The Devil's Pitchfork

37

Spigotta slammed into the interrogation room, towering over Irina. Five minutes earlier he had taken a call from Pilcher. “I just got a phone call from one of my agents saying you received an e-mail from Dalton at eleven today.”

Khournikova frowned. This was not going well. Spigotta had spent the last hour asking the same questions over and over: Where was Richard Coffee? She wished she knew. If they would just cooperate with her, let her track down this impostor using the Russian government’s resources, maybe, just maybe, they would have a chance. She looked up at the angry bear of a man and said, “Agent Spigotta, I am not your enemy here. The enemy here is Surkho Andarbek. You know him as Richard Coffee.”

“Bullshit,” Spigotta growled. “The enemy we have positively identified is Samuel Dalton. The Deputy Director of Homeland Security. He e-mailed you today. Richard Coffee is some phantom a suspected partner of Dalton’s been talking about. In fact, the only people talking about Richard Coffee are you and Stillwater and Dalton. What we know is Dalton e-mailed you and Stillwater before this thing went down today.”

“Perhaps he did,” Khournikova said cooly, “but I have no connection to the man. I remember no e-mail communication with this man. I have no idea who Derek Stillwater is. What did the e-mail say?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

She shrugged. “Agent Spigotta, this is… a diversion. Has it not been a day of… red herrings? Richard Coffee — when he worked for your Central Intelligence Agency — successfully convinced Chechen rebels that he was one of them; and convinced us, as well. He has successfully faked his death twice. Now he has your Bureau chasing ghosts, convinced that I am a terrorist. He has convinced you that this man, Derek Stillwater, is a traitor. I know of no one by this name. I have spent over a decade trying to track down the man we know as Surkho Andarbek. And when I finally do determine that Surkho Andarbek is actually an American spy, the man dies again, only to reappear a year later working on the borders.”

Spigotta chewed on his cigar, staring at her. “You know what, Ms. Khournikova? I think you’re blowing smoke. I think Samuel Dalton, who nearly assassinated the President today, is in cahoots with you and your people.”

“My people?”

“Russia.”

“There is no advantage to Russia for the catastrophe that has occurred today.”

“You are enemies of the United States. Have been—”

Khournikova cut him off. “Agent, the cold war is over. I freely admit that we lost. We wish to trade with the United States. We wish to have a strong economy, to be able to compete on the world marketplace. To have peace and prosperity.”

“You’re run by a bunch of mafiosos — what d’ya call ‘em, oligarchs.”

Khournikova dipped her head. “Yes, this is true. But it does not mean that decapitating the U.S. government is in our best interests.”

“Who knows what you folks think is in your best interests. Maybe you think you can get away with this. What I want to know is, where’s Sam Dalton?”

“I don’t even know who he is. I have been hunting Richard Coffee.”

Spigotta looked sour. “Richard Coffee died in 1991 during the Gulf War. That’s what our records say.”

“Perhaps you can explain to me why Derek Stillwater — a man you claim I must be working with — killed a woman claiming to be Irina Khournikova. She is not. I am—”

”We’re working on an ID of the woman, don’t you worry. We’ve got that handled, Ms. Khournikova.” Spigotta leaned forward, getting very close to the Russian woman. In a soft, menacing voice, he said, “But you gotta tell me, lady… where’s Sam Dalton?”

“I do not know who he is or where he is.”

Spigotta’s hand swept out. It did not connect as planned. The Russian agent rolled her head back and caught Spigotta’s wrist in her hands. In a flash she was inside his grasp, lveraging him to the hard floor in a Judo shoulder-throw. She was at the door, too late realizing it was locked. She spun, thinking, I will have to immobilize him or kill him to get out of here.

Spigotta was on his feet, his gun in his hand, eyes hooded. “Fool me once, shame on you,” he growled, and pointed the gun at the chair. “You don’t want to take another shot at me, though. Trust me on that.”

A drop of sweat beaded on her forehead as she sat back down in the chair.

38

Richard Coffee looked down at the unconscious form of Derek Stillwater. He tapped his chin with his index finger for a moment before turning to Ling, who was removing a sterilized tray of acupuncture needles from a cabinet, momentarily flooding the room with UV light.

“Well Ling? Is your patient telling the truth?”

In an even voice Ling said, “His answers are consistent.”

Coffee burst into a deep bellow of laughter. “Ling… that’s not what I asked.” He moved across the room in what was almost a lunge. Ling tensed, nearly a flinch, but Coffee stopped next to the examining table. He leaned down close to Derek. He patted Derek’s cheek and in a soft voice, as if speaking to Derek alone, said, “Hey buddy… I asked Ling here if you were telling the truth. It’s a simple question. There are really only three answers. They are yes… and no… and I don’t know,” he finished, his voice filled with quiet menace.

Ling’s left eye twitched. Just once. In a barely audible mutter, Ling said, “I don’t know, Fallen.”

“Ah,” Coffee said. “But you have hurt him.”

“Yes, Fallen. I have hurt him.”

“Perhaps you have not hurt him enough.”

“Perhaps,” Ling said, a touch of enthusiasm creeping into his voice.

“You can do this.”

“With pleasure.”

“Yes, I understand that about you, Ling.” Coffee looked up and met Ling’s gaze, judging him. Ling was the first to look away. “All men have a breaking point. Don’t they, Ling?”

“In my experience, yes.”

“And are you anywhere near Derek’s breaking point, Ling?”

“He is very strong. He has… “ Ling licked his lips, searching for the right words. “Derek Stillwater appears to have great mental flexibility. He is perhaps able to compartmentalize his response to the pain I am presenting him.”

Coffee frowned. “Meaning what?”

“Meaning his answers appear to be too consistent. He is either telling us the truth, that he turned Irina Khournikova over to the FBI…”

Coffee took a step closer to Ling. The two terrorists, Sven and Ivan, who had observed Derek’s torture with little or no emotion, now watched closely for any sign that Coffee would want them to act. “Or?”

“Or,” Ling said, “he has created a story to cling to. As he faces the pain, he knows that his story is the only thing that will keep him alive or end the pain.”

“So,” Coffee said, considering. “What you’re saying is, he’s lying or he’s telling the truth.”

Ling’s face fell just enough to suggest that Coffee had missed some of the nuance he was trying to provide. “I am saying that it is possible that Stillwater may fear the repercussions of the truth more than he fears the pain.”

Coffee turned to look at Derek. “Will he tell me the truth?”

“With enough time… and pain… all men tell the truth.”

“And when do you know?”

Ling shrugged.

“Can you wake him up?” Coffee said.

Ling sighed. “He is already conscious, Fallen.”

Coffee turned suddenly toward Derek. “Playing opossum, Derek?”

Derek opened his eyes, but said nothing. Coffee looked down at him. “Ling here can increase the pain. Would you like that?”

“No,” Derek said.

“So tell me the truth. Where is Irina?”

“I told you. I turned her over to the FBI. Unless they released her, they’ve got her at the Hoover Building.”

Coffee studied him. He nodded. “Okay. Right, Derek. Okay. I believe you. Or I believe you enough. I have someone inside the bureau. I’ll check. In the meantime…” Coffee gestured at Ling. “Ling will see if he can get you to change your story. He will see if he can determine whether you’re more afraid of the truth than the pain. He’s good at it.” Coffee left the trailer, letting the door slam behind him.

Ling approached Derek. “It probably no longer matters,” Ling said. He began to insert acupuncture needles into a number of points along Derek’s body: in his temple, behind his left ear, by his collar bone, in his hips, several in his feet and legs. Ling held up a needle. “I trust you will find this to be a very interesting experience. You see, pain is in your mind. Your brain can take only so much pain. It will then dampen the pain, creating its own opiates to numb it. The nerves became tired, your serotonin levels between nerve endings becomes depleted. But I can open you to an entire new level of experience…”

Ling inserted the needle into the palm of Derek’s right hand. It was as if a cool breeze was suddenly blowing over his fevered body. The previous aches and pains vanished. He felt an odd sense of well-being, almost euphoria. Every sense became acute. He could smell the sweat of the two terrorists, smell the gun oil and the gunpowder that clung to their clothing. He could hear Ling’s breathing, vague sounds from outside the trailer, the hum of electricity, the air conditioning. The air around him caressed his body like a gentle lover’s touch; it had weight, texture.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” Ling said, and inserted another needle, this one into Derek’s shoulder.

Derek bit back a scream as his body suddenly exploded as if on fire. Every neuron fired, telling his brain that he was on fire, that he had fallen into lava, that his skin was red, scorched, turning black, sloughing off his body.

Ling withdrew the needle. Convulsing, Derek gasped for air, his brain incapable of letting go of the agony of the flames. Ling said, “Now, perhaps I should ask you… where is Irina Khournikova?” He held up the needle. “Or we’ll burn again? So tell me, old friend of Fallen’s… where is Irina Khournikova?”

Derek stared at the Asian and thought, kill me. Kill me now. If I tell him, they’ll kill me now. Why protect myself? I’m dead. Tell him that I killed Irina Khournikova in that apartment. Tell him. Anything. Anything but that burning… anything.

Spangled fish danced before his eyes and he was suddenly on his kayak racing cross the quicksilver waves of the Chesapeake Bay, feeling so light and nimble it was like walking on water. In his mind he dipped his hand into the water, took a handful, thinking… this is the shape of water… and splashed it on his forehead, soaking his shirt…

Derek said, “I turned her over to the FBI…”

Ling inserted the needle once again. Again, Derek felt the flames engulf him, but somewhere deep, deep in his brain there was water…

39

Richard Coffee left Ling’s trailer, his mind in turmoil. He felt as if his brain were segmenting, fragmenting into shards of memory. The past had doubled back on him, a past he had spent years trying to forget. Where was Nadia?

The thought was a whisper, a chorus of voices in his head. Where was Nadia? For Nadia Kosov was Irina Khournikova. Yes. Nadia was Irina.

He stood in the expanse of pavement between trailers and felt a wave of confusion nearly overwhelm him. Irina Khournikova. The Russian woman from the ‘T’ Directorate who had been hunting him for so many years. With an effort he tried to control the explosion of memories spinning in his head.

He blinked, back in Chechnya. What year was it? It was ‘94? Maybe? Surkho Andarbek had been high in the Chechen rebellion, a tactician and leader. His particular skill had been in stalking Russian military units and assassinating high-ranking officers. Even then, his name was known — Strong Warrior.

There had been a visitor touring their sector, a Lieutenant Colonel from the Russian Army. His name was Sergei Dobrovnik. He was evaluating the Russian mission in Chechnya, which was not going well at all. It was never ending, Russia’s second Vietnam, as if the Afghanistan war hadn’t been bad enough, now this mess.

Coffee’s intelligence network was prized by the Chechens and feared by the Russians, who only knew that their intelligence leaked like a broken water main. Their routes for the tour of the city were kept highly secret, known to only a few. Yet Coffee — Surkho Andarbek — had killed him with a rocket propelled grenade as his convoy passed through the streets. The boldness of his attack had made his name known throughout the country.

And two years later, now the head of the rebels, Surkho Andarbek heard that he was being hunted by a woman, Irina Khournikova. This woman was more than just a top anti-terrorist agent. Her lover had been Sergei Dobrovnik. Khournikova had sworn an oath to hunt the man who had killed her lover.

Coffee, then close to his fall, began to study this hunter. Indirectly, Irina Khournikova was responsible for the depth and breadth of Surkho Andarbek’s intelligence network in Russia and the rest of the world. It was because of her that he began even more recruiting of spies from within and without, developing contacts, spinning a web.

Coffee blinked, back in contact with reality. He glanced at his wristwatch, puzzled, wondering if he had actually been standing in the one spot for ten minutes. He looked around at his followers, busy preparing for the rest of the operation. Coffee knew they believed his trances brought visions.

And maybe they did, he thought. Because you cannot escape the past. The past has a way of unfolding and folding back in on itself. History does repeat itself, even if you remember it.

Like Derek. Derek had appeared like a phantom from his past.

Grimly, Coffee strode across the pavement to the double-wide trailer Derek had noticed, the one with the elaborate ventilation system. At the front of the trailer was an intercom. He punched the button and waited. After a moment a metallic voice said, “Yes?”

Coffee switched to Korean. “What’s the status of your tests?”

“Fallen. They are progressing.”

“Are you comfortable with the results so far? I want to proceed with the next stage.”

More silence. Finally the speaker said, “I do not have one hundred percent confidence in the vaccine. It has not been thoroughly tested.”

“It works on the animals?”

“Yes, Fallen. So far they seem effective, though not enough time has passed.”

“Yes. Yes. Do you need to test it on a human being?”

There was a longer silence. Finally, “Yes.”

Coffee smiled, thinking of Derek Stillwater. “I will bring you your test subject then. Your guinea pig.”

“One… one of The Fallen?”

“No. A guest.”

“Ah. Soon?

“He’s with Ling. When Ling is done.”

“We need him alive.”

“Ling knows what to do.”

“Very well. We will make preparations.”

Coffee walked away, toward another trailer at the far end. As people passed, they nodded their heads in respect. His people. His Fallen Angels. He pushed his way into Trailer F. Three people were working at computer workstations. They were tapped into various news organizations and government agencies. The room was stacked with computers and TVs tuned to CNN and FOX and the other news networks.

“I need you to determine if the FBI has custody of Irina Khournikova.”

The man he spoke to was a slim Malaysian man, who nodded. He moved into the FBI logs and computer system, tapping at keys. He nodded. “Yes. It indicates that she is in an interrogation room on the fifth floor, in the Strategic Information Operations Center.”

Coffee nodded, thinking. Then he said, “I need e-mail. I need a direct e-mail, non-traceable, to our source in the Bureau.”

The Malaysian tapped keys. “O’Hara?”

Coffee nodded, thinking of sacrifices. He was going to sacrifice Derek Stillwater. Blood for blood.

40

Jude O’Hara sat in his cubicle in the anti-terrorism division of the FBI, sifting through computer files. He wore the typical FBI uniform of dark suit, white shirt, though his was as wrinkled and sweat-stained as the rest of the staff’s. Hell, everyone was saying, had broken loose. They were mobilizing, but slowly, with so many cabinet members dead. He brushed a hand through his short sandy hair and closed his eyes, ignoring the pressure behind his ears and the pounding behind his eyes. His mind was a blank, frozen. Everyone was mobilized, the anti-terrorism division was going absolutely apeshit, and he was sitting there trying to come up with a game plan.

Because he knew more about The Fallen Angels than anyone in the entire division. It had been his job over the years to make sure that the FBI knew nothing about the group. Whenever hints came across other agents’ desks, it had been his job to question the veracity of the intelligence. Whenever he heard hints about The Fallen Angels, he had made the intelligence vanish.

