The Judas Strain

1 Dark Madonna

He was being hunted.

Stefano Gallo hurried across the open plaza square. The morning sun already baked the stones of the piazza, and the usual throng of tourists sought shady spots or crowded the gelato shop that lay within the shadow of St. Mark’s Basilica. But this most lofty of all of Venice’s landmarks, with its towering Byzantine facade, massive bronze horses, and domed cupolas, was not his goal.

Not even such a blessed sanctuary could offer him protection.

There was only one hope.

His steps became more rushed as he passed by the basilica. The piazza’s pigeons scattered from his path as he stumbled through them, heedless of their flapping flight. He was beyond stealth. He had already been discovered. He had spotted the young Egyptian with the black eyes and trimmed beard as he’d entered the far side of the square. Their gazes had locked. The man was now dressed in a dark suit that flowed like oil from his wide, sharp shoulders. The first time the man had approached Stefano he had claimed to be an archaeology student out of Budapest, representing an old friend and colleague from the University of Athens.

The Egyptian had come to the Museo Archeologico searching for a specific bit of antiquity. A minor treasure. An obelisk from his country. The Egyptian, financed by his government, wished it returned to his homeland. He had come with a sizable payment, bonded cashier notes. Stefano, one of the museum’s curators, was not above accepting such a bribe; his wife’s escalating medical bills threatened to evict them from their small apartment. To collect such secret payment was not untoward; for the past two decades the Egyptian government had been buying back national treasures out of private collections and pressuring museums to return what rightfully belonged in Egypt.

So Stefano had agreed, promising at first to deliver it up. What was one small nondescript stone obelisk? The object had remained crated for almost a full century according to the manifest. And its terse description probably explained why: Unmarked marble obelisk, excavated in Tanis, dated to the late dynastic period (26th Dynasty, 615 B.C.). There was nothing unusual or particularly intriguing, unless one looked closer, followed its trail of provenance. It had come out of a collection that graced one of the Musei Vaticani in Rome: the Gregorian Egyptian Museum.

How it ended up in the vaults here in Venice was unknown.

Then yesterday morning, Stefano had received a newspaper clipping, sent by private courier in an envelope with a single symbol stamped into a wax seal.

The Greek letter sigma.

He still did not understand the significance of the seal, but he did understand the import of the enclosed clipping. A single article, dated three days prior, reported news of a man’s body found on an Aegean beach, his throat slashed, his body bloated and nested with feasting eels. An especially fierce storm surge had returned the body from its watery grave. Dental records identified the body as that of his university colleague, the one who had reportedly sent the Egyptian.

The man had been dead for weeks.

Shock had caused Stefano to act rashly. He clutched the heavy object to his bosom, wrapped in sackcloth and still prickling with packing hay.

Stefano had stolen the obelisk from the vault, knowing the act would put him, his wife, his whole family, at risk.

He’d had no choice. Along with the dire article, the sealed envelope had contained a single message, unsigned, but plainly scrawled in a hurry, in a woman’s hand, a warning. What the note contended seemed impossible, incredible, but he had tested the claim himself. It had proved true.

Tears threatened as he ran, a sob choked his throat.

No choice.

The obelisk must not fall into the hands of the Egyptian. Still, it was a burden he refused to shoulder any longer than necessary. His wife, his daughter…he pictured the bloated body of his colleague. Would the same befall his family?

Oh, Maria, what have I done?

There was only one who could take this burden from him. The one who had sent the envelope, a warning sealed with a Greek letter. At the end of her note, a place had been named, along with a time.

He was already late.

Somehow the Egyptian had discovered his theft, must have sensed Stefano was going to betray him. So he had come for it at dawn. Stefano had barely escaped his offices. He had fled on foot.

But not fast enough.

He checked over his shoulder. The Egyptian had vanished into the milling crowd of tourists.

Turning back around, Stefano stumbled through the shadow of the square’s bell tower, the Campanile di San Marco. Once the brick tower had served as the city’s watchtower, overlooking the nearby docks and guarding the port. Would that it could protect him now.

His goal lay across a small piazzetta. Ahead rose the Palazzo Ducal, the fourteenth-century palace of Venice’s former dukes. Its two levels of Gothic arches beckoned, offering salvation in Istrian stone and rosy Veronese marble.

Clutching his prize, he stumbled across the street.

Was she still there? Would she take the burden?

He rushed toward the sheltering shadows, escaping the blaze of the sun and the glare off the neighboring sea. He needed to be lost in the maze of the palace. Besides housing the duke’s personal residence, the Palazzo Ducal also served as a governmental office building, a courthouse, a council chamber, even an old prison. A newer prison rose across the canal behind the palace, connected by an arched bridge, the infamous Bridge of Sighs, over which Casanova had once made his escape, the only prisoner ever to break out of the palace’s cells.

As Stefano ducked under the overhanging stretch of loggia, he prayed to the ghost of Casanova to protect his own flight. He even allowed himself a small breath of relief as he sank into the shadows. He knew the palace well. It was easy to get lost in its maze of corridors, a ready place for a clandestine rendezvous.

Or so he placed his faith.

He entered the palace through the western archway, flowing in with a few tourists. Ahead opened the palace’s courtyard with its two ancient wells and the magnificent marble staircase, the Scala dei Giganti, the Giant’s Stairs. Stefano skirted the courtyard, avoiding the sun now that he had escaped it. He pushed through a small, private door and followed a series of administrative rooms. They ended at the old inquisitor’s office, where many poor souls had suffered interrogations of the most pained and brutal sort. Not stopping, Stefano continued into the neighboring stone torture chamber.

A door slammed somewhere behind him, causing him to jump.

He clutched his prize even tighter.

The instructions had been specific.

Taking a narrow back stairway, he wended down into the palace’s deepest dungeons, the Pozzi, or Wells. It was here the most notorious prisoners had been held.

It was also where he was to make his rendezvous.

Stefano pictured the Greek sigil.

What did it mean?

He entered the dank hall, broken by black stone cells, too low for a prisoner to stand erect. Here the imprisoned froze during winter or died of thirst during the long Venetian summers, many forgotten by all except the rats.

Stefano clicked on a small penlight.

This lowest level of the Pozzi appeared deserted. As he continued deeper, Stefano’s steps echoed off the stone walls, sounding like someone following him. His chest squeezed with the fear. He slowed. Was he too late? He found himself holding his breath, suddenly wishing for the sunlight he had fled.

He stopped, a tremble quaking through him.

As if sensing his hesitation, a light flared, coming from the last cell.

“Who?” he asked. “Chi è là?”

A scrape of heel on stone, followed by a soft voice, in Italian, accented subtly.

“I sent you the note, Signore Gallo.”

A lithe figure stepped out into the corridor, a small flashlight in her hand. The glare made it hard to discern her features, even when she lowered her flashlight. She was dressed all in black leather, hugging tight to hips and breast. Her features were further obscured by a head scarf, wrapped in a bedouin style, obscuring her features fully, except her eyes that reflected a glint of her light. She moved with an unhurried grace that helped calm the thudding of his heart.

She appeared out of the shadows like some dark Madonna.

“You have the artifact?” she asked.

“I…I do,” he stammered, and took a step toward her. He held out the obelisk, letting the sackcloth fall away. “I want nothing more to do with it. You said you could take it somewhere safe.”

“I can.” She motioned for him to set it down on the floor.

He crouched and rested the Egyptian stone spire on the floor, glad to be rid of it. The obelisk, carved of black marble, rose from a square base, ten centimeters per side, and tapered to a pyramidal point forty centimeters tall.

The woman crouched across from him, balancing on the toes of her black boots. She ran her light over its drab surface. The marble was badly chipped, poorly preserved. A long crack jagged through it. It was plain why it had been forgotten.

Still, blood had been spilled for it.

And he knew why.

She reached across to Stefano and pushed his penlight down. With a flick of her thumb, she switched on her flashlight. The white light dimmed to a rich purple. Every bit of dust on his slacks lit up. The white stripes of his shirt blazed.

Ultraviolet.

The glow bathed the obelisk.

Stefano had done the same earlier, testing the woman’s claim and witnessing the miracle for himself. He leaned closer with her now, examining the four sides of the obelisk.

The surfaces were no longer blank. Lines of script glowed in blue-white sigils down all four sides.

It was not hieroglyphics. It was a language that predated the ancient Egyptians.

Stefano could not keep the awe from his voice. “Could it truly be the writing of the—”

Behind him, whispered words echoed down from the floor above. A skitter of loose rock trickled down the back stairs.

He swung around, fearful, his blood icing.

He recognized the calm, clipped cadence of the whisper in the dark.

The Egyptian.

They’d been discovered.

Perhaps sensing the same, the woman clicked off her lamp, dousing the violet light. Darkness collapsed around them.

Stefano lifted his penlight, seeking some hope in the face of this dark Madonna. Instead, he discovered a black pistol, elongated with a silencer, aimed at his face, held in the woman’s other hand. He understood and despaired. Fooled yet again.

“Grazie, Stefano.”

Between the sharp cough and the spat of muzzle flash, only one thought squeezed through the fatal gap.

Maria, forgive me.

Monsignor Vigor Verona climbed the stairs with great reluctance, haunted by memories of flame and smoke. His heart was too heavy for such a long climb. He felt a decade older than his sixty years. Stopping at a landing, he craned upward, one hand supporting his lower back.

Above, the circular stairwell was a choked maze of scaffolding, crisscrossed with platforms. Knowing it was bad luck, Vigor ducked under a painter’s ladder and continued higher up the dark stairs that climbed the Torre dei Venti, the Tower of Winds.

Fumes of fresh paint threatened to burn tears from his eyes. But other smells also intruded, phantoms from a past he preferred to forget.

Charred flesh, acrid smoke, burning ash.

Two years ago an explosion and fire had ignited the tower into a blazing torch within the heart of the Vatican. But after much work, the tower was returning to its former glory. Vigor had looked forward to next month, when the tower would be reopened, the ribbon cut by His Eminence himself.

But mostly he looked forward to finally putting the past to rest.

Even the famous Meridian Room at the very top of the tower, where Galileo had sought to prove that the earth revolved around the sun, was almost fully restored. It had taken eighteen months, under the care and expertise of a score of artisans and art historians, to painstakingly reclaim the room’s frescoes from soot and ash.

Would that all could be so recovered with brush and paint.

As the new prefect of the Archivio Segretto Vaticano, Vigor knew how much of the Vatican’s Secret Archives had been lost forever to flame, smoke, and water. Thousands of ancient books, illuminated texts, and archival regestra—leather-bound packets of parchments and papers. Over the past century, the rooms of the tower had served as overflow from the carbonile, the main bunker of the archives far below.

Now sadly, the library had much more room.

“Prefetto Verona!”

Vigor startled back to the present, almost wincing, hearing an echo of another’s voice. But it was only his assistant, a young seminary student named Claudio, calling down from the top of the stairs. He awaited Vigor in the Meridian Room, having reached the destination well ahead of his older superior. The young man held back a drape of clear plastic tarp that separated the stair from the upper room.

An hour ago Vigor had been summoned to the tower by the head of the restoration team. The man’s message had been as urgent as it was cryptic. Come quickly. A most horrible and wonderful discovery has been made.

So Vigor had left his offices for the long trek to the top of the freshly painted tower. He had not even changed out of his black cassock, donned for an earlier meeting with the Vatican’s secretary of state. He regretted his choice of garment, too heavy and warm for the arduous climb. But finally he reached his assistant and wiped his damp forehead with a handkerchief.

“This way, prefetto.” Claudio held the drape aside.

“Grazie, Claudio.”

Beyond the tarp, the upper chamber was oven-hot, as if the stones of the tower still retained heat from the two-year-old fire. But it was just the midday sun baking the tallest tower of the Vatican. Rome was going through an especially scorching heat wave. Vigor prayed for a bit of a breeze, for the Torre dei Venti to prove its namesake with a gust of wind.

But Vigor also knew most of the sweat from his brow had nothing to do with the heat or the long climb in a cassock. Since the fires, he had avoided coming all the way up here, directing from afar. Even now he kept his back to one of the chambers off to the side.

He once had had another assistant, before Claudio.

Jakob.

It hadn’t been only books that had been lost to the flames here.

“There you are!” a voice boomed.

Dr. Balthazar Pinosso, overseer of the Meridian Room’s restoration project, strode across the circular chamber. The man was a giant, nearly seven feet tall, dressed almost like a surgeon in white with paper-booted feet. He had a respirator pushed to the top of his head. Vigor knew him well. Balthazar was dean of the art history department at the Gregorian University, where Vigor had once served as the head of the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology.

“Prefect Verona, thank you for coming so promptly.” The large man glanced at his wristwatch and rolled his eyes, silently and amusingly commenting on his slow climb.

Vigor appreciated his gentle teasing. After he’d assumed the high mantle of the archives, few dared to speak to him beyond reverential tones. “If I was as long-legged as you, Balthazar, I could have taken two stairs at a time and gotten here well ahead of poor Claudio.”

“Then best we finish here so you can return for your usual afternoon nap. I’d hate to disturb such diligent labors.”

Despite the man’s joviality, Vigor recognized a bit of tension in his eyes. He also noted that Balthazar had dismissed all the men and women who worked alongside him on the restoration. Recognizing this, Vigor waved Claudio back toward the stair.

“Could you give us a few moments of privacy, Claudio?”

“Certainly, prefetto.”

Once his assistant had retreated back to the stairs and vanished through the drape of plastic tarp, Vigor returned his attention to his former colleague. “Balthazar, why this urgency?”

“Come. I’ll show you.”

As the man stepped toward the far side of the chamber, Vigor saw that the room’s restorations were nearing completion. All along the circular walls and ceilings, Nicolò Circignani’s famous frescoes depicted scenes from the Bible, with cherubs and clouds above. A few scenes were still crisscrossed with silk grids, awaiting further work. But most of the repairs were already complete. Even the carving of the zodiac on the floor had been cleaned and polished down to its bare marble. Off to the side, a single spear of light pierced a quarter-size hole in the wall, spiking down atop the room’s slab floor, illuminating the white marble meridian line that ran across the dark floor, turning the chamber into a sixteenth-century solar observatory.

On the far side, Balthazar parted a drape to reveal a small side closet. It even looked like the original stout door was still intact, evident from the charring on its thick wooden surface.

The tall historian tapped one of the bronze bolts that pegged the door. “We discovered the door has a bronze core. Lucky for that. It preserved what was in this room.”

Despite Vigor’s trepidation at being here, his curiosity was piqued. “What was in there?”

Balthazar pulled the door open. It was a cramped, windowless space, stone-walled, barely room for two people to stand abreast. Two shelves rose on either side, floor to ceiling, crowded with leather-bound books. Despite the reek of fresh paint, the mustiness of the chamber wafted out, proving the power of antiquity over human effort.

“The contents were inventoried when we first took over here and cleared the closet,” Balthazar explained. “But nothing of great significance was found. Mostly crumbling historical texts of an astronomical and nautical nature.” He sighed loudly and a tad apologetically as he stepped inside. “I’m afraid I should have been more careful, what with all the day laborers. But I was focused on the Meridian. We kept one of the Swiss guards posted up here at night. I thought all was secure.”

Vigor followed the larger man into the closet.

“We also used the room to store some of our tools.” Balthazar waved to the bottom shelf of one rack. “To keep them from getting underfoot.”

Vigor shook his head, growing tired from the heat and the heaviness of his heart. “I don’t understand. Why then was I summoned?”

Something like a grumble echoed from the man’s chest. “A week ago,” he said, “one of the guards chased away someone snooping about.” Balthazar waved a hand to encompass the closet. “In here.”

“Why wasn’t I informed?” Vigor asked. “Was anything stolen?”

“No, that’s just it. You were in Milan, and the guard scared off the stranger. I just assumed it was a common thief, taking advantage of the confusion here, with the comings and goings of work crews. Afterward, I posted a second guard up here, just in case.”

Vigor waved for him to continue.

“But this morning one of the art restorers was returning a lamp to the closet. He had it still switched on when he entered.”

Balthazar reached behind Vigor and shifted the door closed, shutting out the light from the other room. He then clicked on a small hand lamp. It bathed the room in purple, lighting up his white coveralls. “We use ultraviolet light during art restoration projects. It can help bring forth details the naked eye can miss.”

Balthazar pointed to the marble floor.

But Vigor had already noted what had appeared under the lamp’s glow. A shape, painted crudely, shone on the center of the floor.

A curled dragon, nearly turned upon its own tail.

Vigor’s breath choked in his throat. He even stumbled back a step, trapped between horror and disbelief. His ears roared with the memory of blood and screams.

Balthazar placed a hand on his shoulder, steadying him. “Are you all right? Maybe I should have better prepared you.”

Vigor stepped out of the man’s grip. “I…I’m fine.”

To prove this, he knelt closer to inspect the glowing mark, a mark he knew too well. The sigil of Ordinis Draconis. The Imperial Royal Dragon Court.

Balthazar met his eye, the whites glowing under the ultraviolet. It was the Dragon Court that had burned this tower two years ago, aided by the traitorous former prefect of the Secret Archives, Prefetto Alberto, now dead. It was a story Vigor had thought long ended, finally put to rest, especially now with the tower’s phoenix-like rise from the smoke and ashes.

What was the mark doing here?

Vigor knelt with a crick of his left knee. The mark looked hastily sketched. Just a crude approximation.

Balthazar hovered at his shoulder. “I studied it with a magnifying loupe. I found a drop of restoration paste beneath the fluorescent paint, indicating it had been recently drawn. Within the week, I’d guess.”

“The thief…” Vigor mumbled, remembering the start of the story.

“Perhaps not just a common thief after all.”

Vigor massaged his knee. The mark could only be of dire import. A threat or warning, maybe a message to another Dragon Court mole in the Vatican. He remembered Balthazar’s message: A most horrible and wonderful discovery has been made. Staring at the dragon, Vigor now understood the horrible nature of that message.

Vigor glanced over his shoulder. “You also mentioned discovering something wonderful in your note.”

Balthazar nodded. He reached behind and opened the closet’s door, allowing in a flood of light from the outer room. With the brightness, the phosphorescent dragon vanished off the floor, as if shunning the light.

And Vigor allowed a long breath to escape with it.

“Come see this.” Balthazar knelt beside Vigor. “We would have missed this if not for the dragon painting on the floor.”

He leaned forward on a palm and reached out with his other hand. His fingers brushed across the bare stone. “It took the loupe to reveal this. I caught sight of it when examining the fluorescent paint. While I waited for you, I cleared some of the centuries of grime and dirt from the carving.”

Vigor studied the stone floor. “What carving?”

“Lean closer. Feel here.”

Concentrating, Vigor obeyed. He felt more than saw, with his fingertips, like a blind man reading Braille. There was a faint inscription in the stone.

Vigor didn’t even need Balthazar’s assessment to know the carving was ancient. The symbols were as crisp as scientific notation, but this was no physicist’s scrawl. As the former head of the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology, Vigor recognized the significance.

Balthazar must have read his reaction. His voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. “Is it truly what I think it is?”

Vigor sat back and rubbed the dust from his fingertips. “A script older than Hebrew,” he mumbled. “The first language if you were to believe the stories.”

“Why was it drawn here? What does it signify?”

Vigor shook his head and studied the floor, another question growing. Again the dragon sigil appeared, but only in his mind’s eye, lit by his worry rather than the glow of ultraviolet. Upon the stone, the dragon had coiled around the inscription, as if protecting it.

His friend’s earlier words returned to Vigor. We would have missed this if not for the dragon painting on the floor. Maybe the dragon was not so much protecting the ancient carving as meant to illuminate it, to cast a spotlight upon it.

But whose eyes was it meant for?

As Vigor pictured the twisted dragon, he again felt the weight of Jakob’s body in his arms, smoking and charred.

In that moment Vigor knew the truth. The message was not meant for another Dragon Court operative, another traitor like Prefect Alberto. It was meant to draw someone intimately tied to the history of the Dragon Court, someone who would know its significance.

The message had been left for him.

But why? What was its meaning?

Vigor slowly stood. He knew someone who might be able to help, someone he had avoided calling for the past year. Until now, there had been no need to keep in touch, especially after the man had broken up with Vigor’s niece. But Vigor knew a part of his reticence rested not just with broken hearts. The man, as much as this tower, reminded Vigor of the bloody past here, a past he wanted to forget.

But now he had no choice.

The dragon sigil glowed before his mind’s eye, full of dread warning.

He needed help.

“Gray, can you empty the kitchen trash?”

“Be right there, Mom.”

In the living room, Commander Gray Pierce picked up another empty bottle of Sam Adams, another dead soldier of his parents’ July Fourth celebration, and chucked it into the plastic bin under his arm. At least the party was winding down.

He checked his watch. Almost midnight.

Gray gathered another two beer bottles off the front entry table and paused before the open doorway, appreciating a bit of breeze through the screen door. The night smelled of jasmine, along with a lingering hint of smoke from fireworks exploded by the block party. Off in the distance, a few whistles and crackles continued to punctuate the night. A dog howled from the yard behind his mother, aggravated by the noise.

Only a few guests remained on the front porch of his parents’ Craftsman bungalow, lazing about on the porch swing or leaning on the railing, enjoying the cool night after the usual swelter of a Maryland summer. They had watched the fireworks from the perch there hours earlier. Afterward, the partygoers had slowly dwindled away into the night. Only the most diehard remained.

Like Gray’s boss.

Director Painter Crowe leaned against a post, bent next to the teaching assistant who worked for Gray’s mother. He was a dour young man from the Congo who attended George Washington University on a scholarship. Painter Crowe had been inquiring about the state of hostilities in the man’s homeland. It seemed even at a party, the director of Sigma Force kept a finger on the world’s pulse.

It was also why he made such a great director.

Sigma Force functioned as the covert field arm for DARPA, the Department of Defense’s research and development division. Members were sent out to safeguard or neutralize technologies vital to U.S. security. The team consisted of ex — Special Forces soldiers who had been handpicked in secret and placed into rigorous doctoral programs, forming a militarized team of technically trained operatives. Or as Monk, Gray’s friend and team member, liked to joke: killer scientists.

With such responsibility, Director Crowe’s only relaxation this night seemed to be the single-malt scotch resting on the porch rail. He’d been nursing it all evening. As if sensing the scrutiny, Painter nodded to Gray through the door.

In the wan illumination of a few candlelit lanterns, the director cast a stony figure, dressed in dark slacks and a pressed linen shirt. His half — Native American heritage could be read in the hard planes of his face.

Gray studied those planes, searching for any cracks in his demeanor, knowing the pressure he must be under. Sigma’s organizational structure had been undergoing a comprehensive NSA and DARPA internal audit, and now a medical crisis was brewing in Southeast Asia. So it was good to see the man out of Sigma’s subterranean offices.

If only for this one night.

Still, duty was never far from the director’s mind.

Proving this, Painter stretched, pushed off the rail, and stepped to the door. “I should head off,” he called to Gray, and checked his wristwatch. “Thought I’d stop by the office and check to see if Lisa and Monk have arrived safely.”

The pair of scientists, Drs. Lisa Cummings and Monk Kokkalis, had been sent to investigate a medical crisis among the Indonesian islands. The pair, traveling as adjuncts to the World Health Organization, had left this morning.

Gray pushed through the swinging screen door and shook his boss’s hand. He knew Painter’s interest in the pair’s itinerary stretched beyond his role as field ops director. He read the worry of a man in love.

“I’m sure Lisa is fine,” Gray assured him, knowing Lisa and Painter had barely been apart of late. “That is, as long as she packed her earplugs. Monk’s snoring could rattle the engine off a jet’s wing. And speaking of the one-man bugle corps, if you hear any news, you’ll let Kat know—”

Painter raised a hand. “She’s already buzzed my BlackBerry twice this evening, checking if I’d heard any word.” He downed his scotch. “I’ll call her immediately once I hear.”

“I suspect Monk will beat you to that call, what with two women to answer to now.”

Painter smiled, if a bit tiredly.

Three months ago Kat and Monk had brought home a new baby girl, six pounds and three ounces, christened Penelope Anne. After being assigned this current field op, Monk had joked about escaping diapers and midnight feedings, but Gray recognized how it tore a little hole in his friend’s heart to leave behind his wife and baby girl.

“Thanks for coming over, Director. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Please pass on my thanks to your folks.”

Reminded, Gray glanced to the flood of light along the left side of the house, coming from the detached garage around back. His father had retreated there some time ago. Not all the fireworks this evening had been out on the streets. Lately, his father was finding social situations more and more difficult as his Alzheimer’s progressed, forgetting names, repeating questions already answered. His frustration led to a private flare-up between father and son. Afterward, his father had stomped off to the garage and his shop.

More and more his father could be found holed up back there. Gray suspected he was not so much hiding from the world as circling the wagons, seeking a solitary place to protect what remained of his faculties, finding solace in the curl of oak from his wood planer or turn of a well-seated screw. Yet, despite this manner of meditation, Gray recognized the growing fear behind his father’s eyes.

“I’ll let them know,” Gray mumbled.

As Painter departed, the last of the straggling partygoers followed in his wake. Some stopped inside to wish his mother well while Gray said his good-byes to the others. Soon he had the porch to himself.

“Gray!” his mother called from inside. “The trash!”

