Patient Zero

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Crisfield, Maryland / Wednesday, July 1; 5:01 A.M.

CHURCH DIDN’T ASK me if I was okay. He leaned against the fender of a DMS Humvee and listened as I described everything that had happened in the plant. Around us the DMS operatives and their colleagues from half the civil and federal agencies in the phone book were in full swing. Stadium floodlights had been erected and it was bright as day even though dawn was an hour off. Except for military choppers the airspace above us was designated a no-fly zone; all business and residential properties had been emptied and the whole population of the area moved to a safe distance. The press was not invited in and the scene was officially designated as the target of a “possible” terrorist attack. According to Homeland’s complicated playbook this meant that it was considered a war zone and that in turn meant the military could call all the shots.

When I was finished he stared at me, lips pursed judiciously, and then nodded. “Has everyone been thoroughly checked and cleared by the doctors?”

“Yes. Lots of scratches and cuts, but no bites. My guys are suffering from exhaustion and everyone’s in some level of shock.”

“You as well?” His gaze was penetrating.

“Absolutely. Physically and mentally. Who wouldn’t be? I got the shakes and every muscle I own feels like it’s been run through a Cuisinart. Hu shot me up with some kind of vitamin cocktail, and I’ve had hot coffee, food, and a protein shake that tasted like a horse pissed in it. I feel like crap, but I’ll live.”

He gave a small nod. Mr. Warmth.

“What’s your assessment of what happened in there this morning?” he asked.

A dozen smartass replies came to mind but I kept a leash on my tongue. I said, “It was a trap and we walked into it.”

“You got out of it.”

“We were getting our asses handed to us in there. I got lucky.”

“Not counting your two encounters with Javad, this is your third combat situation with the walkers with zero casualties from your own team. In this kind of fight, ‘lucky’ can be enough.”

“Not for Grace’s people. Alpha Team got chopped. That’s hard, man.”

“It’s very hard,” he agreed.

“They had the whole place booby-trapped and as soon as we broke into the lab they remote-detonated the computer room. The holding pens for the walkers were rigged to open all at once, which means we tripped some kind of alarm, something we didn’t see. None of that was an accident. Those bastards knew we were coming.”

“Knew that it was today, or knew that it was inevitable?”

It was a crucial question and one that I’d been mulling for the last few hours. Our entire assessment of the enemy and his potential hung on that answer. “I don’t know. They were ready, but not completely. Only two of their bombs went off. The walkers didn’t come after us fast enough or in the right place. It should have been an all-you-can-eat affair, but we survived. And none of the walkers got out. None of that adds up.”

“No,” he said, and I think he was as troubled by these facts as I was.

“Y’know, I don’t know if we’re looking at this thing the right way.”

“I’m pretty certain we’re not.”

“We were expecting to find… what, a bunch of guys sitting around a table plotting the downfall of Western civilization? Instead we find what looks to me like a testing facility. These guys were studying the walkers. More so and more thoroughly than down in Delaware.”

“What about your team? Did they perform to your expectations?” When I didn’t answer, he said, “I expect a frank and open report, Captain. Now’s not a good time to be coy.”

“I’m not being coy, Church. I’ve known these guys for less than a full day and all of it’s been action. Yesterday they performed superbly. This morning we hit some potholes. Skip Tyler and Ollie Brown both went missing under questionable circumstances and I haven’t had time to fully debrief them. There are some… twitchy points about that. Skip claims he was jumped and Tasered from his blind side, but that doesn’t square with the facts because there were only two ways out of that shower room: the door my team came through and the corridor Skip was watching. He says he got zapped and then woke up in a storeroom, managed to cut his bonds and retrieve his weapon, and was then set upon by walkers. Ollie’s story is about the same. Says someone must have opened a door and Tasered him. Both of them have burns on their necks, and most of the guards in the plant carried Tasers.” I didn’t mention the fact that Ollie had nearly blown my head off during the fight. It was something Ollie and I would discuss at some later time.

“So, for a considerable amount of time you can’t account for either of those men?”

“Guess not.”

“By your own statement there was a period where you were alone, which means that Sims and Rabbit were not with you throughout the mission. And you told me that Sergeant Rabbit carried a prisoner back to the entrance and it was he who reported that Tyler was missing. How do you know that he didn’t disable Tyler and then break the prisoner’s neck? We have no immediate proof that the prisoner died as a result of Alpha Team blowing open the door.”

“Are you targeting Echo Team? You think that’s where the mole is?”

“I have no idea where the mole is and I’m questioning everyone,” he said with some edge in his voice. “I’m not a big fan of making assumptions, Captain. Until proven otherwise everyone is under the microscope.”

We glared at each other for a minute, but then I nodded. “Yeah, damn it.”

Church looked away to watch a truck drive by and when he turned back to me he was completely composed.

“Maybe you should broaden your search,” I said. “Instead of just going all Inquisition on everyone in the DMS, you might want to take a close look at whoever sent these people to you. Everyone you have was handpicked, right? Well, then, how sure are you about the people who picked them?”

Church gazed at me for a space and I thought I could hear relays clicking in his head. “Thank you for that suggestion, Captain. It wouldn’t surprise me if the mole was planted simply to bring the DMS down. It might not even be connected with the terrorists. After all, everyone in the intelligence community constantly jockeys for funding and there’s probably some hard feelings from some quarters that we’re getting their funding.”

“And are we?”

“Sure, but there’s a war on and we’re a little more ‘frontline’ than most. Mind you, there is always some political espionage and backstabbing going on in the intelligence services. Always has been, and it’s factored into daily life. The release of the walkers from Room Twelve may have been a terrorist act or it may have been meant to disrupt the DMS and discredit me.”

“Mass murder is a pretty extreme thing to do just to discredit someone. Are you that important?”

He shrugged.

“Well then, let me put it another way: are you that vulnerable?”

I didn’t expect an answer to that but he surprised me. “Not as much as some people might think.” He wouldn’t elaborate on that rather enigmatic remark, however, nor did he return to the topic. His cell beeped and he opened it and listened for a moment and then hung up without comment. “Dr. Hu has finished prepping the prisoner for interrogation.”

As he turned to go I blocked his way. “Slow your roll one minute more. I failed in there, Church. The quiet infil turned into a full-out assault and people died. You hired me on to lead Echo Team and I led them right into a trap.”

He looked at me steadily through the nearly opaque lenses of his glasses. “What do you want to hear? That I’m disappointed? That this was a badly led mission? That I want you to resign?”

I wasn’t going to feed him the script to my own dismissal so I waited.

“Sorry,” he said, “but you’re still Echo Team leader. I don’t have much interest in Monday-morning quarterbacking. So far you’re still four and oh with walkers. Baker and Charlie teams were totally destroyed; Alpha Team has been cut down by half… while Echo Team, small as it is, remains intact.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m the man for this job—”

He sighed through his nose. “If you need absolution go see a priest. If you want to decompress, talk to Dr. Sanchez. However, if you feel that you have some need to put things right and balance the scales, then help me stop this thing. Besides… last night you told me that you wanted to wait until your team was fully rested. We didn’t, and we can both take blame for that if blame needs to be assigned.”

I said, “What about reinforcements? I thought you had more Echo Team candidates on their way.”

“Some of them have already arrived. They’re being processed at the warehouse as we speak. They’ll be shown the tapes, given the speeches, and when you get back you can start training them.”

“Maybe we should send Top Sims back there now. Him and Bunny. They can start training the new guys.”

“Not Brown and Tyler?”

“I need to have a chat with each of them first.”

His phone rang again and he looked at the display and his mouth twitched with impatience. He flipped his phone open. “Yes, Mr. President,” he said. I raised my eyebrows but Church kept his usual composure. He listened for a few moments, then said, “Mr. President, I have neither the time nor the facts to give you a full briefing. What I can tell you now is that the crab plant appears to have been rigged as a trap. Yes, sir, we sustained heavy casualties.” He gave a bare-bones account of the hit. The President interrupted him at least six times. “We have one prisoner, Mr. President. Yes, that’s correct, just the one. I am on my way to conduct an interview with him right now so time is pressing,” Church listened some more and I could actually see the point at which his patience evaporated. He did something that I had never even heard of anyone doing before, and something I would have thought that not even Church would dare. “Mr. President, with all due respect this conversation is wasting my time. The clock is ticking for my interview and if you keep trying to micromanage this we’re going to lose the best opportunity we have. Now, please, sir, let’s stick to our original agreement. You will be properly informed when I am ready to make my report. Good day, sir.”

He didn’t wait for a reply but simply closed his phone and put it back in his pocket. He saw me goggling at him and said, “What?”

“Church… you just bitch-slapped the President of the United States.”

He said nothing,

“Nobody does that. Nobody can do that. How the hell did you—?” Church made a dismissive gesture. “We have an understanding. The DMS was built upon and continues to operate based on that understanding.”

“Care to share what that understanding is?”

“No,” he said.

Chapter Seventy

Crisfield, Maryland / Wednesday, July 1; 5:22 A.M.

DOCTOR HU HAD the prisoner ready in a big white van that was kitted out with diagnostic equipment. The prisoner sat in what looked like a dentist’s chair with his wrists and ankles secured by nylon bands. An IV dripped clear liquid into his veins. Hu didn’t meet my eyes. He hadn’t forgotten our little dustup after the Room 12 incident. Neither had I.

Church pulled over a stool and sat down. I stood by the door. The prisoner’s eyes darted back and forth between Church and me, probably sorting out who was good cop and who was bad cop.

“What is your name?” Church asked.

The man hesitated then shook his head.

Church leaned forward, his forearms on his knees. “You understand English. That’s a statement, not a question, so please don’t hide behind a pretense of ignorance. I am a representative of the United States government. The other men in this room work for me. I know that you’ve been infected with a pathogen that will kill you unless you take regular doses of a control substance. You believe that if you stonewall me you’ll die, that the disease in your system will shut you down before you can be made to talk. Under normal circumstances that might be true, especially if someone other than me was interrogating you. Listen closely now,” Church said, and his voice was calm, conversational. “You will tell me everything that I want to know. You will not die unless I allow you to. You will not keep silent. You will not be rescued.”

The man was sweating badly and his eyes were no longer darting over to me. The entirety of his mental and physical focus was locked on Mr. Church.

“We know about the control disease. We know its nature. The IV contains the control formula. Very clever to hide them inside ordinary aspirin; but not really clever enough as you can see. Death will not save you from this conversation. Death will not save you from me. Tell me that you understand.”

Muscles bunched in the man’s jaws as he fought to keep his mouth clamped shut.

“One of your comrades told us that his family was being held hostage, that they would be killed if he spoke to us. Is this how they are controlling you?”

Church gave him nearly thirty seconds, not blinking once, and then the man gave us a single spasmodic nod.

“Thank you. I have covert operations teams in every country in the Middle East and Asia. With one phone call I will send a team to find your family. I can order that team to rescue them. Or I can order that team to torture them to death. I can order them to capture your family—wife, children, parents, cousins, nephews, and nieces to the fourth generation. If I order that then your entire family, perhaps your entire village, will cease to exist. Whether they remain in prison, or are tortured, or are released with false identities and money in a new country, is entirely up to you.”

The man spat out a single word. The Iranian word for “dog.”

“The word you’re looking for,” said Mr. Church, “is ‘monster.’” He said it in flawless Iranian. The word hit the man like a punch and he recoiled from it. “Let us understand each other. I know that you are a subordinate, a scientist or a laboratory technician. Your loyalty has been obtained through fear for your own life and the lives of those you love. A monster did that. Someone like me. That person was willing to kill innocent people—people you love—in order to create and release a weapon that will kill millions. Imagine what I would be willing to do—to you, and to your family—to protect everyone that I love.”

The man started to open his mouth, to say something else, but whether it was a curse or a confession was unclear because he found another splinter of resolve and bit down on it. His eyes and mouth tightened again.

Church leaned back and considered the prisoner for two minutes. That’s a long time to endure a stare from anyone, let alone from a man with the personal intensity of Mr. Church. The man squirmed and sweated.

“I do not believe that you are a military man,” Church said. “Military men are trained to be hard, to be tough, to resist torture. I can see from your face, from the softness of your hands, that you are not going to be able to resist torture. We have chemicals. We have appliances. We can be so very crude, and in the end everyone talks. Everyone. Even I could not endure some of the techniques that could be used, and I am not soft. This man here,” and for the first time he indicated me with a slight gesture, “is a battle-trained soldier. You saw him in combat today, you saw him kill many people. He is a soldier, a leader of men, a hardened killer. Even he could not endure if the torturer were truly committed.”

“I… I… cannot!” the man said in a voice so hoarse it sounded like there were jagged rocks in his throat.

“Yes you can. You will. No one can outlast what we have. Our science is too good. I have studied torture, I understand its magic. The only thing you can do is to talk to us now, to work with us, to help us fight this thing.”

“My children…”

“Look at me,” Church said with soft intensity. “See me. If you give me information right now I will dispatch my teams to find and protect them. If you don’t then I will still get the information out of you, but I will make sure that everyone who has ever heard your name will be hunted down and exterminated so no memory of you or your family will be left upon the earth.”

I felt a chill dance along my lower spine and I wanted to get the hell away from this man. If Church was only messing with this guy’s head he was doing almost too good a job of it. It was messing with my head, too.

The prisoner opened his mouth again, closed it, opened it again… and finally said, “You have to promise that my children will be safe. When they are safe and in American hands then I will—”

Church’s face was ice and his look stopped the man mid-sentence. “You misunderstand me, my friend. I will send teams once I have information from you. Every second you waste is a second longer that your masters have to realize that you are in captivity and that means that your children are a second closer to death. You are wasting the seconds of their lives. Is that what you want? Do you want to kill your own children?”

“No! In Allah’s name, no!”

“Then talk to me. Save them. Be a hero to them and to the world. Save everyone by talking to me now.” He paused for a moment, and then reinforced it. “Now.”

The man closed his eyes and tears broke from beneath the closed lids. He bowed his head and shook it for several moments. “My name is Aldin,” he said, and a sob convulsed in his chest. “I will tell you everything I know. Please do not let my children die.”

Chapter Seventy-One

Crisfield, Maryland / Wednesday, July 1; 6:47 A.M.

WHEN I STEPPED out of the interrogation van I felt dirty. I understood the need for what Church had done, but it still made me feel like a piece of shit. Church had called himself a monster, and I think he meant it.

“Joe!” I heard my name and turned to see Rudy hurrying across the parking lot. He grabbed my hand and shook it, then stepped back to study my face. “Dios mio! Major Courtland told me what happened. I… I don’t have words for it, Joe. How are you?”

“I’ve been better,” I admitted, but before I could explain Gus Dietrich came over at a fast walk.

“Captain Ledger,” he said, “I have most of the forensics experts you wanted. The others are all en route and should be here by noon. Jerry Spencer is already on-site.”

“Okay, Sergeant, I want everyone cleared out of the building. Tell Jerry that I’ll be in there in a few minutes to do the walk-through with him.”

Dietrich smiled. “Detective Spencer seems to be pretty mad at you for bringing him into this, especially this early in the morning.”

“He’ll get over it. Especially once he has a big juicy crime scene to play with.”

“Mr. Church requested a medium-sized circus tent to be used as a temporary forensics lab. It’s being set up around the corner on the far side of the lot.”

“Church was able to get a circus tent on short notice?” Rudy asked.

Dietrich gave him a rueful smile. “Mr. Church has a friend in the industry.”

“Jeez,” Rudy said, shaking his head.

“Oh, and Gus…?” I said as Dietrich turned away.

“Sir?”

I stuck out my hand. “Thanks for saving our asses in there.”

He looked embarrassed as he took my hand. “Sorry it wasn’t sooner.”

“Believe me when I tell you that it was in the very nick of time.”

He nodded and headed off. Rudy and I watched him go.

“He’s a good guy,” Rudy said. “I had a chance to get to know him yesterday and I saw him in action this morning. If there really is a mole in the DMS, it isn’t going to be him.”

“Would you bet your life on that?’

Rudy thought about it, nodded. “I surely would.”

“Glad to hear it.” We started walking over to a card table on which plastic tubs of ice were set. I rummaged inside and pulled out a bottle of green tea for him and a Coke for me.

Rudy tapped my bottle with his. “To life.”

“Amen to that. Look, Rude, Church just got finished interrogating the prisoner.” I told him about what Church had said to Aldin.

“Will he save the man’s family?”

“I think so. I heard him make the call and I don’t think he was bluffing.”

“That’s comforting.”

“That’s all you have to say? The guy’s a self-admitted monster, for Christ’s sake!”

“Joe, you’re tired and you’ve got symptoms of postincident stress, so I’m going to cut you a lot of slack. You’re all upset because Church threatened the man’s family, that he used psychological manipulation, that he—”

“He did more than that, Rude. He tore that guy to pieces.”

“Physically?”

“No, but—”

“So, all he did was scare the man into cooperating. No physical torture, no thumbscrews, no sexual or religious humiliation.” He shook his head. “I wish I had been there to see it. It sounds brilliant.”

I stared at him. “Christ! Don’t tell me you approve of this?”

“Approve? Maybe. Admire, certainly. But turn it around, cowboy, and tell me how you would have extracted that same information. Could you have gotten the man to speak without resorting to physical torture? No, what you’re upset about is that you don’t know whether he was bluffing about the threats to the man’s family. You soldiers and cops talk very tough. Over the last twenty-four hours I’ve heard a lot of ‘kill ’em all’ and ‘let God sort ’em out’ stuff; lots of ‘we’re heartbreakers and widow-makers’ trash talk. To a large degree it might even be true, but a fair amount of this stuff is team cheers to get the players ready. Down on the real level you’re each human and there’s no way you can truly separate yourselves from the realities of war. You might have had to hurt Aldin physically in order to get him to talk; you might even have had to do permanent physical damage to him. Doing that would be hurtful to you, but it’s a battlefield thing, ultimately not much different than a sword thrust or a kick to the cajones. What you’re reacting to here is that Church inflicted damage on a completely different level. He hurt the man psychically, emotionally. Tough as you are I’m not sure you can do that, and you are very sure that you can’t. And yet… Church did not so much as slap this man across the face.”

“Okay, okay, I get the relativity of it, O wise Yoda,” I griped, “but that still doesn’t cover all of it.”

“I know,” Rudy said, nodding, “you’re afraid that Church might have been serious when he threatened that man’s children.”

I stared into the open mouth of my Coke bottle. “Yeah,” I said. “He called himself a monster.”

“Yes, but let’s both hope that he really isn’t that kind of monster.”

“And if he is?”

Rudy shook his head. “I’ve said it before, cowboy. It must be terrible to be him.”

Chapter Seventy-Two

Crisfield, Maryland / Wednesday, July 1; 6:50 A.M.

RUDY WENT BACK into one of the trailers to conduct some postevent sessions with the remnants of Alpha Team. I spotted Grace standing at the aid station and headed over. Her eyes were red-rimmed but for now her tears were done. Maybe she’d cried herself dry, the magazine empty. I hoped Rudy would take some time for her soon.

As I approached she looked up, and in the space of a few seconds several emotions crossed her face. Grief, of course; but also pleasure and a little surprise, maybe as she realized that she was smiling at seeing me. Just as I was smiling to see her, and the sight of her was sending a warm and tingly wave through my stomach. The realization gave me a little jab of surprise, too. I felt it down deep. Understand, I’ve always held office romances in some degree of contempt, regarding the lovers as perpetrators of bad judgment, but as I became aware of feelings for Grace—however new and unformed they were—I couldn’t work up the slightest flicker of self-contempt. The angel on my right shoulder was getting his ass handed to him by the devil on my left.

“How are you,” I asked. “Or is that the single stupidest question ever asked since Nero asked his friends if they’d like to hear a little music?”

“I’ll get by,” she answered, handing me a cardboard cup of coffee. “I’m not going to let myself think too much about it… about my team.” She sniffed and tried to smile. “I plan to have a complete breakdown when this is all over.”

“If you want company for that, let me know.”

She gave me a penetrating look and nodded. “I may take you up on that.” She changed tack. “Your friend Detective Spencer’s been asking for you. Or, to be precise, he’s been asking where the effing hell you are and what do you think you’re playing at having him dragged out by a goon squad while he’s on medical leave. Words to that effect. He’s not the mildest of men.”

“Jerry’s okay. Good cop.”

“You must know that we interviewed him.” She paused. “That’s why Mr. Church and I were at the hospital. At St. Michael’s. We’d had our eye on Spencer since he first joined the task force, and after he was shot we followed his ambulance to the hospital and ‘borrowed’ him once he was free of the ER doctors.” She shuddered. “I don’t like to think what would have happened if Mr. Church hadn’t been on site when the infection began spreading through the hospital.”

“You think it could have been worse?”

“I know it would have been.” She gave me a strange smile. “It’s funny, but in all the time I’ve known him, in all that the DMS has done since I’ve been seconded here from Barrier, it’s the only time I’ve ever seen Church take direct action.”

“I get the feeling that he’d be pretty effective. He has the look. What was he, Special Forces?”

“I truly don’t know what his background is, and I’ve covertly tried to find out. I think he’s used his MindReader system to erase his past. No fingerprints, no DNA on file, no voice-print patterns, nothing. He’s a ghost and these days no one’s a ghost.” She shook her head. “When the walkers came flooding down the halls heading toward the lobby Church didn’t get angry, didn’t even show the shock he had to be feeling. He simply took action. I was outside by then, establishing a perimeter, so I only had glimpses of him through the big glass doors in the lobby. He didn’t seem to do much, but as the walkers reached him they fell, one after the other. I’ve only ever seen one person move with that kind of ruthless efficiency.”

“Oh? Who’s that? Maybe we should recruit him.”

“We did,” she said, locking my eyes with hers.

“Ah,” I said, feeling enormously uncomfortable. “I guess I need to add ‘ruthless efficiency’ to my résumé.”

“You know what I mean. You don’t hesitate. It doesn’t seem to affect you.”

The image popped into my head of the walkers in the hallway climbing over each other to get to me and how my hands almost slipped as I slapped a magazine into my gun. And then a second and more terrible picture began flashing on the big movie screen in my head: my hands reaching out to Grace in the lab and the moment of hesitation I felt as I worked up the nerve to break her neck to spare her from becoming a zombie.

“Believe me, Grace, it does. Really and truly. I nearly lost it a couple of times over the last day. No joke.”

Grace shook her head. “‘Nearly’ doesn’t count. But even so… Church is different, colder. He’s less…” She tried to put a word to it and couldn’t.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I saw a little bit of that today.” I told her about the interrogation, but like Rudy Grace seemed unmoved.

“What did you learn?” she asked.

“Not a lot, though Church is still working on him. The code name for the walker plague is Seif al Din. Translates as ‘the Sword of the Faithful’; but it has a second connection, and that may be the biggest tidbit we got out of Aldin. He confirmed that El Mujahid sometimes takes the name of Seif al Din. Kind of like Carlos being the Jackal.”

She nodded. “El Mujahid is a clever bastard. There are a lot of blokes in counterterrorism who would love to hang him very slowly from a tall tree.”

“I’ll buy the rope. But I’m not sure how fast we should label El Mujahid as our supervillain here, Grace. I read the Homeland profile on him when I was with the task force and I don’t recall anything that said he has a background in science. Explosives, maybe, but not medicine. He’s more of a field general than a lab rat.”

“Then he’s hired lab rats. Bin Laden isn’t an airline pilot but his people still flew planes into the towers.”

“Mm,” I said noncommittally. “Well, I’d better get inside before Jerry has kittens.”

She took my hand and gave it a hard, quick squeeze and started to turn away, then paused, doubt on her face. “Joe…? We have the plant, the army of walkers they were making, the computers. Did Aldin mention anything about any other sites? Any cells we’ve missed?”

“No. He said he’d overheard the guards talking about possible locations for another site but he didn’t think they’d settled on a spot yet. This plant here is the main site. The factory floor, so to speak; and a lot of the stuff that was stored here was intended for use with future cells. He said the Delaware meatpacking plant was relatively new. A tiny lab, no computers, just a bunch of stored walkers. He didn’t even know about the captured kids or the experiments planned for them.”

“Do you think he was lying?”

I shook my head. “You weren’t in the room. Once he started talking he kept on talking. Hu got enough information to begin working on a research protocol.”

“Even so, what’s your intuition tell you? Have we stopped the immediate threat? Do we have time now to rebuild our teams? Or is the clock still ticking?”

“I… don’t know, Grace,” I told her honestly. She nodded glumly and headed off and I went to find Jerry Spencer.

Chapter Seventy-Three

Crisfield, Maryland / Wednesday, July 1; 7:07 A.M.

JERRY SPENCER WAS pissed.

“Hey,” I said. “Thanks for comin—”

“I thought I told you to leave this shit alone, Joe.”

“No, you told me that you hadn’t heard about the DMS and told me that I hadn’t, either.”

“Same damn thing. A smarter cop would have backed off, and I don’t appreciate being dragged into this. I made that clear to Church and that British broad and I thought I’d made it clear to you.”

“The British broad’s name is Major Courtland,” I snapped. “And too fucking bad if you don’t want to be involved. Look, I know you’re short and you’ve got your whole retirement mapped out, but this is national security. This is a crisis on a par with nine-eleven, and in a lot of ways it’s worse. So stop whining about it, grow a set, and help us bag these rat-bastards.”

He tried to switch gears. “Why’d you have them drag me into this? FBI’s got better crime scene investigators than me.”

“Balls. You may be a world-class pain in the ass, Jerry, but you’re also the best of the best. I got no time for second team. You got the magic and you were available. You want me to beg? Is that it?”

We glared at each other, but then I could see something shift behind his eyes. Something I’d said had hit the mark. He stepped back and flapped an arm at me. “Ah… shit!”

“So what does that mean? Are you in?”

We were inside the shower room of the crab plant and he looked down at the floor as he absently rubbed the spot on his chest where bullets had cracked his sternum. “Thirty years, Joe. Thirty years on the job and I never so much as caught a scratch. Not a splinter, and then that asshole damn near punches my ticket. If I hadn’t had the Kevlar I’d be dead.”

“Yeah, man, I know. Upside is that you did have the Kevlar. Universe threw you a bone.”

“Christ, you been reading The Secret or some shit?” He scowled at me and then sighed long and deeply, wincing a little as he did so. Then he gave me a crooked little smile. “You’re a total pain in my ass you know that? You at least save that Cigarette boat for me?”

“Um, well, no,” I said, “… we kind of blew it up.”

“Crap.” He turned and looked around at the ruined shell of the shower room. “All right, dammit, let’s get this dog and pony show on the road.”

I offered him my hand and we shook. “Thanks, Jer. I owe you on this.”

“You owe me a frigging boat.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said, wondering if Church had a friend in that industry.

There was an FBI forensics investigator on hand to assist Jerry and I was amused to see that it was Agent Simchek—my old friend Buckethead, who’d braced me at the beach and dragged me into this mess. He didn’t return my nod and only gave Jerry a hard and unsympathetic stare. The FBI never likes playing second chair to ordinary cops. Simchek carried a full evidence collection kit and an air of disapproval.

I wasn’t fluffing Jerry’s ego when I said he was the best. I’ve worked with him on the task force and on a few other cases that had connections between Washington and Baltimore. I’m good with a crime scene, but Jerry is better than me or anyone I ever heard of. If there was any way I could persuade him to sign on to the DMS as head of forensics I was going to give it a hell of a try. Church said that I could have whatever I wanted.

Jerry looked at the rows of lockers behind which Skip had been hiding. “There was a struggle here.” He squatted down, careful of his chest, and looked at the floor and shone a penlight at different angles to evaluate the shadows cast by dust and debris. He asked Simchek for evidence markers, and received a stack of small plastic A-frames. Jerry put four of the numbered orange markers down on the floor and started to get up, then settled back down on his upturned heels and narrowed his eyes for a moment, then grunted and said, “Clever.”

Simchek and I looked at each other. Jerry frowned for a moment and then added a fifth marker, right between the first and second set of lockers. That’s when I saw it but I can’t pretend that I ever would have seen it if Jerry hadn’t spotted it first. It’s why I asked for him. Simchek, to give him credit, was only a half-step behind me.

“Is that a door?” he asked.

“Uh-huh,” Jerry said as he stood. “I understand one of your boys went missing here at the infiltration point. There’s no other way out of this room except the corridor and the doorway that they blasted. Scuff marks pretty clearly show that he was using the first set of lockers as a shooting blind. I figured that unless he’s a damn fool there had to be another access point, otherwise it would have been impossible to sneak up on an armed sentry. Another door made the most sense, so I looked for one and voilà! But we won’t open it until the bomb squad checks it out. But I’ll bet you a shiny nickel that this puppy opens silently.”

I made the call and we moved on but stopped almost immediately as Jerry and Simchek both had their first look at what filled the corridor. The air was thick with blowflies. Corpses were sprawled singly or lay together as if in some grotesque dance; they slumped against the walls or lay in pieces. Beyond the first few bodies was a mountain range of the dead. The air was heavy with the drone of blowflies.

“Holy…” Simchek’s voice failed him and he closed his eyes. Jerry sagged and almost leaned against the wall for support. After a few moments Jerry took a bottle of Vicks VapoRub from his pocket, dabbed some on his upper lip, and handed it without comment to me; I took some and gave it to Simchek. Even with the menthol goo blocking out the smell the scene was almost too intense to handle. We literally had to crawl over the bodies in order to get to the far end of the corridor. That’s an experience I knew was going to stay with me.

