Germ

'. . . what was it like playing an animal. . .'

[engines revving, tires screeching]

[static]

'. . . because I know you did it. I know . . .'

Yeah. He felt his synapses picking up speed, trying to catch up with the information cycling past. Before long, he'd be able to start and finish the sentences whose fragments each channel spat out with blinding speed. The chances of his guesses being the actual sentences were slim, but they made sense, and that alone meant his mind was clicking, and clicking fast.

A beep sounded from the cockpit. He returned to the pilot's seat and checked the laptop strapped into the copilot's seat. His new client had fed updated coordinates into the mapping software he had provided upon retaining Atropos's services. The target was on the move. The man's current trajectory warranted a change in destination airports. He found the new airport coordinates in a GPS unit and punched them into the autopilot. The cockpit brightened as the plane banked toward the sun.

five

'We have a lock on the SATD signal.'

The man who spoke did not take his eyes off the three flat-panel displays arranged before him. One showed a twenty-five-square-mile section of Atlanta, with a thick vein running diagonally through it. Small letters next to the vein identified it as I-75. A red dot moved steadily northwest along the highway.

An old man in a wheelchair turned from surveying the bucolic landscape beyond a wall of windows. The chair buzzed across an expanse of hardwood floor and edged up next to the technician.

'Can we seize the signal completely?' the old man asked.

'You mean cut the CDC agent out of the loop, so only we have it?'

'Exactly.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Will anybody—the FBI, CIA, CDC, anybody—be able to intercept it once we take it?'

'No, sir. Nobody.'

'Will they be able to trace it back to us?'

'We are completely cloaked, sir.'

'Will this CDC woman be able to reconnect or disrupt our use of it?'

'If she tries, the program itself will block her out. She'll just keep getting error messages on her computer.'

'Then do it.'

The technician typed a command and hit ENTER. The image flicked once. 'Done.'

Wheeling away, the old man said, 'Now tell our men to back off.'

He shook his head. You always tried to hire professionals for jobs like this, but with freelancers you never knew what you'd get: someone calm and competent or a complete nut job. These two had come highly recommended, and look: They didn't seem to care who they blew away in their quest to capture the target. They'd destroyed a restaurant and were now engaged in a high-speed gun battle with a federal agent. Not exactly the discretion he'd hoped for.

'Keep them close, but not too close,' he instructed. 'Let's give 'em a chance to calm down.'

Julia's Taurus rammed into the space between the concrete median and the car ahead. The force knocked the other car only partially out of the way; its bumper screeched along the entire length of the sedan. Then her car popped free, and Julia roared toward her partner.

The SATD showed her partner at least five miles ahead of Tier now, the assailants all over him, no doubt.

Hang in there, Goody. I'm coming.

As she watched, the red dot sputtered and blinked out. Then the map switched off, leaving only faint gridlines. She slammed on the brakes and stopped in the center lane of the momentarily empty highway. She stared at the screen, dumbfounded.

Her hands flashed to the keyboard. She punched in command after command. Nothing. She checked the connections at the antenna, at the box on the floor, at the back of the computer. The screen remained blank.

She snatched the radio mike and keyed the talk button. 'Goody! What's happened? Goody!'

She grabbed the wire connected to the receiver for Goody's body mike and slid her hand up to the earplug. She jammed it into her ear. Static. She ripped it out again.

With a last futile look at the computer monitor, she hit the accelerator and plunged ahead, blind.

Donnelley was about to take another shot at the Maxima when it swerved out of sight behind him.

Vero yelled out in surprise and pointed. 'Look!'

In the rearview Donnelley saw the Maxima fly off the shoulder and down an embankment, kicking up a cloud of dust.

'You beat 'em!' Vero laughed, almost giddy.

Donnelley wasn't so sure, but he set his gun on the seat. He felt as though he'd been kicked hard in the side. He touched the pain, and his hand came back drenched in blood.

Vero stared. He gripped Donnelley's shoulder. 'I should drive.'

Donnelley eyed him. 'I don't think so.'

Vero himself looked terrible: oily sweat glistened on his face and arms and plastered his curly brown hair to his skull. His lips, cracked and bleeding, quivered constantly. His eyes bulged, held in place, it seemed, by the red vessels fanning out from each corner. Blood was crusted around the opening of his ear.

Registering Donnelley's quick assessment, he said, 'I'm not as bad as I look. Not yet. Pull over.'

'No. Sit back' Flicking his attention between the road ahead and the rearview mirrors, Donnelley clutched the wheel with his bloody fist. His face hardened with purpose.

six

She'd lost them. Goody and Vero had simply vanished.

Julia had long ago passed the place they had been when the SATD malfunctioned. Surely they could not have continued their fierce battle with the assailants this long. One of them would have triumphed, the other beaten too hard to carry on. Yet she had not come across wreckage—of car or man—other than a periodic scattering of glass, plastic, and paint.

Three state patrol cruisers, cherry-tops blazing, had sailed by in the other direction miles ago, suggesting that the troopers had not spotted two feuding vehicles up ahead. They apparently thought the trouble lay in the stalled and battered traffic behind her. It wouldn't be long before they realized their error and started combing ahead for the culprits. She had to find Goody before they did.

She swept the hair back from her forehead and realized that tension was contracting every muscle in her body: her abs burned, her forearms bulged in crisp definition from gripping the wheel so tightly, even her face ached. She inhaled deeply through her nose, then let the air escape slowly through her mouth.

She had known Goody for six years, ever since her assignment to the FBI's Denver field office. He'd been an office hotshot with a reputation for cracking the toughest cases and collaring the most elusive criminals. Twenty- five years old and fresh from the Academy, she was consigned to grunt work and rarely had occasion to watch the great Goodwin Donnelley in action.

For eight months the Denver SAC had her handling background investigations of people applying for sensitive government jobs. This was a choice assignment in DC, where the subject might be a potential Superior Court judge or congressional aide. But in Denver it amounted to drudgery, especially for an eager young agent with a master's degree in criminology.

Whenever she could, she'd quietly sit in on Goody's case meetings, just to watch him work and learn the investigative ropes, if only vicariously. At first she was merely a curiosity, a pretty woman with a thing for criminal