrubs. Underwear was not allowed into the hot zone. She donned a cloth surgical cap. She wore her blond hair short, partly to make this work easier, in part because she thought she looked pretty good with it short. She worked hard at keeping in shape, was still two years shy of forty and knew she could pass for a younger thirty… not in her twenties, that wasn’t possible. But thirty-two, maybe. She took a calm, steadying look at herself in the mirror, then crossed to the door and knocked on it so Michael would know he could come in. She crossed the room to the opposite door and pushed it open, feeling pressure sucking at the door. Everything beyond the locker room was under negative air pressure, designed to keep nasty germs — bugs — from floating out on the air currents. The room beyond, Level 2, was filled with blue ultraviolet light. UV light destroyed viruses and bacteria. Level 2 was a staging area into HL4.

A mile from U.S. Immunological Research, the three vans sped off the expressway onto an exit ramp, then split up, one van heading for the rear entrance, two for the main entrance. The two-story U.S. Immunological Research building was a long, low-slung concrete box with few windows. The second floor contained no windows at all. It looked industrial and uninteresting except for an unusually large numbers of air vents and stacks on the roof. It was surrounded by a largely empty parking lot, narrow grass borders populated with mature ash, oak and pine trees, and a six-foot-tall chain-link fence. The gates — one in the front and one in the rear — weren’t designed to keep serious intruders out, but to provide a psychological barrier to the randomly curious. When asked, employees of U.S. Immunological Research told people they were a small biotech company trying to create new vaccines, which was essentially true. A uniformed security guard manned a booth at both entrances and employees were required to display ID and sign in with the guard before a barrier arm was raised.

The three vans were two minutes out.

Liz walked through Level 2, which consisted of a shower stall lit by UV light. There was soap and shampoo. She grabbed a pair of socks off a shelf as she passed and slipped them on, then moved into the staging area that contained a desk, sink and chair. On the desk was a roll of duct tape, which she used to tape the base of her pants to her socks, creating a seal. Then she slipped on a pair of Latex gloves and proceeded to tape the shirt sleeve to the gloves. It was a pain in the neck to use tape while wearing rubber gloves, but she managed it without tearing the gloves.

In an overgrown closet next to the desk her spacesuit hung with four others. It was the newest out from Chemturion, a prototype, bright blue and bulky. She laid it out on the concrete floor and slithered into it. She was staggering to her feet when Michael appeared, his wrists and ankles taped. She shouldered her way into the sleeves, then pulled the facemask over her head, zipping up the zipper. Her faceplate immediately fogged up. Coiled on the wall were plastic air hoses. She unhooked one and plugged it into the suit, which immediately inflated with pressurized air. Her faceplate cleared, but she could barely hear through the roar of the air. She watched as Michael donned his own spacesuit and hooked up to the hoses. They took turns examining each other’s fittings and connections, taking the extra time to make sure there weren’t any breaches in the suits. They gave each other a thumbs-up, unhooked their air hoses and proceeded to the passage leading into Hot Level 4.

It was a stainless steel airlock with nozzles built into the ceiling and walls that could spray water and bleach or Lysol for decontamination. It was called the Decon room on the technical specs, though everyone who worked HL4 called it Styx. Liz didn’t know who had called it Styx first, but the name of the mythological river one crossed into the afterlife had stuck for the Decon room. Black humor, to be sure.

At the far end was another heavy metal door. Liz unlatched the door, thinking, Welcome to Hades, and stepped into the hot zone.

The vans’ attacks were so closely coordinated that two vehicles hit the front gate at almost exactly the same time the solo van hit the rear gate. Pulling up to the gates, the side door of the vans slid open and fully geared men fired their Colt XM-177s into the guard house, the 45mm rounds immediately shredding the security guards. Roaring forward, splintering the gate arm, the vans raced to the entrances. The two vans in the front pulled to the front door and five armed men dressed in white biohazard suits exploded through the main doors. They fired their machine guns at the shocked guards at the main entrance, racing through the main corridor at a dead run, hitting the elevator in seconds. Two white-suited men stayed outside the elevator and fired at anyone who stuck their head out of their offices as his three companions rode the elevator to the second floor.

The rear van took a similar approach, only two men went in through the loading dock, emptying their weapons at anyone they saw, breaching the main building and setting up perimeters at two crossways so no one could get to the elevator.

Hot Level 4 opened into a small, concrete block room, about ten feet by sixteen. The walls were covered with metal cabinets that contained a variety of laboratory materials and were lit by UV lights. Everywhere was the red biohazard symbol. At the opposite end of the room was a long concrete corridor with rooms jutting off it. Some of those rooms contained laboratories with microscopes and hoods and centrifuges while others contained animals — caged monkeys in three of the rooms — while yet others were autopsy suites.

Momentarily unhooked from the air supply, Liz shouted, “We need to feed the monkeys, then check the Marburg cultures. Frank said—”

Above their heads a yellow light began to strobe. There were two lights, one yellow, one red. The yellow one indicated someone was entering HL4. That was unexpected, but they had just a moment to be glad it wasn’t the red strobe light. The red light indicated the negative pressure air system had been compromised and any bugs in the area might be able to get to the outside world.

Their relief was short-lived as two figures in white Tyvek biohazard suits burst into the hot zone. Both carried machine guns. One had a bulky bag slung over his shoulder.

“What the hell?” Michael stepped forward, hands held out in a STOP gesture. “Who the hell—”

The machine guns chattered. Michael flew backwards, blood spattering his blue suit. Clumsy in her spacesuit, Liz spun and began to sprint down the hallway, hoping to dive into one of the rooms. She could lock herself in. She was into the corridor when a massive impact struck her back and she was flung to the ground, slamming into the concrete block walls.

She heard the two men shouting to each other in a foreign language. She didn’t move. Didn’t want to bring their attention to the fact she was alive.

Alive!

She didn’t know why she was alive. Her back hurt like she’d been hit with a sledgehammer, but she otherwise seemed unhurt. Her heart thundered in her chest, her breathing fogging her faceplate. Oh God! she thought. Don’t let them see the mist on the faceplate.

Out of the corner of her eyes she saw the two figures disappear into the first room on the left, the storage room for the frozen samples of all the Level 4 pathogens. It contained refrigerators, freezers and liquid nitrogen containers.

Who were they?

She heard one of the men say something. It sounded… Asian? She didn’t know. Foreign. She tried to focus on the words. Tried to remember, but her brain wasn’t working right. Her usually nimble mind seemed to be stuck in a pit of thick tar. There was a dim rumble and clatter, then a hissing sound. A moment later she heard the sound of footsteps as the figures left Hot Level 4.

She tried to take a deep breath, but found she couldn’t. When she tried to inhale, a blistering shot of pain seared across her back and shoulder blades. She was getting sleepy, her eyes barely able to open. God, she thought. Maybe I am dying. And then she realized that without an air hose hooked up, she was rapidly depleting the remaining oxygen in her suit. Staggering cautiously to her feet, she noted that the yellow strobe light had stopped, but she could hear klaxons going all throughout the building. Reaching over, she snagged an air hose and hooked it up to her spacesuit. Her suit inflated again, the roar in her ears almost a comfort. She looked down at Michael, lying still in a puddle of blood, and began to shake. Then it hit her, hit her hard, the shock, the fear… and she crumpled to the hard floor.

2

Derek Stillwater leaned forward and dug his paddle into the flat surface of the Chesapeake Bay. He was far out in the bay on his ocean-going kayak, the afternoon sun beating down hard, spangles of reflected light like silver fish darting along the waves. Only three miles into a fifteen-mile workout, his tank top beneath the life vest was already soaked with sweat. In the distance he heard the beat of helicopter rotors, not unusual in this very busy body of water. He knew from living on the bay that Coast Guard helicopters routinely flew overhead, as well as military, private and tourist choppers.

He aimed the prow of the kayak toward the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and paddled hard. He was only starting to warm up, the muscles in his shoulders and back starting to loosen as the blood and oxygen flowed. Sucking in the salt air, Derek felt good. Life was good. A beautiful day, gorgeous water, the sun on his face, skimming across the waves like a dolphin.

The sound of the helicopter grew louder. Turning his head, he saw a red, white and blue Coast Guard chopper sweep around him, very low.

Jesus, he thought. The prop was kicking up so many waves he was afraid he might capsize.

The helicopter’s loudspeaker boomed: “Are you Dr. Derek Stillwater?”

He gave a thumbs-up.

The voice from the helicopter: “We’re dropping someone down to help you up.”

Stillwater sighed. This was not good news. So much for the beautiful day. From the open door of the helicopter a figure in a black wetsuit began to descend on a rope. When the officer hit the water he swam over to Stillwater, rope towed behind him.

“Secretary Johnston ordered us to find you ASAP and deliver you to an investigation site, sir. There are cops at your boat and cutters cruising the bay. We got to you first. You’re going to need to take off your vest and put this harness on.”

The Coast Guard officer had a deep voice with a Texas twang.

“This is a three thousand dollar kayak,” Stillwater said, slouching out of his life vest. “I’m not going to just abandon it.” He paused, squinting up into the downblast of the chopper rotor. “Any experience with kayaks?”

The Texan broke into a broad grin. “Yes sir.”

Derek nodded and slipped into the harness. He handed over the paddle and shouted, “Slip 112, Bayman’s Marina, ‘The Salacious Sally.’ Just leave the kayak on the rear deck.”

“Don’t worry, sir. I’ll take care of her.”

“Yeah, and have fun.”

The Texan laughed. “Yes sir. You too.”

Stillwater shook his head. “Un-fucking-likely.” The Texan gave a thumbs-up to the chopper and they reeled Derek Stillwater skyward.

The pilot of the helicopter was a young woman with black hair cut in a wedge. She had flashing green eyes and an oval face and Stillwater thought she was pretty cute, though entirely too young to be behind the controls of a helicopter. He kept both observations to himself. There was another coast guardsman on the flight deck manning the winch. He helped Stillwater in.

Derek shouted, “Can you land at the marina? I need some things.”

“We’re to take you directly to the—”

”I have two GO Packs on my boat. I have to have them!” The wind roaring into the chopper was so loud they could hardly hear each other. “Can you stop there?”

“Yes sir. We’ll call ahead and have the local cops clear the lot. Will you be long?”

“No.”

The guardsman was a lean redhead with freckles. I’m getting old, Derek thought, darting another glance at the pilot. Well, maybe not too old…

The chopper ascended in a hurry, arcing toward land. Through the open cockpit Derek watched the Texan in his kayak diminish in size. Going, going, gone, he thought.

In about four minutes the chopper landed in the marina parking lot. On each end two cop cars, lights flashing, were keeping people at bay. Jumping out, Stillwater dashed to the docks, aiming for slip 112, his boat and home, a 52-foot Chris Craft Constellation. It was a large marina, heavy on sailboats rather than cabin cruisers. Derek didn’t know why that was the case, but it was, the marina looking like a denuded forest with hundreds of masts jutting skyward. He jumped aboard, unlocked the cabin door, quickly snatched a fax from the machine, snagged a blue nylon frame backpack and a military-issue duffel bag and sprinted back to the helicopter. He threw his GO Packs into the chopper and clambered in after.

He gave an OK and they lifted off. Derek glanced at the fax.

Derek tore the message into pieces and let them flutter out the open cockpit door. Then he dug through his nylon pack and drew out a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, socks, underwear and a pair of shoes. Stripping, he noticed the cute pilot taking a glance over her shoulder. Buck naked, he grinned, made a turn-around gesture with his finger and shouted, “Not on the first date.”

The co-pilot grinned, then looked startled. “What are you doing?”

Having pulled on his clothing, Derek was holding his swimsuit and tank top out the hatch. “Drying my clothes,” he said.

From the marina it was a short hop over Baltimore to the incident site. The chopper set down in the parking lot of U.S. Immunological Research. Before climbing out, Derek scrambled up next to the pilot. “Thanks for the lift. What’s your name?”

“Cynthia Black.”

“Cindy?” He offered his hand. “Derek Stillwater. Mind if I call you when this is over?”

“When what’s over?” she said, shaking his hand.

He shrugged. “If I get called in, it usually means the end of the world.”

She considered him for a moment. “Well,” she said, “if it doesn’t end, sure, give me a call.” She picked up a pen Velcroed to the dashboard. “Got some paper?”

Stillwater held up his hand. “Write it here.”

Cynthia Black cocked an eyebrow, then scribbled her cell phone number on the palm of Stillwater’s hand. “Good luck.”

He grinned, clutched a chain around his neck for a moment, then tipped a salute to the other guardsman and jumped out of the chopper, GO Packs over each shoulder.

3

The Coast Guard helicopter lifted off into the azure sky and Derek ran about thirty yards when he was surrounded by tense, armed men. Three of them wore suits, but four were decked out in military fatigues. All of them were aiming their weapons — a variety of rifles and hand guns — directly down his throat.

He froze. “Whoa! I’m not moving! I. Am. Not. Moving!”

One of the suits said, “Identify yourself!”

Still unmoving, he said, “Derek Stillwater. Department of Homeland Security. My wallet and ID are in my right rear pocket.”

Some sort of silent communication spun around the circle, then one of the Army guys lowered his M-16, stepped over and plucked Derek’s ID from his pocket.

He flipped it open and read. “Okay. He’s legit. Says you’re a troubleshooter.”

The men lowered their weapons. “That’s the job title,” Derek said. “Who’s running things?”

The head suit, a slender blond guy wearing wire-rimmed glasses, said, “Spigotta. Hang on. I’ll let him know you’re coming.”

Two of the suits led Derek to the building’s entrance. It didn’t take a trained eye to see that it had been shot to pieces. Derek paused to take in the destruction. His gaze lingered on the human-shaped mounds beneath blood-soaked white sheets. The odor of death and blood and cordite lingered in the air. He flinched. Images of war zones flashed in his head. Iraq. Panama. Bodies rotting in the sun, flies buzzing in swarms. For a moment he swayed, then took a deep breath, returning to the present, which wasn’t much better. He’d come after the photographs and triage, but before they could move the bodies out. He felt something clench in his stomach, thought, Good God, what do we have here?

The Blond Suit, who hadn’t bothered to ID himself, described what they thought had happened, the three vans, the automatic weapons, the penetration of the building. “We’ve got guys going over the security tapes now.”

“How many casualties?”

“Looks like 23 dead, 18 wounded. Let’s go.”

Before following, Derek turned around and scanned past the chain-link fence. There were mobs of TV crews, onlookers and cop cars. He realized he’d probably make the news with his dramatic entrance and hoped everyone had the sense to keep their mouths shut about him.

Blond Suit was looking at him impatiently. “Spigotta’s debriefing a couple of the scientists. Hope we can figure out what this is all about.”

I’m afraid I already know exactly what this is all about, Derek thought, and followed the agent into the facility. He processed the sight of all the vent stacks on top of the building. He knew that meant heavy-duty air filtering and treatment. Usually it meant negative air pressure and infectious agents and chemicals that God should never have invented, that human beings should never have discovered.

“What time did this go down?” Derek asked.

“11:43.”

It was 1:30. Derek reflected that the response time had been pretty good overall. He was led down a tiled corridor that seemed too utilitarian to be a for-profit company. The place was swarming with crime scene people who looked federal, maybe military. He’d already figured some sort of military involvement from the soldiers outside, but had never heard of this place.

Blond Suit knocked on a door and pushed it open. Three people were inside what appeared to be a conference room. There was a projection screen, three tables pushed together to form a large conference area and a mish-mash of chairs. Low budget, he guessed.

Two people were seated, a man and a woman. The man was in a white shirt and dark tie and khaki slacks. His hair was gray and short, almost military in style. There was something about his bearing that shouted military, the stiff back, the square shoulders. He looked tired, impatient, his big hands tapping on his chair’s armrest.

The woman was blonde and looked like she was in shock. Her blue eyes had that deer-in-the-headlights look and her complexion was gray. But she seemed to focus on him with interest. The other guy didn’t. He just looked impatient.

The guy standing looked big and muscular like he lifted weights. Maybe in his fifties, his face was craggy, jaw square, accustomed to being in charge. He snapped, “You from Homeland?”

Derek set his gear down and proffered first his ID, then his hand.

“Huh.” The guy took his hand. “Agent Rick Spigotta, FBI.” He pointed to the two others. “Dr. Frank Halloran, head of this facility, and Dr. Elizabeth Vargas. We were just going over some things. Here’s what we got so far. Three white vans merged on the facility right around 11:45, give or take. Two went through the front gate using automatic weapons to take out the guard. At the same time a van took out the rear entrance. Looks nicely coordinated. Two guys went in the back way, the loading dock, taking out everyone they saw. ATF and the Bureau people are working the scenes now.”

“What is this place?” Derek interrupted.

Spigotta glared at him. “Why don’t you sit down, Dr. Stillwater. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover and it’d be best if you saved your questions for the end. Or am I going to have trouble with you?”

Derek slid into a seat at an angle from Halloran and Vargas. “No, no trouble. Sorry.”

Liz Vargas said, “We’re a biological warfare think tank. Kind of a practical one. We try to come up with vaccines and cures for typical biowarfare agents. Our funding is largely through the Pentagon.”

“Any relationship with USAMRIID?” The United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland was the heart of the U.S. Army’s research into biowarfare.

“We consult with—”

Spigotta spat out, “Later, dammit.” To Derek: “There are people from Detrick on the way. We’ll get to that.”

“Go on,” Derek said.

Spigotta described how the commandos entered the building, rode up in the elevator and penetrated Hot Level 4. Which is when he let Liz Vargas talk.

Liz didn’t think she had been out for very long when she regained consciousness. For a few disoriented seconds she didn’t know where she was, then she realized with horror that she was in the hot zone and the last few minutes flooded in on her. Sitting up abruptly — too abruptly in a spacesuit — she looked over at Michael, then scuttled over to him. Dead. Without a shadow of a doubt dead. Not only had the bullets stitched a bloody zipper from beltline to collar, Michael’s plastic faceplate had been shattered.

She looked away, panting, knowing that to vomit in the spacesuit would be a major problem. Slowly her gorge receded and she felt herself edge back under control.

The intruders had been in the storage room. What had they taken? Walking slowly toward the room, booted feet kicking aside spent shell casings, she stepped into the bare cinder block space. The walls had been covered with thick white goop, as had all the walls and floors in the hot zone, to prevent pathogens from seeping through the concrete. There were three chest freezers capable of -70 degrees Celsius. But it was the waist-high liquid nitrogen tanks that drew her attention. All three were plastered with biohazard warnings and the blood red biohazard petal symbol. This was the heart of Hot Level 4, where the worst bugs on the planet were stored. But how to inventory?

And then she saw it.

A black binder, pages encased in acetate. It lay open on the counter. Normally it would be on a shelf, one of seven such books documenting the contents of each nitrogen tank and freezer.

She stared at the open page. Beads of sweat began to roll down her forehead, into her eyes, burning. She blinked, unable to wipe the moisture away or to rub her eyes. She blinked again, eyes tearing even more. She shook her head, tasted bitter bile as her guts twisted. “Oh dear God,” she prayed. “Don’t let it be.”

With trembling hands she punched the four-digit code to allow entry into the tank, and following the coding in the book, removed a stack of triangular storage boxes. Liquid nitrogen fog curled around the edges of the tank, reminding her of playing with dry ice as a child. Box 6. Tubes 6 through 25. She pulled thick insulated gloves over the three layers of gloves she already wore, the new gloves to protect from the liquid nitrogen, and opened the box. Empty.

Tears trickled down her cheeks.

During her recitation Derek climbed to his feet and began to pace the conference room. He stopped and stood staring out the room’s sole window. The media crowd had grown. Helicopters circled like turkey vultures.

“What did they steal?” Spigotta demanded.

“It’s a… an entirely bioengineered organism,” Liz said.

“What’s that mean?” Spigotta said. “What’s that mean? Entirely bioengineered?”

Without turning from the window, Derek said, “You ever work a bioterror case before, Agent Spigotta?” His voice was mild, just curious, it said. Non-confrontational.

“I worked the anthrax mail case.”

“Ah,” Derek said. “Well, that makes me feel better.”

“You got a problem?” Spigotta snapped.

“We’ve all got a problem,” Derek said. Glancing over his shoulder, he said, “Go on. What’s it called?”

“Chimera M13. Like I said, it’s completely bioengineered.”

“Virus, bacteria or prion?” Derek said.

“What?” Spigotta said, his face turning red.

“Not knowing the difference in a case like this is like not knowing the difference between a revolver and a semi-automatic,” Derek said. “You need to get up to speed on the vocabulary.”

“It’s a virus,” Liz said.

“You made a virus?” Spigotta asked.

Liz Vargas nodded. Halloran cleared his throat. “Dr. Eckard Wimmer from the State University of New York at Stony Brook constructed a polio virus completely from scratch in 2002. The military funded the project. They did it solely from data found on the Internet and chemicals and genetic components available from commercial medical supply houses. Using $300,000 of military funding, they created a polio virus entirely in the lab, injected it into animals and proved that it worked. That’s the level of genetic engineering we’re capable of. We can literally create life. It was possible. So we wanted to know if it was a practical possibility to manufacture a completely new pathogen in the lab. If we could do it, terrorists could do it. So we brain-stormed, decided to see if we could create a virus with the toughness of hepatitis, the immuno-suppression qualities of Yersinia pestis—”

”Bubonic plague,” Derek said. “A bacterium.” He didn’t turn from the window.

“Yes,” Halloran said. “We decided it should have the infectious properties of Ebola — and the hemorrhagic qualities, as well — yet still be transmissible as an aerosol. Weaponizable, in other words.”

“And you succeeded?” Spigotta asked, dropping into a chair. He looked as if they had hit him in the forehead with a ball peen hammer.

“Yes. We succeeded.”

“Do you have an antidote for it. Antibiotics?”

Derek spoke up. “We’re back to basic vocabulary again. It’s a virus. It doesn’t respond to antibiotics. Does it respond to protease inhibitors or any of the anti-virals?”

“No,” Halloran said. “As far as we know it doesn’t respond to anything. Bleach can kill it. That’s it. It’s highly infectious, can be transmitted through the air, in water, on food, by touch. It remains alive and active on plain surfaces like a counter top for as long as six days. From infection to first symptoms it’s twelve hours, sometimes less. Around twelve hours the subjects develop internal bleeding, usually bloody noses which rapidly progresses to bleeding from the ears and the rectum. Within another six hours the internal organs are so compromised that soft tissue — eyes, mouth, gums, penis, vagina and bruised skin are bleeding uncontrollably… eventually even the skin deteriorates, but by that time most hosts are essentially dead.”