When we got to the spur of the hall where the bomb had gone off I saw that a lot of the evidence—the clothes and other items—were gone, blown to atoms along with several members of Alpha Team. All that was left in some places were swatches of cloth and smears of red. Jerry stood for a long time and looked at the clothing that remained, whistling a soundless song.

Simchek leaned close to me and whispered, “He run out of ideas?”

Without turning to us Jerry said, “You want to tell an Italian mother how to make gravy?”

Simchek frowned at me. “What?”

“He means shut the fuck up,” I interpreted, and Simchek lapsed into a wounded silence.

Jerry went back to walking the scene but he didn’t say a word. His mood had downshifted and perhaps the scope of this thing had finally sunk all the way in.

Finally he said, “This is going to take a while, Joe… let me work it alone, okay?”

“Sure, Jer,” I said, and left him to it.

Chapter Seventy-Four

Crisfield, Maryland / Wednesday, July 1; 11:54 A.M.

I SAT DOWN across a folding table from Ollie Brown and for two whole minutes I looked at him and said nothing. He met my stare the whole time. I was looking for him to sweat, to squirm, to look away. He didn’t.

We were in a small room in the back of a travel trailer belonging to the DMS. His face was gray with exhaustion and there were dark smudges under his eyes.

“You’re giving me the ‘look,’ Captain,” he said at last.

“What look?”

“The one that says that you have a problem with me.”

“Is that what I’m saying?”

“You want me to admit that I screwed up? Okay. I screwed up. There, I said it.”

I waited.

He sighed. “I let myself get blindsided. If you’re expecting me to make excuses or try and worm my way out of it, then forget it. If you want to bounce me off the team then go right ahead.”

“You think that’s what this is all about?”

“Isn’t it? You called me in here, you make me wait here for an hour before you come in, and then you sit there giving me the look. What else could it be about? Or… are you going to give me shit about what happened during the firefight?” I said nothing, so he made a face. “Shit. Look… sir… this zombie stuff may not bother you but it’s scaring the living shit out of me. We were losing in there and I started thinking about what was going to happen. I could see myself being bitten. After seeing those kids yesterday I can’t get it out of my head. So, yeah, I get a case of the shakes. My hands are still shaking. I saw one of those walkers coming up fast and I took the shot. You moved right as I fired and the bullet passed close. Things were getting pretty hairy in there and I was scared out of my fricking mind. There, I admit it. You happy now?”

No, I thought; I wasn’t. This wasn’t where I expected this conversation to go.

“Tell me again how you got taken.”

“I told you twice. I told Dr. Sanchez four times, and I told Sergeant Dietrich five times. The story isn’t going to change because there isn’t enough of the story to change. I felt a burn on the back of my neck and next thing I know I wake up strapped to a chair and some towelhead asshole is smacking the crap out of me. Then you, Top, and Bunny come in and you know the rest.”

I waited for another few seconds, but Ollie didn’t seem like he was about to start sweating anytime soon. If this was all an act then it was a good one.

What I said was, “Room Twelve.”

A bad actor would have jumped to his feet, knocked his chair over, and started shouting bloody murder right about then. Ollie cocked his head to one side of me and gave me a look like I’d asked him to explain his involvement in the sack of Rome.

“Ah,” he said softly, half smiling. “So that’s it.”

“That’s it.”

He sat back and folded his arms across his chest. “No,” he said, and he didn’t say another word.

Chapter Seventy-Five

Crisfield, Maryland / Wednesday, July 1; 12:44 P.M.

SKIP LOOKED JUMPY from what had happened in the plant. He’d been pelted pretty good by the falling debris from Dietrich’s rescue and had bruises and butterfly stitches on his face. While he waited for me to speak his fingers kept lacing and unlacing on the tabletop.

“That was some shit, wasn’t it?” he asked, giving me a nervous laugh.

“It was memorable,” I agreed, and then I gave him another dose of the long silent treatment. His reaction was the exact opposite of Ollie’s; Skip was younger and more high-strung. His hands and eyes never stopped moving. He was so jittery that it was hard to get any read at all on him. So far he’d been the least “warriorlike” of the team, though admittedly during both battles with the walkers he’d been quick and efficient. Grace said that he’d been half-crazed when Alpha Team found him, and maybe that’s what I was seeing here: the aftereffects of fighting solo against those monsters. I remembered my own reactions after I fought Javad. I freaked, I threw up, and I had the shakes.

On the other hand, he—like Ollie—had told us that he’d been taken off guard at the crab plant. I studied his face. There was no way to know if the mole was even on my team, let alone whether it was Ollie Brown or Skip Tyler. But of the two choices I found it hardest to believe it of Skip. Maybe that was his shtick or maybe he was as innocent as he seemed. I was too exhausted to trust my own judgment.

“Our forensics guy figured out how you got taken,” I said after a moment.

He came to point like a bird dog. “What the hell did happen? Secret door?”

“Secret door,” I agreed.

“Son of a bitch.”

I nodded. Skip looked at the tabletop for a long time and when he raised his head his eyes were wet.

“I’m sorry, sir.”

I waited.

“I should have checked.”

“You’re lucky you weren’t killed.”

He looked away for a moment while he took a steadying breath. “Sir… after what I saw in there yesterday and today, after what I did…”

“What you did?”

“I… shot women. And kids. Old ladies. People. I killed a lot of people,” he said in a whisper. His mouth trembled and he put his face in his hands and he began to weep.

I sat back in my chair and watched him. His grief was everywhere. It filled the room.

I wondered what Rudy was thinking about all of this. The DMS had cameras that no one could spot, and Rudy was in the adjoining room watching it all.

Chapter Seventy-Six

Crisfield, Maryland / Wednesday, July 1; 1:18 P.M.

AFTER I DISMISSED Skip my phone buzzed. It was Grace.

“Joe!” she said urgently. “It’s Aldin… hurry!”

I ran out of the room and sprinted across the parking lot and into the interrogation van where I saw Aldin lying on the floor. Dr. Hu and two nurses were working frantically over him and the little prisoner was shuddering with convulsions. Everyone was wearing surgical masks and latex gloves. I snatched a set off the table and pulled them on.

“We’re losing him,” Hu hissed desperately.

“What’s happening?” I asked, dropping down beside Grace, who was holding Aldin’s feet.

“It’s the control disease. It’s activated… he’s dying.”

I shot a look at Church. “I thought you said that you gave him the antidote.”

“We did,” Church said. “It’s not working.”

“I think it’s a different disease,” Hu said as he worked. “This one’s much more aggressive. Maybe a different strain, I don’t know.”

I placed my hands on Aldin’s chest to try and keep his body from thrashing, but I was pissed. “Oh, come on, Doc… two different control viruses? That’s bullshit.”

As if to contradict me Aldin went into full-blown convulsions, every muscle in his body seeming to seize and clutch at once. It was so sudden and so powerful that it nearly threw us off him.

“My—my—” Aldin tried to talk past clenched teeth.

“Clear his mouth,” I snapped.

Hu hesitated, looking to Church, who nodded. “The captain gave you an order, Doctor.”

With great reluctance Hu removed the air tube. Aldin coughed and gagged. “My—children?” he gasped. “Are they—safe?”

“Yes,” I said, not knowing if it was true or not. “We got to them in time. They’re safe.”

He closed his eyes and the violence of the tremors seemed to diminish as relief flooded his face. “Thank you. Thank… Allah.”

I put my hand on his shoulder and gave him a little squeeze. He settled back against the floor, the convulsions fading for the moment. “Tell us how to help you?”

Aldin shook his head. “I don’t know. The pills always… worked before.”

Hu looked at me. “We don’t have your pills. We’re using what we found at the first two sites.”

Aldin suddenly went into another fit and when it passed he looked considerably weaker, more dead than alive. He tried to say something but his voice was barely a whisper. I leaned close, strained to hear. “Save—them—”

“Your children are safe,” I assured him, but he shook his head.

“No. Save them. Save… all of them. There—is still—time. Save them!”

“Who? Who do you want us to save?”

“L—L—” He couldn’t form the word. Blood seeped from his nose. He closed his eyes and a tear of watery blood fell from his left eye. When he opened his eyes one pupil was massive, a clear sign of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was fighting to hold on with everything he had, and I felt myself admiring him for the ferocity of his struggle—and, truth be told, for the lengths he had been willing to go to protect his children; but this was a fight he couldn’t win. He knew it, too. We all did. He forced his mouth to shape the word slowly. “L—Lester—”

“Lester?” I said. He nodded. “Lester who?”

Aldin tried to answer, failed, shook his head. He turned and spat blood onto the floor.

“Aldin… who is this Lester? Give me a last name? Who is he? What does he do? Tell me something?”

“Find L-Lester—” he whispered, and struggled as the next wave of spasms tore through him. Blood was welling through his skin, erupting from his pores. It was like his whole body was disintegrating. With the last fragment of his will he shaped another word and I bent close to him to catch it. His voice was faint, a fading whisper. “B-Bell—Bellmaker…”

And then he was gone. He sagged down and lay utterly still.

Grace let out the breath she was holding and sat back, pushing a damp strand of hair out of her eyes. She looked at Aldin and then at me. “Lester Bellmaker,” she said. “Have you ever heard of him?”

I reached out and closed Aldin’s eyes. “No,” I said tiredly. “It doesn’t mean a thing to me.”

“Doesn’t ring a ‘bell,’ huh?” Hu said in an offhand tone, and I wheeled on him.

“You’re a half-step away from life on a ventilator, asshole.”

Hu recoiled. “Jeez, sorry. I was just trying to make a joke. It’s not like he was one of the good guys.”

“Shut up,” Church said, ever so softly. Hu flinched as if Church had slapped him and he got up and walked to the far end of the van and threw himself into a chair.

I stood as well and looked down at Aldin. “Did I lie to him, Church? Or did we really rescue his kids?”

Church got to his feet and peeled off his mask and gloves. “We were too late by about three days. The whole village was already gone. Someone let some walkers loose. All of the bodies were laid out for us to find. There was another tape. El Mujahid. It’s on my laptop.”

I punched a nearby cabinet and left a dent in it. “I can’t tell you how much I want to find this guy. You can keep my paycheck, Church; just promise me that when we find El Mujahid I get to be locked in a room with him. Him and me.”

“You’ll have to get in line,” snarled Grace.

“First things first,” advised Church. “We need to identify this Lester Bellmaker. If he’s a link to El Mujahid then we need to jump on it.”

“I’ll run it through MindReader,” offered Grace. “If his name is in anyone’s database we’ll find him.” She hurried out.

Church and I stood there, still looking down at Aldin.

“Did you get anything else out of him?” I asked.

“Bits and pieces. It looks like the crab plant was the hub of this whole operation. People were abducted, infected, and studied. Aldin said that there was no plan that he knew of to release them at the present time. Once a subject was completely transitioned—his word—they were simply stored. He said that his team was studying the varying rates of infection based on age, race, body weight, ethnic background, and so on. The children in Delaware were part of a new phase of the experiment, but he had few details. Sergeant Dietrich tells me that the blast did not destroy all of those computers you found, which means that we should be able to harvest some or all of fourteen months of their findings. Dr. Hu”—and here he cut a brief, hard look at his pet mad scientist—“thinks that it’ll shortcut the search for a cure.”

“Cure? I thought prion diseases couldn’t be cured.”

“Doctor?” Church beckoned to him. “If you please.”

Hu approached me the way a limping caribou approaches a cheetah. “Okay, true, you can’t cure a prion disease. The key is to stop the parasite that triggers the aggression and accelerates the rate of infection. We might be able to get a handle on that based on some things Aldin told us. Stop the parasite and you slow the rate of infection from minutes to months. If we can get ahead of the timetable we might be able to immunize against the parasite. It won’t save anyone who gets infected with the prion disease, of course, but it will give us time to isolate the carriers and they probably won’t become aggressive and try to bite people. They’ll just be sick people.”

“You’re saying you could inoculate ‘everyone’? There are over three hundred million Americans, plus travelers, tourists, illegal aliens… how could you produce and distribute enough antidote?”

“Well,” he said awkwardly, “we couldn’t. We’d have to bring in major pharmaceutical companies to help us. Maybe a lot of them, and it’ll be expensive. We’re talking billions of dollars in research and more than that in practical distribution. To inoculate everyone who lives in or might ever visit the U.S… . that’ll cost trillions.”

“Which might be the point of all of this,” Church said. “A crisis of this magnitude could easily shift the economic focus of the United States away from war and into preventive medicine. We couldn’t continue to fund our big-ticket war efforts overseas if we had to throw those kinds of resources into combating diseases. The Jihadists know that they can’t put a big enough army into the field to oppose the U.S., so it seems that they’ve picked a different kind of battlefield, one where our greater numbers work against us.”

I whistled. It was a horrible plan, but a damn smart one.

“And it’s not like we can choose whether to do it or not,” Hu said. “We have to because we know they still have the disease.”

I nodded. “And just because we know about it doesn’t mean they won’t try to release the virus anyway.”

“I think we should start considering which pharmaceutical companies to approach,” Hu said. “I mean… after you’ve talked to the President.”

“Mr. Church,” I said, “I sure as hell hope you have a few friends in this industry.”

He almost smiled. “One or two.”

Chapter Seventy-Seven

Crisfield, Maryland / Wednesday, July 1; 5:37 P.M.

AFTER I LEFT the interrogation van I went over to the communications center and asked for a secure line to Top Sims who had taken Echo Team back to the warehouse. He gave me a quick rundown and we talked staffing strategies for a few minutes. Then I spent a few hours with Jerry Spencer and gave him my step-by-step account of Echo Team’s actions.

With that out of the way I commandeered a DMS Crown Vic, chased the driver off with a grumpy mumble, and climbed in the back to try and grab a few hours of sleep. I felt more than spent; I felt like I’d been opened up, reamed out, and then beaten with hammers. I was no good to any part of this investigation the way I felt.

As I waited for sleep to take me I tried to organize the things that had happened and weigh them against what we’d learned. Now that the combat part of the day was over the cop part of my mind was in charge. I mentally laid out the evidence and let it speak to me the way a crime scene speaks to Jerry.

I drifted off to sleep, but the cop stood his watch.

I DIDN’T WAKE until after midnight, though the sounds outside were the same—shouts, portable generators, the whup-whup of helicopters, the buzz of indecipherable conversation.

I lay there and realized that I knew what was going on. With the plant, with the walkers… maybe all of it.

Sometimes it happens that way: you go to sleep with puzzle pieces scattered everywhere and somehow in the depths of sleep the puzzle pieces fall into place. When you wake up you can sometimes see with startling clarity.

I opened my eyes and stared at the shadow-darkened ceiling of the car. “Oh man…” I said aloud.

Five seconds later I was hurrying to find Jerry Spencer.

Chapter Seventy-Eight

Sebastian Gault / The Hotel Ishtar, Baghdad / Thursday, July 2

“LINE?”

“Clear as a bell, my sweet.”

“Sebastian…” The way Amirah said it made Gault feel warm everywhere. “I’ve missed you so.”

“Me, too.” His voice was husky and it nearly cracked. He covered the mouthpiece and cleared his throat. “I want you,” he murmured.

“I need you,” she replied, and Gault could feel the sweat popping out on his forehead.

Gault opened his eyes and looked around the hotel room. It seemed so drab, so overtly empty. Toys had gone shopping in the bazaar with a female rock star who was in town to entertain the troops. Gault wished he were back in Afghanistan. With her. He shook his head and made himself change the subject.

“A lot’s happened,” he said, his voice suddenly brisk and businesslike. He told her about the raid on the crab plant.

“You let them have the computers?” Her voice sounded shocked, almost frightened.

“I let them have some of the computers. All of it was old data, nothing past Generation Three, though they won’t be able to tell that from the time-coding. They’ll think this is all recent research data.”

“You’re sure?”

“Quite sure. They’ll have more than they need to understand the earlier generations of the pathogen. Scientists will be queuing up to get federal grant money to study it.”

“What are you saying? That we’re done? That we should call off the operation?”

“Good Lord, no! Your loving husband and his merry little prank is going to be the icing on this cake. Without him the Yanks might lapse into one of those periods of red tape where everything gets talked about in committees but nothing actually gets done. No, dear heart, we need them frightened, terrified… so terrified, in fact, that they are too scared not to act. Once El Mujahid has pulled off his stunt then they will be in full gear, no doubt about it.”

“‘Stunt’?” Amirah said, and Gault could hear the change in her voice, which had suddenly dropped to one degree above freezing. “I would hardly call a heroic sacrifice a ‘stunt’ or a ‘prank.’”

“I’m sorry,” he said with a purr, “I don’t mean to disparage his sacrifice. Have I offended you?” He listened very closely to her as she replied, and he noted the hesitation—small though it was—before she spoke.

“Oh, of course not.” Her voice sounded light. “But I think we should maintain some respect. After all, he is… a freedom fighter. He believes in his cause, even if we do not.”

And there it was again. The slightest fragment of hesitation before she said “we.” It came close to breaking his heart.

“How is the shutdown process going?” he asked, changing tack again.

“It’s going… well.” There it was again. Damn it. “We should be completely shut down by the end of the week.”

“And the staff?”

“I’ll take care of them.”

It had always been their intention to gather all nonessential personnel together once El Mujahid’s “heroic sacrifice” was under way, and to terminate them. The largest staff room was rigged to lockdown and flood with gas. Only certain key people would be spared and those few would form the nucleus of a new team that would start an entirely new line of research. All records of the Seif al Din pathogen and the years of lab work that had gone into its creation would be dumped to coded disks and then stored in one of Gault’s most secure locations. Everything else would be deleted or destroyed, all computer memory wiped. That was Amirah’s current task and she’d promised to do it, but there was something in her voice that troubled Gault.

“I’m glad you’re taking care of things, my love. Do you want me to come and help you clean up the last details?”

“No,” she said quickly. “I have everything under control. You have more important things to do.”

“Yes, I suppose I have.” He paused and said, softly, “I love you, Amirah.”

There was a final pause, and then she murmured, “I love you, too.”

After the line went dead Gault stood for a long while looking out the window at the plaza below. The erotic elation he’d felt when he had first heard her voice was completely gone. No, that was wrong—there was just enough of it left to make his heart hurt.

“Amirah…” he whispered to the night. Grief was like a heavy stone around his neck. Gault was too practiced a deceiver to be deceived; Amirah, though clever, was far less skilled at guile. What was it the Americans were so fond of saying? Never bullshit a bullshitter. Her pauses had been too long and in all the wrong places; some of the inflections were brittle. He wondered if she was aware of it, and doubted it. She was sure of her sexual control over him, Gault was certain of that, just as he was certain she was lying to him. About her lab and her staff. That could be a real problem and he knew that he would need to take a look, that he would need to go back to Afghanistan even though it was a poor security risk with so many things in motion. And she was certainly lying about El Mujahid. Her comment about his “sacrifice” was telling, and the things it implied broke his heart.

He went and built himself a gin and tonic, but as he tumbled ice into the glass he saw that his hands were shaking.

“God damn her!” he roared and abruptly hurled the glass across the room with such savage force that it shattered into thousands of silvery fragments that fell glistening to the carpet.

He sagged back against the wet bar. “Damn you,” he said again, and now his eyes burned with tears.

What should he infer from this and from the other hints he’d picked up over the last few weeks? Did Amirah really have feelings for her brute of a husband? Was that even possible? After all of the sex, after all of the constant betrayal and the plotting behind the Fighter’s back, could she haven fallen back in love with El Mujahid? Gault reached for another glass and mixed another drink, swallowed half of it down a dry throat, and poured more gin into it without adding any extra tonic.

Then something occurred to him that made his heart go still in his chest. He could hear his pulse throbbing in his ears as the new thought blossomed from a seed of suspicion into a fully realized belief. The gin in his stomach turned to sickness as he realized that all of the pieces of this puzzle did actually fit together but that the picture they made was one that he had never expected or foreseen.

What if Amirah had never stopped loving El Mujahid? What if this whole thing, from the very beginning before their clandestine meeting in Tikrit, what if everything she had done for him and with him and to him had been part of an older scheme, one that was not of his design? What if this had been something Amirah and El Mujahid had cooked up themselves, something they’d twisted so subtly that he thought he had recruited them? What if they’d suckered him into financing their scheme instead of the other way around? Toys had once suggested this as a possibility but Gault had dismissed it with a laugh.

But now… what if it was all true?

“Good Christ,” he said aloud, and now his hands were shaking so badly that gin sloshed out of his glass onto his shirtfront.

What if Amirah and El Mujahid were not helping him scam the U.S. government out of billions in research and production money? What if money was not even the point? Was that possible? he wondered, but the answer was so obvious. Toys had been right all along. The truth now burned in front of his mind’s eye like a flare. There was only one thing more powerful than money, especially in this part of the world.

What if this was jihad?

Gault staggered backward and his back crashed against the wet bar. His legs turned to rubber and he sat down hard on the floor, the rest of his drink splashing onto his thighs. He didn’t feel the wetness or the cold. All he could feel was a rising sense of terror as the realization that he had given the world’s deadliest weapon to a wickedly clever assassin and insured—insured—that nothing could stop the release of the Seif al Din pathogen. El Mujahid was not carrying the weaker strain of the disease with him, Gault was certain of that now. The Fighter was taking with him Amirah’s newest strain, Generation Seven. The unstoppable one. The one that infected too quickly for any kind of response. The Fighter would release it and the plague would sweep the Western Hemisphere. Did Amirah think that its spread could be held back by oceans? Or, in her religious madness did she no longer care?

He crawled across the floor to the table and grabbed his cell phone, hit speed dial and waited through four interminable rings before Toys answered with a musical, “Hello-o-o!”

“Get back here!” Gault said in a hoarse whisper.

“What’s wrong?” Toys said sharply, his voice low and urgent.

“It’s…” Gault began, then a sob broke in his chest. “My God, Toys… I think I’ve killed us all.”

The phone fell from his hands as the black reality of apocalypse bloomed like a mushroom cloud.

Chapter Seventy-Nine

Crisfield, Maryland / Thursday, July 2; 3:13 P.M.

I SPENT HALF the day with Jerry. Once I’d explained my theories we set about comparing them with what he’d deduced from his forensic walk-throughs. We were both on the same page. I told Jerry to round up all the forensics experts that had arrived while I’d been sleeping and I went off to find Church. Outside I ran into Rudy. He accompanied me to the computer van, where Church and Grace were using MindReader to search for Lester Bellmaker.

“Jerry Spencer’s ready to give a preliminary forensics report,” I said. “I think we should set that up sooner than later.”

“You have something?” Grace asked, searching my face.

“Maybe, but I want you both to hear the forensics first and then we can play ‘what-if.’”

Church made a call to set up the meeting.

Grace told us that MindReader had come up with two Lester Bellmakers in North America and six more in the U.K., but so far none of them appeared to have even the slightest connection to terrorists, diseases, or Baltimore. The closest hit had been a Richard Lester Bellmaker who served a tour in the Air Force from 1984 to 1987 and was discharged honorably. That was it. The guy managed a Chuck E. Cheese outside of Akron, Ohio, and no matter how deep Grace searched into his background the guy didn’t ring a single damn bell.

“We’re getting nowhere,” she said.

“And slowly,” Church agreed.

“Could Aldin have been lying to us?” Grace asked, cutting a look at Rudy. “You watched the interrogation videos, and you read the telemetry feeds. What’s your assessment?”

Rudy shrugged. “From what I could see that man was desperate to tell the truth. That much was in his voice. He was trying to make a dying declaration, and he wanted to go out with as clear a conscience as possible.”

“So, he was telling the truth?” Grace asked.

Rudy pursed his lips. “It’s probably fair to say that he was telling the truth as he knew it, but we can’t discount the possibility that he may have been regurgitating disinformation fed to him by the guards.”

“Too right,” Grace agreed. “Which means we could be wasting time and resources on a wild-goose chase.”

“So what do we do now?” Rudy asked.

“Keep looking,” Church said.

Chapter Eighty

Sebastian Gault / The Hotel Ishtar, Baghdad / July 2

THE DOOR to Gault’s hotel room banged open and Toys came rushing in with a pistol in his hand. All affect was gone and in its place was a reptilian coldness as he swept the gun across the room. Seeing Gault on the floor, Toys kicked the door shut behind him and rushed to his employer’s side.

“Are you hurt?” he asked quickly, searching for signs of blood or damage.

“No,” Gault gasped. “No… it’s…” He disintegrated into tears.

Toys studied him with narrowed eyes. He lowered the hammer on his gun and slid it into the shoulder holster he wore under his jacket. Then he caught Gault under the armpits and with surprising strength hauled him to his feet and walked him to a chair. Gault sat there, face in hands, sobbing.

Toys locked the door and verified that the electronic bug detectors were still operating, then he dragged an ottoman over and sat down in front of Gault.

“Sebastian,” Toys said softly. “Tell me what happened.”

Gault slowly raised a tear-streaked face to him. His eyes had a look of hopeless panic.

“Whatever it is we can deal with it,” Toys assured him.

Uncertainly and with stuttering words, Gault told him about the call to Amirah and of the dreadful realization that had bloomed in his mind. Toys’s face underwent a process of change from deep concern to disbelief and then to fury.

“That fucking bitch!”

“Amirah…” Gault’s voice disintegrated into tears again.

Without word or warning Toys slapped Gault across the face with vicious speed and force. Gault was flung half out of the chair. Gault stared at him, his tears stilled by the impossibility of what had just happened.

Toys leaned close and in a deadly quiet voice said, “Stop your blubbering, Sebastian. Stop it right fucking now.”

Gault was too stunned to speak.

“Try for once to think with your brain instead of your cock; if you had you’d have seen this coming. I bloody well saw it coming, and I’ve been warning you about that bitch and her husband for years. Christ, Sebastian, I ought to kick the shit out of you.”

Gault climbed back into the chair, eyes still unblinking.

Toys sat back and waited until the immediacy of his rage passed. “How sure are you about this? Is this a guess or do you know?”

“I… I don’t know for sure,” Gault managed. “But it all just came to me. In a flash.”

“Came to you in a flash.” Toys sneered. “Mother Mary, save me.”

“I… if they…”

“Shut up,” Toys said as he fished out his phone. He dialed a number. A voice answered on the third ring.

“Line?” Toys asked.

“Clear,” said the American.

“I’m calling on behalf of our patron. There’s a problem. Listen to me very closely and take all appropriate action. The Princess and the Boxer have gone off the reservation.”

“What? Why?”

Toys’s mouth made an ugly shape as he said, “They think they’re still in church.”

That wasn’t an agreed code word, but Toys was sure the American would grasp the meaning, and he did. “I never trusted those two from the beginning. Jesus H. Christ.”

“Yes, well, that’s a comfort to all of us, isn’t it?”

Toys disconnected and stared at Gault. “Listen to me, Sebastian… if El Musclehead is going to launch the latest generation of the plague in America then we have to assume that Amirah has taken some precautions.”

Gault’s eyes came back into focus. “Precautions?”

“She’s a wacko, I agree, but I can’t believe that she’d want to destroy the entire world. A lot them are true believers, don’t forget.”

Gault sat up straight. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that she probably has a bloody cure for this thing. Or a treatment. Something that will keep it from wiping out her own people. El Mujahid might already have been inoculated, but that’s beside the point. What we have to do is get our ruddy asses to the Bunker, beat some information out of your girlfriend, and then make sure Gen2000 starts cranking out the cure just in case our American friend doesn’t stop the Fighter in time.”

“The Bunker… yes.” Gault nodded and his jaw lost some its softness, his eyes grew several degrees colder. “Yes, Amirah will have thought it through.”

Toys cut him off. “Understand me, Sebastian,” he said in an icy voice, “I work for you and I love you like a brother, but you’ve endangered me by letting this thing get out of hand. I warned you about Amirah a hundred times and now she’s stabbed you in the back. If she has a cure then we are going to bloody well get it.” His green eyes glittered. “And then we are going to put a bullet right through that brilliant little brain of hers.”

Gault closed his eyes for a moment as if to block out that image, but when he opened them Toys saw that some kind of change had occurred. The eyes that looked out at him from Gault’s puffy and tear-streaked face were vicious, almost feral in their hateful intensity.

“Yes,” he snarled.

Chapter Eighty-One

Crisfield, Maryland / Thursday, July 2; 6:00 P.M.

THE FORENSICS TENT was set up in one corner of the parking lot. As Dietrich had promised it was an actual circus tent. The silk sides and scalloped dome were painted with brightly colored animals—elephants, zebras, giraffes, and monkeys—and around the base was a life-sized line of capering clowns. Inside, Jerry Spencer was the ringmaster.

Teams of experts had spent the whole day collecting evidence and transporting it out of the building in protective bags. The tent had several hermetically sealed plastic clean rooms that were marked with the logo of the Centers for Disease Control. Men and women wearing white hazmat suits worked in one of these and they had a production line going with one autopsy after another. A refrigeration truck was backed up to that end of the tent and the bodies of autopsied walkers were double-sealed in body bags and stacked like cordwood inside.

There were a dozen experts at the meeting along with Jerry, Grace, Dietrich, Rudy, and Hu. Somehow Church had managed to change into a clean suit. I was still in the soiled fatigue pants and T-shirt I’d worn under the Hammer suit. I must have smelled pretty ripe.

“Let’s start with the bodies,” Jerry said as soon as everyone was seated. He nodded to a tall black woman with golden skin and pale brown eyes.