With a sigh, he bent and recollected the bin with empty bottles, cans, and plastic cups. He would help his mother clean up, then bicycle the short way back across town to his apartment. As he let the screen door clap behind him, he switched off the porch light and headed across the wood floor toward the kitchen. He heard the dishwasher humming, and the clatter of pans in the sink.

“Mom, I’ll finish up,” he said as he entered the kitchen. “Go rest.”

His mother turned from the sink. She wore navy cotton slacks, a white silk blouse, and a damp checkered apron. At moments like this, harried as she was from an evening of entertaining, his mother’s advancing age suddenly struck him. Who was this gray-haired old woman in his mother’s kitchen?

Then she snapped a wet towel at him and broke the delusion.

“Just get the trash. I’m almost finished here. And tell your father to get inside. The Edelmanns do not appreciate his nocturnal woodworking. Oh, and I’ve wrapped up the leftover barbecued chicken. Could you take that to the refrigerator in the garage?”

“I’ll have to make a second trip.” He hauled up the two plastic sacks of garbage in one hand and cradled the bin of empty bottles under his arm. “Be right back.”

He used his hip to push through the rear door and out into the shadowy backyard. Carefully climbing down the two back steps, he crossed toward the garage and the line of garbage cans along its flank. He found himself moving with a soft tread, attempting to keep the clink of bottles silenced. A Rainbird water sprinkler betrayed him.

He tripped and the bin of bottles rattled as he caught his balance. The back neighbor’s Scottish terrier barked a complaint.

Crap…

His father swore sharply from the garage. “Gray? If that’s you…gimme a goddamn hand in here!”

Gray hesitated. After one near shouting match with his father this evening, he didn’t want a midnight encore. Over the past couple years, the two had been getting along fairly well, finding common ground after a lifetime of estrangement. But the past month, as some of his father’s cognitive tests began to slide downward again, an all-too-familiar and unwelcome brittle edge had returned to the taciturn man.

“Gray!”

“Hold on!” He dropped the garbage into one of the open cans and settled the bottle bin next to it. Girding himself, Gray crossed into the light flowing from the open garage.

The scent of sawdust and shop oil struck him, reminding him of worse days. Get the goddamn strap, you piece of…I’ll make you think twice about using one of my tools…get your head out of your ass before I knock you clear to…

His father knelt on the floor beside a spilled coffee can of sixpenny nails. He was brushing them up. Gray noted the streak of blood on the floor, from his father’s left hand.

His father craned up as Gray stepped inside. Under the fluorescent lights, there was no denying their familial ties. His father’s blue eyes held the same steel as Gray’s. Their faces were both carved into the sharp angles and clefts, marking their Welsh heritage. There was no escaping it. He was becoming his father. And though Gray’s hair was still coal black, he had a few gray hairs to prove it.

Spotting the bloodied hand, Gray crossed and motioned his father to the back sink. “Go wash that up.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

Gray opened his mouth to argue, thought better, and bent down to help his father. “What happened?”

“Was looking for wood screws.” His father waved his cut hand toward the workbench.

“But these are nails.”

His father’s eyes lit upon him. “No shit, Sherlock.” There was a well of anger in his gaze, barely constrained, but Gray knew it wasn’t directed at him for once.

Recognizing this, he remained silent and simply gathered the nails back into the coffee can. His father stared down at his hands, one bloody, one not.

“Dad?”

The large man shook his head, then finally said softly, “Goddamn it…”

Gray offered no argument.

When Gray was young, his father had worked the Texas oil fields until an industrial accident had disabled him, taking a leg off at the knee, turning an oilman into a housewife. Gray had found himself bearing the brunt of his frustration, always found wanting, never able to be the man his father wanted him to be.

Gray watched his father stare at his hands and recognized a hard truth. Maybe all along his old man’s anger had been directed inward. Like now. Not so much frustration with a son as a father’s anger at failing to be the man he wanted to be. And now once again, disability was slowly taking even that away.

Gray sought some words.

As he searched, the roar of a motorcycle sliced through any further contemplation. Down the street, tires squealed, vandalizing asphalt with rubber.

Gray straightened and placed the coffee can atop the bench. His father cursed the rude driver, probably a drunken reveler. Still, Gray swept an arm and doused the garage lights.

“What are you—?”

“Stay down,” Gray ordered.

Something was wrong…

The cycle appeared, a black and muscular Yamaha V-max. It roared into view, skidding sideways. Its headlamp was off. That’s what had set Gray’s nerves jangling. No spear of light had blazed up the street, fleeing ahead of the engine’s growl. The cycle was running dark.

Without slowing, it skidded sideways. Rear tires smoked as it tried to make the sharp turn into their driveway. It hesitated, balanced, then ripped forward.

“What the hell!” his father barked.

The rider overcompensated for the turn. The bike bobbled, then the bump of the curb sent the vehicle careening to the side. The rider fought for control, but the rear fender caught the edge of the porch step.

The bike went down in a showering skid of red sparks, becoming yet another Fourth of July display. Thrown, the rider shoulder-rolled end over end, landing in a sprawl not far from the open garage.

Farther down the drive, the bike’s engine choked and died.

Sparks blew out.

Darkness descended.

“Jesus H. Christ!” his father exclaimed.

Gray held a hand back for his father to stay in the garage. His other hand pulled a 9mm Glock from an ankle holster. He crossed toward the prone figure, all dressed in black: leather, scarf, and helmet.

A soft groan revealed two things: The rider was still alive, and it was a woman. She lay curled on her side, leathers ripped.

Gray’s mother appeared at the back door to the house, standing in the porchlight, drawn by the noise. “Gray…?”

“Stay there!” he called to her.

As Gray approached the downed rider, he noticed something lying steps away from the bike, its black shape crisp against the white cement of the driveway. It looked like some stubby pillar of black stone, cracked from the impact. From its dark interior, the glint of a metallic core reflected the moonlight.

But it was the glint of another bit of silver that caught his eye as he stepped to the rider’s side.

A small pendant around the woman’s neck.

In the shape of a dragon.

Gray recognized it immediately. He wore the same around his own neck, a gift from an old enemy, a warning and a promise when next their paths crossed.

His grip on his pistol tightened.

She rolled from her shoulder to her back with another small groan. Blood streamed across the white cement, a black river forging toward the mowed back lawn. Gray recognized a raw exit wound.

Shot from behind.

A hand reached up and pulled back the helmet. A familiar face, tight with agony, stared up at him, framed in black hair. Tanned skin and almond eyes revealed her Eurasian descent and her identity.

“Seichan…” he said.

A hand reached to him, scrabbling. “Commander Pierce…help me…”

He heard the pain in her words — but also something he’d thought he’d never hear from this cold enemy.

Terror.

2 Bloody Christmas

Just another lazy day at the beach…

Monk Kokkalis followed his guide along the narrow strand. Both men wore identical Bio-3 contamination suits. Not the best choice of apparel for strolling along a tropical beach. Under his suit, Monk had stripped to a pair of boxer trunks. Still, he felt overdressed as he slowly baked inside the sealed plastic. Shading his eyes against the midday glare, he stared out at the nearby horror.

The western bay of Christmas Island frothed and churned with the dead, as if hell itself had washed up out of the deep. Mounds of fish carcasses marked last night’s high tide. Larger hillocks of shark, dolphin, turtle, even a pygmy whale, dotted the beach — though it remained hard to tell where one began and the other ended, flesh and scale melted into a reeking mass of bone and rotting tissue. There were also scores of seabirds, contorted and dead, on the beach and in the water, perhaps attracted by the slaughter only to succumb to the same poisoning.

A nearby blowhole in the rock spewed a fountain of sludgy seawater with a ringing bellow, as if the ocean itself were gasping its last breath.

Ducking under the spray, the pair of men worked north along the beach, traversing a narrow trail of clear sand between the foulness of the tidal zone and steep jungle-shrouded cliffs.

“Remind me to skip the seafood buffet back on the ship,” Monk mumbled through the rasp of his respirator. He was glad for his suit’s canned air. He could only imagine the reek that must accompany this tidal graveyard.

He was also relieved his partner, Dr. Lisa Cummings, had remained back aboard the cruise ship on the other side of the island. The Mistress of the Seas floated in Flying Fish Cove, safely upwind of the sickening pall that wafted across the island from the toxic soup on its western side.

But others had not been as lucky.

Upon arriving at daybreak, Monk had witnessed the hundreds of men, women, and children being evacuated from the island, all in various states of contamination: some blind, others merely blistered, the worst with skin dying off in pustulant slides. And though the toxic readings were rapidly declining, the entire island was being cleared as a safety precaution.

The Mistress of the Seas, a giant luxury cruise ship out on its maiden voyage among the Indonesian islands, had been evacuated and diverted, turned into an emergency medical ship. It also served as the operations center for the World Health Organization’s team, called in to discover the cause and source for the sudden poisoning of the surrounding seas.

It was also why Monk was out here this morning, seeking some answers in the aftermath of the tragedy. Back aboard the ship, Lisa’s skill as a medical doctor was being put to hard use while Monk’s training had him tromping through this cesspool. Because of his expertise in forensics — medical and biological — he had been handpicked for this particular Sigma assignment. The op had been classified as low risk — survey only — an operation to ease him back after taking three months off for family leave.

He shied away from that last thought. He didn’t want to think of his little baby girl while slogging through the filth here. Still, it couldn’t be helped. He flashed back to Penelope’s blue eyes, pudding cheeks, and impossible corona of blond hair, so unlike her father’s shaved head and craggy features. How could something so beautiful share his genes? Then again, his wife may have stacked the deck in that department. Even here, he could not dismiss the ache in his chest, a physical longing for them, as if a tether bound him as surely as any umbilical cord, a sharing of blood between the three of them. It seemed impossible he could be this happy.

Up ahead, his guide, Dr. Richard Graff, a salt-hardened oceanic researcher out of the University of Queensland, had dropped to one knee. He knew nothing of Monk’s true identity, only that Monk had been recruited by the WHO for his expertise. Graff settled his plastic sample case atop a flat shelf of rock. Through the face shield, the man’s bearded countenance was tight with worry and concentration.

It was time to get to work.

The pair had been dropped off in an inflatable rubber Zodiac. The pilot, a sailor from the Royal Australian Navy, remained at the boat, beached beyond the kill zone. An Australian Coast Guard cutter had arrived to oversee the island’s evacuation.

The remote island, resting fifteen hundred miles northwest of Perth, was still Australian territory. First discovered on Christmas Day in 1643, the uninhabited island was eventually colonized by the British to take advantage of its phosphate deposits, setting up a major mine here, employing indentured workers from throughout the Indonesian islands. And though the mines were still in operation, the tropical island’s main industry had turned to tourism. Three-quarters of the island’s highlands, thick with rain forests, had been declared national parklands.

But no tourists would be flocking here anytime soon.

Monk joined Dr. Richard Graff.

The marine researcher noted his arrival and waved a gloved hand to encompass the massive die-off here. “It started a little over four weeks ago, according to reports of some local fishermen,” explained Graff. “Lobster traps were found full of empty crustacean shells, the flesh dissolved away inside. Trawling nets blistered hands when pulled from the sea. And it only grew worse.”

“What do you think happened here? A toxic spill of some sort?”

“No doubt it was a toxic assault, but it was no spill.”

The scientist unfolded a black collection bag, emblazoned with a hazardous chemical warning, then pointed to the nearby surf. The waters frothed with a foamy yellowish slurry, a poisonous stew thick with meat and bones.

He waved an arm. “That is all Mother Nature’s handiwork.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re looking at slime mold, mate. Composed of cyanobacteria, an ancient predecessor of the modern bacterium and algae. Three billion years ago, such slime flourished throughout the world’s oceans. And now it’s on the rise again. It was why I was called in here. Such organisms are my primary area of expertise. I’ve been studying such blooms out near the Great Barrier Reef, specifically one called fireweed. A mix of algae and cyanobacteria that can cover a soccer field in less time than it would take you to eat lunch. The bloody creature releases ten different biotoxins, potent enough to blister skin. And when dried, it can aerosolize with the burning force of pepper spray.”

Monk pictured the devastation back at The Settlement, the island’s largest township. It lay not far from the bay here, in the path of the tradewinds. “Are you saying that’s what happened here?”

“Or something like it. Fireweed and other cyanobacteria are blooming all across our oceans. From fjords of Norway to the Great Barrier Reef. Fish, coral, and marine mammals are dying off, while these ancient slimes, along with venomous jellyfish, are blooming. It’s as if evolution were running in reverse, the oceans devolving into primordial seas. And we’ve only ourselves to blame. Runoff of fertilizers, industrial chemicals, and sewage have been poisoning deltas and estuaries. Overfishing of the past fifty years has driven the population of large fish down by ninety percent. And climate change is acidifying and warming the waters, lessening its ability to hold oxygen, suffocating marine life. We are rapidly killing the seas beyond the ability to heal.”

With a shake of his head, he stared out at the dead pool. “In its wake, we are seeing the return of seas from a hundred million years ago, teeming with bacteria, toxic algae, and venomous jellyfish. Such dead spots are found all around the world.”

“But what caused this one?”

That was the question that drew them all here.

Graff shook his head. “A new unidentified slime mold. Something we haven’t seen yet. And that’s what scares me. Marine biotoxins and neurotoxins are already the most potent poisons in the world. So nasty that they are beyond even man’s ability to duplicate. Did you know saxitoxin, from bacteria in certain shellfish, has been classified by the United Nations as a weapon of mass destruction?”

Monk grimaced through his face shield at the seas here. “Mother Nature can be a nasty bitch.”

“The greatest terrorist of them all, mate. Best not to piss her off.”

Monk didn’t argue.

With the biology lecture over, Monk bent down and helped organize the collection kits. He struggled, fighting the plastic gloves of his suit. He was further compromised by a numb left hand. Maimed after a previous mission, he now wore a five-fingered prosthesis, state-of-the-art, chocked full of the latest in DARPA gadgetry, but synthetics and bioelectronics were not flesh. He cursed a bit as he fumbled a syringe into the sand.

“Careful with that,” Graff warned. “I don’t think you want to puncture your suit. Not out here. Though the toxic readings are receding, we’d best be cautious.”

Monk sighed. He would be glad to be out of this monkey suit, back aboard the ship, back to his own suite. En route to the island, Monk had pulled strings to have an entire forensics suite airlifted to the cruise ship. That’s where he’d rather be.

But first they needed lab samples. And plenty of them. Blood, tissue, and bone. From fish, shark, squid, dolphin.

“That’s odd,” Graff mumbled. He stood and glanced up and down the beach.

Monk joined him. “What?”

“One of the most ubiquitous animals on the island is Geocarcoidea natalis.”

“And in English, that would be…?”

Graff stood up and glanced up and down the beach. “I’m referring to the Christmas Island red land crab.”

Monk studied the fouled coastline. He had read up on the island’s flora and fauna. The terrestrial red crab was the star of the island, growing to the size of dinner plates. Their annual migration was one of the wonders of the natural world. Each November, timed to lunar cycles, a hundred million crabs made a mad dash from jungle to sea, dodging seabirds and attempting to prove their right to mate by surviving this gauntlet.

Graff continued, “The crabs are notorious scavengers. You’d think all the carcasses out here would attract them. Like the seabirds. But I don’t see a single one here, alive or dead.”

“Maybe they sensed the toxin and kept to their jungles.”

“If they did, such a factor might hold some clue to the origin of the toxin or the bacteria that produced it. Maybe they’ve encountered such a deadly bloom before. Maybe they’re resistant. Either way, the faster we can isolate the source, all the better.”

“To help the islanders…”

Graff shrugged. “Certainly that. But more importantly, to keep the organism from spreading.” He studied the yellowish sluice, and his voice lowered with worry. “I fear this may be a harbinger of what all oceanic scientists have been dreading.”

Monk glanced to him for elaboration.

“A bacterium that tips the scales, an agent so potent it sterilizes all life in the sea.”

“And that can happen?”

Graff knelt to begin the work. “It may already be happening.”

With that dour pronouncement, Monk spent the next hour collecting samples into vials, pouches, and plastic cups. All the while, the sun rose higher above the cliffs, glaring off the water, cooking him in his bio-suit. He began to fantasize about a cold shower and a frozen drink with an umbrella in it.

The pair slowly worked down the beach. Near the cliff face, Monk noted a cluster of charred incense sticks stuck in the sand. They formed a palisade in front of a small Buddhist shrine, no more than a faceless seated figure, long worn by sea and sand. It rested under a makeshift lean-to splattered with bird droppings. He imagined the incense sticks being lit to ward against the toxic pall, seeking some heavenly intervention.

He continued past, nettled with a sudden chill, wondering if their efforts here would prove any more useful.

The throttling growl of an approaching boat drew his gaze back out to sea. He glanced down the beach. While collecting samples, he and Graff had traveled past a spit of land. Their Zodiac lay beached beyond the rocky point, out of sight.

Monk shaded his eyes. Was their Aussie pilot moving the boat closer to them?

Graff joined him. “It’s too early to go back.”

The spat of rifle fire echoed over the water as a blue-hulled, scarred speedboat shot around the point. Monk spotted seven men in the rear, their heads wrapped in scarves. Sun glinted off assault rifles.

Graff gasped, backing into him. “Pirates…”

Monk shook his head. Oh, that’s just great…

The boat turned toward them and skimmed through the chop.

Monk grabbed Graff by the collar and tugged him off the sunlit beach.

Piracy was on the rise worldwide, but the Indonesian waters had always been rife with such cutthroats. The many islands and small atolls, the thousand secret ports, the thick jungles. All of it created the perfect breeding ground. And after the recent tsunami in the region, the number of local pirates had boomed, taking advantage of the chaos and the thin stretch of policing resources.

It seemed this current tragedy proved no different.

Desperate times bred desperate men.

But who was desperate enough to risk these waters? Monk noted the gunmen were wrapped from head to toe in their own makeshift bio-suits. Had they heard the toxic levels were dropping here and decided to risk an assault?

As Monk retreated from the water’s edge, he glanced in the direction of their beached boat. Among the islands, their Zodiac boat would fetch a pretty penny on the black market, not to mention all their expensive research equipment. Monk also noted the lack of return fire by their Zodiac’s pilot. Caught by surprise, the Australian sailor must have been taken out in the first assault. He also had their only radio. Cut off, they were on their own.

Monk pictured Lisa aboard the cruise ship. The Australian Coast Guard cutter patrolled the waters around the tiny port. At least she should be safe.

Unlike them.

Cliffs cut off any retreat. To either side, empty beaches stretched.

Monk dragged Graff behind a tumbled boulder, the only shelter.

The speedboat aimed toward them. Gunfire chattered, pocking the sand in an arrow toward their hiding place.

Monk pulled them lower.

So much for that lazy day at the beach.

Dr. Lisa Cummings smeared the anesthetic cream across the back of the crying girl. Her mother held her hand. The woman was Malaysian and spoke in soft whispers, her almond eyes pinched in worry. The combination of lido-caine and prilocaine quickly soothed the burn across the child’s back, dissolving the girl’s pained cries into sobs and tears.

“She should be fine,” Lisa said, knowing the mother was employed as a waitress at one of the local hotels and spoke English. “Make sure she takes the antibiotics three times a day.”

The woman bowed her head. “Terima kasih. Thank you.”

Lisa nodded her toward a group of men and women in blue-and-white uniforms, the staff of the Mistress of the Seas.

“One of the crew will find a cabin for you and your daughter.”

Another bow of her head, but Lisa was already turning away, stripping off her gloves with a snap. The dining room on the Lido Deck of the Mistress of the Seas had become the major triage point for the entire ship. Each evacuee from the island was examined and divided into critical and noncritical cases. Lisa, with the least experience in crisis medicine, had been assigned to first aid. To assist her, she was given a nursing student from Sydney, a skinny young man of Indian descent named Jesspal, a volunteer from the WHO medical staff.

They made an odd couple: one blond and pale, the other dark-haired and coffee-skinned. But they operated like an experienced team.

“Jessie, how are we doing on the cephalexin?”

“Should last, Dr. Lisa.” He shook the large bottle of antibiotics with one hand while filling out paperwork with the other. The young man knew how to multitask.

Snugging the green scrub pants higher on her hips, Lisa glanced around her. No one waited for immediate care. The rest of the dining room remained in a state of subdued chaos, punctuated by cries and occasional shouts, but for the moment, their station was an island of calm.

“I think the bulk of the islanders have been evacuated,” Jessie said. “I heard the last two tenders from the docks arrived only half full. I think we’re seeing the dribs and drabs from the smaller outlying villages.”

“Thank God for that.”

She had treated over a hundred and fifty patients during the course of the interminable morning, cases of burns, blisters, racking coughs, dysentery, nausea, a wrist sprain from a fall at the docks. Yet she had only seen a fraction of all the cases. The cruise ship had arrived at the island last night, and the evacuation had been well under way by the time she arrived at daybreak, flown in by helicopter. It required her to hit the ground running. The tiny, remote island had held over two thousand inhabitants. Though quarters were tight, the ship should accommodate the entire populace, especially as the number of dead had tragically climbed past four hundred…and was still rising.

She stood for a moment, hugging her arms around herself, wishing it were Painter’s strong arms instead, embracing her from behind, his cheek, rough with stubble at her neck. She closed her eyes, tired. Even though he was absent, she borrowed a bit of his steel.

While laboring, case after case, it had been easy to turn clinical, to detach, to simply treat and move on.

But now, in this moment of calm, the enormity of the disaster struck her. Over the past two weeks, the illnesses here had started small, a few burns from immediate exposure. Then in just two days, the seas had churned up a toxic cloud, erupting in a final volcanic expulsion of blistering gas that killed a fifth of the population and injured the rest.

And though the toxic cloud had blown itself out, secondary illnesses and infections had begun afflicting the sick: flus, burning fevers, meningitis, blindness. The rapidity was disturbing. The entire third deck had been designated a quarantine area.

What was she doing here?

When this medical crisis first arose, Lisa had petitioned Painter for this assignment, stating her case. Besides her medical degree, she held a PhD in human physiology, but more importantly, she had extensive field experience, especially in marine sciences. She had labored for half a decade aboard a salvage ship, the Deep Fathom, doing physiological research.

So she had a sound argument for her inclusion here.

But it was not the only one.

For the past year Lisa had been land-bound in Washington and found herself slowly being consumed by Painter’s life. And while a part of her enjoyed the intimacy, the two becoming one, she also knew she needed this chance away, both for herself and for her relationship, a bit of distance to evaluate her life, out of Painter’s shadow.

But maybe this was too much distance…

A sharp scream drew her attention toward the double doors into the dining room. Two sailors hauled in a man atop a stretcher. He writhed and cried, skin weeping, red as a lobster shell. It looked as if his entire body had been parboiled. His bearers rushed him toward the critical care station.

Reflexively, she ran the treatment through her head, going clinical again. Diazepam and a morphine drip. Still, deeper inside, she knew the truth. They all did. The suffering man’s treatment would be merely palliative, to make him comfortable. The man on the stretcher was already dead.

“Here comes trouble,” Jessie mumbled behind her.

Lisa turned and spotted Dr. Gene Lindholm striding toward her, an ostrich of a man, all legs and neck, with a shock of feathered white hair. The head of the WHO team nodded at her, indicating she was indeed his target.

What now?

She didn’t particularly care for the Harvard-trained clinician. He came with an ego to match. Upon arriving, rather than helping here, he had sequestered himself with the owner of the cruise line, maverick Australian billionaire Ryder Blunt. The billionaire, notorious for his hands-on approach to business, had been aboard the ship for its maiden cruise. And while he could have left when the ship was commandeered, the billionaire had remained on-site, turning the rescue event into a marketing opportunity.

And Lindholm cooperated.

However, such cooperation did not extend to Monk and Lisa. The WHO leader resented the strings that were pulled to include the pair on his team. But he’d had no choice but to acquiesce — still, that didn’t mean he had to be pleasant about it.

“Dr. Cummings, I’m glad to find you here idling with nothing to do.”

Lisa bit back a retort.

Jessie snorted.

Lindholm glanced to the nursing student as if he’d been unaware of the man’s presence — then just as quickly dismissed him and returned his focus to Lisa.

“I was instructed to include you and your partner in any findings related to the epidemiology for this disaster. And as Dr. Kokkalis is out in the field, I thought I should bring this to your attention.”

He thrust out a thick medical folder. She recognized the logo for the small hospital that served Christmas Island. Staffed with only on-call doctors and a pair of full-time nurses, the hospital had been quickly swamped, requiring the more severe cases to be airlifted to Perth. But that became impractical after the full brunt of the biological meltdown struck the island. Once the cruise ship had arrived, the hospital had been the first to be evacuated.

Lisa flipped open the folder and saw the patient’s name listed as John Doe. She quickly scanned the history, the little that there was. The patient, a man in his late sixties, had been found five weeks ago wandering naked through the rain forest, clearly suffering from dementia and exposure. He could not speak and was severely dehydrated. He subsequently slipped into an infantile state, unable to care for himself, eating only if fed by hand. They sought to identify him by fingerprint and by searching through missing person records, but nothing had turned up. He remained a John Doe.

Lisa glanced up. “I don’t understand…what does this have to do with what happened here?”

Sighing, Lindholm stepped next to her and tapped the chart. “Under the list of presenting symptoms and physical findings. At the bottom.”

“‘Moderate to severe signs of exposure,’” she mumbled, reading down the list. The last line stated deep dermal second-degree sunburn to calves, with resultant edema and severe blistering.

