Germ

number and Julia's mobile phone. After two rings, he disconnected, then dialed again.

She picked up instantly.

'Goody!'

'Yeah, let's talk fast: unsecured line. I thought you'd be here by now. I'm hurt, kid. Real bad.'

'Goody, listen to me.' Her voice was higher-pitched and more panicked than he had ever heard it. 'I don't have the signal. Someone else does. Do you hear? Turn off the tracking device, Goody! Do it now!'

'You don't—hold on.' He fished the memory chip and transmitter out of his pocket. He used a fingernail to turn the slot in its side to the '0' position.

He closed his eyes to catch hold of his convulsing thoughts. If someone else was tracking them, this thing was bigger than he'd imagined. It boggled his mind to think of the equipment and covert intelligence necessary to intercept the SATD signal. It confirmed for him that someone inside CDC-LED, the FBI, or another federal agency was involved. And people like that didn't let their muscles relax once they had them pumped up; they'd be coming after Vero and him soon; they could be watching the bar even now. Still holding the memory chip, he scanned the confines of the dark booth. Laying the handset on top of the phone, he pushed up on the milky plastic panel that covered the fluorescent tube overhead. It rose about an inch. He pushed the chip and transmitter into the open space, but then the panel wouldn't lay flush.

He could hear Julia frantically calling his name. 'Hold on,' he said, loud enough to reach the handset. He felt around the perimeter of the telephone itself. Nothing. He leaned over and felt under the small wooden seat positioned in one corner. His hand slid over several clumps of old gum, then he found what he was looking for: a thin space between the seat and one of its supports. He transferred the chip to his other hand, then wedged it into the space, flat against the seat bottom.

Julia was ranting when he put the phone back up to his ear. He cut her off.

'Hey! Hey! It's your turn to listen to me, kid. I'm in the phone booth. In the phone booth.'

'I understand that the line is not secure. Okay?'

He could tell she was absolutely panicked that he had not understood her before.

This time she spoke each word with painful deliberation: 'Did . . . you . . . turn . . . off! . . . the . . . tracking . . . device?'

'It's off, it's off,' he said. 'How—'

'I don't know how, but you have to get away from there. Go now, Goody. Your location is compromised. Call me from somewhere else.'

'I need to contact Casey, Julia. He's at Earl's place in Chattanooga. Understand?

'No, I. . .'

Come on, kid, Donnelley thought, you have to remember.

'Yes! I understand. But Chattanooga?' She swore. 'I was just there. I'm about twenty miles south now. You got Vero?'

'I got him. And he's talking about some kind of bio-attack that may already be under way. I think there's a list somewhere of the cities they're hitting, something to do with a virus—'

'Tell me later, Goody. Just get outta there now.'

'Look, if something happens to me and—'

'Nothing's going to happen if you get your butt out of there. Now go!'

'What's your ETA?'

'Give me fifteen minutes.'

'You've got ten,' he said and hung up.

He was turning from the phone when he saw them: two men in black knee-length coats. He couldn't think of all the reasons a person would wear such a thing in warm weather, but he knew of one—to conceal weapons. They had already passed the phone booth. He couldn't see their faces, but he would have bet his pension one of them had two shiners from a broken nose. They were heading directly for Vero in the second-to-last booth.

He pulled out his gun.

For Donnelley, the next seven seconds moved in excruciatingly slow motion.

Shouldering open the bifold door, he lunged through, pushing a scream out of his lungs.

The men spun. One raised a shotgun—something exotic, Donnelley thought. The other, the one on his right, had something smaller pulled up close to his torso: a submachine gun. Donnelley shot him. A red rose bloomed in the center of the man's chest, and he staggered back, dazed but not down. Donnelley pulled the trigger again, realizing his mistake even as he made it. He should have nailed each assassin with a double-tap before putting more holes in them. The shooter on the left was the one he had recognized, the Serpico for DEA. The guy brought his shotgun around, and Donnelley understood that the split-second decision to fire twice at the first one would cost him his life.

He was falling, one foot remaining in the phone booth. He had swung his pistol three-quarters of the distance to the other shooter when the shotgun boomed, hurling flames and dozens of razor-sharp disks directly at him. He caught a brief glimpse of the shooter's scowl, twisted into a perverted hybrid of man and demon.

When he was a kid, he had imagined that a sweet fragrance was the first evidence that heaven had opened its doors to receive you. But now the acidic odor of cordite from gunpowder stung his nostrils, and he thought, Not sweet at all—it smells like death.

He saw the sparkling of stars—disks catching the light—and behind them, the shotgun barrel's smoking black hole. Then the disks tore into him.

Not sweet at all.

Blackness.

eleven

The bartender's name was Johnny. He'd been doing

this job for . . . he forgot how many years, maybe twelve. He liked the gig, because women liked bartenders. They especially dug a 'mixologist' guy who'd perform for them, flipping bottles in the air and pouring a shot from way up high and catching it in a glass balanced on his foot, all the while wiggling his fanny to music Johnny thought had not survived the eighties. He wasn't one of

those

guys—though, truth be told, he broke a few bottles and spilled a paycheck's worth of booze on the floor seeing if he

could

be one of those guys when his uncle, who owned the joint, first hired him on.

Nah, he was the kind of bartender ladies liked second best. If they were nice to him, he gave them free drinks; the nicer they were, the more they could imbibe on the house. He hadn't wanted for a date since he'd started, though he had learned early on that you couldn't be too picky when your dates were more interested in Johnnie Walker than Johnny the Bartender. And it wasn't as if the work could ever be classified hard labor. In fact, Johnny couldn't remember a time when he'd broken a sweat on behalf of Babylon Bar, not even mopping the floor.

Until now. Drops rolled off his head and into his eyes, as if he were taking a shower. He wiped them away and peered around the edge of the bar, where he'd clambered when the shooting started. He'd decided long ago, if something like this ever went down, he wouldn't get stuck behind the bar like a fish in a barrel. He saw a Tarantino film where the bartender got it just because, and he'd been an easy target in that all- too-much-like-a-shooting-range space behind the bar. So that's why he was where he was, on the outside edge of the counter, farthest from the action without being seen and a screaming ten paces from the back office door, should the need arise to make a break.

He'd had his eyes on the two strangers pushing through the door, striding in like kingpins, when the guy who said he was from detox sprang out of the phone booth, gun blazing. As if he'd been waiting for them. Johnny had been on all fours and halfway to safety when he heard a big boom!—not the crack of the guy's pistol.

Coming around the bar, he'd had a straight view of the other detox dude in the booth—the one he'd heard