Dr. Clarita McWilliams was a professor of forensic pathology at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. “We have a total body count of two hundred seventy-four. That breaks down as follows: eleven terrorist soldiers, five scientists and technicians, two unspecified support staff, five DMS personnel, and two hundred fifty-one of the… um… ‘walkers.’” She briefly looked around the room through her half-moon glasses, then cleared her throat and plowed ahead. “There were ninety-one adult male walkers; one hundred and twenty-two adult female walkers; twenty-one male children under the apparent age of eighteen and seventeen female children of the same approximate age. The ethnic breakdown of the walkers stands at one hundred twenty-four Caucasians, seventy-three black, twenty-eight Asian, and twenty-six Hispanic. If you want a more precise racial breakdown it’ll take some time.”

“So what does that tell us?” I asked.

“It’s close enough to a general population cross section,” McWilliams said. “Maybe a little heavy on the male-to-female mix. If there’s a pattern it isn’t yet apparent.”

“What do we know about where these people were from?” I asked.

Dietrich held up his hand. “I’ve been working on that using recovered wallets, cell phones, and so on. Most of these people seem to be concentrated in Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. None from anywhere else.”

“Just like the kids in Delaware,” I said. “Random but all East Coast.”

“Any IDs with the name Lester Bellmaker?” Grace asked. “Or any variation on Bellmaker? Maybe Belmacher or something like that?”

Dietrich scanned a sheet of paper on a clipboard. “Nah. Closest we have there is a Jennifer Bellamy. No Lesters.”

“It’s a dead end,” Church said quietly. “We have to consider that the name is an alias.”

“Aldin seemed to think it was important to give it to us,” I said. “He used his last breath.”

“Time will tell,” Church said. “Anything else, Dr. McWilliams?”

She shook her head. “Medically speaking we haven’t yet found anything that goes outside of what Dr. Hu has already shared regarding these walkers. One item of interest is that less than half of the victims I’ve seen displayed any visible bite marks. Most have injection marks and presumably that’s how the pathogen was introduced.”

Grace asked, “Of the ones with the bite marks have you determined if any of them were bitten postmortem?”

“No. There’s no evidence that these walkers preyed on each other. That suggests that they are attracted only to living flesh.” She looked ill as she said it.

“Like in the movies,” Hu said, but she ignored him.

I turned to Jerry. “What’s next?”

“Frank?” he asked, turning to Frank Sessa, a sturdy man of about sixty with a shaved head, wire-framed glasses, and the callused knuckles of a long-time karate practitioner. Frank and I went way back; both in martial arts circles and through chemical analysis work he did for law enforcement.

Sessa laced his fingers and leaned forward on his forearms. “Your terrorists have some odd choices when it comes to explosives. They used explosive organic peroxide. It’s a colorless liquid with a pretty strong smell. It’s generally stored as a twenty-five-percent solution in dimethyl phthalate to prevent detonation, so whoever rigged the booby traps knew something about temperature control as applied to explosives. This is difficult stuff to work with and way above the level of what I’d expect from a Unabomber wannabe.”

He gave us a technical rundown on how this stuff is made, handled, and used. It was pretty damned disturbing news. “Now, I understand that these walker-things are also dormant at low temperatures,” Sessa said, “and on the surface there might be a tendency to say, well, the place is already cold so that’s why they chose an explosive that is safest at low temps, but I’d hesitate going there. There are plenty of explosives that are not nearly as temperature-sensitive as this stuff. I don’t know who your bad guys are, but to me it kinda looks like someone was showing off. It’s too much bomb for the purpose to which it was put, and they used the wrong amounts in at least two places.”

“What do you mean?” Dietrich asked. I said nothing; I thought I already knew the answer. So did Jerry.

“Well, the amount they had at the door where they were storing the infected people… that was too big or too small depending on how you look at it. If the intent was to blow open the door or kill whoever tried to open it, then it was too much; on the other hand if it was intended to destroy the contents of the room it was way too small. If they’d been using dynamite I’d have dismissed it as some fool who doesn’t understand how explosives work, but then we have the computer room. There was a good amount of the explosive, but it was all at one end of the room. If their intent had been to destroy all of the computers they could have used less of the material but put a portion inside each of the units. Less blast but much more effect in terms of security.” He shook his head. “No, this is a combination of high-tech knowledge, lots of money, and strange choices.”

Jerry gave me a knowing smile, but I kept my face straight.

For the next two hours we heard from one expert after another. Ballistics told us what we expected: the terrorists were using standard AK-47s and a variety of bought-on-the-street handguns. The AKs were converted to take M-16 magazines and standard NATO 7.62-millimeter rounds. That’s nothing new; gun collectors have been doing it for years. The fingerprint guys lifted plenty of sets and so far three of the terrorists had popped up in the computers, each with known ties to Al Qaeda or El Mujahid. Of the scientists, none of them were in the computers; but that wasn’t particularly surprising.

Church’s chief computer wizard, Utada, spoke next. “As Mr. Sessa pointed out we aren’t seeing a total loss with the computers. In fact we got pretty lucky because two mainframes are completely intact, and we’re salvaging stuff from three more.”

“What have we found so far?” Grace asked.

Hu answered that. “Tons. If the data is supported by the lab work my guys are doing right now then we might have a name for some or all of the component parasites. That’s going to save us a lot of time in putting together a protocol.”

I thanked the forensics experts and let them get back to work, though Jerry stayed behind.

Church said, “We haven’t actually heard from you yet, Detective Spencer. What are your thoughts on this?”

Jerry smiled and gave me a sly look. “Captain Hotshot here already knows what I’m thinking, but let me give it to those of you who aren’t cops.” It was a nice dig at the feds in the room. I did my best not to smirk. “Point one,” he said, ticking the items off on his fingers, “this place is built to be a rat maze. The only viable entry point was the door Joe’s team used. From an approach point of view nothing else was moderately safe. I believe that these suckers planned it that way. Point two: once Joe and his boys were inside they were offered a single route to follow. Anyone who’s in this business would know that they’d leave a man behind to guard the door. There was only one possible position a shooter would take to defend that position and right behind him there was a hidden door on well-oiled hinges. Absolutely silent when it opened, allowing an ambush man to sneak up and Taser young whatshisname.”

“Skip Tyler,” I supplied.

“Yeah. Tyler. They take him out with a liquid Taser, cart him off and dump him in a room, but they leave his weapons where he can easily find them? Why not just cut his throat or feed him directly to the walkers? There’s only one way that makes sense.” He didn’t elaborate on that point quite yet. “Point three: they take out the second guy.” He snapped his fingers at me.

“Ollie Brown.”

“Right, they Taser Brown and drag him down to their lab. Now, the bad guys know full well that they’ve been infiltrated. So why the drama? Why capture Joe’s guys instead of killing them? There were only three armed DMS agents left, and between the armed guards in the building and a couple hundred walkers they could easily have simply wiped the team out, or taken them hostage to use as bargaining chips. They didn’t try; they didn’t even try to use Brown as a hostage when Joe broke in. They didn’t try to flee. No, it doesn’t add up. This whole thing should have been a massacre or a standoff… and it was neither.”

“It came pretty bloody close,” muttered Grace.

“Don’t get me wrong, Major,” Jerry said. “I’m not saying they were interested in the well-being of your teams. It probably would have worked out equally well for these guys if you’d all died in there.”

“Charming,” Grace said.

“My point is that this was not a matter of them fighting back. Nothing that I’ve seen supports that. Tell me I’m wrong, Joe.”

“You know you’re right, Jerry,” I told him. The others around the table were staring at us and there was a mixture of expressions. Church’s face, as usual, told me nothing; but Grace was nodding, putting the pieces together herself. Rudy had one eyebrow raised the way he did when he was looking in at his own thoughts. Dietrich looked a little puzzled and kept looking to Church as if for instructions. Hu looked skeptical.

“Why would they do that?” Hu asked.

“Because they wanted us to find what we found,” I said.

Hu shook his head. “No… no way. That doesn’t make sense.”

“Yes it does,” murmured Church. We all looked at him, but he nodded to me. “You have the floor.”

“All of this is a setup,” I said. “Jerry’s absolutely right: they could have taken us out and should have. We had a small team and no intelligence at all about the inside of the building. Once we were inside they shut down the refrigeration units and turned up the heat to activate all of the walkers that had been lying dormant before we got there. So, between the booby trap in the big warehouse room, the walkers released into the halls, and the appearance of the guards who suddenly decided to open up with their AKs, we were herded into the lab. They set explosives in the computer room, but not enough to destroy all of their research, and none of the armed guards in the hall tried to use a keycard to enter the lab. Jerry checked… their keycards had the right code, but they didn’t use them. We were played.”

“To what end?” Rudy asked. “I mean, I can see the shape of it when you lay it out like that, but what’s the point? You’ve managed to kill all of the walkers, all of their scientists and personnel are dead, we have the computers, and we have whatever else can be salvaged from the lab. The way you’re describing it the terrorists have handed us the solution to the threat.”

When I didn’t answer, he added, “Why would they do something like that?”

Chapter Eighty-Two

El Mujahid / Pier 12 / Brooklyn, New York

THE FREIGHTER ALBERT Schweitzer docked at Pier 12 in the shadow of the Queen Elizabeth 2 and was met by a parking lot filled with ambulances, paratransit vehicles, limousines, and cabs. The ambulatory wounded were escorted down the boarding ramp by nurses and orderlies; the more serious cases wheeled in chairs or on gurneys. Sonny Bertucci walked down under his own steam, though he used a cane and looked frail. He was met by two agents from Global Security. They led him to a white van with the name of a private ambulance company stenciled on the doors. The agents got into the back with Bertucci and the driver shut the door, climbed into the cab, and drove out of the parking lot and within half an hour they were on the New Jersey Turnpike heading south.

At the Thomas Edison Rest Stop the van pulled around behind a row of parked semis and stopped next to a black Ford Explorer with Pennsylvania plates. Both drivers got out and shook hands and together they walked around to the back of the white van. The van driver knocked three times, waited, and knocked once more before opening the door.

“Your ride is—”

That was as far as he got. The driver of the Explorer pressed a silenced .22 against the back of his head and fired two quick shots. The van driver collapsed just as the doors opened; Sonny Bertucci reached out and caught him and together he and the Explorer’s driver hauled the corpse into the van, laying it next to the two bodies of the Global Security agents. Both of them had their throats cut, and the big man held the hook of his cane in his left hand. The hook ended in a six-inch wickedly sharp stiletto that had fit into the shaft of the cane, the seam hidden by a decorative metal band.

Bertucci tossed the weapon into the back and together he and the driver of the Explorer closed and locked the van’s doors. When they were done they embraced warmly, slapping each other on the back.

“It is so good to see you!” beamed the driver.

El Mujahid grinned despite the pain of his healing wounds. “Ahmed, it is very good to see a friend in this place.” He paused and jerked his chin toward the van. “Gault knows?”

“So it seems,” said Ahmed. “I received a call about fifteen minutes ago saying that you were to be terminated. I assume one of them,” the driver said, jerking his head toward the closed van, “got a similar call.”

“Yes. It came in while we were driving. I couldn’t hear what was said but I could tell from his eyes that he’d gotten a kill order. Thank you for taking care of things.”

“My pleasure. Come, let us go… we cannot risk being here if Gault has other agents coming.”

Once they were both seated inside the Explorer and pulling back into the flow of traffic, Ahmed asked, “What is the news from home? How is my sister?”

El Mujahid smiled. “Amirah sends her love.”

“I miss her.”

The Fighter patted the man on the shoulder. “Soon we will all be together, in this world or in paradise.”

“Praise Allah,” said Ahmed as he accelerated to seventy and headed south.

Chapter Eighty-Three

Sebastian Gault / Over Afghani Airspace / Thursday, July 2

“IT’S A REAL honor to have Mr. Gault make this visit,” said Nan Yadreen, the Red Cross liaison for Afghanistan. “And a bit of a surprise. If we’d had more notice we would have prepared a better reception.”

Toys forced a smile. “Not necessary, Doctor. This is just a visit, not an inspection.”

The helicopter’s roar made conversation difficult, for which he was grateful. The preening doctor had to shout to be heard. Gault sat across from him, pretending to be asleep but Toys knew better.

The doctor nodded. “I understand. And I suppose advertising it in advance is bad for security.”

“Indeed.”

“Good thinking, sir,” said the doctor.

Too bloody right it’s good thinking, Toys mused darkly. Last thing they needed was Amirah knowing that they were on the way. The only people expecting their arrival in Afghanistan was a crack team of mercenaries from Global Security led by one of Toys’s favorite people, the ruthless South African, Captain Zeller. Toys had called to make arrangements, explaining what they intended. Zeller didn’t bat an eye when Toys told him that this was going to be a wet operation. Wet works were their specialty and they loved the bonuses he’d promised for their pay packets.

The chopper flew on toward the Red Cross field hospital. Gault had pulled himself together on the drive to the heliport, but Toys was cautious. Nothing was ever certain in matters of the heart. He was glad that he didn’t have one.

Chapter Eighty-Four

Crisfield, Maryland / Thursday, July 2; 8:30 P.M.

“HERE’S THE PROBLEM,” I said. “In one way or another over the last couple of days I’ve said that I’ve found it hard to buy the scenario that we’ve been fed: that this is a group of terrorists who have the smarts, the funding, and the technology to create several new diseases, to pioneer new fields of science in order to manipulate and weaponize those diseases, to locate and hold hostage the families of key scientists, and to manage those scientists through the use of not one but two control diseases. And all of it off the radar of all of the world’s top intelligence networks?”

“When you put it that way,” Dietrich said, shifting uncomfortably.

“From the beginning I was bothered by the control disease because it’s way too sophisticated. Who here thinks that a bunch of terrorists really thought that up? Show of hands.”

When no one raised a hand, Dietrich said, “But we know that this is the case.”

Instead of answering I said, “The next thing to consider is the crab plant itself. As Jerry pointed out it was a trap from the beginning, no doubt about it. The staff inside, to all intents and purposes, were suicide fighters. Either they knew they weren’t getting out of there alive, or they were duped into thinking that they were playing a stronger hand than they were.”

“I doubt the scientists were in on it,” Grace said.

“At least one was,” I said, and reminded them about the one with the detonator. “He said that it was already too late. I’m not sure what he meant by that, though it’s pretty clear that we’d know if the Seif al Din pathogen had been released into the public.”

“We’re still looking for additional cells,” Church said. “This is clearly not over, and directly after this meeting I’ll make a conference call to the CDC and the White House.”

“Good. Now getting back to my theory. I’m no science geek but from what Rudy and Hu have said, everything we’ve seen is absolutely cutting edge; stuff that would be science fiction if we hadn’t actually experienced it firsthand.”

“What’s your point?” asked Dietrich. “We know these assholes are smart.”

I shook my head. “Yeah, well, ‘smart’ is a relative term. You can have real geniuses act like idiots sometimes.” I tried hard not to look at Hu when I said this, but out of the corner of my eye I saw him shift in his seat. “You see, these guys have done stuff that’s needlessly sophisticated. The control diseases, the fancy explosives. Whoever’s behind this seems to think that expensive toys work better, but all they really do is send up red flags. He’s drawing attention to his own attempts at being slick. Doc,” I said to Hu, “correct me if I’m wrong but the compound from the treatment recovered from the warehouse, once removed from the aspirin coating, was able to dissolve in ordinary saline, correct?”

“Yes,” he agreed. “It’s a very small amount of material, a few chemicals that are all soluble in water or saline. Barely clouded the fluid.”

“How easily could it be detected?”

“In food, you mean? Probably not at all. They’re mostly vegetable based; organic stuff. None of the compounds would significantly affect the taste or smell of most foods.”

“So it could have been dissolved into something strong tasting, say orange juice, without anyone being the wiser?”

“I suppose so.”

“Then why wasn’t it?”

The others stared, and I could see them catch on, one by one. “Son of a bitch,” growled Dietrich.

Grace said, “You’re right. The process of hiding it in the aspirin is too clever a step. Impressive, but unnecessary.” She was with me on this now, step by step.

“That’s one point,” I said. “Now the second is their intent. We can presume that they did know they were under surveillance the whole time, which means they could have released the walkers, taken suicide pills, blown the place up. Why wait until we infiltrate?”

Rudy snapped his fingers. “They wanted you to find a functional lab and have a heroic fight. They wanted you to believe that you fought for and obtained the evidence, damaged and partial though it is.”

“Right,” I said. “Our bad guy wanted to stage a big, scary event that would scare the hell out of us.”

“Which it effing well did,” Grace said bitterly.

“After Aldin died, it seemed pretty clear that the terrorists were trying to make us afraid of the possibility of an epidemic. That it might be the new threat, a new kind of warfare that would force the U.S. to divert funding away from tanks and missiles and into preventive medicine. That’s probably going to happen, at least in part, because we know that this disease actually exists and that terrorists have it. But… before we decide that we know the shape of things, let me ask this: if we do start scrambling for new treatments and cures, who stands to benefit?”

“Dios mio! A lot of people will get rich,” Rudy said. “Pharmaceutical companies, drugstores, health organizations, hospitals… pretty much the entire medical profession.”

I sat back and stared at him, and then at each person at the table.

“So… why are we so damn sure that terrorists are the only ones behind this thing?”

Chapter Eighty-Five

Amirah / The Bunker / Thursday, July 2

“SEBASTIAN GAULT HAS been spotted by our man in the Red Cross outpost.”

Amirah looked up from her computer screen at the young Yemen woman who stood in front of her desk. “When will he get here?”

“Day after tomorrow at the latest.”

Amirah chewed her lip thoughtfully.

“Do you want Abdul to…?” Anah left it unsaid.

But Amirah shook her head. “No, let him come. It should be an enlightening experience for him.” She smiled at Anah who flinched before returning the smile. Anah turned and left the room, silently reciting a prayer. For just a moment Amirah’s face had looked like that of a desert demon, a djinn. Anah was glad to be away from that evil and totally mirthless grin.

Chapter Eighty-Six

Crisfield, Maryland / Thursday, July 2; 8:44 P.M.

“YOU LOST ME,” Dietrich admitted. “I thought you were saying this was all about shifting the U.S. budget away from war and into research. So… what, are we talking about an axis of evil formed by Walgreens and CVS?”

“Think bigger,” Rudy said.

“Doctors, hospitals? Drug companies?”

“Bingo,” I said. “That’s who would stand to make more money if word of this thing got out.”

“Then this whole thing is some kind of goddamn advertising campaign?” Dietrich asked.

“In a way,” I said. “Show the big scary bug to us, prove to us that terrorists are capable of releasing it, then let us stop the first wave so that we feel like we’ve caught a break. But at the same time make us so afraid that the bug might still be out there, still in the hands of terrorists, that we have to scramble to get treatments. Everything that happened at the plant supports that. They handed us the first steps in developing the treatment, sure, but even Hu said that it would take billions to fully research it and maybe trillions to distribute the cure.”

“So who’s the bad guy?” asked Dietrich.

“That’s the real question, isn’t it?” Grace said. “I’m sure whoever is behind this will make sure they’re one among many companies making fortunes. They won’t be so rash as to stand out or try to come to market with the only treatment.”

“Absolutely,” I agreed.

Church pursed his lips and we waited. Finally he nodded. “I think you’ve hit it, Captain. Excellent work.”

“Do I get a cookie?”

“And you are still a world-class smartass.”

I bowed in acknowledgment.

“So where does that leave us?” Rudy asked. “Do you know how many pharmaceutical companies are out there?”

“Too many,” Church said. “But not all of them could have funded something like this.”

“We need to find one company with pockets deep enough to hide the kind of expenditure required for the research and development of this kind of disease. Or diseases,” I corrected. “Or a group of them who have pooled their resources.”

“Surely there must be some way to narrow that list even further,” Rudy argued. “Not all pharmaceutical companies deal with disease pathogens. Not all of them deal with preventive medicine.”

“Will that matter?” Dietrich asked.

“Sure,” Rudy replied. “If they aren’t prepared to do the research or mass-produce the treatments then they wouldn’t be in on the first wave of cash. The big-money wave. Their factories wouldn’t be configured for it. But even discounting those, we’re still looking at a lot of companies.”

“It’s likely to be a great deal more complicated than that,” Grace said, “because a lot of the big companies are multinational, with divisions peppered liberally all around the world. I doubt any of them would be so daft as to orchestrate this inside the borders of any of the superpowers. The governmental regulations on materials and money would be too risky. I’ll bet these bloody bastards have an R and D facility in some third world country. How would we know where to start looking?”

“MindReader,” said Church. “Though we’re going to have to make a lot of guesses as to what the search arguments are going to be; and this whole thing is still speculation, so we are likely to trip over some of our own assumptions. This presents its own complication, however. No matter who we ultimately discover as the culprit behind this, we still have to bring this to the President and then ask for help from the pharmaceutical companies to prepare in case the disease is ever released, whether that happens deliberately or, more likely, by accident.”

“Oh man,” Dietrich said, “that means that we’re probably going to be making our bad guy pretty damned rich.”

“Right up to the moment we put a bullet in his brain,” Grace said. She wasn’t joking and no one took it as such.

“In the meantime,” I said, “we still have to bear in mind the possibility that actual terrorists are involved in this. My guess is that our phantom pharmaceutical company has been funding terrorists to encourage their cooperation.”

“It makes sense,” Church said. “The terrorists get to benefit from the shift of resources in the superpowers, which gives them a real victory in the eyes of the world. They know that taking hostages didn’t work. Hijacking planes and crashing them into buildings didn’t work. Blowing up subways didn’t work. They may have done a lot of damage, but in the global scheme of things their batting average is low. Now with this they get to rack one up in the ‘win’ category.”

Dietrich chewed on that. “So, they’re something like hired guns for the drug company behind all this.”

“Something like that,” I said, “but one thing we know about terrorists is that they don’t give up easily, and they are seldom satisfied with a subtle victory. They’re not great team players, they resent being someone else’s flunkies, and they suck at sticking to the rules.”

“Meaning…?” Rudy asked.

“Meaning,” I said, “that just because our bad guy has paid them to arrange some demonstrations of this disease, it doesn’t mean that they’re going to pack up shop and go home now that the scheme worked. A lot of their people have been killed in the process. If El Mujahid is involved, then hurting the U.S. economy might not be enough to satisfy his needs.”

“What needs?” Rudy asked.

“Religious needs,” I said.

“Oh crap,” Dietrich said softly.

Chapter Eighty-Seven

Sebastian Gault / Afghanistan / Thursday, July 2

“LINE?” ASKED THE American.

“Clear,” said Gault. Toys was right there with him, listening in on the call.

“I have some bad news for you. The Boxer slipped the punch.”

Gault heard Toys hiss quietly. “How?” Gault asked.

“He KO’d the other players. I think he had a corner man. Police found the vehicle at a rest stop on the Jersey Turnpike. No trace of the Boxer. Seems like they already had another play running, and the knock-down order reached them too late.”

Gault stood up and walked across the tent and stared out into the Afghani darkness. The Red Cross camp was quiet and the sky above was littered with stars.

“What about the chocolate box?” Gault asked, then abruptly swore in frustration. “For Christ’s sake, let’s skip the sodding code. Tell me what happened?”

After a long pause the American said, “The trigger device has already been picked up. Someone identifying herself as the wife of Sonny Bertucci picked it up an hour ago. The woman fit the description of the woman that’s been sleeping with Ahmed Mahoud, El Mujahid’s brother-in-law.”

“Then they’re already two steps ahead of us,” Gault said. “That means that you’re going to have to find some way to stop him when he makes his run,”

The American swore and the line went dead.

“Bloody hell,” Gault said. “It’s all coming apart.”

“Don’t start,” Toys snapped. Since the moment when he’d slapped Gault the dynamic of their relationship had undergone a change. He’d stepped up into a position of greater power even though Amirah’s betrayal had only made Gault stumble rather than collapse. They had not drifted back into their old pattern, and maybe never would. Both of them were aware of it though neither put the topic on the table. “Now we have to be very careful, Sebastian. If the Yank has to spill his guts to the authorities in order to stop El Mujahid then your name is going to be mud on five continents.”

Gault snorted. “Oh, you think?”

“Well, just be glad we planned well in advance. You have enough false identities and bolt-holes to stay hidden for years, probably forever.” He sniffed and brushed a strand of blond hair from his eyes. “Which means I’ll also have to go into hiding. We’ll need new faces, new fingerprints…” He sighed. “Bugger all.”

Gault saw the misery in Toys’s face. “I’m sorry. It was all working so well.”

“That’s a consolation.”

Gault stared up into the limitless nothing of the sky. “We’ll be at the Bunker day after tomorrow. If there’s any luck left in the bottle then Amirah will have a cure and then maybe we can find a way to bring it to market while there’s still an intact world economy.”

Or an intact world, Gault thought, but he didn’t say it.

Chapter Eighty-Eight

Crisfield, Maryland / Friday, July 3; 10:01 A.M.

I STAYED AT the plant again that night and spent Friday alternately working with Jerry and working with Church to concoct a news story that would calm the public. The new story, which was released to the press via the Maryland governor’s office, said that a major meth lab had been raided by a task force under the direction of the ATF, but during the raid part of the lab blew up. Church’s computer techs cobbled together bits of video footage of other raids—enhanced with some nifty computer graphics—that showed tactical teams raiding the plant. It was pretty convincing, and it did what we wanted it to do: it knocked the phrase “terrorist attack” right off the headlines and out of the CNN news crawls.

BY LATE FRIDAY night I was totally fried. So was everyone else so we bagged it and decided to head back to the Warehouse. In DMS parlance the temporary headquarters on the Baltimore docks was now being called the Warehouse, capital W; just as the Brooklyn facility at Floyd Bennett Field was called the Hanger. Grace said that the Warehouse would probably become one of the organization’s permanent sites, it being conveniently close to D.C.

Church wasn’t going with us. He said that he needed to brief the President personally and he took a Bell Jet Ranger to Washington; Hu went with him, but before they boarded I took Church aside.

“Every time I close my eyes I see the face of that lab tech with the detonator saying that it’s all too late. It’s nagging at me.”

“You’re not alone in that,” he admitted. “Do you have a suggestion?”

“I do. You already said that if this thing was launched on some big event that it would get out of control. Tomorrow’s the Fourth of July and there’s no bigger event that I know of than the rededication of the Liberty Bell.”

He nodded. “I’ve already alerted their security teams to be on ultrahigh alert.”

“I was supposed to be on that detail,” I said, “and I think I want to follow through on that. But I want to make it a field trip. I want to take Echo Team to Philly and let them put their eyes to work. Give them some fieldwork that doesn’t involve zombies. Maybe take Grace and Gus, too.”

When I said Grace’s name there was the faintest flicker of amusement in his face, but it was gone in an instant. Maybe I imagined it.

“Is this a hunch?” he asked.

“Not really. Maybe half a hunch. It’s just that if I were going to launch this thing, that’s where I’d do it.”

Church leaned a shoulder against the chopper and considered the point. “The First Lady will be there. Perhaps I should request that she be removed from the event.”

“That’s your call. I could be wrong about this. There are a lot of big celebrations tomorrow, all over the country; and maybe these guys are too smart to pick the one where about every third person in the crowd is carrying a federal badge. No, I can’t see disrupting the event on a half a hunch, but I think you should reinforce your warning to all commands to stay extra frosty.”

He nodded. “I’ll do that; and I’ll be with the President in a couple of hours and he can punctuate the request. But I’ll have some National Guard units on standby just in case.”

“Fair enough.”

We shook hands and he climbed into the chopper.

The rest of us climbed into the Seahawks and we rose into the night sky, flying across Maryland with two Apaches giving close air support. For some strange reason going back to the Warehouse felt like going home.

Chapter Eighty-Nine

Baltimore, Maryland / Saturday, July 4; 1:12 A.M.

BACK AT THE Warehouse we each went our separate ways. Echo Team was already sacked out for the night but Top had left me reams of notes on the new recruits. I put that aside for later and headed off to get clean. In the shower I let the hot water blast me for a long time. I do some of my best thinking in the shower and as I washed, rinsed, and repeated I wondered about who Lester Bellmaker might be and despite furious lathering I came up with nothing.

It was already into the early hours of July 4. I figured we’d head out early and get to Philadelphia in time to add a little security muscle to the event. And if nothing happened… at least they have great hot dogs, soft pretzels, and beer in that town.

Back in my room I was bemused to notice that Cobbler had been fed and even his cat litter changed.

When I climbed between the sheets Cobbler crouched at the foot of the bed and stared at me like I was a stranger. I told myself that he was only spooked by having been handled by someone he didn’t know, but I knew that wasn’t really it. It was me. Rudy was right—I’d been changed, too. Cobbler could see it in my eyes and he kept his distance. After five minutes of trying to coax him nearer I gave up and turned out the light.

I could feel him watching me with his wise cat eyes.

I finally fell asleep around one or so but within minutes a tap at the door woke me. It was tentative. I lay in the dark and listened, uncertain whether it was real or part of some complicated dream. Then it came again. Firmer this time.

I switched on the bedside light and padded to the door in sleeping shorts and a T-shirt. There was no peephole or intercom so I unlatched it and peered cautiously through the crack. I guess I expected Rudy, or Church. Maybe Top Sims or Sergeant Dietrich.

I never expected Grace Courtland.

Chapter Ninety

Baltimore, Maryland / Saturday, July 4; 1:17 A.M.