“Death occurs within twenty-four hours?” Derek asked.

“As early as eighteen hours, depending on where the infection site is,” Liz Vargas said.

“And this is what a bunch of terrorists stole?” Spigotta’s voice had risen in anger and disbelief. “You invented this… this Chimera just to prove it could be done, then you kept it?! Why in God’s name didn’t you destroy it?! Whatever possessed you to put it in cold storage!? Why in hell did you save it?!”

Still looking out the window, Derek muttered, “The devil’s pitchfork.”

Halloran looked startled. Spigotta snarled, “What did you say?”

Derek turned from the window, his expression grim. “When human beings steal the devil’s pitchfork, they don’t destroy it. They think by stealing it they’ve stopped the devil.” His gaze rested on Frank Halloran. “Instead, you’ve become the devil.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Congratulations.”

4

The man they called Fallen stepped out of the white van, looked around and took in the surroundings. They had parked the three vans on the second level of the Frederick Municipal Airport parking garage. He spotted the security cameras and turned, acting as if he did not notice; acting as if he were just an average businessman heading out of town. He and the rest of his people had rid themselves of their white Tyvek suits and their biological hazard masks after Lee had transferred the transport container into another double-lined completely sealable container. They now wore nondescript slacks and shirts, their Colt XM-177s stowed in gym bags and suitcases.

A private jet, a Lear, he thought, roared down the runway and leapt into the sky. Once the decibels diminished, he looked to Lee and asked him in Korean if the samples were safe.

Lee, who had gone into the hot zone with him, just nodded.

His men all looked at him, waiting for direction. Fallen had recruited them from various countries, specialists in a wide assortment of military and espionage skills. They were all warriors of one sort or another who had fallen from their government’s graces. Fallen had offered them money first, then he had offered them a sense of belonging. Finally, he had offered them a sense of mission. They were fanatically loyal to him, to his vision.

Fallen’s face split into a wicked grin. “Comrades,” he said. “That went perfectly. On to the next stage of the operation.”

They dispersed, all except one of the men, a short, wiry man with curly hair the color of weak tea cut close to his scalp.

“Dieter?” Fallen said, slipping into German. “Was machst du da?” (What are you doing there?)

Dieter stepped out of one of the vans and carefully shut the panel door, then turned to Fallen. He described the presents he had left in the vans.

Fallen was impressed. Dieter had special skills. He had simply told him to sabotage the vans for when the authorities had found them. But Dieter, like so many of his people, had surpassed his expectations.

“Dieter, du bist ein Klugscheißer!” (You are a clever shit.)

Dieter crawled into the second van, his thick voice wafting out of the door. “Ich bin ein tödlich Scheißer.” (I am a deadly shit.)

“Gut,” Fallen said. “Das ist gut.”

Once Dieter was done with all three vans, he followed Fallen from the second level to the first where the rest of his people waited. As he walked, Fallen pulled out a cellular telephone and placed a call. It was answered by a woman.

“Nadia,” Fallen said, and spoke in Russian. “Dushka, the operation has gone perfectly.”

“You are safe?”

“We all are. Have you been tracking the enemy?”

“Da. The FBI, led by a Richard Spigotta. And the Department of Homeland Security, a Dr. Derek Stillwater.”

Fallen’s hand gripped the cellular telephone. “Who?”

“Dr. Derek Stillwater.”

Fallen’s eyes flashed and for a moment he felt a rage that threatened to engulf him. He whispered, a harsh voice, “I was promised. I was promised!”

“Fallen…”

“No,” Fallen whispered into the phone. “No. I need you for this. You and only you. You must track this Derek Stillwater. Where is he now?”

“Probably at U.S. Immunological Research.”

“Pick him up there if you can. Then get back with me immediately. Have them pull his records so you can identify him. Follow him.”

“Yes. Be careful.”

“You, too, Dushka. You too.” Dushka. Darling.

Fallen clicked off the telephone, the anger clear on his face. His men watched him carefully. He took a deep breath, thinking of empty promises and of betrayal. He thought of things that might go wrong, on the uncontrollable elements of any operation.

Einstein had said that God did not play dice with the universe.

Fallen was certain that Einstein had been wrong. God routinely played dice with the universe and took great pleasure in unexpected turns of chance.

Derek Stillwater was an unexpected problem.

He paused, thinking, then climbed into one of the waiting vehicles, a black Mercedes sport utility vehicle.

Derek Stillwater could be an asset. Or Derek Stillwater could be a major problem.

Thinking of divine powers and plans, Fallen wondered which Derek Stillwater would turn out to be. He wondered if he would be forced to kill Derek Stillwater.

He wondered when he would be forced to kill Derek Stillwater.

And he imagined dice rolling across the sky and knew that he was the one who was flinging them.

5

Derek stood front-and-center. “Okay. I’m going into HL4. Who’s qualified to go in with me?” He let his gaze settle on Halloran and Vargas.

“I will,” Liz said. She swallowed hard, looking ill.

“Now wait a minute,” Halloran said. “Who are you? Nobody goes in the hot zone unless they’re—”

Derek said, “I was trained in the Level 4 facility at USAMRIID. I spent the Gulf War on the front lines as a Bio and Chem Warfare Specialist, then I spent a year or two afterwards defusing biowarheads in Iraq. Then I joined UNSCOM as a weapons inspector until Saddam Hussein kicked us out in ‘98.” He paused. “I’m qualified. I’m going in. And with all due respect, Doctor, you don’t really have all that much say about it right at the moment.”

He turned to Spigotta. “I’ve got an underwater camera in my GO Pack. I’ll get pics so you can see things. Send in the Detrick people when they get here. In the meantime, there are a few things you might consider.”

Stillwater held up a finger. “One, I want to see the local security cameras.”

He added a finger, counting off his points. “Two, I suggest you start a team of as many as you can getting every traffic cam, ATM camera or security tape in a five-mile radius of this facility. See if we can get a look at the people in these vans.”

Another finger. “Three, somebody with an ID badge and somebody who knew or had access to the entrance codes to HL4 is involved. Better find out—”

”We know that,” Spigotta growled. “James Scully. It was his ID. He called in sick today. I’ve sent a couple agents to his house.”

“He’s not involved in this,” Halloran said. “Jim and I came here together from USAMRIID. He’s completely trustworthy.”

“He’s sure as hell involved, Doctor,” Spigotta snarled. “It was his ID badge that gave them access.” Ignoring Halloran further, Spigotta turned to Derek, his face twisted in skepticism. “Anything else, Stillwater?”

Derek turned to Liz Vargas. “The language the two men spoke to each other. Can you repeat any of it?”

Liz sighed. “I… I don’t know. It sounded Asian.”

Derek sat in the chair next to her. “Close your eyes. Think back. Listen.”

Liz did as he said. A flurry of emotions flitted across her heart-shaped face. Then… recognition. “‘Polly… kind of… Pah-Lee,’” she said. “And the other said something like ‘Yee ruin… something, something… see duh rule…’ Or something like that.”

Derek looked up at Spigotta. The FBI agent shrugged. Halloran shrugged too. Derek, thinking for a moment, said, “How about: ‘Pa-Li’ and, hmmm…’Yi-Ru-Han Kyoung-Wu-E-Neun Seo-Du-Reul Su-Ga Up-Seum-Ni-Da?’ How’s that?”

Slowly Liz nodded. “Yes. Yeah, I think so.” She tried out the words. ”Yes, that sounds about right. I guess.”

“Okay, Stillwater. Spill it.” Spigotta looked, if possible, even crankier than before.

“Korean,” Derek said. “The first guy said, ‘Hurry,” and the other guy said, ‘You can’t hurry this.’”

“You speak Korean,” Spigotta said, not really a question, more a statement of disbelief. Or suspicion.

“Not much. But I spent some time in Korean along the DMZ when I was in Special Forces. I’m good with languages and picked up a few words and phrases.”Derek cocked an eyebrow at Spigotta. “Korean.”

Liz Vargas, Frank Halloran and Agent Spigotta led Derek Stillwater to the second floor staging area to HL4. An armed soldier stood guard at the locker room door. Derek thought: barn door — locked; horse — gone; Halloran’s career — over.

Halloran said, “I still think this is a bad idea. What do you expect to find in there?”

Derek shrugged. “If I knew, I wouldn’t have to go in.”

Spigotta said, “Take pictures. Don’t mess around.”

Derek frowned. “Is the HMRU on their way?” HMRU was the FBI’s Hazardous Materials Recovery Unit.

“Yes.”

“Good. They can deal with this crime scene. USAMRIID can deal with this crime scene. But aside from that… I’m the only one here who can deal with this crime scene. You’ll have to live with it.”

“Don’t fuck it up.”

“I’ll go in,” Derek said, “look around, take pictures. When the USAMRIID and HMRU people get here they’ll be able to use my pics to make a plan for clearing the evidence and retrieving Michael Ballard’s body. That’s going to present quite a logistical problem all in itself.” He looked pointedly at Halloran. “You might want to start thinking about that.”

Liz let herself into the locker room first. The guard remained stoic, but Spigotta whipped out his cell phone and started punching keys, demanding updates from whoever he talked to. Within five minutes Liz knocked on the door and Halloran used his badge to let Derek in. Derek was glad to leave Halloran’s numb shock and Spigotta’s frenzied organizing behind. Liz’s face, however, was the same color as chalk dust. She bit her lip. “You and Jim Scully are about the same size. You can use his suit. Ever wear a Chemturion?”

“Yes,” Derek said. “I also have a field suit in my duffel, but it’d be better if I didn’t have to use it. By the way… why aren’t you dead?”

Liz sighed. “Are you familiar with the latest model Chemturion?”

“Not really. They make a new model?” Derek crossed over to a bench and dropped his gear. “Scrubs?”

She found him a pair and turned her back, giving him a modicum of privacy.

“No peeking now,” he said, and began to change into the green scrubs.

Not responding to the lightness of his tone, she said, “The new Chemturion was designed to be multi-purpose — air hoses or a portable air supply. So they reinforced the back and shoulders with Kevlar to prevent the air tank or straps from cutting the suit.”

“You’re lucky.” Derek walked over to her so he was right behind her. “I want to see your back.”

“What?!”

“Your back,” he repeated. “Please raise your shirt so I can—”

She spun to glare at him. “Are you nuts?”

Derek shook his head. “Does your back hurt?”

“Yes, of course!”

“Getting shot at, even with Kevlar, leaves a hell of a bruise. I want to document it.”

She stared at him, her barely controlled composure beginning to crumble. “You don’t believe me?”

He gripped her shoulder. “Dr. Vargas, I wouldn’t be going into a hot zone with you if I didn’t believe you. But when Spigotta gets his priorities straightened out he’s going to wonder whether you were an insider on this assault. He’ll want some sort of proof that they actually shot at you and that you just got lucky. Let’s give him the proof before he comes looking for it.”

Tears slowly rolled down her cheeks. Reluctantly she turned away from him and raised her scrub shirt. Derek whistled at the black and blue and orange and yellow and purple discoloration that ran from about mid-back up to the nape of her neck. “You’ve got a lovely back, but that’s got to hurt like hell.”

She laughed ruefully. “It does. Believe me.”

“You should get into a hot tub as soon as you can or you won’t be able to move tomorrow. You got a Jacuzzi at home? Hold still, I’m going to shoot a couple pictures.”

She stood still. “No, no Jacuzzi. You?”

“No. I live on a boat. No bath, just a shower.”

He snapped a couple pictures. “Okay,” he said. “Onward.”

She turned and saw that his own composure seemed to be slipping. The skin on his face seemed stretched over his cheekbones and his forehead was damp with sweat. She pointed to his neck. “No jewelry.”

Derek pulled back his shirt so she could see. Around his neck were two necklaces. One was a string of dark-colored beads; the other was a heavy chain from which dangled a gold four-leaf clover and a St. Sebastian’s medallion.

“It’s not jewelry,” he said. “And I’m not taking them off.”

She stared at him. His color seemed to be getting worse, taking on a grayish-green tinge. “What are the beads? Is that a St. Christopher’s medallion?” she said.

“Ju-ju beads. Got them from a friend who spent some time in Somalia. It’s a St. Sebastian’s medallion. He was believed to fend off plague.”

“You’re superstitious!”

“I believe in luck, good and bad. Now, you got a john in here? I’ve got to go throw up.” His tone was flat, matter-of-fact.

Liz’s eyes widened. “I don’t think you’re up to this!”

“I’m up to it,” he said in a strangled voice. Without pausing, he rushed past her. “This is just stage fright.” He found the sink and vomited into it.

A moment later, clear-eyed, he splashed water on his face, closed his eyes and tried to center and calm himself. He could feel his pulse slow, his respiration even out. Just stage fright, he thought.

Liz said, “Aren’t we a pair. Neither of us should go in.”

“Yeah,” Derek said. “We should both be on a beach somewhere drinking rum drinks and thinking about our sex lives. Unfortunately, I’ve never been that lucky. Let’s go.”

They donned their spacesuits and progressed through Styx and into Hades.

Inside HL4, spacesuits filled with pressurized air, Derek paused to take it all in. Using the underwater camera, he snapped pictures from several angles, including a careful shot of the empty shell casings on the floor. It seemed to him that the physical evidence supported Liz Vargas’s version of events. That was good, because he had been suspicious of how she had survived the encounter. The bruises were even more convincing.

Careful where he put his feet, Derek moved through the facility, peering in each door. Autopsy tables, laboratories, cages occupied by monkeys, rats, mice and guinea pigs. All appeared unchanged. Moving from room to room, switching air hoses as he went, he snapped pictures. Finally he stood at the entrance to the storage room. More photographs. Liz stood silently next to him.

“I assume you’ve got all the usual suspects in here. Ebola, Marburg, Hanta…”

“Plus anthrax, Tularemia, cholera…”

“Great.” He didn’t proceed into the room. His breathing sounded loud in the suit, despite the roar of air from the hose. A room full of demons, he thought.

What Derek had not shared with Spigotta, Halloran and Vargas, was that he had attempted to retire after being booted from Iraq. He had spent several months under the care of a psychiatrist who had finally told him, “You’ve spent most of your professional life peering through the gates of hell. You’re handling the stress better than most. Go take a vacation somewhere warm. Drink some margaritas, get laid, have some fun. Remind yourself why you do this kind of work. Then make the decision whether or not to quit.”

Remind yourself why you do this kind of work.

Because I can.

The vacation had lasted until September 11, 2001. When President Bush later created the Department of Homeland Security, one of the first people called had been Colonel Derek Stillwater, PhD. (Retired).

The Secretary of Homeland Security wanted people skilled in various aspects of terrorism — organization, nuclear, financial, biological, logistical, chemical — who could be dropped into any situation and provide advice, investigative and pre-emptive skills, and be able and willing to work within and without the established law enforcement channels.

Derek shook his head to clear his thoughts and took a deep breath of air that smelled suspiciously of the previous occupant’s body odor. Jim Scully must have had a serious case of nervous perspiration when working HL4. Derek stepped into the storage room and took a picture of the liquid nitrogen tank, which, except for the punch-button code lock and the biohazard warnings, resembled a beer keg.

Leaning over the black binder, Derek took a series of photographs, then called for Liz to open the tank and display box 6, the now-empty container of Chimera M13. With nitrogen fog curling from the mouth of the container, Derek snapped more pictures. Finally he had Liz put it away.

He wasn’t sure what to look for. It would make sense to do a thorough inventory of all the freezers, but that would take hours and he didn’t have hours.

Everything was just as Liz had described it. He turned slowly, scanning the room, shifting the air hose as he went, his peripheral vision severely impaired by the plastic faceplate.

He tried to think it through. A highly trained, coordinated assault. Twelve men. He assumed men, though it wasn’t a given. The drivers and a guard stayed with the vans. Two men from each vehicle entered the building. Four of the men set up perimeter posts to guard the intersecting hallways and the elevator doors. Two men entered HL4. They knew exactly where to go, had an ID badge and knew the entrance security codes to Styx and to the freezer containing the bug.

Inside, they had wasted no time. Lucky for Liz Vargas they hadn’t checked on her. “Hurry,” one of them had said in Korean. “You can’t hurry this sort of thing,” the other had probably said, the one opening the freezer and stealing the bugs. That implied that the guy doing the hands-on work had experience with high-level infectious agents. Even Korean, that put him in a very small group worldwide.

Then they left. They didn’t put the binder away or check on Liz or go to any other part of HL4. They did close the nitrogen container, thank God for small favors. That didn’t require more than dropping the top in the hole so it clicked shut, but they could have kicked the damn thing over which would have made the room damned near impossible to clean up. Perhaps they hadn’t wanted to risk infecting the outside of their own suits, which would be a problem back in the vans or wherever their headquarters or staging area was. It wouldn’t do to wipe out your own guys.

With clumsy gloved fingers Derek flipped pages in the binder. Probably fifty pages of acetate-covered paper.

He picked up the binder.

He stared. Liz said, “What the hell?”

Beneath the binder was a playing card. On the back of the card was a leering devil with cloven hooves, spiked tail and jutting horns. In one long-fingered hand the devil held a pitchfork.

6

When Derek and Liz got out of HL4, the spacesuits hanging bathed in purple UV light and the underwater camera soaking in a bucket of Lysol, Spigotta was swearing into a cellular phone and Frank Halloran was gone.

“Tell the fucking press it was some sort of crazed employee or something!”

Spigotta listened, the cellular mashed up against his ear. “Hey, you do the media, I handle the investigation. But you can’t tell the fucking press that some Army assholes let some man-made super germ loose on the world. So use your goddamned imagination.” He clicked off and glared at Derek.

“Well?” He spat out the word like a bullet.

“Camera’s soaking, but there is a…”

Liz broke in and described the playing card. Spigotta stared at her, then shifted his gaze to Derek. “What the fuck?”

“Under the binder,” Derek said. “I shot it. There’ll be pictures.”

“The devil and his goddamned pitchfork? That’s what you said before! You!” Spigotta jabbed Derek in the chest with a thick finger. “You got an explanation, Stillwater?”

“No.” Derek shook his head.

Spigotta squinted suspiciously. “What card is it? Please tell me it’s not a Tarot.”

“No, regular deck. It’s a joker.”

“So? C’mon. Feed me up some bullshit explanation of the devil card and your statement about the devil’s pitchfork. Nice coincidence. Or would you like to try at Bureau headquarters?”

Derek rolled his eyes. “I’ve been calling super bugs the devil’s pitchfork since before the Gulf War. I’ve written position papers analyzing the U.S. and military and worldwide risk from biological warfare and bioterrorism. The President, the Joint Chiefs, the Secretary General of the U.N., they’ve all read my reports.”

“Swell.” Spigotta scowled. “Fuck. What a mess. Any brilliant suggestions?”

“Brilliant? No. Fresh out of brilliant. But I do have a few suggestions that I imagine you’ve already thought of.”

Spigotta’s gaze lingered on Derek. “Aren’t you the diplomat. Okay. Hit me with your less-than-brilliant ideas.”

“We need to notify the CDC and have them keep an eye out for anyone showing internal bleeding. USAMRIID can coordinate. Has the Bureau’s Hazardous Materials Response Unit gotten here yet?”

“On their way.”

“Good. They can work with Rid. We’ve got to figure out who knew about Chimera M13.” Derek turned to Liz. “Was it ever published?”

She shook her head. “No, but there are black patents on it.”

Black patents. Patents on top-secret government products. The paperwork existed somewhere in a government archive. Access was severely restricted.

“And,” she added, “we wrote a lengthy report on it. The Pentagon got it. Probably the National Security Council did, too.”

“Shit,” Spigotta said.

“We also need to figure out who had plans to this building,” Derek said. “These guys knew just where to go.”

Spigotta was already punching the buttons on his phone. “I’ll get somebody on it.”

Derek knew three of the USAMRIID people and all of the HMRU people. Liz had gotten the film out of the camera and was developing it. Derek told them what he’d seen and what he thought the problems were going to be. He asked if the facility had a portable embalming machine in the hot zone. Frank Halloran said no. They would have been able to embalm Michael Ballard right in HL4; the formaldehyde would kill the bugs and they would have been able to transfer his body out of the biocontainment area.

Dr. Sharon Jaxon, from USAMRIID, suggested they just incinerate the body and quit screwing around. No autopsy was necessary because they knew what killed him. “My vote,” she said, “is dump Ballard’s body, suit and all, in the incinerator. Goodbye safety issue.”

Derek grinned. Jaxon was a hard-edged blonde with broad shoulders, blunt fingers and a take-no-prisoners attitude. He personally knew her to like fast motorcycles, spicy Mexican and Thai food and that after making love she liked to sit up in bed with the sheets pooled around her waist and channel surf on the TV. He and Sharon had trained together at Fort Detrick. She had stayed in research. He had headed off to join UNSCOM to play hide-and-seek with Saddam Hussein. It had been a long time between meetings. He said, “Do you have a strong desire to spend the next decade in Congressional hearings or civil courts being sued by his family?”

“This is a national security issue,” she said. “Sometimes we have to put aside tact.”

“Let’s try not to put aside our humanity,” he said. Actually, he thought her suggestion was a good one, political repercussions be damned. It wasn’t his job to worry about public image. It was his job to make sure this manmade germ didn’t get loose. He glanced at his watch. “Sorry, but this really isn’t my problem. You guys figure it out.”

She looked like she was going to punch him, but Spigotta stomped into the room before she could.

“Stillwater!” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Out here. Now.”

Derek followed the FBI agent into the hallway. He thought Spigotta’s ruddy complexion had gone a little pale. Spigotta had stuck an unlit cigar in his mouth and was chewing on it, acting like he was going to break a no-smoking rule at any moment. Derek knew the feeling.

This stretch of corridor was body bag free, painted an industrial pale green and lit by harsh fluorescent lights. The tile floor was a dingy speckled white. Everything about the facility, especially security, seemed to have been done on the cheap.

Spigotta, voice hoarse, said, “I think you need to get over to Scully’s house. I can’t leave here, but I’m going to have my second-in-command, Aaron Pilcher, drive you there.”

Derek cocked his head. “What’s at Scully’s house?”

Spigotta swallowed. “The team I sent over there says it looks like a massacre.”

7

Aaron Pilcher was the blond suit who had originally delivered Derek to Spigotta. He shook hands with Derek and led him to a waiting Ford Taurus. Pilcher had pale blue eyes and boney cheeks. His teeth were small and even and reminded Derek of some small scavenger like a ferret or raccoon. Where Spigotta seemed like a G-Man, a leftover from J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, Pilcher was definitely one of the newer breed of agents — intelligent, articulate and curious. The man wanted information, a lot of it, good or bad, he would make the evaluation himself, thank you very much. Just answer the questions, do it now, give me your opinions, I’ll decide what they’re worth.