She glanced up. She had treated similar symptoms all morning. “This wasn’t just a sunburn.”

“The island’s clinicians jumped to that conclusion,” Lindholm said with evident disgust.

Lisa could not blame the island’s doctors or nurses. At that time, no one was aware of the environmental disaster brewing. She again checked the date.

Five weeks ago.

“I believe we may have found Patient Zero,” Lindholm said pompously. “Or at least one of the earliest cases.”

Lisa closed the folder. “Can I see him?”

He nodded. “That was the second reason I came down here.” There was a grim waver in his voice at the end that disturbed Lisa. She waited for him to explain, but he simply turned on a heel and headed out. “Follow me.”

The WHO leader crossed the dining room to one of the ship’s elevators. He hit the button for the Promenade Deck, third level.

“The isolation ward?” she asked.

He shrugged.

A moment later the doors opened into a makeshift clean room. Lindholm waved for her to don one of the bio-suits, similar to the one Monk had taken to collect samples.

Lisa climbed into a suit, noting the slight body odor as she pulled the hood over her head and sealed her seams. Once both were ready, she was led down a passage to one of the cabins. The door was open and other clinicians were crowded at the entry.

Lindholm bellowed for the others to clear a path. They scattered, well trained by their leader. Lindholm led Lisa into the small room, an inside cabin, no windows. The only bed stood against the back wall.

A figure lay under a thin blanket. He looked more cadaverous than alive. But she noted the shallow rise and fall of the blanket, a panting weak breath. Intravenous lines ran to an exposed arm. The skin on the limb so wan and wasted as to the point of translucency.

She instinctively looked to his face. Someone had shaved him, but hastily. A few nicks still oozed. His hair was gray and wispy, like a chemo patient, but his eyes were open, meeting hers.

For a moment she thought she noted a flash of recognition, the barest startle. Even a hand lifted feebly toward her.

But Lindholm strode between them. Ignoring the patient, he peeled back the lower half of the blanket to expose the man’s legs. She was expecting to see scabbed skin, healing from a second-degree burn, like she had been treating all day, but instead she saw that a strange purplish bruising stretched from the man’s groin to toe, pebbled with black blisters.

“If you had read further into the report,” Lindholm said, “you would have discovered these new symptoms arose four days ago. The hospital staff surmised tropical gangrene, secondary to the deep infection in the burns. But it’s actually—”

“Necrotizing fasciitis,” she finished.

Lindholm sniffed tightly and lowered the blanket. “Exactly. That’s what we thought.”

Necrotizing fasciitis, better known as flesh-eating disease, was caused by bacteria, usually beta-hemolytic streptococci.

“What’s the assessment?” she asked. “A secondary infection through his earlier wounds?”

“I had our bacteriologist brought in. A quick gram stain last night revealed a massive proliferation of Propionibacterium.”

She frowned. “That makes no sense. That’s just an ordinary epidermal bacterium. Nonpathogenic. Are you sure it wasn’t just a contaminant?”

“Not in the numbers found in the blisters. The stains were repeated on other tissue samples. The same results. It was during these second studies that an odd necrosis was noted in the surrounding tissue. A pattern of decay sometimes seen locally. It can mimic necrotizing fasciitis.”

“Caused by what?”

“The sting of a stonefish. Very toxic. The fish looks like a rock but bears stiff dorsal spines envenomed by poison glands. One of the nastiest venoms in the world. I brought Dr. Barnhardt in to test the tissue.”

“The toxicologist?”

A nod.

Dr. Barnhardt had been flown here from Amsterdam, an expert in environmental poisons and toxins. Under the auspices of Sigma, Painter had personally requested the man’s addition to the WHO team.

“The results came back this past hour. He found active poison in the patient’s tissues.”

“I don’t understand. So the man was poisoned by a stonefish while wandering in delirium?”

A voice spoke behind her, answering her question. “No.”

She turned. A tall figure filled the doorway, a bear of a man squeezed into a contamination suit too small for his girth. His grizzled and bearded face fit his size, but not the delicacy of his mind. Dr. Henrick Barnhardt pushed into the room.

“I don’t believe the man was ever stung by a stonefish. But he is suffering from the venom.”

“How is that possible?”

Barnhardt ignored her question for the moment and addressed the WHO leader. “It’s what I suspected, Dr. Lindholm. I borrowed Dr. Miller’s Propionibacterium cultures and had them analyzed. There is no doubt now.”

Lindholm visibly blanched.

“What?” Lisa asked.

The toxicologist reached and gently straightened the blanket over the John Doe patient, a tender gesture for such a large man. “The bacteria,” he said, “the Propionibacterium…is producing the equivalent of stonefish venom, pumping it out in quantities enough to dissolve this man’s tissues.”

“That’s impossible.”

Lindholm snorted. “That’s what I said.”

Lisa ignored him. “But Propionibacterium doesn’t produce any toxins. It’s benign.”

“I can’t explain how or why,” Barnhardt said. “Even to begin any further assessment, I would need a scanning microscope at least. But I assure you, Dr. Cummings, this benign bacteria has somehow transformed into one of the nastiest bugs on the planet.”

“How do you mean transformed?”

“I don’t think the patient caught this bug. I think it was a part of his normal bacterial flora. Whatever the man was exposed to out there, it changed the bacterium’s biochemistry, altered its basic genetic structure and made it virulent. Turned it into a flesh-eater.”

Lisa still refused to believe it. Not without more proof. “My partner, Dr. Kokkalis, has a portable forensic lab assembled in our suite. If you could—”

Lisa felt something brush the back of her gloved hand. She almost jumped away, startled. But it was only the old man in the bed, reaching again for her. His eyes met hers, desperate. His lips, chapped and cracked, trembled with a dry breath.

“Sue…Susan…”

She turned and gripped the man’s fingers. Plainly he was still in a delirium, mistaking her for someone else. She squeezed reassurance.

“Susan…where’s Oscar? I can hear him barking in the woods…” His eyes rolled back in his head. “…barking…help him…but don’t…don’t go in the water…” She felt his fingers go slack in her grip. His eyelids drifted closed, dragging away the brief moment of confused lucidity.

A nurse stepped forward and checked the man’s vitals. He was out again.

Lisa tucked his hand back under his blanket.

Lindholm stepped forward, close, invading her space. “This forensics lab of Dr. Kokkalis’s. We must gain access to it as soon as possible. In order to confirm or dismiss this wild conjecture by Dr. Barnhardt.”

“I would prefer to wait for Monk’s return,” Lisa said, stepping back. “Some of the equipment is of special design. We will need his expertise to operate it without damage.”

Lindholm scowled — not so much at her as life in general. “Fine.” He swung away. “Your partner is due back in the next hour. Dr. Barnhardt, in the meantime collect whatever samples you’ll need.”

A nod by the Dutch toxicologist acknowledged the order — though Lisa noted the slight roll to Barnhardt’s eyes as the WHO leader departed. Lisa followed Lindholm out of the room.

Barnhardt called after her. “You will page me when Dr. Kokkalis returns, ja?”

“Of course.” She was as anxious as everyone else to discover the truth here. But she also feared they were still barely scratching the surface. Something dreadful was brewing here.

But what?

She hoped Monk would not be gone long.

As she left, she also remembered the patient’s last words. Don’t…don’t go in the water…

“We’ll have to swim for it,” Monk said.

“Are…are you crazy?” Graff answered as they cowered behind the rock.

Moments ago the pirates’ speedboat had ground up against a submerged reef, one of the many that gave rise to the name for this section of island: Smithson’s Blight. Out on the water, the gunfire had ended, replaced by the roar of the engine as the boat sought to drag itself free.

Monk had popped his head up to evaluate the scenario, only to almost lose an ear to a sniper’s bullet. They were still pinned down, trapped, with nowhere to run — except into the face of the enemy.

Monk bent down and unzipped one of his suit’s seals near his shin. He reached through the opening and removed the 9mm Glock from its ankle holster.

Graff ’s eyes widened as he pulled free the pistol. “Do you think you can take them all out? Hit the gas tank or something?”

Monk shook his head and zipped back up. “You’ve been watching too many Bruckheimer movies. This peashooter will only serve to get them to duck their heads. Perhaps long enough for us to hit the surf over there.”

He pointed to a line of boulders that stretched out into the water. If they could get on the far side, keep the boulders between them and the boat, they might be able to make it around the next point. Then if they could reach the beach on the far side before the pirates freed their boat…and if there was some path that led into the island’s interior…

Damn, that’s a lot of ifs…

But there was only one certainty here.

They were dead if they stayed shivering like a pair of rabbits.

“We’ll have to stay underwater as much as possible,” Monk warned. “Maybe we could even take a breath or two if we keep air trapped in our contamination hoods.”

Graff ’s face looked little comforted by this idea. Though the worst of the toxic event was over, the bay remained a poisonous cesspool. Even the gun, men knew better than to leave the safety of their boat. The masked men were using oars to pry the craft off the rocks, rather than climbing in themselves and lightening the load.

If even pirates refused to go into the water…

Monk suddenly began to question the wisdom of his own plan. Besides, he hated diving. He was a former Green Beret, not a friggin’ Navy SEAL.

“What?” Graff asked, reading something in Monk’s expression. “You don’t think your plan is going to work, do you?”

“Let a man think already!”

Slumping down, Monk found himself staring back toward the worn Buddha statue under its lean-to, protected by its charred row of prayer sticks. He wasn’t Buddhist, but he was not above praying to any god that would get him out of this scrape.

His eyes again settled to the burned prayer sticks. Without turning away, he spoke to Graff. “How did these worshippers get here?” he asked. “There’s no village for miles along the coastline, the beach is protected by reefs, and the cliffs appear too sheer to climb.”

Graff shook his head. “What difference does it make?”

“Someone lit those prayer sticks. Within the last day or so.” Monk shifted up. “Look at the beach. No footsteps but our own. You can see where someone knelt to light their smudge sticks, but no steps head out to the water or along the beach. That means they had to come down from above. There must be a path.”

“Or maybe someone just raised and lowered a rope.”

Monk sighed, wishing for a more dim-witted companion, someone less able to poke holes in his reasoning.

“Water or Buddha?” Monk asked.

Graff visibly swallowed as the speedboat’s engine throttled up. The pirates were almost free.

Graff turned to Monk. “Is…isn’t it good luck to rub the belly of a Buddha?”

Monk nodded. “I think I read that on a fortune cookie somewhere. I hope that Buddha read the same cookie.”

Monk shifted around, raising his pistol. “On my count, you haul ass. I’m going to be at your heels, blasting at the boat. You just concentrate on getting to that Buddha and finding that path.”

“And I’ll pray the worshippers didn’t use a rope to—”

“Don’t say it or you’ll jinx us!”

Graff clammed up.

“Here we go.” Monk braced himself, bouncing a bit to get circulation into his legs. He counted off. “Three…two…one…!”

Graff took off, bolting out like a jackrabbit. A bullet rang off the rock at the man’s heels.

Monk cursed and jerked up. “You were supposed to wait for go,” he mumbled, squeezing the trigger and firing toward the trapped boat. “Civilians…”

He peppered the boat, driving the snipers onto their bellies. He watched one man throw his hands up and go toppling overboard. A lucky shot on Monk’s part. Return fire consisted of a few wild blasts, fired in an angry panic.

Ahead, Graff reached the Buddha and skidded in the sand, slipping past the prayer sticks. Twisting around, he caught his balance and leapfrogged behind the lean-to.

Monk took a more direct route and crashed through a sandy thornbush. He landed next to Graff.

“We made it!” Graff gasped out with way too much surprise in his voice.

“And pissed them off damn good.”

Monk pictured the man going overboard into the toxic soup.

Possibly in retribution, rifle blasts tore through the lean-to and exploded the vines and leaves draped along the cliff wall. Monk and Graff sheltered together, protected by Buddha’s wide stone belly. Surely there was symbolism in this last act.

But that was about all Buddha had to offer.

Monk studied the cliffs behind the wooden shack.

Sheer and unscalable.

No path.

“Maybe one of us should have rubbed that belly when we ran up here,” Monk said sourly.

“Your gun?” Graff asked.

Monk hefted it up. “One round. After that, I could always throw the pistol at them. That always works.”

Behind them the boat finally freed itself with a roar of its engine. Worse yet, the boat was now on the island side of the reef, sidling toward the beach, sluicing through the bodies of the dead.

Before long there would be another two bodies to add to the soup.

A volley of shots peppered the Buddha and shattered through the lean-to. More vines were shredded. A ricochet sped past Monk’s nose — but he didn’t move. He watched one of the drapes of blasted vine fall away, revealing the mouth of a cave behind it.

Monk crawled forward, keeping the statue between him and the approaching pirates. He nudged open the vines. Sunlight revealed a step, then another…

“A tunnel! So much for your rope-ladder theory, Graff!”

Monk turned and saw the doctor slumped to one side, a hand pressed to his shoulder. Blood welled between his fingers.

Crap…

Monk hurried back to him. “C’mon. We’ve no time to dress it. Can you walk?”

Graff spoke between clenched teeth. “As long as they don’t shoot me in the leg.”

With some help, the two crawled through the vine drape and into the tunnel. The temperature dropped a full ten degrees. Monk kept a grip on Graff ’s elbow. The man trembled and shook, but he followed Monk’s lead and hurried up the steps into the dark.

Behind them he heard the scrape of hull on sand and the victorious shouts of the pirates, confident their prey was trapped. Monk continued up, around and around, feeling in the dark.

It would not take long for the pirates to find the tunnel. But would they pursue or simply take off? The answer came soon enough.

Lights flared below…along with more furtive barked orders.

Monk hurried.

He heard the anger in the voices.

He had indeed pissed them off.

Slowly the darkness overhead turned to gray. Walls became discernible. Their pace increased. Graff was mumbling under his breath, but Monk could not understand the man’s words. A prayer, a curse…he would take either if it would work.

At last the upper end of the stairs appeared. The pair burst out of the tunnel and into the fringe of rain forest that frosted the cliff. Monk pushed onward, grateful for the dense cover of the jungle. As he entered the forest, he saw the toxic kill zone was not limited to the beach below. Dead birds littered the forest floor. Near his toes lay the furred body of a flying fox, crumpled like a crashed jet fighter.

But not all the forest’s denizens were dead.

Monk stared ahead. The forest floor churned and eddied in a red tide of its own. But this was no bacterial bloom. Millions of crabs covered the forest floor, every square inch. Some were latched onto trunks and vines.

Here were the missing Christmas Island red crabs.

Monk remembered his earlier study. Throughout the year, the crabs remained docile until aroused or stirred up. During their annual migration, the crabs were known to slash tires of passing cars with their razor-sharp claws.

Monk took a step back.

Stirred up described the crabs at the moment. They climbed all over one another, agitated, snapping. In a feeding frenzy.

Monk now understood why the creatures were missing from the beach below. Why go down when there was plenty to eat up here?

The crabs not only feasted on the dead birds and bats — but also on their own brothers and sisters, in a cannibalistic free-for-all. At the men’s appearance, massive claws lifted in warning, snapping like broken sticks.

Welcome to the party!

Behind them, from the tunnel opening, excited voices echoed forth.

The pirates had spotted the tunnel’s end.

Graff took a step forward, clutching his shoulder. A large crab, hidden under a fern leaf, swiped at his toe and cleaved clear through the plastic.

The doctor retreated back, mumbling under his breath again. It was the same mantra as on the stairs, only now Monk understood it…and couldn’t agree more.

“We really should have rubbed that Buddha’s belly.”

3 Ambush

“What the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know, Dad.” Gray hurried with his father to close the carriage doors to the garage. “But I intend to find out.”

The two had hauled the assassin’s motorcycle into the garage. Gray had not wanted the bike left in the open. In fact, he wanted no trace of Seichan left here. So far there had been no sign of whoever had shot her, but that didn’t mean they weren’t coming.

He rushed back to his mother. As a biology professor at George Washington University, his mother had taught plenty of pre-med students and knew enough to belly-wrap Seichan’s wound in order to stanch any further hemorrhaging.

The assassin hovered at the edge of consciousness, drifting in and out.

“It looked like the bullet passed clean through,” his mother said. “But she’s lost a lot of blood. Is the ambulance on its way?”

Moments ago Gray had made an emergency call with his cell phone — but not to 911. Seichan could not be taken to any local hospital. A gunshot wound required answering too many questions. Still, he had to move her, get her medical attention as soon as possible.

Down the street, a door slammed. Gray listened, jumpy at any noises, his senses stretched to a piano-wire tautness. Someone called out, laughing.

“Gray, is the ambulance on its way?” his mother persisted in a harder tone.

Gray just nodded, refusing to lie out loud. At least not to his mother. He turned to his father, who joined them, wiping his palms on his work jeans. His parents thought he was a laboratory technician for a D.C. research company, a lowly position after being court-martialed out of the Army Rangers for striking a superior officer.

But that had not been the truth either.

Only a cover.

His parents knew nothing about his true profession with Sigma, and Gray meant to keep it that way. Which meant he needed to bug out of here ASAP. He had to get moving.

“Dad, can I borrow the T-bird? All this Fourth of July commotion, emergency services are overloaded. I can get the woman to the hospital faster myself.”

His father’s eyes narrowed with suspicion, but he pointed toward the back door to the kitchen. “Keys are on the hook.”

Gray ran and leaped up the rear porch steps. Cracking open the screen door, he reached inside and grabbed the jangling key fob from the hook. His father had restored a 1960 Thunderbird convertible, raven black with a red leather interior, tricked out with a new Holly carburetor, flamethrower coil, and electric choke. It had been moved out to the curb for the party.

He ran to where it was parked with its top down, hopped over the driver’s door, and slid behind the wheel. A moment later, he was roaring in reverse and backed into the driveway, bouncing a bit in the seat as he hit the curb. His father was still troubleshooting the rebuilt suspension.

He choked it into park, engine running, and ran to where his mother and father knelt at Seichan’s side. His father was already scooping her up.

“Let me,” Gray said.

“Maybe we shouldn’t move her,” his mother opined. “She took quite the fall and roll.”

Gray’s father ignored them both. He heaved up, cradling Seichan in his arms. His father might be missing a part of a leg and mentally slipping a few gears, but he was still as strong as a draft horse.

“Get the door,” his father ordered. “We’ll get her spread out across the backseat.”

Rather than arguing, Gray obeyed and helped get Seichan inside. He opened the door and folded the front seat down. His father climbed into the back and draped her with deliberate gentleness, then settled into the rear seat, supporting her head.

“Dad…”

His mother climbed into the passenger front side. “I’ve locked the house up. Let’s go.”

“I…I can take her on my own,” Gray said, waving them both out.

He was not headed to any hospital. His earlier phone call had been to emergency dispatch, where he was immediately put in contact with Director Crowe. Thank God he’d still been there.

Gray had been ordered to a safe house, where an emergency medical evacuation team would rendezvous to evaluate and treat Seichan. Painter was taking no chances. In case this was all a trap, she was not to be taken to Sigma’s headquarters. A known assassin and terrorist, Seichan was on the most-wanted lists of Interpol and a score of intelligence agencies around the world. Rumor had it that the Israeli Mossad maintained a shoot-on-sight order on her.

His parents had no place being here.

Gray stared at the steel in his father’s eyes. His mother’s arms were already crossed over her chest. They were not going to budge easily.

“You can’t come,” he said. “It’s not…not safe.”

“Like here’s any safer,” his father said, waving an arm back toward the garage. “Who’s to say whatever gangbangers or drug dealers who shot her aren’t already on their way here?”

Gray had no time to explain. The director had already dispatched a security detail to protect and watch over his parents. They would be arriving in the next couple minutes.

“My car…my rules,” his father finished with a rumble of finality. “Now go, before she starts seeping through your mother’s bandages and messes up my new leather seats.”

Seichan groaned, stirring in pain and confused agitation. One arm lifted to her bandage, clawing. His father caught her fingers and lowered her hand. He kept hold of it, reassuring as much as restraining.

“Let’s go,” his father said.

The rare tenderness more than anything broke through his constraint.

Gray climbed into the driver’s seat. “Buckle in,” he said, knowing the sooner he got Seichan to the safe house, the better for all of them. He’d deal with the fallout later.

As he started the engine, he caught his mother staring at him. “We’re not fools, you know, Gray,” she said cryptically, and turned away.

His brows furrowed, more in irritation than understanding. He shifted the car into gear and shot down the driveway. He took the turn onto the street rather sharply.

“Careful!” his father barked. “Those are new Kelsey wire wheels! If you goddamn scratch them up…”

Gray sped down the street. He made several fast turns, minding the wheels. It felt good to be moving. The 390 V8 growled like a beast. An ember of grudging respect for his father’s handiwork burned through his exasperation.

His mother glanced down the street as he turned in the opposite direction from the nearest hospital, but she remained silent and settled deeper in her seat. He would find some way of dealing with his folks at the safe house.

As Gray sped through the midnight city, he still heard occasional firecrackers popping. The holiday was ending, but Gray feared the true fireworks had yet to begin.

So much for holidays off…

Director Painter Crowe stalked down the hall toward his office. Central Command’s skeletal night staff was rapidly swelling in numbers. A general alert had been dispatched. He’d already fielded two calls from Homeland Security. It wasn’t every day you had an international terrorist fall into your lap. And not just any terrorist, but a member of the shadowy network known as the Guild.

Often competing with Sigma, the Guild hunted and stole emerging technologies: military, biological, chemical, nuclear. In the current world order, knowledge was the true power — more than oil, more than any weapon. Only in the Guild’s case, they sold their discoveries to the highest bidder, including Al Qaeda and Hezbollah in the Middle East, Aum Shinrikyo in Japan, and the Shining Path in Peru. The Guild operated through a series of isolated cells around the world, with moles in world governments, intelligence agencies, major think tanks, even international research facilities.

And once, even at DARPA.

Painter still felt the sting of that betrayal.

But now they had a key Guild operative in custody.

As Painter entered the anteroom to his offices, his secretary and aide, Brant Millford, shifted back from his desk. The man used a wheelchair, his spine severed by a piece of shrapnel following a car bombing at a security post in Bosnia.

“Sir, I have a satellite call coming in from Dr. Cummings.”

Painter stopped, surprised. Lisa was not scheduled to report in so soon. A thread of worry cut through the tangle of responsibilities this night.

“I’ll take it in my office. Thank you, Brant.”

Painter crossed through the door. Three plasma monitors hung on the walls around his desk. The screens were dark for now, but as the night wore on, they would soon be flowing with data, all pouring into Central Command. For now, that could all wait. He reached across his deck to the phone and tapped the blinking button.

Lisa had been scheduled to report in just around dawn, when it was nightfall among the Indonesian islands. Painter had requested the full day’s debriefing at that time, just before she went to bed. Such scheduling also offered him the perfect chance to wish her a good night.

“Lisa?”

The connection proved spotty with occasional drops.

“God, Painter, it’s great to hear — voice. I know you’re busy. Brant mentioned a crisis — little else.”

“Don’t worry. Not so much a crisis, as an opportunity.” He rested his hip to the edge of the desk. “Why are you calling in early?”

“Something’s come up here. I’ve transmitted a large batch of technical data to research. I wanted someone over there to start double-checking the results from the toxicologist here, Dr. Barnhardt.”

“I’ll make sure it gets done. But what’s the urgency?” He sensed the tension in her voice.

“The situation here may be more dire than originally projected.”

“I know. I’ve heard about the aftermath of the toxic cloud that blew over the island.”

“No — yes, that was horrible, certainly — but things may be growing even worse. We’ve isolated some strange genetic abnormalities showing up in secondary infections. Disturbing findings. I thought it best to coordinate with Sigma researchers and labs as soon as possible, to get the ball rolling while Dr. Barnhardt completes his preliminary tests.”

“Is Monk helping the toxicologist?”

“He’s still out in the field, collecting samples. We’ll need everything he can bring us.”

“I’ll alert Jennings here in R and D. Get him to roust his team. I’ll have him call and coordinate at our end.”

“Perfect. Thanks.”

Despite the resolution, Painter could not escape his own worry. Since assigning this mission, he was doing his best to balance his responsibilities as director, to maintain that necessary professional distance, but he could not achieve it, not with Lisa. He cleared his throat. “How are you holding up?”

A small amused snort escaped her, tired but familiar. “I’m doing okay. But after this, I may never take another cruise in my life.”

“I tried to warn you. It never pays to volunteer. I wanted to contribute. To make a difference,” he said, mimicking her with a ghost of a smile. “See what it gets you. A passport to the Love Boat from Hell.”

She offered him a halfhearted laugh, but her voice quickly lowered into a more serious tone, halting and unsure. “Painter, maybe it was a mistake…me coming here. I know I’m not an official member of Sigma. I may be in over my head.”

“If I thought it was a mistake, I wouldn’t have assigned you. In fact, I would have grabbed any excuse to keep you from going. But as director, I had a duty to send the best people suited to oversee a medical crisis on behalf of Sigma. With your medical degree, your doctorate in physiology, your field research experience…I sent the right person.”

A long stretch of silence followed. For a moment, Painter thought the call had dropped.

“Thank you,” she finally whispered.

“So don’t let me down. I have a reputation to maintain.”

She snorted again, her amusement ringing more true. “You really have to work on concluding your pep talks.”

“Then how’s this: Stay safe, watch your back, and get back here as soon as possible.”

“Better.”