SHE WORE MAKESHIFT pajamas—blue hospital scrubs and a black tank top. Her hair was untidy, there were fatigue smudges under her eyes. She held a six-pack of Sam Adams Summer Ale beer by the handle of the cardboard carrier.

“Did I wake you?”

“Yes.”

“Good, because I can’t sleep. Let me in.” She let the sixer of beer swing from her finger.

“Okay,” I said, and stepped back to pull the door open. Grace nodded and walked past me into the room. She gave it a quick, flat appraising look and grunted.

“They brought a lot of your things.”

“They brought my cat,” I said as I closed the door. Cobbler jumped off the bed and came over to her, sniffing tentatively. “Cobbler, be nice to the major.”

Cobbler still looked cautious but when Grace squatted down to pet him he allowed it. Her fingers flexed luxuriantly in his fur.

“Have a seat,” I said, indicating the recliner. I got the bottle opener that was attached to my key chain, opened two bottles and handed her one. I took mine and sat on the edge of the bed.

She rose and stood looking down at the cat for a moment, sipping thoughtfully.

“I like your friend Dr. Sanchez.”

“Rudy.”

“Rudy. We met outside the showers, had a bit of a heart-to-heart. He’s a good man.”

“You any judge?”

“I’ve known a few shrinks in my time.” She looked away, but I saw that her eyes were wet. Cobbler was still close so she busied herself by scratching between his ears, then she tilted the bottle back and drank nearly all of it.

“These last few days have been unreal,” she said softly. “Ungodly…”

She shook her head, sniffing back tears. She finished her beer, got another. I handed her the opener and as she took it her fingers brushed mine. She wanted it to look casual, but she wasn’t that good an actress. My skin was hot where she’d touched me.

“It must have been pretty bad at the hospital,” I said. “I still haven’t seen the tapes, but Rudy told me. Worse even than the crab plant, from what he said.”

Back in her chair she looked at the beer bottle as if interested in something on the label. When she spoke her voice was almost a whisper. “When we realized something about… about what was going on, when we saw that we were losing control of the situation at St. Michael’s… I…” She stopped, shook her head, tried again. “When we realized what we had to do… it was the worst thing in my life. It was worse than…” A tear gathered in the corner of her eye.

“Have some beer,” I suggested softly.

She drank and then raised her head and looked at me with her red-rimmed eyes. “Joe… when I was eighteen I got pregnant by a boy during my first year at university. We were just kids, you know? He freaked and buggered off, but then he came back when I was in my third trimester. We got married. A civil ceremony. We weren’t ever really in love, but he stayed with me until the baby was born. Brian Michael. But… he was born with a hole in his heart.”

The room was utterly silent.

“They tried everything. They did four surgeries, but the heart hadn’t formed correctly. Brian lived for three months. There was never really a chance he’d make it, they told me. After the last surgery I sat with my baby day and night. I lost so much weight I was like a ghost. Eighty-seven pounds. They wanted to admit me.”

I started to say something, but she shook me off.

“Then one afternoon the doctor told me that there was no brain activity, that for all intents and purposes my baby was dead. They… wanted me to… they asked me if I would consent to having the respirator disconnected. What could I say? I screamed, I yelled at them, I argued with them. I prayed. For days.” The tears broke and cut silvery lines down her face. They looked like scars. “When I finally agreed it was so horrible. I kissed my baby and held his little hand while they stopped the machines. I put my face down to listen to his heartbeat, hoping that it would go on beating, but all I heard was one heartbeat. Just one, he died that quickly. One beat and then a dreadful silence. I felt him die, Joe. It was so awful, so terrible that I knew that I would never—could never feel anything worse.” She drank most of the second bottle. “It ruined me. My husband had left again after the second surgery. I guess to him Brian was already gone. My parents were long gone. I had no one else in my life. I continued to get sicker and I wound up in a psychiatric medical center for nearly three months. Are you shocked?”

She looked at me defiantly, but something in my expression must have reassured her. She nodded.

“In the hospital I had a counselor and she suggested that I look for something that would give me structure. I had no family left and she knew a recruiter. She wrote me a letter of recommendation and two weeks after discharge from hospital I was in the army. It became my life. From there I went to the SAS. I saw combat in a dozen places. I saw death. I caused death. None of it touched me. I believed that whatever had made me a person, a human being, was gone, buried in a little coffin with a tiny body. Both of us dead, killed by imperfect hearts.”

She wiped at the tears then stared with subdued surprise at the wetness on her fingers. “I hardly ever cry anymore. Except sometimes at night when I wake up from a dream of holding Brian’s hand and hearing his last heartbeat. I haven’t cried in years, Joe. Not in years.”

My mouth was dry and I drank some beer to be able to breathe.

Grace said, “When Al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center I didn’t cry. I just got angry. When the bombs went off in the London subways, I tightened up my resolve. Grace Courtland, Major SAS, combat veteran, professional hard-ass.” She took a big breath, blew out her cheeks. “And then St. Michael’s. God! We went in there hard and fast, so tough and practiced. You never got a chance to see the DMS at its best, but everyone in Baker and Charlie teams were absolutely first-rate. Top-of-the-line combat veterans, not a virgin among them. What is it you Yanks say? Heartbreakers and life-takers? State-of-the-art equipment, cutting-edge tactics, nothing left to chance. And you know what happened? We were slaughtered! Grown men and women torn apart. Civilians killing armed military with their fingers and teeth. Children taking shot after shot to the chest, falling down and then getting right up again, their bodies torn open, and still they kept running at our men, tearing and biting them. Eating them.”

“God,” I whispered.

“God wasn’t there that day,” she hissed in as bitter a voice as I’ve ever heard. “I’m not a religious person, Joe. Faith isn’t something I’m good at, not since I buried Brian; but if there was ever a splinter of belief or hope left in me it ended that day. It was consumed by what happened.”

“Grace… you do know that you and Church had no other choice?”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better? Do you really think that makes any difference to me? I know we didn’t have another choice, that’s why we made the choice we did. We were losing, Joe. Losing. Suddenly, all the training, all the power that we thought we had was gone. It failed us. Just as medicine and prayer failed Brian. All we could do was disconnect another switch, turn off more lives because there was nothing else left for us.” Tears fell steadily but she didn’t bother to wipe them away.

She gave me a twisted smile. “The thing is… that was even worse than turning off my baby’s life support. Worse, do you understand? And afterward do you know what I felt the most? Guilt. Not for having to kill all of those people. No, I felt—I feel—guilty because that was the worst moment of my life. It probably always will be. So I feel like I’ve somehow betrayed or maybe abandoned my baby because now this event is bigger and worse even than that. I feel like I’ve lost Brian again. Forever this time. It hurts so damn—”

Her voice suddenly disintegrated into terrible sobs and she dropped the bottle and covered her face with both hands. I was up and across the room before her bottle rolled to a stop. I took her by the arms and gathered her to me, pulling her off the chair, wrapping her up against my chest. The sound of her sobs cut through my flesh and into my heart. I held her close—this angry woman, this bitter soldier—and I kissed her hair and held her as close and as tight and as safe as I could.

SHE WEPT FOR a long time.

I walked her to the bed and we lay down together, her face buried against me, her tears soaking through my T-shirt, her body fever-hot. Maybe I said something, some nonsense words, but I don’t remember. Her body bucked and spasmed with the tears until slowly, slowly, the immediacy of the storm began to pass. Her arms were wrapped around me, her fingers knotted in my shirt. The knots of tension eased by very slow degrees.

We lay like that for a long time, and then I could feel the change in her as her tension changed from the totality of grief to the awkwardness of awareness. We were as physically close as lovers, but there had been nothing even remotely sexual about her tears or my holding her, not even in our lying down together. Not at first. But now there was a new tension as we both became enormously aware of all the points of contact—of thighs intertwined, of groins pushed forward, of her breasts against my chest, of hot exhalations, and of animal heat and natural musk.

There was a moment when we should have rolled apart, made a few awkward jokes, and retreated to separate corners of the universe. But that moment passed.

After a minute or two she said, very softly, “I didn’t come here for this.”

“I know.”

“It’s… well, there was no one else. I can’t talk to Mr. Church. Not about this. Not like this.”

“No.”

“And I don’t know Dr. Sanchez yet. Not well enough.”

“You don’t know me, either.”

“Yes,” she said quietly, her forehead tucked under my chin. “I do. I know about Helen. I know about your mum. You’ve lost so much. As much as I have.”

I nodded, she could feel it.

“Will you make love to me?” she asked.

I leaned back and looked down at her. “Not now,” I said. When I saw the hurt on her face I smiled and shook my head. “You’ve chugged two beers, you’re grieving, exhausted, and in shock. I’d have to be the world’s biggest jackass to try and take advantage of that kind of vulnerability.”

Grace looked at me for a long time. “You’re a strange man, Joe Ledger.” She pushed one of her hands up between us and touched my face. “I never thought you’d be kind. Not to me. You’re an actual gentleman.”

“We’re a dying breed… they’re hunting us down one by one.”

She laughed and then laid her head against me. “Thanks for listening, Joe.”

After another long time of silence she said, “Back at the plant I asked you a question, about whether we’ve stopped this. Was that the last cell? Did we stop the terrorist movement here in the States, or did we just burn up our last lead?”

“Bad questions to ask in the dark,” I said, stroking her hair.

“Mr. Church spoke with the President and the head of the FDA. The gears are already turning to get the pharmaceutical companies involved. The President will address a closed session of Congress in two days. The full resources of the United States, England, and the other allies will be thrown against this now.”

“Yes.”

“So why am I still so afraid?” she asked.

The silence swirled around us.

“Same reason I am,” I said.

She said nothing more and after a long while her breathing changed to the slow, steady rhythm. I kissed her hair and she wriggled more tightly against me, and after a while, she slept. After a much longer time I, too, drifted off.

Chapter Ninety-One

The DMS Warehouse, Baltimore / Saturday, July 4; 6:01 A.M.

GRACE AND I had a quiet breakfast in the mess hall before first light, then she headed off to muster her team while I made a call. I was hoping I’d wake Church up and get to hear him when he was off balance, but he answered on the first ring. Fricking robot.

Instead of “Hello” he asked, “Is there a problem?”

“No. I wanted to touch base about the Liberty Bell thing. You still cool with me taking Echo Team to Philly?”

“Of course,” he said, and it implied that I’d have heard different if he’d changed his mind. The communication flow with him was going to take some getting used to. I’m used to a lot more bureaucracy. “I advised the President of our concerns with safety during the holiday, and he approved all of my recommendations. The gears are already turning to get the pharmaceutical companies involved. The President will address a closed emergency session of Congress tomorrow. The full resources of the United States, England, and the other allies will be thrown against this now.”

Church briefly outlined the steps he was taking to bulk up security at the top twenty Fourth of July events scheduled across the country. It meant mobilizing tens of thousands of additional police and military, and though that had to be a red-tape nightmare Church seemed confident that it would all be handled. I guess having a rubber stamp from the Commander in Chief lit a lot of fires under the right asses. Points for Church.

“My question,” I said when he’d finished, “is what our actual status is going to be down there in Philly? I mean… we can’t exactly flash DMS badges, can we?”

“We don’t have badges,” he said. “I also discussed this with the President and obtained authorization for Echo Team to roll as a special detachment of the Secret Service. How familiar are you with their protocols?”

“I can fake it.”

“Last night I called a friend in the garment industry and appropriate clothes should be arriving by six-thirty. IDs were already sent by courier and Sergeant Dietrich has them.”

“You don’t like wasting time, do you?”

“No,” he said, and hung up.

I smiled and shook my head. So this is what it felt like to be in the major league.

I found Dietrich and got the material Church had sent. IDs for everyone plus a detailed set of notes from Church that included the names and numbers of the people we planned to interview.

I found Grace in the computer trailer. I told her about my call to Church. “How is it that he has this much power over the President? I mean… who is Church?”

Grace shook her head. “I’ve heard some bits and pieces of things over the last couple of years that add up to his having the goods on a lot of people in Washington.”

“The goods? As in… blackmail?”

“I think he quite literally knows where all of the bodies are buried, as the saying goes. He has leverage on a lot of power players and he uses it to get what he wants.”

“Good thing he’s on our side.” I paused. “He is on our side, isn’t he?”

“God, I hope so.”

“How’d he get all this dirt?”

“I can make a guess,” she said, arching an eyebrow, and then she tilted her head in the direction of the complex array of computer terminals that filled the room.

“MindReader?”

She shrugged. “It makes sense. It’s brilliant at digging into everyone else’s business without leaving a trace that it was there. That’s one of its unique and most dangerous features. With MindReader he can sneak into the Pentagon, read whatever files he wants, and then exit without leaving the usual signature. I’ve seen him do it.”

“Holy smoke.” I stared at the computer as if it was Aladdin’s lamp. “You ever heard the expression, ‘If that were to fall into the wrong hands it’d be curtains for the free world’? Well, that pretty much applies here.”

“Too right it does. There are only a handful of people in the world who have access, and Church has to personally grant us access through his mainframe router to allow us to log on each day. It’s no joke, and even though MindReader doesn’t leave a trace in other computers, all searches and operations are logged on his hard drive.”

“So Big Brother really is watching,” I mused.

“All the time.”

“Does the man ever sleep?”

“God, I’ve never seen him so much as yawn. I think he’s a cyborg.”

“At this point, it wouldn’t surprise me. Maybe there’s something in those vanilla wafers.”

She picked up a printout. “These are the names of the agency directors who have sent staff to the DMS. Nearly half of them will be in Philadelphia today for the Liberty Bell event, either as guests or on the job. Because the First Lady, the Vice President’s wife, the wives of fifty congressmen, and over a hundred members of Congress are all attending the event, it’s a security mishmash. Most of the chiefs will be there to make sure their individual Indians don’t let anyone of importance get scalped.”

“I know, I was originally assigned to the detail. How’s this helping us?”

“The President, at Mr. Church’s urging, has contacted each of these directors to put themselves at our disposal. We can set up meetings, and we can interview them personally.”

“During a major event?” I goggled.

“Well… we’d have to pick our moments,” she conceded.

I was skeptical. “All well and good, but how can we interview them with all of the speeches and rallies going on?”

“The rededication only lasts two hours.”

“Good point,” I said. “Okay, let’s mount up and ride.”

Chapter Ninety-Two

El Mujahid / The Motorways Motel / July 4

THE FIGHTER SAT on the edge of the motel bed in cotton trousers and a tank top that showed off his huge shoulders, bull neck, and the corded muscles of his arms. He had removed his bandage to let his guests inspect his face and the slash mark was a livid red line surrounded by green and purple bruises.

The two men seated on the couch stared at him. Ahmed, Amirah’s brother, was on the left, his face showing concern for his brother-in-law. Next to him was a young black man with wire-framed glasses and a knit kufi on his close-cropped hair. His name was Saleem Mohammad but was born as John Norman twenty-six years ago in West Philadelphia. He was a graduate of Temple University’s MFA theater program where he specialized in stage makeup and costume design. For two years after graduation he worked on and off Broadway, but eighteen months ago he met an African-American mullah who introduced him first to the teachings of Muhammad and, later, to the more radical teachings of El Mujahid. Saleem had been totally captivated and over the months moved smoothly from a study of the Koran to a more specialized study of fundamentalist politics. Years of repressed anger bubbled up and came to a boil when he saw the tapes of El Mujahid’s diatribes on Western interference in Middle East culture and religion. Unlike many of his fellow converts to the faith, Saleem was thoroughly primed to accept the belief that extreme measures were sometimes necessary in order to protect the followers of the one true God. Saleem looked like an artist, which he certainly was, but in his chest beat the heart of a soldier of the Faith.

Sitting there on the couch, he looked very young to El Mujahid, but the Fighter could see familiar fires burning in Saleem’s eyes. It pleased him. The Fighter was amused by the young man, but he also felt proud of him, of his depth of conviction. For nearly an hour they had discussed scriptures and had all prayed together. Now, their prayer mats rolled up, they sat and talked. El Mujahid had taken off his shirt and bandages to let Saleem take a close look.

“Can you do it?” the Fighter asked.

“Yes. What you want is… easy. I mean, there’s nothing to it.” Saleem looked at Ahmed. “I thought you said you wanted me to do something difficult?”

Ahmed shook his head. “I said I wanted you to do something important.”

“It needs to hide everything,” said El Mujahid, “the cut, the bruising.”

Saleem smiled earnestly. “Give me an hour and I can guarantee you that no one will recognize you or see that injury. I have everything I need at my apartment.”

“That’s excellent.”

They agreed on a time for Saleem to return and the young man left, looking a little starstruck at having been in the presence of El Mujahid. One of Ahmed’s agents tailed him surreptitiously though both he and El Mujahid were convinced of Saleem’s dedication to the cause. When he was gone, the Fighter pulled on a shirt and buttoned it up.

“By now Gault knows that I’ve eluded his assassins and that we have the trigger device,” El Mujahid said. “If he was man enough to grow a beard Gault would be pulling it out by now. He must be very confused over what has happened.” He paused. “Where is the shipment from Amirah?”

“Andrea installed it over a week ago, and it is very cleverly hidden. No one will detect it,” Ahmed said, referring to his American girlfriend, a woman he’d converted to their brand of Islam a few years ago. He gestured to a suitcase that he’d brought with him.

“Which version did Amirah send? I tried Generation Seven on a village and it was impressive.”

“Generation Ten.”

“Ten?” gasped the Fighter. “You mean Generation Seven—”

Ahmed grinned and shook his head. “My sister is ambitious and her anger toward the Western Satan is very great. She did not say much in her coded message, but she said that this will sweep America like the breath of God.”

El Mujahid murmured a prayer.

Ahmed nodded to the suitcase. “Your clothes, identification, weapons… everything is there. Once Saleem performs his magic tricks then you will be able to walk among them and not be suspected. Everything is in place, my brother, and Andrea will be on site to make sure that it all goes smoothly.” He paused and gave his lips another nervous lick. “There is one more thing. My sister sent something for us. She shipped it using Gault’s own pipeline and it was delivered via international hazardous materials courier to a hospital in Trenton, New Jersey, late yesterday. The accompanying papers and forms were flawless so that no eyebrows were raised. My sister is very clever.”

“That she is. What did she send?”

Ahmed smiled. “Well… on the package it said that it was samples for bacteriological research. Something to do with plant blight. And in truth that’s what most of the contents were, heading from one of Gault’s labs in India to a research facility here in the States, but of the twenty-four vials of infectious materials there were two that contained something quite different.” He paused and repeated that. “Quite different, Allah be praised.”

“Tell me…”

“She sent Generation Twelve of the Seif al Din.”

“Do we need more? I thought—”

Ahmed shook his head. “This is not a weapon, my brother. If Generation Ten is the Sword, then Generation Twelve is the shield.”

The Fighter looked confused, and then as understanding blossomed a great mass of pent-up tension left his body in a long exhale. “Allah be praised, all blessings to His name.”

Ahmed reached out and squeezed El Mujahid’s arm. “She did it!” he said in an excited whisper. “We have an antidote. Amirah did what no one else has been able to do… she created a cure for the disease. We can release it as planned and then only the godless Americans will die but we—we, my brother—will survive!”

The room swam around him and El Mujahid slid from his chair onto his knees. For weeks now he had been mentally and spiritually preparing himself for what he believed was a suicide mission. He had accepted the will of Allah that he should die from the Seif al Din as he released it on the Americans. It was so small a price to pay to deliver a killing stroke unlike anything ever inflicted on an enemy. Total annihilation of the Americans and an ocean between the wasteland that North America would become and the rest of the world. But now… now!

He lowered his reeling head to the floor and gave praise to Allah, weeping with joy, weeping with the knowledge that the one true God had chosen to spare him and to let him continue to fight for His truth here on Earth. Paradise was a wonderful promise, but El Mujahid was a fighter and had regretted leaving the battle with so much to be done.

Tears sprang into Ahmed’s eyes as well and he knelt down next to his brother-in-law, his friend, and together they prayed, both of them knowing that it would all work now, that nothing could stop the Seif al Din.

Nothing.

Chapter Ninety-Three

The DMS Warehouse, Baltimore / Saturday, July 4; 6:44 A.M.

WE TOOK TWO cars, a pair of brand-new DMS SUVs—BMW X6s that were equipped like James Bond cars with hidden compartments, armor plating, front and rear video, spy-satellite downlinks, and even fore-and-aft machine guns hidden behind faux foglamps. Church really loved his toys.

“No ejector seats?” I asked Grace as we climbed into the lead vehicle.

“You joke, but we have a Porsche Cayenne with an ejector option for driver or passenger.”

“Really?” I grinned and switched to my best Sean Connery. “My name is Ledger. Joe Ledger.”

She gave me an icy stare. “So help me God, if you call me Pussy Galore or Holly Goodhead, I’ll shoot you and leave you by the side of the road.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said, and then under my breath added, “Miss Moneypenny.”

“I’m serious. Dead in a ditch.”

I mimed zipping my mouth shut. We were all dressed in dark suits, red ties, and white shirts, with little American flags on our lapels and wires behind our ears. Pretty damn impressive for twelve hours’ work. I mean, I can wear off the rack but Bunny is a moose. I marveled at Church’s network of contacts. It must be nice to have so many friends in so many “industries.” One of these days I was going to have to find out who the hell Church was.

For hardware I had my old familiar .45 with me, snugged against my ribs, with two extra magazines clipped to my belt. Around my right ankle was a sweet little Smith & Wesson Model 642 Airweight Centennial, a hammerless .38 revolver that is one of the most practical backup guns around. I also had a Rapid Response Folder, a tactical knife that could sit in a pocket clip and with a snap of the wrist would produce a 3.375-inch blade that, although short, was more than enough in the hands of a good knife fighter. I’m a very good knife fighter and I prefer speed over blade length any time. With all that I felt that I was a bit overdressed for the party, considering that we were going to interrogate government officials not storm the Bastille, but I’m one of those guys who believes that the Boy Scout motto is one of the most useful pieces of advice ever given: Be Prepared.

Grace looked very nice in a tailored suit that was a good balance of weapon concealment and curve revealment. No way that this was off the rack. She had on a light touch of makeup and a very enticing pink lipstick. The makeup was within professional guidelines, but the lipstick—I’m pretty damn sure—was a personal choice with a different agenda and I hoped that it wasn’t my male ego or wishful thinking at work here.

All I said was, “You clean up pretty good, Major.” I gave her my best smile as I said it. The one that puts the crinkles around my eyes. Grace, however, did not pull around to the back of the warehouse and immediately undress. Her fortitude was commendable in the light of that smile.

She said, “Buckle up for safety,” and inflected it in such a way as to convey about fifty separate possible meanings.

Just as we were heading toward the main Warehouse doors I saw a figure step into our path: Rudy, and he was also dressed like a Secret Service agent. Grace slowed and when she stopped Rudy opened the back door and climbed in.

I turned around to look at him. “Halloween’s not till October.”

“You’re hilarious,” he growled as he thrust an ID wallet into my hands. I opened it.

“Rudolfo Ernesto Sanchez y Martinez, MD. Special Agent, United States Secret Service,” I read. “Is this some kind of joke?”

“If it is then Mr. Church is the only one who knows the punch line.”

Grace smiled. “Mr. Church is impressed with you, Doctor.”

“Rudy,” he corrected.

“Sorry. He told me you grilled him pretty thoroughly the other day.”

I was surprised. “He admitted that?”

“He didn’t go into details, but he gave the impression that you got a good read on him.”

“Interesting,” said Rudy. “Joe… he wants me with you when you do the interviews.”

“I’m okay with that, Rude, but if we get into anything today…” I let it hang.

“Then I’ll run and hide, don’t worry, cowboy. I’m a lover not a fighter.”

Grace turned and gave him an appraising stare. “I’ll bet you could handle yourself.” And again there were a lot of ways to interpret that. Rudy gave her an elegant incline of the head and settled back in his seat.

“Are you carrying a gun?” I asked him. At his request I’d taught Rudy to shoot a couple of years ago, shortly after he started working as a police psychiatrist. He thought it would help him with his patients if he more fully understood the power—both real and imagined—of a gun.

“You’ve seen me shoot, cowboy. Am I qualified to carry a handgun in public?”

“It would not be in the best interests of public safety.”

“Then there you go.”

Grace put the car in gear and we rolled out of the Warehouse with Echo Team behind us. When we were on I-95 heading north toward Philly, Rudy asked, “Won’t the real Secret Service know that we’re fakes?”

Grace shrugged. “Only if we tell them, and it will be need-to-know. Our credentials are real, authorized by the President himself.”

Rudy said, “Wow.” He hadn’t voted for the President but the office and what it represented was bigger, and held more meaning, than any single person who had held it. Maybe more than all of them put together. A certain degree of respect was appropriate no matter what your personal political views were. “That’s a lot of power.”

“Mr. Church knows—” she started to say but Rudy cut her off.

“No, it’s a lot of power to give us. Our team.” He paused. “The eight of us.” When I turned to him he went on, “We still have a traitor in the DMS, and that means that one of the men in the car behind us could be a spy or assassin. Or worse, a terrorist sympathizer.” He waggled the ID case. “And this is an all-access pass to the President’s wife and half of Congress. Is that wise?”

Grace smiled at him in the rearview. “Mr. Church has confidence that we’ll stay in control of the situation.”

All Rudy said in reply was, “Room Twelve.”

Chapter Ninety-Four

Sebastian Gault / Helmand Province, Afghanistan / July 4

GAULT’S HELICOPTER TOUCHED down two hundred kilometers from the Bunker, landing near a WHO outpost. The outpost supervisor, a wizened old epidemiologist named Nasheef, was willing to lend Gault a car but cautioned him about the dangers of traveling in the Afghani desert without military escort.

“We’ll be fine,” Gault assured him. “We have our Red Cross and WHO credentials. Even out here that often gives us safe passage.”

But Nasheef insisted on providing a driver, his burley nephew who had fought guerrilla actions against the Soviets. No amount of argument would dissuade Nasheef, and to make too strong a protest would raise suspicions, so they reluctantly agreed.

An hour later they were rolling out of the camp and heading west.

Gault had reclaimed his position as the de facto alpha dog in his relationship with Toys; though every now and then he could feel the ghost of a memory of the slap Toys had given him back in Baghdad.

“Go with God!” Nasheef called after them. It made both of them smile for all the wrong reasons.

Chapter Ninety-Five

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania / July 4; 9:39 A.M.

TRAFFIC WAS HEAVY as we approached Philly. The Phillies were playing a doubleheader, and a bunch of rock stars had put together a Freedom Rocks concert at the Wachovia Center down near the airport. Plus an estimated half million people were descending on Center City and the Liberty Center. Overall it was supposed to be the biggest, loudest, busiest day in Philadelphia history.

“Great day for travel,” Rudy grumped from the backseat.

“Almost there,” Grace said as she turned off I-95 near Penn’s Landing. I’d called ahead and arranged for a pair of motorcycle cops to meet us and help us through the traffic snarls.

Grace filled us in on the people we would try and interview. There were six agencies involved in various aspects of security. The two who interested us most were Robert Howell Lee, the director of special operations for an FBI/Homeland joint command; and Linden Brierly, who was the regional director of the Secret Service and the direct link between the Secret Service and its parent department of Homeland Security. More current and proposed DMS personnel had been recommended by them than all of the other agencies put together. Both of them had extensive military connections and had sent candidates from every branch of the service. It seemed to be the best use of time to start with them first. They were also the men most closely involved with security at the Liberty Center event.

Robert Howell Lee and his FBI team were in charge of the facilities security and had oversight for all interjurisdictional arrangements between local, state, and federal law enforcement. He was an indirect descendant of Richard Henry Lee, the man who had ridden from Virginia to the First Continental Congress with the resolution to declare independence from England. He was an ambitious man of fifty who was almost certainly going to be the next director of the Bureau or maybe ever the top dog in Homeland.

The other man, Linden Brierly, was an equally careercentric man who had been involved in some key phases of the service’s transition to Homeland after 9/11. It was Brierly who would be overseeing the personal safety of the First Lady and her party.

They were both powerful men; patriots as well as seasoned field agents and politicians. Move the wrong way with them and we’d not only upset the security applecart but we’d bring down so much heat that maybe even Church’s clout would not save the DMS. This was dicey for a couple of big reasons: the careers of everyone involved with the DMS and the belief—which I now shared—that no other organization within the United States government was as equipped as the DMS to counter threats like the one we’d been facing during the last few days. The wrong word to either of these guys could spin everything out of control.

But, no pressure, right?

“We’re here,” Grace said.

Chapter Ninety-Six

Amirah / The Bunker, Afghanistan

“HE’S COMING!”

Amirah turned away from the big glass cage in the central lab as Abdul hurried into the room. Her only reply to his outburst was a slow smile.

“Did you hear me?” he demanded. He had a Kalashnikov hanging by a strap from his right shoulder and his face was dark with anger.

“I heard you, Abdul,” she said, her voice soft and dreamy.

“Well… what are your orders? Should I have him killed?”

Amirah blinked very slowly, once, twice. “Kill Sebastian?” She abruptly laughed as if it were all a wonderfully funny joke. She covered her laughing mouth like a teenage girl. “Is he alone?”

“He has his assistant with him, and a driver.”

“Good. Let them come.”

“Come? Come here?” he echoed, incredulous. “Amirah… he has to be aware of what we’re doing. He’s coming to shut us down!”