Derek tossed his GO Packs in the trunk of the Taurus and climbed into the passenger seat. Pilcher gunned the engine and headed for the front gate. “If you don’t want to end up on the evening news I suggest you slouch or something.”

Derek settled with resting an elbow on the window sill and seeming to prop his head with his hand, managing to cover part of his face.

“Any idea where to go with this?” Pilcher asked after the armed soldiers had cleared the press and gawkers out of the way. Within minutes they were speeding east on I-695.

“The Korean angle’s a possibility,” Derek said. “Get on your computers and see what comes up for Korean foreign nationals with experience in biology, especially high-end ID experience.”

“ID?”

“Infectious disease.”

“We can do that. See what immigration and the CIA have to say.”

“I’d run all your terrorism files, too.”

“Sure. Makes sense.”

Pilcher pulled off I-695 and headed north. Into wooded suburbs.

“What’s your take on this? This is your specialty, right?”

“Right.” Derek watched the urban landscape slide into semi-rural suburbia. Still plenty of strip malls, chain stores and fast food restaurants, but there were also more trees and farms and the size of the residential lots were larger. He was starting to feel impatient. Starting to feel that every second that went by was a step closer to disaster. The feeling was like having a rat gnawing at your stomach from the inside. It was a feeling he had often and he didn’t care for it. He could feel the rat, the panic rat, start to nibble. “My take?” he said, trying to concentrate on the agent’s questions.

“What’re they after?”

“Political blackmail is a possibility. If so, we’ll be hearing from them soon.”

“Like, U.S. out of South Korea or we let this bug loose at McDonald’s?”

“Right. Or release our prisoners out of wherever.”

“Camp X-Ray.” The al-Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“Sure. Or they want to develop it as their own strategic weapon system.”

“Strategic?” Pilcher said.

“Versus tactical.” Derek wasn’t sure Pilcher understood. He said, “Anthrax is a tactical weapon. You drop it on troops, it kills them in a finite way. Smallpox or Chimera, as weapons they’re not tactical. You can’t control them. They’re too infectious, they take off and kill everybody. If you have your own troops vaccinated against smallpox, or your own genetically enhanced version of smallpox, it’s still not really tactical. You use it as a threat. Like having 7500 nuclear warheads. Nobody needs that many. But it’s strategic. You bargain with it. We’ve got them so we’re tougher than you. It’s fucking stupid, but that’s how the world works. Smallpox or Chimera as strategic weapons — it’s suicidal.”

“Huh,” Pilcher said. “You’ve thought a lot about it.”

“I’ve thought a lot about it. Yeah.”

“What else?”

Derek turned to look at him. “Give us fifty million bucks in a Swiss bank account or else. Or, here Syria, fifty million in a numbered account. Nice doing business with you.”

“Greed,” Pilcher said with a nod. He seemed comfortable with greed.

“Then there’s Basic Terrorism 101.”

“Being?”

“The point of terrorism is to terrorize. Most people agree that the anthrax letters weren’t very effective at killing people, but psychologically they were just terrific. Even bin Laden’s lunatics could understand that. Their airplanes killed about 3500 people, but hell, they shut down U.S. air traffic for a day and turned New York City upside-down. The economic fallout lasted for years. Of course, this bug’s too dangerous for traditional terrorism.”

“Think they know that?” Pilcher turned off the main road down a two-lane highway. The houses, which all seemed large, were on five and ten-acre lots, isolated from each other by distance and copses of trees. Pines and hard woods, ash, oak and maple. Green leaves still untouched by the oncoming fall.

Derek glanced at his watch again. He felt the panic rat gnawing. He wondered what he was missing, what he should be doing. “It’s not my biggest concern,” Derek said. “We almost there yet?”

“Almost. Just over the hill if the map’s any good. What’s your biggest concern?”

“A suicide group. What is technically known as the Apocalyptic Terrorist.”

Pilcher stared at him, then readjusted his steering as the Taurus began to drift over the yellow line. “Like al-Qaeda.”

“No,” Derek said. “I was thinking Aum Shinrykyo, the Japanese suicide cult that let sarin gas out on the Tokyo subway. I hope that’s not what we’re dealing with here, a group of suicidal nuts who want to bring about the end of the world.”

Pilcher didn’t comment. Once over the hill he pulled the car into a long paved driveway. There were already a handful of cars — more sedans that seemed to scream Federal Government and two local police cars, lights flashing. Derek and Pilcher climbed out and displayed their ID to the approaching cops.

Above them, two helicopters did a mid-air dance, circling, circling. Derek figured the choppers had probably followed them from U.S. Immuno. Pilcher looked around. “Pretty isolated spot.”

“Uh-huh.” Derek gestured for Pilcher to open the trunk. He rummaged through his backpack and came up with a disposable camera, a cellular phone, a notepad and pen, and a 9mm semi-automatic in a belt clip. He attached the phone and gun to his belt and said, “Ready?”

Pilcher looked thoughtfully at him. “Suicidal maniacs?”

Derek said, “Hope we get a ransom call soon,” and strode toward the sprawling two-story colonial.

It happened in the family room at the rear of the house. The front of the house where Derek and Aaron Pilcher entered was a formal sitting room with plush crushed velvet furniture and crystal lamps. Very formal. Derek had the sense the room was rarely if ever used. He stopped to examine a large formal family photograph on one wall. A man, Mike Scully; his wife, an attractive woman about forty years old or so with blond hair; two kids, a boy and a girl. With a shake of his head he followed Pilcher.

The kitchen was roomy with oak cabinets, shiny appliances and a blue tile-topped serving island. It was teeming with FBI Evidence Recovery Team members. It looked, based on a dining room table set for four, minus two chairs, that dinner preparation had been interrupted.

Derek cautiously sniffed. Pilcher said, “Something burned.”

“Spaghetti sauce, I think.”

One of the ERTs, a short stocky woman with dark hair and red plastic-framed glasses, said, “Water in the pot boiled off and the pasta burned; sauce just simmered into a lump. Garlic bread in the oven got turned into briquettes. The rest of the smell…” She made a gesture past them. “Go on in. But I may never eat Italian again.”

Even more ERTs were in the family room, a cozy, low-ceilinged space with a fireplace, sliding glass doors overlooking a redwood deck, a big-screen TV and a sofa, love seat and lounge chair. A comfortable room, one that looked well-used. A nice place for the family to sprawl out and watch TV, catch a movie, eat popcorn.

In the center of the room were the two missing oak dining room chairs. In one, a man sat, tied with rope and duct tape. Liz had been right, Derek thought. Scully had been about his size. Slightly over six feet, athletic but not bulky. He had brown hair cut short and a lean, handsome face. His throat had been slit and his gray ARMY sweatshirt and blue jeans were crusted with dried blood.

Sitting tied and taped to the second chair so they were facing each other was the woman. Unlike her husband, she was nude, her legs splayed obscenely. Like her husband, her throat had been cut, but for her it had probably been a relief.

Her breasts and face and pubic region had been burned with what had probably been a match or cigarette lighter. There had been mutilations — a little finger, one ear, a nipple. Her left eye appeared to have been carved out.

Derek drew in a ragged breath and felt acid rise up into his throat. He took deep breaths to regain control, biting back the bile.

One of the ERTs, a grizzly-sized bald guy in his fifties said, “If you’re gonna barf, use the john. I already processed it. You wouldn’t be the first one in there today.”

Derek shook his head, turned to Pilcher. “Kids?”

“Upstairs,” the bald guy said. “Throats slit… Bastards.”

Derek took it in, eyes wide, trying to process it analytically, to keep his emotions in check. Finally, “They told him what they’d do to her if he didn’t answer their questions. And they used the burns probably to soften him up, make him believe them. And they did it anyway, cut her, to make him tell more. To confirm.”

“Or he didn’t tell them because…“ Pilcher hesitated. “…he knew what they wanted. He knew what was at stake.”

“They got what they wanted,” Derek said. “They might have threatened to do this to the kids as confirmation. He spilled. Who wouldn’t have?”

They did it because they liked it, he thought. Berzerkers.

They lapsed into silence. The techs took photos, vacuumed for trace evidence, dusted for fingerprints. From upstairs they could hear similar activity.

Derek pointed to a doorway. “What’s in there?”

“Kelly’s just started in there. Give her a few minutes to finish the trace collection.”

Pilcher went off to discuss things with the original agents sent to the house. Derek found the stairs and checked out the second floor — four bedrooms, a bathroom off the master suite, another bathroom off the hall.

He found the children in one of the bedrooms. A boy of about seven and a girl about nine or ten. Blindfolds over their eyes, hands and feet duct-taped. Gaping slashes at the throat. Both lying together on a bed with a Star Wars comforter, posters of dinosaurs, jets, Harry Potter and spaceships on the wall.

Derek wondered if they had heard their mother’s torture downstairs or if they had been killed before. But he knew the answer.

They had saved the children for last just in case Scully had needed more persuading. Scully would have seen what they were doing to his wife and known where it was heading. But maybe, just maybe, he had prayed, they would spare the children if he kept cooperating.

Derek no longer felt nauseous. He felt murderous. A coldness was settling in that brought with it an awful kind of clarity. It pushed him into a world of black and white, good and evil, where there was very little faith in the goodness of human beings or hope for humanity. This, he knew, was how it was all over the world. The world was filled with people who could do this to other people without a blink of an eye. Monsters. Devils. Evil incarnate. The case was no longer an abstraction, no longer about the theft of something no one had ever seen. It was now about the unnecessary cold-blooded murder of two children and their parents.

He turned on his heels and went downstairs. He asked Kelly, a willowy redhead with flashing green eyes, if he could come into the office.

“You the Homeland guy?” Her voice had a trace of Georgia in it.

“Yeah.” He introduced himself.

She was concentrating on the desk. It was a large, elegant maple table strewn with papers. A laptop computer was parked on one corner. Off to the right, next to a half-full bottle of Budweiser, was a Dictaphone.

Kelly said, “The tape’s at the end. I wonder…” With a latex-gloved finger she rewound the tape and pushed PLAY. A flat, soft male voice said, “…work is progressing on the experiments with ribaviran and monkey pox with IL-4—“

”Do you understand that?” Kelly asked.

“Unfortunately, yes.” They had been testing an antiviral drug on monkeys infected with a genetically engineered form of monkeypox, a disease similar to smallpox that only infected monkeys. The monkeypox had been modified with a molecule that seemed to make pox work on monkeys vaccinated against monkeypox, in effect, neutralizing the vaccine.

Suddenly, in the background, there was a crack, and screams, followed by voices. A confusion of voices, the television on in the next room. Then Scully’s voice, clear because he was so close to the microphone. “What the fuck?” followed by what was probably the pounding of feet.

As suddenly as it began it ended. The TV, which had been playing what sounded like a cartoon, was clicked off.

And then a voice. Clear. Male. “Take the kids upstairs. Dr. Scully, sit down. We have a lot to talk about.”

“What do—“

”Sit. Now.” There was a sharp, female cry. “Do it.”

Rustling.

“Get her clothes off.”

“Hey!”

“Not another word until I tell you to speak. Do it.”

More rustling. Sobs.

It went on and on. Pilcher and the three other agents had crowded into the office, listening intently. Kelly, the ERT, said, “Dear God,” almost a moan.

They questioned James Scully about where Chimera M13 was located at U.S. Immuno. He refused to talk. At first. They threatened to cut off his wife’s little finger and burned her to convince him they were serious. Scully tried to be vague, to tell them it was in a secure area of the facility. They cut off his wife’s finger and he told them it was on the second floor in the front storage room of the Hot Level 4 Biocontainment area. They asked more questions. Even when he was clearly being honest and straightforward, they burned his wife and threatened to cut her again, and when he answered they cut her anyway.

Scully talked. Begged them to stop. He would tell them everything. Everything. If only they would stop.

A half hour later, after they cut off his wife’s ear, but before the killers cut off a nipple or gouged out an eye, the tape came to a merciful end with a final click.

Everyone in the room looked stunned.

Derek looked worse, if that was possible. His face had grown pale and gray and sweat once again had begun to trickle down his forehead and armpits. He felt the back of his shirt cling to his spine.

That voice. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible.

He wondered if he was going crazy. If the stress had gotten to him. He was hallucinating. Had to be.

He recognized the voice of the interrogator.

But…

The owner of the voice was dead.

8

“Get that tape into evidence,” Derek snapped. He glared at the tape machine. “Go back. Let’s see, it was around 0183 on the meter.”

Kelly obliged, rewinding. She hit PLAY.

Pilcher said, “What’re you listening for?”

Derek held up his hand to shush the agent. That voice came on again.

“Okay, Doctor. Which freezer is Chimera M13 in? Think about your answer…”

There was a pause that was filled by an indistinct sound in the background.

“There,” Derek said. “Play it again and jack up the volume.”

Kelly did. There was a lot of tape hiss, but the sound was better. They all held their breath, straining to hear.

Pilcher said, “Somebody said, ‘Fallon.’ I’m pretty sure that’s it. ‘Fallon,’ to get this motherfucker’s attention. Then… something like, ‘the kids are…’ something.”

“‘Secure,’” Kelly said. “‘Fallon… Hey, Fallon. The kids are secure.’ That’s it.” She turned the tape off. “Sounded like he had an accent. German?”

Derek nodded, his mind spinning. Fallon? He blinked, not processing his surroundings, trying to remember. Fallon?

Without warning Derek turned and strode out of the room, heading for the front door. Outside, leaning against the Taurus, he punched out a number on the cell phone. It was picked up on the first ring.

“Sam Dalton.” Dalton was the second-in-command of the Department of Homeland Security.

“Sam, it’s Derek Stillwater. I’m not on a secure phone.”

“Get to one. We need an update ASAP.”

Derek told him where he was. “I need a ride to the Pentagon. I can get on a secure phone there and fill you in, but I need to get to the Pentagon. The HMRU’s at the facility, they’ve got Hueys—”

”They’re already on their way to Detrick. Can you drive?”

“During rush hour? Clock’s ticking. What about the Coast Guard?” Derek glanced at his watch. He clenched his jaws and tried to ignore the panic rat.

“Okay,” Dalton said. “They’re on the way.”

Pilcher appeared a few minutes later. He held his own cellular in his hand and stared curiously at Stillwater. Derek had retrieved a portable CD player from his pack and was sitting on the hood of the Taurus sipping from a bottle of water.

“What’re you listening to?” Pilcher asked.

“‘Chant II.’”

Pilcher stared in disbelief. “What?”

“Benedictine monks singing Gregorian chants. They were really popular in the 90s. Put out a bunch of CDs, but the public sort of lost interest after the first two or three.”

Pilcher squinted his eyes. “Jesus Christ!”

“That’s the idea.”

“Who the hell are you? Didn’t you see what happened in there?” He moved toward Derek, head bobbing like a fighting cock.

From the south came the approaching beat of helicopter rotors. Derek stood up and said, “I’m going to head out back. That should be my ride.”

He grabbed up the backpack and the duffel and started to walk around Pilcher. Pilcher grabbed his arm and spun him around. “What the hell are you—”

Derek caught Pilcher’s wrist in one hand and twisted it at a sharp angle and torqued the arm behind the agent’s back, applying pressure and using the man’s weight against him. For just a moment Derek applied more pressure, then suddenly let go.

“You’ve got things under control,” he said. “I’ve got to get over to the Pentagon, make a report on a secure phone.”

“Who’s Fallon?” Pilcher said. He followed after Derek, snapping at his heels like a cocker spaniel. “The look on your face. You know something. This isn’t the time to withhold information, Stillwater. What do you know? Who’s Fallon?”

The helicopter arced toward them, flying in fast.

Derek turned. “I don’t know anybody named Fallon. I thought I recognized the voice. But you tell me, Pilcher? Am I crazy? Am I losing it? Is the stress too much for me? I thought I recognized the voice, but the guy it belongs to has been dead for over a decade. Still want to know his name? It isn’t Fallon. But you tell me. Does the FBI want to waste time chasing after a phantom that could be a figment of my imagination?”

Pilcher stepped back. “You’re bullshitting me.”

“No, I’m not.”

The two men locked eyes. Pilcher finally said, “What else? What does Fallon mean to you?”

Derek shook his head. “I wonder if we misunderstood. The guy who said that had what sounded like a German accent. Or Russian. Czech. Something Slavik, at least as much as we can tell with the shitty sound reproduction. Maybe the FBI lab can clear it up. They’re good at that sort of thing.”

The red, blue and white helicopter, an Agusta MH-68A, nicknamed the Mako, was settling down in the Scully’s backyard fifty yards from where they stood.

Shouting to be heard over the roar of the chopper, Pilcher said, “Who’s Fallon?”

Derek leaned closer. “I thought he said Fallen.”

Pilcher looked puzzled.

“You know,” Derek shouted. “Like Fallen Angel.”

Pilcher’s expression changed to that of a man who had taken a step off a tall cliff.

He thinks I’m crazy for sure now, Derek thought.

“Fallen Angel?” Pilcher said. “You’re insane!”

“Fallen Angel,” Derek repeated. “You know. Weren’t you ever in Sunday School? Lucifer. The Devil.”

It was the same Coast Guard crew who had picked him up on the Chesapeake Bay. The Texan grabbed the backpack and helped Derek in. Derek settled into one of the seats.

Cynthia Black, the pilot, said, “How’s the end of the world coming?”

Derek gave her a thumb’s-up. “Let’s go.”

The chopper rose quickly into the air. The Texan said, “Your kayak’s back on your boat. Sweet, both The Salacious Sally and the kayak.”

“Glad you like it.” He ignored them, put the earphones back over his ears.

“Doctor.”

He looked at the Texan. “Yeah?”

“Can you tell us what’s going on? This is… pretty irregular.”

He shook his head. “I wish I could. But…” He shrugged, considering the three. “It’s bad. Really bad.”

Derek settled back in the seat, buckled up, and closed his eyes. A career in the military had taught him how to catch a nap when the opportunity appeared, and he decided to take it. With Gregorian chants in his ears, he quickly dozed off for the short flight from Baltimore to Washington, D.C. He woke up as they were coming in toward the Pentagon. He noted that the roads were clogged with cars. He glanced around, as he almost always did when flying into D.C., looking for the Washington Monument and the Capitol, the usual suspects.

The chopper descended toward the Pentagon helicopter pad.

Derek was met by a young and efficient Army officer in dress whites. He grabbed the duffel bag and led Derek at a crouching run toward the Pentagon entrance. “Staff Sergeant Stanley O’Reilly, sir. I’m to get you to a secure communication room and then provide you with everything you need.”

“Good. I could use a bite to eat, Mountain Dew and the complete file of a Special Forces officer I served with in the Gulf War. Captain Richard Coffee.”

“Serial number, sir?”

“I don’t know. But the time frame should narrow it down.”

“Yes sir. This way, sir.”

They confiscated his sidearm and went through his bags, but he was quickly led to a secure communications room, a small bland office probably wrapped in copper to eliminate the possibility of radio eavesdropping. It contained a desk on which was an STU, or secure telephone unit. Everybody who used them called them stew phones. O’Reilly said, “I’ll be back soon. Any food preference, sir?”

“Some sort of sandwich, turkey preferably, on rye with lettuce, no tomato. And an apple. Yeah. An apple. Thanks.”

“Yes sir. And Mountain Dew.”

“Yeah, better make it two. I’m going to need the caffeine.”

O’Reilly supplied a key for the phone’s encryption lock and left, closing the door behind him.

The stew phone looked like any other phone except for the lock and an LCD panel. Derek unlocked the phone and called Dalton. When Dalton answered, Derek told him he was ready to go. He pushed a button and the LCD screen read: GOING SECURE.

Silence for maybe thirty seconds. Then the LCD read: US GOVERNMENT SECRET and Dalton said, “O-kay — Der-ek — Fill — us — in.”

The scrambler on the stew phones, even the newer models, distorted voices, especially if the callers talked too fast. Dalton and Derek were old hands at stew phones and knew from experience to talk slowly and deliberately.

Derek filled in his boss, knowing that J.J., the Secretary, was also listening in.

“Your recommendation?” Dalton said.

“The FBI’s already on it in a major way, Pilcher and Spigotta. They’ve got different styles, but they both seem sharp, especially Pilcher. HMRU’s already on the facility, and the Rid’s involved. Get with them, they’ll know what to do. Bring in the CDC if you can get it through their heads that this is a possible major incident in BW, not a public health emergency. They can be a little slow about that, though maybe they’ve learned something from the anthrax attacks and SARS.”

“Good. Stay on top of things. Continue to coordinate.”

Derek hesitated. “Sir. I’m going to pursue what is possibly a tangent.” He explained about recognizing the voice on the tape recording.

There was a long silence on the stew phone. Dalton said, “Are you feeling all right, Derek?”

“I’m standing on the edge of Armageddon here, Sam. How the fuck am I supposed to be feeling?”

Suddenly the voice on the phone was that of General James Johnston, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. “Do you think the FBI and USAMRIID can handle both the routine investigation and any containment procedures?”

“Yes sir. They know their job and I believe, especially now that Rid’s involved, are aware of the potential problems.”

“Fine then. You investigate this hunch you have, but keep in touch with the Bureau and The Institute. I’ve been at war with you, son, and I trust your instincts.”

There was a knock at the door and Derek opened it to reveal Sergeant O’Reilly standing there with a plastic tray bearing a turkey sandwich, an apple and two cans of Mountain Dew. “If you’re done with your phone call, sir, we’ve got an empty office for you to use. Someone will be bringing you the file in a few minutes.”

“Great.” Derek took the tray and followed O’Reilly through what seemed to be a mile of corridors. He had spent a year at the Pentagon writing position papers on biological warfare. He hadn’t cared for the environment, although he’d enjoyed the almost academic nature of brainstorming biowarfare scenarios and creating war game simulations for the military to test out. But in all his time there he had never gotten the hang of the Pentagon floor plan.

O’Reilly led him into another bare office, this one without a secure phone. It smelled of fresh paint and contained only a desk, two chairs, a regular telephone and a bank of filing cabinets he assumed were empty.

“Enjoy your food, sir, and if you need anything, please contact me.” He handed Derek a card with his pager, telephone, fax and e-mail address on it before leaving. Derek put his earphones back on and ate his dinner, glancing at his watch repeatedly, wondering when the file on Richard Coffee was going to arrive. He was halfway through his apple when there was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” he called.

Into the room strode a tall, thin man in his fifties with a gray crew cut and elegant, slim features. He wore gold wire-rimmed glasses and the insignia on his uniform and his ID badge indicated he was Lieutenant Colonel Jerome Tallifer. Tallifer carried a briefcase secured with two combination locks.