“Then I’ll simply have to go for the gold.” He spoke firmly. “I miss you. I love you. I want you in my arms.”

He truly did miss her, with a physical ache in his chest.

“See,” she said. “With a little practice, you can actually be a pretty good motivational speaker.”

“I know,” he said. “The same line worked with Monk earlier.”

A true laugh followed. It helped shatter his worry from a moment ago. She would do fine. He had faith in her. And in addition, in Painter’s stead, Monk would keep her safe. That is, if Monk ever wanted to show his face again…

Before Painter could respond further, his aide appeared at his door, knocking softly. Painter waved for him to speak.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Director. But I’ve another call holding. On your private line. From Rome. Monsignor Verona. He seemed quite urgent.”

Painter’s brow furrowed. He spoke into the phone. “Lisa—”

“I heard. You’re busy. Once I coordinate with Monk, we’ll conference with Jennings on the situation here. Get back to work.”

“Stay safe.”

“I will,” she said. “And I love you, too.”

The line blinked off.

Painter took a breath to collect himself, then twisted around to hit the button on his private line. Why was Monsignor Verona calling? Painter knew Commander Pierce had been romantically involved with the monsignor’s niece, but that had ended almost a year ago.

“Monsignor Verona, this is Painter Crowe.”

“Director Crowe, thank you for taking my call. I’ve been trying to reach Gray for the past two hours, but there’s been no answer.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Is there a message you’d like me to forward?”

Painter didn’t bother to explain about the current situation. Though Monsignor Verona had helped Sigma in the past, the matter here was on a need-to-know basis, already coded in black.

“There’s been an incident here at the Vatican…in the Secret Archives precisely. I’m not entirely sure of its import, but it strikes me as a message or warning. One left for both myself and perhaps Commander Pierce.”

Painter stood up and circled around his desk to his chair. “What sort of message?”

“Someone broke into a vault here last week and painted the symbol for the Royal Dragon Court on the floor.”

Painter sank into his seat, disturbed by the coincidence. Two years ago, Gray and Monsignor Verona had teamed up to root out and destroy a brutal sect of the Dragon Court. They had succeeded — but not without help, requiring an alliance with an enemy, an operative from the Guild.

Seichan.

And now the assassin was here.

Painter was not one to swallow coincidences easily. Not in the past, and certainly not now. If nothing else, his stint as director of Sigma had honed his edge of paranoia to a razor’s sharpness.

“Did anyone get a look at this trespasser?” he asked.

“Briefly. Whoever it was, they came alone. Slipped past all of Vatican security. We captured only a shadowy image on one security camera. This was no casual thief. Only one person I know could have crossed into the inner sanctum and out again with no more than a shadow captured. The same someone connected to our joint involvement with the Dragon Court in the past.”

So it seemed the monsignor was no less suspicious than Painter.

“And the dragon painting on the floor,” Vigor continued. “It was plainly a message, perhaps even a reminder of a debt owed.”

“You believe it was the Guild operative, Seichan,” he said. “The one who helped you defeat the Dragon Court?”

“Exactly. If we could find her, ask her—”

Painter knew that any further secrets would only hamper discovering the true threat. It seemed the need-to-know status of the situation had just extended to Rome.

“Seichan is here,” he said, cutting the monsignor off. “We have her in custody.”

“What?”

He quickly related the night’s return of the assassin, dropping out of nowhere, bloodied and on the run.

Vigor was stunned for a moment — then spoke in a rush. “She must be interrogated. If for no other reason than to ask her why she painted the message on the floor.”

“We’ll do that. Once she’s treated, we’ll conduct a thorough interview. Behind very stout bars.”

“You don’t understand. There’s something larger going on. Possibly larger than the Guild itself.”

“What do you mean?”

“The dragon symbol was painted around an ancient inscription carved into the floor of the archive vault. Carved possibly back when the Vatican was first being built, back to the time of Galileo. The symbols are the characters from what some conjecture might be the most ancient of all written languages. Older than proto-Hebrew. A writing that may even predate mankind.”

Painter heard the anxiety in the other’s voice. “What do you mean predate mankind? How could that be?”

Vigor answered him.

Painter kept the shock out of his reaction, along with his disbelief. He ended the call with a deep frown. The monsignor’s assertion was plainly impossible, but true or not, he immediately understood the monsignor’s distress. They needed to question Seichan as soon as possible — before anything else happened to her.

Painter hurriedly confirmed ETA on the medical team, then had his aide patch him through to the guard stationed at the safe house.

Who was on duty out there?

He called for Brant to contact security and have them forward video feed from the safe house to his office plasma screens.

As Painter waited, Vigor’s final words echoed through him.

Those symbols…carved into the stone…

Painter shook his head.

Impossible.

…they are the language of the angels.

Gray sped down Greenwich Parkway into the exclusive Foxhall Village subdivision. He reached the end and made a left turn onto a tree-lined street. He slowed. He let the Thunderbird’s idling engine carry him forward. The safe house appeared ahead, a two-story red-brick Tudor with forest-green shutters, a match to the woods of Glover-Archibold Park upon which the home backed.

With the top down, he could smell the damp forest.

Nearing the house, he noted the front porch light was on, as was a lamp in the upper corner window.

The all-clear sign.

He turned and bumped into the driveway, earning a groan from their injured passenger.

“Where are we?” his mother asked.

Gray braked under an overhanging porte cochere on the left side of the house. A side door to the house lay steps away. He had attempted repeatedly to get his parents to vacate the car, but with every hospital and medical center they passed, they only became more stubborn. Or at least his mother did. His father remained at the same level of muleheadedness.

“This is a safe house,” he said, seeing little reason to dissemble now. “Medical help should be on its way. Stay put for now.”

Gray cut the engine and climbed out.

On the far side of the car, the side door to the house opened. A large shadowy figure filled the doorway. A hand rested on a holstered weapon at his hip. “You Pierce?” the man asked, gruff and short, eyeing the additional passengers with suspicion.

“Yes.”

The figure stepped out into the light. He was an ape of a man, thick-limbed, stubble-cut brown hair. He was dressed in military fatigues. Not exactly keeping a low profile.

“Name’s Kowalski. I have Crowe on the horn for you.” He raised his other hand and held out a cell phone.

Gray headed around the back of the car. He had not been looking forward to this conversation with the director, to explain his blown cover. It was not exactly covert to have your parents tagging along.

Even the guard stationed here seemed baffled by the elderly pair sharing the open convertible. He studied the new arrivals with his brows bunched into a knot over his forehead. He scratched his chin.

“Three fifty-two?” he asked as Gray came around.

Gray could not fathom what he meant.

His father answered from the backseat. “No, it’s a three-ninety block. Rebuilt V8 from a Ford Galaxie.”

“Sweet ride.”

Plainly the guard hadn’t been studying his parents, only the car.

Seichan stirred in the backseat, perhaps somehow noting the lack of wind and motion. She struggled weakly to sit up.

“Can you help get her inside?” Gray asked the guard. He noted the lower half of a U.S. Navy anchor on the man’s right biceps as he accepted the phone. Ex-military. No surprise there. If there had been a picture under jarhead in the dictionary, it would’ve been this man’s mug shot.

His mother opened the passenger door. “Where’s that medical help?” She seemed to find little hope in the large form of the guard, even clutching her purse a bit tighter to her side.

Gray held up a palm, asking for patience.

“Ma’am,” Kowalski said, and pointed to the kitchen. “There’s a medkit on the kitchen table. Morphine stabs and smelling salts. I’ve laid out a suture pack.”

His mother eyed the man with a more studied appraisal. “Thank you, young man.”

With a more withering glance in Gray’s direction, his mother headed inside.

Stepping out of the way, Gray spoke into the phone. “Director Crowe, Commander Pierce here.”

“Is that your mother who just got out of the car?”

How the hell…?

Gray searched up and spotted the video camera hidden under the porte cochere. It must be sending a live feed to Central Command. He could feel heat rise at his collar.

“Sir—”

“Never mind. Explain later. Gray, we’ve intel out of Rome, related to our new arrival. How is the prisoner holding up?”

Gray eyed the back of the convertible. The guard and his father were discussing the best way to move Seichan’s limp form. He noted the fresh bloom of blood in the center of her belly wrap.

“She’s going to need immediate attention.”

“Help should be there any minute.”

The trundle of a heavy vehicle sounded. Gray swung around. A large black van turned and headed down the street.

“I think they’re here,” he said with a relieved sigh.

The van reached the house, shifted to the curb, and braked at the foot of the driveway. Gray felt a twinge of unease, hating to be blocked in, but he recognized the van. It was Sigma’s medical response team. The camouflaged ambulance was based on the same design as the vehicle that accompanied the president, capable of handling emergency surgery if necessary.

“Give me an update as soon as their evaluation is over,” Painter said. The director must have spotted the van also.

The side doors of the van shoved open. Three men and a woman, all in surgical scrubs and matching loose black bomber jackets, exited the van with coordinated skill. Two men yanked a stretcher, legs unfolding beneath it. They followed the third man and the woman, who strode forward to meet Gray. The man held his hand out.

“Dr. Amen Nasser,” he said.

Gray shook his hand, appreciating the cool, dry grip. Calm and in control. The doctor could be no older than thirty, yet he carried himself with firm authority. His complexion was the hue of polished mahogany, unlike the woman, whose skin was more the color of warm honey.

Gray studied her.

Though of Asian heritage, the woman plainly sought to downplay it. She had shaved her head to a crew cut and bleached her remaining hair an ice blond. Entwining tattoos also circled her wrists in a Celtic pattern. While such severity had never appealed to Gray before, there remained something strangely seductive about her. Perhaps it was the emerald of her eyes, a feature that needed no other embellishment. Then again, it may have been the way she moved, leonine, muscular, balanced. Like much of Sigma, she must have had some military training.

The woman nodded to Gray. No introduction was offered.

“I’ve been informed of the situation,” the team leader continued, his words precise, plainly foreign-born, with a trace of an accent. “I’ll ask you all to stand back and let us work. We will transfer the patient to the surgical bay inside the van. I will send out Anni with a status report shortly.” He finally acknowledged the woman.

The other two men rushed past with the stretcher. The doctor followed, while Anni remained where she was, leaning on a hip.

The cell phone in Gray’s hand began to vibrate as he stepped aside. The team leader spoke rapidly. Gray finally recognized the accent of the team leader.

Dr. Amen Nasser.

He was Egyptian.

Painter stood in front of the wall monitor directly behind his desk. The plasma screens on the other two walls displayed live video of the first and second floor of the safe house. The one behind his desk pixilated with digital feed from the exterior camera.

“Pick up the phone, Gray!” he yelled at the screen.

The controls for the cameras were down a floor in main security. Painter had no way of swiveling the camera. He had seen the med van park at the edge of the screen, but it wasn’t until a second ago that he had spotted the pair who had stepped into view in front of Gray.

Neither of them worked for Sigma.

Painter knew all the personnel.

The van might be Sigma’s, but the team inside was not.

A trap.

On the screen, Gray flipped open the cell and raised it to his ear. “Director Crowe—?”

Before Painter could answer, a thin foot kicked out and smashed the phone against Gray’s head. With a snap of cellular crackle, he went down, caught off guard.

“Gray…”

The image on the screen suddenly jumped — then went black.

The first shot took out the camera.

Head ringing, Gray heard the muffled cough and splintering shatter. He twisted around.

“What the hell?” his father bellowed as the camera’s debris rained down on him. He was still crouched in the backseat with Seichan.

The guard, Kowalski, was on the other side of the car. He froze like a deer in headlights, a grizzled two-hundred-pound deer. But the pistol at the back of his neck was a strong deterrent against moving.

The orderlies had shoved the stretcher into the side yard. One held a gun on Kowalski, the other waved for Gray’s father to get out of the car.

“Stay where you are,” a harsh voice warned behind him.

Gray glanced over his shoulder. The woman, Anni, held a black Sig Sauer at his face, standing out of reach of a leg sweep, but close enough that she would not miss a head shot.

Recognizing this, Gray faced the Thunderbird.

Dr. Nasser carried a matching pistol in his hand.

Gray somehow knew that it was the weapon that had shot Seichan.

Nasser came around to Gray’s father’s side. He searched down to where Seichan lay sprawled. He shook his head sadly, then pointed to the gunman on that side. “Get the old man out of the car. See if the bitch has the obelisk, then drag her to the van.”

Obelisk?

Gray watched as his father was manhandled out of the backseat. He prayed his father would not aggravate the situation. But it proved unnecessary. Plainly stunned, his father offered no resistance.

“She doesn’t have it,” the man in the backseat finally said, straightening up.

Nasser stepped to the car and scanned the interior himself. He did not find what he was looking for. The only sign of consternation at this lack of discovery was a single crinkle between his eyes.

He stepped away from the car and faced Gray.

“Where is it?”

Gray fixed the man with a steady stare. “Where is what?”

He sighed. “Surely she told you, or you wouldn’t be making such an effort for an enemy.” Without turning, he signaled the man who had searched Seichan. The man pressed his pistol against his father’s forehead.

“I don’t ask questions a second time. You probably don’t know that. So I’ll give you this moment of leeway.”

Gray swallowed, noting the raw fear in his father’s eyes.

“The obelisk,” Gray said. “The one you mentioned. She had it with her, but it broke when she crashed her bike at the house. She passed out before she could say anything about it. For all I know, it’s still there.”

And it might be.

He had forgotten about it in the rush to deal with Seichan.

Where had it gone?

The man kept his eyes fixed on Gray. He studied him with a calculating and steady gaze.

“I think you’re actually telling me the truth, Commander Pierce.”

Still, the Egyptian signaled his gunman.

The shot was deafening.

A minute ago Painter had noted movement on the plasma screen to the left. The interior video cameras of the safe house were still working. He spotted Mrs. Harriet Pierce crouched behind the kitchen table.

The attackers seemed unaware she was hiding inside.

No one except Gray had known he was coming to the safe house with an extra two passengers. The van had arrived after Gray’s mother had gone inside. With the one guard stationed at the house immobilized, they had assumed the scene was locked down.

Painter knew it was his only advantage.

He called for a silent alarm to be raised at the house and a line opened. He watched the amber light beside the house phone blink and blink.

See the flashing light, he willed her.

Whether it was the alarm light or the simple instinct to call for help, Harriet crept over to the kitchen phone, reached up, and pulled the receiver to her ear.

“Don’t talk,” he said quickly. “It’s Painter Crowe. Don’t let them know you are inside. I can see you. Nod if you understand.”

She nodded.

“Good. I have help coming. But I don’t know if they’ll reach you in time. The attackers must know this, too. They will be cruel and quick. I need you to be crueler. Can you do this?”

A nod.

“Very good. There should be a pistol in the drawer below the phone.”

The gunshot was deafening.

Deafening.

Not a silencer like before.

Gray knew the truth the fraction of a second before the gunman holding a weapon to his father’s head fell to the side, half his skull splattering against the front quarter panel of the Thunderbird.

He knew the shooter.

His mother.

She was Texas bred, raised by an oilman who worked the same fields as Gray’s father. Though his mother constantly petitioned for gun control, she was not shy around them.

Gray had both feared and hoped for some distraction from her. He’d kept ready for it, legs braced. Before the gunman’s body even hit the ground, Gray leaped straight back. He had been watching the Asian woman’s form in the polished chrome of the rear bumper.

The loud gunshot and the sudden backward leap caught her by surprise. Gray raised his right arm and hooked her arm, the one holding the Sig Sauer. As he struck her, he smashed his boot onto the inseam of her foot and cracked his head backward.

He heard something crunch below and behind.

Ahead, Kowalski had already elbowed his gunman, grabbed him by the scruff, and slammed his face into the edge of the convertible’s door.

“Eat steel, jackass.”

The gunman dropped like a sack of coal.

Without a pause Gray cradled Anni’s captured fist and swung her arm toward Dr. Nasser. He squeezed the woman’s finger against the trigger. She fought. Compromised, Gray’s aim was off. His shot struck the brick wall with a ringing spark.

Still, it succeeded enough. Dr. Nasser ducked to the right, diving into the bushes that fronted the house, vanishing away.

Gray yanked the pistol from the woman’s grip and back-kicked her away from him. She stumbled but kept her feet. Bloody-nosed, she twisted around and fled toward the van, sprinting like a gazelle, oblivious of her smashed foot.

Going for more weapons.

Gray did not want an encore of Anni Get Your Gun.

He raised the pistol toward her, but before he could fire, a round sizzled past the tip of his nose. From the bushes.

Nasser.

Startled, Gray stumbled backward, going for shelter under the porte cochere. He fired blindly into the bushes, not knowing where the bastard hid. He backpedaled until his calves struck the rear bumper of the T-bird. He fired another two rounds toward the med van.

But Asian Anni had vanished inside.

His shots ricocheted off the van. Like the president’s med van, this one was armor-plated.

Gray yelled. “Everyone inside the car! Now!”

His mother appeared at the kitchen door, holding a smoking pistol. She had her purse over her other arm, as if she were going out for groceries.

“C’mon, Harriet,” his father said. He reached up and hauled her toward the passenger door.

Kowalski leaped headlong into the backseat. Gray feared his bulk might finish Seichan off quicker than anything Nasser planned.

Gray vaulted over into the front seat and crashed hard. He twisted the key, still in the ignition, and the hot engine roared.

The passenger door slammed. Both his parents crowded the one seat.

Gray glanced into the rearview mirror.

Anni stood braced in the opening of the van. She balanced a rocket launcher on her shoulder.

The show is Anni Get Your Gun—not rocket launcher, you bitch!

Gray shifted into gear and slammed the accelerator. Three hundred horses burned the rear tires, rubber smoking and screaming.

His father groaned from the next seat — Gray suspected more about the wear on the glossy new tires than his own safety.

The wheels finally caught a grip, and the Thunderbird leaped forward, crashing through the wooden gate to the backyard. Once through, Gray yanked the wheel hard to avoid hitting a massive hundred-year-old oak. The tires dug a half-doughnut trench across the rear lawn, then sped them deeper into the yard.

Behind them, a sonorous whoosh was followed by a fiery explosion.

The rocket struck the large oak, blasting it to a ruin of flaming branches and bark. Blazing debris shot high. Smoke rolled.

Without glancing back, Gray punched the accelerator.

The Thunderbird smashed through the back fence and barreled into the woodlands of Glover-Archibold Park.

But Gray knew one certainty.

The hunt was just beginning.

4 High-Sea Piracy

Boxers and boots.

That’s all that stood between Monk and a sea of cannibal crabs. The feeding frenzy continued throughout the jungle, fighting, clacking, ripping. It sounded like the crackle of a forest fire.

Stripped, with his bio-suit in hand, Monk crossed back to Dr. Richard Graff. The marine researcher crouched at the edge of the jungle. He had also removed his bio-suit as instructed by Monk, wincing as he pulled the plastic fabric from his wounded shoulder. At least the marine researcher was better dressed, in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt.

Monk’s nose crinkled as he stepped up to him. Out from beneath the thicker jungle canopy, the air burned, and the stench of the dead pool below was like being slapped in the face with a rotting salmon.

“Time to go,” Monk said with a scowl.

A shout echoed up from the tunnel that led down to the toxic beach. The pirates were approaching more carefully, cautious. Graff, stationed there, had been lobbing chunks of limestone down the tunnel. Moreover their pursuers didn’t know that Monk’s pistol was down to one shot. But fear and rock throwing would only hold the pirates off for so long.

For the hundredth time Monk wondered at the strange persistence of their attackers. Hunger and desperation certainly made men do stupid things. But if the pirates wanted to raid and steal the Zodiac, to get ahold of their supplies and equipment for the Indonesian black market, then nothing was now stopping them. Most of these local pirates, brutal and ruthless as they might be, operated on a smash-and-grab modus operandi.

So why this persistence? To just silence them, to cover their tracks? Or was it something more personal? Monk pictured the one masked man toppling into the waters, clipped by one of his wild shots. Or was it revenge?

Whatever the reason, the raiding party was not settling for just the spoils — they wanted blood.

Graff choked at the burning air as he straightened. “Where are we going?”

“Back to visit our friends.”

Monk led Graff into the jungle fringe. Steps away, the crimson sea of crabs chattered and clattered. If anything, their numbers had grown over the past few minutes, perhaps drawn by their voices or the fresh blood from Graff ’s seeping shoulder.

The marine researcher balked at the edge of the clearing. “There’s no way through those crabs. Those giant claws can rip through leather. I’ve seen them take off fingers.”

And they were fast.

Monk danced back as a pair of crabs, locked in mortal combat, rushed past them, sharp legs a blur, as fast as any jackrabbit.

“It’s not like we have much choice,” Monk said.

“And there’s something wrong with these crabs,” the researcher continued. “I’ve witnessed some of their aggression during migrations, but nothing of this caliber.”

“You can psychoanalyze them later.” Monk pointed to a large neighboring tree. A Tahitian chestnut. The evergreen was draped with many low branches. “Can you climb that?”

Graff clutched his wounded arm to his belly, trying to keep from moving it too much. “I’ll need help. But why? It won’t hide us from the pirates. We’ll be sitting ducks.”

“Just climb.” Monk walked him to the tree and helped him scale the first few terraces. The branches were thick and easy to grab. Graff managed well even on his own, climbing higher.

Monk dropped down, landing near a crab. It raised both pincers in threat. No leaving the party early, buddy. Monk kicked him back into the hordes of his brethren, then called back to Graff. “Can you see the tunnel opening?”

“I think…yes, I can.” Graff shifted in the tree. “You’re not leaving me up here, are you?”

“Just whistle when you see the pirates.”

“What are you—?”

“Just do it, for Christ’s sake!” Monk regretted the harshness of his tone. He had to remind himself that the man was not military. But Monk’s mind was stacked with worries of his own. He pictured his wife and baby girl. He was not about to lose his life to a bunch of cutthroats or a forest full of Red Lobster entrées.

Monk crossed to the jungle clearing and stepped to the edge of the churning, snapping horde. He lifted his pistol in one hand and balanced his grip with his prosthetic one. He tilted his head and breathed through his nose.

C’mon, let’s see what you got…

He heard a noise from the chestnut tree behind him. It sounded like air leaking out of a half-deflated balloon.

“They’re coming!” he heard the man whisper, tension plainly sucking the wind out of his whistle.

Monk aimed across the clearing. He had one round, one shot.

Across the forest glade a pair of air tanks rested against the foot of a boulder. Earlier, as they were stripping out of their suits, Monk had Graff pass him his bio-suit’s air tank. The portable air cartridges were lightweight, constructed of an aluminum alloy. Using the ankle holster from his pistol, Monk had quickly bound the doctor’s tank together with his own and pitched the package in an underhanded throw across to the far side of the jungle clearing. The tanks had crashed amid the crabs, crushing a pair and sending their neighbors scurrying.

Monk took a bead upon the tanks now, steadying his aim with both flesh and prosthetics.

“They’re here!” Graff moaned.

Monk squeezed the trigger.

The blast froze the image in his mind for a split second — then one of the pressurized tanks spat a brief flash of flame. The bound tanks spun and clattered, hissing and jumping. Then the second tank’s nozzle cracked and the dance became more frenzied, smashing into crabs and sweeping and bouncing.

It was enough.

In the past Monk had strolled beaches covered with crabs that — once a seabird or stranger appeared — would clear in a heartbeat, crabs diving back into their sandy burrows. It was the same here. Those crabs nearest the commotion fled, climbing over their neighbors, jarring them into a panic. Soon a trickle became a stampede. The crabs, already riled up, fled on instinct.

The sea of crabs turned their tide — toward Monk — literally becoming a surging, churning wave of claws, climbing over one another to escape.

He fled back to the chestnut tree, pincers snapping at his heels.

He leaped and scurried up into the branches. One crab latched on to his boot. He cracked the shell against the trunk. It fell away. The pincer was still snagged tight to his boot. He felt the sharp edge cutting into his heel.

Damn.

Below, the tide of crabs swept past, obeying some instinct, possibly tied to their annual migration patterns. They fled toward the sea.

Monk climbed up to join Graff. The researcher had one arm hooked around the trunk. He eyed Monk, then turned back toward the slice of open rock that lay around the mouth of the sea tunnel.

The pirates, six of them, were out of the tunnel, spread a bit, but they had ducked low with the pistol shot. Only now were they rising to their feet, unsure.

Then from the jungle, the roiling sea of crabs burst forth.

It struck the man closest to the jungle fringe. Before he could react, comprehend what he was seeing, they scrambled up his legs to the level of his thighs. He suddenly screamed, stumbling back. Then one leg gave out under him.

During combat, a fellow Green Beret had had his Achilles tendon cut by a bullet. He had dropped in the same crooked manner as the pirate.

The man fell to one arm, screaming.

He was overrun, crabs scrabbling across his writhing body. But his wails continued, buried under the mass. For a moment, he surged back up. His mask had been stripped away, along with his nose, lips, and ears. His eyes were bloody ruins. He screamed one last time and fell back under the tide.

The other pirates fled in horrified panic, back to the tunnel, vanishing away. One man was cut off from the tunnel, pinned out on a spur of rock jutting off from the sea cliff. The crabs swelled toward him.

With a final cry he turned and leaped off the cliff.

More screams echoed up from the tunnel.

Like water down a drain, the sea of crabs swirled into the mouth of the tunnel, spiraling away in a red tide of razored claws.

Monk found Graff panting heavily beside him, eyes unblinking.