“Shut us down?” She laughed again.

Abdul stared at her. Amirah’s eyes were almost glassy. She looked drugged. Or worse, drunk! But that was unthinkable.

“You certainly don’t want him to come in here. Not now. Not when he knows.”

She shook her head. “How long until he gets here? Into the bunker?”

“Thirty minutes.”

“Assemble the staff in the dining hall, Abdul.”

“For what reason?” he demanded, and for a moment the dreamy look on Amirah’s face solidified into something else. Something cold and reptilian that glared out at him through her beautiful eyes. Abdul took an involuntary step backward.

Amirah’s lip curled and she turned away to stare through the glass at the monsters she had made. Four of them, each one clawing at the inside of the reinforced glass walls, their eyes burning like black stars.

“You have your orders, Abdul,” she said without turning.

He backed toward the door, his anger warring with his doubt. He watched Amirah put both her palms on the glass and then lean forward so that her cheek was pressed against the cool surface as the four monsters clustered on the other side, tearing at each other to try and get to her.

Abdul fled.

Chapter Ninety-Seven

The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 10:28 A.M.

WE STOOD IN the Liberty Bell Center, which is located on Market Street between Fifth and Sixth Streets in the Old City part of Philly. Because of the task force’s involvement with the event security I’d had a chance to tour the building a few times over the last six months and had a good working knowledge of its layout. The new building had been the centerpiece of a three-hundred-million-dollar makeover of the Independence Mall area, and they’d sunk nearly thirteen million dollars into the center, which opened in October 2003. The place was over thirteen thousand square feet, and was airy, well lighted, and pretty fascinating to any tourist or history buff. The bell itself sits in a glass chamber designed to magnify it so every one of the million-plus yearly visitors has a chance to get a really good look.

I think we all felt somewhat awed by all that it represented. I knew from having taken the tour that this was actually the second bell; the first one was made in the Whitechapel Foundry in England but it cracked shortly after it was cast. A couple of pot-and-pan makers named Pass and Stow recast it from a mixture of copper, tin, and traces of lead, zinc, arsenic, gold, and silver, but the second bell also cracked. That’s the one that we were all looking at. The names Pass and Stow were stamped into the front of the bell. Rudy leaned forward and read the rest of the inscription: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof—Lev. XXV, v. x. By order of the Assembly of the Province of Pensylvania for the State House in Philada.”

“They spelled Pennsylvania wrong,” Skip remarked.

I shook my head. “It was one of a couple of acceptable spellings at the time.”

“Darn thing’s broken,” Bunny said with a grin.

Behind us was a second large display platform but this one was draped with a Stars and Stripes tent, inside of which was the new Freedom Bell. Because this bell was intended to ring on special events it hadn’t been encased in magnifying glass. Time would tell if this one would be crackproof.

These bells symbolized everything for which the DMS had fought, suffered, and died. They were emblematic of the unsullied ideals of freedom, democracy, and fairness. Despite their many flaws the Founding Fathers had been mostly well intentioned. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion. The right to live. Even though those same founders had been unable to unite to abolish slavery and extend equal rights to all people of both sexes, they had at least started the ball rolling. Freedom had rung out across the land, and across the oceans, until its promise, at least, was heard in every country around the world. Without that bravery and optimism we wouldn’t be standing together here. Men and women, black and white, foreign and homegrown, united in a single cause: to take a stand against hate and destruction. Despite my years of practiced cynicism I felt a real stirring of good ol’ red, white, and blue patriotism.

From beside me Rudy said, “It’s a genuine perspective check, isn’t it?”

“Hooah,” Top said softly.

“Major Courtland…?” We turned to see a big man in a beautifully tailored lightweight charcoal suit come striding across the floor, hand out, a smile on his tanned face. I recognized him at once from Grace’s description. Linden Brierly, regional director of the Secret Service. We stepped up to meet him by the podium that had been erected between the display cases. It was a three-step affair heavy with red, white, and blue bunting and bristling with microphones, none of which were currently turned on. I’d checked.

Grace made introductions and offered her hand; Brierly gave it a firm single pump. “Sorry for borrowing the Secret Service as our cover, sir,” she said. “The President thought it would be best under the circumstances.”

Brierly didn’t miss a beat. “Sure, sure, I understand,” he said, though he probably didn’t like it. I wouldn’t if I were in his shoes; but he hadn’t gotten this far in his career by letting sour grapes show on his face. He looked around to confirm that there was no one else in the room except Brierly and Echo Team. “I’ve met your boss. Mr. Deacon.” He paused and his smile became a bit rueful. “Or is it Church? There seems to be some disagreement about that.”

“He prefers to be called Mr. Church.”

“Interesting man,” Brierly said. “I tried to run a background check on him and pretty much had my knuckles beaten with a ruler by the Commander in Chief.”

Grace returned his smile but said nothing, nor did Rudy. I practiced looking like a cigar-store Indian.

Brierly waited a second, then shrugged. “Okay, I get it. No problem, Major. So, tell me what I can do for you?”

Grace and I had agreed that she’d handle Brierly and I’d take Lee, so she dug right in. “Sir,” she said, “we’d like to discuss the candidates you suggested for transfer to the DMS.”

That dialed down the wattage of Brierly’s smile. “Why is that, Major?”

Instead of answering she asked, “What can you tell me about the men you chose to recommend?” She recited eleven names including Sergeant Michael Sanderson, who was one of Dietrich’s security men, and Second Lieutenant Oliver Brown. The others I hadn’t yet met.

I saw Brierly flick a glance across the room at Ollie and then return his gaze to Grace. “Can you be a bit more specific?”

“Just dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s,” she said with a smile.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “And for that you flash a presidential order?”

Grace said nothing.

Brierly sucked his teeth. “Okay,” he said, “you caught me.”

I stiffened, but then he upped the wattage on his smile. “A couple of my recommendations were entirely self-serving, I’ll admit it. Mike Sanderson is the son of an old friend of mine. Mike’s career seemed to stall in place after he left the army and joined the Service. We all thought he’d rise like a meteor but he didn’t make the cut to the presidential detail, and when you miss that step you tend to tread water. I promised his dad I’d look out for him and the DMS seemed like a chance for a fresh start.”

“And Lieutenant Brown?” Grace asked.

Brierly colored. “Well… that’s a little more awkward, and I’m not sure if it’s something we should even be talking about.”

“Sir, we’re here on the orders of the President himself.”

Brierly sighed and stared at the empty air between Grace and me for a few seconds, the muscles in the sides of his jaw flexing as he thought it through. We let him. Finally he said, “Okay, but it’s on your head if this information gets out because I’ll damn sure know that it didn’t come from me except right here and right now.” He nodded to himself, the decision made. “Homeland and the Service have done a number of ultra–top secret operations since nine-eleven. Off-the-books stuff, if you follow me.”

“Of course, sir,” Grace said. I nodded. A lot of black ops stuff never makes it onto paper. Plausible deniability is easier without a paper trail.

“Ollie was never in Iraq. That, um, was a cover story. He’s been Delta Force for four years and has been used in over twenty operations. Extreme stuff. Missions that involved military intelligence, the Service, Homeland, and the CIA… but more recently, until he was transferred to the DMS, Lieutenant Brown has officially been a Secret Service agent, but one that we’ve had out on loan to the Company.”

“We know he’s with the CIA,” I said. “Are you saying he’s more than just another one of their spooks?”

He grunted. “Captain, until I transferred him he was one of this government’s very best operators. Covert ops, infiltration, and special skills—he has the full package.” Brierly looked past me to where the young man was standing foursquare, staring hard in our direction. “And on top of all that, he’s the best assassin I’ve ever seen.”

Chapter Ninety-Eight

El Mujahid

“HOW DO I look?” the Fighter asked.

Ahmed turned in his seat and smiled broadly. “Perfect! Amirah herself would not recognize you!”

El Mujahid leaned over and looked at himself one last time in the Explorer’s rearview mirror. With blue contact lenses, an expert hair dye that gave him wavy red hair, skillfully crafted latex appliances, and makeup that gave him pale skin and a scattering of freckles the Fighter looked like a rawboned young Irishman. Saleem had even used special tape to change the shape and angle of El Mujahid’s nose, giving it a snubbed and uptilted look. Padding in his gums gave him more prominent cheekbones. Even he could not see the man he was beneath the makeup.

“The boy is a wizard,” the Fighter agreed.

“Now… there’s one last thing to do before we go,” said Ahmed as he took a small case from the glove compartment, unzipped it and removed a prefilled syringe. The liquid was a luminous green-gold that sparkled in the sunlight. “Roll up your sleeve.”

El Mujahid did so and held out his arm. He didn’t even wince when Ahmed plunged the needle into his flesh and injected the entire contents into him.

“Amirah said that the antidote will be at its strongest in forty minutes,” Ahmed said, “and advises that you release the plague at that point. She said that you should be completely protected, but also said that once you activate the device you should get away as quickly as possible.” He drew a breath. “Besides, things will be getting very violent very quickly.”

El Mujahid looked at his wristwatch. “Then we had better move.”

Ahmed nodded and removed a second syringe from the case and injected himself. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt with toucans on it and gave himself the shot high on his shoulder where it wouldn’t be seen. He put the syringe case back in the glove compartment. He hung a lanyard around his neck to which was clipped a plastic ID holder. It read: PRESS.

“You have only two doses?” the Fighter asked. “What about your woman, Andrea?”

“She’s a woman.” Ahmed spread his hands in a man-of-the-world gesture. “We all make sacrifices.”

El Mujahid nodded. He had made his own sacrifices to the cause where women were concerned.

“There is no God but Allah,” Ahmed whispered.

“And Mohammad is His prophet,” agreed El Mujahid.

Ahmed put the car in gear and drove off.

Chapter Ninety-Nine

The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 11:26 A.M.

BRIERLY TOLD US that he stood behind his decision to send Ollie to us and that he’d stake his reputation on the fact that Ollie was every inch a “true American.” A phrase he used three times. “Look, I have an event to run. The First Lady will be here in a couple of minutes.”

“Mind if we loiter about, sir?” asked Grace.

He frowned at her. “Am I going to have some trouble here today?”

I cut in on that. “Wouldn’t you agree that since nine-eleven there’s been a potential for threat at every major national holiday and political event?”

Brierly studied me for a three-count and then his voice dropped to a less friendly whisper. “Don’t fuck with me, Captain. I got a pretty damned cryptic ‘keep your eyes open’ sort of memo this morning from Washington but it had zero details and I really don’t like being kept in the dark. If your team is here because of a specific threat then I need to know about it and right goddamn now.”

I opened my mouth to reply in kind, but Grace stepped between us and took Brierly by the elbow and led him out of earshot of everyone in the room. They stood with heads bowed together for three minutes and I could see his body becoming more rigid with each passing second. Then he gave a nod and moved toward the door, walking as if his boxers were filled with jagged glass.

“What’d you tell him?” I asked when she rejoined me.

“The truth,” she said. “Or at least as much of it as he needs to know.”

“He didn’t look happy about it.”

“Are you?”

“Point taken.”

“He said he’ll quietly increase the circle of protection around the First Lady. He has a number of agents in plainclothes who can be seeded into the crowd at the ceremony.”

“Good. The more the merrier.”

Another agent entered the chamber a minute later and hurried over to us, introducing himself as Colby, Brierly’s number two. “I’ve been asked to brief you on the on-site security.” He led us to a STAFF ONLY door hidden behind a screen on which the Declaration of Independence was printed. “If we need to remove the First Lady in the event of a crisis, agents will escort her through here and then lock the door behind them. There are offices and other rooms back there and we have a designated secure spot as well as escape routes.”

After he left I dialed the cell number for Robert Howell Lee and, after verifying that the line was secure, identified myself and read the note from the President that ordered everyone to offer complete and immediate assistance to my investigation. He answered that with a long silence and I could imagine him trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I hadn’t told him. I broke into the silence and asked him if he could meet us in the bell chamber.

“What… you mean now?” he demanded. “Are you out of your mind, Captain? Do you have any idea what is going on? We have—”

“We can grab a few minutes after the speeches,” I interrupted. “This won’t take long.”

“Can you at least tell me what the hell this is about?”

Grace had returned and she and Rudy were leaning close to eavesdrop on the call. She mouthed the words: “Play the card, Joe.”

So I did. “Yes, sir, we are here representing the Department of Military Sciences.” I let him digest that. Whether he was guilty or innocent it was a hell of a bomb to drop and he had to react.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. There was another pause. “All right, give me a few minutes. I’m on the other side of Independence Mall in the communications center and I have to get someone to cover for me.” He disconnected.

I turned to Rudy. “Well? Did he sound spooked to you?”

He shrugged. “He sounded harried.”

Grace nodded. “Let’s face it; we picked a bloody stupid time to come up here.”

“Can’t catch someone off guard if they have time to prepare,” Rudy said.

She shrugged and I looked over at my team. Ollie’s face was pure hostility and had been ever since he saw that we were there to interview the man who had sent him to the DMS. He eyed me with that cold shooter’s squint and I gave it right back to him. Skip saw the look passing between us and frowned; and he took a half-step back from Ollie as if afraid to get in the way of something. I noticed that Top, Bunny, and Gus were casually looking from them to me, but nobody said anything.

The door behind us opened and a big man entered. He was dressed in the standard navy blue and red tie of the Service. He was every bit as big as Bunny, with thick shoulders, flaming red hair, and an Irish snub nose.

“Who are you?” Dietrich asked sharply, moving to intercept him.

“Special Agent Michael O’Brien,” the man said in surprise, holding out his ID. He held a metal case in the other hand. “I was detailed to check the room before the First Lady’s party moves in here for the speeches.”

Gus checked the ID and called it in while he inspected the metal case. It held the standard electronic scanners and nitrate sniffers that would show if anyone had planted bugs or bombs in the room. Dietrich nodded his approval and handed back the ID.

Dietrich closed his phone and sketched a salute to the agent. “Okay, O’Brien… the room’s yours.”

Chapter One Hundred

Gault / Outside the Bunker / July 4

THE ROVER SAT in the lee of a stand of palm trees about a hundred yards from the tent that hid the entrance to Amirah’s bunker.

“Now what, sir?” asked the driver. “Is your contact meeting you here?”

“In a way,” Gault said. “Toys? Would you oblige?”

Without a word Toys drew his pistol and shot the driver in the back of the head. The impact knocked the man against the steering wheel and splashed the window with bright blood.

“Sorry, old chap,” Gault said distractedly.

Toys’s face was stone as he removed the clip and replaced the round. He didn’t want to come up a bullet short at some crucial moment. He looked at his watch. “Zeller’s team is still twenty minutes out. Where do you want to wait for him? I don’t like being this exposed.”

Before Gault could answer the sat phone rang and Toys put it on speaker. For a moment Gault’s heart lifted, hoping that it was Amirah, but then the American’s voice barked at them.

“Line?”

“Clear, my friend. How are things going?”

The American’s voice was shaky. “God… they’re on to me!”

“What are you talking about?”

“The DMS… they’ve sent agents here to interview me.”

“Christ! How did that happen?”

“I don’t know… Sebastian, you have to do something.”

Gault almost laughed. “What is it exactly you expect me to do? I’m half a world away.”

“I have to get out. We haven’t been able to find El Mujahid. He could be anywhere! And these agents are right here… now.”

“You haven’t found him?” Gault was stunned. “Listen to me, we’re paying you too much money for you to let something this important slip through your hands. Fix this!”

“How? The only way I can bring more assets to bear on this would be to go to my own superiors, and that would land me in federal prison for the rest of my life!”

“Well, I daresay that getting arrested is going to be the least of your problems, wouldn’t you think?” Gault’s voice was cold.

“What should I do?”

“Make whatever calls you have to make to let the proper authorities know about the threat. Call the DMS. Tell them that you received an anonymous tip, something like that. Tell them that there is a biological threat. Just for God’s sake don’t mention me, and try not to implicate yourself. Maybe they can stop the Fighter before he can open the bloody gates of hell. Then get as far away as you can. An island somewhere. If this thing is released then an island is the only chance you’ll have.”

“God…”

“I’m about to clear up my end of things. I suggest you do the same. Be a hero. Save the day.”

The American mumbled something that Gault thought was a Hail Mary, and then the line went dead.

“Bloody hell,” he said, staring out through the bloodstained windshield. “The man’s a coward and a fool.”

“You get what you pay for,” Toys said with an irritated sigh. He looked at his watch. “There’s still sixteen minutes before Zeller’s team reaches the Bunker. We can’t just sit here.”

“No,” agreed Gault. They got out of the vehicle and drew their pistols. Nothing moved, so they moved quickly and quietly toward the line of tents by the mountain wall. The camp appeared to be deserted, but as they darted from the shelter of one tent to another they found four corpses lying in a row, their hands and ankles bound, their throats cut. Their blood had soaked into the desert sand and flies buzzed around them. They were all men on Gault’s payroll.

Toys snorted. “So much for the element of surprise.”

Chapter One Hundred One

The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday July 4; 11:47 A.M.

SPECIAL AGENT O’BRIEN completed his sweep of the center, packed his gear back into the metal case and stowed it under the podium. Linden Brierly entered from another door and with him was a contingent of grim-faced Secret Service agents and at least four members of my old task force, and following them were half the members of Congress, a couple dozen assorted local politicians, and the First Lady and the VP’s wife. We faded back against the wall and tried to blend into the woodwork the way the Secret Service are supposed to do. I got some strange looks from my former task force teammates, but no one broke protocol to catch up on old times.

Robert Howell Lee had not yet arrived. I looked at Grace, who shrugged. “Give him time,” she said; but there was no time. Brierly, looking stressed and flushed, was trying to guide the ladies to their spots between the two bells, but the women were not cooperating. They were pausing to glad-hand everyone and engage in chitchat while outside the press photographers were snapping pictures through the big glass windows; and beyond the press a veritable sea of people waited for the festivities to commence. Eventually they let about two hundred civilians into the room, which meant that everyone was packed like sardines.

I glanced around. Top and Ollie were directly across from where we stood; Bunny and Skip were on my three o’clock and Gus on our nine.

“This is going to be a bloody circus,” Grace said under her breath. “Brace yourself… I think everyone in a suit is about to make a longwinded speech.”

“Swell.”

The First Lady, looking very stylish in a pretty dress and an absurd hat, mounted the steps to the podium and tapped a microphone, making the usual “Is this on” remark which, strangely, got a laugh. I saw Special Agent O’Brien standing by the far door, slowly scanning the crowd. Our eyes met and he gave me a single, curt nod and then his eyes shifted away. Weird thing was, he was smiling. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Secret Service agent smile. Not on the job.

As the First Lady launched into her speech I scanned the crowd looking for Robert Howell Lee, but my eyes kept flicking back to O’Brien. That smile bothered me.

Chapter One Hundred Two

Gault / The Bunker

GAULT RADIOED his assault team to let them know he and Toys were proceeding inside. “If you don’t hear from us in ten minutes come in hard and fast.”

“We’ll be there,” assured Captain Zeller.

Then Gault and Toys entered the shallow cave that led to the Bunker’s hatch. They encountered no one but they weren’t fooled and both men kept their pistols ready. Toys stood guard while Gault accessed the entry keypad that was hidden in the wall. He didn’t use the standard code. Amirah was too clever for that. Instead he entered a number sequence that bypassed the security using a back door he’d written into the security software. The new code disabled all external video scanners, including the ones in the cave and the monitors that watched the back door. Zeller’s team would now be able to approach unseen.

Gault punched in a second code and a door swung open. It wasn’t the big airlock that swung open; instead, to his left, a tall, slender ridge of rock slid upward on silent hydraulics to reveal a narrow passage. No one, not even Amirah, knew about this entrance.

As the door opened to his command Gault felt another fragment of his confidence return. There were a number of things Amirah didn’t know about the Bunker. After all, it wasn’t really her facility.

It belonged to Gault.

Chapter One Hundred Three

The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 11:59 A.M.

I LEANED CLOSE to Grace. “Call me paranoid, but I’m getting a weird vibe from that agent over there.” I told her where to look and she glanced surreptitiously at O’Brien and then flipped open her phone to call in a request for a physical description of Special Agent Michael O’Brien.

“Description matches,” she said, but from the expression on her face she clearly was getting the same bad feeling. Into the phone she said, “Transfer me to Director Brierly’s secure channel.”

Across the room I saw Brierly’s head swivel around to find us. “Sir,” said Grace, “this may be nothing but Captain Ledger has some concerns about one of the attending agents. O’Brien. Big red-haired bloke by the press entrance.”

We watched Brierly turn. “Michael O’Brien? He’s part of the team sent from D.C. Do you want him removed?”

“If you can do it quietly,” she said, and I winced. The Secret Service could do just about anything quietly. The word “secret” wasn’t there for show, but I understood what Grace was doing. She was putting the onus on Brierly to handle something correctly and we could learn a lot from the way he played it.

“Stand by,” he said, and switched channels. Almost immediately two of his agents began making their way around the perimeter of the room toward O’Brien.

My spider sense was going haywire now. I told Grace to get Brierly back on the line.

ON THE PODIUM the First Lady launched into a crushingly dull speech that was apparently going to chronicle the history of the Liberty Bell from the moment someone cooked up the idea, minute by minute, to today. “In 1752,” she intoned, “the Pennsylvania Assembly ordered a two-thousand-pound bell to place in the steeple of the new State House—what we now call Independence Hall.”

One of the approaching agents reached O’Brien and bent to whisper in the man’s ear. It must have been couched as a repositioning order because O’Brien merely nodded and began moving toward the exit which was directly behind him. The ranks of reporters made it necessary for him to thread his way through and the two other agents followed.

“He’s not bolting,” Grace said. “Maybe you’re wrong.”

“If I am I’ll apologize,” but I was still watching O’Brien.

“The order for the bell was sent to the Whitechapel Foundry in England,” continued the First Lady, “and noted metalsmith Thomas Lester was contracted to cast the first liberty bell and to inscribe it with these historic words: ‘Proclaim Liberty throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof.’ Sadly that first bell cracked shortly after it was mounted and a replacement bell was—”

The First Lady kept speaking but something she had said jolted me as my brain replayed those words.

…noted metalsmith Thomas Lester was contracted to cast the first liberty bell…

“And today we will be unveiling a new bell, designed and cast by Andrea Lester—who is with us today.” She indicated a small, unsmiling woman in a yellow pantsuit. “Ms. Lester is the last descendant of the original bell maker and is a resident of North Carolina. She is here with us today to help dedicate this new—”

My mind was reeling. Rudy must have caught it, too; he turned and was staring wide-eyed at me. He mouthed the word: “Bellmaker.”

Thomas Lester. The metalsmith who made the original Liberty Bell.

His descendant Andrea Lester, maker of the new bell.

Lester… the bell maker!

Holy Christ! Aldin had told us, but he hadn’t told us enough.

I saw Andrea Lester glance very quickly from the First Lady, to the doorway where Agent O’Brien had paused, his hand on the glass door. He turned and looked back into the room, straight at Andrea Lester. The agents with him put their hands on his upper arms to try to move him along quietly; not wasting to make a scene.

I grabbed Grace’s arm so hard she flinched in pain and nearly dropped her phone.

“Grace! Oh my God… it isn’t Lester Bellmaker. It’s Andrea Lester, the bell maker. She made the Freedom Bell!”

Just as I started moving the First Lady’s aides pulled the cords that released the drapes over the Freedom Bell; the red, white, and blue fluttered to the floor. In my mind the falling colors became a horrible promise of disaster. On the other side of the room I saw Special Agent Michael O’Brien shrug off the two agents and, his smile broader than ever, pull a small device out of his pocket.

It was a detonator.

Chapter One Hundred Four

Amirah / The Bunker

SHE STOOD ON a metal walkway that circled twenty feet above the main laboratory, watching as her entire staff stood in patient lines, their sleeves rolled up as nurses moved among them to administer injections. Everyone looked so proud. They knew that they were part of something vastly important, that they had contributed something so crucial to the war against the infidel.

Amirah smiled down at them.

One of the nurses flicked a glance up at Amirah and they shared the briefest of smiles. No one noticed that the liquid in the bottle from which she had filled her needles had been the slightest bit different in color. A touch of green, where the others tended more to amber; but the nurse used a nearly opaque white syringe and she moved very quickly, filling her syringe, injecting, wiping the needle point with alcohol-soaked cotton, drawing more, moving on down the line.

Amirah glanced down at her own forearm, and absently rubbed the injection spot. Black lines had begun radiating out from the needle mark. She was perspiring heavily now, her robes far too hot; sweat ran down her back and pooled at her waist. She gripped the metal rail to steady herself as the whole room took a sickening sideways lurch.

“Where are you, Sebastian?” she whispered. On the wall the clock ticked away the seconds.

Chapter One Hundred Five

The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; Noon

EVERYTHING FROZE DOWN to a single white-hot fragment of a second that moved in bizarrely slow motion. The First Lady was leading the applause for the unveiling of the Freedom Bell. Beside her on the podium Andrea Lester was reaching in her pocket. Grace’s phone was falling from her hand as she pulled back the flap of her coat to reach for her gun. Agent O’Brien was starting to raise the detonator.

My gun was in my hand.

I could hear myself screaming but I had no idea what I was saying.

Every eye in the room was turning toward me. Agents were clawing at their guns.

I had no shot at O’Brien—the First Lady was between me and him. On the podium Andrea Lester was reaching for the President’s wife. Something flashed in her hand and I realized that she had a blade. Not steel—the Secret Service would have caught that—but probably one of the many polymer knives that were nearly as hard as steel and would never trip a metal detector.

With a scream of “Allah akbar!” she lunged at the First Lady.

I shot Andrea Lester twice in the chest. The bullets spun her away from her intended victim but the polymer knife tore a long gash in the First Lady’s sleeve.

Everyone started screaming; panic was immediate and total. I ran forward, grabbing people and hurling them out of my way as I fought to get to the podium where I could get a shot at O’Brien, who had bolted for the podium. The two agents flanking him were already moving, one of them tried to tackle him while the other stepped back and drew his sidearm. Then the crowd surged between us and I lost sight of them.

A shattering volley of gunfire erupted from the far side of the podium, and as I pushed Rudy and the secretary of the interior out of my way I saw that the agent who had drawn his weapon on O’Brien was falling backward, a bullet hole in his temple. The shot hadn’t come from O’Brien—it had come to my left. I turned and saw a gun in Ollie Brown’s hands and as I watched he swung a pistol around and fired two shots and then the throng hid him from view. Had he shot the agent? It seemed like everyone in the room had a gun and bullets burned past me. There was too much commotion to tell who was who, and I didn’t know how many people in this crowd were Brierly’s agents or members of some terrorist hit cell. It was total chaos.

I pivoted and started toward O’Brien but as I located him in the screaming crowd I saw the second agent go down, blood jutting from a slashed throat. O’Brien moved back toward the podium, the detonator still clutched in his big hand.

And suddenly I understood.

It was the bell.

“Seal the room!” I bellowed as I raised my gun once more, then I saw out of the corner of my eye that the First Lady was still on the podium. Andrea Lester was down, and one of the First Lady’s bodyguards was down; other agents were rushing the podium, guns drawn, racing to protect the President’s wife. Gunfire was coming from every point in the room and I saw agents in blue blazers shooting at civilians; I saw a man dressed in carnival pattern shorts standing guard over a pair of congressmen while nearby a Secret Service agent was trying to wrestle a plastic handgun from the hand of what looked like a news reporter. I needed to get to the top of the podium so I could see the room and try to see O’Brien so I could stop him before he pushed that button.

Grace split off to my left and vanished into the press. I saw a swarm of agents pull the First Lady down and hustle her toward the STAFF ONLY door; but in the confusion the wife of the Vice President was still there, nearly lost in the press of congressmen fighting to get away from the gunshots, her agents down and bleeding. Several people were firing now and I couldn’t tell if it was a pitched gun battle or panic shooting; then I saw an agent mount the steps to protect the VP’s wife, but a split second later he staggered and went down, his white shirtfront blooming with red. A second agent leaped up but he also took two in the chest and pirouetted into the crowd. I saw a hand holding a gun pulling back into the crowd. It was bare—no coat sleeve, just a flash of a Hawaiian shirt. One of the tourists? A reporter? Shit… how many of these bastards were in the crowd?

“Top!” I yelled when I saw him fight his way out of a knot of panicking people. “It’s O’Brien!”

He nodded and plunged into the crowd again, but there was so much resistance he made no headway. Some of the guests were trying to drop down to the floor to avoid the gunfire, but the storming crowds trampled them. I saw Rudy pushing a group of Girl Scouts into a corner to keep them from getting crushed by the rush of people. There were screams of pain interspersed with the din of the terrified crowd and the constant barrage of gunshots. I heard the distinctive commanding yells of Secret Service agents but no one was heeding their orders to drop and remain down. I had no idea where Grace or the rest of Echo Team was and I continued to fight my way toward the podium. The VP’s wife was huddled down, arms wrapped around her head, flanked on both sides by dead agents. There were hundreds of people yelling and screaming and fighting to try and get out of the Liberty Bell Center.

I caught another flash glimpse of O’Brien. He was still smiling as he raised his hand to bring the detonator up above the level of the crowd.

I had no time to think. I launched myself into the air and my shoulder caught the Vice President’s wife in the side; I wrapped my arms around her and my momentum carried us off the podium just as Michael O’Brien depressed the button.

The Freedom Bell exploded.