“Dr. Derek Stillwater?”

“Yes sir.”

“I’m Lt. Col. Jerome Tallifer, Military Intelligence. May I see some ID please.”

Derek provided it. Tallifer, his voice hinting at a childhood in the hills of Kentucky or maybe Mississippi, said, “Retired Army, I understand.”

“Yes sir. Colonel, Special Forces. Retired, sir.”

“But a professor.”

“Yes.”

“I believe I’ve read your papers. Might even have caught a talk or two you gave.”

“Possibly, sir.” Derek remained in his seat despite the temptation to stand at attention. Though the years of service and conditioning had been deeply ingrained and the inclination to salute never went away, he had found that his ability to ignore the response had grown stronger every day he was out of the military.

“Yes, well, we would like to know why you’re interested in a dead soldier, Doctor.”

Derek leaned back in his chair and studied the standing Lieutenant Colonel. He gestured to the other chair. “Have a seat. I’ll make it quick because, quite frankly, the clock’s ticking.”

To his surprise, Colonel Tallifer sat.

Derek laid it out for him. The stolen infectious agent, the murder of the family, the tape and his recognition of a voice that he thought was that of Captain Richard Coffee. Tallifer considered him for a few minutes. “If I may say so myself, Doctor, that doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Captain Coffee died in Iraq.”

“I’m aware of that. I was there.”

“But you want to read his file.”

“Yes sir.”

“And you suspect what, exactly?”

Derek said, “I suspect that I have precious little to go on and the FBI has the manpower to pursue a more conventional route of investigation, but my mandate as a Homeland Troubleshooter is to evaluate, coordinate and investigate. It is my determination that all conventional avenues are currently being covered. However, I am pursuing a long shot, what some might call a WAG, or wild-assed guess. I am pursuing it because everyone else is busy. And I’m pursuing it because I think it needs to be pursued, especially since some terrorist lunatics have stolen a BW organism that could wipe out most of the population of the planet in less then a month. Now,” he said, an edge to his voice, “are you going to let me see the file, or shall I have the request put to the Joint Chief by Secretary Johnston, who I just spoke to on the telephone less than twenty minutes ago?”

Tallifer shrugged. He picked up the briefcase and let it rest on his lap. He turned the dials on the combination lock, opened the lid, pulled out a file and dropped it on the desk. He closed the briefcase and spun the dials. “Good luck, Doctor.” Tallifer stood up and headed for the door. Turning, he said, “Good luck with your wild-assed guess.”

“Colonel,” Derek said. He hadn’t touched the file.

“Yes, Doctor?”

“How many files were there in your briefcase?”

Colonel Tallifer’s cool blue gaze lingered on Derek for a moment, then without a word he left the office.

Derek nodded, thinking that a Lieutenant Colonel from Military Intelligence was a rather unusual delivery boy. He picked up the file and began to read.

9

In the White House secure communications center, Sam Dalton hung up the stew phone and whirled to look at General James Johnston, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Johnston raised an eyebrow. “You have a problem?”

Dalton was tall, his physique as taut as a bowstring. He could have been a recruiting poster for the Army, a sandy-haired, square-jawed man in his forties, his gaze steady and hard. He leaned back in the chair, which creaked beneath him. “You never should have assigned Stillwater to this case.”

Johnston crossed his arms. He was older, closing on sixty, his shoulders broad, his thick chest swelling the tailored shirt beneath his dark blue suit. “I understand that you’re not Derek’s biggest fan. I have confidence him, though.”

“I don’t,” Dalton said. He tapped a finger on the chair’s armrest. “The man is a cowboy. Or a nutcase. You figure it out. I think he’s unreliable. You remember his last trip out to Kansas City?”

Johnston nodded. It had been memorable. One of the truths of working anti-terror, especially bioterror, was that luckily it was filled with false alarms. Every time the FBI’s HMRU was called out to investigate an envelope filled with white powder, or a food poisoning case that occurred in some government cafeteria, or water contamination, Derek or one of his colleagues for DHS was sent with them to evaluate. Two months ago, in Kansas City, the HMRU had been called because someone thought their Cheerios box had been contaminated with anthrax. By the time they got there it had been determined that the family’s kids had filled a bowl with Cheerios, added sugar, then decided they wanted toast instead and threw the bowl’s contents back in the box. Had the mother of the children not been a semi-hysteric with a job in a state senator’s office, it would never have even come to the attention of the FBI, or anyone else, for that matter.

But she had freaked out and gone to her boss who had called in the Bureau. Derek and the HMRU had flown in and Derek had taken one look at the box of cereal and flung it in the woman’s face, turning and storming out of the house. Johnston hadn’t known whether to laugh or reprimand Stillwater. Derek had offered to resign and buy the lady a new box of cereal, but Johnston had talked him into an apology. It was a legendary story within DHS. For that matter, Derek’s offers to resign were legendary… and weekly.

Johnston shrugged. “Derek has an instinct for bullshit. And he’s right this time. If the FBI and USAMRIID have things under control, let him chase the long shots.”

Dalton scowled. “I wanted to assign Swanson. Why did you assign Stillwater? Next time he offers to resign, let him.”

Johnston sighed, craned his neck and looked at the ceiling. “You know, Sam, I’ve got to go and talk to the entire administration tonight about this. They’re going to want to know what we’re doing that the FBI and USAMRIID aren’t doing. It’s very useful for me to have an answer for the President besides, ‘Dogging the FBI.’ Besides, Stillwater’s much better than Swanson.”

“Swanson is by the book.”

“Swanson hasn’t had an original thought in his head in twenty years. He just likes being on the government payroll. He’s strictly an academic. His experience with terrorism and bioterrorism comes from books and made-for-TV movies.”

Dalton looked disgusted. “He gives us clear and articulate reports on time and doesn’t have panic attacks before every assignment.”

Johnston headed for the door. “Derek Stillwater’s reports are clear and articulate.”

Dalton flung himself out of the chair. “Oh, right. Let me see, do you remember: ‘The substance in the fucking envelope was fucking talcum powder.’”

Johnston suppressed a smile. That report had been memorable as well. Derek’s entire incident report, one sentence, two epithets. And completely accurate. Johnston put on his official face and turned to Sam Dalton. “Sam,” he said. “I still think Derek Stillwater’s my best troubleshooter. He stays on the case.”

Johnston opened the door, but Dalton tried one more thing. “He’s a psychiatric case. You know that. He has panic attacks in the field. It’s well documented.”

Johnston nodded. He met Dalton’s gaze. “Derek knows better than most that what he’s investigating could kill him. It’s a valuable bit of knowledge. He stays, Sam. Meanwhile, I want you to start nagging all our intelligence people to see if we can find out about Fallen Angels and this Richard Coffee. I’ll want a report before nine tonight. Consider it an order.”

10

Liz Vargas leaned back in one of the mismatched conference room chairs and felt waves of exhaustion wash over her. What a day! She hadn’t experienced anything resembling this kind of stress since, well, never. The closest had been the death of her husband.

She rotated her neck, hoping to shake off the thought and relieve some tension. That was not a good place to go and this was not a good time to go visiting the worst period in her life. In her current condition she might start crying and not be able to stop for days.

Toughen up, Vargas! We’ve got a problem to solve.

Sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup, she looked at Frank Halloran. Frank had sunk into a kind of dazed depression, head down, staring at his hands. He looked somehow diminished. She knew he was a fine scientist and a good administrator. Something had gone wrong, wrong in the worst way, and she didn’t blame Frank. But she got the feeling that the FBI and these Army guys did. And maybe blamed her as well.

Frank and Jim Scully had left the Army to start a more speculative biowarfare research center than what had been practiced at USAMRIID. From rumors she had heard, part of it may have been the pay. The Army paid their doctors and veterinarians and PhDs only a fraction of what they could make in the outside world. Their new think tank had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, if pay was the only issue. It had turned out to be easier than they had thought to find government funding and there had been a few successful gene products and potential vaccines that had provided on-going commercial income.

But this disaster would probably ruin Frank’s career.

For the first time it occurred to her that she was likely to be painted with the same career-ruining tone of paint.

She closed her eyes again, trying not to think of what had happened to Mike Ballard and Jim Scully… and Scully’s family. She tried to push aside selfish thoughts of career and think about all the people she had worked with who were dead or in the hospital. She tried not to think about the ramifications of a terrorist group getting their hands on Chimera M13. An involuntary shudder shook her.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the gentle but commanding voice of Colonel Benjamin Zataki. Zataki was head of the science division — the scientific head of USAMRIID. A fit and aggressive career military man, he had been involved with biowarfare development in the 60s before Nixon put an end to it in 1969.

“Okay everyone. Let me summarize our progress. The HMRU has moved Doctor Ballard’s body and all the physical evidence to Detrick for processing.

“All of today’s casualties have been moved to the local Medical Examiner’s Office. Agent Spigotta has moved the investigation center to the Strategic Information Operations Center at the Hoover Building in D.C. We’ve brought in a team of MPs to secure the perimeter here.”

He cleared his throat. “I’ve had a chance to read up on Chimera M13.” Zataki paused. He had a thin craggy face that looked like he spent a lot of time on the water squinting into the sun. It was lean and weather beaten, tanned dark and leathery. It was hard to tell exactly how old he was, but Liz figured he had to be in his early 60s, at least. Despite the rank of Colonel he was not currently in uniform, instead wearing a pair of green surgical scrubs.

“Frank,” Zataki said. “I understand that M13 stands for Manufactured #13.”

Frank Halloran looked up, expression bleak. “Right,” he said slowly, as if coming awake from a deep sleep. “It was the thirteenth version. It did everything we planned for it to do, then we shut down the program.”

“Had you tried to develop a vaccine to M13?”

“No,” Halloran said, shaking his head. “The project was purely speculative. Could we develop a biowarfare weapon to our specifications entirely in the laboratory. Once we accomplished our goals we closed it down.”

There was silence. Nobody said what they all must have been thinking: You should have destroyed it, not tucked it away in a freezer.

Zataki picked his words carefully. “Do you have more sample of M13?”

Halloran looked up again. “Well… yes. We had an A and B tank. As far as I can tell they only stole from tank A. Why?”

Zataki nodded, his blue eyes seeming to gleam. “And Chimera M1 through M12. Are they similar to M13?”

Halloran narrowed his eyes. “Yes. We think of some of them as failures, but each additional iteration was built on the previous.”

“Why a failure?” Zataki asked.

“Well…” Halloran trailed off.

Liz said, “They didn’t kill their host.”

All eyes turned her way. Zataki’s expression seemed to intensify, if that was possible. “Which ones?”

“M1, M2, M3 and M4. The test subjects got sick — in the cases of 3 and 4, very sick — but they recovered.”

Captain Sharon Jaxon said, “What about M5 through M12?”

Liz looked at her, recognizing in the athletic blonde someone that, under different circumstances, she could have been friends with. “They all killed their hosts. They didn’t always do it in a way we expected or in a time-frame that would have been considered practical for biological warfare. Everything after M4 was really just refinement.”

“What,” Zataki asked, “would happen if someone were inoculated with M1, 2, 3 or 4, then later inoculated with M13? Would the subject have developed an immunity to M13 from the early versions of the bug?”

Halloran was sitting up now, a little color and energy returning to his face. “We never tested that. We never even really discussed it. Chimera was a theoretical exercise, not a full-range research project.”

“It might work,” Liz said thoughtfully. “M1, 2, 3 or 4 just might work as a Chimera vaccine.”

Traditionally there are two types of vaccines against viruses. The first is to find a similar, but weaker type of virus to infect the host. Dr. Edward Jenner, in 1796, noticed that milk maids infected with cowpox, a disease similar to, but weaker than smallpox, were immune to smallpox. He intentionally infected a boy with cowpox, then infected him a few days later with smallpox. The boy did not get smallpox. It worked — luckily for the kid — and the first vaccine was created.

A hundred and fifty years later Dr. Jonas Salk developed a vaccine against polio. Unable to find a similar virus, he eventually was able to “kill” the poliovirus using formaldehye, then filtering out the formaldehyde.

A form of genetic engineering is now used to identify, modify and kill viruses for vaccines, the most common being the yearly flu vaccination. It is, essentially, a variation on the Salk vaccine. It is effective, safe and time-consuming.

What Dr. Zataki was proposing was a version of the smallpox vaccine. His plan was to see if one of the earlier versions of Chimera M13 could make an effective emergency vaccine if the stolen Chimera M13 was let loose on the world.

Nobody much wanted to talk about what would happen if this plan didn’t work and the terrorists used Chimera.

It was decided to split up the operation between U.S. Immuno and USAMRIID. The reason for this was availability of disease-free monkeys. Sharon Jaxon suggested they get the CDC in Atlanta involved. Zataki said he would inform them of what was going on as soon as possible. In the meantime, the clock was ticking. They had to get started.

Three of the USAMRIID biologists were going to stay at U.S. Immuno. The rest would work at Fort Detrick. As Zataki set up the logistics, Liz realized with dismay that she was not being included in the plans.

“Hey! Wait a minute! I’m one of only two remaining people on the planet that’s worked with Chimera. What’s going on?”

Halloran said, “You’ve been through enough—”

”Fuck you, Frank. I’m not going home to rest. I helped create this mess. I’ll help fix it.”

An awkward silence settled over the room. She didn’t know if it was just her paranoia creeping in, but she thought they were all looking at her accusingly.

A wiry man from USAMRIID, Captain Jay Beckenstein, said, “I personally feel that there are a number of questions concerning your presence in HL4 during the actual theft and the question of your survival, that hasn’t been answered.” He had a thick New England accent that reminded Liz of Bobby Kennedy.

Liz glared at him. “What are you saying? You’re saying you don’t trust me? That you think I was in on it?”

Beckenstein, who had curly black hair and a lethal five o’clock shadow, nodded his head. “Yeah. That’s what I’m saying.” His dark eyes met hers unflinchingly.

Liz saw that a number of the others were nodding their heads in agreement. She felt her stomach churn and thought she would be sick.

Sharon Jaxon said, “I’ll work with you.”

Liz looked at her in relief and surprise. “Thank you.”

Jaxon nodded. “Okay Ben?”

Zataki nodded. “Frank will be working with my people here. Why don’t you come to Rid with the rest of us. We can use your help. Whatever you’re up to.”

“I’m up to everything,” Liz said.

Zataki nodded. “That’s it, then. Let’s get going.”

Within an hour Liz found herself strapped into the seat of a Huey flying above Interstate 270 toward Fort Detrick, the Catoctin Mountain glimmering in the haze ahead.

11

Derek sat back in the office chair, thinking over the file he had just read on Richard Coffee.

And probably Sanskrit, Latin and Esperanto, Derek thought.

Derek remembered being stationed in Korea with Richard and how quickly Coffee had picked up the language. Fast enough to get around, talk to the natives, barter in the stores and order at the restaurants. They had only been in Korea for six months.

According to his file, Coffee had been at the very top of his training group and was considered to have “significant leadership potential.” His marksmanship was rated as “excellent,” which was above “sharpshooter.”

He had, like Derek, served in Panama and been stationed throughout the world: Korea, Japan, Germany, England, Italy, Cuba. With his language skills he had been shifted back and forth between liaison and training positions with the locals, and what was probably translating materials used in Psychological Operations or Psyops.

After Coffee had been exposed to an unidentified mix of chemical and biological agents, Derek had rushed him to the nearest medi-vac chopper where he had been whisked away to the 807^th M.A.S.H. Derek had been ordered to move with the advancing troops to evaluate the ongoing risk of biological and chemical weapon attacks.

He had not been able to check on his friend until the end of the war. He was informed that “Captain Richard Coffee had died of unexplained lung and neurological damage caused by an unspecified and unidentified combination of biological and chemical agents believed to have been stored at the arms depot at An Nasiriyah.”

His body, Derek had been informed, had been shipped home to Boulder, Colorado for burial.

It was all in the file.

Well, Derek thought, flipping to the end again… not quite all. Under the circumstances he would have expected a complete medical file including an autopsy report. Coffee’s death had been unusual, an anomaly in a war with relatively few casualties. On the other hand, medical records in a war zone were something of a luxury and thousands had been mislaid during the Gulf War. Perhaps that had happened in Coffee’s case.

Given the later controversy over Gulf War Syndrome, the unexplained mix of health syndromes many veterans had complained of, it was slightly odd that the one certifiable American death by Iraqi biowarfare weapons wasn’t more thoroughly documented.

Or was that why it wasn’t?

Gulf War Syndrome had never been satisfactorily explained. Many in the military believed it was all nonsense, just veterans trying to get more money or insurance benefits out of Uncle Sam. The latest “official” explanation was that the wide and varied mix of simultaneous vaccines given to such a large group of people in preparation for desert warfare against a country with a penchant for using bio and chem weapons had overloaded many G.I.’s immune systems, leading to the odd mix of health problems.

Derek had always assumed the reason Coffee’s death had never reached the media was because it would have given ammunition to the Gulf War Syndrome argument.

But now he wondered.

He flipped through the file again, trying to pinpoint what he was missing. What wasn’t there that should have been?

Leaning back in the chair, he closed his eyes and let his mind drift. There was something there, he knew, some odd little factoid that he was trying to remember.

Yi-Ru-Han Kyoung-Wu-E-Neun Seo-Du-Reul Su-Ga Up-Seum-Ni-Da.

You can’t hurry this.

He sat up. Opened his eyes. Flipped through the file again.

When he and Coffee had been stationed in Korea, playing tag with North Koreans along the DMZ, evaluating land mines and North Korea’s biological and chemical weapons potential, they had shared more than a few beers in Seoul bars.

He remembered Coffee, tilting his bottle of Hite beer, a popular Korean brand, and saying he had plans to leave the Army.

“Don’t we all,” Derek had said. “You’re out of your mind, though. We’re lifers. Where else are you going to get your regular adrenaline fix? I tell you, Java, you’re not going to get the same buzz playing golf.”

“CIA,” Coffee said.

Derek rolled his eyes. “What? With your background in languages? They’ll stuff you in an office the size of a telephone booth in Langley, probably in a fucking sub-sub-sub-basement somewhere, and you’ll be translating grocery lists and bureaucratic memos twelve hours a day. Fuck it. I don’t believe you.”

“Nah. I applied, man. I’d make a great field agent.”

“Bullshiiiiittt.”

But now, Derek couldn’t find it. Had it been bullshit? Would it have made it into military records if Coffee had officially applied to the Central Intelligence Agency?

He tried to remember the look on Coffee’s face when he had told him. Had he been serious? With Coffee — Java as he was called by everyone — it was hard to tell. The man had been a world-class poker player and one hell of a liar.

“Fucking CIA cash cow,” Derek said, his voice sounding slightly strained in the empty room. He glanced at his watch. He had to make up his mind soon. Was this a chase of the wild-goose variety, or a long-shot worth pursuing?

His gaze settled on the chair where Colonel Tallifer, the Military Intelligence spook, had sat.

What would I do if I were M.I. and somebody official came around trying to dig up something they’d buried a long time ago?

He came around the desk and took a look at the other chair in the room.

He found it attached to the right metal leg with a magnet. What appeared to be a bug — of the electronic kind.

Holding the tiny transmitter between his two fingers, Derek dropped the listening device into his second half-finished can of Mountain Dew. He rattled the can good and hard. “Half-full or half-empty, Colonel Tallifer? What do you say?”

Derek called O’Reilly with a simple request: the current location and phone number of Captain Simona Ebbotts and a lift to a rental car facility.

“What is that noise, sir?”

Derek had been shaking the Mountain Dew can during their brief telephone conversation. “Sorry. Nervous habit.”

“Yes sir. We can supply a vehicle. Secretary Johnston has expressed his desire for full cooperation.”

“I’m sure he has. Thank you. That will be fine. The phone number, though?”

“I’ll get it for you, sir.”

“Good. And Sergeant? This request is confidential.”

“Yes sir.”

The military vehicle O’Reilly came up with was a forest green Ford Explorer. Derek loaded his gear into the back, took the slip of paper with Simona Ebbots’ contact information on it, thanked O’Reilly and sped away. He didn’t want to use his cellular phone for this. It took a mile of driving before he found a pay phone in front of a 7-Eleven.

The number was in San Antonio, Texas. Glancing at his watch, he decided to try the work number first. It was late, but it was an hour earlier in Texas.

Using a phone card, he dialed the number. After four rings, a female voice said: “Brooke Community Army Hospital, Medical Surgical Floor.”

“Dr. Simona Ebbotts, please.”

“Hhmmm. I think she’s with a patient.”

“Please tell her it’s Derek Stillwater and that it’s an emergency.”

“Well…”

“Tell her,” he said, voice short.

“Just a moment please.”

He waited. And waited. He glanced at his watch again. He wondered how the investigation was going. What was Pilcher up to now? Spigotta? More important, what was… what was Richard Coffee and his band of merry men doing?

Because, whether true or not, he had begun to think of the terrorists as being linked to Richard Coffee.

He thought about the woman he was trying to get hold of. His ex-wife. A military marriage that lasted two years until their separate careers had forced them apart more than they were together.

“Derek, what do you want?”

“Hi Simona. Look—”

”No, Derek. We’re very busy here. I’m doing follow-ups on surgical patients. And we’ve gone to Code Red, but nobody knows why. What do you want?”

“I know why you’ve gone Code Red,” he said.

There was silence on the line. “I thought you were retired.”

“I’m with Homeland. A troubleshooter.”

More silence. “This news in Baltimore…”

“Yes.”

“What is it?” She knew. She was so smart, he thought. She knew.

“Bioengineered. Nothing like it. Pretend it’s smallpox without a vaccine.”

“Dear God. What do you need from me?”

“I need the names of some nurses and doctors who worked at the 807^th M.A.S.H. in February and March of 1991. Iraq. People with good memories.”

“I can do that,” she said. “Honey. I can get you a list of names in ten minutes.”

Derek’s mind locked on ‘Honey.’ He remembered Simona with long dark hair she usually wore in a braid. Remembered braiding that hair for her a time or two, both of them naked, fresh out of the shower, pink and clean, her fine straight back in front of him, her long silky hair in his fingers. So long ago.

“E-mail it to me,” he said, and gave her his address. “Thanks, Simona.”

“Derek…” Her voice broke. “Take care of yourself.”

He smiled. “What a concept. Bye, love. And thanks.”

He sat in the Explorer in the 7-Eleven parking lot, watching what looked like three gang members shoulder through the front door. Baggy jeans hanging off their asses, Baltimore Ravens jerseys, red doo-rags on their heads. He hoped they weren’t knocking the place off. He didn’t have time for crap like that. He made his next call on his cell phone.