He had been doing this for seven years, ever since a lengthy trip through the former Soviet republics in search of terrorists and thieves who were wholesaling stolen Russian military hardware to the highest bidders. He had been approached in a Moscow casino by a woman named Ekatarina, a voluptuous blonde in a shimmery silver dress that could not contain her exuberant body. It had not been a difficult seduction… and by the end of it he had found himself with a Swiss bank account and a connection to the very group he was looking for. By the time Osama bin Laden’s boys had changed the tenor of the war on terrorism, he was stuck. It was either continue or face a life in prison with a possible execution order.

He considered disappearing numerous times. Over the years he diversified the money, created a number of false identities, set up the pathways for a disappearance.

The Fallen Angels confused him. Originally they appeared to be about money. Over time, the closer he found himself to the group, the more they seemed like some sort of whacked-out ideologues, an odd doomsday cult that believed themselves to be the eventual instigators of a New World Order.

He had met The Fallen, the head guy, by the fountain in front of the Schlöss Charlottenburg in Berlin, just another old man feeding pigeons. Except up close the guy wasn’t that old. He said to call him Fallen. He spoke in the harsh, hard accent of a native East Berliner, which had confused O’Hara because all the intel he had gleaned on the guy suggested he was Chechen or maybe Russian.

He took the money and he took the sex and he convinced himself that this Chechen guy or this Russian was strictly a Russian or Eastern European problem. But now Fallen had come home and O’Hara was starting to feel like his nuts were being roasted over an open fire. He was thinking about escape plans.

He had twenty grand take-a-powder money in his safe at home with three different passports. He had a bag packed.

He could catch a train out of Washington, D.C. and fly from a smaller airport, maybe Frederick, to Atlanta. From Atlanta, almost anywhere. Atlanta to L.A. to Hawaii to the Phillippines. From the Phillippines he could lose anybody, hopscotch through Asia, backpack, slip back into Europe, the Mediterranean maybe, under a new identity. This might be the time for it.

His phone rang. He stared at it, transfixed. After three rings he picked up, saying, “O’Hara, FBI.”

“Do you remember Schlöss Charlottenburg?” The same voice, accented. He had Fallen on the phone. O’Hara brushed a suddenly clammy hand over his jaw, his heart thudding in his chest.

“Yes,” he said.

“We have a problem.”

O’Hara felt like he was choking. He tucked a thumb under his collar and pulled it away from his neck. “What… sort of problem?”

“No,” said Fallen. “That’s not the correct answer. The correct response is: ‘What can I do for you?’”

“Okay,” O’Hara said, suddenly visualizing his escape route.

“Good. I need confirmation. Your people have a Russian woman in for questioning.”

“Yes,” O’Hara said.

“Her name is Irina Khournikova.”

“Yes.”

“I have weighed our risks. This woman, though she is personally very important to me, has now become a major liability. She must be eliminated.”

“Um… I don’t… understand.”

“Yes, you do.”

O’Hara leaned back in his chair and looked around. The division was a mob of activity. Here it was, 4:30 in the morning, and everybody was on duty. Everybody was on their computer, on their phones, or flying around the city or the world backing their informants into corners, demanding if anybody knew about this attack at U.S. Immuno; more importantly, if anybody knew about Sam Dalton and his attack on the White House. Nobody was looking at him. Brady Gallagher, the agent whose cubicle was to his back, had left an hour earlier to “have a friendly chat with a Serbian pal of mine who works at the U.”

“What you’re asking,” O’Hara said, “is impossible.”

“Is your computer on?”

“Good. You’ve got mail.”

O’Hara turned to his computer screen, looked around to see if anyone was watching, then clicked on his e-mail. Sure enough, he had just received a file with an attachment. The message said, We’re not negotiating. F.

Stomach churning, O’Hara clicked on the attachment. There were three files. One was the entire transactions list of his numerous off-shore numbered bank accounts, starting with the Swiss account The Fallen Angels had created for him. He quickly deleted it, swallowing hard.

The second was a video file. He clicked on it and saw a video of him and Ekatarina having sex in a Moscow hotel. He deleted that before it could last ten seconds. Bile filled his throat.

The third file contained what appeared to be the contents of a Russian dossier on the arrest of a woman believed to have been involved in the theft and sale of Russian stinger missiles to al Qaeda cells in Tunisia, Iran and Afghanistan. It was a large file and it held interrogation records thoughtfully provided in Russian and in English, lists of known contacts — his name was on it — and photographs before and after her death by lethal injection. The woman was the blonde, Ekatarina. There it was, a nice trail tying him to known terrorists.

There was not, he noticed, any record of a jury trial. Ah, the Russian way. Something the U.S. had somewhat adopted post-9/11; call them enemy combatants and lock them away for an extended interrogation session, isolated from family, friends and legal council.

He deleted the file.

In his ear Fallen said, “Still there?”

“Yes.”

“I have the e-mail addresses of quite a number of people who would find those materials interesting.”

“I’ll… take care of your problem.”

“See that you do. Soon.”

O’Hara flinched away from the buzzing in his ear and slowly hung up the phone. The agent opened his desk drawer, withdrew his handgun, checked that it was loaded, and left the division, heading for the restroom. He knew where the Russian woman was being held. But could he do the job and get out of the building? He had to have a plan.

As he splashed cold water on his face, he thought of one.

41

Ling removed the final needle from Derek Stillwater’s sweat-drenched body and placed it carefully on the tray. Stillwater appeared to be unconscious, yet Ling did not think he was. He was impressed, despite himself. Stillwater had stuck to his story about Irina Khournikova being turned over to the FBI. Ling did not actually believe the story. He knew from years of experience extracting information from political prisoners in China that Stillwater had been in tremendous pain. Also, when his patients were under that intensity of feeling, they would change their story. If they were telling the truth and the pain persisted, they would make up things, anything that they thought their torturer wanted to hear, hoping that something would satisfy them and end the pain.

Stillwater never changed his story.

And Ling did not believe the story. He believed Derek Stillwater was physically strong. But he had broken physically strong men. They always gave in eventually. Clearly this man had a certain type of intellect, a psychological flexibility and strength that allowed him to deal with the pain in some fashion.

Ling believed all human beings could be broken. He had dedicated his life to it. He had harnessed his talents to the man who called himself Fallen, who had a vision and plan for the world. Ling believed he could, with time, break Derek Stillwater. But time was not a luxury he had today.

Ling believed from experience that the thing that was keeping Derek Stillwater in control was a sense of mission. He had tortured many, many people. The most difficult to break, he had found, were the believers. Religious people, in many cases; or people who had a profound believe in something: God, social justice, perhaps family. They believed they must hold onto some slim reed of belief while the world became pain and it was this reed that Ling began to pick away at when he had time.

“You may open your eyes, Dr. Stillwater,” Ling said. “I know you are conscious, so you can stop playing me for a fool. Open your eyes.”

Derek opened his eyes.

Ling said, “I am done with you, I believe. Perhaps this is a lucky thing for you. To all eyes you appear to be telling the truth. Fallen shall return shortly with knowledge of your honesty or your deception. If he has proof that you speak true, very well. But I, Dr. Stillwater, know you to be lying. What do you believe in, Doctor? In God? In life everlasting? In your government? Your country?”

Derek didn’t reply.

Ling began to clean Derek’s wounds, suturing them, covering them gently with dressings. He injected Derek with Ampicillin, explaining to him what he was doing.

“Eh, Doctor? Do you believe in America? Is that why you resist me? Fighting me for God and country? You understand that America is dying tonight. We almost got your President. We nearly decapitated your government. We took out very many of your generals and your bureaucratic directors. We have Dalton to thank for that, even if his prime target managed to escape.”

Ling looked closely at Derek, at the tightening around his patient’s eyes, at the sudden interest and glitter in his eyes. “You did not know?” he asked softly.

Derek said, “You’re lying.” His brain was in turmoil. It was a psychological ploy. Ling was telling him stories to confuse him, to make him give up hope.

“Ah,” said Ling. “You do not know.” He finished with his medical handiwork and looked down at Derek Stillwater. “Samuel Dalton released a canister of VX gas into the White House last evening. It was timed to coincide with a high-level emergency cabinet meeting. It killed the director of the FBI, the CIA, the director of Health and Human Services, the director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. It killed the National Security Advisor and your military Joint Chiefs of Staff. It decimated a large majority of the Administrative Branch of the United States government, Dr. Stillwater. It is only through luck and quick reflexes that the President survived. Your President survived along with a James Johnston and a Benjamin Zataki. Johnston, I believe, was the Secretary of Homeland Security.”

“Was?” Derek croaked in disbelief.

What might have passed for a smile crossed Ling’s face. “It is my understanding that your President demanded Johnston’s resignation. He could not be trusted when his Deputy Director turned out to be a terrorist. This Zataki I do not know. A military man, I believe? In your Army?”

Derek said nothing.

“Of course, Doctor,” Ling continued. “They also believe that you are working for The Fallen Angels.” He gazed at Stillwater. “Perhaps you will. Perhaps Fallen will recruit you, bring you in with us. Especially now that your own government believes you are a traitor. Hmmm? What do you think, Doctor Stillwater?”

Derek’s brain raced. Was this true? Had Dalton set off VX in the White House? He thought of all the helicopters, all the military and police traffic in the city. He initially thought it was because of the attack on U.S. Immuno, the heightened alert. But… had he somehow known that things had gotten worse?

What had Dalton said?

In Rock Creek Park, Derek had said, “Semantics. You’re playing word games and your own head’s on the block. You’re going in. If you cooperate, tell us where Fallen is, where Coffee is, things might go easier on you.”

Dalton laughed as if he knew something Derek did not. He said, “You are full of shit. Full of shit and uninformed, pal. There isn’t a plea deal in the whole universe for me.”

With a chill he realized that Ling was probably telling the truth. Derek said, “When you throw in with madmen like Coffee—”

”Fallen!”

“Yeah, right. Fallen. When you team up with him, you have to realize how expendable you are. Look at what he did to Dalton. See how he repays loyalty? I’d watch your back.”

Ling looked amused. “If you were lying about the woman you call Irina, Doctor Stillwater, and Fallen finds out, then it is you who must watch out. But I do not see you becoming one of us. I think you will die here tonight or die out in the greater world later when we release Chimera.”

“So you are going to release.”

Ling fastidiously rearranged his instruments of torture. “Yes, Doctor. We most certainly are going to release it.”

Derek stared at his torturer. Such madness. Didn’t they realize… of course they did. “And the White House attack was the first part of your plan.”

“Almost completely successful, but alas, not completely.”

“You’re declaring war on America,” Derek said, trying to hide the sound of desperation that entered his voice.

“No, Doctor,” Ling said. “We are declaring war on the world.”

The door to the trailer opened and Richard Coffee stepped in, his face a mask of conflicting emotions. “Are we done here, Ling?”

“Yes, I have done all that can be done in the short time available.”

“And he told you…”

“He remained consistent with his story. He subdued Irina and turned her over to the FBI for questioning.”

Coffee nodded. “Release him, please.”

Ling nodded and unbound Derek’s hands and feet. Derek slowly sat up, massaging his wrists.

Coffee said, “Give him scrubs. I think that will do.”

Ling nodded and removed a pair of green surgical scrubs from a cabinet and handed them to Derek, who slowly pulled them on. As he stood he staggered against Ling’s tray, knocking the surgical instruments and acupuncture needles to the floor with a loud clatter. The two guards jumped back, as did Ling.

Coffee, in a move as swift as lightning, had his semi-automatic up in both hands, aimed directly at Derek’s face. His voice rough with emotion, he said, “Don’t try anything, Derek. You don’t want to get cute with me right now. Yes, Nadia was at FBI Headquarters, as you said. But I planned to have children with her. She is my wife. You have forced me to have her eliminated by our mole at the bureau. She knows too much. She would have willingly sacrificed for our cause, but it’s because of you that I have to sacrifice her. And for this you’ll pay.”

Derek didn’t move. Nadia? Nadia was Irina? Was that why Ling kept referring to her as the one you call Irina? A sense of horror crept over him as he stared into the barrel of Coffee’s gun, realizing what a knife-edge he had been blindly walking. If Coffee confirmed it, then someone named Irina Khournikova — the real Irina Khournikova? — was being held at FBI Headquarters. They weren’t holding the woman he referred to as Nadia because Nadia, who had been posing at Irina Khournikova, was dead. He had tortured her to death. But who was the real Irina Khournikova?

Derek expected Coffee to gun him down right here. He saw the mad light in his eyes, the way his finger pressed on the trigger.

Then Coffee laughed, a wild, joyous burst of laughter. He put the gun down, spinning it on his finger like a gunslinger and slipping it into his holster. “C’mon, man. Get dressed. Time to give you a tour of the facility. You’re gonna love it.”

Derek carefully got dressed. Carefully, because the acupuncture needle he had palmed from the table was inserted in the waist of the scrub pants.

42

Aaron Pilcher showed his ID badge to the cops who had cordoned off the parking lot near the park. The cop directed him to park his car to one side. Pilcher did so, climbing slowly out of the car, his energy nearly gone. His body was once again soaked in sweat from his nightmarish trip through the White House, fear and stress leaching from his pores. He would have to take a break soon, get a couple hours of sleep, but first Spigotta had told him to run over here, check on things. There were reports of shootings and then an explosion…

What he saw was the burning wreckage of two vehicles and a helicopter. The area was lit up in flashing red and blue and white. The stench of burning fuel permeated the air. Heat baked off the wreckage. Half a dozen police cars, two fire trucks, a swarm of firemen and cops. He gaped at the helicopter. Was it…?

He looked around for the person in charge and located a bulky man shouting through a bullhorn at rescue workers. Pilcher strode over, ID ready. He introduced himself. The man’s jacket indicated he was with the fire department. He glanced at the ID and said, “Probably need NTSB, too. Looks like somebody shot down a Coast Guard helicopter. Blew up a couple trucks. There’s a two dead guys, too. One over there and one over…”

Pilcher didn’t wait around. He jogged over to the first body, which was being guarded by a uniformed cop, waiting for detectives or M.E. people to arrive. Pilcher flashed his badge again and took a look. The guy looked military. Maybe it was just the haircut, short on the sides, the old whitewalls. And not familiar.

“Any ID?”

“Waiting for the detectives. I’m not touching the body.”

Pilcher frowned, glanced tiredly at his borrowed watch, then hurried over to the other body, lying near the woods. The female cop guarding this body placed her hand on her weapon as he approached. He slowed down, keeping his badge up.

