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 a.s.sume 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 Airs.p.a.ce / 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 a.s.sholes 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 b.i.t.c.h," 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 h.e.l.l 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 d.a.m.n 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 G.o.dd.a.m.n 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-cla.s.s smarta.s.s."

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 ma.s.s-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 b.l.o.o.d.y b.a.s.t.a.r.ds 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 a.s.sumptions. 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 d.a.m.ned 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 c.r.a.p," Dietrich said softly.