Germ

The floor shook, a prolonged vibration that cracked the tile. Explosions rumbled in the distance, deep and low. If Kendrick had faithfully described the attack, either the tomography bombing had started or they were still striking at the hangars and the assassins' Cessnas. He hoped the Hummer he had stashed in the jungle was small enough and distant enough to escape the bombing. He hoped he could get to it before the serious ordnance rained down. He hoped he wouldn't stumble into the ground troops Kendrick would surely send in last.

And while he was hoping, he hoped to someday see Kendrick feel the bite of his germ and watch him as he died.

'How can you do this?' he asked. 'You're bombing a foreign country.'

'Haven't you heard? You're operating the largest methamphetamine laboratory in the world there. Side things too—refined cocaine hydrochloride, heroin, marijuana, a little money laundering for the Colombian and Bolivian cartels. All kinds of nasty stuff we created the Anti-Drug Abuse Control Commission to stamp out. Considering how much anti-drug money Paraguay and Brazil get from us, they were more than happy to cooperate.'

Inside the safe was a Halliburton briefcase. Litt pulled it out and stood. Its heft made him feel a little better.

'You realize,' Kendrick said, 'you might have gotten away if you'd have left the president's family out of your plans. Without his authorization, I would have had to send hired guns. And we've seen recently how ineffective they can be.'

'Das gebrabbel. Make sense, Kendrick.' He headed for the stairs.

'You could have targeted me without hearing so much as a raised voice.' A pause. The clinking of ice against glass near the receiver. The old Schlauberger was having a cocktail. 'My time's almost up anyway.'

Footfalls slapping against the tile startled him. He turned as a man ran past, lab coat flapping. The man rounded the next corner, going for the exit.

Litt moved the handheld closer to his ear and heard, '. . . was the only thing that allowed me to move so quickly.'

'What? What was?'

'Hold on a mo—'

Litt heard him speak to someone. The background noise was a cacophony of voices, some raised in excitement, others droning out information. Litt grew incensed at the thought that Kendrick's room hummed with the activity of his, Litt's, destruction.

After a moment, Kendrick came back on. 'Excuse me, Karl. We have a lot going on.'

He pictured Kendrick's smug expression. He said, 'Du willst mich wohl fiir dumm! This isn't over, Kendrick. You're too late.'

'You mean your hit list? The people you infected? Yes, your bitterness, your vengeance, will be felt, if that pleases you. But that's where it ends, Karl. You will have killed them in vain. The media will assume some cult infected them through a contaminate in their food or drink or injected them and then sent out a list of victims. Cruel, but nothing else. They will never hear from you. They will never know why.' He paused, then added, 'We'll probably frame a militant group, take them out of the picture, and make our citizens feel safe again. In a few years, even their grief will fade.'

Litt arrived at the door to the laboratory wing. He moved his face to the facial thermogram. Nothing happened. His heart wedged in his throat. He looked into the black pane again, his reflection glaring back. The door clicked open. As he started up the stairs, he said, 'I'll save you a spot in hell, old man.'

'You do that, Karl.'

He heard a click on the line, then nothing. He growled and shoved the handheld into his pocket. At the top of the stairs, he pushed through the door into the sun and the sound of droning planes.

ninety-three

Convinced they had been spotted and fired upon by a guard with some sort of monster-gun, Julia and Stephen scuttled back down the chimney as fast as they could. Julia anticipated her next moves: roll away from the ladder to make room for Stephen; grab the flashlight; draw the Sig Sauer; run like hares for the adit. Stephen clambered down right above her.

He was counting—'Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen.'

'What's that?' she asked, breathless, thinking he somehow knew when the next assault would strike.

'Rungs,' he said. 'Nineteen, twenty. Trying . . . not to .  .. panic. Now shhh. Twenty-three, twenty-four . . .'

Her feet touched dirt and she rolled away.

'Thirty-one, thirty-two!'

She grabbed him and started tugging.

'Wait, wait, wait,' Stephen said.

Julia shook the flashlight and it lit up. She centered it on the hole in the mine's ceiling where the shaft rose to the surface.

'Shouldn't we have heard something by now if they were after us?' he said.

Overhead, the siren stopped. Then another sound, thunderlike, and the ground vibrated. Dirt sprinkled from the ceiling.

'That was an explosion,' Julia said.

'Is this Kendrick Reynolds's doing?'

She shrugged.

'We gotta get Allen out of there,' he said, stripping off his gloves, unraveling the tape at his ankles and wrists. Julia did the same, then yanked the beanie off her head. Stephen was already heading back up. He rammed his shoulder into the manhole cover, heaving it to the side and hoisting himself up and out.

Julia followed, coming up behind the Dumpster. Smoke spiraled into the sky. She peered around the big trash container. A hangar was torn and smoking. It was at the far end of the airstrip near three small jets. One of the jets was missing a wing and rested on its nose, its tail angling up like a sinking ship. It was leaning against one of the other planes.

A fighter roared in, dropping dozens of what looked to Julia like bowling balls. They struck the cluster of jets and another hangar, setting off a chain reaction of explosions.

'Guards,' Stephen said.

He was standing behind her, looking in a different direction. She followed his gaze to two guards by the gate and guard shack. They were huddled together, crouched low, casting wide eyes at the plane flying away. When it disappeared, they scanned the grounds, perhaps hoping for someone to tell them how to interpret this new event. One of them held a walkie-talkie to his mouth, yelling into it. A crash of metal caught their attention.

Julia turned also. A half dozen people had come through a door at the end of a Quonset hut and were streaming toward the gate.

'That's the Quonset Tate said the stairs were in,' she said.

Stephen brushed by her.

'Wait!'

But he was gone, around the container and jogging down a small hill toward the huts. She started after him, then stopped when one of the guards raised his submachine gun. She yanked her pistol out of her waistband. She had the guard's head in her sights when he slipped away. She watched him apparently decide that the fleeing workers knew something he didn't. He turned and trotted through the gate, machine gun bobbing on its strap at his side. His buddy watched him go, then followed.

Stephen intersected the group of evacuees. He reached out, grabbed two handfuls of white lab coat, and lifted its occupant off the ground. He spoke, the man shook his head no, and Stephen dropped him on his backside. He snagged another man, got another negative response. She couldn't make out his words, but she knew the theme: Where's my brother?

Cautious—more cautious than Stephen, at least—she started for him. She kept her gun at her side and her finger flat against the trigger guard.

His latest captive pointed and must have indicated knowledge of Allen's location; Stephen swung the hapless soul around like a doll, clasped him in a headlock, and marched him toward the Quonset door.