He reached and touched the man. He flinched.

“We have to go. Before the crabs decide to return to their forest.”

Graff allowed himself to be led down to the forest floor. There were still hundreds of crabs down here; they moved cautiously through them.

Monk broke off a feathery branch of the chestnut tree and swept away any of the crabs that got too near.

Slowly Graff seemed to return to himself, to settle back into his own skin. “I…I want one of those crabs.”

“We’ll have a crabfeed when we get back to the ship.”

“No. For study. Somehow they survived the toxic cloud. It could be important.” The researcher’s voice steadied, in his element.

“Okay,” Monk said. “Considering we left all our samples behind, we shouldn’t return to the ship empty-handed.”

He reached down and snagged up one of the smaller crabs with his prosthetic hand, grabbing it by the back of its shell. The feisty fellow snapped its claws backward at him, straining to get him.

“Hey, no marring the merchandise, buddy. New fingers come out of my paycheck.”

Monk went to smash it against a tree trunk, but Graff waved his good arm. “No! We need it alive. Like I said before, there’s something odd about their behavior. That bears examination, too.”

Monk’s jaw tightened in irritation. “Fine, but if this bit of sushi takes a chunk out of me, you’re paying for it.”

They continued through the plateau forest, wending across the island.

After forty minutes of trekking, the forest thinned and a panoramic cliff-top view opened. The island’s main township — named simply The Settlement — spread out along the beach and port. Out in the surrounding sea, beyond Flying Fish Cove, the white castle that was the Mistress of the Seas floated, a cloud in a midnight-blue sky.

Home, sweet home.

Movement drew Monk’s eyes to a group of smaller boats, a dozen, rounding Rocky Point, each leaving a contrail of white wake. The group traveled in a wide V, like an attack wing of fighter jets.

A matching group appeared on the other side of the township’s port.

Even from here Monk recognized the shape and color of the crafts.

Blue speedboats, long in keel and shallow draft.

“More pirates…” Graff moaned.

Monk stared between the two converging groups, two pincers, even more deadly than any red crab. He gaped at what was trapped between them.

The Mistress of the Seas.

Lisa stared at the radiograph X-ray.

The portable light box was set up on a desk in the cabin. Behind her, a figure lay sprawled on the bed, a sheet fully covering the patient.

Dead.

“It looks like tuberculosis,” she said. The radiographs of the man’s lungs were frothy with large white masses or tubercles. “Or maybe lung cancer.”

Dr. Henrick Barnhardt, the Dutch toxicologist, stood at her side, leaning a fist on the table. He had called her down here.

“Ja, but the patient’s wife said he’d shown no signs of respiratory distress prior to eighteen hours ago. No coughing, no expectorating, and he does not smoke. And he was only twenty-four years old.”

Lisa straightened. They were in the cabin alone. “And you’ve cultured his lungs?”

“I used a needle to aspirate some of the fluid from one of the lung masses. The content was definitely purulent. Cheesy with bacteria. Definitely a lung abscess, not cancer.”

She studied Barnhardt’s bearded face. He stood with a bit of a hunch as if his bearish size somehow embarrassed him, but it also gave him a conspiratorial posture. He had not invited Dr. Lindholm into these discussions.

“Such findings are consistent with tuberculosis,” she said.

TB was caused by a bacterium, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a highly contagious germ. And while the clinical history here was definitely unusual, TB could be dormant for years, slow-growing. The man could have been exposed years ago, been a ticking time bomb — then his exposure to the toxic gas could have stressed his lungs enough to cause the disease to spread. The patient would have definitely been contagious at the end.

And neither she nor Dr. Barnhardt wore contamination suits.

Why hadn’t he warned her?

“It wasn’t tuberculosis,” he answered. “Dr. Miller, our team’s infectious disease expert, identified the organism as Serratia marcescens, a strain nonpathogenic bacteria.”

Lisa remembered her discussion earlier, regarding the patient with normal skin bacteria that was churning out flesh-eating poisons.

The toxicologist confirmed the comparison. “Again we have a benign non-opportunist bacterium turning virulent.”

“But, Dr. Barnhardt, what you’re suggesting…”

“Call me Henri. And I’m not just suggesting this. I’ve spent the past hours searching for similar cases. I found two others. A woman with raging dysentery, literally sloughing out her intestinal lining. Caused by Lactobacillus acidophilus, a yogurt bacterium that is normally a healthy intestinal organism. Then there is a child demonstrating violent seizures, whose spinal tap is churning with Acetobacter aceti, a benign organism found in vinegar. It’s literally pickling her brain.”

As she listened, Lisa found her vision narrowing, focusing on the implication.

“And these can’t be the only cases,” Henri said.

She shook her head — not disagreeing, only in the growing, terrifying certainty of the truth of his words. “So something is definitely turning these benign bacteria against us.”

“Turning friend into foe. And if this turns into an all-out war, we are vastly outnumbered.”

She glanced up to him.

“The human body is composed of a hundred trillion cells, yet only ten trillion are ours. The other ninety percent are bacteria and a few other opportunistic organisms. We live cooperatively with this foreign environment. But if this balance should tip, should turn against us…?”

“We need to stop it.”

“It’s why I called you down here. To convince you. If we’re going to move forward, Dr. Miller and I need access to your partner’s forensic suite. We must begin answering critical questions. Was this a toxic or chemical alteration to these bacteria? If so, how do we treat it? And what if it’s contagious? How do we isolate or quarantine against it?” He grimaced through his beard. “We need answers. Now.”

Lisa checked her watch. Monk was already an hour late. Either he’s lost in his work or appreciating the island’s beauty and beaches. But now was not the time for sightseeing.

She nodded to Henri. “I’ll have someone radio Dr. Kokkalis. Get him back here ASAP. But in the meantime, you’re right. Let’s get started.”

She led the way out of the cabin. Monk’s forensic suite was near the top of the ship, five decks up. Sigma had commissioned one of the largest cabins to accommodate his equipment. Some of the crew had even unbolted beds and furniture to open space for the makeshift lab. The suite also had a wide balcony overlooking the starboard side. Lisa wished she was there now, needing sunlight, a fresh breeze on her face, something to chase away the mounting fear.

As she headed toward the ship’s elevator, she knew she’d have to call Painter yet again. She could not bear this responsibility on her own. She needed the full support of Sigma’s R&D team.

Plus she wanted to hear his voice again.

She pressed the button to call the elevator.

As if the button were attached to a detonator, a loud boom echoed from the other side of the ship, from the direction of the ship’s docking bay, where the tender boats ferried folks between the shore and the ship.

Had there been an accident?

“What was that?” Henri asked.

A second louder explosion rattled on their side of the ship, somewhere near the bow. Screams distantly echoed. Then Lisa heard a familiar sound, the strafing ping of automatic fire.

“We’re under attack,” she said.

Monk bounced the rusted Land Rover down the steep slope. He had hot-wired the old truck from a parking lot near the island’s phosphate mine, abandoned during the evacuation. They sped along a dirt track that led down the back side of the mine toward the coastal township.

Dr. Richard Graff was belted into the seat next to him, one arm raised to the roof to help hold him in place. “Slow down.”

Monk ignored him. He needed to reach the coast.

The two had broken into one of the mine’s workshops and tried the phone.

No service. The island was all but empty at this point. They were at least able to find a first-aid kit in the shack. Graff ’s shoulder was slathered in antibiotic salve and wrapped up in gauze.

The researcher had managed his own care while Monk had hot-wired the truck. Graff still had the first-aid kit clutched to his belly with his wounded arm. Once emptied, it served as a nice cage for their crab specimen.

A curve of jungle road forced Monk to downshift. He flew around the bend, carting the truck up on two wheels by a couple inches. They slammed back down, jostled in their restraints.

Graff gasped. “You’re not going to do anyone any good if you bury our front end into the jungle.”

Monk slowed — not because of Graff ’s words of caution, but because the road ended at a paved crossroads. They had reached a remote section of the island’s coastal highway, a narrow two-lane blacktop. The dirt track dropped just to the south of Flying Fish Cove. To the north, the bulk of the township rose, a mix of seaside hotels, Chinese restaurants, dilapidated bars, and tourist traps.

But Monk’s attention remained focused out into the waters, beyond Flying Fish Cove. The Mistress of the Seas was surrounded by burning ships, blasted yachts, and the ruins of the Australian Coast Guard cutter. Smoke choked high into the midday sky. Like circling sharks, a score of blue speedboats sped and roared through the water.

A single yellow-and-red helicopter, a Eurocopter Astar, circled the cove, an angry hornet stirring up the smoke. From the flashes of muzzle fire out its open hatch, it was no friend.

Monk had caught glimpses of the sea assault as he swept down the switchbacks from the highlands: explosions, flashes of gunfire, shattering eruptions of flaming debris. The blasts had echoed up to their truck like the sound of distant fireworks.

Boom…boom…boom…

Off to the north, a resounding blast cast up a gout of smoke and flame, coming from the township. Close enough to rattle the Land Rover’s windows.

“Telstra substation,” Graff said. “They’re cutting off all means of communication.”

Other sections of The Settlement were already burning.

These were no ordinary pirates. It was a full-on assault.

Who the hell were they?

Monk shifted back into gear and headed away from the township, along the coastal road.

“Where are you—?” Graff began to ask.

Monk rounded a bend. A small beachside hotel, isolated within a couple of tamed acres of rain forest, appeared ahead. Monk took a sharp turn at a sign that read THE MANGO LODGE AND GRILLE. He sped down the entry road. The hotel rose into view, a two-story building that dissolved into a few freestanding jungle bungalows. A swimming pool glistened.

The place appeared deserted.

“You’ll be safe here,” Monk said as he braked to a stop at the side of the hotel under the shielding bower of the lodge’s namesake, a mango tree.

Monk hopped out.

“Wait!” Graff struggled with his door, finally fighting it open. He all but fell out of the Land Rover. He chased Monk down.

Monk did not slow. He half trotted toward the beach. Like all seaside hotels, the Mango Lodge and Grille offered all the activities a beachcomber might want: snorkeling, kayaking, sailing. At the rear of the establishment, Monk spotted the hotel’s activities center, a small cinder-block outbuilding with a thatched roof. It was boarded-up because of the evacuation.

On the fly, Monk snatched up a pole used to clean the pool. In no time, he was prying boards free and smashing through the glass door.

Graff caught up with him.

Monk reached out and hauled the researcher inside, out of the sun. The helicopter roared past overhead, low, its rotor wash whipping palm fronds. Then it swept away, continuing its patrol of the shoreline.

“Keep out of sight!” Monk warned.

Graff nodded vigorously.

Monk stalked through the front of the activities center, packed with beach towels, sunglasses, suntan oils, and a host of souvenirs. The place smelled of coconut and damp feet. Monk circled the counter and proceeded through a doorway draped in rattling beads.

He found what he was looking for.

Scuba gear hung along the back wall.

Monk kicked off his boots.

On the beach side of the room, lined up before a roll-up door, rested a variety of crafts for fun in the sun. Monk bypassed the paddleboats, a pair of kayaks, and stopped before the lone Jet Ski watercraft. It rested on a wheeled trailer, ready for easy hauling to and from the water.

At least the seas on this side of the island were clean of that toxic soup.

Monk turned to Graff. “I’m going to need your help.”

Eighteen minutes later, Monk rubbed his elbow across the grease-stained window in the roll-up door. His wet suit squeaked against the glass. Craning his neck, Monk waited for the helicopter to circle by overhead and swing back north toward Flying Fish Cove. The cove lay out of direct sight, hidden by Smith Point. All that Monk could make out of the war zone was the smudged pall of smoke rising over the ridgeline.

At last, the helicopter turned tail and headed back toward the cruise ship.

“Okay, here we go!”

Monk bent down and hauled the door up, snapping it into place overhead. Behind him, Graff lifted the trailer hitch, and Monk swung around to the front. He grabbed the back of the Jet Ski, and together they ran the trailer down to the water. The large rubber sand tires made it quick work.

Graff loosened the craft from the trailer while Monk ran back and hauled on his BC vest and tanks. Once outfitted, he slipped a souvenir Mango Lodge windbreaker over all his equipment.

Heavily burdened, Monk plodded back to the water and helped float the Jet Ski off its trailer. “Stay hidden,” he instructed Graff. “But if you can find some means of communication, a radio or anything, try to raise someone in authority.”

Graff nodded. “Be careful.”

In another minute Monk was gunning the engine to a high whine and racing off toward Smith Point. Behind him, Graff trotted the empty trailer back to its garage.

Monk bent lower in the seat and cranked the craft to full throttle. Flying faster, the windbreaker snapped in the breeze. Sea and salt sprayed. Smith Point grew in front of him. At last, he reached the rocky spur and, without slowing, sped around it.

On the far side of the cove, the Mistress of the Seas rose like a besieged white castle. Closer still, the waters burned with spills of flaming oil and smoking husks of ships. Even the jetty was a blasted ruin. And throughout the war zone, the roar of the pirates’ speedboats growled.

On the hunt.

Here we go.

Like a skimming torpedo, Monk shot into the fray.

“There must be something we can do,” Lisa said.

“For now, we sit tight,” Henri Barnhardt warned.

They were holed up in one of the empty outside cabins. Lisa stood near one of the room’s two portholes. Henri took a post by the door.

An hour ago they had fled through the ship, only to discover the place in full chaos. Uniformed crew and wild-eyed passengers, both the sick and the healthy, crowded the hallways. Explosions and gunfire were almost drowned out by the nerve-rattling klaxon of the ship’s alarm bell. Whether automated or purposeful, someone had tripped the ship’s fire doors, dropping them, isolating sections.

Meanwhile masked gunmen cleared the halls, one after the other, shooting anyone who resisted or moved too slowly. Lisa and Henri had heard the screams, the gunfire, the trampling feet from the deck above. They came close to being shot themselves. Only a swift race through the ship’s gilded showroom and down another hallway had saved them.

They did not know how much longer they could hold out.

The rapidity of the takedown of the Mistress of the Seas suggested some of the crew must have been involved.

Lisa stared out the porthole window. The sea was on fire. From this same window, she had watched a handful of desperate passengers leap from upper balconies into the waters, hoping to make it to shore.

But the gunboats swept the cove, peppering and strafing the water.

Bodies floated amid the flaming debris.

There was no escape.

Why was this happening? What was going on?

Finally, the alarm klaxon went silent, cutting off with a final whining squelch. The silence that remained felt heavy, a physical weight. Even the air seemed thicker.

Somewhere above someone sobbed and wailed.

Henri met Lisa’s eyes.

From the room’s speaker a stiff voice began speaking in Malay. Lisa didn’t speak the Malaysian language. Still staring at Henri, she watched the toxicologist shake his head. He was just as lost. But whatever was said was eventually repeated in Mandarin Chinese. They were the two most common languages spoken on the island.

Finally, the speaker switched to English, heavily accented.

“The ship is now ours. Each deck is patrolled by guards. Anyone caught out in the halls will be shot on sight. No one will come to harm as long as we are obeyed. That is all.”

The speech ended with a snap of static.

Henri tested to make sure the cabin door was locked, then stepped toward Lisa. “The ship’s been hijacked. Someone must have been planning this for some time.”

Lisa flashed back to the Achille Lauro, an Italian cruise ship hijacked by Palestinian terrorists back in 1985. And more recently in 2005, Somalian pirates attacked another cruise ship off the east African coast.

She turned to the porthole, staring out, and studied the boats patrolling the waters below, operated by teams of masked gunmen. They appeared to be pirates, but she suspected otherwise.

Maybe some of Painter’s paranoia had rubbed off on her.

This was all too coordinated for a random act of piracy.

“Surely,” Henri said, “they’ll ransack the ship and steal everything not locked down, then flee back among the islands. If we can keep alive, avoid any confrontation…”

The speaker screeched again, and a new voice spoke through the general shipboard communications. In English. It didn’t repeat in Malay or Chinese.

“The following passengers will report to the ship’s bridge. They will be expected here in the next five minutes. They will come with their hands on their heads, fingers clasped. Failure to appear will result in the death of two passengers for every minute you are late. We will shoot the children first.”

The names were stated.

Dr. Gene Lindholm.

Dr. Benjamin Miller.

Dr. Henri Barnhardt.

And last: Dr. Lisa Cummings.

“You have five minutes.”

The radio went silent again.

Lisa still faced the porthole. “This is no hijacking.”

And these were no ordinary pirates.

Before she turned away from the window, she spotted a Jet Ski racing across the water toward the cruise ship. A rooster tail of water jetted high behind it, making it easy to spot. It weaved through the debris with skill. She could not make out who was aboard the craft. The rider was hunkered low.

And with good reason.

Two speedboats were in tight pursuit, crashing through flames and smoking planks. Muzzle flashes sparked from the boat.

She shook her head at the Jet Skier’s foolishness.

From over the top of the cruise ship, a helicopter dove into view, sweeping down toward the Jet Ski. She didn’t want to watch, but she felt some obligation. Some acknowledgment of the rider’s suicidal assault.

The helicopter tilted in a sharp arc, side door open.

A blast of smoke spat from its interior.

Grenade launcher.

Wincing, Lisa glanced down in time to see the Jet Ski explode in a fiery ball of smoke and charred metal.

She swung away, numb and trembling all over. She faced Henri. They had no other choice.

“Let’s go.”

Monk sank into the depths of the sea, dragged down by his weight belt and tanks. He did not fight it and held his breath. Overhead, the blue of the water blazed with fire. Shrapnel from the blasted Jet Ski sizzled through the water. Two meters away, the watercraft sank nose first into the depths.

As Monk followed, he struggled out of his Mango Lodge windbreaker. There was no reason to keep his tanks hidden any longer. He pulled up his scuba mask and swept his arm out to gather his air hose. He used the regulator to blow his mask clear, then secured it.

The depths turned crystalline clear.

He seated the regulator and drew his first breath.

More a sigh of relief.

Had his bit of subterfuge worked?

A moment ago, as the helicopter had dove toward him, drawn like a hawk to a mouse, Monk had eyed the gunman in the open hatchway. As the grenade launcher was pointed at him, Monk flipped the Jet Ski over at the last second, diving beneath it and into the depths. The explosion had still struck him like an anvil to the head, ears popping.

He sank toward the sea bottom. Flying Fish Cove had deep-water moorings to a depth of thirty meters. But he didn’t need to go that deep.

Monk adjusted his buoyancy compensators, swelling his vest with air from his tanks. His descent slowed to a hover. He craned up and watched the bottoms of the trolling speedboats, propellers churning the water white. They circled and circled, looking for any signs of the Jet Ski’s rider, ready to fire if he surfaced.

But Monk wasn’t planning on surfacing, and if his ruse had worked, no one knew he had scuba gear. Monk twisted around, checked his glowing wrist compass, and headed along the bearings he had already calculated.

Toward the Mistress of the Seas.

He had always wanted to take a cruise.

5 Lost and Found

“This is as far as we dare go,” Gray said.

He had spent the last seven minutes creeping and edging the Thunderbird through Glover-Archibold Park, following an old weedy service road, bushes scraping against the flanks of the convertible. The left front tire was a punctured ruin, slowing them, making steering damn near impossible.

Though most people considered Washington, D.C., to be a place of historic buildings, wide parade malls, and museums, it also featured one of the longest, interconnected series of parklands, threaded throughout the heart of the city, covering well over a thousand acres. Glover-Archibold Park marked one end, terminating at the Potomac River.

Gray had headed away from the river. It was too far and too open. Following a back alley that paralleled the park homes, he had wended north with his headlights off, discovering an old fire road that led deeper into the dense woods. He took it. He needed to stay lost, yet the Thunderbird was on its last legs.

Recognizing he could go no farther, he slowed.

They were at the bottom of a ravine. Steep wooded hills climbed on either side. Ahead, an old abandoned train trestle crossed the narrow valley. Gray edged the Thunderbird under the bridge of rusted red iron and wooden slats. He braked next to one of the cement walls holding the trestle up. The wall was scrawled with graffiti.

“Everybody out. We go on foot from here.”

On the far side of the trestle, lit by stars and a sliver of moon, a wooden trail marker indicated a hiking trail. The path looked more like a tunnel, cutting into the heavily bowered forest.

All the better to hide them.

Off in the other direction, the sirens of emergency vehicles wailed. Gray spotted a flickering orange glow in the night sky. The fiery rocket blast must have started a house fire.

Closer still, the woods were dark, painted in shades of black.

Gray knew Nasser and his assassination team could be anywhere.

Behind them, ahead of them, closing in already.

Gray’s heart pounded. His fears gathered tight around him — not for himself, but for his parents. He needed to get them somewhere safe, to put distance between them and the dangers circling around him. The only way to do that was to get Seichan patched up.

And he had to do that away from all eyes.

Even if he still had his scrambled cell phone, he dared not contact Sigma or Director Crowe. Lines of communication were compromised, as evidenced by the ambush at the safe house. Protocol dictated he go cold and dark. There was a leak somewhere, and until he had his parents holed up someplace safe, he wasn’t going to lift his head above the weeds.

So that meant they’d have to seek an alternate means to care for Seichan. His mother had suggested one option and had already implemented her plan, making two calls on her personal cell phone. After that, Gray had her remove her cell phone’s battery, lest someone use the device to track them.

“The morphine seems to have relaxed her,” his mother reported from the backseat.

During a short stop, Gray’s mother had shifted into the backseat with Kowalski. Seichan lay draped between them. His mother had injected Seichan with a premeasured morphine syrette, taken from some medical supplies at the safe house.

“If we’re going to make it,” Gray said, “we’ll have to carry her from here.”

“I’ve got her.” Kowalski waved everyone out of his way.

Gray’s father helped his mother exit the convertible. Once out, his father eyed the state of his car and shook his head, swearing under his breath.

Kowalski stood up, hauling Seichan in his arms. Even in the dark beneath the trestle, Gray noted the black stain on her belly wrap. The movement stirred Seichan awake. She struggled a moment in Kowalski’s arms as he clambered out, startled, dazed. She cried out and struck the heel of her hand into his cheek.

“Hey…!” the large man exclaimed, avoiding another strike.

Seichan began to yell, an angry stream, an unintelligible mix of English and an Asian dialect.

“Quiet her down,” his father said, glancing at the dark forest.

Kowalski tried to muffle her mouth, but almost got a finger bitten off. “Son of a bitch!”

Seichan’s agitation grew more fierce.

His mother moved closer, searching in her large tote. “I have another dose of morphine.”

Gray shook his head. “Wait.” With Seichan’s blood loss, he feared the respiratory depression that accompanied morphine. A second dose might kill her, and he still needed answers.

He held a palm out toward his mother. “Smelling salts.” He remembered Kowalski had mentioned them as among the contents of the emergency medkit.

His mother nodded. She reached to her bag, fumbled a long second, then handed him a few capsules. Gray grabbed one and stepped to Kowalski’s side.

The guard now bore a long bloody scratch down one cheek. “Christ, do something about her!”

Gray grabbed a fistful of her hair, arched her neck, and cracked the capsule under her nose. Her head wrenched, fighting, but he kept the capsule at her upper lip. The delirious cries cut off, replaced by gagging.

A hand rose to push him away.

He held tight.

“Enough…” Seichan coughed out, and grabbed Gray’s wrist.

He was surprised at the strength in her fingers. He let his arm drop.

“Let me breathe. Set me down.”

Gray nodded to Kowalski. He didn’t have to be told twice. He settled Seichan to her feet but kept an arm under her shoulders. She’d overestimated her own strength. Her legs sagged. She hung in the large man’s arms.

Wincing, she glanced around her. Gray read the confusion in her eyes, behind the war between pain and morphine. She quickly focused back to him.

“I…the obelisk…” she said with strained worry.

Gray was tired of hearing about the damned obelisk. “We’ll have to get it later. It broke after you crashed. I left it back at the house.”

His words seemed to cause her more pain than her bullet wound. But perhaps his earlier lapse was a bit of luck. Maybe Nasser had gone after the obelisk rather than pursuing them.

His mother, overhearing their conversation, stepped forward. “You’re talking about that broken black pillar.” She patted her large purse. “I picked it up when I went inside to get the bandages. It looked old and maybe valuable.”

Eyes closing with relief, Seichan nodded to both those assessments. Her head hung in exhaustion. “Thank God.”

“What’s so important about it?” he asked.

“It could…it might save the world. If we’re not too late already.”

Gray glanced to his mother’s tote, then back to Seichan. “What the hell do you mean?”

She waved an arm weakly, fading again. “Too complicated. I need your hel p…can’t…not alone…we must, must get away.”

Her chin dropped to her chest as she slipped into unconsciousness again. Kowalski caught her weight on his hip.

Gray was tempted to use another capsule of smelling salts, but he feared exerting her any further. Fresh blood trickled from her bandage.

His mother seemed to make the same assessment. She nodded to the trail. “We can’t be far from the hospital now.”

Gray turned to the dark path on the far side of the trestle. It was the other reason he had taken the Thunderbird north through the woods, following a suggestion from his mother. On the far side of Glover-Archibold Park spread the campus of Georgetown University. The school’s hospital bordered the edge of the forest. His mother had former students who labored there.

If they could reach it in secret…

But was the destination too obvious?

There were a thousand exits out of the park system, but Nasser knew his quarry bore a seriously injured woman and that she needed immediate medical attention.

It was a huge risk, but Gray saw no way of avoiding it.