Chapter One Hundred Six

Gault / The Bunker

THEY CROUCHED TOGETHER in the gloom of a narrow corridor that ran inside the walls of the Bunker. LEDs set into the floor cast just enough light so they could pick their way through the darkness.

“Let’s split up,” Gault suggested. “Go to the rear hatch and make sure Captain Zeller’s team can get in. Kill anyone who gets in your way.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to the lab.”

“To do what?” Toys asked, his tone brimming with unspoken accusation. “Remember that we came here to kill her. Not to snog and make up.”

Anger flared in Gault’s chest. “Don’t tell me my business,” he snapped. “I’m tired of—”

“Tired of what, Sebastian?” Toys cut him off. “Don’t try to assert your authority over me at this late date. The time for that passed when you let your girlfriend develop a doomsday weapon.”

Gault’s pistol was in his hand, the barrel almost but not quite pointed in Toys’s direction. His assistant looked down at it, then with a smile he reached down and pushed the barrel toward him so that it pointed right at Toys’s heart. Toys leaned close, forcing contact with the gun.

“Either kill her or kill me,” Toys said calmly.

They stared at each other over the gulf that was opening between them.

“Toys… I…”

Toys pushed the gun aside. He bent forward quickly and kissed Gault on the cheek. “I love you, Sebastian. You and I are family. Remember that.”

With that he turned and vanished down the corridor, leaving Gault alone in the dark.

Chapter One Hundred Seven

The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:01 P.M.

THE OUTER COVERING of the Freedom Bell must have been a thin veneer of painted foil that covered hundreds of small ports. Deep inside the bell, in the actual metal of its body, the signal from the detonator ignited countless pockets of highly compressed gas. The whole surface of the bell disintegrated as thousands upon thousands of tiny glass darts were propelled outward with a whoosh of compressed air. No gunpowder, no nitrates: the bell itself was a giant air gun. Each dart was pointed at one end and had walls as thin as spun sugar. Half of them burst as they struck the foil layer on the outside of the bell and they discharged their contents harmlessly into the air. But the other half—maybe fifteen hundred darts in all—tore into the flesh of members of Congress and the press, stinging the hands and faces of tourists and local dignitaries and ambassadors from a dozen nations. I could feel the wave of them pass over me as I toppled to the ground with the Vice President’s wife under me. I had no idea if I’d been hit or not. Everyone was screaming. The VP’s wife shrieked in agony as we crashed onto the concrete floor.

I rolled off her and spun over into a kneeling shooter’s position. How the hell I’d held on to my gun is beyond me, but it was in my hand and I brought it up, fanning it around to find O’Brien, but he was nowhere in sight. All I could see were legs and torsos as people scattered and stumbled and fell. People kicked me as they ran and I had to scramble back from being trampled to death.

I could hear Grace’s voice, high and shrill, ordering the agents in the room to seal the doors. She knew, she understood what we were facing: all of those glass beads fired from the bell were filled with the plague. From her voice I could tell she was every bit as terrified as me.

The Seif al Din had been launched. After all we’d been through, we could lose it all right now if even one of the infected got out.

God…

“Echo Team!” I roared, and suddenly Bunny was there, his face white as paste and splashed with blood.

“Are you hit?” he yelled.

“To hell with that—we have to seal the doors!”

“It’s already done!” I heard a voice yell with enormous force and then realized it was Brierly shouting through the amplification of my earjack. “The doors are sealed. I have teams converging to reinforce us from outside.”

The crowd hit the glass walls like a wave and some of the people closest to the doors had to be crushed by the sheer violent mass. There were screams of rage and terror, and pain.

“I have the VP’s wife,” I said. “But I can’t see the First Lady, Brierly, did she get out?”

“My assistant, Colby, and a team of agents got her to the safe room,” he said. “What the hell is going on, Ledger?”

“I’m on the back side of the podium. Find me,” I said. “Now!”

As I turned to start looking for him, Bunny said, “Boss, those darts…”

“I know. Keep an eye out. If anyone starts acting twitchy you take the shot.”

I could see how the weight of what we might have to do hurt the big young man, but he nodded. I looked around and saw Rudy still with the Girl Scouts. One of them was bleeding but from that distance I couldn’t tell if it was from the darts or the panic of the crush.

“Bunny, stay with the VP’s wife,” I ordered. “And keep your eyes open for Agent O’Brien. He’s our hostile. If you see him, kill him.” I gripped his sleeve. “Bunny… did you see who Ollie was shooting at?”

“Negative. Everybody’s shooting,” he said, and as if to punctuate his comment a couple of rounds whined over his head and he flinched. The wild gunfire erupted again and the screams rose to a higher pitch.

“Just in case, don’t stand in front of him if he has a gun.”

Bunny turned to me and his eyes searched my face. “Copy that, boss.” He dropped down into a crouch over the Vice President’s wife, who was curled into a fetal ball, her face knotted with pain. Three Secret Service agents converged on him and together they formed a protective ring.

I got to my feet and saw Top and Ollie racing toward one of the doors. They were working together to prevent the crowds from getting out. Grace was already blocking the other door, her pistol out.

I saw Gus Dietrich bent over the governor of Pennsylvania, who was covered with blood. Dietrich was sheltering him with his own body and he had a smoking pistol in his hand. On the floor beside him was a Secret Service agent who had taken the blast of the glass darts full in the face. I met Dietrich’s eyes for a second and we exchanged the briefest of nods. I was conscious of the fact that several of the TV cameramen were still on their feet, their cameras mounted on their shoulders. How the hell they had kept their heads was beyond me, and I could only imagine how half the country was reacting to this. I hoped the networks had blacked it out.

I saw Brierly and grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him against the podium. There were no more gunshots but the air was still torn by screams and yells. We had to bend close and shout in each other’s ear.

“Why the hell did you shoot that woman?” he demanded, and I was conscious of the fact that his pistol was half turned toward me. I batted it aside.

“Andrea Lester was a traitor and a terrorist sympathizer. She rigged her own bell to fire those darts.” I pulled him closer. “She’s working with El Mujahid, and your agent, O’Brien, is one of them. He set off the device.”

That hit him hard. “My… God! We screened her, she was cleared to be here.”

“These guys must have had inside help. Trust no one right now.”

“Inside—?”

“No time for that. Listen to me and listen close. The darts from the Bell… they contain the infectious agent Grace told you about. You know Ebola? This is a hundred times worse.” I pulled his ear to within an inch of my mouth. “If one single person gets out of this room we’ll have a worldwide plague on our hands. There is no cure.” I said that slowly, punctuating each word. “Believe it.”

Brierly’s face twisted into a mask of such utter horror that I thought he was going to scream. Then he ducked as bullets struck the plastic walls around the Liberty Bell. I turned and saw someone dressed like a Philly cop pointing his pistol at us. He fired again and I pushed Brierly out of the way and returned fire. The fake cop pitched back.

I said, “Contact your men outside. Nobody leaves this building. Nobody! We’re going to need troops and a class-A biohazard team.”

He licked his lips, blinking several times as the devastating news sank in, and then I saw the man behind the bureaucrat take over. “Christ, I hope you’re wrong about this, Ledger.”

“I wish I was,” I said. “But I’m not.”

Brierly tapped his mike and began rapping out a series of curt commands. He ordered that all teams seal and defend every exit in the building, and he reinforced that to include exits that led off from the offices and rooms beyond the STAFF ONLY. “Hummingbird is to be located and secured.” Hummingbird was the code name for the First Lady. Junebug was the VP’s wife. When he got confirmations he turned to me.

“Okay, the First Lady is in the safe room. The VP’s wife is being guarded by one of your men and three of my agents. We’ll move her to the safe room in a bit.” He looked marginally relieved.

“Brierly, you need to make sure everyone understands that we can’t let anyone out of here. Not even the President’s wife.”

He stared at me, torn by his responsibility to protect his charges and the greater reality of the plague. Finally he nodded and keyed his mike. “This is Director Linden Brierly. This is an all-stations alert. On presidential orders no one is to leave this building. No exceptions. Repeat and confirm.” All posts confirmed, but I could imagine a lot of them were either scratching their heads or getting really spooked. “You’d better be right about this.”

I left him to his job and went to try and find O’Brien but I couldn’t see him anywhere. The gunfire was dwindling now, just sporadic shots interspersed with yells and screams.

Movement to my right made me turn and Grace was there, with Top right behind her, both with guns drawn. Grace had blood on her clothes but when she saw my expression she glanced down at her clothes then met my eyes. She shook her head. “There was a young woman standing right in front of me,” she said, and left it there.

The gunfire stopped but the crowd was still surging back and forth like frightened animals in a pen.

“Grace… we have to calm these people down!”

“I’m on it,” she said and spun off, calling to Top and Dietrich and soon they were moving like bulls through the crowd, shoving people back, yelling orders to everyone, grabbing Secret Service agents and putting them to work. Skip Tyler was near the back wall, reloading his gun.

“Skip,” I said as I rushed over, “help me find O’Brien.”

“The red-haired guy? He went through there a second ago.” He pointed to the STAFF ONLY door that was tucked into a corner. We raced over but the door was locked from the other side.

“You sure he went this way?”

“Yeah, him and Ollie followed a whole bunch of Secret Service agents who were hustling the First Lady into the safe room.” He looked confused. “That was the protocol, right?”

“Son of a bitch,” I snarled and kicked the door in. “Skip, guard this door. Get Grace or Top to give me some backup, but nobody else gets in. You hear me? Nobody. I’m counting on you to hold this line.”

The young sailor gave me a serious nod and took up a defensive stance. “You got it, Captain.”

I ran through the doorway.

Chapter One Hundred Eight

Gault and Amirah / The Bunker

GAULT OPENED A slit in a wall panel and peered through it and almost gasped. Amirah was not five feet from him. Below her the nurses had nearly completed the injections.

He steeled himself and aimed his pistol through the gap and put the red dot of his laser, light as a whisper, on Amirah’s back, right between her shoulders. One shot from this distance would punch through her spine, tear through her heart, and burst from between her breasts to leave a gaping red hole the size of a golf ball. One flex of his finger and the traitorous bitch would be dead. He could do it. He knew he could.

Damn you, Amirah, he said, and without meaning to he mentally added, my love.

Tears jeweled his vision, warping her with prismatic distortion. The barrel of the pistol wavered. His assault team would be entering the cave any moment and Toys would lead them here. Gault shivered, partly at the thought of the firestorm Captain Zeller would be unleashing here in the Bunker, and partly at the thought of Toys’s transformation. Had his assistant actually changed that much or had Gault been blind all these years to the scorpion he kept by his side?

The seconds ticked away. Soon the whole Bunker would be a hell of bullets and blood. Soon everyone would be dead. Amirah, too, whether he killed her himself or not. His orders to Zeller had been specific. Kill everyone, no exceptions.

Amirah.

God.

Tears broke and rolled down his cheeks and before he could stop it a single, heartbroken sob escaped his throat. He saw Amirah stiffen, but she did not turn, and Gault forced his hands to steady, to hold the red pinprick of the laser sight on her back. Be a fucking man, he snarled inwardly.

Amirah.

And then she spoke.

“Sebastian,” she said.

Amirah turned without haste to face him. Her head was bowed, looking down to see the red laser dot on her chest, wavering right over her heart. She raised her head slowly.

Gault felt a cold hand reach into his own chest and squeeze his heart to a tiny block of ice. Amirah’s eyes were wide and glassy, bright with fever. She reached a hand up to the front of her chadri, gathered the black cloth in her fingers, and slowly pulled the scarf down to reveal her smiling mouth. Her lovely olive skin had paled to a sickly sand color, almost gray, and her full lips were stained with fresh blood.

“Sebastian,” she said softly as her lips peeled back from her teeth in a snarl of vicious animal hunger.

“My God.” Gault recoiled in horror. “What have you done?”

Amirah advanced toward the wall and even through the narrow opening of the observation slit he could smell her. A fetid, rotting-meat stink that rolled off her like the perfume of hell.

“Seif al Din,” she whispered, leaning to peer in through the slit.

“You’re infected!” His gun hand was shaking so bad that he almost dropped the weapon. Sweat burst from his pores and his pulse snapped like firecrackers. “What have you done?” he asked again in a terrified whisper.

She shook her head, still smiling. “No, Sebastian, I’m not infected. I’m reborn. I’m more alive now than I ever imagined.”

“This will kill you!”

She shook her head again. “The pathogen is no longer fatal… I’ve perfected it. You only saw Generation Seven.” She giggled. “That one scared you, Sebastian. You almost screamed like a woman.” Amirah wiped drool from her lips. “By now my lovely El Mujahid should have launched Generation Ten on the American people. They will be dying soon, Sebastian. All of them. Seif al Din is so quick.” She snapped her fingers in front of the slot and Gault jumped.

“Generation Ten? You’re insane!”

“I’m immortal,” she countered. “You see… we had a breakthrough, Sebastian. We’ve been working so hard for so long, and you thought we were plodding along with Generation Three. But, oh… Generation Ten is immediate. The body reanimates immediately. No lag time, no time to quarantine the infected. Generation Ten is the perfect plague.”

“Perfect?” The word was like bile in his mouth.

She ignored him, totally rapt by her discoveries. “But we went further still. Generation Eleven was a disappointment, but, oh… Generation Twelve!” She drew the word out, filling it with wonder and with threat. “We broke through into an entirely new area of science. It’s what I’ve been laboring on for the last year while you left me here in this bunker. The killer pathogen was developed to Generation Ten before you even knew of the second generation.” She laughed at the look of shocked hurt on his face. “We had the plague but we couldn’t use it until we had the cure. And now… Oh, Sebastian, it’s a fire in my blood! I can feel it moving through me.”

“You… used it on yourself! You’ve turned yourself into one of those damned monsters…”

“Do I look like a monster?” she said. She stepped back from the slot and cupped her breasts through her robes. “Do you think I’m a monster, Sebastian?”

“God…”

Amirah’s face instantly changed and she whipped her hands away from her breasts and slapped them against the wall on either side of the slot. It was like an entirely different personality had shoved itself into place behind her dark eyes. “God? How dare you even mention Him! Your god is money, you worthless piece of shit.”

Gault recoiled and raised the pistol.

“You don’t even understand what it means to worship God. You couldn’t know, Sebastian, what it feels like to feel Him in every thought, every breath, to hear His words flowing over the desert sands. You pretended to read the writings of the Prophet to fool El Mujahid, but you lacked even the depth of understanding to let those words enter your soul! You think you made me into your whore? Do you think that I would truly betray my husband, my people, my faith, for you?” She spat at him and he dodged away, terrified of what might be in that sputum. He swung the pistol up and put the dot of the laser sight on her forehead where it glowed like an Indian bindhi.

“I loved you,” he said weakly. And then his mind replayed those words and he realized that he had said “loved,” not “love.” It nearly broke him. In his mind’s eye he saw himself turning away from her and bringing the barrel of his pistol up to his own temple. Better to snuff out that loss than endure its absence.

But although his hands trembled the gun did not move.

Amirah ignored it. “Have you figured it out yet? You must have or why else would you be here, Sebastian?” She was using his name like a whip and each time it stung him. “You think you found us, but we had been looking for you for years. Not specifically you—you’re just not that important—no, we were looking for any faithless greedy dog who had the resources you have. It was so easy!” She laughed and shook her head, delighting in the pain she caused him. “It was so easy to lure you with covert hints through your network of spies, to draw you to us step by step, to stage things so that you always felt that you were in control when all the time this was a plan my husband and I had made. Yes… my husband. El Mujahid, the greatest of God’s warriors on Earth. A true soldier of the Faith, a man who lives the words of the Prophet every minute of every day.”

“But… you… we…”

She spat again, but this time on the floor. “What? We made love? Is that what you were going to say?” Her voice made the words intensely ugly. “I’m not a man, Sebastian. I can’t go into battle with guns and knives like my husband and his soldiers. I’m a woman and I am forced to use other weapons… no matter how utterly disgusting and humiliating it has been to open my body to you.”

“No,” Gault snapped back, anger flaring. “I know you loved me. I know.”

He saw the mad look in her eyes flicker and for a second that other personality, the dreamy one, seemed to drift back. And Gault knew—knew for sure—that he saw the fires of love still there. Or maybe it was only the embers, for in the next moment the hard and murderous personality reemerged.

“Each day I get down on my knees to beg forgiveness from Allah for what I have done, even though it is His will and serves His ends. You made me a whore in the eyes of God, Sebastian. How many deaths does that earn you?”

Behind Amirah there was a strange sound. The gathered scientists and technicians were all jabbering loudly, some in shocked protest, others in fury. Amirah stepped back to allow Gault to see what was happening.

“They think we have an antidote,” she said softly as below more than two thirds of the crowd were sinking down to their knees or collapsing onto tables. “They think we are all safe from Seif al Din.”

“What have you done?”

She turned to him. “I gave my best people—a few fighters, a few scientists—Generation Twelve. Like me.” She raised her arm and pulled back her sleeve to show the needle mark on her arm. From the dark pinprick black lines of infection radiated out like a dark spider-web.

“You’ve killed your own people.”

“Oh no… not all. The rest of them were given Generation Ten, and soon I’ll open the Bunker doors and they’ll spread out across Arabia like the plague they are. The Great Satan does not have enough bullets to stop the waves of them that will come.”

“You’re insane! You’ve doomed us all.”

But Amirah shook her head. “No… Generation Twelve is different. We don’t die like they do. We… ascend. I’ve already ascended. I died without dying, Sebastian, but I suffered no brain death, no loss of brain or motor function, no loss of intellect. I am me, Amirah, scientist, wife of El Mujahid, loyal handmaiden to Allah, a servant of the word of the Prophet… but now I cannot ever die. I’ve been reborn, you see. Seif al Din has cut through me like a purifying scythe. My sins, my earthly attachments have been carved away by the Sword of the Faithful. What remains is pure. What remains is the instrument of God on Earth.”

“Oh… Amirah… my princess,” Gault murmured, tears cascading down his cheeks. “What have you done? What have you done…?”

“Beginning today thousands of doses of Generation Twelve will be sent from here to those fighters who have proven their faith. Once they have ascended they will share the gift with their families and their most trusted friends, and then we will sit back and watch the rest of the godless world devour itself!”

“I won’t let you!”

Amirah reached out to grasp the lip of the observation slit. She pulled herself close and whispered like a child conveying a great secret. “I know everything about the Bunker, Sebastian. Everything. I know all your secrets.”

Gault stared at her, puzzled, and then he heard the slow scuff of shambling feet in the darkness of the corridor behind him.

Chapter One Hundred Nine

The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:04 P.M.

AS SOON AS I was inside the sound of chaos diminished and I crept into a long, darkened corridor that led, I knew, into a maze of offices and workrooms. The center wasn’t that big but there were still a hundred places someone could hide. I moved forward through several rooms, encountering one locked door after another. It would be suicide to kick each door, but these were interior locks and I could trip most of them with a stiff piece of plastic. I used my Barnes & Noble member card. It was slow going, searching and clearing every room without backup. I wondered what was taking Skip so damn long to send someone after me.

I was hoping that O’Brien and Ollie had tried to make a run at the First Lady and had been cut down by Colby and his team. Agents on the Presidential Detail are incredibly tough and resourceful. But with every step my hopes diminished. I didn’t know who or what O’Brien was, but if Brierly was right and Ollie was a top CIA killer, then this was exactly his sort of operation: a hunt-and-kill.

What confused me was the fact that Brierly did not seem to be our man. Having spoken with him and seen him in action I could not believe that he was any part of the chaos back in the hall; and yet Ollie had been with O’Brien. And someone had fired those shots that saved O’Brien. Very accurate shooting in a hysterical situation, which showed professional calm.

I stopped when I saw a splash of blood on the floor. Very fresh. Creeping forward I found more, and then a place where feet had scuffed in the blood. Two sets of shoes. A scuffle? Had someone else come in following O’Brien and Ollie and been ambushed by them, or had the two traitors had a falling-out?

Then it occurred to me that one of them might have become infected. What if the walker plague had turned one of them into a monster? Was I chasing two armed men or one man and a zombie? Or two zombies? The thought chilled me.

“Joe?”

Grace’s voice in my earjack made me jump and I faded to one side and crouched down behind the open door of a mop closet, pistol aimed into the darkness.

“Joe… where are you?”

“I’m inside the center,” I whispered. “O’Brien came in here with Ollie Brown. I’m following a blood trail but no sign of them yet. I could use some backup.”

“Top Sims is on his way in with Skip. I have two other agents on the door.”

“Good. What’s the situation outside?”

“It’s bad. We’re getting the crowd quieted down, but I think some of them are already infected. Several people are showing signs of sickness. I have our people going through the crowd and separating out anyone who was hit by those darts.”

“Grace… if they start to turn…”

“I know, Joe,” she said in a voice that was hard but scared. We were both thinking about St. Michael’s, but this was much worse. Members of Congress were here, and the VP’s wife; and on both sides of the glass were TV cameras. “I called Church and he had the President order an immediate media blackout. Church said that the President has declared a state of emergency for the Philadelphia metropolitan area. Oh God!”

Through the mike I could hear a fresh wave of screams.

And then gunfire.

Then nothing as Grace’s link went dead.

“Grace…” I said into the silent link. I wanted to run back. I needed to go forward. I was totally torn.

I heard a muffled sound behind me and whirled, but it was one of the Secret Service agents standing in the shadow of an open doorway. I recognized him. Agent Colby, Brierly’s second in command. I could see a couple of other agents behind him.

“God, am I glad to see you. Is that the safe room? Is the First Lady okay?”

Colby took a step into the hallway and smiled.

But it wasn’t a smile.

His lips peeled back from his teeth and bloody drool dripped from his mouth. With a feral growl like a hunting cat Colby and the other agents rushed me.

Chapter One Hundred Ten

The Bunker

ABDUL STEPPED INTO the hall, his automatic rifle ready. He was happy to be away from the hall where all sense and reason seemed to have fled. Though he understood the plan El Mujahid and Amirah had devised he still thought it was insane. It did not fit with his understanding of the Koran; but there was nothing he could do about it. He knew enough about the Seif al Din to realize that Amirah was distributing two different versions of it, one to the general staff and another to the more valuable team members. Anah, Amirah’s assistant, had tried to give him a shot but he’d fended her off, not wanting any part of this.

He was almost happy when the alarms rang, warning of an intrusion at the rear hatch.

The monitors were offline but Abdul had a good idea what was happening. Gault was not fool enough to have come here alone. So Abdul sent a team of soldiers to the hatch to intercept whatever backup the infidel had brought with him. Now he was hurrying that way himself to take charge of the situation.

He switched off the safety and took a more comfortable grip on his weapon as he stepped through a portal from the side corridor to the one that led to the hatch.

Toys stepped out from behind a stack of crates and put the barrel of his pistol against the back of Abdul’s head.

“Shhhhh,” Toys said with a smile.

Chapter One Hundred Eleven

The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:05 P.M.

COLBY CAME AT me with incredible speed, reaching with hooked fingers, teeth snapping at me while he was still two yards away. Even with everything that had happened—everything that was still happening—it took me totally off guard. I brought my gun up but not in time as he leaped in and drove me back against the wall. The other agents were three steps behind him.

My back slammed into the wall and for a fragment of a second the thought I’m dead flashed through my mind; but even as I was thinking that my body was moving. Years of conditioning make the limbs move at the reflexive level, and it was all of those years of drills, of repetitive movements, that saved me. But it was so close.

As I hit the wall my hips turned to the left and I slammed the butt of my pistol into Colby’s temple. It made his mass turn with mine and we rolled down the wall together, turn after vertical turn, putting distance between us and the other walkers. When we hit the doorway we jolted to a stop and I rammed the barrel of the .45 into Colby’s mouth, and even as he bit down on it I pulled the trigger. The big hollow-point blew out the back of his head and punched a hole the size of a nickel through the forehead of the agent right behind him. Both of them were instantly dead, but the sudden drop of Colby’s body coupled with the locked teeth around the pistol jerked the weapon out of my hand.

I pushed myself away and dodged instantly to my left as a third walker lunged over the corpses of his fellows. His arms closed around empty space.

There were three more of them—four in all. The one who had jumped at me had fallen forward. He made a grab for my ankle but I rushed forward to meet the attack of the next closest walker.

Even as I closed the short six-foot distance I whipped the folding RRF knife from its pocket holster and with a flick snapped the blade into place. The motion took a fraction of a second and as the lead walker hit me I spun away like a ballet dancer but at the end of the pirouette I ducked low and slashed him across the back of the knee. The RRF was wickedly sharp and the creature’s tendons parted like old string. As he staggered and went down I shoved him toward the second walker and lunged past their colliding bodies and slammed into the third, using a hard palm at the end of a stiffened arm to drive him back; then I ducked under his outstretched arms, avoiding his snapping teeth, and came up behind him. I grabbed his hair with my left hand and slammed the point of the knife up into the sweet spot—the arched opening at the base of the skull. The blade pierced the spinal cord and the walker shuddered to a stop and instantly fell forward.

The walker who’d tried to grab me after I’d killed Colby was scuttling forward now, running at me low and fast. I used my knife arm to parry his reaching arms and sidestepped like a bullfighter, then brought the RRF up and over and down and buried the entire blade in the wind-gate, the soft spot at the top of the skull. I gave the blade a brutal half turn and yanked it up, sidestepping to avoid the arching spray of blood and brain tissue.

That left two.

The one I’d crippled was crawling along the floor toward me but the other was up and running at me. When he was two paces out I stepped in and to the side so that his mass missed me by half an inch. Again I changed my step into a pivot and came up behind him and tried for the sweet spot again, but the hair was greasy with gel and he slipped away with my blade stuck into the solid bone of his skull. His twist wrenched the handle out of my hand and it wasn’t worth fighting for, so I let it go and wrapped my arm around his throat and gave him a reverse hip throw. When you’re facing forward it’s a hard fall but not fatal; when the thrower is back to back with the person he’s trying to throw then all of the hundreds of pounds of force are trapped in the weakest body point. His neck snapped like a bundle of wet sticks.

The last walker was crawling forward, but I jumped over his arms and came down on the small of his back. The vertebrae cracked audibly. He flopped down, dead from the waist down. I couldn’t leave him like that so I recovered the RRF. This time there was no way for the walker to twist away as my blade found its target and shut him off.

Chapter One Hundred Twelve

Grace / The Bell Chamber / Saturday, July 4; 12:05 P.M.

ONE MOMENT GRACE was speaking to Joe via commlink and then next the air around her was whining with bullets. A reporter was blasted backward as a bullet punched through his chest and he knocked Grace back and down. As she fell she saw three men separate themselves from the crowd. Each of them had guns and she recognized the weapons as the high-density plastic handguns that terrorists used to sneak through airport metal detectors. Probably firing ceramic rounds. No metal at all, she thought as she pushed the dead reporter off her and drew her weapon.

The foremost of the three gunmen saw her and raised his weapon but Grace gave him a double tap—chest and head—and flung him back against the wall. She swung her gun to the second killer just as two figures came suddenly in from the killers’ blind side. Gus Dietrich took the left-hand gunman out with three quick shots: two to the middle of his back and one to the back of his head. Next to him, Bunny appeared, no weapon in his hand, but he didn’t need one for the other killer: he chopped down on the man’s wrist with a balled fist, knocking the gun to the floor, then grabbed him by throat and crotch and slammed him into a corner of the Liberty Bell display case. He stepped back to let the broken body drop.

Then a fourth man stepped out of the crowd of tourists and pointed a polymer pistol at the back of Bunny’s head. Grace didn’t bother to call a warning; she put two rounds in the man and he spun away trailing blood. Bunny threw her a grim nod and scooped up the man’s plastic pistol.

Then the rest of the Secret Service agents were there.

“There are still hostiles in the crowd,” Grace yelled. “Search everyone.”

The agents moved very fast, and they plowed into the crowd, gruffly shoving congressmen and tourists alike. They found one final hostile, a trembling young man dressed like a Japanese tourist. He managed to get his pistol into his mouth before the agents could tackle him. The blast took off the top of his head.

Rudy pushed his way through the crowd toward Grace.

“Are you all right—?” she began, but he interrupted.

“Grace… some of these people are getting sick. It’s happening already… faster than before. We have to do something. We have to separate them before this becomes another St. Michael’s.”

As he spoke one of the reporters staggered forward and dropped to his knees and vomited. He looked up at them with a fevered face and eyes that were already becoming glassy. The man reached out a desperate claw of a hand toward them. “Help… me…”

Chapter One Hundred Thirteen

The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:07 P.M.

I WIPED MY knife and slid it back into its pocket clip then retrieved my gun and cleaned it quickly on Colby’s tie. I had no idea how many agents had gone with the First Lady. Was there a chance she was safe somewhere? Would we get that much of a break?

I tapped my ear mike but there was nothing, not even static. It must have been damaged when I’d hit the wall. I was alone.

I was also furious with myself for not having brought a stronger force here to Philly; or maybe for not pressuring Church into canceling the event. We’d both looked at this as a likely scenario and we’d still allowed it go forward. I realized as I thought these things that this was one of the aftershocks of 9/11. For a while after that everything that could draw a crowd was canceled, but then our culture moved on and there were no more attacks. We became complacent. Maybe we even thought that, against all evidence, we really had Al Qaeda on the run and that we’d taken the fight so effectively to them that we could settle back into normal life here in the States.