He took one look at the body. “Shit,” he said.

“Do you recognize him, sir? He looks familiar to me.”

“He should. Shit.”

Pilcher flipped out his cell phone and punched in Spigotta’s direct number. On one ring Spigotta snarled, “What is it now?”

“It’s Aaron. This accident site? There’re two dead bodies in the area. One’s unknown. The other’s Dalton.”

There was silence on the line, then, “Fucking dead, you said?”

“Yes.”

“Well kick the motherfucking corpse for me, Aaron. Who killed him? I’ll pin a medal on his goddamned chest.”

“I don’t know. We’ve got two burning SUVs and, uh… a downed Coast Guard helicopter. It looks like the one that was shuttling Stillwater around.”

“Survivors?”

“I don’t know.” He looked over at the crumpled and blackened helicopter. A firetruck was pouring foam on the wreckage. “I don’t think so, though.”

There was uncharacteristic silence on the line. Finally Spigotta said, “Is there anything you can do there, Aaron?”

Pilcher hesitated. He wasn’t at all sure he wanted anything to do with the interrogation of Irina Khournikova. “I need to spend a little more time here.”

“Fine. But get back here ASAP.”

“Sure.”

Pilcher nodded, took a moment to absorb the scene. As he did, somebody shouted, “I found someone!”

He spun on his heels toward the voice. A number of EMTs and firemen rushed toward the edge of the woods. He sprinted after them. Heat radiated off the burning helicopter, like standing at the gates of hell. He elbowed his way through the crowd to find two EMTs kneeling next to the crumpled figure of a woman in a Coast Guard flight suit.

“She’s alive,” one of them said. “Leg might be broken, shoulder… ribs… but she’s breathing.”

The crowd stepped back as someone brought in a stretcher. The EMTs deftly eased her onto the stretcher and attached a bag of saline. When the needle went in her arm she opened her eyes. The EMTs placed an oxygen bottle over her mouth, but she said something.

“What did she say?” Pilcher shouted, barely heard over the sound of the trucks and the crowd and the fires. “What did she say?”

“Who’re you?”

“FBI. This has to do with the attack at the White House. What did she say?” He pushed his way to the side of the gurney and looked at the woman. The scorched name tag on her flight suit said C. Black. He said, “What did you say?”

She looked confused, blinked, closed her eyes. Then: “Crew?”

Pilcher said, “How many were in your crew?”

“Two,” she said, barely audible.

Pilcher looked up at one of the firemen who shook his head, gesturing toward the helicopter. “Was there anyone else?” Pilcher asked.

“We’ve really got to get her to a hospital,” the EMT said.

“Was there anyone else?” Pilcher asked.

Cynthia Black opened her eyes for a moment, said, “Stillwater…”

“Derek Stillwater?”

“They… they caught him.” Then she was silent. The EMTs rushed her out of the crowd toward a waiting ambulance.

They caught him, he thought. They?

He looked around the parking lot. At the two trucks that looked like they’d been hit by rockets. At the two dead men, including Sam Dalton. At the crashed helicopter with its two dead crewmen and the pilot who had miraculously survived the crash and resulting explosion.

They caught him, he thought.

Deep in thought, he walked slowly away from the flaming chopper toward his car. He stood at his car for a minute, looking around, wondering who they were. Wondering who had killed Sam Dalton. He shook himself, thinking it through. Thinking about his gut reaction to Derek Stillwater.

He climbed in his car and followed the ambulance to Walter Reed. He wanted to be there when — and if — the pilot of the Coast Guard helicopter woke up.

43

Derek staggered down the two metal steps of the medical trailer after Richard Coffee, sinking to his knees on the hard pavement. Coffee turned to look at him, a speculative look on his face. “Bad day, huh?”

Derek struggled to his feet. “You might say that.”

“Sorry,” Coffee said. “I never thought you’d be the one coming after me. Dalton told me it would be a possibility, but he’d try to keep you off it.”

Derek stood and tried to catch his breath. The world was gray around the edges and he felt weak. His stomach roiled and churned, his wounds ached and his head pounded. “You thought you could trust Dalton?” he panted. “You’re dumber than I thought you were.”

Coffee’s backhand to Derek’s face lifted him off his feet and slammed him to the pavement. Derek looked up again into the black maw of Coffee’s handgun. “I have very little reason to keep you alive, Derek. Don’t give me more reasons to kill you now.”

Derek held his hands out to his side. Blood trickled down his chin. He waited.

Coffee put his gun away and held out a hand. Derek stared at the extended hand for a moment, then took it and let Coffee assist him to his feet. Coffee patted him on the shoulder. “Sorry about that. Been under a lot of stress. Had to give a death order for my wife, you know.” The way he said it was jovial. “Hey, that reminds me,” he said. “Whatever happened to that woman you were dating, that doctor. What was here name? Simona, right? Whatever happened to her?”

Coffee led him toward the double-wide trailer with the complicated ventilation system. Derek was pretty sure he knew what was there and was pretty sure he didn’t want to go in. And equally sure that he didn’t have much choice in the matter.

“I married her,” he said. “Then we got divorced.”

“Didn’t have to have her killed though, huh?”

Derek couldn’t read Coffee’s expression. Bi-polar didn’t quite cover the mood swings. Bi-polar with delusions of grandeur and psychotic breaks might start to describe Richard Coffee.

“No,” Derek said. “I didn’t. And neither did you. You could have trusted her to keep her mouth shut if she was so loyal to you.”

“Did you tell the truth, Derek? Did Ling get to you?”

Derek didn’t reply. Because in truth, he had not told the truth. Would he have if Ling had a few more hours or another day or two? You bet.

“Dalton. Irina. I’m not sure it’s safe being on your team, Richard.”

“Sacrifices sometimes have to be made. Nadia would understand.”

“Who’s Nadia?”

Surprise and confusion mixed with a considering expression flashed across Coffee’s face. “Her real name is Nadia,” he finally said. “Nadia Kosov.”

“Then who is Irina Khournikova?”

“The real Irina Khournikova?”

Derek nodded.

“A huntress,” Coffee said. “A nemesis. A stalker. A vigilante. Someone who wants me dead.”

“President of your fan club, right?”

“You might say that,” Coffee said.

Derek didn’t know who was being held at FBI HQ. It was, like about a million other things, out of his range of understanding. What he did understand was that Richard Coffee was nuts and that he had stolen Chimera M13 and he and his band of merry men intended to use it. He also understood that while he was still alive it was his responsibility to try and stop that from happening. Even if he died doing it. And of course, if he lived and The Fallen Angels succeeded in releasing the bug, he’d probably die anyway.

He didn’t know if he could kill Coffee right here. Coffee had not been tortured for the last hour or two, been shot twice or in general had a shitty day. If Derek jumped him it was likely that he, Derek, would end up dead and Coffee and his Fallen Angels would go about their business as planned. Even if he did managed to kill Coffee, he didn’t know if that would stop the plan from going into affect.

He was inside the circle. He was alive. That was probably more than anybody at DHS could ask for.

“What are you planning on doing?” Derek asked.

“I’ll show you.”

“I’d just as soon skip the show-part of show-and-tell. Why don’t you just tell me.”

Coffee turned and for a moment Derek thought he was going to get a fist in the face again. Instead Coffee laughed and said, “You’re not calling the shots today, Derek. I don’t owe you. I’m not glad you’re here, but who knows? Maybe you’ll be useful. Lee might be able to use your expertise… or something.”

“Kim Pak Lee?” Derek said.

Coffee turned again. “You know him?”

“Irina… Nadia showed me his dossier. Is he growing Chimera?”

“Indeed he is.”

“Are you going to sell it?”

Coffee snorted and stopped in front of the entrance to the double-wide. “Money is going to be a thing of the past, Derek. Get used to the idea.”

“Why? Why release the bug?”

Coffee smiled. “Because somebody’s going to eventually, Derek. Why not now? Why not me?”

“This isn’t Mount Everest. You don’t have to do it just because it’s there.”

In a conspiratorial whisper Coffee said, “I’m doing it because I can, Derek. Simply because I can. Haven’t you ever wanted to dance on the grave of the world?”

“Not literally.”

“Well I’m going to.” He pointed to the entrance of the double-wide. “Time to see how Lee’s doing.”

Derek felt his heart rate accelerate. He didn’t want to go into the double-wide trailer. It was a laboratory. Probably some sort of jury-rigged Level IV containment facility. Dr. Kim Pak Lee was inside in some sort of spacesuit growing Chimera. There was only death inside the trailer.

Derek walked through the doors, swallowing back bile.

It was an airlock, of sorts. A small anteroom with a double sealed door and a key pad. Coffee punched four digits into the pad and said, “Steel reinforced.” The lock clicked and he opened the door, ushering Derek inside.

The next room, also small, was a locker room. Coffee said, “You’re dressed fine. I’m stripping down. Don’t try anything funny, Derek. I’m still armed.”

“Where would I go?”

“You and I both know that if you kill me a major part of your mission would be accomplished.”

Keeping the gun aimed, Coffee kicked off his boots, slid off his jacket and stripped down to his underwear, removing a pair of scrubs from one of four metal lockers. Awkwardly, but still keeping the gun ready, he pulled on the clothes. Derek did nothing, just waited.

They passed through another sealed door, having to push against a suction of air. This room was flooded with purple UV light. The spacesuits hung on hooks. Derek frowned. He wondered if the suits hung in the light 24/7. UV broke down most synthetic materials. It was okay to expose the spacesuits to UV for a limited amount of time to kill microorganisms, but around the clock exposure would cause the spacesuits to deteriorate prematurely. Small holes and tears, shredding… it was a good way to end up dead in a hot zone.

Coffee began to awkwardly slip into a spacesuit.

“Do I get one?” Derek asked.

“Sorry. Why bother?”

Derek felt light-headed. His worst nightmare. Naked in a hot zone. He clenched his fists, trying to stop them from trembling.

From inside the spacesuit Coffee said, “In we go, buddy.” He waved the gun at Derek.

For a wild moment Derek considered refusing. He felt panicky, butterflies spinning in his veins, the fear a tactile entity living inside his skin. He stared at Coffee. Coffee would be clumsy in the suit. He could end this now. Kill Coffee, put on a suit, enter the lab and kill Dr. Lee and destroy everything inside the lab.

Coffee stepped backward, as if sensing his thoughts, and held the gun in two hands. His muffled voice could be heard clearly. “You’re expendable, Derek. If you don’t head for that door right this second, you’re dead.”

Derek headed for the door, which led through a makeshift decontamination area, a shower room From there, they were into the laboratory.

Inside the cramped trailer two people were working in spacesuits. Derek couldn’t identify them. Coffee shouted, “Lee, this is Doctor Derek Stillwater.”

One of the spacesuited figures turned to nod at him. The other figure was working in glass-fronted hoods, transferring cloudy liquid from a flask to yellowish clear liquid in another. He or she did not turn and acknowledge Derek. He was thankful for that, sure the tech was working directly with Chimera.

Derek took in the room, his brain automatically slipping into observer mode, his mind doing the desperate calculus it had been trained for in Escape & Evasion School. It was a laboratory. Black-topped chemical resistant counters. Two stacked incubators that looked like steel cupboards, attached to a number of gas tanks — typically carbon dioxide. Most cultures required temperatures of about 98.6 degrees with a percentage of carbon dioxide pumped in to supply carbon for growth. The humidity in the incubators had to be kept high to allow for cell growth.

There was another room — at least another — beyond a sealed door. The walls on the inside had also been sealed with some sort of putty or rubber cement.

Coffee said, “About a year ago Dalton got us a copy of the black patent on Chimera M13. Lee has been working from them ever since to develop a vaccine.”

“Any luck?” Derek asked, heart racing just a little bit. If the Korean scientist had developed a vaccine then it might be enough to get his hands on it and escape. Not an easy task, but far simpler than destroying Chimera and stopping Coffee.

In a heavily accented voice Kim Pak Lee said, “We are making progress now that we have the actual virus. It is showing signs of being effective on our test animals, but we have not tested it yet on a human being.”

“Well,” Coffee said. “Dr. Stillwater here has volunteered.”

Derek turned to stare at Coffee through his faceplate. “The fuck I have.”

Coffee raised the gun and pointed it at Derek’s heart. “I could kill you now.”

“I know what that shit does to a human being,” Derek said, standing his ground. “I’d rather you shot me than—”

Derek felt something bite into his arm and lashed out. He spun and saw that Lee had injected him with a syringe. For a horrifying moment he thought the Korean had injected him with Chimera, but as the scientists stepped back, holding the hypodermic in one gloved hand, Derek felt the darkness close in around him. Staggering, he turned and tried to punch Coffee, get in one good solid hit, but he slowly sank to the floor of the trailer and everything went dark.

When he came to he was once again lying on a cot, but this time he wasn’t strapped down. He got to his feet and glared around. It was small, the walls and floors bare. There was a thick glass mirror on one wall, which he imagined was two-way. Next to it was a mesh speaker with a button. He could be observed from the other side.

Coffee’s voice came over the speaker. “Well, Derek. I just want to thank you. You will turn out to be very helpful in our enterprise after all. Dr. Lee injected you with our vaccine, then just a few minutes ago injected you with Chimera. We should know in a few hours whether the vaccine works. In the meantime, I’ve got a lot of preparations to make. It was nice seeing you, buddy. If you’re lucky, this stuff will work.”

“If it works,” Derek snarled, “I’ll hunt you to the ends of the earth, you bastard.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure. Look, something to keep in mind, friend. You break out of here somehow, you’re infected. You don’t want to be the cause of the end of the world, do you? Why don’t you just lay down and take it easy. Make peace with yourself in case Lee’s potion doesn’t work.”

Derek slammed his fist against the glass, but it did not break. “It’s not over,” he screamed. “It’s not over, Coffee! I’m coming after you! I’ll stop you!”

“Goodbye, Derek. See you later.”

“I’ll see you in hell, Richard! In hell!” And with a moan Derek collapsed to the cot and buried his head in his hands.

44

The FBI mole, Jude O’Hara, took in a deep breath. Standing in the men’s room staring at himself in the mirror, he steeled himself. This was it, he thought. He had to trust Fallen, this freak, this nutcase, that if he did what this guy wanted he wouldn’t turn his escape plan over to the authorities, wouldn’t make his escape impossible.

What choice did he have?

He took his Sig Saur 9mm out of its holster, double-checked that the magazine was full, that there was a round in the chamber, that the safety was off. From his coat pocket he took an excellent and highly illegal silencer and screwed it onto the barrel.

