Biowar

ear.

“What are you doing?” asked Sourin.

“Could you hold on a second?” Karr said into the phone.

“Pull it, Tommy,” said Farlekas.

Karr smiled at Sourin, shook his head back and forth, then motioned to Sourin that he would be right with him. Sourin took a step into the tent.

“No, no, I really need you to hang on a second,” Karr told the imaginary person on the other end of the line. He put the phone down.

“What are you doing?” demanded Sourin.

“Just calling in to check on that support you wanted.” Karr glanced to his right where the Thai guard was dozing. Sourin’s eyes followed — and then widened in rage. He began cursing — or at least the flood of words sounded like curses. The guard from outside ran in as Sourin’s voice rose in a shout, and he dragged the unfortunate man out of the tent. Karr stepped back to the laptop and yanked the dongle out, palming it as the major returned.

“What are you doing in here?” the major demanded.

“Like I said, talking to my people to get you support.”

“What’s in your hand?”

Karr held it up, turning it over. “Helps me make a connection if I need one,” he said. “I put my computer into it.”

“No, Tommy,” warned Chafetz.

But it was too late. Sourin came over and yanked it from his hand. “Show me.”

“You’re not cleared, my friend.”

Sourin yanked his pistol from his holster and pointed it at the op’s head. “Show me.”

“Afraid I can’t,” said Karr.

Sourin extended his hand. His pistol was an older Colt model, a .45-caliber that would make a very artistic hole in Karr’s head if fired.

“Tell you what — I’ll show you on one of your computers if you want,” said Karr. He reached over and picked up one of the laptops. “Plug it in like this.”

He felt Sourin’s gun press against his ear. “That’ll be enough,” said the major.

“Suit yourself,” said Karr, returning the dongle to his pocket. “Mind if I finish my phone call?”

“It’s finished,” said Sourin.

“You want that gear or not?”

The major frowned at him but then holstered his pistol.

“I’m a crank when I don’t get my sleep, too,” said Karr, picking up the phone.

“You pushed that too far,” said Farlekas.

“Yeah, no kidding,” said Karr, smiling at the major. “So what time should we expect delivery? And can you include a steak?”

29

Dean felt the perspiration rise from his body as if it were steam, bubbling and running off into his clothes in rivulets. The bed seemed to have sunk in the middle, and his head buzzed; the inside of his stomach felt like scorched sandpaper, and the fire smoldered up his esophagus.

He pushed himself upright, breathing slowly to try to clear his head. Lia had taken him to a hotel several towns away from where he’d been dropped; she was sleeping in the next room. Security men — they were Air Force sergeants, borrowed from an Air Force base in Germany and dressed in plainclothes — were watching the floor, along with several people Lia had taken from the embassy earlier.

God, he was hot. He touched his skull beneath the back of his right ear where the com device had been implanted. A butterfly stitch bandage covered the incision.

Was his headache a result of the operation? It hadn’t lasted thirty seconds.

More likely the beers.

Dean went over to the window, and despite the fact that he’d been admonished not to even look out, he opened it now, trying to get a full breath of air. His lungs rebelled, and he started to cough.

Dean settled back on the bed. He’d had a wild dream, and it came back to him now — he and Keys in high school, cutting a class and hanging out by the baseball field drinking a god-awful mixture of wine and whiskey Kegan had lifted from his dad’s liquor cabinet.

Kegan leering at him, drunk. “We’re cows,” he said. “Cows.”

Dean shook his head.

That hadn’t happened. Kegan never cut class as a kid. Kegan was too serious about his grades, too committed — or too scared maybe.

Not scared. Serious. Very serious. Even in those days, he knew he was going to be a doctor. Dean figured he’d find a cure for cancer or something like that.

Kegan had predicted that, hadn’t he? During one of their drinking sessions — they did have drinking sessions, though his memory was foggy about them now.

Dr. Kegan, the man who would save the world from the scourge of cancer.

That’s how Dean thought of his friend.

Not as a murderer. Though the two things weren’t necessarily contradictory.

Dean’s stomach rumbled. He pushed himself up out of bed, stumbling toward the bathroom.

30

Sandra Marshall was the first person William Rubens saw that evening when he walked into the secure conference room in the White House basement. She was sitting just opposite the doorway, looking at something on the screen of the computers reset into the tabletop. Blue light reflected up from the screen, casting her face in a soft glow. The light was more than flattering, and Rubens was surprised by a twitch of lust.

He moved quickly to take a seat next to his boss, Vice Admiral Devlin Brown. Brown wasn’t particularly happy that Homeland Security was involved; like most, if not all, Washington and military veterans, he had little use for the agency.

“Dr. Lester is from the CDC,” said George Hadash, running the meeting in the President’s absence. “He’s going to give an overview of the situation, with input from the FBI and Desk Three.”

Lester started his summary from the beginning, focusing on the domestic outbreak, thus far limited to two positive and twelve suspected cases. Thanks to a heads-up from Desk Three — Lester at least gave credit where due — the CDC was now focusing on a family of bacteria known as S. moniliforms, which were responsible for streptobacillary rat-bite fever. Ordinarily transmitted by rat bites, the disease was characterized by a high fever that would typically cycle on in two-to-four-day series randomly recurring over the course of months. A maculopapular rash that looked like a large bruise typically accompanied the disease, which also featured a variety of flulike symptoms, meningitis, and pneumonia. Maculopapular referred to the fact that the rash was both macular — a stain-like mark distinguished from its surroundings — and papular — having pupules or eruptions above the surface of the skin like pimples.

The symptoms fit S. moniliformis better than Spirillum minus or Sodoku, a very similar disease also called rat-bite fever but caused by a different bacteria, which was also under consideration because of evidence the Desk Three people had uncovered. But there was one problem in making the connection — both diseases were caused by rat bites. As far as they could tell, Victim Two had not been bitten by a rat.

Victim Two was Gorman, the BCI investigator. The other man had died an hour before.