He remembered Nasser’s eyes as the bastard asked about the obelisk. Hungry, ruthless. The Egyptian had believed Gray’s assertion that the obelisk had been left behind — mostly because Gray had believed it. But which was more important to the man: obtaining the obelisk or seeking revenge?

He stared around at their small group.

All their lives balanced on that answer.

A half hour later Painter stalked the length of his office, a hands-free headset fixed to his ear. “They’re all dead?”

Behind him, the plasma screen displayed live feed of the fiery blaze of three homes, along with a section of the neighboring parkland. It had been a dry summer, turning forest into kindling. Fire engines and emergency personnel swarmed the cordoned-off area. Television vans were already raising satellite antennas. A police helicopter circled above, floodlight spearing down, searching.

But it was too little, too late.

Neither the convertible Gray had driven to the safe house nor the hijacked medical van was among the wreckage. The raging fires hampered further investigation.

The only solid news was bad. The original med-van team had been discovered in an abandoned field, each shot in the head. He had four folders on his desk. He sank to his seat. On top of everything else, he had four hard calls to make before dawn. To their families.

Painter’s aide, Brant, wheeled into his doorway. “Sorry, sir.”

Painter nodded to him.

“I have Dr. McKnight holding on your third line. He’s available for phone or video conferencing.”

Painter pointed a thumb at the fiery screen. “I’ve seen enough of this for the moment. Patch Sean through.”

Painter peeled the headset out of his ear. He swore he might as well have one surgically implanted. He swung around to face the screen as the emergency scene dissolved away, replaced by the face of his boss.

Sean McKnight had founded Sigma but had since been promoted to the head of DARPA. Painter had placed a call to him as soon as Seichan had crashed into Gray’s life. Both for his advice and expertise. But also for one more pressing reason.

“So the Guild is back on our doorstep,” Sean said. He combed his fingers through his graying red hair. It was mussed, and it looked like he had been summoned directly from his bed. But his white shirt was creased and pressed. A navy pinstripe jacket lay over an arm of his chair. Ready for a long day.

“The Guild may be more than on our doorstep,” Painter said. “Current intel suggests they may be through the door already.” Painter tapped a folder behind him. “You’ve already read the sit-op.”

A nod answered him. “Plainly the Guild knew about the safe house. Knew Gray was headed there with their AWOL operative. We have a leak somewhere.”

“I’m afraid we have to assume that.”

He shook his head. If true, it was disastrous. The Guild had infiltrated Sigma once before, but Painter would swear his organization was clean now. After the last mole had been exposed, Painter had burned Sigma to its roots and rebuilt it from the ground up, with hundreds of safeguards and countermeasures.

All for nothing.

If there was still a leak, the very foundation of Sigma might be suspect. It could mean the dissolution of the organization. An internal audit was already under way, a cost-benefit analysis of Sigma’s basic command structure, under the guise of unifying U.S. intelligence-gathering services within Homeland Security.

But worst of all, there was a more intimate cost.

Painter had the four folders waiting on his desk to remind him.

Sean continued. “It is not just our division that is plagued by this terrorist-for-hire network. Two months ago, MI6 cleared a cell that had infiltrated a British Aerospace’s black-ops project outside of Glasgow. They lost five agents in the process. The Guild is everywhere and nowhere. Here at home, the NSA and the CIA are still trying to figure out who the Guild’s Osama is. We know next to nothing about their leader or their main players. We don’t even know if they are called the Guild. The derivation of that name came out of a nickname by an SAS officer, now deceased. Still, apparently the various cells have taken on the name as their own, at first mockingly, then perhaps more genuinely. We know that little about the network.”

He left this last hanging.

Painter understood. “And now we have a defector.”

Sean sighed. “We’ve been trying to get a foothold in the organization for years. I’ve proposed several scenarios. But nothing as efficient as having an operative, one of the Guild elite, drop into our laps. We must secure her.”

“And the Guild will try just as hard to stop that from happening. They’ve made that plain. To eliminate her, they’ve chosen to expose their own infiltration into Sigma. A costly choice. And to carry it out, they’ve sent their best and most elusive operative. Another of their elite.”

“I saw the video of the man at the safe house. Read his dossier.” Sean grimaced.

Painter had read the same. The Butcher of Calcutta. His true origin and allegience was unknown. Of mixed descent, he had posed in the past as Indian, Pakistani, Iraqi, Egyptian, and Libyan. If Seichan had a male counterpart, it would be this man.

“We have one lead,” Painter said. “We were able to pick out his name off the video feed. Nasser. But that’s the best we could manage.”

Sean waved a dismissive hand. “His aliases are as numerous as his assassinations. He’s left a bloody trail all around the world, mostly concentrating in North Africa and throughout the Middle and Near East. Though just recently he’s extended deeper into the Mediterranean. The garroting of an archaeologist in Greece. The assassination of a museum curator in Italy.”

Painter’s attention hardened back to the screen. “In Italy? Where?”

“Venice. A curator found shot in the prisons below the Duke’s Palace. Nasser — or whatever his real name is — was seen in surveillance footage of the piazza outside.”

Painter rubbed his chin, hard enough to burn the stubble. “I received a call earlier from Monsignor Verona at the Vatican. The details should be in the sit-op report. There is a good chance that Seichan was also attempting some action in Italy at around that time.”

Sean’s eyes slowly narrowed. “Interesting. It’s a coincidence that bears further investigation. Both assassins in Italy. Now they’re here. One hunting the other. Two master assassins, the best of the Guild. And if nothing else, Nasser has driven Seichan into our arms.”

Or rather into Gray’s arms, Painter added silently.

“We need that woman in custody. Immediately. To lose this chance is beyond acceptable.”

Painter understood the severity of the situation, but he also knew Gray, how his mind worked. If anyone had a level of paranoia equal to his own, it was Gray. Custody could prove to be a problem.

“Sir, Commander Pierce is on the run. Ambushed at the safe house, he must suspect a leak like we do. He’ll go into hiding with her. Lay low until he feels it’s safe to come out of the cold.”

“We may not have that long to wait. Not with the Butcher of Calcutta hunting them both now.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Commander Pierce must be found, brought back in with her. I have no choice but to expand the search, to contact local authorities and the FBI. I’ve already ordered a search of all hospitals and medical facilities. We can’t let him go to ground.”

“Sir, I would prefer to give Commander Pierce some leeway to address the situation. The more light shone in his direction, the more likely it will draw the attention of Nasser.”

“If so, then we attempt to apprehend two Guild operatives.”

Painter could not keep the shock from his voice. “By using Gray as bait.”

Sean stared out of the monitor. Painter read the stiffness of his posture. He also noted again the pressed jacket and shirt. Painter suddenly realized he had not been the first one to have Sean’s ear this night.

“This decision was made by Homeland. Signed by the president. There will be no countermanding it.” Sean firmed his voice. “Gray and this Guild agent must be found and brought in by whatever force necessary.”

Painter found no words to argue. There could be none. It was a new world. He slowly nodded. He would cooperate.

Still, in his heart, he knew Gray.

On the run, hunted by both sides, the man would prove formidable.

He would hide deep.

“I spotted a Starbucks in the lobby downstairs,” Kowalski mumbled. “Maybe it’s open now. Anyone want a cup of Joe?”

“We stay put,” Gray said.

Kowalski shook his head. “No fucking kidding. It was a joke.”

Ignoring him, Gray continued to examine Seichan’s broken obelisk. They were gathered in the small reception room of a dental office. At his elbow, a table lamp illuminated the cramped space, decorated in the typical cookie-cutter manner: months-old magazines, generic watercolors, an anemic potted ficus plant, and a dark wall-mounted television.

Forty minutes ago the group had followed the woodland trail to the edge of Glover-Archibold Park. It had ended at a street that separated the park from the Georgetown University campus. At that hour, there had been no cars, no traffic. They had hurried across the street, slipped between two darkened research buildings, and reached the university’s Dental Annex. The hospital proper lay beyond, lit brightly. They had dared not go that far, risk that level of exposure.

So they made other arrangements.

Across the dental-room reception, Kowalski swore quietly and folded his arms, plainly bored but still on edge. They all awaited word.

“What’s taking so goddamn long?” Kowalski grumbled.

Gray had learned the man was a former seaman with the U.S. Navy. He’d been recruited into Sigma following his assistance with a Sigma operation in Brazil, not as an agent, but as muscle. He had tried to show Gray his scars from that mission as they waited, but Gray declined. The man did not know how to shut up. No wonder he’d been assigned to guard duty. Alone.

But Kowalski’s ongoing commentary had not fallen on deaf ears.

Across the room, Gray’s father lay sprawled over three chairs, eyes closed but not sleeping. It took an effort to maintain that deep frown.

“So you’re some sort of science spy,” his father had said earlier. “Figures…”

Gray still didn’t know what his father meant by that, but now was not the time to confront the issue. The sooner he could get Seichan patched up and away from his parents…the better for all of them.

Gray continued his examination. He turned the obelisk around, studying every surface. The black stone was ancient, pitted and scored, but was otherwise nondescript. It looked Egyptian, but it was not his area of expertise. Even his assessment of origin might have been clouded by the failed assassin’s Egyptian accent.

But one feature of the obelisk was definitely not natural to the stone.

He turned the broken top section on end. Protruding from the bottom was a bar of silver, about the thickness of his smallest finger. He touched it. Gray knew it was the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Something had been hidden at the heart of the obelisk. Looking more carefully at the broken end, he was able to make out an old cemented seam in the stone, invisible from the outside. The obelisk was really two pieces of marble craftily glued together, hiding something within. Like carving out the pages of a book to hide a gun or valuables.

He remembered Seichan’s words.

It might save the world…if we’re not too late already.

Whatever she meant, it was important enough for her to come seek him out, to betray the Guild.

He needed answers.

The creak of the door drew his attention. Gray’s mother pushed into the dental suite. She pulled a surgical mask from her face.

Gray stood up.

“She’s damn lucky,” his mother said. “We’ve cauterized the bleeding and hung a second unit of blood. Mickie thinks she’ll do fine. He’s finishing her dressing.”

Mickie was Dr. Michael Corrin, a former teaching assistant of his mother’s who had gone on to medical school, largely based on his mother’s recommendation. The depth of their relationship and trust extended to this midnight house call, a secret rendezvous at the hospital’s neighboring dental facility. A quick ultrasound revealed the night’s first bit of good news. The bullet hadn’t pierced Seichan’s abdominal cavity. The shot had passed just lateral to her pelvic bone.

“When can she be moved?” Gray asked.

“Mickie would rather she spend a few hours here, at the very least.”

“We don’t have that much time.”

“I explained that to him.”

“Is she awake?”

A nod. “After the first unit of blood, she grew more responsive. Mickie’s loaded her with antibiotics and analgesics. She’s already sitting up.”

“Then it’s time to go.” Gray went to push past his mother. He had observed the ultrasound, but he’d been chased out when the doctor set to work on the wound. No amount of arguing would make the doctor budge.

Gray hadn’t liked letting Seichan out of his sight, so he’d left with the broken obelisk. Seichan was not going anywhere without it.

With the two pieces of the obelisk in hand, Gray shoved through the door. His mother followed. Gray crossed to the first dental suite. He almost ran into Dr. Corrin as he was stepping out. The young doctor stood as tall as Gray, but he was sandy-haired and whip-thin. A manicured line of beard traced his jawline. Wearing a scowl, Dr. Corrin nodded back to the room.

“She yanked her catheter and asked that I fetch you. And an ultraviolet light.” He waved a hand toward the rear of the dental office. “My brother uses one to cure dental composites. I’ll be right back.”

With the way open, Gray entered the suite.

With her back to him, Seichan was sitting in a dental chair, naked from the waist up, struggling to pull a borrowed Redskins T-shirt over her head. A steri-drape lay crumpled at her feet. Even with her bare back to him, Gray read the strain of the effort. She had to catch herself on the armrest.

His mother sidestepped him. “Let me help you. You shouldn’t be doing that by yourself.”

Seichan resisted. “I’ve got it.” She lifted an arm to ward off any help, but flinched with a gasp.

“Enough, young lady.”

Gray’s mother went to her side and helped her tug the T-shirt over her bare breasts and bandaged midriff. Turning around, Seichan discovered Gray standing there. Her face darkened, abashed. But Gray suspected her embarrassment lay not in being almost caught naked, but in showing weakness.

She slowly stood, face hardening against the pain. Leaning her rear end against the reclined chair, she rebuttoned her pants, still tight to her hips.

“I need to speak to your son,” she said to Gray’s mother, voice hoarse, dismissive.

His mother glanced to Gray. He nodded to her.

“I’ll go check on your father,” his mother said coldly, and left.

Down the hall, the muted sound of a television started. Apparently Kowalski had found the remote.

Alone now, Gray and Seichan stared at each other. Neither spoke, both taking a moment to size the other up.

Dr. Corrin stepped to the door with a handheld lamp. “This is all we have.”

“It will do.” Seichan tried to raise a hand to ask for it, but her arm trembled.

Gray accepted it, cradling the pieces of obelisk in one arm. “We’ll need a minute.”

“Of course.” Dr. Corrin followed after Gray’s mother, sensing the tension in the room.

Seichan’s eyes had never left Gray’s face. “Commander Pierce, I’m sorry I put your family at risk. I underestimated Nasser.” She gingerly touched her bandaged wound. Acid entered her voice. “I won’t make that mistake again. I thought I had lost him in Europe.”

“You didn’t,” Gray snapped back.

Her eyes narrowed. “I didn’t because Sigma command is compromised. The Guild used your own resources to track and expose me. The blame does not fall squarely upon me.”

Gray had no argument against that.

She touched her forehead as if she had forgotten something, but Gray suspected she was stalling, weighing what to say and what to leave out. “You must have a thousand questions,” she mumbled.

“Only one. What the hell is going on?”

Her left eyebrow lifted. A strangely familiar gesture, a reminder of their shared past. “To answer that, we have to start there.” She nodded to the obelisk. “If you’ll set it on the instrument table…”

Needing answers, Gray obeyed, balancing the broken piece atop the base.

“The lamp…” she said.

A moment later, with the overhead lights off, Gray bent over and studied the rows of illuminated letters glowing upon the black stone, across all four surfaces.

He did not recognize the lettering as any hieroglyphs or runes he’d ever seen. He glanced across at her. The whites of Seichan’s eyes glowed in the ultraviolet backwash.

“What you’re looking at is angelic script,” she said. “The language of the archangels.”

Gray’s brow crinkled with his disbelief.

“I know,” she said. “Insane. The script’s origin traces back to both early Christianity and ancient Hebrew mysticism. If you want to know more—”

“Skip it. I’d rather find out what you meant when you said that the obelisk could save the world.”

She leaned back, glancing away — then her eyes flicked to him. “Gray, I need your help. I have to stop them, but I can’t do it alone.”

“Do what alone?”

“Go against the Guild. What they are attempting…” Again there was that flash of fear from her.

Gray frowned. When he’d first run into Seichan, she had been attempting to explode weaponized anthrax over Fort Detrick. Considering such callousness, what would scare her now?

“I helped you in the past,” she said, trying the guilt card.

“To defeat a mutual enemy,” he countered. “And to save your own skin.”

“And that’s all I’m looking for here again. Cooperation to defeat a mutual enemy. And it’s not just my life in jeopardy this time. Hundreds of millions are threatened. And it’s already started. The seeds are planted.”

She nodded to the obelisk’s glowing writing. “All that is stopping the Guild is locked in this riddle. If we could solve it first, there would be some hope. But I’ve gone as far as I can alone. I need fresh eyes, someone with more knowledge.”

“And you expect the two of us to be able to solve what thwarts the Guild with its vast resources. If we brought all of Sigma into the picture—”

“You’d be handing the Guild their victory. There is a mole in Sigma. Whatever Sigma learns, the Guild will know.”

She was right. It was worrisome, to say the least.

“So you propose we go it alone. Just the two of us.”

“And one other…if he’ll cooperate.”

“Who?”

“When it comes to dealing with angels and archaeology, there is only one other person I respect.”

Gray knew immediately to whom she was referring. “Vigor.”

She nodded. “I left Monsignor Verona a calling card, a mystery to begin solving on his own. If you cooperate, we’ll continue on.” She touched the obelisk, wobbling the broken half. “To the next step on the angelic path.”

“And where is that?”

Another shake of her head. She certainly was not going to make this easy. “I will tell you when we are away. As it is, we must get moving. The longer we sit in one place, the greater risk of our exposure.”

She reached for the obelisk.

Gray beat her to it. He snatched up the larger half of the broken obelisk and raised it over his head. He’d had enough.

“Destroy it if you want,” Seichan warned. “I still won’t tell you anything more. Not until we’re safely away and you agree to help.”

Gray ignored her. “I assume you already made copies of the script here, probably even photos.”

“Several in fact,” she said.

“Good.”

He brought his arm down and smashed the obelisk against the floor. It shattered into several pieces, skittering across the linoleum. A small gasp of surprise escaped Seichan, indicating she had no clue anything was hidden inside the statue.

“What…what have you done?”

Gray bent down and picked through the pieces to retrieve the chunk of silver from the debris. He straightened. In his fingers, he held what was hidden inside the stone. He was momentarily stunned silent.

He lifted the large silver crucifix.

Seichan’s eyes widened with recognition. She jerked closer, oblivious of any pain. “It cannot be. You found it.”

“Found what?”

“Friar Agreer’s cross.” Her voice lowered, both angry and mortified. “I had it all along.”

“Who is Friar Agreer?”

“Friar Antonio Agreer. The priestly confessor to Marco Polo.”

Marco Polo?

Tired of the riddles and half statements, Gray snapped harshly. “Seichan, what the hell is going on?”

She waved to a side chair, where her ripped leather bomber jacket had been tossed. “We have to get out of here.”

He refused to move, blocking her as she stepped toward the chair.

She lowered her chin, her eyes going hard. “Gray, make up your damned mind. I don’t have the time.” She made to push past him.

He grabbed her upper arm. “And what’s to stop me from just turning your ass over to Sigma.”

She twisted free. All the freshly transfused blood was now in her face, livid and furious.

“Because you know goddamn better, Gray! If the Guild catches me, I’m dead. If your government captures me, I’ll be locked far away forever, beyond any ability to stop what’s about to happen. That’s why I came to you. But fine. I’ll sweeten the deal. Make you a trade. How’s that? Help me, convince Vigor of the same, and afterward I’ll give you the name of the mole at Sigma. If saving lives isn’t good enough…the wolves are already at Sigma’s door. You may not know it, but the powers that be are seeking to castrate you all, to put you all out to pasture, and now that another mole — a second mole — is hidden in your midst, they’ll burn you down and salt the ground. End of Sigma. Forever.”

Gray found himself swaying. He had indeed heard of such rumors, engendered by the internal audit by NSA and DARPA. But he also remembered a different Seichan, bent over him, gun in his face. She had attempted to kill him when they’d first met. How much could he trust her?

Before the standoff could be resolved, a shout came from the reception area. “Commander Pierce! Come see this!”

Gray swore under his breath at the man’s loud bark. What about covert didn’t Kowalski understand?

Gray met Seichan’s gaze. She was still burning with raw anger, but it failed to lay waste to what he’d first heard in her voice, bleeding across his parents’ driveway. Terror.

He stalked to the side chair, picked up her jacket, and handed it to her. “We’ll do it your way for now. But that’s all I’ll promise.”

She nodded.

“Commander!”

With a shake of his head, Gray headed out of the suite. He heard the television turned up louder. He hurried forward. Still clutching the silver crucifix in his palm, he pocketed it before stepping into the reception area.

He found everyone staring up at the television. Gray noted the familiar logo for CNN Headline News. On the screen, three homes burned at the edge of a forest fire.

“…possibly arson,” the report continued. “To repeat, the police are looking for this man. Grayson Pierce. A local Washingtonian.”

A picture of Gray flashed in the corner of the screen, in uniform, his black hair shaved to a stubble, eyes angry, mouth grim. It was his mug shot from when he was incarcerated in Leavenworth. Not a flattering picture. He looked like a feral criminal.

His father grumbled at his side. “Looks like your past just bit you in the ass.”

Gray concentrated on the news report.

“For the moment, the police are calling this former Army Ranger a person of interest. That is all. He is wanted only for questioning. The police request anyone with the knowledge of his whereabouts to contact authorities immediately.”

Kowalski lifted the remote and muted the sound.

Dr. Corrin stepped back from them all. “In the light of all this, I can’t keep silent any—”

Kowalski pointed the remote toward the doctor. “In for a penny, in for a buck, doc. Aiding and abetting. Keep quiet or you can kiss your medical degree good-bye.”

Dr. Corrin blanched, backing another step.

Gray’s mother reached and touched the doctor’s arm reassuringly. “Nonsense.” She scowled at Kowalski. “Quit scaring him.”

Kowalski shrugged.

“Someone is just trying to flush us out,” Gray said.

“But it makes no sense,” his mother argued. “I spoke with Director Crowe on the phone back at the safe house. He knows we were ambushed. Why is he letting these lies spread?”

The answer came from behind them. “Because they really want me.” Seichan stepped into the room. She had donned her jacket. “They don’t want to risk having me slip between their fingers.”

Gray faced the others. “She’s right. They’re tightening the noose. We have to leave now.”

Kowalski confirmed this assertion. After being chastised by Gray’s mother, he had crossed to the lone window, peeking through the blinds. “Folks, we’ve got company.”

Gray joined him. The window faced the main hospital. The curve of the ambulance bay was visible. Four police cars careened into view, silent, lights twirling. Local authorities had begun canvassing hospitals.

Turning, he faced his mother’s former teaching assistant. “Dr. Corrin, we’ve asked much of you, but I’m afraid I must ask more. Can you get my parents somewhere safe?”

“Gray,” his mother said.

“Mom, no argument.” He kept his eyes on the doctor.

Corrin slowly nodded. “I own a few rentals. One off Dupont Circle is currently furnished but vacant. No one would think to look for your parents there.”

It was a good choice.

“And, Dad, Mom…no outside communication, use no credit cards.” He turned to Kowalski. “Can you watch over them?”

Kowalski sagged, plainly disappointed. “Not goddamn guard duty again.”

Gray started to order, but his mother cut him off. “We can take care of ourselves, Gray. Seichan is still in poor shape. You may need an extra pair of hands more than we will.”

“And the apartment building has around-the-clock security,” Dr. Corrin added, a bit too briskly. “Guards, cameras, panic alarms.”

Gray suspected the doctor’s support was less for his parents’ security than to keep Kowalski off his property. Even now, Dr. Corrin was careful to remain a few steps away from the man.

And his mother was right. With Seichan compromised, they might need the large man’s strength. He was Sigma’s muscle, after all. Might as well put him to work.

Kowalski must have read something in Gray’s expression. “About time.” He rubbed his hands together. “Let’s get this party started then. First, we’ll need guns.”

“No, first we need a car.” Gray turned again to Dr. Corrin.

The doctor did not hesitate. He pulled out a key chain. “Doctor’s lot. Slot 104. A white Porsche Cayenne.”

He was more than happy to part with their company.

Another was not.

His mother hugged him hard and whispered in his ear. “Keep safe, Gray.” Her voice lowered to a breath. “And don’t trust her…not fully.”

“Don’t worry…” he said, agreeing to both.

“A mother always worries.”

Still in her arms, he whispered one final instruction, meant only for her ears. She nodded, and with a final squeeze, she let him go.

Gray turned to discover his father’s hand out. He shook it. It was their way. No hugs. He was from Texas. His father turned to Kowalski.

“Don’t let him do anything stupid,” he said.

“I’ll try my best.” Kowalski nodded to the door. “We ready?”

As he turned away, his father placed a hand on Gray’s shoulder and gave it a firm squeeze, followed by a pat good-bye. It was as close to I love you as he’d get from the man. And it warmed Gray more than he’d care to admit.

Without another word, he led the others out.

“Still no word on Commander Pierce’s whereabouts,” Brant reported over his intercom.

Painter sat at his desk. The lack of news both disheartened and relieved him. Before he could analyze his own internal reaction, Brant continued.

“And Dr. Jennings has just arrived.”

“Send him in.”

Dr. Malcolm Jennings, head of R&D, had called half an hour ago, eager for a meeting, but Painter had to put him off because of the crisis at the safe house. Even now, Painter could only give him five minutes.

The door opened and Jennings strode into the office, a hand already up. “I know…I know you’re busy…but this couldn’t wait.”

Painter motioned to the seat before his desk.

The former forensic pathologist lowered his lanky frame into the chair, but he remained perched at its edge, plainly anxious. A file folder was clutched in his hand. Jennings, close to sixty years old, had been with Sigma since before Painter took over as director. He adjusted his glasses, whose half-moon lenses were tinged a slight shade of blue, better to prevent eyestrain during computer use. They also complemented his dark olive skin and graying hair, giving him a hip professorial air. But right now, the pathologist merely looked worn from the long night, though there remained a manic vein of excitement in his eyes.

“I assume this meeting is about the files Lisa transmitted from Christmas Island,” Painter began.

Jennings nodded and opened the folder. He slid over two photographs, gruesome shots of some man’s legs, riddled with what appeared to be gangrene. “I’ve gone through both the toxicologist’s and the bacteriologist’s notes. Here is a patient whose skin bacteria suddenly turned virulent, consuming the soft tissues of his own legs. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Painter studied the pictures, but before he could even ask a question, the doctor was back up on his feet, pacing.