Today we were paying the price for complacence. Did the blame belong to me? Church? Or was this a cultural failing? If I lived through the day I’d have to take a closer look at those questions; but social philosophy doesn’t help you in the heat of a firefight, so I pressed on.

There was still no sign of backup coming for me, but I couldn’t wait. I crept forward, going room by darkened room. I tried light switches in the hallway and in several rooms but got nothing. Someone must have thrown the circuit breakers. The only light was the dim red glow of emergency lamps. I had to check every locked room, every closet to see if I could locate the First Lady, or Agent O’Brien, and throughout I could feel a hot spot between my eyes as if Ollie Brown was laying his laser sight on me and waiting for the right moment to punch my ticket.

Five rooms in I heard wet sounds coming from the far side of a row of desks. I knew what those sounds would be and I really didn’t want to look; but I had no choice. Taking a fresh grip on my .45 I rounded the desks on the balls of my feet.

There were three of them on their knees, heads bent forward, like lions around a zebra carcass. Only the carcass was that of a Secret Service agent and the lions were office workers—two women and a man wearing business casual and sporting Liberty Bell Center IDs around their necks. Their hands and mouths were black with blood.

Bile rose in my throat and I gagged. Just a tiny sound, just enough so that their heads snapped up like the wary predators they were. The closest of them, a woman, hissed at me.

I shot her in the head. The impact flung her back and she toppled over the dead agent in a perverse imitation of intimacy.

The other two rose up and lunged but I was ready.

Two shots, two kills.

I stared at the bodies, and then at the dead agent. His throat had been savaged. Would he reanimate, or was this beyond the pathogen’s wound-repair mechanism? I pointed my gun at his head and just as my finger was tightening around the trigger I heard three separate sounds at the same moment.

From far behind me I heard Top Sims calling my name. At my feet I heard the first feeble twitch as some new and monstrous force fired the engines that would raise this fallen hero up as an undead killer. And up ahead I heard the First Lady scream.

Chapter One Hundred Fourteen

Gault and Amirah / The Bunker

GAULT WHIRLED AND pointed his pistol into the shadows. Five figures crowded the narrow corridor, their bare feet scuffing the floor. In the pale glow of the LED panels their faces were a ghostly white, but their eyes and mouths were as black as sin.

He recognized one of the monsters: Khalid, the soldier who had been the first of El Mujahid’s men to take Gault’s money for personal services. Gault had liked him. The man had always been tough and crafty, but now he merely looked dead. His skin hung slack on his skull and his mouth sagged open to utter a moan of mindless need.

“I’m sorry,” Gault whispered. His first shot took Khalid in the shoulder and spun him around so that his outstretched hands slapped the second zombie across the face. If Gault had watched the scene in a movie it would have been comical, a dark slapstick; but this was no zombie comedy, no BBC pantomime. This was death. This was horror.

The creatures behind Khalid pushed him forward so that he kept moving toward Gault even though he was facing the wrong direction, like flotsam on a current that flowed from the bowels of hell. Gault gagged and fired again. Khalid’s face disintegrated and he collapsed. Two others stumbled over him, falling down to crack bones on the hard concrete. Gault shot them each in the head; but the final two were already climbing over them, their mouths working as the scent of blood filled the air.

He fired and fired and fired. Behind him, through the narrow observation slit in the wall, he heard Amirah’s mad laughter.

Chapter One Hundred Fifteen

Grace / The Bell Chamber / Saturday, July 4; 12:11 P.M.

“FOR GOD’S SAKE… help me!” The junior senator from the state of Alabama raised his head and stared pleadingly at Grace Courtland. His skin had already turned from a healthy tan to the color of old parchment. There were two puncture marks on his cheek from where a pair of the glass darts had struck him.

Grace raised her pistol and pointed it at him. “Get against the wall, sir,” she said tightly.

“I… don’t feel…” He shook his head as if trying to clear muddy thoughts. “I’m… sick…”

“Sir… for the love of God, please get against the wall with the others.”

Behind her a woman’s voice slashed the air. “Agent… what the hell do you think you’re doing? Lower your weapon immediately.” It was not the first time the Vice President’s wife had yelled at her in the last few minutes. Grace stood her ground.

The room was silent except for sobs from the wounded. Grace, Bunny, Dietrich, and Brierly had worked through the crowd, separating out anyone who had been stung by the darts. Over sixty people, all of them sick and shivering with fever, were huddled together in a cluster by the wall farthest from the STAFF ONLY door. Rudy moved among them making quick and purely visual assessments of them. His face was rigid with shock. A line of Secret Service agents, fifteen of them, stood with their pistols pointed at the sick and wounded, but even the toughest agents among them looked confused and frightened. Outside, on the other side of the thick glass walls, the National Guard were setting up machine gun emplacements, and the sky above Independence Mall was filled with army gunships.

Things had started brewing to a panic and so Grace had climbed to the top of the podium and fired a shot into the ceiling to get them to listen. “Listen to me!” she shouted.

Bunny and Dietrich took up positions around the base of the podium, their guns at the ready. The fifteen remaining Secret Service agents stood in a line between the infected and the rest, their faces showing the terrible doubt and conflict they each felt.

In a few short sentences Grace told everyone that the Freedom Bell had been rigged by terrorists and that anyone who had been struck by the darts was likely to become infected with a highly contagious disease. That helped with the separation as the uninjured moved quickly away from them. The disease, she told them, would cause erratic and violent behavior. As she spoke she looked for signs of infection in anyone who had not admitted to having been stung.

That’s when Audrey Collins, the VP’s wife, had suddenly spoken up to champion the cause of the infected. Collins was a thin woman with a hatchet face and fierce blue eyes, and despite the agony from three cracked ribs, she managed to muster enough personal power to take a commanding position in the conflict. “You will lower your weapon, Agent, or so help me God, I will make sure that you are punished to the fullest extent of the law.”

Grace stepped down from the podium, and Dietrich turned and brought his gun up to cover the infected junior senator. Grace said, “Ma’am, you have to be quiet and let us do our jobs—”

Collins cut her off. “Do you know who I am?”

“Yes, ma’am, I know who you are and I know full well that your husband can have me jailed, deported, and probably stood against a wall and shot… but right now I am trying to save the lives of most of the people in this room and probably all of the people in this country. If you interfere with me or prevent me from doing what I have to do I will knock you on your ass.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

Grace took a step closer and the savage look in her eyes was so ferocious that the people who had gathered behind the VP’s wife faded back, leaving the woman alone with Grace.

“Ma’am, if you do anything—anything—to try and stop me I’ll put you against the wall with them. Believe me, you don’t want me to do that.”

“Ma’am,” said Rudy, stepping up beside Grace. “I implore you to listen.”

“Slow down here, Major,” Brierly said, coming up on Grace’s other side. “Everyone’s scared here.”

The remaining Presidential Detail agents milled uncertainly near Mrs. Collins. Brierly had briefed them and had even channeled the President himself on to the team’s command link. The President’s voice had been trembling with fear and rage but he had been clear: Grace Courtland was in charge. Even so, threats to their principal went against all of their training.

“No one more than me, sir,” Grace said, but her eyes locked on the VP’s wife. “But this is not something I can back down on. You know that.”

Bunny moved to Grace’s right with a good shooter’s angle to the presidential agents.

“Mrs. Collins…?” implored the junior senator.

Audrey Collins, apart from being married to the Vice President, was a career politician in her own right and she was used to giving orders rather than taking them. But for all her bluster she was no fool. She shifted her furious stare from Grace and looked at the young senator; and changed her expression from anger to wretched concern.

“Do what the major says, Tom,” she said to the frightened congressman. “Everything will be okay.”

She turned to Grace and the look they shared insisted that nothing was going to be okay. Not now, and maybe not ever. “If you’re wrong about this,” said Mrs. Collins, “I’ll—”

“I’m not,” Grace interrupted. Then she softened her own expression. “Thank you.”

“Fuck you,” said the Vice President’s wife.

Grace almost smiled, but then someone screamed.

“My God! She’s biting him!”

Everyone turned toward the wall, to where the anchorwoman for the local ABC affiliate was hunched over the unconscious body of a tourist in a Hawaiian shirt. The anchorwoman, a petite blonde with sculpted nails and Prada shoes, was chewing on the tourist’s arm.

“No,” Bunny said. “Come on… no!”

“God help us all,” Grace said and raised her gun.

What happened next was unspeakable.

Chapter One Hundred Sixteen

The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:12 P.M.

THERE WAS NO time to think. I put a shot into the head of the agent and spun on my heel before he flopped back against the ground, sprinting in the direction of the scream. That wasn’t the hunting-cat screech of a walker—it was filled with very human terror. I just hoped it wasn’t her last scream.

Screw caution—I ran. I tore through room after room. Twice white-faced figures lunged at me out of the shadows and each time I put them down with single shots without breaking stride. I could still hear voices behind. Top and Skip calling my name. They were smart enough to follow the trail of bodies.

The First Lady screamed again, just ahead, on the other side of a closed door.

I hit the door with a jumping kick that tore it off its hinges. The door crashed onto a walker and crushed him underneath. I leaped into the room, taking in the scene as I landed in a combat crouch.

The First Lady was huddled in the corner of an office cubicle. Her Secret Service detail had been slaughtered. Only one agent remained and there was a crowd of seven walkers trying to bring him down. The agent was bleeding from half a dozen bites and his face was white with pain and panic. Two of the walkers were the last remaining agents; the rest were employees of the Liberty Bell Center. No sign of Ollie or O’Brien.

I opened fire and took one of the walkers in the back of the neck. He crashed forward and dragged down two others as he fell.

“Help!” the First Lady screamed. “Oh God, please help us!”

The nearest walkers had turned toward me at the sound of my shot and they rushed me. I shot one but then there was a blast from behind me and the walker to my right pitched back with a gaping hole in his temple.

“On your six!” I heard Top growl and then he and Skip were rushing the group of walkers from either flank. Top used double taps each time, stalling them with a chest shot and then putting one through the brain. Skip’s shots were more random and he hit walkers over and over again in the body, wasting shots.

“Head shots, goddamn it!” Top yelled at him and blew away a walker that was rushing at Skip from his left.

The remaining Secret Service agent fired his last shot, a wild blast that nearly hit Top, and then the last walker tackled him so that they fell into the cubicle, crashing down at the First Lady’s feet. She screamed but then she snatched a laptop off the desk and used it to beat in the back of the walker’s head. None of us could take a shot because she was so close, and she laid into the monster with a will, her fear becoming fury. The walker shivered and collapsed into a terminal stillness. Beneath him the agent groaned and reached out an imploring hand to her.

“Roger!” she said and reached for him.

“No!” I yelled and darted forward to slap her hand away. “Don’t! He’s infected.”

Around us the room became unnaturally still as the gunshot echoes faded. The only sound was a painful wheeze from Roger, the wounded agent.

“I’m… sorry, ma’am,” he said, struggling to get the words out.

The First Lady looked at me. “Help him, for God’s sake!”

I stepped between her and Roger, then squatted down and offered him my left hand. He closed his hand around it with ferocious desperation as if it was a lifeline that could pull him up from hell. “Listen to me,” I said gently. “Your name’s Roger?”

“Agent… Roger Jefferson.”

“I’m Joe Ledger. Listen, Roger… there’s been an outbreak. A plague. You understand? From the Freedom Bell.”

He nodded. His breathing was getting worse.

“That’s what happened to your men. One or more of them must have been exposed. It… changes people.”

He nodded again. “I… saw. Barney… Linus… all of them. God…”

“I’m sorry, man.”

“Is… is she…?” He turned his head, looking for the First Lady, but I don’t think he could see her anymore.

The First Lady put a hand on my shoulder and leaned over. “Roger. I’m right here.”

“Are… are you… all…?”

“I’m fine, Roger. You didn’t let them get me.”

Roger smiled and his eyes drifted shut, but his grip was still strong. He whispered something that I had to bend close to hear.

“Cap’n,” warned Top.

Roger said, “I… saw how it works.” Blood seeped from the corners of his mouth. “You do… what you have to do.”

“I will,” I promised. “Rest easy, Roger. You saved the First Lady.”

With his last strength he gave me a trembling smile. “All… part of the job.” He tried to laugh but there was not enough left of him and he settled back.

“Get her out of here,” I said to Top. “Do it now.”

“What do you mean?” she protested as Top closed in. “We can’t just leave him here.”

“Ma’am,” Top said, “you saw what happens. Let the captain do what he has to do. It’s the best thing… it’s best for Roger.”

“Top… get her out now!”

The First Lady straightened her back and though tears flowed down her face she walked away with great dignity. I hadn’t voted for her husband, but I sure as hell admired her.

When they were out of the room I disengaged my hand from Roger’s slack grip. I reached over and took a cushion off the nearest chair and put it over his face. I was counting seconds. I felt the first twitch in less than forty seconds since his last breath and I put the barrel of my gun against the pad and fired. Maybe it was because the pad would muffle the shot and make it easier for the First Lady, or maybe it was because it would cover his face and grant him a slice of dignity. Or maybe it was that I couldn’t bear to see another good man become one of those things. Probably all three.

I stood up and looked at Skip. The young sailor wouldn’t meet my eyes. He just turned away and I followed him out of the cubicle and into the next room. The First Lady was sitting on a leather office chair and Top had brought her a cup of water from a nearby cooler. She sipped it and when she saw me she just stared at me, her expression un-readable.

The office was big and looked to be the graphic arts department for the center, with worktables, advertising sketches pinned to the walls, and machines for printing posters. Two offices led off from the main room, both with doors that stood ajar. I had just opened my mouth to order Skip to check them out when two figures stepped out of the shadows of the left-hand office. They came in quick and they had guns in their hands.

Ollie Brown and Special Agent Michael O’Brien.

Chapter One Hundred Seventeen

Grace / The Bell Chamber / Saturday, July 4; 12:13 P.M.

“MAJOR… WATCH!” BUNNY yelled, and Grace whirled just as the anchorwoman for Channels 6 News leaped at her from the podium. The anchor’s skin was wax-white and her eyes as round and empty as silver dollars, but she growled with hunger as she lunged for Grace’s throat.

“Bloody hell!” Grace shot the woman twice in the face. Blood splattered the faces of the three snarling figures that were mounting the steps behind her.

“What the hell are you doing?” screamed Mrs. Collins, and she made a grab for Grace’s gun arm and succeeded in pulling it down so that the next round chopped a divot out of the marble floor and ricocheted up to punch a red hole through the thigh of the Canadian ambassador. The ambassador dropped with a shriek of pain and instantly two of the walkers leaped from the podium and pounced on him. Grace wrestled with the Vice President’s wife, who had a surprising amount of wiry strength and in the end she had to let go with her left hand and chop Mrs. Collins on the side of the neck. It dropped the woman to her knees and Grace tore her gun arm free just as the third walker dove at her. Grace put two rounds in him and the corpse skidded to a stop inches from Mrs. Collins.

IT WAS COMPLETE pandemonium in the Bell Chamber as the infected who had lapsed into comas instantly snapped awake as walkers and attacked the crowd. Even with the warnings Grace, Brierly, and Rudy had given them about the nature of the infection the fifteen remaining Secret Service agents faltered, hesitating, unable to open fire on citizens, congressmen, and dignitaries.

Bunny muscled one dazed agent out of the way just as a journalist from the Daily News was about to grab him. The hulking sergeant snaked out a hand and caught the walker by the throat, buried his borrowed polymer pistol against the creature’s head and fired. He flung the corpse into the path of a second walker and killed that one, but then six of them came at him in a bunch and he fell back, dragging the startled agent with him.

“Fire, goddamn it!” Bunny yelled, and the agent seemed to snap out of his stupor. They found a clear patch of floor and the pair of them made their stand, opening up with both guns. Bunny had four shots left and used them all; the agent wasted an entire clip to bring down just one walker.

That left two from the pack still on their feet. Bunny stepped in and kicked the lead one in the stomach and when it doubled over he arched up and then brought his balled fist down as hard as he could on the back of the exposed skull. The walker immediately went into a boneless sprawl; but his companion just kept coming. He was three steps out when a shot snapped his head back. Bunny turned to see the agent, reloaded now, holding his smoking pistol in a two-hand grip.

BEHIND THEM RUDY, holding a flagpole, stood his ground between a huddled group of Girl Scouts and a walker in a Hawaiian shirt with toucans on it. The walker took a step forward but then ducked back away from the swing of the pole. Rudy frowned. He’d seen all of the tapes of the DMS encounters with the walkers, and he’d noted that they never flinched, never dodged. They lacked the cognitive powers to do it, and even their unnatural reflexes did not include any defensive reactions. And yet this one dodged once, twice.

And he smiled.

He pointed a crooked finger at the little girls behind Rudy and then he did something else walkers can’t do. He spoke.

“Mine!”

“Dios mio!” breathed Rudy, and the idea of a walker still capable of thought and deliberate action nearly took the heart out of him. But the whimpers of the girls behind him put strength in his hands. He held his ground.

AHMED, BROTHER OF Amirah, lover of Andrea Lester and El Mujahid’s chief agent in the United States, leered at Rudy and the girls. He felt amazing, immensely powerful and more completely alive than ever. The Generation Twelve pathogen burned like wildfire in his veins and when he had come awake moments ago he was overwhelmed by the clarity of focus it bestowed. Even after a life lived in dedication to the teachings of the Prophet he had never before understood so completely. The will of Allah was a white-hot light in his brain.

Consumed by his purpose and bursting with immortal power, he rushed forward to do the will of God. As the flagpole swung at him he caught it with one palm and with the other he grabbed Rudy Sanchez by the throat.

Chapter One Hundred Eighteen

The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:14 P.M.

I RAISED MY pistol and put the laser sight on Ollie Brown who had a Glock in his hand though the barrel was pointed down at the floor.

“You fucking bastard,” I said, and slipped my finger inside the trigger guard, but before I could fire a gunshot shattered the air. Ollie gave me a crooked smile and when he opened his mouth blood gushed over his chin. Ollie dropped his pistol and staggered forward and I realized that O’Brien had shot him. The CIA assassin stumbled, dropped to hands and knees, fighting to keep his head raised. He looked up at me, his eyes glazing.

“S… sorry…” he said, though his voice was a gurgle. “I… I…”

And then he collapsed onto the floor.

O’Brien began to raise his gun toward me.

“Drop the weapon!” I snarled. “Do it now!”

“Or what?” he asked, and suddenly his voice was different, no longer the bland American accent he had used before. Now he sounded British. “What will you do? Shoot me?” He laughed. “What do I care?”

“Say the word,” Top murmured from behind me, “and we’ll waste this shitbag.”

“Drop it,” I warned. “Last chance.”

O’Brien closed his eyes for a moment. He was bathed in sweat and his color was bad. He lowered his pistol and then took a sagging sideways step; but his hand snaked out fast as a cobra and caught the doorframe to keep him from falling.

I took a cautious forward step, my pistol rock-steady, the laser sight tattooed on the front of his muscular chest. The agent shook his head as if trying to clear his thoughts, the pistol hung from his hand but he had not dropped it. On the floor I could see Ollie’s fingers open and close slowly. There was a bullet hole in the back of his sports coat from which blood still bubbled sluggishly. I couldn’t have cared less, though. If he was dying, then let him die. Saying that he was sorry didn’t hold much weight for me.

“Drop the gun,” I commanded.

Behind me I could hear Top and Skip moving closer. O’Brien was outnumbered and outgunned.

And still the son of a bitch made a try for it. He raised his head and smiled at me, and I could see that there was something odd about his face. The heavy sweat that soaked his face seemed to be washing the color out of him. His freckles looked like they were melting, and I could see a faint jagged line beneath his skin as if he had a thick scar running diagonally across his face. Was he wearing… makeup?

O’Brien looked at me, his eyes going in and out of focus. Then I saw the muscles around his eyes tighten as he suddenly whipped his gun up and screamed: “Allah akbar!”

I shot him twice in the chest.

The impact slammed him back through the doorway and he collapsed into the darkness of the office beyond. He went down hard and I could hear the crunch of elbows, skull, and heels as he struck the linoleum floor.

The moment stretched as a haze of gun smoke washed the air with a faint gray.

All I could see was the soles of his shoes, but after a single twitch he stopped moving. I didn’t trust it, though, and I kept my pistol on him as I moved into the room, crouched and pressed fingers to his throat.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I felt some of the tension leave me and I rose and went back into the main room, but I was frowning. The tips of the fingers I’d used to check his pulse were smeared with color and I sniffed it. I was right: stage makeup.

“Nice shot, boss,” Top said. He lowered his piece but didn’t put it away. He knelt down to check on Ollie, but his face showed his distaste for the effort wasted. “He’s alive. Maybe he’ll live long enough to hang. Traitorous prick.”

Skip was standing behind him, staring past me. He bent and picked up Ollie’s pistol and then retreated to stand beside the First Lady, who was staring in renewed horror.

“Jesus,” Skip breathed, his eyes fixed on O’Brien. “You actually killed him.”

“Yeah,” I said, “that sometimes happens when you shoot someone.”

“Shame you can’t collect the reward,” Skip said.

“What reward?”

He gave me a quirky grin. “For bagging El Mujahid, boss. Last I heard there was a million-dollar reward for him.”

I frowned, puzzled. “The hell are you talking about?”

Skip nodded past me. “O’Brien. He’s El Mujahid. You didn’t figure that out?”

I turned and glanced down at the big corpse, then looked back at Skip. “How the hell do you know that?”

Skip raised both guns. He put the barrel of one against the First Lady’s temple and pointed the other at my face.

“A little bird told me,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.

Son of a bitch.

Chapter One Hundred Nineteen

Gault and Amirah / The Bunker

GAULT TURNED BACK to face Amirah. Her hunger and hate were so strong that the metal wall between them felt paper-thin. He glanced down at his watch and felt his heart skip a beat. The team from Global Security should have been here by now.

“Are you expecting someone, Sebastian?” Amirah purred.

“You can’t win this,” he retorted. “I won’t let you destroy everything.”

Her face darkened. “Won’t let me? What does it matter what you want? It is the will of Allah that matters. That is the only thing that matters.”

Fury was beginning to burn away his grief. “You know, I’m getting so bloody tired of religious tirades, my dear. Why don’t I shoot you and then you can go and see your god.”

She ignored the threat. “There’s someone out here who wants to talk to you, Sebastian.”

He took a cautious half step forward as she moved back to allow him a better view. Down below the moans and screams had intensified. There was blood splashed on the walls as the infected who had transitioned first had now turned on those who had not yet succumbed. What he saw was a picture out of a nightmare, a Hieronymus Bosch painting come to terrible life; but that wasn’t what Amirah wanted to show him. Instead a second figure stepped into view.

It was Anah, a young woman Gault knew to be a cousin of El Mujahid. She had the same dreamy half-mad look as Amirah, and the same gray skin, but the young woman’s mouth was smeared with red and in her hands she held something so grotesque that Gault had to clamp a hand to his mouth to keep from vomiting.

Anah carried the head of Captain Zeller. The leader of the Global Security rescue team.

Gagging, Gault thrust the barrel of the pistol through the observation slot and fired shot after shot into Anah, punching holes through her chest and face, staggering her back to the metal rail and then blasting her over. Anah fell without a scream and crashed down into the mass of creatures fighting below.

“You mad bitch!” he screamed at Amirah and shot her. His first bullet hit her in the stomach. Amirah staggered back and her face twisted into a grimace of agony.

No…

Not pain. Amirah was laughing. She whirled and ran along the corridor as Gault fired after her, trying to hit her, needing to kill her, wanting her death. He hit her at least three more times until she was so far down the corridor that he could no longer get an angle for a useful shot. He knew that he’d hit her, he’d seen her robes fluff out with the impacts, had seen blood splash the walls. But Amirah hadn’t even slowed down… and as she ran she called his name in a mocking laugh.

The slide on Gault’s pistol locked back and he reeled away from the slot, gasping, blood roaring in his ears. With trembling fingers he fumbled for a new magazine and slapped it into place. Sweat coursed down his face and chest.

He had a flash of panic and pulled out his sat phone, but Toys did not answer. No help was coming. He was alone. Panic howled in his head.

Amirah knew about the secret passages he’d built into the place. If she and El Mujahid had been playing him then there was a good chance she’d somehow hacked into his computer. The network of hidden passages was on there. And, dammit, so were the detonation codes he had created to blow this place to atoms. Okay, that option was gone. Just as the rescue was gone.

He had two full magazines plus the one in the gun, which gave him about a third as many bullets as he would need even if every shot was a kill, and that was unlikely.

“Head shots, you bloody fool.” He cursed himself for wasting a chance to kill that witch.

Witch. He’d called her that so many times that now it came back to haunt him. It was more accurate a label than he had ever known. What she had done was the blackest kind of sorcery. A true deal with the devil, and it occurred to Gault that it hadn’t been cuckold’s horns that El Mujahid had worn. They were the king and queen of Hell. Damn them both.

He paused at a T-juncture in the corridor. To his left he could hear the hiss of hydraulics as someone—Amirah or one of her monsters—opened a doorway to his right. Okay, he thought, that simplifies things; and he took the other fork of the juncture.

There was only one more thing that he could do. One final chance left to stop Amirah’s doomsday scheme. At least the part of it that she wanted to launch here in the Middle East. He only hoped the American had been able to somehow warn the authorities before things got out of control over there. He rushed down the hallway, knowing that his one chance was slim, and even then he had almost no hope of surviving. Somehow it amused him to think that he might actually sacrifice himself to save the world.

“God… they really will think I’m a saint now,” he mused. He almost laughed as he raced along through the shadows.

Chapter One Hundred Twenty

The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:16 P.M.

I STARED AT Skip. “You?”

“Yeah,” he said. “What… you thought it was Dudley Do-Right over there?” He jerked his head at Ollie.

“You piece of shit,” growled Top, but Skip jabbed the First Lady with the pistol. She sat rigid and terrified, her eyes locked on mine, pleading silently for me to do something. But Skip held all the best cards.

“Put your piece down, boss,” Skip ordered. “Two fingers, nice and slow. Now kick it away. Good. The knife, too. You, too, Top. You even think about doing anything funny and I pop the lady first.”

“Why?” I demanded. “What’s your stake in all this?”

“Well,” he said with a grin, “if you’re wondering if I’ve embraced the teachings of the prophet Mohammad, then no. I’ve pretty much embraced ten million dollars in an offshore account.”

“You’re doing this for money?”

“Of course I’m doing it for money.”

“That doesn’t make sense… you fought side by side with us against these things.”

“Yeah, and it’s the best cover story in the world. And that whole ‘Taser’ thing was a setup. Cute, huh? Once you and the others went to explore the crab plant I slipped into the hidden passage. Oh, don’t look surprised. They downloaded the whole floor plan to me before we ever set out. We planned the whole thing via text messages—it went off like clockwork. I told them to take out one of the other guys with a liquid Taser and then I faked my own abduction. I had to fake my own burn with a lighter, but we all make sacrifices. The rest was window dressing to confuse things. I pop caps in a bunch of walkers, rub dust in my eyes to get the tears flowing, and then wait to be rescued. I should get a frickin’ Academy Award. That Courtland bitch bought it hook, line, and sinker. And if you’re wondering about the fight in the laboratory, I’d have made it out of there, too. There was an exit door behind the last meds chest, right near where I was standing. I’m sure Jerry Spencer will probably find it eventually, not that it’ll matter now. If that asswipe Dietrich had been another ten seconds slower I’d have ducked out as soon as you guys started getting chomped.”

“You’re a real piece of work.”

“Just doing my job. Funny thing is, I wasn’t even supposed to be the point man for this gig. Lieutenant Colonel Hanley was supposed to step up and lead Echo Team, with me as his backup, but then you come along and go all Jackie Chan on him. Ah well. More cash for me.”

“And Room Twelve…?”

He shrugged. “Couldn’t let you interrogate the tech from the Delaware lab. That hit hadn’t been part of the plan and they weren’t ready for you. I never even got a chance to send a warning ’cause we were wheels up so fast. So I opened Room Twelve, popped a cap in the prisoner, and let the walkers out to play. If you guys hadn’t cleaned it up so fast I would have gotten there and played hero… but it worked out okay.”

“Don’t you realize the people you’re working with are trying to start a plague that will wipe out—”

He cut me off with a laugh. “Oh come on, Captain… you don’t buy any of that shit, do you. We fed you the clues. This was even timed to happen right before the Fourth so that there would be some concerns about this event. I was tickled pink when I heard that we were coming down here ’cause it meant that absolutely everything was falling into place. We gave you everything you need to stop the plague before it goes anywhere. All you have to do is spend a shitload of money on research and inoculation. That Chink doctor from the DMS is already working on a treatment. There are enough agents and cops here in Philly to keep the infection contained. None of this was ever going to get out of the center. You’ll be happy to know that was the last planned release of the plague. Nah… this isn’t about the end of the world, it’s just about the moolah. Always has been, always will be.”

“Ten million dollars sounds like a cheap price tag for your soul, Skip.”

“It’ll do. Especially where I’m going. I can live well and stay off the radar for the rest of my life.”

“What about all the people who’ve died? All the DMS agents, the people they turned into walkers at the crab plant…”

I looked for a flicker of conscience in his eyes but there was nothing. He was as dead inside as one of the walkers. “The fuck do I care? I’m only a player. You want to lay a guilt trip on someone, boss, blame the asshole you just shot. Yeah, that really is El Mujahid. Made up to look like a Secret Service agent. I worked on getting his papers and ID ready before my boss transferred me to the DMS. Everything worked fine, too.”