In his mind’s eye, he rehearsed it. What he would have to do, the steps he would have to take. What he would have to do once it was over to make his escape.

He put the gun back in its holster, then filled the wastepaper basket with toilet paper and paper towels. He took paper towels and crumpled them into tight balls and stuffed them into his jacket pockets.

Now?

He thought it through. He knew he would require some luck. Maybe more than a little luck.

What choice did he have?

He could run. He could walk out the door, get into his car and drive home, grab his stash and his passports and drive. He could be in New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Atlanta in a very short period of time. Catch a flight out using fake ID. Disappear.

No wait.

He could transfer the money first. That way he’d be out of it, one step ahead of Fallen.

Sweat broke out on his forehead and his stomach churned.

He could feel the weight of time pressing down on him.

The door opened and Bill Stallings walked through, one of the older agents, a guy who had been working anti-terror for twenty-some odd years. Stallings had spent half his career in Peru talking to Shining Path psychos, advising the government. His pink scalp peeked through straggling strands of gray hair and he had a scruffy gray beard. He looked a little like Santa Claus after a few too many drinks.

“Hey,” Stallings muttered. “Fuckin’ nightmare tonight, eh?”

“Yeah.”

Stalling shoved into one of the stalls. There was the zwick of a zipper followed by the thud of gun and handcuffs hitting the floor with his pants, followed by a moan of relief.

O’Hara stared at the shoes beneath the stall, brain frozen. What the hell was he supposed to do now? Could he wait for Stallings to finish up?

“You heard?” Stallings said from the stall.

“What?”

“Big fuckin’ mess out at Rock Creek Park. Coast Guard helicopter went down, couple trucks on fire. Pilcher, Spigotta’s golden boy, called in to say the chopper pilot survived, it looks like that Homeland troubleshooter was out there, there was some sort of motherfuckin’ firefight. And get this… they found the body of Sam Dalton out there.”

O’Hara’s blood went cold. “Dalton’s… dead?”

“Yeah. Shot to pieces. Good riddance. The question is, was he working with these Fallen Angels or what? Or is this a coincidence? Taking advantage of another terror attack. MacNeil pulled me off, has me going back over every single file we’ve got, looking for any kind of reference to The Fallen Angels we can find. I’m talking to the Russians, that Stasi prick, Eberhardt, remember him? Back when East Germany was East Germany? He said he’d get back to me. And get this, you know what he said to me?”

“Uh-uh,” O’Hara said, stomach cramping.

“Goddammed kraut goes, ‘Ah, Ze Falling Angels. Ja. I haf heard of zhem, natürlich. But we never wanted to discuss zhem wit’ you because we always suspected zhey had a mole in your CIA or your FBI. Zhey sold a lot of American ordinance.’ Can you fuckin’ believe it?”

“Maybe he meant Dalton,” O’Hara said, head feeling light.

“Maybe. But MacNeil’s putting together a task force to make sure there isn’t somebody else.”

Taking a deep breath, O’Hara walked over, kicked the door in and shot the FBI agent twice in the head.

“You and Elvis, dead on the toilet.”

He closed the door, took out a lighter and set the waste basket on fire.

Now. Move it, move it, move it.

He walked from the men’s room. Every time he saw an empty office, if the door was unlocked he stepped in, lit up one of the crumpled balls of paper towel and dropped it in a waste basket or recycling bin.

The hall was empty… for now. He sprinted to the stairwell and dropped ball after ball of flaming paper towel as he climbed the steps to the fourth floor. Soon the smoke alarm would go off. Sprinkler systems would kick in. And he’d better not be standing in the hallway lighting up paper towel when it—

The klaxon sounded, shrill, harsh and insistent. Headquarters was more active than usual at five in the morning, but most agents were still out in the field; most support personnel were home in bed, preparing for the commute into work, perking coffee. He emptied his pockets and lit up the remaining paper, standing at the doorway, watching the stairwell fill with smoke.

He shoved through the doorway and raced toward the interrogation room where Irina Khournikova was being questioned. Half a dozen people were in the hallway, heading for the exit. O’Hara shouted, “This one’s filled with smoke! Go the other way!”

They hesitated, then ran toward the opposite hallway. He saw Spigotta, big and burly, an ugly old bear on the first morning of spring, waking from hibernation. “Where’s the fire?” he growled as O’Hara rushed toward him.

“Stairwell. Third floor,” he gasped out. “Evacuate.”

Spigotta glanced over his shoulder and O’Hara had his hand in his coat, reaching for the Sig, was pulling it out and up when Spigotta turned, his own gun in his hand, already on the move. Damn, O’Hara thought. How did he know? O’Hara tried to get a bead on the older agent, tried to keep in motion, but Spigotta had his own gun aimed directly at him, his finger squeezing… and O’Hara felt the pain in his chest a fraction of a second before he heard the sound, thought, That wasn’t too bad, and kept moving, bringing his gun around on Spigotta, squeezed—

And missed. Spigotta fired again, calmly, no expression on his face, the report loud over the sound of the fire alarm. People heading for the exits turned… everything seemed to slow…

O’Hara dropped to his knees, still clutching the gun. Blood dripped onto the tile floor and a part of his mind thought, Blood Spatter Patterns 101. I hated that subject.

The floor rose up to meet him and he was still.

45

Ben Zataki stood next to Sharon Jaxon in the animal room of the Level IV facility and felt his heart sink. For a long, hopeless moment he leaned against the far wall and just stared at the cages. Sharon clumped over to him, pushed her face plate next to his and pinched shut her air hose to decrease the roar. “Any ideas?”

Zataki was close to her, eyes only inches away. For a moment he felt something that was probably despair. Nineteen of the twenty monkeys had died. The twentieth monkey would soon be dead. Their plan for a possible vaccine had failed and failed miserably. As far as they could tell, none of the weaker versions of the virus had even slowed down the contagion.

And what an ugly, evil disease, he thought. There were similarities to Ebola, severe hemorrhagic fevers, internal bleeding. But the animals seemed in so much pain… His horrified gaze took in the slack, bloody corpses of all the monkeys. Even more troublesome was the astonishing speed of the infection. Ebola took four days before symptoms started to show. Chimera symptoms began in hours. They had engineered this bug to target vascular tissue systems and made it so energy efficient it was frightening. He’d never seen anything like it. From a purely technical point of view, he was impressed. It had been a technical tour de force to create this monster.

“Anyone working on a weakened virus?” he asked, knowing that they were.

“Yes. It’s slow work.” She hesitated. “Too late to help Liz.”

Zataki nodded. He had checked on Dr. Vargas before he entered Level IV. She was showing signs of mild internal bleeding. They were providing her with clotting factor and saline and three types of antivirals. They had put her on a Valium drip. She was sleeping. It had occurred to Zataki that the most humane thing to do might be to overdose her. But he was a physician and he couldn’t do that. She was still alive and there was still hope. Not much, he had to admit, but some.

“What did Hingemann say?” he asked, wondering what Liz had been thinking when she asked the immunologist from Michigan State University to consult. It had been several hours since the talk and Liz had gotten much worse. At first Liz had resisted the tranquilizer, but then it became obvious she wasn’t thinking clearly and was, in fact, becoming hysterical.

“He said he’d read the papers and see if he had any ideas. I hope he calls back soon.”

“Let’s ring him.“

”We e-mailed him all the information on Chimera. It’s a ton of material. He won’t have been able to get through it all.”

“We don’t have time for him to get through it all. We’ll call him.”

“Okay,” she said.

He and Jaxon moved out of the Level IV containment area into the disinfectant shower — seven minutes under a stream of Lysol.

They called Hingemann from Zataki’s small spartan office. They had a high-speed Internet hookup and the university professor looked tired on the screen of the computer.

“How is Liz doing?” Hingemann asked.

“She’s hanging in there, but her condition is deteriorating rapidly. Do you have any ideas, Doctor?”

Hingemann hesitated. “I don’t know if it will work.”

Jaxon said, “We’re grasping at straws here, Doctor. Nothing we’ve tried has worked. What’s your idea?”

“Well,” Hingemann said, frowning. He scratched at his beard. “I understand we were pressed for time, so I couldn’t read as carefully as I had hoped to…”

“None of us have,” Zataki said.

“Yes, of course. This is a very interesting organism, Chimera. You understand that they grafted a number of odd things into its genome, taking sections of various viral and bacterial genomes and merging them into a viral genome. It’s the possible antigens that caught my attention.”

All living cells had molecules on their surfaces called antigens. Antigens did a number of things, but what their primary purpose seemed to be was to act as keys. Those keys were designed to fit in locks in other cells — a way for cells to interact. The human immune system responded to antigens by producing antibodies specific to the antigen’s key. Those antibodies were designed to kill the cells with the specific keys that fit their lock. It was how vaccines worked. The immune system was alerted to the specific key, then churned out more antibodies to kill those specific cells if they should show up again. It was like a flu shot. The flu vaccine had specific antigens. If those cells appeared, the body’s immune system recognized the bug and mounted an immune attack.

“Are they in the files?” Zataki asked.

“Well… some of them. But, as you may know, your own institution has done work on Yersinia pestis and vaccines using recombinant V antigen. I don’t know for a fact that the V antigen is present on Chimera M13, but they used quite a large section of the Yersinia genome in piecing together their virus. I think it’s possible.”

Yersinia pestis was the bacterium that caused Bubonic plague. Slowly Zataki said, “You think we should inject Liz with the plague vaccine?”

“No,” Hingemann said, leaning earnestly toward the camera. “I think you should inject her with Yersinia. With the plague itself.”

46

Aaron Pilcher parked his car and raced into the Walter Reed Emergency Room, chastising himself for not having ridden in the ambulance. They were just wheeling the pilot out of the ambulance when he approached.

“Has she said anything?” he asked, flashing his badge.

The paramedic, a woman with thick black hair she wore tied back in a bun, looked up from where she was double-checking an IV line. “No. She’s been out the whole ride.”

“Will she make it?”

The paramedic shrugged. “Pretty messed up.”

“I need her awake.”

As they rolled the gurney in, they were met by a pair of doctors in green scrubs, who took one look and began to roll Cynthia Black deeper into the bowels of the E.R. One of the doctors, a woman with red hair and purple-framed glasses, said, “Prep the O.R., call Jamieson.” The other doctor nodded and scribbled notes.

Pilcher said, “I need to talk to her.”

“She’s not talking to anybody,” the female doctor said, not paying him much attention.

“I’m with the FBI and she’s a witness in this terrorist event—”

The doctor glanced up. “You’ll have to wait. She’s not talking. She’s unconscious.”

“Can you wake her?”

“No, and if I could I wouldn’t. You’ll have to wait.”

“She may have information about this attack on the White House.”

The doctor steeled herself. She pointed to a waiting area. “The answer is still no. You can wait. I’ll talk to you when I can.”

“But—”

She turned and walked away, leaving Pilcher to stew in his own juices. Staring at a sign that warned not to use cellular phones inside the hospital, he scowled and walked outside, pulled out his phone and punched in the number for Spigotta. Nobody answered and he was shunted to voicemail. Damn it! What was going on? He left a message saying where he was and what he was doing and that he would check in every fifteen minutes or so.

Feeling helpless, he clicked off his cell phone and went back inside to wait on news about the Coast Guard pilot.

47

Secretary James Johnston — Correction, he thought wryly, ex-Secretary — hailed a cab outside Walter Reed only minutes before Aaron Pilcher entered the E.R. The cab driver was, to his surprise, a young white guy who spoke English. He looked like a college student with shaggy brown hair and an equally shaggy beard, but he couldn’t have been any older than twenty-five.

“Where to?”

Johnston was about to give the driver his address in Fall’s Church and have him take him home to his wife. He was now a disgraced bureaucrat during one of the worst days in American history, if not the worst day. What was there to do now? Go home, lick his wounds and contact a literary agent to see if some publisher would be interested in his memoir?

Did I spent a career in the Army learning to throw in the towel in the face of defeat? Is that what all those years were about? Including his tours in Panama, Iraq, Haiti and Serbia? Is that what he had learned as a Ranger, in the Army’s Special Forces?

He thought of Derek Stillwater, still out there somewhere.

“Hey, pal, you awake?”

“Leave nobody behind,” Johnston said.

The cab driver turned to look at him. “Maybe you’d better get out.”

Johnston shook his head. “Sorry. Just thinking.” It was the code of the Army Rangers — leave nobody behind. Derek was still out there, fighting the battle, even the war. I won’t leave him behind.

He supplied an address in Georgetown. As they drove, he noted that the state of emergency hadn’t shut down the city. On the contrary, even though there was an unusually high level of police and military activity on the roads, it looked like Washington was waking up and getting ready to go to work. He wondered, now that somebody else was in charge, if they would lock down the city — close the trains, subways, airports. What would the FBI and Secret Service do? Maybe the people with that authority were dead.

It didn’t look like they were putting a ring around the city, trying to hold their enemies inside. Maybe because it was too late. Maybe The Fallen Angels — and Sam Dalton — were already out of the city, maybe even out of the country.

The cab pulled up in front of a redbrick townhouse and Johnston noted with satisfaction that lights were burning. He paid the driver and gave him a generous tip. He buzzed the front door.

After a moment the door opened and an elderly man who looked almost eighty years old stood in the threshold. In a heavily accented voice he said, “So, James… I wondered if I would hear from you.”

“I need your help.”

“Ah,” he said. “Come in, come in.”

Johnston followed him into the main floor, an elegantly decorated living room done in Early American.

“So, James… “

Johnston faced Ernst Vogel. “You’re up, so you know.”

“Ja. I know. Hell in a handbasket. Are you still working?”

“The President asked for my resignation.”

“Foolish. A political decision, I would think?”

“Yes.”

“A massive terrorist crisis and he thinks like a politician,” Vogel said with a sad shake of his head. “Not a man for a crisis, I don’t think.”

“Just the ways of Washington. But… I think I can still do something…” Johnston looked in the old man’s faded blue eyes. “I think we can still do something.”

“Ja,” Vogel said. “Perhaps. Perhaps. Come upstairs, then. Tell me what you are thinking.”

Vogel’s office was upstairs. It was crammed with computers, large-screen monitors and cable lines. Vogel sat down in front of one of the keyboards and turned his chair to face another, which he gestured for Johnston to sit in. Vogel, in the 1960s and ‘70s, had been at the leading edge of East Germany’s cryptography efforts. In 1976 he defected, slipping out of East Berlin in a secret container built into the gas tank of a delivery truck. By 1979 he was consulting to the Pentagon and the National Security Agency. Johnston had gotten to know the old man in the ‘80s during a lengthy tour of duty in the Pentagon. An odd friendship had grown out of their working together on computerized simulations of military and terrorist attacks.