“I know we initially classified the Indonesian disaster as a low-level priority, merely a fact-gathering operation. But after these findings, we need to upgrade. Immediately. I came here in person to petition for a promotion of the scenario to Status Critical Level Two.”

Painter sat straighter. Such a classification would mean diverting massive resources.

“We need more than two people poking around,” Jennings continued. “I want a full forensic team on the ground as soon as possible, even if we have to outsource with the general military.”

“And you don’t think this is jumping the gun? Monk and Lisa are due to touch base in”—Painter checked his watch—“in a little over three hours. We can strategize then, when we have more data.”

Jennings took off his glasses and rubbed a knuckle into an eye. “I don’t think you understand. If the preliminary conjectures by the toxicologist prove to be true, we may be facing an ecological disaster, one with the potential to alter the entire earth’s biosphere.”

“Malcolm, don’t you think you’re overstating your case? These results are preliminary. Most of it mere conjecture.” Painter waved to the photographs. “All this could just be a onetime toxic event.”

“Even if that were the case, I’d recommend firebombing that island and cordoning off the surrounding seas for several years.” He faced Painter. “And if this threat proves in any way transmissible, we’re talking about the potential for a global environmental meltdown.”

Painter gaped at the pathologist. Jennings was not one to cry wolf.

The doctor continued. “I’ve compiled all the necessary data and written a brief abstract to summarize. Read it and get back to me. The sooner the better.”

Jennings left his folder on Painter’s desk.

Painter placed a palm atop it and pulled it toward him. “I’ll do it now and get back to you in the next half hour.”

Jennings nodded, grateful and relieved. He turned to leave, but not before adding one last warning. “Keep in mind…we still don’t know for sure what killed the dinosaurs.”

With that sobering thought, the pathologist left his office. Painter’s eyes settled to the gruesome photographs still on his desk. He prayed Jennings was wrong. In all the commotion of the past hours, he had almost forgotten about the situation out in the Indonesian islands.

Almost.

All night long, Lisa had never been far from his mind.

But now new worries flared, ignited by the pathologist’s urgency. He tried not to let it rule him. Over the course of the morning, Lisa had not reported in again. Apparently nothing had escalated over there enough to warrant another emergency call.

Still…

Painter tapped the intercom button. “Brant, can you ring up Lisa’s satellite phone?”

“Right away.”

Painter opened the file folder. As he began to read the report inside, a cold dread edged up his spine.

Brant came back on the intercom. “Director, it just keeps ringing through to voice mail. Do you want me to leave a message?”

Painter turned his wrist, checking his watch. His call was hours early. Lisa could be involved in any number of duties. Still, he had to force down a rising panic.

“Just ask Dr. Cummings to call in as soon as possible.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And, Brant, check in with the cruise ship’s switchboard.”

He knew he was being paranoid. He attempted to return to the folder, but he found it hard to concentrate.

“Sir…” Brant’s voice returned a moment later. “I’ve reached the sea-band operator. They’re reporting communication troubles shipwide, drops in satellite feed. They’re still working out some of the bugs in the new ship.”

Painter nodded. The Mistress of the Seas had been on its maiden voyage, also known as a shakedown cruise, when it had been commandeered for this medical emergency.

“They report no other major problems,” Brant finished.

Painter sighed. So he was indeed being too paranoid. He was letting his feelings for Lisa cloud his judgment. If this had been any other operative, would he have even called?

He returned to his reading.

Lisa was fine.

And besides, Monk was with her. He would keep her safe.

6 Pestilence

What the hell was going on?

Lisa stood with the other three scientists. They were all gathered in the ship’s presidential suite. A uniformed butler poured single-malt whiskey into a row of tulip-shaped snifters, lined atop a silver tray. As a result of Painter’s appreciation for malt whiskey, Lisa recognized the bottle’s label: a rare sixty-year-old Macallan. The butler’s hands trembled, jostling his aim, splashing the expensive whiskey.

The butler’s poor stewardship could be blamed on the pair of masked gunmen, armed with assault rifles. They stood guard at the double doors that led into the suite. Across the room, French doors opened onto a balcony wide enough to park a municipal bus, where another gunman patrolled.

Inside, teak cabinetry and leather furniture appointed the grand suite. Vases of miniature island roses decorated the room, while a Mozart sonata whispered softly from hidden speakers. The scientists clustered in the room’s center. It could have been the beginning of any university cocktail party.

Except for the raw fear in everyone’s faces.

Earlier, Lisa and Henri Barnhardt had obeyed the summons to climb to the ship’s bridge. What else could they do? Up in the bridge, they found the WHO leader, Dr. Lindholm, already there, wiping blood from his nose, plainly clubbed in the face. Benjamin Miller, the infectious-disease expert, arrived shortly thereafter.

They had been met by a towering figure, the leader of the pirates. He was the size of a linebacker, heavily muscled, with thick, cruel hands. He wore a khaki uniform, jungle-camouflaged pants tucked into black boots. He did not bother with a mask. His hair was the color of wet mud, clipped short, his skin polished bronze, except for a green-and-black tattoo across the left side of his face. It was of a Maori design known as Moko, all swirls and windblown lines.

He had ordered them to this suite, to wait in seclusion.

Lisa had been happy to abandon the bridge. A pitched battle must have been waged atop the ship, evidenced from the bullet-pocked windows and equipment. She had also noted the wide smear of blood across the bridge’s floor, where a body had been dragged away.

Herded over to the presidential suite, Lisa had been surprised to discover one last captive caught in the net.

The owner of the cruise line, Ryder Blunt, stood beside his butler and gathered up a handful of the crystal snifters. Dressed in jeans and a rugby shirt, he looked like a young, sun-bleached Sean Connery.

He crossed over and passed around the snifters of whiskey. “I think we can all use a little of this Macallan heat,” he said, puffing around the smoldering stump of a cigar. “If only to steady our nerves. And if not that, at least we’ll drink through my best stores before the bloody bastards discover it.”

Like most people, Lisa knew Ryder’s story. Only forty-eight, the Aussie had earned his fortune during the silicon boom, developing encryption software for downloading copyrighted material. He then parlayed his profits into a series of wildly successful real estate and commercial ventures, including the cruise line. A lifetime bachelor, he was also renowned for his maverick ways: swimming with great whites, helo-skiing to remote parts of the world, base-jumping off buildings in Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong. Yet he also had a reputation for generosity, joint-venturing a slew of philanthropic pursuits.

So it was no wonder he lent his ship to assist during this medical crisis. Though in hindsight, he might now regret his generosity.

He offered a snifter of whiskey to Lisa. She shook her head.

“Lass, no offense,” he growled at her, still holding out the crystal snifter. “Who knows when we’ll ever get another chance?”

She accepted the glass, more to get him to move away. His cigar smoke stung her eyes. She sipped the amber liquid. A fiery smoothness flowed into the belly, warming through her. She exhaled a bit of the warmth. It did help steady her.

Once the glasses were spread, the billionaire sank into a neighboring chair. He leaned his elbows on his knees, glaring toward the armed guards, puffing on his cigar.

At her side, Henri finally asked the question that had been plaguing all of them. “What do these pirates want with us?”

Lindholm sniffed, his eyes red, already bruising from the punch to the face. “Hostages.” He glanced sidelong toward the seated billionaire.

“Perhaps in the case of Sir Ryder,” Henri agreed, lowering his voice, using the man’s knighted title. “But then why even bother with us? Our net worth combined wouldn’t even equal the man’s pocket change.”

Lisa wafted cigar smoke from her face. “They clearly wanted all the main scientists here. But how did they know whom to summon?”

“They could have obtained a manifest from the ship’s crew,” Lindholm said sourly. He cast a second sidelong glance toward Ryder. “No doubt some of his crew were in league with the raiders.”

Ryder heard and mumbled to himself, “And if I ever find out who they are, I’ll have them strung up from the yardarms.”

“But wait…if they wanted all the main scientists here, why wasn’t Dr. Graff summoned with us?” Benjamin Miller asked, naming the marine researcher who had left to collect samples with Monk. He turned to Lisa. “Or your partner, Dr. Kokkalis? Why summon us, but not the others?”

Miller sipped from his glass, his nose crinkling at the potency of the single malt. The Oxford-trained bacteriologist was not an unhandsome man, with thick auburn hair and green eyes. He stood barely over five feet, but he appeared even shorter due to the roll of his shoulders and hunched posture, possibly earned from decades of crouching over a microscope.

“Dr. Miller is right,” Henri said. “Why weren’t they called?”

“Maybe the bastards knew they weren’t on board,” Lindholm said.

“Or maybe they’d already been captured.” Miller glanced apologetically in Lisa’s direction. “Or were killed.”

Lisa’s chest hollowed out with worry. She had hoped Monk had escaped the trap, was even now summoning help, but she placed little faith in this dream. Before the assault, Monk had already been late getting back to the ship.

Henri shook his head and downed his drink in one swallow. He lowered his glass. “No use speculating on their fate. But if our captors knew our colleagues were out in the field, then that suggests whatever is going on here is more than a hostage situation.”

“But what else could they want?” Miller asked.

The thumping of an approaching helicopter drew all their gazes toward the open balcony doors. It was too throaty for the smaller Eurocopter that had added air support to the sea battle. As a group, they moved to the doorway. Ryder stood up with a fierce exhalation of smoke and joined them.

A fresh breeze blew off the sea, smelling of salt and the barest hint of chemical bitterness, the aftermath of the toxic expulsion or perhaps it was just from the oil burning on the water. Nearby, the Australian Coast Guard cutter, gutted by a rocket blast, still smoked and foundered on its side, half sunk.

From over the top of the ship, a gray helicopter with double rotors, front and rear, military design, canted into view. It veered out over the water, stirring the smoke. It passed toward the seaside township, aflame in several spots now — then swung around, satisfied with whatever it had surveyed. It sped back to the ship and disappeared out of sight. From the path of its roar, it settled to the helipad atop the ship.

The thumping of the blades slowed and quieted.

In its absence, Lisa recognized a new rumble. A slight vibration tickled the soles of her feet.

“We’re moving,” Henri said.

Ryder swore around his clamped cigar.

Lisa saw it was true. Very slowly, like the hands of a clock, the view of the burning township was shifting.

“They’re taking the ship out,” Miller said.

Lindholm clenched a fist to his chest.

Lisa felt a similar fear. There remained a certain level of security in knowing land was so near. But even that was being taken from them. Her breathing grew heavier, yet drew less air. Surely someone would soon realize what had transpired and come to investigate. In fact, she was due to call Painter in only three hours. When she didn’t call in—

The pace of their movement accelerated as the giant cruise ship fought its own inertia and began to roll away from the island.

She checked her watch, then turned to Ryder. “Mr. Blunt, how fast can your ship travel?”

He stubbed out his cigar in an ashtray. “The Hales Trophy benchmark for racing the transatlantic crossing in a cruise ship is forty knots. Bloody fast.”

“And the Mistress?” she asked.

Ryder patted one of the bulkhead walls. “Pride of the fleet. German-designed engines, monohull construction. She is capable of forty-seven knots.”

Lisa calculated in her head. If she didn’t phone in three hours, when would Painter begin to worry? In four or five hours? She shook her head. Painter wouldn’t wait a minute longer.

“Three hours,” she mumbled to herself. But was that still too late? She turned to Ryder. “Is there a map in here?”

Ryder pointed and led the way. “A globe. In the library alcove.”

He took her to a niche off the main room lined with teak bookshelves. A standing wooden globe rested in the center. She leaned over it and rotated the world to bring up the Indonesian islands. She calculated in her head and measured with her fingers.

“In three hours we’ll be lost among the Indonesian chain of islands.”

The region, dominated by the bigger islands of Java and Sumatra, was literally a maze of smaller atolls and islets. Over eighteen thousand of them, spread over an area equivalent to the size of the continental United States. Away from the main cities of Jakarta and Singapore, the region subsisted at a Stone Age level of technology. Cannibalism was still practiced on some of the outer islands. If you wanted to hide a cruise ship, here would be a good place to do it.

“They can’t hope to steal an entire ship,” Lindholm exclaimed, drawn to the library in the wake of the others. “What about surveillance satellites? You can’t hide something as big as a cruise ship.”

“Don’t underestimate our captors,” Henri said. “First someone has to know to look for us.”

Lisa knew he was right. Given the swiftness of the assault, along with the collusion of key members of the ship’s crew, the hijacking had to have been weeks in the planning. Someone knew what was happening on Christmas Island long before the rest of the world. Lisa remembered the patient in the isolation ward, the John Doe with the flesh-eating bacteria. He had been found wandering the island five weeks ago.

Did their captors’ knowledge extend that far?

A commotion at the suite’s double door drew them all around. A pair of men entered. In the lead, Lisa recognized the pirate leader with the tattooed face.

Stepping past the Maori warrior, a tall stranger pushed forward. He swept off a wide-brimmed panama hat and passed it to a woman who appeared from beyond the tattooed man’s shoulder. Striding forward, the newcomer had apparently come dressed for a garden party, dapperly attired in a loose-fitting white linen suit with a matching cane, his salt-and-pepper hair cut rakishly long to the collar. His burnished features and close-set eyes cast him as Indian or perhaps Pakistani.

He crossed to the group, thumping his cane, but plainly not needing the support, all for show. His eyes glinted with a misplaced cheeriness.

“Namaste.” He greeted them in Hindi with a slight bow of his head. “Thank you all for joining me here.”

As the stranger settled to a stop, he nodded to the owner of the Mistress of the Seas. “Sir Ryder, I appreciate your hospitality and the use of your fine ship. We will do our best to return your ship to you unscathed.”

Ryder merely glowered, sizing up the man.

Turning, the stranger acknowledged the scientists. “As we embark on this great endeavor, it is a privilege to have such leading experts from the World Health Organization gathered in one room.”

Lisa noted Henri’s brows pinch both in wariness and confusion.

The stranger’s eyes settled last upon Lisa. “And of course, we must not forget our colleague from U.S. covert operations. Sigma Force, I believe, yes?”

Stunned silent, Lisa could only stare. How could he—?

The man offered the barest bow in her direction, genteel, not mocking. “I’m sorry your partner could not join us. It seems he met with a mishap while we attempted to fetch him. Something to do with indigenous crabs. The details remain sketchy. We lost several of our own men in the attempt. Only one fellow made it back alive.”

Lisa’s vision narrowed, closing down with dread.

Monk…

A hand touched her shoulder, consoling. It was Ryder Blunt. He faced the stranger. “Who the bloody hell are you?”

“Of course. My apologies.” The man lifted a palm and formally introduced himself. “Dr. Devesh Patanjali, chief acquisition officer, specializing in biotechnology, for the Guild.”

Despite her anguish, a cold stone settled into the pit of Lisa’s stomach. She had heard all about the Guild from Painter…and the bloody swath that the terrorist organization left behind in its wake.

The man tapped his cane on the floor with a note of finality. “And I’m afraid we must not waste any more time on introductions. We have much work to do before we reach port in the morning.”

“What work?” Lisa managed to force out, bitter with grief.

He cocked one eyebrow toward her. “My dear, together we must save the world.”

Monk clamped his palm tight over the man’s mouth. His other hand’s prosthetic fingers tightened on the man’s throat, just under his jaw, squeezing off his carotid, halting blood flow to the brain. The man struggled, but Monk’s fingers were strong enough to crack walnuts between them. He waited for the man’s kicking legs to go slack — then lowered him to the floor.

He hauled the man into a small equipment closet.

Monk noted the vibration underfoot, and a sonorous pitch to the engines. He straightened. The ship was moving. He had stowed away just in time.

After the explosion of his Jet Ski, Monk had boarded via one of the stabilizing anchor chains on the far side of the ship, shedding his scuba tanks and letting them sink to the bottom of the cove. His entry point was scantily guarded, most of the attention being directed toward shore. From the chain, he was able to leap to one of the hanging lifeboats, then clamber and roll to the Promenade Deck.

He had ducked quickly into hiding.

From the supply closet, he had waited a quarter hour for a lone guard to pass, one of the pirates, bearing a Heckler & Koch assault rifle. The guard was now sprawled in the same closet. Monk unzipped his wet suit and stripped the man of his loose pants and shirt. He changed quickly, but he was unable to cram his feet into the stolen boots.

Too small.

No choice, he left barefooted, but not barehanded.

The rifle’s weight helped center him.

Stepping into the hall, he pulled the head scarf over his face, masking up like the other pirates. Monk knew the ship, having memorized the schematics while en route to the islands from the States. He hurried down a deck and along the starboard hallway. He met another two pirates at the stairwell, but he merely shouldered through them, appearing busy and hassled.

One of the guards yelled at him, jostled by his passage. Monk didn’t understand the language, but he knew when he was being cursed. He lifted his rifle, acknowledging but not stopping.

He hurried down the hallway.

Lisa and Monk shared adjoining staterooms here. It was his first place to hunt for his missing partner. Monk had passed two sprawled bodies on his way down here, shot in the back, left where they had fallen. He had to find her.

He counted the staterooms. He heard someone crying behind one door, but he hurried until he reached their assigned cabins.

He tugged on his own door. Locked. He had left his room’s electronic key card back with his bags in the beached Zodiac. He moved to the next door, Lisa’s cabin. The knob refused to budge — but he heard someone stir behind the door.

It had to be Lisa.

Thank God…

He tapped a plastic knuckle lightly on the door and leaned his lips close. “Lisa…it’s me.”

The peephole in the door darkened as someone shifted to peek through. Monk stepped back and lowered his head scarf, revealing himself. After a breath, the chain scraped on the other side, and the dead bolt released with a click.

Monk pulled up his mask and checked up and down the hall. “Hurry it up,” he whistled out.

The door swung open, pulled inward.

Turning back to the door, he stepped forward. “Lisa, we have to—”

Monk immediately recognized his mistake and swung up his gun.

It was not Lisa.

Silhouetted against the brighter sunlight in the cabin, a young man crouched, half hidden by the door. “Don’t…please don’t shoot.”

Monk held his rifle rock-steady while he scanned the cabin. Someone had ransacked the room: drawers opened and dumped, closets emptied. But his attention quickly fixed on the room’s one other occupant: a dead body, facedown on the bed. It was one of the pirates. From the pool of blood soaked into the bedding, his throat had been slashed.

Eyes widening, Monk turned his attention back to the trespasser.

“Who are you?”

The young man waved an arm to encompass the room. “I came here to find Dr. Cummings. I didn’t know where else to look.”

Monk finally recognized the young nurse who had been helping Lisa. He could not recall the man’s name.

“Jesspal, sir…Jessie,” the young man mumbled, reading his confusion.

Lowering his gun, Monk nodded and pushed inside. “Where’s Lisa?”

“I don’t know. I was up in triage,” he explained, trembling all over, close to shock. “Then the explosions…four of the crew opened fire in the hospital ward. I ran. Dr. Cummings had gone to speak with the toxicologist. I prayed to Vishnu that she had fled back to her cabin.”

The young man glanced to the fouled bed, then just as quickly away. “Dr. Cummings had left her bag up in triage. I grabbed it. Found her key. But the man here had already been waiting inside. He got angry when I wasn’t her. Made me kneel on the floor. He had a radio.”

Jessie pointed to the portable radio on the floor.

“And what happened to his throat?” Monk asked.

“I couldn’t let him report in. And Dr. Cummings had left more than her key card in her bag.” From his waistband, Jessie pulled free a scalpel. “I…I had to…”

Monk squeezed his upper arm. “You did good, Jessie.”

The young man sagged down atop the other bed. “I heard them over shipwide radio. Calling for some of the doctors. Including Dr. Cummings.”

“Where did they want them to go?”

“The ship’s bridge.”

“Did they repeat the order?”

Jessie stared for a moment, then slowly shook his head.

So Lisa must have obeyed…

Monk now had a destination.

He crossed to the door that linked their two rooms. It had been left ajar. A quick peek revealed his room was in no better shape. Someone had cleared his personal gear, including his satellite phone. He searched a bit more to be sure. No luck.

Monk also examined the dead body and discovered a surprise. The dark hue of the pirate’s skin extended only to hands and face. The remainder of the man’s skin was as pale as snow, sprinkled with a few freckles. This was no local islander — but some mercenary in disguise.

What was going on here?

Monk crossed back to his room to grab a pair of basketball shoes.

As he pulled them over his bare feet, he spoke to Jessie. “We can’t stay here. Someone will come looking for your sleeping beauty over there. We’ll find you somewhere else to hole up.”

“What about you?”

“I’m going after Lisa.”

“Then I’m coming with you.” Jessie stood up a bit shakily.

The young man tugged his shirt over his head, plainly intending to go in a pirate disguise, too. The young man was all rib bones, but Monk supposed there were some wiry muscles under there, too. Jessie had jumped the man here, taken out someone twice his size.

Still…

“I’m better alone,” Monk said firmly.

Jessie finally got his shirt over his head, mumbling something.

“What?”

The nurse turned to him, exasperated. “I’ve been trained in jujitsu and karate. Fifth-degree black belt in each.”

“I don’t care if you’re India’s answer to Jackie Chan. You’re still not coming.”

A knock at the door startled them both. Someone shouted at them in Malay, plainly a question. Monk didn’t understand a word. He lifted his rifle. He had other means of communication.

Jessie slipped past him, shoving Monk’s rifle barrel down as he passed. The nurse called through the door, sounding irritated, snapping back in Malay. An exchange followed, then whoever was at the door left, plainly satisfied.

Jessie turned back to him, cocking one eyebrow.

“Okay, maybe you could be useful,” Monk admitted.

Lisa stood with the other scientists and Ryder Blunt. The group of captives had been led at gunpoint to the foredeck of the ship. The large helicopter rested on its pad, tethered down now. Its hatches were open and a beehive of activity buzzed around it. Men unloaded heavy crates from its cargo holds.

She noted some of the stamped names and corporate logos: SYNBIOTIC, WELCH sCIENTIFIC, GENECORP. One box bore a stenciled American flag and the letters USAMRIID. The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

It was all medical equipment.

The crates vanished down the throat of an elevator.

She caught Henri Barnhardt’s eye. The toxicologist had also noted the marked crates. One hand absently scratched his bearded chin. Deep frown lines bracketed his lips. Off to the side, Miller and Lindholm simply stood with their eyes glazed over, while Ryder Blunt attempted to light another cigar in the blustering breezes atop the cruise ship.

Standing under the helicopter’s rotors, Dr. Devesh Patanjali continued to oversee the final unloading personally. He had never explained his cryptic statement about saving the world. Instead he had ordered them all up here.

The Maori leader of the gunmen stood to one side, hands free of any weapons, but his palm rested on a holstered horse pistol, a massive sidearm. He stood with squinted eyes, surveying the foredeck’s activity, like a sniper sweeping a killing field. Lisa knew nothing escaped his notice, including the young woman who had accompanied Dr. Devesh Patanjali.

She remained a mystery, having spoken not a single word, her face an unwavering mask. She stood atop the foredeck with her sleek black boots together, her hands folded at her waist, a formal posture of waiting and servitude. And though her face might be unreadable, the shape and curve of her form had fully captured the attention of the Maori gunman.

Lisa had overheard her name when Dr. Patanjali had passed out of the presidential suite below. Surina. The doctor had given her a chaste kiss on the cheek as he left. It had been accepted without a flicker of emotion. The woman appeared to be of mixed Indian blood, dressed in a long sari wrap of muted oranges and rose silk, draped over which was a long ebony braid. If untied, her hair must sweep the floor behind her heels. Marking her heritage, she bore a crimson dot, the traditional bindi, on her forehead. But her complexion, a polished teak, was much lighter than Devesh Patanjali’s, suggesting a European bloodline somewhere in her past.

Whether she was Devesh’s sister, wife, or merely a companion, Lisa could not discern. But there was also something menacing in her silence, possibly heightened by the coldness in her eyes. Also her left arm was gloved in black, so skintight it was hard to tell if it was leather or rubber. But it looked like her limb had been dipped in black India Ink.

Crossing her arms, Lisa turned and searched the receding profile of Christmas Island. In the short time they’d been under way, the island had shrunk to a misty green silhouette, trailing a smudge of dark smoke into the sky. But who was there to see it as a signal? Painter would surely grow suspicious if neither she nor Monk called in to report. And for the moment, she placed all her hopes on his paranoia.

Luckily it was a safe bet.

A wind gusted as the tradewinds kicked up. Gulls coasted the breezes overhead, catching her eyes. If only she could fly away as easily…

A shout drew her attention back to the helicopter.

Two men in surgical scrubs hauled a stretcher from the rear hold of the helicopter. Wheels dropped and locked. Devesh hovered over them, checking the patient strapped to the gurney. Portable monitoring equipment lay nestled haphazardly around the patient for transport. The figure was sealed in an oxygen tent. The patient appeared to be a woman from the rise and fall of her chest. Facial features were obscured by a respirator and a tangled octopus of tubes and wires.

Devesh pointed his cane, and the two orderlies guided the gurney toward the elevators, following the train of medical equipment.

He finally crossed back to his captives.

“We’ll have all the labs and medical suites set up in the next hour. Luckily, Dr. Cummings and her partner were very kind to have brought pieces of equipment that were beyond even my reach. Who would have known your Defense Department’s research-and-development branch had perfected a portable scanning electron microscope? Along with electrophoresis equipment and protein sequencer? Quite a bit of serendipity to have such tools land in our laps.”

