the guards long to notice the open service gate.
“Those jeeps are getting close,” he said and snapped his head toward the driver. “How far to the bridge?”
“Less than half a mile,” he said. “We’d see it right now if this damned road wasn’t so full of twists.”
Ricci breathed. The van was powered by a turbocharged V-8, but its heavy, armor-plate hull gave the jeeps the edge in speed, and they were gaining fast.
He lowered the high, fold-down seat mounted to the side of the right load door, got into it, slid open a hidden gun port in the door, and thrust the muzzle of his VVRS through the port. At his nod, Seybold did the same behind the opposite door.
The jeeps were gaining, gaining, their high beams spearing the darkness. The lead vehicle was maybe a hundred yards back… ninety… eighty…
Ricci poured out a stream of fire, Seybold triggered his own gun, the two of them peppering the road with bullets, hopefully throwing some fear into their pursuers.
It worked. The jeeps dropped back, their ineffectual return fire spacking off the rear of the van.
“How we coming?” Ricci shouted to the driver.
“Almost there, almost, almost—”
They swung onto the short, concrete bridge.
Ricci and Seybold kept laying out parallel bands of fire, kept the jeeps trailing at a distance.
“Okay!” the driver called out. His foot tramped on the accelerator. “We’re across, we’re home, I can see the chopper straight up ahead!”
Ricci nodded, stopped firing, gave the lead jeep a chance to make the bridge.
Its front tires rolled onto the span.
“Now, Thibodeau!” he shouted over the comlink.
At the Two Shoulders base camp, Rollie Thibodeau lightly fingered a switch on his handheld remote-firing device, initiating the radio-addressable mines his team had affixed to the bridge support pillars.
Behind the pickup van, the bridge went up with a flash and a roar, its center heaving upward and then disintegrating, an avalanche of concrete that went crashing downward, taking the jeeps and their occupants with it, mangled, burning, tumbling, down and down and down in a great dome of flame to the frozen streambed below.
“Done,” Thibodeau grunted.
TWENTY-FIVE
As he reached for the telephone, Harlan DeVane was pleased to note that his hand was not trembling. Perhaps his control was only temporary and would slip once the ramifications of Kuhl’s call from Earthglow sank in. Perhaps some part of his mind was still denying that the Sleeper project was finished. He had invested so much in it, made his pronouncements, staked his name on its success. But the inhibitor codes had been expropriated. Seized by men Kuhl was convinced were operatives for Roger Gordian. What was left?
DeVane pressed the “flash” button on his telephone’s keypad and listened to a programmed sequence of bleeps go out into electronic space. The codes, too, were out there. Or soon would be. He pictured them as mathematical formulas on little sheets of paper, dispersing in a loose circle that stretched around the globe. Countless hands grasping for them, snatching them from the air. A cure for this one, this one, and this one. It was a vivid image, and DeVane supposed it would grow even sharper as he came to terms with what had happened in Canada.
Yes, DeVane thought, Zeus had flung a thunderbolt, and now his chariot was tumbling to the ground. But not everything was wreckage. Not yet. He could still leave a trail of flame across the sky.
A ringing tone in his ear now, cut short as a male voice answered.
“Yes?”
DeVane held the receiver in his grip.
“Proceed with the backup option,” he said.
Steadily.
From the roofs beyond Roger Gordian’s window at San Jose Mercy, only a small corner of his bed was visible, and then at a strained and awkward angle. This placement was intentional and appropriate for the stepped-up security around Gordian. As soon as suspicions arose that he was the victim of a deliberate biological attack, the bed had been moved out of line with the window to minimize the threat of outside observation and sniper fire.
The rooftop shooter had his orders, however. Standing at the foot of the bed, speaking to her unconscious husband in soft tones, Ashley Gordian was a clearly exposed target as he made a minor adjustment to his aim.
“You talk to Gord all the time, don’t you?” Megan Breen asked her now. She was seated with her back against the wall to the left of the window, a warm dash of sunlight on her cheek. When the first bullet entered the room, it would pass within an inch or two of her ear.
Ashley looked at Megan. They were alone with Gordian except for the plainclothes Sword op — a thin, dark- haired man sitting quietly to one side of the door with his arms crossed over his concealed firearm — assigned to guard the room. All three wore their ordinary street clothes — no protective aprons, no masks, goggles, gloves, or shoe covers. With the discovery that Gordian’s symptoms had resulted from his ingestion of a gene-directed trigger, infectiousness had ceased to be a concern.
“I’ve got a hunch he hears more than you might think,” Ashley replied. “We joke about our running commentary on the state of anything and everything. Roger says we should mike ourselves and start our own radio call-in show.”
Megan smiled a little. “I can remember a time, not too long ago, when it was torture pulling a single word out of Gord.”
Ashley nodded. “He’s really opened up over the past couple of years, Meg. Ever since we got past our difficulties. Some days it’s nonstop gab, you’d be amazed.”
“It must be nice for you. Being so comfortable with each other.”
“Yes, it is,” Ashley said. “For both of us.”
They regarded Gordian, who lay there under his blankets with his eyes closed, his ventilator making its pumping sounds into the silence. A young man in a white intern’s coat entered the room, checked Gordian’s nutrient IV bag, noted aloud that it required changing, and left. Behind a concrete rampart three hundred yards away, the sniper cradled his rifle in his hands and waited for the signal.
Megan glanced at her watch.
“We’ve got about an hour before Eric Oh and the team from Sobel arrive with the antivirals,” she said, her voice filled with ongoing wonder and admiration over their ability to synthesize them literally overnight. “How about you let me treat you to breakfast while we’re on standby?”
A sudden look came into Ashley’s eyes. Sober, knowing. At first Megan wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.
Kneeling on his rooftop perch, the shooter watched her turn from the foot of the bed and step in front of the window, dead-center between his crosshairs. His finger was curled over the trigger. One squeeze and her heart would burst in her chest.
“Breakfast sounds like a good idea,” Ashley said, her eyes still solemn, her voice dropping to a very quiet volume. “We need to talk in private, and I think it might be the right opportunity.”
Megan gave her a questioning glance.
“Sword business is Sword business,” Ashley said. “I don’t have to know everything about how you do your work. In many ways I prefer not knowing. It’s a part of Gord’s life that scares me. And because I think of you and Pete as family, it makes me scared for you, too.”
“But you want me to tell you something now,” Megan said slowly.