Johnston said, “You’ve been following the day’s news? The terrorist attack on U.S. Immuno and the attack on the White House?”

“Ja. Natürlich. Are they related, these two?”

That question gave Johnston pause. Were they related? He hesitated. “What is the media saying?”

“Well, at the press conference, the new FBI director, let us see, Director McIvoy, said they had not found any proof that they were connected.”

Johnston frowned, wondering if that was how the FBI was proceeding. Perhaps it was true. Maybe Dalton had been uninvolved with The Fallen Angels, but had merely taken advantage of the chaos of the attack and the nine o’clock staff meeting to make his own mark on history.

But he didn’t believe it. He thought they were related.

Thinking aloud, Johnston said, “The Bureau will be taking Dalton’s background apart. That’s old ground. Nothing for us there, I don’t think. Stillwater—”

”Who is Stillwater?”

“My agent, a specialist in biological and chemical warfare. He was tracking the U.S. Immuno attack and went off chasing a theory of this that someone from his past, a Richard Coffee, was the head of the group. I’ve lost touch with him, but he may have been on to something.”

“Let us assume for a moment,” Vogel said softly, “that they are two prongs of a lengthy attack, nicht wahr? What would that mean?”

“Mean?”

“This biological agent they stole… the media is not saying what it is, exactly. Only that it is very dangerous, an experimental biological warfare agent.”

“It is a virus that is highly infectious and completely fatal.”

“So… they steal this virus. To do what with it?”

“Use it? Sell it? Bargain with it?”

Vogel peered at Johnston with his clear blue eyes and shook his head. “If these incidents are separate — this germ and this attack on the President — then perhaps they will sell it or blackmail someone with it. But if the incidents are connected…” He shook his head even more vigorously. “My friend, if the incidents are connected, killing the President and throwing the government into turmoil, then they will plan to use this… germ. How will they do that? How much did they steal?”

“About a dozen test tubes of the stuff… not even that much. They were cryovials, about the size of your little finger. Jammed full of viruses, but nonetheless…”

“So they must grow more.”

“Well… “ Johnston wished Derek was here to answer these questions; or anyone who was a microbiologist. “I think so,” he said. “I mean, they could do a lot of damage with twelve little vials, but yes, I would think if they wanted to do something big and… world-stopping, they would need more of it than a dozen small vials. Ultimately, anyway.”

“So,” Vogel smiled. “They would need a laboratory. A high-level laboratory, perhaps?”

“Yes,” Johnston said. “If they had any sense… not a given… they would need something approximating a Level IV containment facility.”

Vogel turned to his computer and ran a computer search. Most of the listings he found were published by the CDC and provided definitions of the differences between the four biological containment levels. Each level, I, II, III and IV, built on the previous level. Vogel read while Johnston looked over his shoulder. “What are we looking for?” Johnston said.

“Something unique to Level IV,” Vogel said. “Of course, my question would be, if The Fallen Angels were kind of sloppy or suicidal, would they stop short at Level III?”

Johnston thought of the deft attack on U.S. Immuno, on the biosafety suits the terrorists had worn, of the speculative Korean exchange that Derek Stillwater had offered: “Hurry up.” “You can’t hurry this kind of thing.” The Fallen Angels were many things, but sloppy was not one of them. “No,” Johnston said. “They wouldn’t stop short at Level III.”

“Well, then, the things that stand out for me are the biological level safety suits. Are there many manufacturers?”

“No, I don’t think so. In the United States it’s Chemturion. I actually know something about them. They’re manufactured exclusively by ILC Dover, Inc in Delaware. Same company that makes spacesuits for NASA. I’m pretty sure there are others in other parts of the world, though.”

“Yes,” Vogel said. “Yes, I think so. I’ll find them.”

“What else comes to mind?” Johnston said, leaning forward to peer at the screen.

Vogel tapped the computer screen showing an article about a Level IV facility in San Antonio, Texas, the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, that used them for SARS research. “The type of safety hoods they use. They recirculate the air from inside the facility. Unusual, apparently.”

“Okay. Can you—”

Vogel held up a finger. “I will need time, but I can track these down, see who has ordered these in the last, hmmm…”

“Eighteen months,” he said.

“You’re assuming they’re here? Local?”

“If they’re out of the country there’s no hope for us.”

Vogel nodded. “Give me time… and privacy, please.”

“Can I use your telephone?”

“Certainly. Who are you going to call?”

General Johnston got to his feet and adjusted his suit. “An old friend of mine. General Stuart English.”

“Still active?” Vogel asked shrewdly.

“No,” Johnston said. “He runs a company called International Security Provisions, Inc. Better known as ISPI.”

Vogel blinked. “They’re—”

”Mercenaries,” Johnston said. “Let’s get to work.”

48

Agents rushed toward the sound of gunshots, finding Agent Spigotta kneeling over the still body of Agent O’Hara. Spigotta knelt coatless on the floor next to O’Hara, his suitcoat wadded into a ball and pressed against the chest wounds he had inflicted. He knew it didn’t matter. This guy, whoever he was, was dead. But what the hell had he been doing?

Someone shouted over the braying of the fire alarm, “What in God’s name is going on?”

“Guy came out of nowhere, drew down on me,” Spigotta said. “Anybody know him?”

“O’Hara,” a woman agent said. “Anti-terror. Is that his gun there?”

Spigotta looked to where she was pointing. It had a silencer on the end. “Yes.”

She met his gaze. “He was coming after you?”

“Seemed to be. Didn’t you think the fire alarm was… fishy?”

She swallowed. An older woman with graying hair and a fine crinkle of age lines around her eyes and mouth, she nodded. “But everything today…”

Acting Director McIlvoy appeared, jaw tense. “What’s going on here? Is there a fire?”

Someone said, “Bathroom one floor down… we’ve got a dead agent in the john… wastebasket’s on fire… burning paper towel in the stairwell…”

McIlvoy stared at O’Hara’s lifeless body. “What Division? Is he one of ours?”

“Anti-terror,” someone said. “He’s one of ours.”

McIlvoy stared, then shifted his gaze to Spigotta. “What were you doing?”

“Interrogating the Russian. I heard the alarm and ran out in the hallway. I saw the smoke, turned to look down the hallway and saw this guy running in my direction. I noticed he was reaching in his coat and I didn’t like the feel of things. I thought the fire alarm was the wrong thing at the wrong time. Too much weird shit’s been happening today and I just got a feeling something wasn’t right. A fire alarm on top of everything? So I was drawing my gun and I turned around and he had his gun up and ready to shoot.”

“You think he was going after you?”

Spigotta frowned. He struggled to his feet, adrenaline still pumping. “Maybe after me. Maybe after the Russian. She knows something about these Fallen Angels. She’s the only person who seems to know anything about them. Pilcher thought there was a connection between her and Dalton. Maybe he wanted to eliminate a witness. Christ, I don’t know.”

“Where is she? Where’s the Russian woman?” asked McIlvoy.

“Still in the interrogation room.”

“She’d better be.”

Spigotta turned and lumbered to the interrogation room, blasting through the door to find the room empty. His heart thudded in his chest and he spun, nearly knocking Director McIlvoy down in his rush out the door. “Search the damned building!” he shouted. “Find her!”

49

Derek lay on his back on the cot and stared at the ceiling. He didn’t know how much time had passed. He could have been out for minutes or hours. No one had come in to check on him. He had spent easily forty-five minutes studying his cell and trying to determine if there was a way to escape. The door locked from the other side, so, even if he were capable of picking a lock with an acupuncture needle he couldn’t because he didn’t have access. The cot was lightweight plastic snapped together with a thin padded mattress on top. He could break it apart and maybe have a splintered chunk of plastic to use as a weapon, but it wouldn’t be strong enough to get him out of the room. The walls appeared to be rubber sealant painted over thick plywood or something similar.

And time was running out. Coffee had told him he had been injected with Chimera and the vaccine. A human guinea pig.

He didn’t know if it was true. His body was a mass of aches and pains — two bullet wounds, bruises, scrapes and dozens of acupuncture needle pricks, none of which actually ached, and a sort of residual body memory of severe pain. Pain was in the mind, so everyone said, but he could remember the feeling of his body on fire.

They believed their vaccine worked — if it was the truth. Had they already injected themselves? Was he really a real-world test? A guinea pig?

And could he use that knowledge?

Derek cocked an eyebrow, thinking. A plan?

He thought about Chimera, about what he knew about it. The first symptoms were bleeding — nosebleeds, ears, eyes, gums. And the last symptoms, too, he reflected.

Blood.

Suppose he was their guinea pig? Suppose they had tested their vaccine on lab animals — guinea pigs, mice, rats, maybe monkeys. Maybe it had worked. And now they had him.

He smiled. The problem with a human guinea pig…

He knew the results they would want.

He fingered the acupuncture needle he had secreted into his waistband.

And he knew the results they would fear.

Derek rolled onto his side so his back would be to the two-way mirror. He slipped the needle from where he had hidden it and fingered the flimsy metal. He sighed. So thin it wouldn’t cause bleeding if he poked it into his skin. But…

Taking a deep breath, Derek started scratching along the palm of his left hand, gouging through the skin. A thin line of scarlet appeared. Biting his lip, he dug deeper, ignoring the lance of pain that shot through his hand. Harder.

The scarlet line began to ooze, then drip.

Derek wiped his palm on his face, smearing the blood beneath his nose and on his chin.

The cut continued to bleed. He clenched his fist, clenched again, opened his palm. He wiped it again on his face, a line of blood by his ear.

Clenched his fist again, smearing the blood all over his hand.

Showtime.

He slapped his bloody palm against the mirror, once, twice, leaving bloody hand prints on the glass.

Then he slumped onto the cot, hand palm down, faking semi-consciousness.

And waited.

50

In his trailer, Richard Coffee packed a bag. He looked around the interior of what had been his home for the last year, a place he had shared with Nadia.

Nadia.

His eyes misted momentarily, but he shook his head, pushing the thoughts away. Next to the Samsonite was his passport. It was an American passport made out to William Richard Black. It was flawless.

Next to the passport was a can of Coke. He looked at the soda can, mesmerized by the potential.

Because the Coke can was not really a Coke can. It was an aerosol bomb loaded with Chimera.

He was the point man for the New World Order. Each of his angels had been inoculated against Chimera.

Each of his angels was given a Coke can loaded with Chimera. Today, they would began to spread out around the world. They would fly to various points around the globe: France, Spain, England, Russia, Australia, South Africa, Israel, India, Argentina. On their flights, they would open their aerosol bombs and infect hundreds of people on every continent.

Chimera would spread around the world in days.

When it was done doing his work, he and his Fallen Angels would start over again to create a paradise on earth.

He pulled out his gun, debating whether to bring it with him. It could be a liability at the airport. But he believed he could get rid of it easily before he had to go through security and before that point, he might need the weapon.

Coffee picked up a framed photograph of Nadia and himself. It had been taken by one of his angels when they were in Spain. For a moment his hands shook. He flung the frame against the wall, the glass shattering.

Coffee stared at it, then picked his way through the shards and drew the photograph of his beloved from the frame and slipped it into his shirt pocket.

It was time to say goodbye to his comrades. To his Fallen Angels.

51

Secretary Johnston settled uncomfortably onto one of Ernst Vogel’s early-American style chairs and picked up the phone. He wished he had his Rolodex, but he was sure that everything in his West Wing office was now fodder for a hazardous waste incinerator, along with his cell phone, which had been destroyed with his clothing. First he called information asking for International Security Provisions, Inc., and wrote the number down on a notepad that Vogel kept next to the phone. His gaze wandered around the room, taking in the shelf full of books and the stacks of albums, not CDs. Vogel was a fan of classical music, especially piano music. You might go so far as to say he was a classical pianist junky, collecting autographed concert posters and albums of people like Vladimir Ashkenazy and Peter Serkin and Gary Graff. Johnston himself was more of a rock fan and although he had caught The Rolling Stones six or seven times, it had been years since he bothered with live concerts. Too many crowds, too much money, too little time. Which, he realized, he was wasting now.

With a deep breath, Johnston dialed information and asked for the home number of Stuart English in Manassass and directed the operator to place the call.

It only rang twice before the smooth voice of retired General Stuart English answered with, “English here.”

“Stuart, it’s Jim Johnston.”

“Jim, I’m glad to hear your voice. Hell, I’m glad you’re alive. Is this official?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll call you back.”

“You need my—”

”No. Give me a couple minutes.”

Johnston nodded as the line went dead. English was undoubtedly moving to a secure line in a secure room of his house. Apparently Caller ID or something more sophisticated was part of his home phone package.

He waited, thinking, trying to anticipate the problems this conversation was going to create and how he could address them. It was only about two minutes when the phone rang. He picked up. “Johnston.”

“Jim, Stuart. What can I do for you?” Right to the point. That was the Stuart English Johnston had served with.

“I may need about twenty men in a very short period of time.”

“Tell me.”

Johnston hesitated. “You understand my position.”

“CNN claims you resigned over your connection to Dalton. I assume you were asked to resign.”

“Correct.”

“And?” English said.

“And that means that I am no longer in the employ of the United States government.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“I’m working to track the group that broke into U.S. Immuno today.”

“What makes you think you’re going to have more luck than the FBI?”

“I’ve got Ernst Vogel.”

“Ah. Yes. Well, that might help. Okay. And if you do locate them…”

“I want twenty very experienced people to lead a raid on their facility.”

“Why not just call the FBI and turn it over to them.”

“So far they seem to be running around with their heads up their collective asses. And if what my troubleshooter told me about Chimera and this group is accurate, we really can’t wait for the Bureau to get their act together.”

“I see. Will twenty be enough?”

“I hope so.”

“But you have no idea of The Fallen Angels’ numbers.”

“No. Of course, I don’t have any idea of their location, either. I’m making preparations.”

“Yes, of course,” English said. There was silence on the line. “Yes,” he said. “Twenty local men with the kind of experience you need. Should be possible. As you are no longer the Director of DHS, how will you pay for them?”

“There is an off-shore account that I should still have access to,” he said. The account was, in fact, very secret and would be known to only a few high-level people in the government. The President might know about it — the National Security Advisor did, or had, since she was now dead. In fact, the majority of the people familiar with this particular account were now dead.

“I see,” English said. “Yes. That should do. Will there be repercussions later?”

Johnston could envision congressional hearings for the next thirty years if anybody in congress was alive to hold them.

“Hard to say. This is a matter of national security, Stuart.”

“They attacked the White House yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“The press don’t think the two incidents are related. Or so says the Bureau.”

“I think they are.”