“Pilcher here.”

Derek ID’ed himself.

“Where the hell are you?” The FBI agent demanded. “Find what you wanted at the Pentagon?”

“Maybe. I’ve got to talk to one more person. Let’s just say I’ve found a set of extremely suspicious circumstances.”

“Give me a name, Stillwater.”

“It’s too early.”

Pilcher’s exasperated sigh burst through a clutter of static. “I don’t have to remind you the clock is ticking here.”

“No, you don’t. I understand what’s at stake. What’s going on at your end?”

“Spigotta’s moved to SIOC. Everybody’s on high alert. You tell me, how long would it take to make Chimera usable?”

“Depends on their plan. You only need to infect a couple people to get it going, if that’s their intention. Hell, infect a handful of your own people and send them out on the subway or take in an Oriole’s game. Sneeze on a salad bar somewhere. If that’s the plan, they could already be on the move.”

Pilcher was silent a moment. Then, “But if they need to grow more?”

“Anywhere from a few hours to a couple days. Not long.”

“That’s what I thought. Okay, Stillwater. End of briefing unless you share what you’re working on. I want the name.”

Derek grimaced. “I don’t want to send you on a wild goose chase.”

“It’s what we do,” Pilcher snapped. “Name a name or we’re through. And I’ve got info you want.”

Derek sighed. “Richard Coffee,” he said. “U.S. Special Forces.” He told Pilcher what he knew so far.

“Huh,” Pilcher said. “Bears some follow-up.”

“If I can do it fast. I should have a list of names of medical personnel in a couple minutes. Now… what’s going on?”

“We recovered the vans.”

Derek sat straighter. “Where?”

“The Frederick Municipal Airport, second level of a parking garage. We got the license plates and makes from U.S. Immuno’s security cams and put out a BOLO. Local cops regularly cruise parking garages. Looks like they flew out of here. ERTs are going over the vans and we’ve got people checking over the airport manifests and questioning everybody we can find.”

“And the security tapes?”

“Spigotta informed me they’ve got about a hundred. He’s put as many people on them as they can find. Still, it’s going to take time. Plus he’s got a team doing background on all the personnel at U.S. Immuno. Somebody spilled details besides Scully.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

“No,” Pilcher said. “How about you?”

“Nothing. Just M.I.’s odd behavior.”

“Let’s not use the C word, okay?”

“The C word?” Derek asked..

“Yeah. Conspiracy. I hate those.”

“I won’t if you won’t,” Derek said.

“Good, then don’t. Keep in touch.” He clicked off.

Derek pulled out his cell phone and checked his e-mail. Simona had sent him eight names, all scattered around the world. Except one, Dr. Austin Davis, an E.R. doc at Walter Reed. Right here in town.

Derek dialed Davis’s number. The man answered on the second ring. Derek told him he was an agent for Homeland Security and needed to talk to him about a patient he might have had in Iraq. Davis, his voice sounding very Kentucky or maybe Tennessee, said, “Iraq. Iraq now or Iraq back in ‘91?”

“‘91.”

“Sure. I’m wrapping up here, can’t talk. But I can meet you at Jimmy’s on 19th in half an hour. I’ll be the tall good-looking blond at the bar.” He laughed and hung up.

Derek checked his watch. Yeah, that might work.

Jimmy’s was two blocks down from the Walter Reed complex. Derek had expected a yuppie bar with ferns, but got instead an old-fashioned dark hole filled with wall-to-wall medical types more intent on drinking than socializing. He glanced at the bar and zeroed in on the guy he thought was Austin Davis. He was right. The tall good-looking blond at the bar. Austin Davis had gone anti-military. He wore his dirty blond hair long past his shoulders, and had a thick beard, reddish with gray making inroads. Tall and lithe with concert pianist fingers that tapped nervously on the tin bar, he wore a green scrub shirt and faded jeans. Derek verified who he was and showed him ID.

“You’re Simona’s ex, right?”

“Yes.”

Parker eyed him suspiciously. “Hey, I guess it can happen to anybody, but from my angle, you must have lost your mind to let her go.”

Derek silently agreed with him, but his response was, “Can I buy you a drink?”

“Sure. Gin and tonic.”

Derek placed the order with the bartender, adding a coffee for himself.

“Teetotaler?” Davis said, a question whose subtext Derek assumed was actually, Are you an alcoholic?

“I expect to be up all night,” Derek said, and explained what he wanted. He was halfway through his explanation when Davis said, “Richard Coffee.”

Derek turned away from the bar to stare at Davis. “You remember.”

“Hell yes, I remember. I’ve always wondered when something about this guy was going to come up. Now it has.”

“Why do you remember?”

“Huh. Well, one, he was the only one I’ve ever run into. It’s not every day you get a patient exposed to biological and chemical warfare agents. The others I saw in Iraq were in a morgue and they were usually Iraqi. Dead from being caught near their own shit when we dropped a 500-pound bomb on their heads. So do I remember Coffee? Yeah, you bet.” He nodded to someone who walked by.

“Is that why you thought the subject would come up someday?”

“Huh? Oh, the BCW exposure? No. Just that there was some serious weirdness there. I mean, I was off-shift when he died, but I wasn’t familiar with the name of the doctor who signed the death certificate. I asked who he was, was told he was a specialist in that kind of treatment, but I’d never heard of him. Never met him, either. Supposedly he flew in special from Saudi or some such bullshit. The rumor was he was somebody from USAMRIID or something, but I think that was just a crock. I don’t think the guy existed.”

Derek waited. When Davis didn’t continue, Derek prompted him. “Meaning?”

“Meaning I didn’t think Coffee was that bad. He had burns on his face from whatever the gas was, and there seemed to be some minor lung involvement and maybe some nerve trauma, but someone gave him a shot of atropine immediately and got him out of there. I thought Coffee would get some treatment for the chemical burns, spend some time breathing oxygen for the lungs and have a little therapy and he’d be okay. Next thing I know some doc I’ve never heard of signs off on his death certificate and the body is out of there.”

The bartender brought them their drinks. Derek took a sip of his coffee and set it down on the tin bar. It tasted like it had been made with lawn clippings. “Do you remember the name of the doctor?”

“No,” Davis said.

“Do the names Frank Halloran or James Scully ring a bell?”

“Nope.”

“How about Benjamin Zataki?”

“Yeah, rings a bell. He’s at USAMRIID now. But that wasn’t the name. I’m sorry, I just don’t remember.”

“Sure.” Derek thought for a moment. “Well, what do you think happened?”

“No idea.”

“Guess.”

“What’s this about, Mr. Stillwater?”

“I can’t say, but it’s important. It’s of national security proportions.”

“I see. Well, if I had to guess, I’d say for some reason they wanted people to think Coffee was dead. Like they were going to reposition him somewhere with a new identity.”

“Sounds… I don’t know, Doctor. That sounds a little farfetched.”

Davis laughed. “You been in the military long? Were you ever in the military? Farfetched covers a lot of it. But you want to know what my bottom line is?”

“Sure.”

“Richard Coffee, to the best of my medical knowledge, was nowhere near death. Now, that isn’t to say I haven’t had seemingly healthy patients drop dead without warning. Maybe that’s what happened. But Coffee just seemed too healthy. He’d been exposed to some serious shit, but he got lucky. He seemed strong, clear, wasn’t having problems with his lungs or anything else. My biggest concern was long term.”

“Long term?”

“Yeah. You’ve been exposed to a mix of weird chemicals. You recover. Good for you. Then ten years later you get cancer. Or something else. I’ve heard neurologists speculate that some of this stuff could lead to mental problems, schizophrenia, bi-polar disorders, stuff like that. Cancer’s the easy shot, long term. But we know from a history of organophosphate case histories of pesticide research, that there’s more to it. And most chemical warfare stuff got their beginnings in the pesticide business. That stuff affects the nervous system, big time. Expose somebody to low-levels of some BW weapon and ten years later you might get a raving paranoid schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur.”

“Swell,” Derek said. “Well, Doctor. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me.”

“Hey, no problem. Can I ask what this is about?”

“Oh, I just thought I had run into Richard Coffee.”

“Yeah? He seem okay to you?”

“No, Doctor. I wouldn’t say that at all. Thanks again.”

Davis knocked back his gin and tonic. “No problem. I’ll walk out with you. Got to go work out before I go home.”

Derek tossed a bill on the bar and followed the doctor outside. They began to walk down 19^th Street. Derek handed him a card. “If the name of that doctor comes back to you, give me a call.”

Davis took it. “Sure, no—”

Davis staggered backward, slamming against the redbrick wall of Jimmy’s before sliding to the ground. A blossom of scarlet appeared on his green scrub shirt. Derek glanced around, started to reach for Davis, when another bullet whined past him, tugging at his collar, chunking into the wall. He dived to the concrete, rolled, came up running. Another bullet ricocheted off a parking meter in front of him.

He slid behind a mini-van. Glass exploded above his head. The tire, only inches from his hand, sagged with a hiss. He was being bracketed.

He held his breath. Glancing back, he saw Davis was dead, blood everywhere. Somewhere somebody screamed. Another bullet whocked into the fiberglass body of the mini-van just inches from his head.

He sprang to his feet and sprinted down the sidewalk, bullets peppering the walls behind him.

To his left he saw motion, a Chevy Blazer. The woman at the wheel shouted, “Get in! Hurry!”

Another bullet ripped past him. He dived into the Blazer and it peeled away before he could get the door shut.

12

Agent Aaron Pilcher snapped his phone off and stared out at the three white vans parked against the far wall. Beyond the vans was the main airstrip. As he watched, a small jet, probably a Lear, roared down the runway and lifted into the hazy dusk. Night was coming on.

The Frederick Municipal Airport was about 600 acres and catered mostly to private jets and the military, Ford Detrick being nearby. He didn’t like that this airport was so close to Detrick, home of USAMRIID. Didn’t like it at all. Maybe it was just a coincidence. The Frederick Airport was small and relatively near U.S. Immuno and dominated by small private aircraft. If he were a terrorist trying to make a hasty exit from the country, he might have preferred to charter a private jet out of a small airport rather than fly commercial out of Dulles or Ronald Reagan.

Three flatbed trucks appeared one after the other at the mouth of the second level of the parking garage. From where he was standing on the other side of the garage, he saw Rodriguez wave them over. The ERTs had processed everything they could in situ, and wanted to move the vans to their lab before opening them up. They hadn’t even cracked the doors.

When Tres Rodriguez had told him that, Pilcher had raised his eyebrows. “Tres, we’re in a hurry with this. We can’t treat it like a typical criminal case.”

Tres was short, but short like a pit bull. Tres Rodriguez was as tenacious as a pit bull, too. He wore his curly dark hair close to his skull, his dark eyes slanting upward so he appeared vaguely Asian, though he insisted he was Mexican through-and-through. Tres and Pilcher had gone through Quantico together, sharing a dorm room. Their families got together a couple times a year, Pilcher and his wife and two daughters, Rodriguez with his wife and three sons.

“Aaron, my man,” Tres had said, putting on his jive ass Latina act like he did when he was about to insist on having things his way. “I am a fo-ren-sic ge-ni-us, certified by the eff-a-bee-eye of the U-nited States of A-mer-i-ca.. I—” He placed both hands on his meaty chest. “—am an ex-pert heah, mah man. I am not some Jew boy field agent who doesn’t understand the intricacies… no, my man, the mysteries, of the fo-ren-sic sciences! I am the Magician of the Microscope, the Wizard of the—”

Pilcher waved his hand. “Jesus, Tres. If you’ll just shut up, you can do what you want.”

Tres grinned. “In the long run, it’s faster my way. We don’t screw around transporting evidence and risk contamination. Trust me.”

“Yeah, yeah. Just get on it.”

Pilcher didn’t think there was any long run. He hoped these terrorists and their stolen Chimera M13 took the first private jet to Korea or Iraq or Pakistan. That would be just fine with him. Did he really think those countries would use those things if they got hold of them? He hoped not, but you never knew. He knew that these miserable twits couldn’t feed their own people but they were perfectly capable of building atomic bombs and bioengineered super viruses.

What he did not want, what he was afraid they had, was exactly what Stillwater had been afraid of. A bunch of suicidal loons with a big, bad bug to let loose in his jurisdiction. He wondered what he would do, what he would say to his wife and daughters if it happened. He prayed it didn’t. Prayed he wouldn’t be forced into that situation. That nobody would.

Now, standing on the opposite side of the garage, he was trying to get hold of Spigotta. The reason he was standing so far away was because the reception in the parking garage was better on this side. Must be a cell antenna nearby somewhere. And also because Rodriguez could be a real prima donna and didn’t want field agents breathing down his neck while his team processed a scene. Pit bull, Pilcher thought with a grin. Only all bark and no bite. He flipped open his phone and called Spigotta at SIOC on the fifth floor of the J. Edgar Hoover Building.

“Yeah?” Spigotta snarled into the phone.

“I just got off the phone with Stillwater. He gave me a name,” Pilcher said.

“What name?” Spigotta sounded on the verge of a heart attack. On a good day he sounded like he might be having chest pains; today was not a good day.

“Richard Coffee. Apparently an old Army buddy of Stillwater’s. Thinks he might have disappeared into the CIA or something at the end of the Gulf War.” He filled in his boss on Military Intelligence’s odd behavior and the state of Coffee’s military records.

“You believe him?” Spigotta asked.

“No reason not to.”

“The USAMRIID people knew him. They say he’s good,” Spigotta said. “But a couple of them also said he’s a burnout. Seen too much.”

Pilcher shrugged, a gesture whose affect was lost on the telephone. “What do you want to do?”

“We’ll process the name. I need you here by eight o’clock. The Director needs a full brief before he heads to the White House. Full staff meeting at the White House at nine, everybody’s going to be there to update the President.”

“Yes sir.” Pilcher swallowed and turned to watch the flatbed trucks maneuver into position. The drivers were on their backs hooking chains to the first van’s frame. “I’ve got agents going over parking lot surveillance tapes here to see if we can get a look at these guys. And see if they’re still around.”

“Good. Keep me informed.” Spigotta clicked off.

Tucking his cell phone into his pocket, Pilcher headed toward the vans and the ERTs. He could hear the motor of the winch kick into action and begin to pull the first of the three vans onto the flatbed. Rodriguez was standing by the vehicle, supervising.

At the precise instant the van hit 33 degrees off level there was a massive ker-whump! and it exploded into a flaming ball of flying metal, fabric and plastic.

Seconds later the other two vans erupted into flame.

13

The woman raced the Blazer through the D.C. streets, taking seemingly random turns whenever she could, glancing in the rearview mirrors often to check for someone following. In the passenger seat, Derek clutched the chain around his neck and tried not to think about bullets pinning him down, about the petals of blood exploding on Dr. Davis’s chest. Trying to keep his voice even, he said, “Where are we going?”

“Somewhere safe.”

He didn’t comment. His mind was spinning. It was like flying through a hurricane, looking for the eye. And then he found it, a center of calm surrounded by a whirlwind. He looked at her, taking in the shoulder-length dark hair, strong features made up of sharp nose, high cheekbones and square jaw. Her blunt fingers gripped the steering wheel. She seemed tough, maybe the set of that square jaw or the way her attention was focused on the road. In leather hiking boots, black jeans and a white button-down shirt under a leather bomber jacket, she projected an image of someone who could handle almost anything.

He reached over and tugged at the leather jacket. Her right hand shot out and brushed his hand aside, but not before he saw the grip of a matte-black semiautomatic in a shoulder rig.

“Who are you?” Derek repeated.

“Irina Khournikova.”

He thought she had a trace of an accent. The name and the accent pointed toward Russian.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m—”

”Doctor Derek Stillwater. Or do you prefer Professor?”

Derek lapsed into silence. His brain spun. The Blazer was still racing through the streets, never stopping or slowing. Irina Khournikova, or whoever she was, had perfected the rolling stop, never slowing more than twenty miles per hour, even at stop signs. “Let me out here,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

“It is not safe.”

“Who are you?”

She brushed hair impatiently away from her face. Derek noticed a small C-shaped scar, very faint, on her right cheek. “You need to be briefed,” she said. “I didn’t imagine they’d go after you.”

“They?”

The Blazer zigged and zagged through city streets. Not comfortable in D.C. on a good day, Derek had lost all sense of direction except for the reddish glow of the setting sun to the west. The only comfort he felt was that his Colt was still on his hip under his jacket. It was his ace in the hole and he didn’t want to misplay his hand.

“Your own people,” Khournikova said. “The shooter back there.”

Derek settled his gaze on her. “You’re saying somebody from Homeland Security shot Dr. Davis?”

“No, no.” Her accent intensified. She shook her head. “Not your people like that. Others. Probably CIA. Maybe your Military Intelligence. State Department. My guess is CIA.”

Derek said nothing, but thought of FBI agent Aaron Pilcher. Don’t use the C word.

His creeping feeling of dread had caught up to him. Confusion or fear or paranoia, he couldn’t be sure which, but he was feeling it. The panic rat was back, chewing on his intestines. He struggled to stay calm, to focus on what was happening and not shift into analytical mode. There would hopefully be time for that later. Now he had to find out as much as he could and stay on top of the risk factor. He shoved aside his confusion.

“Who are you with?” he asked.

She shook her head again. “When we get to the safe house. Then I’ll answer your questions. We’re almost there.”

There turned out to be a five-story apartment building made of dirty gray brick. It wasn’t inviting. To Derek it looked like an upscale tenement, if there was such a thing. He suspected that in Washington, D.C., there were. On the street, people were out and about, but not many and he had the sense that most of them were beginning their evening prowl, looking for trouble. The neighborhood projected that feeling. She found a spot to park the Blazer on the street and told him to follow her.

Evaluate, coordinate, investigate, he thought.

Derek followed her. A block away somebody shouted in Spanish. Further off he heard music, a heavy bass beat. Even further away, a siren. The sounds of the nation’s capital. There was nobody at the door of the building, just a buzzer console Khournikova ignored, letting herself in with a key. She headed for the stairwell. He followed, keeping his hand near the Colt on his belt, senses highly attuned to the environment. There were the background sounds of TVs and radios and muttered conversations. The stairs were bare concrete, the metal handrail showing peeling white paint. It smelled of dampness and insect repellant.

She stopped at the third floor and led him down a long hallway with poor lighting, every fourth bulb burned out. The carpet was a worn blue, the walls a dingy white. Fading lower-middle-class, he thought. Welcome to the American Dream.

She stopped at apartment 302, jabbed another key into the door and walked in, flicking on a light.

He followed, pulling the Colt as he stepped into the entryway. When she turned he had it aimed directly at her face. She did not seem surprised.

“Who are you?” Derek demanded.

“Lieutenant Irina Khournikova. Directorate T, Russian Federal Security Service.”

“Directorate T?” He did not lower the gun.

“Anti-terrorism. We need to talk about Richard Coffee. If you put the gun away, we can.” Her hazel eyes met his gaze, not flinching.

Yeah, tough, he thought, confirming his initial assessment. He lowered the gun but didn’t put it away.

“Turn around,” he said.

She continued to stare up at him, then slowly turned.

“Take your gun out — two fingers — very slowly and drop it gently on the floor.”

For a second he didn’t think she’d comply. Then she reached gingerly into her jacket and removed the gun, holding it with two fingers. She bent over and dropped it on the floor.

“Kick it back to me.”

She did without comment. He crouched, gun still aimed at her, and picked up her weapon.

“Go on in. Slowly. Hands on head.”

She did. He followed her. It was a two-bedroom apartment, the living room off to the right, the kitchen/dining area to the left. Straight ahead were three doors: the bathroom and two bedrooms. The carpet was the color of a rotten avocado, the walls a single coat of egg shell. There was battered furniture that looked like it came with the apartment: a TV in the living room, two chairs and a threadbare sofa. The kitchen table appeared to be forty or fifty years old, steel tubing and Formica, the chairs a mismatched set of red and blue vinyl and chrome. Derek jammed the gun in her back and pushed her through the apartment. One of the bedrooms had a double bed with two pillows and a gray blanket and thick blue comforter. The second bedroom had a desk and computer on it.

He examined every room, shoving her ahead of him. Finally they were back in the kitchen. “Hands on the table, wide apart. Lean forward.”

She assumed the awkward position without comment. Derek patted her down, retrieved a man’s wallet from her jacket pocket.

“Do you carry a purse?”

“When I need to.”

He flipped through the wallet. She started to stand up, but he said, “Eh, eh, eh. Stay right there until I tell you differently.” The wallet contained unfamiliar ID written in Russian and an ID that appeared to provide her access to the Russian embassy.

“Have a seat,” he said, and poked around in the kitchen, finding it to be reasonably well stocked. Otherwise the apartment looked barely lived in. In fact, the toiletries in the bathroom appeared nondescript, as if from an inexpensive hotel. The whole place appeared to be exactly what the Russian claimed it to be: a safe house, a bolt hole.

Derek sat at the table, dumped the ammunition from Khournikova’s gun and slid the weapon across the table to her, keeping the full magazine. He holstered his Colt.

“Okay,” Derek said. “Talk.”

“Satisfied?” She slipped her gun into her shoulder holster and shot him an irritated look.

“Not hardly, lady. I’m very pressed for time today. You have exactly five minutes to convince me you’re not wasting my time, so start talking.”

“I need your help.”

“If the Russian government wants help from the United States, there are proper channels to use. I’m not one of them.”

She shrugged. “You are looking for a man called Richard Coffee.”

“What makes you think that?”

“My people have ways of knowing certain things. One of those things is when and if someone is checking Richard Coffee’s records on computer.”

“Then I’ll recommend the Pentagon double-check their computer security. Okay. I might be looking for information about Richard. So what?”

“Why are you looking for him?” She sat perfectly still, forearms resting on the table in front of her. She seemed to be working very hard to appear nonthreatening.

“What? Your people don’t have ways of knowing that?” He imitated her accent, sarcasm dripping off every word.

“Are my five minutes about up, Doctor Stillwater? Do you wish to play games or do you wish to obtain information?”

Derek closed his eyes. He opened them and glared at her. “Why does Russia’s antiterrorism unit want to keep tabs on a dead U.S. soldier?”

“Richard Coffee is not dead.”

Derek felt his heart thud harder in his chest. Confirmation.

“U.S. military records indicate he is,” he said. “As you know.”

Khournikova smiled a hard, tight smile. “Richard Coffee died in Iraq in 1991. He was reborn a short time later as Surkho Andarbek. The name, by the way, is Chechen for ‘strong warrior.’ This was shortly after Chechnya declared their independence. We did not become aware of his presence for some time.”