He tapped his cane and set off. “Come. Let me show you the true face of what assails us.”

Lisa followed with the others. In this instance, she didn’t need the rifles at her back to make her obey. Mysteries were piled atop mysteries here, and she wanted answers, some clue to the reason for this assault and for Devesh’s words.

My dear, together we must save the world.

They were led down three decks. Along the way, Lisa had noted crews of men in chemical suits, working along the lower passageways, moving within stinging clouds of sprayed disinfectant.

Devesh continued to the forward section of the ship. The hall ended at a wide circular space, off which the pricier cabins extended. Monk had commandeered one of the large suites here for his own laboratory. It seemed Devesh had commandeered all the rest.

Tucking under an isolation drape, he waved them into the busy central workspace. “Here we are,” he said.

A score of men were cracking open crates, yanking out packing straw and Styrofoam, hauling free plastic-wrapped medical and laboratory equipment. One man emptied a boxful of petri dishes used to culture bacteria. The door to Monk’s lab lay open. Lisa noted a man inside with a clipboard, inventorying Sigma’s equipment.

Devesh marched them to a neighboring cabin. He swiped a personal key card and shoved open the door.

Turning, he spoke to the tattooed leader of the mercenary force. “Rakao, please have Dr. Miller taken to the bacteriology suite.” He turned to the scientist. “Dr. Miller, we’ve taken the liberty of bringing up and expanding your bacteriology station. New incubation ovens, anaerobic growth media, blood culture plates. I’d like you to coordinate with Dr. Eloise Chénier, my team’s virologist, down the hall, to complete the infectious-disease lab.”

The Maori leader waved for one of his men to escort Miller down the hall. The bacteriologist glanced around at the others, plainly not wanting to leave their company, but the rifle at his back discouraged any argument.

As Miller left, Devesh nodded to their group. “And, Rakao, would you personally escort Sir Ryder and Dr. Lindholm up to the radio room? We’ll join you momentarily.”

“Sir.” The tattooed man did not like this decision, his one word heavy with warning, eyeing Lisa and Henri with suspicion.

“We’ll be fine.” Devesh held open the cabin door and bowed his head for the young Indian woman to enter. “I believe Dr. Cummings and Dr. Barnhardt would like to hear what I have to say. And Surina will be with me.”

Lisa and Henri were ushered into the cabin.

Devesh stepped after them, closing the door — then stopped and turned back to the Maori leader.

“Oh, yes, and Rakao, gather the children, if you’d be so kind. The ones I picked out. That’s a good man.”

Devesh closed the door, but not before Lisa noted the Maori leader’s face darken into a glower. His tattoos stood out more starkly, an indecipherable map.

As the lock clicked, Devesh strode over to the cabin’s desk. It was actually two desks joined together, one unbolted and moved from another cabin. The pair of desks supported three LCD monitors linked to two tower HP computers. They were the only additions to the suite. The remainder of the cabin consisted of a comfortable seating area of teak furniture facing patio doors and a shaded balcony.

Surina stepped to one of the sofas and lowered herself, bending only at the knees, to perch on one of its arms. And while the movement had a measure of demure modesty, Lisa sensed power and threat: the focused eyes, the smooth control of a geisha, but mostly it was the pair of sheathed daggers exposed on both ankles as she sat.

Lisa glanced away. A bedroom opened behind the desk. A pair of large steamer trunks rested at the foot of the bed. This must be Devesh Patanjali’s personal room. But why had he brought them here?

Devesh awoke the sleeping computers with the tap of a few buttons, drawing her attention back. All three monitors bloomed to a brilliant glare in the dim room.

“Dr. Barnhardt…or Henri, if I may presume…?” Devesh glanced back.

The toxicologist merely shrugged.

Devesh continued. “Henri, I must commend you on your assessment of the true threat hidden within the shroud of the toxic assault. It had taken our scientists weeks to ascertain what you managed to discern in less than twenty-four hours.”

Lisa’s skin went cold. Weeks. So their captors had been aware of the threat at the island long before the full crisis broke. But what did any of this have to do with the Guild?

“Of course, we did not so much appreciate the general alarm you raised, reaching all the way to Washington. It required accelerating our timetable…and some improvisation. Like utilizing the scientific talent here and merging it with my own. But so be it. We must move quickly if there is to be any hope.”

“Hope for what?” Lisa finally asked.

“Let me show you, my dear.” Devesh patted one of the two chairs, inviting her to sit.

She remained standing, but he seemed to take no offense, busy with the computer keyboard. On the center monitor, a video began playing. It depicted a dense microscopic field of twitching chains of rod-shaped bacteria.

“How much do you know about anthrax?” Devesh asked, glancing back.

Lisa’s skin went cold at his question.

Henri answered, “Bacillus anthracis. It mostly infects ruminants. Cows, goats, sheep. But spores can also infect humans. Often proving fatal.”

It was a clinical assessment, devoid of emotion. But Lisa noted the tense hold to the toxicologist’s shoulders.

Devesh nodded. “Bacillus species are found worldwide in soil. Harmless for the most part. For example, here is one such benign organism, Bacillus cereus.”

The screen image changed to a microscopic close-up of a single bacterium. Rod-shaped with a thin membranous wall, the cell’s DNA strands were stained to stand out in the center.

“Like other members of the species, this little bug can be found in gardens around the world. Happily feeding on microorganisms and nutrients in the soil. It causes no harm to anything larger than an amoeba. But its brother, Bacillus anthracis—” Devesh clicked to bring up another image — side by side with the first, a second bacterium that looked identical.

“Here is the organism that causes anthrax,” he continued, “one of the most deadly bacterium on the planet. It shares the same genetic code with its peaceful, garden-dwelling brother.” Devesh tapped the two cells’ stained twists of DNA. “Gene by gene, nearly identical. So why does one kill and the other remain harmless?”

Over a shoulder, Devesh stared back at Lisa and Henri.

Lisa shook her head. Henri remained silent.

Devesh nodded as if satisfied by their reticence. Turning back, he toggled a key and the anthrax bacterium zoomed on the screen. The mass of DNA swelled on the monitor. Within the cytoplasm of the interior cell, separate from the main tangle of DNA, floated two perfect rings of genetic material, like a tiny pair of eyes staring back at them.

“Plasmids,” Henri said, naming the rings.

Lisa’s brow tightened as she was forced to draw upon her pre-med education. As well as she could recall, plasmids were circular strands of DNA separate from main chromosomal DNA. The free-floating bits of genetic code were unique to bacteria. Their role was still poorly understood.

Devesh continued. “These two plasmids — pX01 and pX02—are what turn ordinary Bacillus species into superkillers. Remove these two rings, and anthrax transforms back into an innocent organism, living happily in any garden. Put those same plasmids into any friendly Bacillus and the bug turns into a killer.”

Devesh finally swung around to face them. “So I ask you, where did these extraneous and deadly bits come from?”

Lisa answered, intrigued despite herself. “Can’t plasmids be shared directly from one bacterium to another?”

“Certainly. But what I meant was, how did these bacteria first acquire these foreign bits of genetic material? What’s their original source?”

Henri stirred, moving closer to study the screens. “The evolutionary origin of plasmids remains a mystery, but the current theory is that they were acquired from viruses. Or more specifically bacteriophages, a category of viruses that only infect bacteria.”

“Exactly!” Devesh turned back to the screen. “It’s been theorized that, sometime in the ancient past, a viral bacteriophage injected a peaceful Bacillus with this deadly pair of plasmids, creating a new monster in the biosphere and transforming a sweet little garden bug into a killer.”

Devesh tapped more rapidly, clearing the screen. “And anthrax isn’t the only bacterium thus infected. The bacterium that causes the black plague, Yersinia pestis…its virulence is also enhanced by a plasmid.”

Lisa felt a prickling chill as realization dawned. All this talk of transforming bacteria reminded her of the patients on the ship. The girl with seizures from vinegar bacteria, the woman with choleric dysentery from yogurt bacteria, the John Doe whose skin bacteria were eating his legs away…

“Are you suggesting it’s happening here again?” she mumbled. “This same corruption of bacteria.”

Devesh nodded. “Indeed. Something has risen again out of the depths of the sea, something with the ability to turn all bacteria deadly.”

Lisa remembered Henri’s example of how prevalent bacteria were in the world, how 90 percent of the cells in our own bodies were composed of bacteria. Nonhuman. If that tide should shift against us…

Devesh continued. “From studying the genetics of anthrax and other toxic bacteria, microbiologists have predicted the existence of an ancient strain of viruses. A strain that created the early ancestors of anthrax and other plague bacteria. Scientists have even coined a name for this ancient strain of viruses, one that turns friend into foe: the Judas Strain.”

Henri must have read something in Devesh’s face, a brightness to his eyes, an excitement. He straightened. “Something tells me you’ve isolated the causative agent in the outbreak here, haven’t you? This Judas Strain. Or you wouldn’t be here.”

“We think so.”

Devesh tapped another two keys. The bacterium vanished, replaced with a rotating figure on the screen, an image from an electron micrograph, all in shades of silver. It made the organism depicted seem more mechanical than biological. It looked like some lunar lander. The main shell was geometric, an icosahedron, made up of twenty flat triangular pieces. Out from every corner stretched thin tendrils, spiked at the tips, made to latch on and pierce.

Lisa had seen many such images back in medical school.

A virus.

“We discovered it in a sample of the cyanobacteria from the toxic tide. It turned the innocent phosphorescent sea bacteria into a flesh-boiling, poison-spewing killer. And within such windblown steaming clouds of toxin, the virus spread onto land, beginning the slow alteration of the island’s bacteria into monsters.”

“And now we’re seeing it happen among the patients,” Henri said. “Turning our own bodies against us.”

Devesh tapped the screen. “The ultimate betrayer of life. This organism has the capability to travel through the planet’s biosphere, transforming all bacteria into lethal, life-destroying organisms. It’s nature’s neutron bomb, a viral explosion with the potential to wipe out all higher life-forms, leaving behind only a toxic soup of deadly bacterial ooze. If unchecked, we’ve already seen a peek of what the world may become on the windward side of Christmas Island.”

“And if it should spread…” Henri’s face had paled. “We’d have no way of stopping it.”

Devesh finally stood and retrieved his cane. “Perhaps. But we’ve barely begun to analyze the organism. The good news is that so far the virus appears to be short-lived and does not infect human cells. Only bacteria. So the virus poses little direct risk to us. It hijacks a bacterial cell, uses the cell to churn copies of itself, then leaves behind the toxic plasmids. Outside the cell, the new virus is fragile. It can easily be killed with simple disinfectants and controlled with good hygiene.”

Lisa pictured the work crews moving through the ship in a cloud of disinfectant. They were sterilizing the ship.

“But unfortunately, the virus leaves behind a killer in its wake. Deadly bacteria that divide and multiply, each a new monster added to the microbial world, contaminating the biosphere forever with never-before-seen life-forms.”

Henri placed a worried palm on his forehead. “If the viral exposure breaks free into the general biosphere…we’re talking about a thousand different new diseases hitting the world simultaneously. A plague with the capability of changing faces faster than we can react. The world has seen nothing like this before.”

“That’s not necessarily true,” Devesh countered cryptically.

Henri focused back to their captor.

“My employers and I believe this is not the first outbreak of this Judas Strain. There are historical reports from the region of a similar outbreak. Back almost a millennium ago.” His voice lowered to a contemplative whisper. “The stories were accompanied by some strange and disturbing claims.”

“What historical reports are you talking about?” Lisa asked.

Devesh waved away her question. “It doesn’t matter. We’ve got others looking into that question, following that historical trail. We must stay focused on our goal. Our mission aboard the ship lies not in the past, but the present. My employers orchestrated the evacuation of the island, arranged to have Mr. Blunt’s cruise ship detoured here. We needed to isolate the currently infected in one place. Here we have the rare opportunity to study how this disease unfolds. Its epidemiology, its pathology, its physiologic effects. And we’ve a full shipload of test subjects.”

Lisa backed away a step, unable to mask her horror.

Devesh leaned on his cane. “I sense your distaste, Dr. Cummings. Now you understand why the Guild had to act. When faced with an organism of such virulence, there could be no hand-wringing. No politically correct response to such an onslaught. Action must be swift, and hard choices made. In Tuskegee, did not your own government allow people infected with syphilis to die of the disease while scientists dispassionately recorded the suffering, the advancing symptoms, and the eventual deaths? To survive this, we must be as brutal and cold. Because, believe me, this is a war for the survival of the human species.”

Lisa sought some counter to his words, too shocked.

Henri interceded, but not in the manner Lisa had expected. “He’s right.”

Lisa turned to the toxicologist.

Henri’s eyes remained locked on the screen depicting the microscopic image of the Judas Strain. “This is a planet killer. And it’s already loose. Remember how fast the bird flu circled the world. We have a week, possibly only days. If we don’t find a way to stop it, all life — at least all higher life — will be wiped off the earth.”

“I’m glad we have a meeting of the minds,” Devesh said with a bow of his head in Henri’s direction. His eyes found Lisa’s. “And possibly when I show Dr. Cummings here her role in our endeavor, she may also find the same such enlightenment.”

Lisa frowned at his puzzling statement.

Devesh swung away toward the door. “But first we must join your friends up in the radio room. We have some fires to put out.”

Painter stared at the news reports on his three plasma screens: Fox, CNN, NBC. All reporting on the blast near Georgetown.

“So everything is fine,” Painter said, standing behind his desk. He held the earpiece more firmly in place. Lisa’s voice was faint, traveling from halfway around the world. “You scared Jennings in R and D. He was just about ready to have the island firebombed.”

“Sorry for the false alarm,” Lisa said. “It was nothing more than laboratory contamination. Everything is fine here…or at least as fine as a shipload of burned patients might be. The initial conjecture is a bloom of something called fireweed. It’s been plaguing these waters for years, spews off a corrosive pall, clearing beaches. This was just a perfect storm of the weed. The matter should be resolved in the next day or so, then Monk and I will head back.”

“That’s the first bit of good news I’ve heard all day,” Painter replied.

His eyes kept flickering back to the plasma screens on his walls. They showed the fires being finally put out in the woods behind the safe house. Fire trucks arced water from engines parked along the forest’s fire road.

Lisa whispered in his ear. “I know you’re busy. I’ll report in again in another twelve hours as scheduled.”

“Great. You get some sleep. I imagine the sunsets out there must be beautiful.”

“They are. I…I wish you were here to enjoy them with me.”

“Me, too. But it won’t be much longer until you’re back. And right now I have a fire of my own to put out.”

On the screen a news helicopter swung away to reveal the charred remains of the safe house for the morning news. He had already heard the report from the arson investigators. Tire tracks in the backyard had led to the discovery of an abandoned Thunderbird, the same convertible in which Gray had arrived on the scene a couple hours ago. It seemed he had not fled to the streets, but into the woods. But where did he go after that? There had still been no sign of Gray, his parents, or the wounded Guild operative.

Where had they gone into hiding?

“I have work here, too,” Lisa said.

“Is there anything you need?”

“No…”

He heard a hesitation in her voice. “Lisa? What is it?”

“Nothing.” She snapped a bit. “I guess I’m just tired. You know how I get this time of the month.”

His aide Brant wheeled into the office with a sheaf of faxes in hand. He noted the letterhead on the top. Washington PD. It was another of the progress reports of their canvass of the local hospitals. He spoke as he accepted the papers from Brant.

“Then make sure you get some rest,” he said, already reading the first line on the report. “You just stay safe and don’t forget the sunblock. I can’t have you making me look like some ghost next to your island tan.”

“Will do.” Lisa’s voice had faded to the barest whisper. The ship’s satellite connection was spotty. Still, he heard the disappointment in her voice. He missed her, too.

“I’ll see you soon,” he finished. “Talk to you in another half day. Now go get some sleep.”

The line died without further word. He removed the earpiece and settled to his desk. Prioritizing, he shifted the pile of reports in front of him. He would scan them, then pass on the all clear to Jennings.

At least, one catastrophe had been put to bed.

Lisa lowered the telephone handset. Her heart thudded heavily in her chest. The line had been cut off at a signal from Devesh Patanjali. He stood in the doorway to the ship’s state-of-the-art communication shack, bracing both palms on his cane.

He shook his head, displaying his disappointment.

Lisa’s stomach churned uneasily. Did he know what she had attempted? She rose from her seat beside the radioman. One of the guards grabbed her elbow.

“All you had to do was stick to the script, Dr. Cummings,” Devesh said, his voice thick with exasperation. “It was a simple request, and the consequences were duly explained to you.”

Panic iced Lisa’s blood. “I…I followed your script. I didn’t say anything out of turn. Painter thinks everything is fine. Just like you ordered.”

“Yes. Lucky for that. But don’t think your attempt at subtle communication, a hidden context, escaped me.”

Oh God… She had taken a chance during the phone conversation. Surely he couldn’t know. “I don’t understand—”

“‘You know how I get this time of the month,’” Devesh quoted her, cutting her off. He turned and headed out the door to the hallway. “In fact, you finished your cycle ten days ago, Dr. Cummings.”

An icy numbness spread through her.

“We have a full dossier on you, Dr. Cummings. Which I’ve read. And my memory is eidetic. Photographic. I encourage you not to underestimate my resources again.”

The guard manhandled her out of the room. She stumbled along.

She had been a fool to try to secretly communicate with Painter, no matter how subtly.

What have I done?

Out in the passageway, other key captives stood lined up in the hall: Dr. Lindholm, Ryder Blunt, and an Aussie captain in a bloody khaki uniform. All of them had called their respective agencies, reporting all was well and under control at the remote island, whitewashing the scenario, buying the hijackers time to add distance between ship and island before anyone grew wiser.

But there were also others gathered in the hall. Four children cowered at the back of the passageway. Boys and girls. Ages six to ten. One for each of those sent into the radio room. Each child’s life was balanced upon their cooperation. Lisa had been assigned a little girl, eight years old, with large almond eyes, terrified, huddled on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest. Her brother, a couple years older, kept an arm around her.

The Maori leader stepped over to the child, pistol in hand.

Devesh joined him and faced back to the group, a fist resting on his hip. “You were all warned if you strayed from the script in any significant regard, attempted any subterfuge, there would be consequences. But as this is Dr. Cummings’s first mistake, I’ll be lenient with her.”

“Please,” Lisa begged. She could not bear the child’s blood on her hands. In the radio room, she had reacted instinctively. It had been a stupid ploy.

Devesh’s gaze settled to her. “Instead of the little girl, Dr. Cummings, I’ll let you choose another child to die in her place.”

Lisa’s breath caught in her chest.

“I’m not a cruel man, only practical. This is a lesson all of you must take to heart.” He waved to Lisa. “Pick a child.”

Lisa shook her head. “I can’t…”

“Choose or I’ll have them all shot. Let this be a lesson to everyone. We have too much to accomplish to tolerate insubordination, no matter how slight.”

The guard dragged her forward at a signal from his tattooed leader.

“Choose a child, Dr. Cummings.”

Lisa bit back a sob, staring at the four children’s faces. None spoke English, but they must have read something in her face, understood her agony, and it scared them. Fresh tears flowed. They all hunched tighter.

Lisa caught Devesh’s eyes, pleading with him. “Please, Dr. Patanjali. It was my mistake. Punish me.”

“I believe that is exactly what I’m doing.” He stared back at her, unmoved. “Now pick.”

Lisa stared across the four faces. She could not pick the little girl, or her brother. She had no choice. She lifted a trembling arm and pointed a finger to another of the boys, the oldest of the group at ten years of age.

May God forgive me.

“Very good. Rakao, you know your duty.”

The Maori gunman stepped over to the boy, whose frightened face lifted hopefully.

A moan escaped Lisa. She took a step forward, trying to retract her decision. The guard tightened his grip on her elbow. Restrained, her legs trembled — then she was on her knees, boneless with terror and grief.

The gunman lifted his pistol and pointed it at the boy’s head.

“No…” Lisa gasped.

He pulled the trigger — but there was no blast of fire. The gun’s hammer clicked sharply in the confined space, snapping on an empty cylinder.

Rakao lowered his weapon.

In the silence a gurgling cry erupted from the other side of the hall. Lisa turned in time to watch Dr. Lindholm sink to his knees, matching Lisa’s posture. He met her gaze, eyes wide with shock and pain. His hands clutched his throat. Blood poured between his fingers.

Behind his shoulder, Devesh’s companion, the woman Surina, stepped back, her head bowed down as if she had just served tea and was now exiting. Her hands were empty, but Lisa had no doubt the woman had slashed the doctor’s throat, her dagger vanishing away as quickly as it had struck.

Lindholm slumped and fell to his chest on the carpeted floor. Blood soaked into the plush weave and overspilled into a growing pool. One hand twitched on the carpet, then stopped.

“Motherfucker…” Ryder growled, his face stony, turning away.

Devesh stepped back to Lisa.

“Wh-why?” she managed to force out, heartsick and cold.

“Like I said, nothing escapes our notice, Dr. Cummings. Including Dr. Lindholm’s skill. Or rather lack thereof when it comes to research and fieldwork. He served his purpose in keeping the WHO off our backs with his call, but beyond that, he is more a liability than an asset. His death at least served one last function. A demonstration. Not only to show the cost of insubordination.” Devesh fixed her with a hard stare. “Can I assume you’ve learned that cost, Dr. Cummings?”

She slowly nodded, staring at the pool of blood.

“Very good.” He faced the others. “The death also demonstrates a lesson to everyone. Of the seriousness of our venture here. Your lives depend upon your usefulness. It is that simple. Perform or die. I encourage you to pass on this lesson to your other colleagues before further demonstrations prove necessary.”

Devesh clapped his hands together. “Now, with that little bit of unpleasantness over, we can begin our work.” He motioned to the Maori leader. “Rakao, please guide everyone to their respective posts. I’ll escort Dr. Cummings personally to her patient.”

Holstering his pistol, Rakao dispersed his men. Devesh led Lisa down the hall, away from everyone else. She passed the line of children. Shell-shocked, they were being gathered for a return to the ship’s day care.

Surina, trailing Lisa and Devesh, paused by the little brother and sister. She bent to the girl, still cowering under her brother’s arm. Surina held out an empty palm; then with a flicker of fingers, a small wrapped sweet appeared in her hand, as if out of the air. She offered it to the terrified girl, but the child only pulled tighter against her older sibling. Her brother, more practical, reached out and snatched the candy from Surina’s palm, as if grabbing it out of a baited mousetrap.

Surina straightened in a smooth flow of embroidered silk, lightly brushing her fingers along the girl’s cheek as she rose. Her fingertips came away damp with the child’s tears. Lisa wondered if it was the same hand that had slashed Lindholm’s throat. The woman’s face remained perfectly still.

Lisa turned away, following Devesh.

He took her down to the very last cabin on this level and keyed his way inside. Another suite. A massive amount of equipment was being assembled in the outer room. Ignoring it all, Devesh crossed to the adjoining bedroom.

Lisa kept near him.

As Devesh passed inside, Lisa spotted a familiar figure sprawled atop the room’s bed, draped in an isolation tent: a woman, tangled amid monitoring equipment, her blond hair a match to Lisa’s own, but shaved to a close crop. Lisa had spotted the gurney used to transport the patient here out in the main room. It was the woman taken off the helicopter. Her features were still obscured behind an oxygen mask that covered her full face.

Two men, the same orderlies who had transported the patient down here, were busy hooking and securing the final leads and lines that ran from the woman to a neighboring bank of monitoring equipment. Lisa took it all in with a glance: electroencephalogram, EKG, Doppler blood pressure monitor. A central lead was already established in the patient’s chest, tied to an intravenous drip. One of the men straightened the drape of a urinary catheter.

Devesh lifted a hand toward the figure in the bed. “May I introduce you to Dr. Susan Tunis, a marine biologist out of Queensland. One of the first people to encounter the toxic bloom of cyanobacteria. I believe you have met another of her party already. The John Doe down in the isolation ward.”

Lisa remained near the door, unsure why she was brought here, still numb from the casual slaughter of Dr. Lindholm. Even if this was one of the first victims, what did it have to do with her? She was not a virologist or a bacteriologist.

“I don’t understand,” she said, voicing her confusion. “There are more qualified medical doctors aboard the ship.”

Devesh waved away her statement. “We have technicians to meet her medical needs.”

Lisa frowned. “Then why—?”

“Dr. Cummings, you’re a proficient physiologist. With significant field research experience. But more importantly, you’ve proven yourself quite resourceful in your service to Sigma in the past. We’ll need that innovation and experience here. To assist me personally. With this one case.”

“Why her? Why this case?”

“Because this one patient holds the key to everything.” Devesh stared down at the woman. His eyes narrowed with worry for the first time. “She holds a riddle, one that extends deep into the historical past, back to Marco Polo and his trips through these waters…and into a larger mystery.”

“Marco Polo? The explorer?”

Devesh waved a hand. “Like I said earlier, that’s a trail we are leaving to another arm of the Guild.” He nodded to the woman. “All our efforts here, all the research aboard the ship, all the sacrifices to come, center on this one woman.”

“I still don’t understand. What’s so important about her?”

Devesh’s voice lowered. “This woman…she’s changing. Like the bacteria. The Judas Strain is growing inside her.”

“But I thought you said the virus doesn’t infect human cells.”

“It doesn’t. It’s doing something else inside her.”

“What?”

Devesh faced Lisa. “It’s incubating.”