Stuart was silent a moment. Then he quoted an amount of money and the numbered account in a Bahamian bank. It was a very large sum of money, but Johnston said, “That sounds a little low.”

“As you know, I am a patriot. I still have to pay these men and they are expensive… you’re getting a discount.”

“Thanks, Stuart. Get them together and I’ll set up a staging area.”

“Here’s my cell,” English said and recited a number. “I’ll be on the move. Call me as soon as you can. And Jim…”

“Yes?”

“Be careful.”

Ernst Vogel was working at three separate computers simultaneously. Johnston had seen him do this before, but it always amazed him to watch the man shift from keyboard to keyboard, from screen to screen, entering data from one into another, entering databases and corporate and governmental archives and computer systems. The data was like a symphony and Vogel was like a concert master, directing it.

“I have not limited my search to Chemturion biosuits,” the man said, bringing up a window that showed the records from the company’s sales. “There are a number of companies and governments that produce similar items, but I think we will be dealing with Chemturion. They sold a number of biosuits this year, and not all of them make sense. There is an order of ten to a biotech company called Biosynthetica, Inc. in Maryland.”

“Biosynthetica,” Johnston said.

“Ja. However, although they are registered, they do not seem to exist.”

Johnston raised his eyebrows. “Really?”

“Ja. Very suspicious. There is an address, but it is a suite in Essex. This—” He tapped at another keyboard and brought up a search engine and reverse phone directory. “—is actually a UPS Store, formerly a Mailboxes, Etc.”

“It’s a letter box,” Johnston said.

“Yes. They call their mailboxes suites so it might give the owner the appearance of having an office suite.”

“Do they have a computer—”

”Not that I have found yet, but wait a moment.”

Johnston knew better than to rush Vogel. The man understood the urgency, but he needed to lead Johnston through things step by step.

“We are also looking for biological cabinets — hoods, they call them — that can be used in biosafety level 3 or 4. The manufacturers of these are very few, and in the United States, even fewer.”

“Is it possible they bought them from outside the country?”

“Possible, but unlikely if they are doing what you think they are doing. Why bring such a device through customs and immigration controls? Why risk a possible red flag and the amount of paperwork necessary? Understand my reasoning?”

“Yes. Go on.”

“This company—” Another window on a second computer screen. “—Beckman… manufacturers a limited number of theses types of biological cabinets. They re-circulate the air within the facility only, not outside the facility. They have sold five of them in the last eighteen months. One to Fort Detrick. Two to the CDC. One to the University of Arizona. And one to—”

He tapped a key. Johnston read the invoice. “Biosynthetica, Inc. Damn. Same address?”

“Oh no,” Vogel said. This was shipped to the Frederick Airport where it was picked up personally by representatives of Biosynthetica, Inc.” Vogel cut again to another screen, this one indicating a pickup of a large freight container delivered from the Beckman manufacturing facility in Houston.

“Jesus.” Johnston’s heart sank.

“Ah,” Vogel said. “We are on the trail, my…” He smiled. “Comrade. We are on their trail. You see, though we do not have access to the UPS Store computer, they did not pay for this biological cabinet with cash. They used a credit card. A corporate credit card with Citibank Visa.”

“It has a mailing address,” Johnston said, heart racing.

“Ah. UPS Store in Essex. The same drop box. However…”

Johnston looked at him, waiting.

“However,” Vogel repeated. “This credit card has some very interesting activity on it.”

“It’s being paid.”

Vogel brought up the Citibank Visa computer system. Johnston didn’t want to think about the security they must have and how easily Vogel had gotten through it. “From an account in Geneva, Switzerland, Banque Diamantaire Anversoise (Suisse) S.A. That would take some time, I’m afraid. No, back to Citibank Visa. You see, they have been buying vehicles — Humvees and motorcycles and panel vans. These are interesting, but I’m afraid they are a dead end. No, what interests me is this—” The man’s finger pointed to a line in the Citibank Visa listing. It was a reference to another credit card.

“What’s that?”

“A second line of credit. For another company related to Biosynthetica, Inc. It is for a company called TFA Holdings, Inc. They have a corporate headquarters in Sioux Falls, Iowa.”

“Address?” Johnston demanded, starting to lose his patience.

“Another UPS Store. It does not matter. I believe it’s a mail drop for a shell corporation. TFA Holdings owns four companies.”

He brought them up on the computer. Angelika Research, Inc. JavaJones Materials, Inc. RAC, Inc. Andarbek Industries, Inc. “They are all incorporated as off-shore accounts, they all have credit and, as far as I have been able to tell, do not actually exist except as these corporations. However…”

Johnston waited. There was something in Vogel’s manner that indicated that this might be worth waiting for.

“However,” Vogel said. “Andarbek Industries, Inc. claims to be involved in warehousing non-perishable food products to be distributed to small stores — your so-called mom-and-pop fast food stores.”

Johnston looked confused.

“Andarbek Industries, Inc. appears to have leased a large warehouse in Alexandria, Virginia from TGLM Properties,” Vogel said.

“A large warehouse,” Johnston repeated.

Vogel brought up an address and a map of Alexandria. “Ja. I would check this out, James. But very, very carefully.”

52

Derek, lying with his own blood smeared on his face, didn’t have long to wait. Only a few minutes after slumping to the cot he heard a noise at the door. It swung open and a blue spacesuited figure stepped in and crouched over him. In one quick motion Derek hooked his arm behind the figure’s legs and swept them out from under him. With a cry the figure crashed to the floor, thrashing awkwardly in the clumsy spacesuit.

Derek leapt over him, sprinting into the main part of the laboratory. A second spacesuited figure stood momentarily paralyzed before racing toward the door. But no one could run fast in a spacesuit and Derek was on him in a second, catching the figure from behind, bringing his arm around the neck of the spacesuit and spinning around and hauling the figure with a spine-cracking thrust over his shoulder. The figure crashed to the laboratory floor and lay motionless, the helmet of the spacesuit at an odd angle.

Derek returned to the first spacesuited figure, who was climbing to his feet. He recognized the features of Dr. Kim Pak Lee through the visor of the helmet, eyes wide in panic. Derek rushed him as the Korean desperately tried to reach a laboratory bench. Derek intercepted him, grabbing the spacesuit material in both hands and slamming the scientist to the floor. It was no contest, really. With nimble fingers Derek detached the helmet and yanked it off Lee’s head.

“Not in here!” Lee hissed. “This is Level 4.”

“Life’s a bitch,” Derek said, pressing his forearm into the Korean’s neck. “Now, you’re going to tell me what your plan is.”

“I will not!”

“You will!” he said, applying more pressure to the scientist’s neck, mindful of how this had gone horribly wrong with Irina Khournikova… or Nadia Kosov.

“No! It is too late. The Fallen has already begun. You cannot stop it!”

“Where is he?”

Lee clamped his mouth shut. Furiously, Derek tried to think of something he could say or do that would make the man talk. His gaze roved over the laboratory equipment on the counters and on the open shelves. He locked in on a glass bottle. It said H₂SO₄ on the label.

He hauled Lee to his feet and dragged him over to the counter. With one hand holding Lee, he picked up the bottle of sulfuric acid in the other. He uncapped the glass stopper.

“I’ll start with your eyes,” he said.

Lee blinked.

“And I’ll burn off your face. And make you drink it. But believe me… you’re going to tell me what you’re doing with Chimera. Where’s Coffee? Where’s The Fallen?”

The scientist couldn’t take his gaze off the bottle. Already the fumes were making his eyes water. “Fallen… is gone.”

“He has Chimera?”

Lee did not answer. Derek spilled a drop of the concentrated acid on the Korean’s forehead. It smoked.

Lee grimaced and writhed in agony.

“I tell you, I tell you…. It’s too late for you to stop it.”

Derek put the bottle aside.

“It’s burning! Make it stop! Please, make it stop!”

Derek snatched a bottle of water off the counter and rinsed the acid off Lee’s face. There was a red burned mark on the man’s forehead.

“Talk.”

Lee took a deep breath. “We are going to start over. We are going to start what you call Armageddon.”

“How?

“Chimera.”

“Where is Fallen? How many have been sent out? Where?”

“Fallen first. Just a little while ago. Then one at a time over the next day. Each with an aerosol canister that looks like a Coke can.”

Derek waited. Lee looked triumphant, smug at being able to talk of their plan. He continued. “International flights. Different countries. We are to release the virus in the airplanes just before we land in the new countries. Then we catch a flight to our… meeting place.”

“Which is where?”

Lee shook his head. “You cannot stop our plan. But you have been vaccinated. You can join us. But only if we trust you. And we don’t trust you. I don’t trust you.”

Derek considered forcing the issue, but didn’t want to get sidetracked. “Which airport? Where is Coffee — Fallen — flying to?”

Lee smiled, a dreamy look in his eyes. “It will start in France.”

“Which airport?”

Lee smiled again, the expression in his face unsettling.

“Which airport?” Derek repeated.

Lee shoved him away with all his strength. Before Derek could stop him the Korean seized the bottle of sulfuric acid and poured it down his throat. With a shriek the bottle dropped the floor and splintered into a million pieces. Lee thrashed on the floor, spewed blood and held still.

53

Irina Khournikova slipped into the back of a diner only five blocks from the Hoover Building. She didn’t completely understand what had happened back there, but she was thankful. It had been a mistake to agree to come with the FBI agent, Unrau. Unrau had told them that their expertise on this Russian national was required, a woman called Irina Khournikova of the ‘T’ Directorate. Of course she had come, but it should have set off alarm bells. Somehow Coffee — Andarbek is how she still thought of him — had set her up. A house of mirrors. Andarbek had set up traps for everyone. For her, for this man Stillwater, whoever he was. But Andarbek must have feared him because so much of this operation seemed designed to ensnare Stillwater. She wondered who he was… and where he was.

There was a pay phone at the back of the diner. The diner was filling up with breakfast eaters, what seemed to mostly be midnight workers coming off their shift, grabbing breakfast before they went home to bed. She liked this place. It reminded her of Moscow. Good solid people working, going about their lives.

She didn’t have money, but it didn’t matter. She had phone card numbers memorized. She dialed a number and waited for someone to answer. It was answered by a seven digit series of numbers spoken in Russian.

Vosem. Devyat. Shest. Pyat. Tree. Dva. Odeen. 8965321.

She recited a series of numbers in response. Tree. Dva. Dva. Shest. Vosem. Shest. Vosem. 3226868.

“What do you need?”

“I need a pickup.” She gave the current code word for an emergency—”v pizdu”—and recited her address. Then, “I need information on the leasing information for an apartment.” She explained about the safe house where the false Irina Khournikova had been staying. “The FBI is probably looking into it as well, so be careful.”

“Anything else?”

“No…. Yes. A weapon.”

She hung up and slipped into the women’s room. She had no identification, no gun and, she realized, precious little time. Andarbek had gone crazy. He wanted to destroy the world. And he had the means to do it.

Her stomach churned. She turned the tap on cold and splashed water on her face, thinking of all the years she had spent trying to track down this man, the terrorist who had assassinated her lover. Each time she got close, he slipped away. Each round of investigations turned up more information, often conflicting. First he was a Chechen leader. Then he was an American CIA operative. Then he was dead. Then he was alive, running arms. Then he was a cult figure, his followers fanatically devoted to him. Each turn of the crank wound this mysterious terrorist tighter. His actions became more unpredictable, his attacks more vicious. It was no longer clear who his allegiances were to.

Well now you know, she thought. To himself.

To his own brand of madness.

She left the women’s room and slipped into a booth, the seats done in red vinyl. When the waitress came she ordered coffee and bacon and scrambled eggs and toast, hoping that the food would get delivered before her pickup arrived. The coffee came almost instantly and she sipped it, welcoming the revivifying effects. There was a TV above the counter turned to CNN. She watched it out of the corner of her eyes. Talk about the attack on the White House, how the President was on Air Force One, how the alleged assassin, Samuel Dalton, had been found killed near Rock Creek Park. The anchor speculated that Dalton had been working for someone. They did not make a connection to The Fallen Angels. No mention was made of the shootings at the J. Edgar Hoover Building, though she thought it was only a matter of time before they did.

Just as the waitress brought her breakfast, an ice-blond man in a navy blue suit came in carrying a calfskin briefcase. He surveyed the crowd, then sidled toward her and slipped into the booth. He first placed the briefcase next to her and slid a set of car keys across the Formica tabletop.

“White Ford Taurus. D.C. plate, ED47LF. Parked just up the street on this side.” He pointed. “Everything you asked for is in the briefcase, including a cell phone. Is there anything else?”

“Money and ID?”

“Taken care of.”

“Good,” she said.

The man, whose English was perfect, said, “There is a message I’m supposed to give you personally. From the T Directorate.”

She eyed him.”Yes?”

“They would very much like this matter with Andarbek to end. For good.”

“Fine. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Good.” He nodded, got up and left. She finished her breakfast, took the briefcase to the women’s room and emptied it. A wallet with appropriate identification: driver’s license, credit cards, and cash. Everything was made out to Irene Kramer, a resident of Washington, D.C. with an address at the Watergate Hotel. There was a 9mm Glock in a belt holster with an extra magazine and a silencer. There was a passport, U.S., which she hoped she wouldn’t need, given tightened security during the crisis. There was a sheaf of papers backgrounding the safe house where Derek Stillwater had tortured the fake Irina Khournikova to death.

Included was the M.E.’s preliminary report on the fake Khournikova and the Russian embassy’s analysis of the woman’s background. While Irina had been a guest of the Federal Bureau of Investigation her people had gotten somebody over to the morgue and taken fingerprints. They had faxed the prints back to Moscow to the Directorate to run on their own database.

Nadia Kosov. A Russian citizen, a former government computer programmer in Moscow. She had died in what had been called a Chechen terrorist bombing in Moscow that had killed eleven people in a bus station. At the time nobody had suspected that she was either involved or been targeted. Her remains had been identified by a driver’s license.

Apparently the woman had been involved in the bombing and The Fallen Angels had planted her identification there to convince the authorities that she was dead.

The Fallen Angels seemed very adept at this, she reflected. She found the report concerning Nadia Kosov’s former job to be vague. Computer programmer for the government. She wondered which branch of the government she had worked for — if she had worked in computer espionage or cryptography. The very vagueness of the report pointed to a high level of interest.

She tucked the report away and glanced through the notes on the safe house. She saw that the management company that owned the building and presumably accepted rent checks from Irina Khournikova/Nadia Kosov, had not been open during the night and they had no known open computer access.