Derek thought the timing and the Russian language skills would have been perfect. He said, “The military doesn’t run spies like that.”

She snorted in derision. “Really, Doctor? How interesting. Let us not argue that point. As you said, you are pressed for time. We are convinced that Coffee was working for your Central Intelligence Agency at the time.”

“Okay,” Derek said. “Let’s say I go along with your premise.”

“It is not a premise. It is a fact.” Her voice carried a harsh, bitter tone. She leaned forward, fingers stabbing the Formica table top. “Richard Coffee was inside Chechnya for the CIA.”

“Whatever you say. That’s nice. So?” Derek glanced at his watch.

“Richard Coffee’s mission,” she snarled, “was to foment revolution on the part of the Chechen rebels, to filter money and military weapons — U.S. money and weapons — to the Chechens. It was the express policy of the CIA to increase Russia’s internal problems by supporting a known domestic terrorist group on Russian soil.”

Derek thought it over. He could believe it. The U.S. had a long history of doing things very similar. Having an ear inside Chechnya would have been considered a very good thing by U.S. foreign policy makers. Russian leadership insisted the Chechens were terrorists, not a separatist movement caused by Russian heavy-handedness. The U.S. was reluctantly willing to go along with this as long as Russia supported the United States’ War on Terrorism. It put the U.S. in an awkward position, calling the Palestinians terrorists and supporting Israel, while supporting Russia and calling the Chechens an internal problem.

“Okay,” he said. “So what makes you think Richard Coffee — assuming that he didn’t die in Iraq — is now in the United States. And what makes you think…” He paused. “You were following me.”

“I was, yes.”

“For how long?”

“Since you left the Pentagon.”

He looked at her. She brushed her hair away from her face. “And you knew I was at the Pentagon because…”

“I already told you. We were informed that you were showing an interest in Richard Coffee. I was to follow you and see if you could lead me to his whereabouts.”

“That was rather quick. I was only at the Pentagon for about two hours.”

“Yes,” she said. “Richard Coffee is something of a priority to my government.”

“Because?”

“Because, Doctor Stillwater, he is, as you might say, Public Enemy Number One. He stopped working for your government five years ago.” She waited for his inevitable question.

“What happened five years ago?”

“He died.”

Derek broke into a grin and slapped the table. “Well hell, Irina! Then I guess he’s nobody’s problem. The man’s dead. Twice over.” His grin faded and he said, “Just tell me.”

It was believed that Richard Coffee died during a major Russian offensive into Chechnya. A man Chechen captives called Surkho Andarbek had been caught by a mortar. They wrote it off as good news, and later the FSB picked up some signal intelligence indicating that the CIA had lost contact with their man in Chechnya. With the shifting tides of U.S./Russian relations, Coffee’s active role in inciting Chechnyan separatism and covert U.S. financial support to the rebels was a major embarrassment to the U.S. and a major bargaining chip to the Russians.

Then there started to be rumors of some other group working on the Russian/Georgia border. A group of multi-national terrorists who could supply any kind of military weapon you could ask for. They were led by a man who called himself The Fallen.

“The Fallen,” Derek said.

“Yes. That’s what the group called themselves. The Fallen, or The Fallen Angels.”

They were believed to have belonged to various military, espionage and anti-terror agencies around the world. Disaffected by their own countries, they pledged their allegiance to their leader, known as Fallen, or The Fallen. He was considered to be charismatic, a great warrior and a master of many languages. His mission was to bring about chaos to the world through terrorist acts. Only by destroying the current world government infrastructure could a better world be reborn from the ashes.

“Proof,” Derek said. “I need more than your word.”

“In the office. I have files.”

“Get them.”

It was a thick file filled with documents, all written in Russian, unfortunately, and a series of photographs. Derek stared at the first photograph. It was among what seemed to be a destroyed city, burned out buildings bombed to charred ruins. A half-dozen men were firing rifles over a brick wall. The man nearest to the camera wore camouflage fatigues and a black watch cap. He had a heavy beard and was sighting down an AK-47. It could have been Richard Coffee, but the angle was wrong and the beard made it difficult to see his face.

Derek flipped to the next photograph.

The man had turned and snarled at the photographer. The photograph caught the man head on, mouth open, eyes blazing from an inner fire.

Derek couldn’t take his eyes off the photograph. It was Richard Coffee. Definitely, without a doubt, the Richard Coffee he had worked with in Panama, Korea and Iraq. He shuffled through the photographs. Many were taken in Chechnya, all during battles and what appeared to be guerilla actions. Long-range photographs.

Then there were a series of what appeared to be surveillance photographs. An older Richard Coffee, now minus the beard, wearing boots and jeans and sweaters, or in business suits, meeting with various men of various nationalities in what appeared to be cities in different countries around the world. Derek stared at one. Coffee was in a restaurant that appeared Asian. He wore an off-white linen suit. He was talking to a man who appeared to be Korean.

Khournikova said, “North Korea.”

He looked up at her.

“We had the other man under surveillance. Kim Pak Lee. One of Korea’s top biowarfare specialists.”

Derek looked back at the photograph.

Khournikova said, “Lee disappeared shortly after that meeting.”

“Disappeared.”

“Yes. Or perhaps a more appropriate thing to say is, he fell.”

“Fell.”

“Yes. Kim Pak Lee joined The Fallen Angels, Doctor Stillwater.”

14

The first explosion knocked Pilcher flat on his ass. He had fast reflexes and scrambled to his feet and was sprinting toward the explosion site when the second and third vans exploded. This time the blasts slammed him against the side of a red Jeep Cherokee, stunning him. As he tried to fill his lungs, a pressure wave of hot air like dragon’s breath engulfed him. He dropped to the pavement and rolled under the Cherokee as flaming debris fell around him. His chest felt like it was on fire and he squeezed his eyes shut to protect them from the heat.

Beneath the Jeep, Pilcher thought the fallout lasted forever as sizzling cloth, plastic and metal clattered to the concrete, but it was probably only seconds.

Far off, muffled, he heard sirens. Good.

He crawled out from under the Jeep and surveyed the garage. The lights had been blown out by the explosions, but the scene was lit by the flaming vehicles and dozens of smaller fires caused by the incendiary debris. Squinting through the acrid, billowing smoke, he picked his way toward the vans.

He stepped on something, nearly twisting his ankle as he caught his balance. Glancing down he saw with horror that he had stepped on the severed torso of one of the ERTs. Vomit rose up in his throat, but he clamped down on his emotions. This was not the time to lose his cool.

He knelt next to the remains and peered at it. Not enough light. Fishing in his pocket, he came up with his key chain and a small flashlight attached to the ring. Pushing his thumb down on the switch, a narrow beam of yellow light cascaded over the body. The tag on the tattered coveralls said RODRIGUEZ, T. Oh God. Pilcher hung his head, eyes stinging from emotion and smoke. Oh Tres, he thought. How am I going to face your family? Oh dear God!

Using the flash to illuminate his route, he stepped over and around dismembered limbs and scraps of scorched meat, the stink of the burning vans and flesh driving deep into his sinuses. It was like standing at the gates of hell. Finally, he was as close as he could get, heat roaring off the burning vehicles. He circled the perimeter, searching for survivors. He didn’t find any.

He turned back to see an ambulance race through the entrance to the second level. Within moments airport security guards and fire crews were swarming the site. He sifted through the growing throng, looking for a familiar face, trying to identify the guy who would take over the scene.

He saw a smooth-faced man in fire gear shouting into a radio. The fireman had clean, angular features, a strong cleft jaw and dark snapping eyes. He was good looking enough to be the poster boy for firefighters or a male model. Pilcher thought he looked too young to be in charge of airport fire control, but he was clearly the one in charge here.

Holding his ID badge in front of him, Pilcher approached, coughing into his hand. The fireman turned when he saw Pilcher and quickly waved over an EMT, who came at a dead run.

“Take care of this man.”

“I’m FBI,” Pilcher shouted. His voice sounded like it was coming from a great distance, his ears affected by the blasts. The fireman’s voice sounded like a whisper. Pilcher coughed again and spat black phlegm onto the ground.

“Sir—”

”I’ll brief you,” Pilcher shouted. “This is a national security issue.”

The fireman waved him to follow. Pilcher leaned against a fire truck. He forced himself to be calm, to tell the man what had happened in a logical, chronological order. As he talked, a crew of firefighters began to spray foam on the vans. He stared, not speaking, thinking, We’ll never get useful evidence off those things.

The next time Pilcher checked his watch, he realized it was dead, the crystal a spider web of cracks. He must have hit it on the ground when he fell.

The EMT insisted he sit for a few minutes, gave him a water bottle to drink from and a canister of oxygen. The EMT daubed gingerly at Pilcher’s face with a damp rag. “How close were you, sir? You’re burned. Looks like a sunburn. Not too bad. If it gets worse or you start to feel a lot of pain, get to a doctor. Don’t want an infection.”

No, Pilcher thought. Wouldn’t want an infection.

“And your eyebrows are singed.”

“I’m alive.” Pilcher greedily sucked on the oxygen, thinking that he wanted to go home and turn this mess over to someone else. But he knew he couldn’t. He felt a responsibility to the original investigation, tracking down the people who stole the virus. And now these monsters had murdered his friend and a whole team of FBI agents. Not it was personal. He thanked the EMT for his care, kept the water and asked him for his watch.

“What?”

“I need a watch. Mine’s busted. How much for yours?”

The EMT had curly black hair and a thick black mustache. He was built like a marathoner, thin and lanky. Pilcher put him in his early twenties. The guy didn’t understand what he wanted.

Pilcher held up his badge. “FBI. I’m commandeering your wrist watch. Give it to me.”

Slowly the EMT figured out what Pilcher was getting at. He unhooked his cheap Swatch sports watch from his wrist and handed it over.

Pilcher strapped it on. He handed the kid his card. “Call me when this is over. I’ll get it back to you with a check for a hundred bucks. Thanks.”

He strode past the ambulance, looking for his people — those who survived.

He found three of his agents near the stairwell. They seemed surprised to see him.

“What happened?” Agent Sara Magnusson asked. Red hair, blocky build, dark suit. Pilcher had worked with her before. She was like a moray eel — once she clamped on she wouldn’t let go of a case.

“Booby trapped. I’m betting explosives with a mercury switch. When the van was tilted enough, it set it off. The explosion set off the other two. Anybody done a head count?”

Magnusson nodded. “Four ERTs, three truck drivers and two agents. Three airport security guys. We thought you were dead.”

Twelve, Pilcher thought. Plus the four at the Scully’s house and twenty-eight at U.S. Immuno. A total, so far, of forty-four. If that didn’t indicate these terrorists’ intentions, nothing did.

“Media here?”

John Yenor nodded. Middle-aged and chunky, Yenor was slow and steady. He was a veteran agent with no apparent ambitions beyond being a good field agent. “We decided they have to wait. We needed to know what the situation up here was.”

“You’re the agent-in-charge,” said the third agent, Benjamin Sanchez. Aggressively handsome, dark and Latina, Sanchez was a Harvard Law School grad. He clearly did have ambitions beyond being a field agent.

Pilcher took a deep breath, but started to cough when he did. When he got it under control, he pointed at Magnusson. “What’s that?” She was clutching an evidence bag under one arm.

“Oh. Security tapes. We got ‘em.”

They all stared at her. Pilcher was the first to find his voice. “What? Explain.”

Magnusson couldn’t contain her grin. “Parking garage security tapes. I was watching the one from this level when the vans blew up. I made sure I collected them before I ran up here.”

Pilcher nodded. “Good. What’ve we got?”

She seemed to nearly vibrate from excitement. “I watched the three vans come in and what looked like twelve men get out. They didn’t head for the stairs or the elevators. I think they were going to different vehicles already parked here.”

“That was on the tape?” Sanchez asked, dark eyebrows raised.

“Not this one. But I’ve got all of them. We can even see faces.”

Pilcher nodded, also excited. “Okay.” He took another deep breath and was again wracked with harsh coughing. He hawked up phlegm and spat. Gray now, not black. He guessed that was an improvement. “Sorry. Magnusson, get those tapes to SIOC. I’ll call Spigotta and tell him you’re coming. He’ll have a lab guy waiting. Good job.”

She just stood there. “Go,” he snapped. She nodded and took off at a run.

“Sanchez, call Newman. He’s coordinating the media. You’ll handle the press here.”

Sanchez clearly liked his assignment. His lean face split into a wide grin. “Yes sir.”

“Go.”

Sanchez went, phone already pressed to his ear.

Pilcher turned to John Yenor. “Get on the phone and get an ERT team out here to get the vans. Get people picking up the security and road cameras in a five-mile radius of this airport. We need to figure what direction these bastards headed. Also, call ATF, I want this parking garage swept for more bombs.”

“Yes sir.” Yenor didn’t need more prompting. He headed off toward the stairs, punching numbers on his phone.

Pilcher leaned against the doorway to the elevators, heart pile-driving in his chest. A wave of nausea swept over him and again he bit it back. No time. Turning, he strode over to where he could get a clean signal and, leaning over the concrete wall looking out at the city lights, he called Spigotta at SIOC.

“I’m glad you called. I’ve got—”

Pilcher interrupted and described the situation. He waited patiently through the senior agent’s cursing. When he wound down, Spigotta said, “It’s a diversion.”

“Yes,” Pilcher agreed. “I think so, too. We may gets leads off it, though. Magnusson’s on her way with the tapes.”

“I’ll have the lab on standby.”

Pilcher filled in Spigotta on his other actions.

“Good,” Spigotta said. “Good. Very good, Aaron. Okay. I’ve got something I need you to do. Turn over the reins to… Sanchez is busy with the press?”

“Yes.”

“Yenor then. I need you to track down Frank Halloran. We’ve got some questions for him that came up during the background checks. If he’s not at U.S. Immuno, track him down ASAP.”

“I’m in Frederick. There should be agents closer to Baltimore.”

“I’ve got a feeling about this, Aaron. I want you to talk to him. You up to it?”

That was the question of the day. Pilcher thought of his friend Tres Rodriguez, blown to pieces. “Yes sir.”

Spigotta told Pilcher what had come up on the background checks. Pilcher nodded and clicked off. With a deep breath of night air that didn’t make him cough, he went looking for Agent Yenor.

15

Liz Vargas felt energized. She didn’t know why. Maybe it was the helicopter ride, something she’d never done before. Maybe it was simply relief at being alive, at having survived a massacre. Maybe it was the light supper and an hour lying on a cot, dozing. Whatever the reason, she felt up to whatever happened and just wanted to get on with things.

She tapped her fingers on Sharon Jaxon’s desk, a cluttered, gray-steel government issue in a cramped, windowless office at the United States Army Military Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID. Jaxon smiled at her. She was on the phone with some guy, a boyfriend. Liz had offered to leave, give her some privacy, but Sharon waved her off, saying she just wanted to tell him they had a “situation” and she wouldn’t be over tonight.

Liz’s impatient gaze took in the office. Some of the clutter was paperwork, but a lot of it was memorabilia from parts of the world where Lieutenant Sharon Jaxon had been stationed: Asian dolls from Korea and Japan; odd bits of sculptured rock from Kosovo shaped like men with packs on their backs; aerial photographs of the Panama Canal.

“Okay. Sure. If the timing’s right, I’ll swing by for breakfast. Yeah, that too.” Jaxon laughed. “Naughty, naughty. Don’t count on it, though. I expect to be here a couple days. Yeah. Love you, too.”

She hung up, her face flushing a little pink with embarrassment. “Guys,” she said.

Liz smiled, but it was a little strained. “Good friend?”

Sharon nodded. “I’m thinking of moving in. Barring disaster, I’ll be here at Rid for the rest of my career. Dave’s a good guy. He’s a freelance copywriter, pulls in three times what I do working out of his back bedroom. Marketing materials mostly. Some ad copy. Not a scientist or in the Army, thank God. You have someone?”

Liz shook her head quickly. “No.”

Sharon reached out and touched her hand. “Hey, it’s all right. I didn’t mean to hit a nerve. I’m sorry.”

Liz sighed, some of her energy seeping away. “It’s just been a bad day. I was married for three years. Mitch was an oncologist at Hopkins. He died in a motorcycle accident two years ago.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Liz shrugged. “Thanks. The only reason I’m being bothered by it is because of… you know. Surviving a terrorist attack.” Tears well up in her eyes, but she wiped them away. She wouldn’t allow herself to think of all of the dead. So many of her friends, colleagues, people she talked to daily, ate lunch with. All gone.

Sharon turned serious. “If you’re not up to this, no one will think less of you.”

“If that’s possible,” Liz said bitterly. “You’re the only one who trusts me.”

Sharon leaned back in her chair, which let out a high-pitched creak. “That’s because Derek trusted you. If he went into a hot zone with you, that’s good enough for me.”

“Jeez, that guy. I didn’t know what to make of him. He got all freaked out before going into HL-4, even… even barfed, but he told me it was just stage fright. I mean, all those good luck charms!”

Sharon smiled tightly and steepled her fingers. “How was he inside?”

“No problem. Better than me. He knew just what to do and the only time he acted even mildly rattled was when he found that playing card.”

Sharon nodded. “Let me tell you a little bit about Derek Stillwater. When it comes to hot zones — in the lab or the field — Derek is the most realistic person I’ve ever met. He knows in a way most of us don’t that one mistake can mean his death. He knows it.” Something troubling crossed her face, a combination of worry and stress. Sharon paused for a moment, then shrugged. “Derek can probably take care of himself. We have something else to worry about. Just… you can trust Derek. In a pinch, you can trust him.”

There was something in Sharon Jaxon’s voice when she talked about Derek Stillwater that suggested they had been more than friends, but she didn’t pursue it.

“What’s taking so long?” she asked.

Sharon smiled. “Ben’s very cautious. Consider what he’s doing. You would be, right?”

Ben Zataki had taken the cultures of Chimera M13 and the cultures of Chimera M1, M2, M3 and M4 into the Level 4 suite and was inoculating them into cultures, preparing them to be injected into a batch of monkeys. He decided to do the preparations himself, then would organize the teams when dealing with the monkeys.

“Well, yes. But why didn’t he want my help?”

“You looked like you needed the rest.”

Liz sighed. Despite her second wind, her body ached and she knew exhaustion, both physical and emotional, was just around the corner. There was a knock at Jaxon’s door. “Come in.”

Ben Zataki stuck his head in. He looked as neat and put-together as before. “Ladies, I’ve scheduled a meeting for everybody in fifteen minutes. I’ve got to make a couple quick phone calls to Atlanta and D.C. and then we’ll be on our way.” His gaze met Liz’s. “You okay?”

“I’m fine. Ready to go.”

“Good. See you there.”

The team met in a second-floor conference room with no windows. The room was full and it was the first time Liz got a sense of unseen machinery at work, that the theft of Chimera M13 had set in motion forces that she could not stop.

Zataki gestured for everyone to sit, but remained standing. Even in green surgical scrubs he held a kind of dignified authority.

“Okay everyone. I’ve prepared our cultures including extras. I’ve set up an experimental procedure and assigned teams. Similar tests are currently being started at the U.S. Immunological Research facility and samples are being flown to the CDC. All of you will be assigned to monkeys and all but two will be inoculated with a high dose of Chimera M13. Four will be injected first with one of the weaker strains. The rest will receive doses at different intervals.”

Liz studied at the schedule that was handed around the room. She was paired with Sharon Jaxon. They were to assist in injecting the four monkeys with Chimera M1, 2, 3 and 4, and in injecting the rest of the animals with Chimera M13. Then, four hours later, they were to inject four of the monkeys with M1, M2, M3 and M4. Other scientists were assigned similar procedures with other monkeys at later increments: eight hours, twelve hours and twenty-four hours.

Liz wondered if they would have twenty-four hours. She wondered if the terrorists, whoever they were, would unleash Chimera on the public before twenty-four hours passed.

Everyone listened carefully as Zataki outlined their objectives, reminding everyone of safety issues. Liz saw that some of the people present seemed confused. Two of them were older men in military uniforms — Army, she thought. Two more were in navy blue three-piece suits. They looked like government agents of some sort, or lobbyists or politicians. Rigid, clean-cut, serious. They, in particular, seemed confused.

One of them said, “Will this work?”

Zataki shrugged. “Mr. O’Brien, right?”

O’Brien nodded.

Zataki said, “We don’t know. That’s what we’re trying to determine.”

“But you think it will?” O’Brien fidgeted with a gold pen, tapping it nervously on a leather-bound folder in his lap.

Zataki gazed at him. “If it doesn’t, Mr. O’Brien, we’re in serious trouble.”

“But what should I advise the President?”

Zataki said, “There isn’t much to advise, Mr. O’Brien. I’ve spoken with Anthony Pfeiffer at the CDC and he’ll be at the meeting. We won’t have anything useful or definitive before tomorrow night.”

“That’s not good enough,” O’Brien said, unable to keep a petulant whine out of his voice.

“Without a doubt,” Zataki said. “But it is, nonetheless, the best we can do. The best anybody can do.”

The second suit said, “If this works, and if these terrorists let this germ loose, will we have enough of the vaccine available to use on the public?” He was heavier set than his lean, younger partner, and spoke more slowly with fewer fidgets.

Zataki peered at him over his half-moon reading glasses. “Samples of all four of the weaker strains—”

”M1, M2, M3 and M4?”

“Yes. As well as a sample of M13, have been turned over to Sidney Alloway. She is the head of Geiger Pharmaceuticals. She runs both a vaccine manufacturing facility in New Jersey, and the means to mass produce a virus or bacterial agent. They will begin growing large amounts of M1, M2, M3 and M4 as soon as possible in case we’re able to use them as a vaccine.”

Liz’s stomach did a slow flip-flop.

Zataki continued. “They will also be growing M13 and attempting to develop a Salk vaccine for Chimera.” A Salk vaccine was a dead virus, treated with Formaldehyde.

All the color drained out of Liz’s face and she thought she was going to vomit. Sharon glanced at her, then grabbed her arm. “Are you okay?” she whispered.

“You’re going to grow industrial lots of Chimera?” Liz burst out.

Zataki turned. “Yes, Dr. Vargas.”

“That’s… Chimera’s too dangerous. That’s crazy! It’s the most dangerous virus on the—”

”We’re well aware of the danger,” Zataki said, voice even. “But we don’t have a choice.” He paused, gaze piercing her. “Do we?”

She shook her head and collapsed back in her chair, realizing fully the Pandora’s box they had opened. She remember Derek Stillwater saying, “When you steal the devil’s pitchfork, you become the devil.”

O’Brien said, “And if these don’t work? What are we going to do if none of these versions of Chimera work? What will we do if we don’t have a workable vaccine and the terrorists release M13 somewhere on the public?”

