Germ

Until the accident.

Kendrick pushed himself up from the pillow, rolled, and collapsed on his back. The room was so dark, nothing was visible. His eyes ached. He closed them.

Karl and his team had developed a virulent, airborne strain of rabies—a Level 4 biohazard—a dozen years before the CDC developed the four-level biosafety designations, and well before the techniques and equipment currently in use to safely handle and contain them. An aerosol canister fell over and its valve broke off, releasing the virus and triggering an emergency evacuation. Security immediately air-lifted lab scientists and staff to a site sixty miles away. There had been no evac plans for civilians, who were in or around the surface buildings. When Karl learned this, he frantically pleaded and threatened the security officers to return for them. He called Kendrick, who stressed the importance of following established procedures.

'There is the general public to think about,' he told Karl.

'I don't care about them! Rebecca! The kids! Kendrick, you can circumvent procedures. Do it!'

'Put Major McCafferty on the line.'

Kendrick had been told the hot zone was limited to a relatively small teardrop-shaped area around the facility, the shape a result of prevailing winds. There was an 88 percent chance family members in the dorms were already exposed; a 15 percent chance that Elk Mountain townsfolk were exposed. Kendrick could not risk pulling the infected people out of the quarantined area. He told Major McCafferty to act as though Kendrick had ordered him to retrieve the families at all cost. His true orders had been to stay clear of the compound.

When the helicopter sent to get the families never returned, Karl became a demon fighting to get out of hell. He tried to wrangle the sidearm away from one of the security officers and was about to be restrained to a cot when he settled down. Two hours later, he was gone. They stopped him at a roadblock, his desperately ill family with him. Their deaths were slow and excruciating. The baby succumbed on day four. Joe, day thirteen. Rebecca lasted nearly three weeks.

Kendrick threw off the bedcovers. He turned to sit on the edge of the bed. His fingers found a water glass on the nightstand, and he raised it to his lips. The water was tepid and smelled metallic. He set it down and missed, and it tumbled off. The room's thick carpet saved it from breaking; its contents splashed up his pajama legs and over his feet. He hardly noticed.

Karl had been infected as well. His symptoms matched his family's; however, where theirs pulled them into the grave, his lessened and reversed. The physicians could not say he'd recovered fully, but that he did at all had shocked them. His respiration was weakened, his eyesight noticeably diminished. The pallor of death on his skin never fully retreated.

'You're a lucky man,' Kendrick had said, embracing him on the day he grew strong enough to step away from the hospital bed.

'You think so?' His voice was thin, raspy.

'You almost died.'

'I wish I had.'

Mumbled so quietly, Kendrick later wondered if Karl had really spoken. He squeezed Karl's shoulder.

'I won't pretend to fully grasp the extent of your pain, Karl, but I believe you'll learn to live again. Maybe even to love again.'

Karl shuffled away. At the door, he leaned on the jamb and looked back. 'You could have saved them.'

Six weeks later he was back to work. Two weeks after that he disappeared.

Kendrick pushed his wet feet under the sheets and flipped the covers back over his body. Maybe he needed noise to lull him to sleep, to distract his mind. One of those sound boxes that imitated rain or a brook or a fan. Anything was better than counting his own heartbeat as the blood pulsed past his eardrums. Absently, he rubbed his feet against the sheets to dry them.

He'd heard nothing from or about Karl for years. He had assumed he'd taken his life, as his father had done. Then reports filtered in about a new dealer on the global bioweapons market. His scientists analyzed a culture of what he recognized as the Zorn virus from an outbreak in Africa, and he knew.

Karl was back.

seventy

'Send what?' Stephen looked at her in utter confusion.

'The data from the memory chip. We talked about sending the chip to Reynolds. That has to be what Allen meant.'

'But he was against the idea,' Stephen said.

'He must have seen or heard something that convinced him Kendrick can help.' She glanced at the talkative road crew. Their mouths, framing the sounds she could barely hear, had acted like a lip-reading primer for her eager mind. They had given her the key. 'He used what could have been his last breath . . .'

Stephen flinched.

'But wasn't,' she added quickly. 'At the time, he was in big trouble. A world-class assassin had him by the neck. He was turning blue. Yet he chose then to try to communicate that we should send the data. That's serious. That's important.'

''Send it.' You're sure that's what he said?'

'When you say it, I can see the movements of Allen's mouth exactly. Now that I know what he said, it's impossible to imagine that I didn't pick up on it immediately.'

'But if it's Reynolds these people are trying to keep the chip

from,' Stephen said slowly, articulating newborn thoughts, 'then we'd be destroying any reason they would have to ransom Allen.'

'We have to weigh that with the possibility that Reynolds can help get Allen back if he knows the contents of the chip.'

They looked at each other. They were at an impasse, not a place you wanted to be when kidnappers had your brother, killers were on your tail, and some mad scientist was pointing a virus-cannon at your country.

Stephen ran his tongue over his lips. His mouth was so dry, it was like rubbing two sticks together. He took a sip of coffee, then said, 'What do they expect us to do?'

'The people who took Allen? They expect us to sit tight, do nothing until they contact us.'

'Then let's do the opposite. Let's send Reynolds the contents.'

She smiled.

'And let's go get Allen.'

The waitress approached with a tray of plates.

'To go, sorry, thanks,' Julia said. To Stephen, she said, 'I'll share with you.' She slid out of the booth.

He watched her in wonder.

'We have a plan now,' she said. 'We can't just sit around.'

'What's our plan?'

'Share what we know with Kendrick and go get Allen.'

'Those are objectives, not a plan.'

'Oh, come on.' She held her hand out. 'Gimme the keys. I want to see where they are. Can you get the food and pay?' She took a couple of steps, then turned back. 'You're okay?'

'Yeah, I'm okay.' He smiled, and she strode off. He guessed he was okay. It was either be okay or be useless—and he didn't want to be that.

He had opened the driver's door and leaned in to deposit the bag of food on the passenger's seat when, from the rear seat, Julia spoke.

'We got a problem.'

'What?'

'They're over the Atlantic, heading south.'

'Yeah?'

'A few hundred miles southeast of Nassau.'

'Heading for Cuba?' His mind tried to grasp the meaning of the jet's leaving the United States. How would that hinder their pursuit?