Irina checked the address, realized the office was a place to start, though she worried that the FBI would be all over it as well. She left the diner, glancing at her watch to see that it was only eight o’clock in the morning. She found the Taurus, studied a map of the city and drove to the three-story brown brick building that housed the offices of Delecourt Facilities Management, Inc.

For the second time in twenty-four hours she found luck swinging her way. They weren’t open. Their hours didn’t start until 9:00, the sign on their frosted glass door said.

She didn’t think she would have much time. Using the butt of the Glock she broke the glass of the door, shoved her arm through and unlocked it, rushing in.

The receptionist’s office was crammed with filing cabinets. A quick search verified what she had suspected — DFM, Inc. was a dump. A steel desk, a Dell computer system, filing cabinets. She began to quickly go through the filing cabinets, looking for anything under the name Irina Khournikova, Nadia Kosov, Richard Coffee, Surkho Anderbek… and then found it under the address of the building, a file of each tenant.

She took the one for Irina Khournikova, leafing through it quickly to see that Irina had paid by check on an account with the Fifth Third Bank.

Irina had been in the DFM offices for less than ten minutes, and by the time she was in the white Taurus she was on the phone to her contacts asking them to do a financial records search on the account number she gave them.

She could smell it, she thought. The trail.

54

Derek rolled away from the body of Kim Pak Lee, now lying in a pool of blood, vomit and sulfuric acid. His eyes watered from the acrid fumes and he gagged, barely able to avoid vomiting. Staggering over to the second scientist, he removed his spacesuit helmet, then decided to go the whole way. He awkwardly removed the suit, donning it himself and hooking himself to the air hose system, which the scientists had momentarily disconnected themselves from when they came to check on him.

With relief his suit flooded with air and he took in deep breaths, fighting not to think about the madness that would cause a man to kill himself by drinking concentrated sulfuric acid.

He took in the lab for the first time, really took it in. Was there contact with the outside world? He knew that outside this double-wide trailer were terrorists who would kill him without a second thought. But if there was an Internet connection or a telephone or a cellular phone…

A search of the laboratory revealed the computer to be disconnected from the Internet and there to be no cell phone. There was a one-button telephone and he was sure that it only connected somewhere within the warehouse.

He perched on a stool in front of the computer and read the files there. They were mercifully written in English and detailed the work Kim Pak Lee had done based on the “blueprints,” the black patent records they had stolen, and the further work he had done in the last day. Their vaccine worked well on animals. So well that they had gone ahead and injected it into all their members.

Madness, Derek thought. Lee had been nuts to make that leap.

And then The Fallen had given him permission to inject Derek Stillwater, a human subject, with Chimera M13 and the vaccine. A real-live human test.

Derek skimmed through the vaccine information, knowing he had to get this to USAMRIID. If Kim Pak Lee was to be believed, Richard Coffee, armed with Chimera, was at an airport heading for France with a Coke can filled with an aerosolized version of Chimera. Soon the rest of The Fallen Angels would be heading to other points around the world. Could they be stopped?

Time was racing away from him.

But he couldn’t leave this information here.

He couldn’t leave this laboratory stocked with live Chimera.

He scrounged through the drawers until he found computer disks and transferred Lee’s records to disk. Opening the spacesuit, he slipped them into the pocket of the scrubs he wore.

Searching the lab, he found a cabinet filled with Clorox bleach. Perfect. Opening each incubator, he removed everything in them and moved all the flasks and test tubes to the hoods. Systematically, carefully, he sterilized the cultures by filling them with bleach, then transferred the now dead containers to what he recognized was an autoclave in one corner. It was taking way too damned long, but he couldn’t leave viable cultures of Chimera here.

It was in a locked cabinet that he found the real weapons — a case of Coke cans that had been labeled:

He removed the cans to the hoods and began the sterilization procedure again, opening each can with a hiss and fizz that was not releasing carbon dioxide like real Coke, but was spraying virus particles into the hoods.

He sterilized every single one of them with bleach, then cleaned the hood.

In a refrigerator he hit pay dirt — a dozen glass vials labeled vaccine.

Now, he thought, I’ve got to get the hell out of here. But how?

His gaze landed on several large cylinders of compressed gas — nitrogen and carbon dioxide — that were used in the incubators. Growing cells needed heat, usually close to 98.7 degrees Fahrenheit, high humidity, and sources of nitrogen and carbon and oxygen. All were supplied by the gases, which were pumped into the incubators to create an atmosphere of about five percent gas.

The cylinders stood almost five-feet tall and were about ten inches in diameter. Each container held thousands of pounds per square inch of pressurized gas.

Which, Derek knew, if released all at once, acted very much like a torpedo. With a small smile, he went to work.

55

Liz Vargas was unconscious. In her spacesuit, Sharon Jaxon sat by her bed for a moment, watching her. They had tried what the Michigan State University professor, Leslie Hingemann, had suggested. Because the original Chimera M13 had been constructed of bits and pieces of other infectious agents, a mix consisting mostly of viral genetic material and a bit of bacterial genome, Hingemann had quickly analyzed the possibility that Chimera’s outer surface might hold antigens similar to Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that caused Bubonic plague. His theory was that if they then infected Liz with Yersinia, essentially infecting her with plague, her immune system would start to create a defense against the plague.

Of course, the vast majority of people infected with plague over the last nine hundred years died of it.

What had changed in the last century was the advent of antibiotics. Although plague was resistant to many antibiotics, it was susceptible to a narrow spectrum of antibiotics like tetracycline. So Hingemann had suggested that by introducing a bacteria like Yersinia into Liz’s immune system, triggering an immune response, then shortly afterward treating her with antibiotics to kill the Yersinia, it just might be possible to kick-start her immune system into fighting Chimera M13.

Sharon Jaxon shifted her attention from Liz’s pale face to the monitors that read out her vital signs. The last lab specimens she had taken indicated that Liz’s immune system was going berzerk, cranking out a wide variety of white blood cells to fight the infection, that her platelet clotting factors were dropping off the chart. Her temperature had been hovering around 103 degrees for the last hour. They were giving her antivirals, antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, steroids, clotting factor, infusions of whole blood…

But she was dying anyway. Hingemann’s strategy had seemed to work, but only briefly. For a short period of time after the introduction of Yersinia, the amount of Chimera M13 present in her blood had fallen. For about an hour Liz had seemed lucid, her temperature had dropped to 99 degrees, her WBC counts, especially her T cell counts, had risen… and then all hell had broken loose.

She had suffered more bleeding, this time her gums and vagina and ears.

Sharon reached out and took Liz’s hand in her own gloved hand, feeling an overarching sadness for this woman who she had decided she liked very much. Liz was alone. Her husband had died, her parents had passed away years before, she had no children. There had been nobody except Hingemann to tell. Afterward, when Liz passed away, there was a short list of friends to be contacted. Most of her friends had worked at U.S. Immuno, now dead as well.

Sharon thought it would be only a matter of hours. They had run out of ideas. She thought it would take a miracle to save Liz Vargas.

56

James Johnston was impressed with Stuart English’s people. Twenty combat-ready men that the retired General vouched for. They were all in their twenties and thirties, the oldest appearing to be in his early forties. All were businesslike and came prepared. English had a conference room set up at a hotel on the outskirts of Alexandria and when Johnston arrived, all the men were ready, wearing jeans, T-shirts and lightweight windbreakers.

Ideally they would have wanted to do this as a commando unit, to suit them up in cammies and full gear and go ahead as an assault. But they were operating in a major U.S. city during a time of crisis and there was no getting around the fact that twenty men fully armed in camouflage gear would get too much attention.

They didn’t want to alert The Fallen Angels and they didn’t want to alert the FBI until it was necessary.

Stuart English was a wiry redhead, though most of his hair had faded to gray. He wore khakis and a white dress shirt and everybody was listening intently as he started his debriefing based on the information Johnston had supplied and, somewhat to his surprise, that he had acquired in the hour since their last telephone call.

On the computer screen English put up an aerial photograph of the section of Alexandria near the Potomac River where the warehouse was located. It was in a warren of similar warehouses with a railroad line running very close by.

“Each of you will be given a palm computer with a detailed map of the area and this photograph. Still, it will be easy to get lost and confused in the area, so stay sharp. In addition, you’ll get print maps. As you can see, there are multiple routes in and out. Our job is to provide surveillance and intelligence. We wish to determine the exact number of individuals inside the warehouse and get an idea of their defenses. General Johnston, what do you have to add?”

Johnston stood up. Twenty pairs of hawk eyes followed him. “We believe this to be the headquarters of a terrorist organization calling itself The Fallen Angels. It is multi-ethnic in makeup and led by a man named Richard Coffee, a former Army Special Forces captain turned CIA rogue. We believe The Fallen Angels to be highly armed, disciplined and well-trained. They are believed to have access to alternative weapons of mass destruction like VX gas. They are believed to have in their control a biological organism called Chimera M13. It is a genetically engineered virus, gentlemen, and it is the purpose of this mission. Inside this warehouse we believe they will have set up a laboratory in which to grow this virus. Once inside this warehouse, it is our top priority to isolate and control this laboratory, to allow no one inside or out.”

He paused. “The Fallen Angels are ruthless, people. They will shoot to kill. They will show no mercy. And if threatened, they will use whatever weapons, traditional or non, in order to complete their mission. They are, in short, fanatics intent on destroying not only the United States of America, but the world. You must be just as ruthless. It is of the utmost importance that this laboratory be controlled, that if any of this group should head toward this facility, they must be stopped at all costs.” He paused. “At all costs, gentlemen. Those are your terms of engagement. Is everyone clear on that?”

A sharp-featured man with an ebony shaved scalp raised a hand. His body looked like it had been carved from granite, even though he was wearing casual clothes. “Biocontainment gear?”

Stuart English stepped forward, giving the impression he was wearing a uniform and still held official rank, despite wearing slacks and a dress shirt. “You will be given a bio suit, but use them only if necessary. They will be too conspicuous. Is everyone here familiar with how to get them on and use them?”

All nods.

“General Johnston? Anything further?”

Johnston nodded, hesitant. He took a deep breath. “This is a very dangerous mission, gentlemen. The United States government does not sanction this action. If your mission is completed satisfactorily, I do not believe there will be negative repercussions to you, though I cannot guarantee this. If your mission does not end satisfactorily, then it will not matter. The Fallen Angels will release this virus on the population and millions will die. Millions. This is your opportunity to back out. I understand your positions as professionals.” He carefully did not use the word mercenaries. “This is a job. It is possible that this job’s scope is beyond what you expected. If you are not up to it, or do not wish to risk the possible repercussions, say so and you may leave.”

He waited. None of the men stepped forward. Johnston nodded to Stuart English. “Back to you, General English.”

English stepped forward. “Here is how we start. Each of you will be provided with a radio set…”

57

Derek was familiar with laboratories. More than familiar. He spent most of his undergraduate years in laboratories. As a soldier, he found he missed the peculiar order and atmosphere of the laboratory. His brother, now a physician with Doctors Without Borders working in Congo, told him to go back to graduate school and combine the two, his love of science and his adrenaline addiction, and work in the field. It had been good advice, but not without its perils. He studied biological and chemical warfare. When he went back to school to pursue his doctorate, his life had once again returned to laboratories. But now he found a particularly vicious and determined form of evil in these laboratories hidden in dark corners of the world.

Laboratories were dangerous places. They were filled with hazardous, flammable and often explosive chemicals. Many laboratories had butane pumped in via Bunsen burner gas lines, though this one did not seem to have that kind of equipment. It did have compressed air tanks. And many bottles of ethyl alcohol.

First, Derek stepped out of the spacesuit. He’d destroyed all the Chimera and now he needed agility and dexterity. Moving quickly, he twisted off the steel safety caps on the gas tanks and examined the regulators. Yes, this would do nicely. He placed the five gas tanks — one oxygen, two nitrogen and two carbon dioxide — together, then surrounded them with as many bottles of chemicals he could find, preferably chemicals that when exposed to flame — or each other — would go up in a large and dangerous explosion. Derek tried to remember if he had seen a stack of gasoline containers along one side of this trailer. He was pretty sure there had been, but which side? He didn’t know for sure and there wasn’t much he could do about it. He moved on.

He needed some sort of fuse. Some laboratories kept lengths of cotton-fiber rope because they were used as the wicks for alcohol burners, which could, among other things, be used to sterilize coverslips. But he found no rope in the lab. He turned back to the little room where he had been held captive. On the plastic cot was a thin mattress. He dragged it out into the main part of the laboratory and, using a pair of scissors, cut it into long strips and tied them together until he had a length of cloth rope nearly thirty feet long.

Using a large two-liter beaker, he filled the glass container with ethanol and dropped the cloth rope into it.

He carefully took the glass bottles of vaccine, wrapped them in padding from the mattress and placed them in a small cardboard box that had once contained laboratory felt-tipped marker pens. He sealed the box with tape and tucked it under his arm.

Derek took a deep breath. If he wasn’t careful how he did this he would be at ground zero when all hell broke loose. He took a moment to think things through. Finding a piece of paper and a pencil, he drew a rough sketch of the warehouse as he remembered it. Thinking where the doors were, where the vehicles were kept, where the other trailers and various people were within the large rectangular space. Plotting his escape, he did what he had been trained by the U.S. Army to do: work out multiple escape routes.

When he thought he was ready, he opened the various doors to the trailers, leaving them open until he was just inside the final door to the rest of the warehouse. Heart hammering, he retraced his steps, took the alcohol-soaked cloth and wrapped it around the regulator’s outtake manifolds, then unreeled the sopping cloth through the trailer until it was just by the exit. The ventilation system was already working on the alcohol fumes and he was concerned that the alcohol would evaporate too quickly.

He hurried back to the compressed gas containers, turned the valves on full to release the gas. Carrying the bucket of alcohol, he poured it along the length of the cloth, emptying it by the final exit door.

With steady hands, he picked up a box of matches he had found in a drawer and lit it. The flame danced at the end of the matchstick. One, he thought.

He touched the match to the cloth. Two.

It ignited with a blue flame and fast, faster than he could have thought possible, the alcohol-soaked cloth caught flame.

His eyes grew wide, because the cloth didn’t ignite, the alcohol did. The blue flame raced toward the gas canisters within the laboratory.

Slamming himself against the door, Derek rushed out into the main warehouse, sprinting toward the exit.

58

Stuart English and James Johnston sat in a Ford Explorer four blocks from the warehouse they had identified as the probable headquarters of The Fallen Angels. English had a portable radio and was in contact with all of his men. The two men had agreed that English would be the tactical command and Johnston would oversee the operation.