Zataki frowned. “The standard procedure is rings of containment. In the case of a virus like Chimera, victims will be transported to isolation facilities — here at USAMRIID or at the CDC or various hospitals — and anybody who has come into contact with the victims will also be isolated, thus setting up rings of containment around the victims.”

“And if someone gets through the rings of containment?” O’Brien demanded. “If you miss somebody?”

Zataki said, “If the virus spreads faster than we can contain it? If the public panics and runs? If the public is noncompliant? That’s simple, Mr. O’Brien. Hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of people will die.”

In time the meeting was wrapped. The White House representatives headed back to Washington, D.C. to tell their boss that the only thing being done to deal with a possible biological attack was a wild-ass longshot that most of the scientists thought wouldn’t work. The military was preparing their troops, but more importantly, were setting up armed perimeters around U.S. Immuno and Geiger Pharmaceuticals.

Somewhere out there, Liz thought as she changed into scrubs, was a lone troubleshooter and an FBI team trying to track down the terrorists before they unleashed Chimera. She made a silent prayer to a god she didn’t really believe in that they would be successful.

Once dressed, the two women proceeded into the next level to tape rubber gloves to their scrubs and socks, then don their spacesuits.

“Looks like Frank and…” Acid flooded Liz’s throat. She swallowed it back, breath coming hard. “…and Jim based our hot level facility on yours.”

“There are only so many ways to do it,” Jaxon acknowledged. She took a close look at Liz. “You up to this? You look a little strained.”

“Yes. I’m up to this.”

“Good. There will be a bunch of observers this round. In the middle of the night it ought to thin out, but don’t get freaked by the number of spacesuits you see.”

“Sure.”

They moved into the spacesuit area and donned their blue suits. The one Liz Vargas wore was brand new and crinkled as she unfolded it. It had the distinctive “new suit” smell. She didn’t like the smell. For some reason it reminded her of her husband’s death, of the Medical Examiner’s Office, of the funeral home. It reminded her of saying goodbye. They suited up, checked each other’s suits for cracks or leaks, then proceeded into USAMRIID’s Biological Safety Level 4 facility.

Jaxon had been right. There were eight or nine people already in there, trying not to bump into each other. She didn’t like the crowd. They would be working with hypodermic needles contaminated with Chimera M13. One pinprick would mean certain death.

Chimera M13, within the limits of their testing, was fatal one hundred percent of the time. Marburg and Ebola were fatal about twenty-five to thirty-five percent of the time. That was largely because they were simian viruses that made the leap to Homo sapiens. They were not well-adapted to human beings.

Smallpox, which was perfectly adapted by nature to infect and kill human beings, was also fatal about a third of the time.

U.S. Immuno had improved on nature, if any sane person would consider it an improvement. Chimera M13 killed every subject it had been tested on. They believed, from a population point of view, that the real number would be somewhere in the ninety to ninety-five percentile range, that in a large human population there would be a small percentage of human beings with immune systems resistant to this disease.

Of course, Chimera had never actually been tested on human beings. It had been tested on cultures of human cells with spectacular success, and on monkeys as well. They had run it on a barrage of mice, rats, guinea pigs and rabbits. Fatal, fatal, fatal. On laboratory animals it was one hundred percent fatal. No human being had ever actually been infected.

The monkey room was at the far end of the hot zone, a large rectangular space. On top of counter tops were wall-to-wall monkey cages, each draped with plastic sheeting to prevent the spread of airborne disease. Liz and Sharon gestured for the crowd to stay along the walls, which they did, more or less. Like any crowd, it had a life of its own, shifting and drifting, people gesturing to each other with sign language, barely able to hear each other through their spacesuits even when shouting.

Jaxon picked up a metal tray containing syringes of M1, M2, M3 and M4. Together they proceeded to the four monkeys on the far left. At the first cage, Jaxon used a lever to bring the false rear wall of the cage forward until the monkey was pressed and immobile against the front of the cage. Jaxon took a syringe from a second tray and injected the monkey with the tranquilizer Telazol. She stepped back and waited. Within moments the monkey became unconscious.

With smooth, deliberate motions, Liz took the syringe labeled M1 and injected it into the first monkey.

Turning, she saw that the crowd of blue suits was pressing in toward her. They recoiled as a group at the sight of the syringe, moving back toward the far wall. She shuffled over to a red “sharps” container on the wall and dropped the syringe into it. She squirmed as a muscle spasm rippled along her back. Grimacing, she adjusted her posture. Her back ached from where the bullets had struck the Kevlar in the spacesuit. After a moment, the spasm passed.

Jaxon repeated her tranquilizing procedure with the second monkey and Liz injected it with M2. This proceeded through the first four monkeys. Each time she turned, the crowd had moved a little bit closer. Inside her suit she sighed, reflecting on Derek Stillwater’s comment about stage fright. No kidding. She felt like she was performing.

The next stage was trickier. They were going to inject all twenty monkeys with M13.

She stood back, sweat beading on her forehead, the blower loud in her ears. Another spasm assaulted her back. She gasped, twisted a bit, and it went away. Jaxon stood close to her, face shields touching. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

It was time-consuming and exhausting. The trick was to not rush. To work slowly and deliberately. To concentrate on what she was doing, not get into an automatic sequence.

But it was hard. It had been a long, exhausting day. Every few minutes her back seized up and she had to twist inside her spacesuit to relieve the pain. She knew she was tiring, knew that maybe she should take a break or turn this over to someone else. But she had something to prove. She had started this mess, had actually been one of the creators of Chimera, and she wanted to be one of the people to fix it.

By the time they hit monkey number twenty, a large thirty-pound male with gray tufted ears and yellowish brown fur, she just wanted to finish. The tidal ebb and flow of the crowd was getting to her. She wanted to get away from them. She wanted to get off her feet, out of the spacesuit and around a cup of coffee. Her back was complaining constantly now, a deep, uncomfortable ache split by the occasional spasm.

She moved in toward monkey number 20. The blue suits moved toward her, circling. Everyone wanting to mark this moment. As she stepped forward, the syringe in her hand, a jagged, searing pain raced through her back like an electrical current. With a cry she bent forward, the syringe jolting out of her grasp. Involuntarily she clutched at it, trying to catch it. She felt the jab of pain immediately, saw the tear in three layers of gloves, saw the drops of blood ooze through the hole.

She had been injected with Chimera M13!

16

Detective Lou Matthews double-parked the Crown Victoria and followed his partner, Detective Chris Flemming, over to the crime scene. Flemming, who stood six-three and weighed nearly three hundred pounds, his coal-black shaved skull standing out like a beacon, headed over to talk to the patrol officers who had cordoned off the area near Jimmy’s Saloon. Matthews, who wasn’t as tall as his partner, and whose skin was more chocolate in tone, moved toward where the crime scene squad was doing their thing. Dressed in a navy blue pinstripe three-piece suit, Matthews brushed back his suit coat and stuffed his hands into his pockets.

“What’ve we got?”

The CSI was a skinny guy with fuzzy brown hair, his complexion red, making his high rounded cheekbones seem rouged. Matthews had worked with him a couple times before. Todd Fawkes, he remembered. Yeah. That was his name. Annoying little shit, but seemed to know his business.

“Large caliber bullet to the heart,” Fawkes said, not looking up from taking evidence. “Looks like a handful of shots. One or two hit the wall here, haven’t got them yet. Couple hit vehicles. Winston’s working on them.”

“Sniper?”

“Maybe.”

Matthews crouched down and took a hard look at the victim. Long blond hair. Reddish beard. He took in the green scrub shirt now caked with drying blood, the jeans and tennis shoes. “Got an ID?”

“Got gloves?”

Matthews took a pair of Latex gloves from his pocket and tugged them on. Fawkes handed him a bagged wallet from his evidence kit. Matthews took it out of the bag and examined it. Maryland driver’s license. Austin Davis. Age: 49. Matthews took another look at the victim. Davis looked younger than 49. There was a doctor tag on the license. He flipped through more of the information, jotting notes in his notebook. AMA card. ID for Walter Reed. The usual collection of credit cards and identification. No photographs. Shifting to the two pockets, he noted that Davis carried a fair amount of cash: six twenties, two tens, one five, three ones. In the other pocket of the wallet was a collection of receipts and what appeared to be notes. The receipts looked straightforward, one from a Starbucks this morning, one from the Walter Reed cafeteria at noon. The man kept track of his expenses. A little anal-retentive, but so what? He was a doctor, right? Attention to detail would be a pretty good quality in a doctor.

The notes seemed to be a collection of To Do Lists, all on folded yellow Post-It notes. There was one with a list of things labeled one through five, number one being “Pick up dry-cleaning” and number five being “Staff mtg @ 3:30.” The staff meeting was crossed out, but none of the others were.

There was a yellow note that said, simply: Derek Stillwater @ Jimmy’s, 7:00.

He wanted to say Ah-ha! his gaze shifting thirty yards to the entrance to Jimmy’s. Nothing like a real clue to make you feel like a real detective.

He went through the rest of the wallet, angling it to the light from several patrol cars, their headlights cutting brilliant swaths through the dark night. Finally he handed it back to Fawkes. “Anything else?”

“Not so far.”

Matthews thanked the CSI and headed over to where his partner was deep in discussion with a female patrol officer. She was built like a weight lifter with broad shoulders stretching the tight uniform blouse, and had the bad complexion of a steroid freak. She adjusted her hat and brushed a flyaway strand of brown hair out of her face when he approached. He introduced himself and she identified herself as Officer Sheila Broadway.

“I was just telling your partner here what we’ve been doing.”

“Got a wit’,” Flemming said. He pointed to a patrol car. “Supposed to be a good one, too.”

“Good. So, what’s going on here?” Matthews asked Broadway.

“Witness reports that the victim was walking down the street with another man. The victim was shot and the other man ran. There were other shots. Then the second man jumped into a vehicle and drove off.”

“Huh,” Matthews said. “The witnesses think the second man shot the first man?”

Broadway shrugged. “Conflicting accounts. Some do, some don’t. Some think it was a sniper and the shots were coming from across the street, maybe from a vehicle. Some people think the second man was the shooter. At least two people were sure he had a gun.”

“They describe the second man?”

“Tall, muscular, jeans and a T-shirt, dark red windbreaker. Curly brown hair. Age is anywhere from twenty-five to fifty.”

They asked her more questions and she consulted her notes and answered them as best she could. “And the wit’ in the patrol?” Flemming asked.

“Got a good description of the vehicle the man jumped into. Plus a license plate.”

“Quite an eagle-eye.”

“Yes sir. He scribbled it on his hand. He was lying in the street, hoping not to get shot. I’ve already run the plate. Belongs to a D.C. address, a Dolores Smithson.”

Flemming said, “Call dispatch, have a patrol sent to that address and have them pick up Ms. Smithson and bring her in for questioning.”

Broadway grinned. “Yes sir.”

“Let’s talk to this eagle-eye witness,” Matthews said.

The wit’s name was Andy Rosenbaum. He was thin, average height, with long dark hair and a scraggly beard. They invited him to step out of the car and he did, stretching, arching his back.

They questioned him back and forth and inside-out. Officer Broadway had been right. Rosenbaum was the best witness. They got his contact information and let him go. Matthews walked back over to Fawkes. “Any idea on the angle of those bullets? Or caliber?”

“No, but large.”

“Handgun?”

Fawkes shrugged. “If it was, it was a cannon. And not point blank. There’s no burn on this guy’s shirt. We’ll be able to work out trajectories later. Winston’s measuring everything. My guess — and that’s all it is, a guess — is that the shooter was across the street, shooting from a vehicle using a rifle.”

They were headed for Jimmy’s when Officer Broadway caught their attention. She hurried over. “Cops went to look for that address for Dolores Smithson. The address doesn’t exist. It’s not anywhere in the computer.”

Matthews and Flemming looked at each other. Then they called in a Be On the Lookout on the Chevy Blazer. And they wanted a check ran on somebody called Derek Stillwater.

17

“…The Department of Homeland Security has declared a Level Red Alert, indicating an active threat of a terrorist attack. In a press conference a short time ago, Secretary James Johnston said that the government was on high alert after a group of unidentified commandos made an armed assault on a government funded biological research facility in…”

Aaron Pilcher reluctantly clicked off the radio as he pulled up to the first checkpoint outside the U.S. Immuno facility. The Army had set up a double perimeter of Humvees and armed, uniformed soldiers. Portable floodlights cast a harsh, uncompromising glare across the parking lot. It looked as desolate and barren as a lunar landscape. The press was out in force and Aaron knew it would make good, though frightening, images for TV.

A soldier asked him to step out of his vehicle. Aaron did and handed over his FBI credentials and showed them his gun. The soldier made a phone call, then nodded and hung up. “You’re expected. Please get back in your vehicle and follow the route ahead to the main gate.”

“Sure.”

Aaron saw that an entry road wide enough for two vehicles to pass had been formed out of concrete barriers. He drove along it, noting the regularly posted sentries. At the main gate the way was blocked by more concrete barriers and guarded by heavily armored vehicles with machine guns mounted in the backs.His skin prickled as he thought of unseen snipers with high-powered rifles and night vision scopes, of fingers on triggers.

The front gate double-checked his ID, checked his gun, searched the car, then gave him an armed escort in a Humvee to the front entrance. In the hours since Pilcher had been there, U.S. Immuno had transformed from a research facility to a military command post. He was led to a command center and met by a Captain Theresa Kavalevski, who demanded to see his ID once again. Kavalevski looked about forty years old with a youthful, oval face. She wore dark hair cut short and round, wire-rimmed glasses that flashed in the harsh fluorescent lights.

She took his ID, compared it to something on a computer screen in front of her, and returned it to him with a brisk nod. “I received a lengthy fax for you from SIOC.” She handed him a folder marked TOP SECRET, AARON PILCHER ONLY, FBI.

“What happened to your face?” she asked.

He involuntarily put a hand to his cheek, felt heat radiating off his skin. “A little too close to an explosion.”

“The one at the municipal airport?”

He nodded.

“You were lucky. I heard we lost a lot of people today.”

“Good people. My people.” He didn’t like to think about it. Thinking about it enraged him and being pissed off didn’t help him be analytical. He needed to think, not freak out. He compartmentalized and hoped he’d still be able to open the door to the compartment when the time to examine those emotions came.

Kavalevski nodded. “Dr. Frank Halloran is changing now. He should be down any minute.” She gestured to a soldier who hurried over.

“Adam, please take—”

”I need a few minutes to go through this file,” he said, lifting it. He pointed to an empty desk. “That okay?”

“Certainly.”

He sat down and adjusted the lamp. Besides a computer there was a photograph of a family, a man, woman and three children. They were at Disney World, hamming it up with Minnie Mouse. They were happy. He wondered which of them was dead. Had the terrorists killed the mother or the father? Had they been told? What were they thinking now? What were they feeling?

Shaking it off, he proceeded through the file. It contained a summary, which he read carefully, then proceeded on to the next twelve pages of documentation. He was a very fast reader with an excellent memory. He put the file aside and reviewed the information in his head. The Bureau had done their usual fine and fast job of background checks. It was what they did best, gather information. But he understood that the FBI wasn’t good at preemption. Preemption required more than information gathering, it required a willingness to break away from a standard mind set and imagine what the terrorists might do. Intuitively he understood that Derek Stillwater was trying to do that, to think outside the box.

“Do you have a shredder?” he asked Kavalesky.

She looked startled. “Yes, right here.”

He shredded the contents of the file and then shredded the file itself. “Ready,” he said.

She called the soldier back over. “Adam, please take Mr. Pilcher to Dr. Halloran’s office. Thank you.”

The U.S. Immuno facility had become a ghost town. Private Adam Nabreau led him silently down empty corridors, walls pocked with bullet holes, tiled floors looking freshly clean — the refuse of violent death having been mopped up.

Halloran’s office must have been one of the few in the building to actually have a window. Considering he was the head of the place, it was pretty spartan. There was a large burled walnut table for a desk, cluttered with paperwork. A computer dominated one corner. A wall of bookshelves were crammed with textbooks and bound technical journals. Gray utilitarian filing cabinets stood sentry, doors shut. On one wall hung photographs and memorabilia from when Halloran was in the military. Pilcher recognized Scully in one of the photographs.

Pilcher welcomed the few minutes in Halloran’s office alone, a chance to get a feel for the man, a chance to get into character. He had three distinct characters he preferred to use for interrogations, with varying degrees of range between each three. With his white blond hair, though thinning, and his square jaw and lean build, he was able to pull off what he referred to as Icy Bastard. By bringing forth a more fussy nature, and generally by working as second fiddle to Spigotta’s Raging Bastard, he could do a very effective Officious Prick. Then, when needed, he was able to totally mellow out and be Surfer Buddy. Somewhere between Officious Prick and Surfer Buddy was the good cop he needed when Spigotta toned down Raging Bastard to his own version of Seriously Bad Cop. With Halloran’s military background, Pilcher thought that Icy Bastard was the way to go.

When Halloran walked into his own office in khaki slacks and a green scrub shirt, Pilcher was sitting behind Halloran’s burled walnut desk, hands clasped in front of him, a hard frown on his face.

“Who are you?”

“Sit down, Doctor.”

When Halloran didn’t sit, Pilcher reached inside his jacket, making sure that Halloran saw his gun in its holster, and retrieved his ID. He held it up. “Special Agent Aaron Pilcher. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Sit down.”

Halloran reluctantly sat. To his credit, he didn’t ask what this was about.

Pilcher stared at him for a long moment. He said, “The Bureau has some questions.”

“I thought I answered all of them earlier.”

“We have more. Are you happily married, Doctor Halloran?”

Halloran raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“Are you happily married, Doctor Halloran?”

“Why are you asking that? What does that have to do with anything?”

“Answer the question!” Pilcher shouted.

Halloran jumped. “Jesus Christ! Yes. What’s your—”

”Do you love your children?”

“What? Now look—”

”Answer the question!”

“Yes.”

“Who are you having an affair with?”

Halloran squinted and leaned forward in his chair. “What?”

Voice cold, colder than ice, Pilcher said, “I asked you a question, Doctor Halloran. In the interest of national security, I want you to answer it.”

“National security?”

Pilcher stared at him. “Every Wednesday night for the last two months you have eaten dinner at a number of restaurants in the Baltimore area. After eating at those restaurants, you have checked into a variety of hotels nearby.”

“How—”

”Since this occurred two months prior to a terrorist assault on your facility resulting in the theft of a bioengineered germ that could cause a pandemic, it amazes me that you would be so stupid to think there’s no connection.”

Halloran’s face drained of color. His voice shook as he protested, “There isn’t.”

“Who is she?”

“A… just a friend. She’s not involved in this.”

Pilcher thought Halloran was an idiot. Voice dripping with ice, he said, “The Bureau will decide whether or not she is involved in this. We want a name. We want a telephone number. We want an address. If you have pictures, we want them. If you do not give us this information… immediately, I am authorized to take you into custody. We will be forced to ask your wife and your children questions… in the interest of national security… concerning your relationships. Do I make myself clear, Dr. Halloran?”

Obviously he was making himself crystal clear, because Halloran’s hands were shaking in his lap. He clutched the arms of the chair and shook his head. “No. No, my life… this… you… you’re ruining my life.”

“Name.” Pilcher intoned.

Halloran leaned forward and pressed his face into his hands. “Oh God. I can’t believe…” He fell silent, fingers pressing into his closed eyes. Finally: “She’s just a friend.”

“Phone number.”

“She’s married. I never called her. She called me.”

“Phone number.”

Halloran looked up. “I don’t have one.”

“Where does she live?”

Halloran shook his head. “Somewhere in D.C., but I don’t really know.”

“How did you meet her?”

Halloran sighed. “Dear God. She’s… she’s just a friend.”

Aaron Pilcher thought of the Scully family, of what had been done to them. He wondered if there was a connection. There probably was. “More than a friend. How did you meet her?”

“A talk I gave at… Georgetown University. She was in the audience. She’s adjunct faculty there. You know, she teaches but isn’t a member of the faculty. She taught microbiology. She has a masters degree in microbiology, taught a lot of laboratory courses.”

“How old?”

He shrugged. “Thirties, I guess.”

“Her name?” Pilcher waited.

Halloran said, “Look, she’s not involved in this. It was a—”

”When you met her for the first time, what did she say?”

“Well, uh, she said she liked my talk, thought it was really interesting, she’d like to know more about my work and the research we do.”

“And?”

“And what?” Halloran, the poor fool, looked utterly confused.

“And what? You offered to buy her a drink somewhere and talk about your work?”

“Well…” Halloran’s face grew red. “Yes. Exactly.”

“Or did she offer to buy you a drink and let you talk about your work?”

He shook his head. “I–I… no, I… I don’t remember.”

Pilcher stared. “What’s her name?”

“Look—”

Pilcher reached under his jacket and retrieved his handcuffs. “I’m really quite through with you, Doctor.”

Sweat beaded on Halloran’s forehead. “No, really. Her name… her name is Irina Khournikova.”

“Sounds Russian,” Pilcher said.

“It is. Her English is excellent. She’s been here in the U.S. for years, but she’s originally from Russia.”

“Adjunct faculty at Georgetown?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any photographs?”

“N-no.”

“Describe her.”

“Well, mid-thirties, athletic, shoulder-length brown hair. Attractive. Very intelligent.”

She played you like a goddamned piano, Pilcher thought. He stood up. “I wouldn’t be surprised if someone comes back to discuss this with you again.” He walked past Halloran and was halfway out the door when Halloran said, “You… you think she’s involved in this, don’t you? In the theft of Chimera.”

Pilcher nodded and walked out of Halloran’s office. He was immediately on his cell phone, calling Spigotta, giving him the name and the information. Spigotta said, “Have you been in touch with Stillwater?”

“No.”

“Get hold of him. I want an update. Brief him on what we know.”

Pilcher clicked off and called Stillwater’s cell phone. Stillwater sounded cagey. “What have you got?” Pilcher asked.

“I’ve confirmed my theory.” He sounded like someone was in the room with him.

“Are you alone?”

“No.”

“Is Richard Coffee behind this like you think?”

“Yes. And others.”

“Okay. I’ve got a lead on somebody we can check on. A microbiology instructor at Georgetown U. Irina Khournikova—”

”Say that again.”

Pilcher did, wondering at Clearwater’s interruption.

“I’ll call you back,” Clearwater said, and clicked off.

“Wonder what that was about,” Pilcher said out loud. He turned to leave and was just walking around the corner when he heard a gunshot fired from behind him. He froze, then slowly turned back, heading toward Halloran’s office. The shot must have been heard throughout the building, because two soldiers swept past him at a dead run. He followed, reluctant to witness what he knew he was going to see.

