Germ

Her finger tightened on the trigger. She imagined the bullet striking the lapel over his heart. She had the shot.

She let her grip relax, and the barrel dipped. She couldn't do it. She could not shoot an unarmed man in the act of surrendering. Even soldiers took prisoners on the battlefield, didn't they? Wasn't it part of the Geneva Convention? But what would she do with him? If she tied him up or knocked him out or disabled him somehow, he'd die in the air strike. That would be no better than shooting him now. If she took his case and let him escape, would he find a way to continue killing, to perhaps even duplicate the work he'd done here? How would she live with herself then? And if she actually took him in custody, how far would they get—she and the gravely ill Allen—before he got the upper hand and murdered them both?

'You have no choice. Do it.'

At first she thought the words were her own, so persuasive as to sound like whispers in her ear. Then she realized they'd come from Allen, who was slowly, painfully moving up behind her. He came into her peripheral vision on her left, scraping along the wall of the hangar, sucking in wet breaths.

'Julia,' he groaned. 'Think of . . . the deaths . . . he's responsible for. Think of . . . your partner. Think of Ste . . . Ste . . .'

He sobbed then—or coughed; she couldn't tell. But it didn't matter, because she was thinking of Donnelley, she was thinking of Stephen. She braced herself, feeling the muscles in her face, especially around her mouth and brow, pinch tight. She brought the barrel back in line with Litt's chest.

'You'd only be killing yourselves!' Litt called.

She held her position. 'Meaning?'

'Meaning—'

His left hand moved—he was holding something. How could she not have noticed? In the moment between seeing the movement and deciding to shoot, she heard a machine kick into gear: clack-clack-clack- clack-clack . . . Fast, like an anchor chain reeling out to the ocean floor. She shifted her vision to see a contraption on the jungle side of the chain-link fence spin around. A Gatling-style cluster of barrels jutting from its body now pointed not out toward the jungle but inward toward them. When it stopped, she continued hearing the sound for a second longer. She turned to see another of these weapons— Tate had called them Deadeyes—pointing its barrels almost directly at her. She remembered Tate saying soldiers controlled them with remotes, and they could be programmed to monitor certain regions around them. She had just witnessed the redirecting of these two, from outward, where a sniper would fire into the compound, to the compound itself, where she and Allen stood. She had no doubt that either Deadeye was capable of blowing them away, regardless of where along this strip between the hangars and the jungle they were.

'Meaning, if you fire your weapon, my mechanical friends will annihilate you both.' He smiled and lowered his arms.

Had Tate not warned them of these anti-sniper weapons, she probably would have called his bluff.

He continued: 'Their response is instantaneous—'

Three seconds, she remembered.

'—and their field of fire is quite broad. You can't elude them. I've seen people try.' As he spoke, he squatted and picked up the silver briefcase. Then he took a tentative step back.

'Just . . . stop!' she screamed through gritted teeth. He did. She took a step forward. He stepped back. Another step for each of them. Her mind had told her she could not shoot him, and she held to that mandate. But she nearly forgot why he was off-limits, and she came within a half pound of trigger pressure of squeezing off a warning round. She pushed the back of her finger against the trigger guard to keep it ready but safe.

'Litt! I said stop! I mean it. Don't think I won't end it all right here, right now.'

She walked forward, and this time he held his ground. Behind her, Allen pushed himself along the wall of the hangar.

'Allen, stay there. Don't move.'

'If you go, I go,' he said weakly. She knew he was referring to a longer journey than the distance to Litt. 'Besides, he . . . probably killed me anyway.' He spat a red glob into the dirt. 'Julia, you can get out of this. I know you can.'

'Any ideas?'

'No. But I know you. You'll figure something out.'

'You're giving me too much credit. I'm stumped.'

They reached a gap between hangars. Allen hesitated and Julia moved close to him, not taking her eyes or her aim off Litt. 'You're not up for this,' she said.

'I'm feeling better. Really.' He groaned, but she thought he did look stronger. Something inside was fighting hard. 'Stephen shot me full of adrenaline. I'm feeling it.'

'Take my shoulder, but don't jar me too much. If this is it for us, I want to take him along.'

'I believe he's going the other direction.' He grabbed hold of her and gently shifted a measure of weight to her.

They crossed the gap and he let go to continue his sad slide along the wall. They had halved the distance to Litt. This near, she could make out the blood that coated the remainder of his ear and where he had smeared it on his jaw and neck. It was stark against the whiteness of his face. Closer, she noticed that a scarlet trickle had followed his jawbone and formed a bead on his chin like a tiny goatee. An explosion hurled debris against the hangar hard enough to shake the entire wall, but she resisted the temptation to look. Hot air billowed her hair. The air strike had taken a giant step toward them.

A body length from Litt, she stopped. She pointed her gun at the left lens of his black sunglasses.

'You're not going to use that thing,' he said, smiling thinly.

'In a heartbeat.'

In her peripheral vision, she saw Allen slide down the wall, grunting when he hit the ground. He held one shoulder out at an uncomfortable angle, as if trying not to completely collapse. His head drooped; he appeared to have spotted something fascinating in the dirt. Litt appraised him.

'Well, Dr. Parker. Did you enjoy your stay with us?'

'You're a sick man, Litt,' Julia said, not sure what to do next.

'So I've been told. Something about the pointless death of his family will do that to a man.'

'That's what this is about? Revenge?'

'When you put it that way, it does sound petty, doesn't it?'

They were both stalling, trying to figure a way out.

'Other people have lost loved ones. They don't kill thousands in retaliation.'

'I'm not other people.'

Keeping his lenses pointed at her, he placed the remote control device into the breast pocket of his lab coat.

'Don't move. Not even a finger.' Julia said, poking the gun at him. Her upper torso leaned into the movement.

'Or what, you'll shoot? Of course, you could pistol-whip me. Would you like that? Maybe this will dissuade you.' His hand came out of the pocket with something that looked like a harmonica—

My mind's not working right, she thought. And if that's true, we're not going to survive.

Then a fat blade snapped out of the end. He held a stiletto.

ninety-eight

Litt began casually stirring the air with the knife.

It looked utterly ridiculous in his bony fingers, but she wasn't going to bet the farm he didn't know how to use it. That he kept it in motion told her something; a moving weapon was the hardest to take away.

'Don't worry, I have no intention of attacking you. I merely desire the same courtesy.'

She raced through her options: Shoot and die . . . Jump him and risk the blade . . . Follow him and hope they moved out of the Deadeyes' sensors. The hangars all had people-sized rear doors. Litt could easily back to a door, then duck in and lock it before she could reach him. By the time she raced around, he'd be gone again. Maybe he