English directed his men to slowly converge on the warehouse from all points of the compass. Because they were in a warehouse district — row after row of steel, concrete and brick warehouses — they entered the area in four trucks as if to make deliveries. One man drove, one rode in the passenger seat and three men were in the back. Once they were close to the warehouse they would fan out and begin their mission.

Each truck was given a radio designation of A, B, C, and D. Each man in each truck was given a letter one through five. They were reporting in now.

“Alpha-three in, I have the target in sight. There are no signs of human guards.”

“Delta-one here. I see video cameras. Confirm.”

“Beta-five, I confirm three video cameras on north side of target.”

Into his radio Stuart English said, “Confirm cameras on all areas.”

In a matter of minutes it was confirmed. There were twelve cameras identified, two at each corner and one in the middle. It was not an unexpected problem. The problem was exactly how to deal with them. The cameras were mounted high on the sides of the building and English’s crew were not equipped to climb and reach them in a fast, effective way. Also, timing was an issue. Although they had enough sharpshooters to take out the surveillance cameras, the element of surprise would be eliminated if they did so — they would have to make a full-out assault on the building simultaneously. This would be problematic because they had no idea what they were getting into. No idea how many people were inside, how they were armed and what the layout of the facility was. As far as anybody could tell, there were no blind spots.

English said to Johnston, “Any ideas?”

“Are there ventilation ducts?”

English passed on the question to his team. A moment later the Alpha-leader, Alpha-one, responded. “Affirmative. On south side of building and on the roof. Suggestion, sir.”

“Go ahead.” English raised an eyebrow at Johnston.

“One of the trucks can drive by close on one side as if on their way by. We can have someone flash one of the lights as we go by to cause a problem with one of the cameras. The passenger side, using a rope and grapple, will take that opportunity to get onto the roof. From there they should be able to—”

Alpha-One’s report was interrupted by the crumping sound of an explosion coming from inside the building. There were shouts and confusion. Even inside their Ford Explorer they could hear the sound of the explosion from four blocks away.

“What’s going on? Report!” English shouted into the radio.

“We don’t know. Something from inside the warehouse. Some sort of explosion. We don’t know what’s going on.”

Johnston gripped English’s arm. “Tell them to go in. It’s their diversion.”

English paled. He could be sending twenty men into a deadly situation. Then he nodded. “Code Pellinor. I repeat: Code Pellinor. Go in.”

59

Derek, Bare feet slapping on the cold pavement, did not get more than twenty steps from the trailer when there was a loud crumping sound. He saw four or five of Coffee’s terrorists turn from what they were doing to see the noise and spot him racing toward the nearest door.

Then there was a much louder sound and Derek felt a percussion wave slam into him like the hand of God and he found himself flying through the air and slamming hard to the pavement. A rain of debris — glass, wood, shards of aluminum — fell around him. With a desperate lunge he threw himself under another trailer, clutching the precious box of Chimera vaccine against his chest. From beneath the trailer he watched the destruction of the laboratory. It looked like it had been sitting on a volcano. The plywood that had layered the inside of the trailer burned with a huge cloud of black smoke. He didn’t think his bomb caused so much destruction; it must have been the stacks of fuel presumably used for generators and the complicated ventilation system of the laboratory.

Sound came to him as if he had stuffed his fingers in his ears. Shouts. A few screams.

Gunfire.

Suddenly explosions ripped the air as doors on opposite sides of the warehouse blew inward, followed by armed men.

Automatic gunfire chattered in return.

From his hiding spot Derek saw the tall thin figure of Dr. Ling creeping toward a doorway, about to make his escape during the chaos.

With a flare of rage, Derek dropped the vaccine and lunged from beneath the trailer and sprinted toward the torturous Asian. Ling must have sensed something because he spun just as Derek reached him. His eyes widened his recognition. His hand darted inside his jacket and withdrew a stiletto. “So, Dr. Stillwater. You live.”

Derek slowed, hands up, dropping into a defensive martial arts stance.

Ling shifted the blade from hand to hand, moving in a circle. Around them was chaos, flames and gunfire. “I assume you are responsible for this.”

Derek didn’t comment. Ling’s hands were very fast. It was difficult keeping his eyes on the blade. He needed to keep his concentration on Ling’s center of gravity, on his hips and stomach because that was where he would get a clue as to the man’s intentions. Not the hands, the waist, the thighs. But he also needed to know where the blade was.

Ling lunged with his left hand. His empty left hand.

Derek spun, slamming his arm down to block the right hand that held the blade. He caught Ling’s wrist. With his left hand Ling jabbed his stiffened fingers into Derek’s shoulder. Derek’s arm grew numb.

Derek twisted Ling’s right wrist, grinding the bones, and snapped his bare foot into Ling’s knee. Ling grunted and lunged with the knife blade, up, toward Derek’s wrist.

Derek kicked Ling’s knee again. Ling dropped to the ground, bringing Derek with him, the knife point close to his wrist.

Derek tried to use his right arm, but it was numb. Ling jabbed his free hand at Derek’s eyes. Derek flinched back, still clutching Ling’s knife hand.

Ling’s free hand curved into what Derek recognized as a shape called “the rooster’s head.” Fingers joined and curved downward, wrist up. It could be used to block, to strike, and could be used to strike with the joined fingertips or the blunt edge of the wrist.

Derek fell foward toward Ling, using gravity, and swung his numb arm upward, slamming his elbow into Ling’s face.

Ling stumbled backward, thrashing out of Derek’s grasp, rolling smoothly and coming up on his feet. The stiletto was back in his hands. The Asian’s eyes narrowed and he moved cautiously, the blade moving back and forth, back and forth.

Derek lunged right as if to go for the knife, then dropped to the floor and swept Ling’s feet out from under him, spinning as he did, bringing his fist down on Ling’s wrist with an audible crack. The knife dropped to the pavement. Ling snatched it up in his other hand and lunged with a scream at Derek, who shuffled backward before the attack. Ling kept coming, backing Derek against the hard surface of a trailer.

A familiar voice shouted, “Freeze,” but neither man paid any attention.

Ling thrust the blade at Derek’s throat. At the last second Derek shifted. Just a few inches. The knife plunged past him and into the thin aluminum skin of the trailer.

For just a fraction of a section the knife stuck as Ling struggled to pull the blade out of the plywood and aluminum wall.

Derek struck Ling in the throat with a closed fist. There was the nauseating sound of cartilage crushing. Ling, eyes wide, let go of the stiletto and staggered backward, fingers scrabbling at his ruined throat. He tried to speak, but the only sound was a harsh gurgle followed by blood spewing from his mouth.

Before Derek could take another step James Johnston stepped forward, placed a gun to Ling’s head and pulled the trigger. Ling collapsed to the floor, most of his head gone, very much dead.

Johnston walked over to Derek. “Are you okay?”

Derek held out his hand. “Can I borrow your gun?”

Johnston, a baffled expression, handed over the Glock. Derek took it, stepped over to the corpse of Ling, and emptied every round in the magazine into the Asian’s body. Each round made the body jump and Derek felt something surge inside him at each twitch. When he had spent each round he felt the anger seep away, leaving scar tissue like a burn on his soul.

With an angry jerk Derek dropped the empty magazine from the weapon and held out his hand. “Got more?”

“Not to do that.”

“I need a weapon.”

“You need to go home and sleep it off. You need some R&R. We’ve got it under control here.”

“Coffee’s gone. Dulles. He’s got the virus and plans to let it loose on a plane. Even with instructions on how to make the vaccine it might be too late if we don’t stop him. This virus acts too fast and getting it distributed will take too long. Millions might still die. I’m going after him. I need a gun.”

Then Derek reached under his scrub shirt and retrieved the computer disks and leaned down to pick up the box containing the vaccine. “Get this to USAMRIID.” He quickly explained what they were.

Johnston took the disks and the vials. “I’ll get this over there right away. But don’t go after Coffee alone—”

“Spare magazine. Now.” Derek raised the gun in his hand and held out his other for the spare magazine. Reluctantly Johnston dropped it into his hand.

Derek said, “I need clothes.” His eyes darted. He forced his way into the nearest trailer, the one he had hidden beneath. There was broken glass on the floor. Furniture. A TV. It was almost homey. In the living area he found a closet with men’s and women’s clothing. He quickly drew on jeans, a denim shirt, socks and a pair of running shoes. They were all a little big on him, but they would do. “Where are we?” he asked Johnston, who had silently followed him in.

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

“Arlington. By the river. Derek, I’ll alert the Bureau. Don’t go after him—”

But his words fell on thin air as Derek rushed from the trailer and sprinted across the warehouse toward a rank of cars, Jeeps and motorcycles. Derek jumped on a cycle, kicked it into life and roared out of the headquarters of The Fallen Angels.

60

Derek raced across town on the motorcycle, in and out among cars, shifting onto the shoulder when the morning traffic clogged. Dulles was a long way from the warehouse in Alexandria, more than twenty miles west. He sped down Braddock to King Street through Sleepy Hollow and Falls Church, charging onto 66 to 267, The Dulles Airport Access Road. Cars, buildings, trees, parks, business were all a blur out of the corners of his eyes. All he felt was an urgency, adrenaline coursing through his veins like an electrical wire in his blood.

As he approached Dulles, his mind registered the signs indicating airlines. Dulles was huge. Probably about a million square feet.

The Air France sign was the most obvious clue. If Richard Coffee was actually heading toward France, that was the way to go, concourse B.

He parked the bike and stopped to take a deep breath. Security was going to be tight. He didn’t have ID and he looked like a wreck. What the hell had he been thinking?

He went in, browsing the computer screens behind the ticket counters. Dulles was a babble of voices in all languages. Flights to Paris…

There was one leaving in an hour.

His gaze scanned the crowd. Hundreds of people, men, women, children. All on the move. Waiting in line, in and out of bathrooms, in and out of the bars and lounges and restaurants. People brushed past him carrying laptop computers and carry-on luggage, hauling wheeled suitcases like reluctant overweight dogs.

If Coffee was here, what would he be doing? Would he have headed for his gate? If he had, Derek thought he might as well forget it. The thought made him feel desperate, panicky. Once again, he felt the panic rat gnawing at his guts. After all this, to be too late. Without his passport or a ticket he didn’t stand a chance of picking up Coffee here.

What would Coffee do?

If Derek were in Coffee’s shoes, he would head for his gate at the last minute, staying in crowded areas with exits. Would Coffee be so cocky as to assume nobody was pursuing him?

Somebody bumped him and he stepped aside, gaze scanning the crowd.

Something sharp pressed against his spine. Coffee’s low voice said, “You are unbelievable. Come with me.”

Derek tensed. “I’m perfectly happy right here, Richard.”

The blade pressed harder into his back. “It would be seriously inconvenient for me to kill you right here, Derek, but I could. I could push this blade right into your spinal column, leave the knife there and walk away and be gone. Move it!”

Derek walked the way Coffee directed him, toward an escalator.

“Where are we going?”

“Somewhere else.”

“I’ve told the authorities you’re here. They’ll be here soon. We’ve caught the rest of your people.”

“I’ll find more.”

They rode down the escalator and Coffee directed him toward the revolving turnstiles of the baggage claim areas.

“Picking up your luggage?”

Coffee moved him close to where the conveyor belt slipped inside the luggage area. Suitcases rode on their endless journey.

“It’s the end for you, Derek. I’m not—”

A tall, striking woman appeared from the crowd. She wore tan slacks, a white oxford shirt and a maroon blazer. One hand was deep in the blazer pocket. “Don’t move, Surkho.”

Derek had never seen the woman before. Behind him Coffee said, “Irina. Well, well, well. Traveling today?”

“Let him go.”

“I’d really like to know how you followed me here.”

She seemed calm. “You think this is the time for it, Surkho?”

“I learn from my mistakes.”

A small smile played across her lips. “Nadia had to pay for that apartment somehow. I backtracked the financials. Probably just a step ahead of the FBI. Now let him go.”

Coffee shrugged and stepped away. Derek moved aside, his gun heavy in his own pocket. He looked around for security guards. He couldn’t believe there were none to be seen. Where the hell were they all? One shout would bring them running, he was sure.

Coffee pulled a can of Coke from his pocket.

“It’s not ideal,” Coffee said, “but this will do.”

Derek lunged at Coffee, grabbing onto his old friend’s wrist. Coffee slammed his other hand into Derek’s skull. His head felt like a gong, but he held on with one hand, hammering at his wrist with the other, wanting him to drop the can. He mustn’t release Chimera here.

They tumbled onto the moving treadmill, bumped and banged by moving luggage. Somebody screamed. Somebody else yelled for security.

Derek slammed Coffee’s arm down onto the stainless steel rim of the luggage carousel. The can slipped from his grip and went rolling and skittering across the moving treadmill. They dived after it. Derek got his fingers on it but it shot away.

Coffee spun after it, but Derek caught him by the belt and knocked him down. Coffee kicked out, connecting solidly with Derek’s knee. Derek felt something snap and a burst of pain exploded through his leg. He tried to stand, but his left leg collapsed beneath him.

He watched helplessly as Coffee chased after the Coke can.

Only to see it picked up by the woman with the gun. Coffee stopped, eyes narrowed. “Give it to me, Irina.”

Irina had a gun in her other hand. “Not a chance.”

Derek finally got his own gun out, shouted, “Freeze! You’re both under—”

Irina fired her weapon at Coffee, who simultaneously dived through the opening into the luggage carousel warehouse.

Derek shouted again. “Put the can down! Do it now!”

She stared at him, surprised. “He’s getting away.”

“Put the can down.”

She stared at him, uncomprehending.

“Now!” His gun was steady. “I will shoot.”

Their gazes locked. She carefully set the can of Coke down on the rim of the carousel and without a moment’s hesitation dived through the hatchway after Richard Coffee.

Derek crawled, dragging his useless leg after him, pain shooting through him until he reached the can of Coke. He leaned back against the carousel, the can of Coke clutched to his chest, the Glock in his other hand, ready to shoot anyone who tried to take it from him. When the first security guards arrived, guns drawn, he said, “My name is Derek Stillwater. I’m with the Department of Homeland Security. You need to contact James Johnston immediately.”

The security cop was a broad-shouldered man with more than a little bit of worry in his dark brown eyes. “Put the gun down.”

Derek shook his head. “National Security matter. A terrorist just went through there into the luggage area. His name is Richard Coffee. He’s very dangerous. Get your people after him. He’s responsible for yesterday’s White House attack.”

“Drop your gun!”

Derek closed his eyes. His breathing was harsh and raspy. “I said…” He trailed off. He would not let down the gun until the Chimera was someplace safe. He had the canister of Chimera. He had stopped Coffee. He had retrieved the devil’s pitchfork.

For now.