Halloran had taken the time to get up from his chair, retrieve a Colt .45 service weapon from a desk drawer. Then he had sat down behind his desk, written on a piece of stationary merely the words, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Then Halloran put the barrel of the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

18

Derek Stillwater stared at the photograph of Richard Coffee and Kim Pak Lee, the Korean bioweapons expert. Then he slid it aside.

“How many in this organization?”

Irina Khournikova shrugged. “Estimates say as small as ten, as large as fifty. It may be that its size is fluid. I don’t have dossiers on all the members. Just a few confirmed cases.”

“Let’s see them.”

He followed her into the bedroom that apparently served as a makeshift office. She retrieved a handful of files and turned, seeing him standing close behind her. She moved around him without comment, but her expression said: You don’t trust me. That was okay by Derek. He didn’t trust her.

He followed her back to the kitchen and joined her at the table. She opened a folder. In it was a head-and-shoulder shot of a scowling woman with dark hair. She appeared to be in her fifties and had a fleshy face and dark, unhappy eyes. “Masha Khattan. An Israeli expert in nuclear weapons.” Irina tapped the photograph. “Mossad would very much like to find her.”

She opened four more folders, describing the nationalities and expertise of the people inside. Japanese, Korean, Italian, German. Expertise in biological and chemical warfare, nuclear physics, computers, intelligence.

“What’s their goal?”

Irina met his gaze. “Money, Dr. Stillwater. The Fallen Angels buy or steal weapons — any kind — or the materials to build weapons of mass destruction and sell them. Sometimes they auction them. Sometimes they fill an order.”

Derek said, “For instance, Syria is willing to pay ten million dollars, U.S., for fifteen pounds of enriched plutonium.”

“Exactly.”

He flipped through the files again and felt his heart sink. He would not ever have thought Richard Coffee would go bad for money. In the years he had worked with the man, he had known him to be a professional, a patriot, a man who was unusually knowledgeable about geopolitics and was concerned, legitimately concerned, about the growing threats of terrorist organizations and their access to weapons of mass destruction.

A part of him refused to believe that Richard could be behind this.

And yet…

If it had been ideological; maybe Derek could believe that Richard had had a breakdown over ideology. The man had been passionate about his beliefs.

Soldiers were trained to support their commander in chief, to fulfill the commands and obey orders without question. Yet, at the same time, both Richard and Derek had been in branches of the military requiring a great deal of independent thought. Derek, as a bioweapons specialist, had been required to give his honest opinion on a course of action. He gave it. Richard had been like that, too. But, like Derek, he had also questioned orders and decisions made by politicians and commanders with motives other than success, or questioned orders that required too large or senseless a sacrifice of men.

What had Richard seen in Chechnya? What had happened to him there?

Derek’s phone chirped. He saw Irina tense. He got up from the table and turned sideways to her. “Yes?”

“Stillwater! It’s Pilcher. I need an update. What have you got?”

“I’ve confirmed my theory.”

“Are you alone?”

“No.”

“Is Richard Coffee behind this like you think?”

“Yes. And others.” Out of the corner of his eyes he saw Irina watching him, sitting still, hands in her lap, out of sight.

“Okay,” Pilcher continued. “I’ve got a lead on somebody we should check on. A microbiology instructor at Georgetown U. Irina Khournikova—”

Derek stiffened, then forced himself to relax. He turned further away from the Russian so she couldn’t see his face. “Say that again.”

“A Russian microbiology instructor at Georgetown. Her name is Irina Khournikova. She was having an affair with Halloran at U.S. Immuno, the simpleton.”

“I’ll call you back.”

Derek clicked off the cell phone at the same time he heard a ripping sound. He was already in motion as Khournikova pulled out a handgun that had been duct-taped to the underside of the kitchen table. He flung the cell phone in her face and dived to the floor as the air filled with bullets.

He rolled and came up under her, shoulder into her chest, slamming her back against the kitchen cabinets. She kneed him. He turned, catching it on his hip. Caught her gun hand with his own, twisting. She clawed at him with her free hand.

He twisted again. Her gun went flying.

She spun, booted foot catching him in the ribs. He stepped back and she moved in fast with flying arms and legs. He shuffled back, shuffled, like fencing, slapping her blows away, on the defensive. He caught a blow to the shoulder. His arm went numb.

He shuffled back before her attack, back, hit the wall. Turning sideways to her, he got his gun out of its clip, only to have her kick it away.

“Fuck this,” he snarled and dived after it.

She went after it, too, just as he had expected.

Derek shifted his weight and caught her on the side of the head with his closed fist, followed up with an elbow strike to the jaw. She staggered and he kicked her in the stomach.

It knocked her off her feet. She stumbled over a chair and crashed to the floor. She lay on the cheap linoleum, struggling for air, dazed.

He picked up the guns and quickly ripped the cords out of the two living room lamps. Before she could completely recover he grabbed her by the hair and lifted her into one of the kitchen chairs. Using the cord he tied her securely to the chair.

Derek stepped back and took a deep breath. Her eyes were half open, breathing ragged. He didn’t trust it. She could be faking.

He looked for his cellular phone and found it in pieces on the floor. He searched for a phone, but found none. The computer was hooked to a cable line, no help there. She didn’t carry a cell phone. Maybe it was in the SUV.

When he returned to the kitchen she was fully conscious, eyes lit with rage. Derek leaned close to her. He was overly conscious of the time ticking away, aware that everything she had told him so far could be an outright lie.

“Is your real name Irina Khournikova?”

“Fuck you.”

He nodded. “Now listen carefully, Irina. I’m going to ask you some questions. You’re going to answer them. Here’s what I want to know. One, what does your group—”

”The Fallen Angels! I told you!”

“Fine. What do The Fallen Angels plan to do with Chimera M13? That’s number one. Number two—”

”We are going to release it,” she hissed. “We are going to start over. Eliminate nations, politics, war. We’re going to wipe out most of the human race and start over again.”

“Where and when?”

She turned her head away from him, chin raised in defiance.

“Where are The Fallen Angels?” he asked.

She did not answer.

“Where will they start?”

Again, silence.

“Well,” he said, standing up, “so much for the easy way.” He stepped behind her and began to rummage in the kitchen drawers.

“Oh, Derek,” she said. “Going to torture me?” She clucked her tongue. “Richard doesn’t think you have the will for such an action. He said you’re too nice a guy. He wanted you delayed. I was to find out what you knew, then detain you. Richard could have killed you back on 19^th Street. But he wanted to pick your brain. He wanted me to try and recruit you. It’s too bad you didn’t let me; you might have liked it.”

“Sorry. I’m not much of a joiner.”

“So now you will torture me?” She laughed. “I don’t think so.”

“Were you at the Scully house, Irina?”

She laughed again, goading him. “Oh yes. I enjoyed her screams. Is that what you’re getting back there, Derek? Looking for a sharp knife? Going to threaten to cut off my ear if I don’t tell you what you want to know? Going to threaten to cut off a nipple? Ha! You do not have the—”

Derek brought a plastic freezer bag over her head and pulled it tight. She struggled, gasping for breath. In her ear he whispered, “Knives really aren’t my style.” He waited, then pulled the bag away.

Face red, Irina gasped for air, struggling to pull oxygen into her lungs.

“Where can I find The Fallen Angels?” Derek said.

In a gasp she said, “Never.”

He yanked the bag back over her head. Held it there, watching her twist against her bindings, sucking the plastic against her open mouth. He pulled it off.

“Where… are they?”

“Fuck—”

Back went the bag. Again and again he took her to the edge of unconsciousness and asked her where The Fallen Angels were, asked her what their plan was, where and how were they going to release Chimera.

She did not tell him. Her voice, hurling epithets in his face, grew weaker. He felt frantic. If he went hunting for a phone to call Pilcher and waited for an FBI team to show up, then waited for her to be officially processed, for paperwork to be filled out, for lawyers to be consulted, hours would pass. He didn’t have hours. The world didn’t have hours. She wouldn’t tell them anything. She would not deal.

Derek pulled the bag over her head and held it tight. He held it, held it…. She passed out. He removed the bag and checked her pulse. He couldn’t tell if it was his imagination, but her pulse seemed erratic. It was there, however, beneath his finger. She was still breathing, still alive.

He took the time to search the apartment again, going through closets, looking under the bed, through every drawer. Nothing. When he returned Irina was conscious, a line of spittle oozing down her chin. She looked up and glared at him. He didn’t like her color. She looked gray. And despite the hatred in her eyes, he thought they had lost their brightness.

“Hello,” he said conversationally. “Ready to go again?”

“I won’t tell you anything.”

He sighed and deliberately pulled the bag over her head, pulling it taut. “I know,” he said in her ear. “But I’m going to keep going, just in case. I’m a thorough professional. And the stakes are just too damned high. I’m very sorry. I guess Richard never told you that, nice guy or not, I would do what I had to do.”

She struggled, her energy dissipating fast.

“I know you’d rather die than betray The Fallen Angels, and that’s too bad. What I’m wondering is, Which will come first? Irreparable brain damage? Or death?”

She twisted her head, groaning. Then abruptly slumped. He removed the bag and checked her pulse. With a growing sense of unease, he shifted his touch, trying to locate her heartbeat.

“Goddamnit!” He peeled back an eyelid, saw a fixed pupil. No pulse.

Heart racing, he untied her, pulled her onto the floor and started CPR. Compression, one, two, three… Breathe, breathe….

But he knew it was too late. He’d screwed up. Caused a fatal heart arrhythmia. He had killed the only lead he had.

Derek left the apartment after going through Irina’s pockets and finding the keys to the Blazer. The neighborhood hadn’t improved with the descent of night. The people who drove by seemed to belong to the darkness, to be on errands and business that fell on the wrong side of the law. Like me, he thought.

He quickly searched the Blazer and came up with a cell phone. He called Pilcher.

“Stillwater, where the—”

”Shut up. Send an evidence team to this address.” He reeled it off. “They’ll find Irina Khournikova. She needs to be printed. Send a computer guy. She claimed she was with Russia’s T Directorate, but I don’t know if what she said was true or not. Now—”

Two cops were bracketing the Blazer. Derek hadn’t noticed them approach.

“Shit.”

“Stillwater, what’s going on?”

“Cops are here.”

Derek clicked off and dropped the phone into his pocket. “Hello,” he said.

“Step out of the vehicle, sir. Keep your hands visible at all times.”

Derek, right hand up, opened the driver-side door slowly and stepped out. If they hauled him in for questioning, he’d be out of business for hours. He couldn’t allow that.

“I’ve got a gun on my right hip,” he said. “I’m with the Department of Homeland Security. We’re on—”

The cop on his side of the Blazer leaned forward to remove Derek’s gun from the holster. It was a mistake.

Derek slammed his elbow into the cop’s face, grabbed his arm and spun him around so his bulk was between him and the second cop.

“Freeze!” The second cop started to move around the Blazer, gun drawn.

Derek pressed the first cop’s own gun against his head. “Stay where you are. Put your gun down.”

The second cop, a young, frightened rookie, didn’t put down his gun.

“Put the gun down,” the cop repeated.

The last thing in the world Derek needed was a stand-off. “Look,” he said. “I’m an agent with Homeland Security—”

The cop Derek was holding slammed his head back into Derek’s jaw, jerking away. The young cop on the other side of the Blazer fired his weapon. Derek felt a searing pain rip through his side. Instinctively Derek ducked and rolled, moving in toward the truck, automatically returning fire, then leapt up over the hood of the truck and kicked the cop in the head, sprinting away into the darkness. He ducked into the nearest alley, the sound of pounding feet behind him.

At the end of the alley was a wooden fence, six feet tall. Jived on adrenaline, Derek vaulted it in one smooth motion, dropped to the other side and immediately hit a crossroads. Behind him one of the cops was clambering awkwardly over the fence. Derek didn’t have much time.

He raced to the right, then right again, into another alley, doubling back. And saw it. A rusty fire escape, its ladder eight feet off the ground. But a barred window ledge was within reach.

He monkeyed onto the window ledge and caught the ladder. It rocked under his weight. Ignoring the sudden exploding pain in his side, he climbed up the ladder, up, up, up, then over the lip of the building, where he collapsed, gasping for breath.

Sirens filled the air. He touched his side and brought his fingers away wet. He had been shot and he couldn’t tell how bad it was. He shrugged out of his windbreaker, peeled off his shirt and balled it up and pressed it against the wound. His skin broke out in goose flesh, the night air chilly on his bare skin. He tugged the windbreaker back on, feeling ill. For a moment he saw lights flashing before his eyes and felt like he might pass out.

Below him somewhere he heard voices, the approach of cars. Somebody said, “He just fucking disappeared. When I came around the corner, he was gone.”

Gulping air, Derek tried to think, tried to get his head on straight.

The cellular phone!

He reached into his jacket pocket. It was gone. Frantic, he searched the windbreaker, then crawled around on the ground in the dark trying to find it. Nothing. Panic. He was starting to panic, he knew, his heart racing, his lungs kicking in. He had to get it together. If the panic rat started chewing on your guts, it was all over. Everything. Everything would be all over.

Not only had he lost his lifeline to Aaron Pilcher and the FBI and the Homeland Security director, the phone’s memory and any numbers Irina Khournikova might have called were gone! Derek slumped back against the ledge and buried his face in his hands.

19

The man they called The Fallen waited in a green and tan Subaru Outback. The Fallen checked his watch, frowning. Nadia was suppose to signal him when she made her decision. Would Derek come or would he go? Would he fall, become one of his angels? Or would he have to be sacrificed? Or could he be let loose to spread disinformation among the world, to further The Fallen Angels’ goals, and increase the inevitable confusion and panic that was going to roll over the country and the planet in a very short time.

Fallen rubbed his forehead and closed his eyes against the stabbing pain. Star bursts and neon worms flashed before his interior vision. He smelled smoke and tasted blood; for a moment he was back in Chechnya, but he fought the fragmentation inside his head, the odd fugue states he sometimes fell into during moments of stress. He dragged himself back to the present.

Nadia was late and this worried him. He waited in the Subaru a block from the Washington hovel, that miserable apartment that reminded him of Grozny, Chechnya before the Russian Army destroyed the city.

The door to the building opened and he watched as Derek Stillwater stepped outside, looking up and down the street, then crossed over to the Blazer. Derek did not seem to notice the police cruiser, but The Fallen did. He noticed and watched as they moved in on Derek.

Bad field craft, Derek, he thought. You’re distracted or you’ve lost your touch. What’s happened to you during our time apart? Gone soft?

The Fallen watched as the two cops struggled with Derek, who overpowered them and disappeared down an alley, the cops giving chase. The Fallen’s fingers twitched on his cell phone, the desire to call Nadia strong. But the police were coming back, and he could hear sirens drawing near. He looked toward the third-floor window, waiting. Nothing.

What did you do, Derek?

Fallen winced at the stabbing pain behind his forehead. Again he smelled smoke and tasted blood. This time he slipped back in time.

Once, long ago, he had been known as Richard Coffee. He had been reborn twice. Derek Stillwater had been present at his death in Iraq, an unwitting witness to his first transformation, a ridiculous bit of subterfuge by the geniuses in Langley. They had flown him from the M.A.S.H. unit in Iraq and sped him through their training school in Virginia, then inserted him into Chechnya with a new name: Surkho Andarbek.

The Chechens had just declared their independence and Moscow had treated them like it was just another internal rebellion, not the beginning of a civil war that would threaten to tear Russia apart. The CIA wanted someone inside, providing information to be bartered with. Surkho Andarbek appeared in the city, arriving from the outskirts of the republic, a laborer. With money coming from the CIA, Surkho was able to open a small restaurant, a place where men came to meet and talk. And Surkho got to know them, gathered information, became a part of their plans, a part of their rebellion.

He moved up in their ranks. Surkho’s handlers back in Langley were pleased because of the information he gave them and because he could help the rebels organize. Surkho was a warrior and a natural born leader and his fellow Chechens would follow him into hell and back.

Surkho outstripped his American mandate. Richard Coffee died in Iraq and Surkho Andarbek was reborn, a leader, a warrior, the man who would lead Chechens to freedom. He took the American money and bought weapons to fight the Russians, and when America’s priorities changed as they always seemed to do, Surkho Andarbek was told to stop fighting the Russians, to work to bring peace. But Surkho Andarbek laughed because there was no negotiating, there was only the chaos of war and hatred and men who would follow him. There was no going back. The CIA agent named Richard Coffee had ceased to exist.

And then there appeared a man from Canada. Or so he claimed, one of a group of independent relief workers, traveling in a beat-up station wagon filled with medical supplies and food. Surkho, with his tentacles reaching throughout the republic, heard that this Canadian was looking for Surkho Andarbek and showing around a photograph of him.

Not an aid worker.

Surkho debated whether to bring the Canadian to him or to await his arrival. Chechnya was a dangerous place, even for aid workers. It was always possible the man would die trying to find him. Let him come.

One day he did come. Surkho knew he had been found and he knew that this man who was not a Canadian was there to kill him, to stop what he was doing.

Surkho was alone, as he had planned. Sitting in the shade of a half-destroyed building, what, ironically, had been his place of business before Russian missiles had turned it to rubble. It was a hot day, Grozny’s skyline a fractured, tortured tableau of twisted metal and bombed-out hulks. Smoke from burning buildings hung over everything like a shroud. The man came on foot. He was muscular, his face weathered, a grizzled beard on his face.

“Surkho?” he asked, approaching. “Surkho Andarbek?”

Surkho pretended to be dazed. “Who’re you?” he rumbled in Chechen.

“Anthony. From… Canada. Are you Surkho Andarbek?”

“Maybe,” he said in Chechen.

Anthony looked flustered. He stepped closer. “Speak English?”

Surkho glared at him. “Anthony who?” he asked in English.

“Coffee? Richard Coffee?”

Surkho glared at him. “Did you come to kill me?” In English.

“Time to come home,” the man named Anthony said. “You’ve been here too long, Richard. Time to come home.”

Surkho stood up and faced the American assassin. “We both know better. They don’t like me any more, do they?”

Anthony blinked. “Times change. Priorities change. You’ve fallen out of…” The CIA assassin trailed off. Richard Coffee was holding a hand grenade in front of him. He grinned, his teeth flashing white in his dark face.

“Fallen, have I? Where’s your gun? Or are you a blade man? Garotte? Poison?”

“None of that,” Anthony said. “Nothing like that. Just time to come—”

But Anthony was on the move, lightning fast, fist coming around with a gun in it, firing. Surkho Andarbek tossed the grenade as bullets tore along his ribs. He kept moving, away from the grenade, away from the explosion that killed the CIA assassin sent to clean up the mess.

The wounds had been worse than Surkho Andarbek initially thought, and he made it into the shelter of an abandoned basement before he passed out. When he came to he was being cared for by a woman named Tatiana who had treated his wounds and brought him back to life. Tatiana was now dead, murdered by Russians. When she asked him who he was he had known that Surkho Andarbek was dead, that he and Richard Coffee had fallen. The Fallen Angel. And this new being, whose mind was now aflame with hatred for the world, had said, “My name is Fallen.”

Now, years later in a different time and a different place, The Fallen looked at his watch, then back to the apartment where Nadia might be. The police were close and the clock was ticking, ticking. The next stage of the operation was about to begin and he couldn’t be here when it happened.

Dropping the Subaru into gear, he drove away, calling up his angels on his cell phone and telling them that finding Derek Stillwater was now a priority.

With a final look at the apartment receding in the distance, the entrance lit up with flashing indigo and scarlet lights, The Fallen whispered, “Nadia.”

20

Liz Vargas watched in horror as a drop of blood — her blood — gathered on her finger, gained weight and fell — plop! — on the counter top. Her heart skittered, a roar crescendoing in her ears. I’ve been infected, a distant, rational voice in her head said, as if commenting on a knickknack in a maiden aunt’s house: Oh, how pretty.

I’ve been infected.

The tidal wave of blue space-suited scientists surged forward. Liz raised her hand in warning: she still held the syringe.

She turned her head to look at Sharon Jaxon. Through her helmet’s face plate she could see Jaxon’s expression — grim, concerned, sympathetic, horrified. Jaxon held up a metal tray. Hesitating, Liz dropped the syringe into it. Then she stepped back, away from the monkey cages.

As hands gripped her and began to lead her toward Decon, she saw Jaxon inject the final monkey with Chimera M13.

But that oddly detached voice, the one that undercut the panicked, frightened Greek chorus of voices in her head, said: Oh no, Doctor Vargas — you’re the last monkey.

She spent the required seven minutes under the decontamination shower, yellow Lysol jetting out of the showerhead, raining down the faceplate of her suit, obscuring the view of her companions.

Seven minutes.

Seven long, lonely minutes in which to consider her death. She thought of everything she knew about Chimera M13, of how fast it killed, how thoroughly it destroyed its host, of what an ugly death it created — hemorrhaging, bleeding from the eyes, the ears, the mouth, nose, vagina and rectum. Blindness came early, the eyes affected first, the whites turning scarlet as they suffused with blood before rupturing. Of the excruciatingly painful disintegration of the internal organs. But that, at least, didn’t last long. Usually the patients — victims — drowned in their own fluids gasping for air as their lungs ruptured and filled with blood.

She realized the shower had stopped and two people were waiting for her. She shook herself and moved into the next level, Level 3, a gray zone between the hot zone and the safer locker rooms. Awkwardly she stripped out of her borrowed spacesuit. Her finger had stopped bleeding, but it throbbed painfully in time to her heartbeat. Every heartbeat, every stroke of that tireless muscle, shot particles of Chimera M13 racing through her bloodstream to infiltrate every cell of her body.

In a matter of minutes the antigen molecules on the exterior of the virus would match up with the receptors on her body’s cells, like putting a key in a lock. They would convince the cells to throw open their doors to the virus, which would enter the nucleus of those cells, intercalate itself into the DNA and take over the genetic machinery of those cells. Chimera would turn her cells into Chimera-manufacturing facilities that would churn out more and more virus that would infect more and more cells…

She began to hyperventilate, her head light, blood roaring in her ears. Two of the scientists led her out of the Biosafety Level 4 facility, down another corridor, then back through another airlock.

It looked like a motel room. She realized she was in the Biosafety Level 4 hospital suite, dubbed The Slammer. She was going to be isolated, cared for — what a joke! — by nurses and doctors wearing spacesuits and rubber gloves. She would never again feel the touch of a human hand. In the remaining hours before her painful death, blind, bleeding, paralyzed when her brain suffered a series of debilitating strokes as the arteries in her brain ruptured, she would die alone.

And this time, she did pass out.