“Your boss. You mean Robert Howell Lee?”

Skip blinked but recovered quickly. “Good call. Maybe you’re better than I thought, not that it matters. You can have Lee. I don’t give a shit. He’s a weasel. Me… I’m outta here.”

“At least tell me something, Skip,” I said. “Who started all of this? I’m betting on some pharmaceutical company, with the terrorists as hired help.”

He blinked again. “Okay, points for that. Yeah, this is all big-business shit.”

“Care to share which companies?”

“As if,” he said, then half shrugged. He kept one gun on me but lowered the other and moved forward a couple of paces and put the barrel of his second piece against the back of Top’s head. “Actually, I don’t know much more than you do. All I was told is that some big pharmacy company is footing the bill.” Again he nodded past me to where El Mujahid lay in a pool of blood. “Somebody’s going to make a lot of money.”

“Maybe, but they won’t be able to spend much of it. We’ll catch them.”

He snorted. “The DMS might, Captain, but you won’t. And even if they do, what’s it to me? I’m a contract player here. I got no personal stake in this no matter how it turns out, and when the shit really hits the fan I’ll be far, far away in Happily Ever After Land. I’ll bet it won’t even make the papers where I’ll be.”

“I get out of this, kid,” said Top softly, “you’d better keep looking over your shoulder ’cause one of these days I’ll be right there.”

“Wow. I’m really scared.” He jabbed Top again with the gun. “You take a run at me, old man, and I’ll cut off your balls and make you eat them.”

There was a renewed rattle of gunfire from down the hall. Out in the Bell Chamber.

Grace.

Skip smiled. “I’ll bet we can all guess what’s happening out there. Zombie madness, and on national TV. That’s gonna be some real shit. But that’s also my cue to get the hell out of Dodge. A little hysteria is very useful, don’t you think, Captain?”

“For someone who’s supposed to be a cold-blooded killer you’re doing a lot of talking. What’s the problem, Skip? You getting cold feet about capping your teammates?”

He laughed. “Man, that’s precious. You’re right out of Psychology 101. Try to manipulate the emotions of the hostage taker by establishing a bond between him and his captives. Please. No, Captain, I wanted to make sure that I got the chance to get a little payback for you kicking my ass the other day. I’m not huge on the whole forgive-and-forget thing.”

“You want to go another round? Sure. You want to do it hand to hand or are you looking for a knife fight? According to your file you’re quite a hotshot with a blade…”

“Get real. You think I’m an idiot? I know you can take me in a fair fight. Why do you think I’m not fighting fair, asshole?”

“Okay… then you have me confused here, kid. What do you have in mind?”

“I want to see you get your ass kicked by someone you can’t take.”

“Oh? And who would that be?”

“Me…” hissed a guttural voice behind me.

I whirled.

El Mujahid stood hulking in the doorway. And, yes, he was dead. Not that it much mattered at the moment. He smiled at me and bared his teeth.

From behind me, in a mocking voice, Skip said, “Now ain’t that a bitch.”

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-One

Gault and Amirah / The Bunker

GAULT HAD TO crawl through two access tunnels and climb down four cold metal ladders to reach the very heart of the facility, far below the Bunker. He was making for a set of controls that he’d had built into the Bunker from the beginning, just in case all other options failed. He was careful not to make a sound in case Amirah or some of her creatures—alive or dead—had followed him. It was nearly black down here, with security lights spaced out only every hundred feet, so he had to pick his way. It was also terribly hot down here.

Below the Bunker was a deep drill hole that had punched into a lava stream buried far beneath the desert. The geothermal energy that powered the Bunker was virtually limitless, and a series of six vents—each a half-mile-long segment of reinforced piping—kept the heat converters from building up too much of a charge. If even half of them collapsed the venting would still keep the station safe from a critical overload. But there was a single point where they all joined: a huge vertical shaft that was bored straight down into the cathedral roof of the lava chamber. Superheated gasses rose up into the shaft and then dispersed through the six upward-slanting vents. Heat always rises, and that kept the engines turning and at the same time created a vulnerability because heat could only vent if nothing prevented it. Block the vents—all of them—and the heat would be trapped below the generators. With lava funneling that much heat it would be a matter of minutes before the generators either melted to slag or blew up. In either case it would trip all of the Bunker’s fail-safe devices—protocols that were hardwired into the station’s structure with so many redundancies that even a deliberate attempt to disable them would trigger them. Once triggered the fail-safe would send electrical signals to explosive bolts that would slam every door shut and then burst-weld them into place. The fail-safe system would then start a series of asbestos-coated alloy fans that would take the superheated gasses and blow them into every room and chamber in the Bunker. Gault had designed the Bunker that way to keep his pathogens from escaping. He really did not want to destroy the world. All he wanted was to become the richest man in it.

He crawled along the tunnel, pouring sweat, inching toward a spot that could only be found by touch: markings like Braille that Gault himself had etched into the plate steel. Behind that plate were six hydraulic levers. Each one would cause about a ton of rock to crash down onto a separate vent pipe. Easy as pie.

Forty feet to go.

Thirty. Twenty. Then he heard it. A voice whispering in the darkness somewhere behind him.

“Sebastian,” she called. Low and sweet and dreadful.

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Two

The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday July 4; 12:19 P.M.

I STAGGERED BACK from El Mujahid as he lumbered forward out of the darkened office.

“Mother of God,” I heard Top whisper.

The makeup on El Mujahid’s face had run, giving him a weirdly melted look. It revealed a wicked cut, like a knife slash, that bisected his face. It was the first time I’d been this close to him. He had to be six five and two-fifty if he was an ounce. He pulled off the jacket he’d worn as part of his Secret Service disguise, then jerked the tie loose and tore that off, dropping it on the floor. His white shirt was soaked with blood, and he touched the bullet holes. They were in the right place, they had to have clipped his heart. He smiled.

“It worked,” he said in wonder. “My princess has found the way…”

Skip said, “Here’s an incentive for you, boss. My employers may not have been trying to bring about the end of the world… but this asshole? Shit, he’s one of the horsemen of the apocalypse. He gets out of this place and it really will be game over.”

El Mujahid snarled at Skip, and out of the corner of my eye I could see Skip staring at the big terrorist with a mixture of admiration and disgust. Then I noticed that Top was looking straight at me, his dark eyes intense and unblinking. My hands were at my side and as I turned my face toward El Mujahid I curled the thumb and pinky of my left hand so that I showed three fingers. Then I curled the ring finger up, then the forefinger. Then the index, hoping that Top had read me the right way.

Abruptly I lunged at El Mujahid and chopped him across the throat with as hard a knife-hand blow as I’d ever used on a human being. At the same instant Top pivoted, his speed powered by adrenaline and fear and a hell of a lot of indignation. He grabbed Skip’s wrist with one hand and drove his opposite elbow back into the young man’s stomach. Skip’s finger clutched in a spasm of pain and the bullet burned across the side of Top’s temple. Top bellowed in pain but he came up off the floor and tackled Skip, driving him halfway across the room so that they both crashed onto a desk. The pistol flew into a corner.

Skip shoved Top back with a curse and with a shake of his wrist a knife dropped from a sleeve holster into the palm of his hand. He opened his mouth to taunt Top, but First Sergeant Sims moved forward in a blur and slammed into Skip. They hit the desk and then rolled off on the far side and out of sight.

I couldn’t go help. I had my own problems.

The blow that I’d used on El Mujahid should have killed him. At very least it should have crippled him. It would have done that to any man.

But El Mujahid was no longer a man. He coughed but then he expanded his chest and I could actually hear the fragments of his shattered hyoid bone click together. It was the creepiest sound I’d ever heard.

In a hoarse rasp of a voice he growled, “My princess has made me immortal. Praise Allah!” His eyes had looked dazed and dull when he’d first come out of the room, but I could see them becoming more focused. I didn’t understand it. If he was a walker, then why was he able to talk? Or think?

He took a step toward me. The first step was wobbly, as if he was uncertain how to use his body. But the second step was firmer. The third step showed no instability at all.

Crap.

His face took on an expression that was half triumphant leer and half naked hunger, and a fanatical light burned like a solar flare in his eyes. “Allah is the only God and I am his wrath on Earth!”

“Whatever,” I said as I dodged to one side and kicked him on the meat of the thigh with the steel toe of my shoe, a blow that would cripple anyone. But again it did nothing to him.

“It’s funny,” he said in Farsi, “but it doesn’t even hurt. Oh, Amirah… how I love you.”

I made a lunge for my fallen pistol but El Mujahid leaped at me. Any awkwardness he might have experienced upon returning to life was gone. For all his size he moved with cat quickness and he body-blocked me away from the piece and kicked the gun under a desk. I slewed around and came up into a fighting crouch. Okay, I thought, c’mon, Joe, you’ve done this before. Break the neck and you stop these buggers.

So I jumped in and tried to grab his chin and hair. Most people have only seen this move in movies. They won’t recognize it when someone tries it on them, and it’s such a fast move that by the time they figure it out they’re on the cold side of being dead.

Unfortunately for me El Mujahid wasn’t a novice. He parried my lunge and hit me in the ribs with a short chopping punch that lifted me completely off the ground; then he combined off that and planted an overhand right that nearly took my head off. I managed to get a shoulder up in time to save my head, but El Mujahid was a tank and his punch dropped me. I landed hard and immediately tucked into a sideways roll and barely managed to avoid a stamp that would have crushed my skull.

The First Lady was screaming over and over again and I wondered if her mind had snapped.

I came out of my roll on fingertips and toes and tried to reach for the .38 on my ankle, but he rushed me with a flying tackle that sent us both rolling over and over across the floor. At the end of the roll I managed to get a knee up between us and braced it against his chest as he tried to pull me into a bear hug. With his arms he’d have splintered my back. I drove my shoulders back and used the greater power of my legs to break his grab. He skidded back and I again went for my pistol, this time getting it out; but El Mujahid threw himself forward like a dolphin jumping out of the water onto the side of a pool. It was a sloppy move, all momentum, but it worked and he made a big reach and swatted the pistol out of my hand.

So I kicked him in the face and back-rolled to my feet.

I had my back to the wall and he was between me and any guns. He rose slowly, head down, shoulders hunched, hands forward and out. This was a son of a bitch who really knew how to fight. Without rules, just react and destroy. Like me.

Past him I could see parts of the tussle that was going on behind the desk. Legs and arms, and a lot of cursing. I had no idea who was winning that fight.

El Mujahid stalked me, cutting left and right to try and box me into the corner. Against most opponents a corner is a pretty good place to make a stand, it allows for a lot of options when flight is no longer in the mix; but with a fighter like this bruiser it would be a death trap.

He leered at me and bit the air with a clack of teeth. “I think I’ll take a bite out of you,” he said, pitching it to sound like a joke. I wasn’t laughing.

I could still hear gunfire and screams coming from the Bell Chamber. It must be one hell of a battle in there. Would Grace survive it, or had she already fallen? Would she rise as one of the mindless walkers or as a new and improved thinking monster like the one I faced?

What would Church and the President do? Let everyone in the Liberty Bell Center kill each other and then torch the whole place? Could the President risk any other response, even with his wife here?

Then I realized that the First Lady was no longer screaming. El Mujahid noticed, too, and we both turned to see that she had picked up my .45 and was pointing it at the big terrorist. She fired, but in her panic she jerked the trigger instead of squeezing it and the gun bucked upward and the shot punched a hole in the ceiling.

I rushed in her direction, wanting that damn gun, but El Mujahid lunged in to cut me off, pawing at me with a fast grab. I parried it, but it was a fake and he snaked the other hand in and caught me by the sleeve of my suit jacket.

The First Lady got off another shot but it just tore a chunk out of El Mujahid’s hip.

He jerked me forward with such force that I flew off the ground, and he hit me with an elbow shot that broke a black bomb in my head. I sagged in his grip and as he bent toward me I could feel his hot breath on my exposed throat.

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Three

Gault and Amirah / The Bunker

GAULT SCRAMBLED FORWARD in a panic, feeling for the etched markings as Amirah’s eerie voice floated through the darkness toward him, louder each time she called his name.

“Sebastian!” She drew it out, making it a perverse song.

His fingers scrabbled across an uneven spot on the wall and he stopped, fumbling at it. Yes! He felt for the upper-right corner of the panel and then punched it with the side of his fist. The corner folded inward and he gripped the edges and tore the whole panel away. A small red light flicked on inside the compartment, illuminating the rubber-coated handles of six big levers.

“Sebastian!”

“Witch,” he breathed and grabbed the first handle and pulled. It was much harder than he thought it would be, and the angle was bad. He had to stand hunched over and throw his entire weight backward to move the handle. On the first pull it only moved five inches.

“Bastard!” he growled and tried again, screaming with effort. This time the handle tilted toward him and locked into place. There was an anticlimactic silence for a few seconds and then far away there was a heavy rumbling that he felt more than heard.

He grabbed the second handle and again it took him two pulls to lock it down.

“Sebastian!”

Her voice was close. God, he thought… God!

Even as the rumbling started for the second collapsing vent pipe he threw himself back with the third, and this one locked down on the first try. The rumbling started at once.

“Sebastian!” Now there was a different tone in her voice. Perhaps a faint flicker of doubt. He grabbed the fourth lever and pulled. It was so hard, so stiff that it took him five tries to lock it down, but finally it clicked and the rumbling started.

“Sebastian!” He could hear the hurried scuff of her feet and her voice definitely had a note of alarm in it. It gave him strength to hear the fear and he tackled the fifth lever with a will and in two grunting pulls it locked down. Already the ambient temperature was rising as the superheated gasses began recoiling from blocked vents. A deep red glow was reflected through the steel passages and it bathed him in a bloody light.

“Sebastian!”

He turned and she was there, not twenty feet away. Her robes were torn and she was covered in blood. God knows whose blood it was. In the fiery glow of the lava she looked like a monster from hell itself. The blood on her lips and hands was black and her eyes were so shadowed that she looked more like a skull than a woman whose beauty had once made him gasp with but a single slanting glance.

“Listen to me, Sebastian,” she said, her voice thick and heavy. “Stop this… I can share Generation Twelve with you. If you truly embrace the Koran and the teachings of the Prophet I can make you one of us; I can make you one of God’s immortals.”

“You’re insane, Amirah. You’ve turned yourself into a monster.” He put his hand on the sixth lever.

“I am Seif al Din,” she retorted, her dark eyes flashing. “Don’t you understand? I am the plague, I am the Sword of the Faithful. We don’t need laboratories or test subjects anymore. I am the breath of God that will blow across the entire world. The faithless will die and the faithful will become immortals. Like me. Like El Mujahid.” She reached a hand toward him. “Like you, Sebastian… if you only accept.”

He shook his head and tears spilled down his cheeks. “I’m a greedy heartless bastard, Amirah… but I’m not a monster.”

Amirah spread her hands and smiled at him. “Am I a monster, my love?” she said in that old familiar voice that turned a knife in his heart. It was so bizarrely at odds with the bloodstained thing she had become.

“Yes, you effing well are!” The answering voice came from the shadow behind her. Toys.

Amirah turned to look behind her and there was Toys, his clothes torn, his face streaked with blood, his eyes swimming with pain. He leaned one bloody hand against the wall and with the other he held his pistol aimed at her. The barrel trembled.

Amirah hissed at him; and Toys managed a mean little smile and hissed back. He looked past her at Gault and at the lever he held in his hands. Toys took a ragged breath.

“Do it,” he said.

Amirah swung back toward Gault.

“No!”

“God,” he said softly as the mountains rumbled around him and the heat scorched the air between them. “I loved you, Amirah.”

“Sebastian…” They both said it, Amirah and Toys.

Gault tightened his grip around the handle and tensed his muscles.

“God help me,” he murmured, “but I will always love you.”

She lunged at him as Toys fired the gun and Gault threw his weight back and pulled the lever. Their screams were lost in the rumble as tons of rock collapsed onto the last pipe. In the bowels of the earth, in the furnace of hell, the hand of Satan clutched its fiery fingers into a fist and punched upward toward the Bunker.

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Four

The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:21 P.M.

HIS BREATH WAS as hot as the wind from hell and I recoiled from it, twisting in his grip, turning my hips as hard and fast as I could. I drove my knee up into his crotch and at the same time drove the stiffened tips of my fingers up under his jaw, crushing tissue and cartilage above the Adam’s apple. Another killing blow that I knew couldn’t kill him; but it jolted him so that his head jerked back just enough for me to hit him right over his left ear. Once, twice, three times, rocking his whole body with each shot. I could hear his neck bones grind with the third shot and then El Mujahid suddenly flung me away from him. Maybe when he felt his vertebre start to shift he realized his one vulnerability.

I landed hard and tried a back roll but I didn’t have the room and crashed into a filing cabinet so I ended up nearly standing on my head. My own neck sent a lance of pain through my shoulder and back, but I bit down on it, planted my palms on the floor, and hopped backward onto my feet. It wasn’t gold medal gymnastics but it got me right side up and I pivoted fast as El Mujahid rushed at me again.

The First Lady shot again and missed and then the slide locked back on the gun.

I knew I couldn’t keep this up. I was getting tired and I was getting hurt and this son of a bitch was immortal. He was a monster who couldn’t feel pain. Sooner or later he was going to wear me down and then he’d go to work on me with his teeth.

Across the room I heard someone howl in pain and couldn’t tell if it was Skip or Top, and I couldn’t spare the second it would take to look.

I crabbed sideways to circle him, but he lunged forward to cut the line. That was fine because as he dodged in I jumped sideways to pass him on his left. His sweeping grab clipped my ear and though it rang my chimes it didn’t stop me. I used the impact to spin into a sloppy pirouette that sent me halfway across the office toward one of the artist’s tables. At the far end of the table I’d seen what I wanted, but El Mujahid was already coming at me, his face almost black with rage and his teeth snapping as he rushed forward.

Rage, in an opponent, is a very useful thing. It makes smart people do stupid things. If you backpedal from the enraged attacker you simply get smashed against a wall and then he proceeds to beat you to a pulp—or, in this case, tear you apart with his teeth. So I didn’t backpedal; instead I went forward to meet him. Not chest to chest like a pair of bulls. I lunged in and down and tucked myself into a cannonball and rolled hard at his lower legs, hitting him full onto his left shin and clipping his right. With his greater upper-body weight and my two hundred pounds of rolling mass he went flying forward and smashed facefirst into a row of metal cabinets.

I came out of my roll, pivoted, and leaped back toward the artist’s table, grabbing at the item I’d seen: a big paper cutter that was bolted to the metal tabletop. I yanked the cutter arm up, grabbed the handle with both hands, and surged my weight to my right. The bolt that hinged the big blade to the cutter board was not designed for sideways resistance and the whole cutter arm tore off with a loud snap of broken fittings. I whirled and El Mujahid was already in motion, coming hard and fast, deadly and fearless, completely unhurt by the collision with the cabinets.

Again I rushed to meet him in the middle of his lunge, but this time I swung the big cutter like a sword, the curved blade whistling through the air. I caught him square, right on the left side of his neck, and the edge of the blade bit deep. The impact jerked El Mujahid to an abrupt stop and he goggled at me, his eyes and mouth gaping in shock. His fingers reached up to feel the heavy blade buried into muscle and tendon. It hadn’t cut all the way through his neck, but the very edge of the blade must have buried itself in the big man’s spinal cord.

Half an inch was enough.

His immense strength immediately began to melt away as his muscles lost all order and control. He dropped to his knees like a supplicant preparing to abase himself. Gasping for breath, I braced one foot against his body and then ripped the handle free in a spray of blood.

“You can’t stop the will of God…” he said with a throat that was filled with blood.

“This was never about God’s will, you stupid bastard!” I growled as I raised it above my shoulder and then with a scream of pure rage I swung the blade again.

The blade sheared all the way through what was left of his neck and the force of the swing tore the cutter from my hands. It buried itself point first in the linoleum floor and stood there, quivering.

El Mujahid’s head bounced and then rolled to a stop, his wild eyes staring with infinite shock up to the heavens.

I staggered back and almost fell.

The First Lady screamed.

Then I heard another cry of pain and turned, my body tingling with nervous tension, my mind reeling from what I’d just done, and I saw Skip Tyler coming toward me, a bloody knife in one hand. He looked at me, and then down at the terrorist. He smiled with bloody teeth.

“Well,” he said hoarsely, “aren’t you the goddamn hero.”

And then his eyes rolled up in their sockets and he fell flat on his face.

There were half a dozen pencils jammed into a tight grouping in his back, buried deep into the right kidney.

A bloody, trembling shape climbed up from behind the desk. Top was covered with cuts and painted with blood.

“Tough little son of a bitch,” he said. He coughed and slumped down to his knees, catching himself with one arm on the desk. The First Lady and I both rushed to him. She got there first and she helped him down into a sloppy sitting position. Her face was as flushed as his. I wobbled toward them and then my legs gave out and I almost fell. Top waved me off. “I’ll live, Cap’n. But… gimme a second to catch my breath.” He lowered his head and sat there, dripping blood onto the floor. The First Lady stroked his hair and held on to him, both giving and taking comfort.

“Did… you get him?” a voice asked, and I turned to see Ollie Brown peering up at me with one half-opened eye.

I tottered over and sank down beside him. He was in bad shape. I looked at Top and shook my head. Top winced and hung his head.

“Hey, kid,” I said, putting my hand on Ollie’s shoulder. “You hold on now.”

“Bastard blindsided me. O’Brien… son of a bitch was the—” he began and then coughed bloody phlegm onto the floor. “I should have… figured it out. S-sorry for letting you down.”

His voice was almost gone. I took his hand and held it just as I’d held Roger Jefferson’s, and like Jefferson, Ollie held on tightly as if through it he could cling to life.

“He fooled us all. It wasn’t your fault. If anything, Ollie,” I said, “it was mine.”

He shook his head. “Was it… Skip? Was he the one?”

“Yeah.”

“You get him, too?”

“Top did.”

“He had that baby face.” He smiled weakly. “Guess… guess it was easier to think it was me.”

“I’m sorry I ever doubted you, Ollie.”

He coughed. “Shit happens, Cap.” He tried to turn his head. “I can’t hear… gunshots. Is it over?”

I listened and he was right. There was only silence from the Bell Chamber. I turned to look down at Ollie, wanting to give him some comfort, but for him it was already over. His eyes were open but he was looking into a whole different world.

I bowed my head and held his hand.

Behind me, down the hallway, I could hear new sounds. Running steps. Voices. It took a lot for me to raise my head and look as several figures rushed into the room. Bunny was first, his face streaked with blood and his pistol in a two-hand grip. Gus Dietrich was right behind him. And then she was there.

Grace.

Alive. All of them, alive.

“Joe!” she cried and rushed to me and I pulled her to me, down on the floor.

“We stopped it, boss,” growled Bunny, who was bending over Top, his face lined with concern.

Grace wrapped her arms around me and I held Ollie’s hand—a man I’d mistrusted and wronged—and I wept for all of us.

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Five

The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:28 P.M.

A FRESH WAVE of Secret Service agents were the first to enter the Liberty Bell Center. Dressed in hazmat suits, they surged through the building until they found the First Lady. They whisked her away through a back door. Paramedics came to get us. Bunny lingered in the doorway to the office where Ollie and the others lay dead. EMTs worked on Top Sims, putting compresses on over a dozen slashes and stab wounds before loading him onto a gurney. Bunny hovered over them like a mother hen, giving them evil looks every time he thought they were a little too rough. He followed them out, offering a string of suggestions on how to do their jobs. They were probably happy their protective suits hid their faces.

I later learned that Skip Tyler had sixteen broken bones and a ruptured liver, apart from all the pencils Top had rammed through his kidney. Must have been one hell of a fight, but I was only marginally sorry I missed it. I’d had enough of violence. Maybe enough for the rest of my life. Even the Warrior who lurked in the back of my soul was glutted for now.

Ollie Brown and the fallen Secret Service agents were zippered into black rubber body bags. Skip and El Mujahid were left to lie where they were. Forensics teams would need to take pictures first. They could rot for all I cared. The EMTs all stopped and stared at the two pieces of El Mujahid. They gave me strange looks and didn’t get too close.

Grace sat beside me, her hand on my shoulder, as the EMTs plastered me with bandages and ice packs. When they were done, I said, “How bad was it?”

She was a long time answering that. “Bad,” was all she said.

I took her hand and held it. Her fingers were cold as ice.

“Rudy?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

She nodded. “Safe.”

When I felt able to walk she and I went back to the Bell Chamber. Brierly saw us and came over. “They tell me you and your man saved the First Lady.”

“Men,” I corrected. “First Sergeant Bradley Sims and Lieutenant Oliver Brown. They both did their part and Ollie died in action.” I paused. “I wanted you to know that Ollie died serving his country.”

Brierly nodded. “Thanks, Captain. He was a good man.”

“Yes,” I said. “He was.”

We shook hands and he took Grace aside for a conference call with Church. “I’ll be back,” she said.

“I still owe you a drink.”

“Yes,” she said, giving me a sad little smile, “you bloody well do.”

There were no more crowds. The victims lay in rows and men in white plastic suits were draping sheets over them and searching for identification. Someone had rigged blue Tyvek tarps over all of the windows, but the crowds were gone; all of Independence Mall had been cleared and the whole city was under martial law. The National Guard occupied Center City and dozens of choppers packed with federal agents, scientists, medical personnel, and a lot of other folks were descending on the town.

Rudy sat on the edge of the podium, jacket off, sleeves rolled up, the ends of his tie hanging limply from either side of his throat. He looked up at me and started to offer his hand, but both of our hands were stained with blood. He withdrew his hand and sighed.

“Dios mio, cowboy.”

“Yeah.”

“Bunny told me that it was Skip after all. Not Ollie. We were wrong.”

“Everyone was. Even Church thought that it might be Ollie. Ollie looked best for it. These bastards probably picked Skip as much for his innocent face as for his greedy black heart. They fooled us and it almost cost everyone here their lives.”

I sat down next to him and for a long time neither of us said a word. His gaze was fixed on a point across the room and I followed his line of sight to where a man in a Hawaiian shirt lay sprawled. Someone had rammed the broken end of a wooden flagpole through his eye socket.

“I didn’t know it could be like this,” Rudy said at length. “I mean, I’ve counseled hundreds of cops, but…” He shook his head.

I understood and I could hear the deep hurt in his voice. But what could I say? We’d all had to do our parts; and I knew there would be long summer nights to come where we’d sit out in his backyard and watch the stars wheel overhead and drink beer as we talked it through. But that time wasn’t now and we both knew it. Across the room some of the Secret Service agents were standing like ghosts, their faces pale, their eyes haunted, as they tried not to look at the bodies lying under sheets.

“It must have been terrible for them,” Rudy said.

“For you, too, man.”

He shook his head. “I mostly watched. I… I’m not sure I could have done what they did. They had to shoot congressmen, civilians…”

“You blame them for gunning down these people?”

“God, no. They’re heroes. Every one of them.”

I nodded. “They don’t think so.”

“No,” he agreed.

“They’re marked,” I said. “This is what you were talking about. The look on their faces, in their eyes. It’ll never go away. Violence always leaves a mark. You taught me that.”

He sighed. “We ask so much of the people who protect us. Firemen, cops, soldiers… They sign up to do some good, to make a difference, but we sometimes ask too much.”

“They’re warriors,” I said softly. “Some of them will be stronger because of today. For some people battle is a clarifying experience. It forces all of the senses to come awake, it makes you become totally aware, totally alive.”

“And some of them will be broken because of today,” he said quietly. “Not everyone has a warrior soul. You taught me that, Joe. Some people have only so much courage, only so much tolerance for violence, even when it’s for the right cause. For some of these people this may be a breaking point. Today might kill some of those young folks. Not right away, maybe not for twenty years, but a few of them may never shake the memory of what they had to do today, what they were forced to do. They’ll know all the logic about how it had to happen, how they had no choice; and for a while that will keep them steady… but some of them will never survive this. Not ultimately.”

I wanted to argue with him, but I knew that he was right. Being a hero doesn’t mean that a person can become comfortable with being a killer, too.

“They’re going to need you, Rudy.”

“I can’t help them all.”

“They couldn’t save all the people here,” I said. Rudy closed his eyes for a moment, then he stood up and looked down at me.

“And what about you, cowboy? Have you reached your limit?”

When I didn’t answer, he sighed and nodded. He patted my shoulder then turned and walked over to the group of agents. I watched him go, saw the process of change that happens when he goes from being my friend Rudy to Dr. Sanchez. He always seems bigger, taller. A rock for those who need something to cling to. But I knew the truth: he, too, was marked, and like the rest of us he would carry this with him forever.

So… what about me? I wondered. I could already feel the shock ebbing within me. As the adrenaline washed its way out of my bloodstream my deep grief and horror was dipping lower and lower. In the reeds there in the back of my mind the Warrior was already beginning to sharpen his knife again. I knew it, I could feel it.

I looked at the agents, and all of them looked so young and so hurt. Only one looked back at me and held my gaze. He was in his late twenties, not all that much younger than me, but his eyes were older than his face. His expression reflected less shock than the others. He read my face and I read his, and we exchanged a brief nod that none of the others saw, or if they did then they didn’t understand it. They weren’t of the same species as we were. The young agent turned back and listened to Rudy, but I was sure that he was already working through the experience in his own head. The way I was. The way warriors do. He and I did not need to be marked by our experiences. We were born with that mark.