Текст книги "Gideon's Corpse"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

72

Simon Blaine stumbled backward with a cry as the puck struck the floor and split open, spewing its contents with a puff of condensation, the pieces of plastic and glass bouncing off the door frame and skittering across the floor. He could see the crystalline powder melt on contact with the floor.

With lightning clarity his mind saw the future: the sealing off of Washington and its suburbs, the quarantine, the inexorable spread of the disease, the frantic and useless vaccination efforts, the galloping pandemic, the mobilizing of the National Guard, the riots, the ports closed and borders sealed, curfews, states of emergency, bombing sorties, war along the borders with Canada and Mexico… And of course the total collapse of the US economy. He saw these things with a certainty born of knowledge. These were not speculations: this was exactly how it was going to happen, because he had alreadyseen it happen to the enemy in their computer simulations, over and over again.

All this flashed through his brain in a few seconds. He knew they were all likely infected already; the disease was as catching as the common cold, and the amount of smallpox in the puck represented a staggering quantity of virus, enough to directly infect almost a hundred million people. With the shattering of the puck, it had been rendered airborne. They were already, all of them, breathing it in. He and the rest of them were dead men.

He saw all this with a horrific lucidity. And then he became aware of the shouts, the cries of the soldiers, the hollering of Dart.

“Don’t move,” he said in a commanding voice. “Don’t stir the air. Stop yelling. Shut up.”

They obeyed him. Instant silence.

“We need to get the building sealed,” he said, with a strange, sudden calm that surprised even himself. “ Now.If we can keep everyone inside, we might just contain it.”

“But what about us?” Dart asked, his face white.

“We’re finished,” said Blaine. “Now we need to save our country.”

A long silence. A soldier suddenly screamed and bolted, leaping over the doorsill and tearing off down the hall. Without hesitation, Blaine drew his weapon, took careful aim, and pulled the trigger. The old Peacemaker kicked with a roar and the soldier went down, screaming and gargling.

“Fuck this, I’m putting a suit on,” Dart said, his voice breaking, scrabbling at the rack, pulling down suits. “We’ll be safe in the lab!” Several suits fell off the rack with a crash and now the soldiers rushed in, grabbing at suits, shoving one another, all semblance of discipline vanished.

Multiply that panic by a hundred million, Blaine thought. That’s what the country was facing.

His eye fell back on the faint, damp patches where the crystallized virus and its substrate had sprayed across the floor and walls. It was unspeakable. He couldn’t believe Gideon had actually done it. Blaine knew he was perfectly willing to give his life for his country—in fact he had expected to—but not like this. Not like this.

And then he noticed something.

He bent down. Looked closer. Got on his hands and knees. And then reached out and picked up the broken puck. A small serial number was stamped on the side, along with an identification label in tiny type:

INFLUENZA A/H9N2  KILLED

“My God!” he cried. “This isn’t smallpox! We’ve been tricked. Spread out, search the building, find him! This is a different puck. He switched pucks.He’s still got the smallpox! He’s still got the smallpox!”

73

Gideon sprinted down the hallway. As he ran, he decided to head for the rear of the building. There might be more soldiers waiting in the lobby. Besides, the back of the building would give him the added advantage of bringing him closer to where he’d parked the Jeep, in the rear lot.

Which meant he had to find a back exit.

He raced up a stairwell to the ground floor and headed toward the back of the building, running as fast as he could while still protecting the puck. It was a huge, virtually deserted complex, and he found himself wasting time with unexpected twists and turns, dead ends and locked doors that forced him to backtrack again and again. And all the while, the clock was ticking.

He had no idea how effectively his ruse would delay their response. He had seen his opportunity and had taken it, his old skills as a magician coming in handy as he’d palmed a random puck from the lab table and substituted it for the smallpox. It had been relatively easy, given that he had worked magic tricks with many objects of precisely that size and sometimes even that shape. What that other puck contained, if anything, he had no idea, but it couldn’t be all that dangerous or it wouldn’t have been stacked on the outside table, unguarded. Maybe it would give them all hives.

After yet more wrong turns he arrived finally at a long corridor that ended in a glassed-in waiting area with a large exit sign and a crash door at the far end, striped white and red with an Alarm Will Sound label. He ran for the door, only to see a man appear abruptly in the lobby from another approach. It was the captain, Gurulé.

So they’re on to me already. Shit.

The captain turned, saw Gideon, began to draw his weapon.

Gideon charged ahead, ramming into the captain and slamming him back against the crash door, which burst open with a piercing alarm, the pistol flying away. He scrambled for it, acutely aware of the smallpox container in his pocket, shielding it protectively with his body. The captain, sprawled across the threshold but recovering fast, pulled himself up and leapt on Gideon, trying to get a hammerlock around his neck. In doing so he left his face exposed and Gideon punched back fiercely with the palm of one hand; he felt the captain’s nose break under the strike, Gurulé’s grip loosening just enough for Gideon to wrench free, even as the captain landed a vicious punch to his side.

They faced off, the captain shaking his head, trying to recover his senses and fling away the blood spurting from his nose. The smallpox felt like it was burning a hole in Gideon’s pocket. Whatever happened, he couldn’t let that puck break.

Gurulé suddenly turned and unleashed a powerful kick to Gideon’s groin; Gideon twisted to protect the smallpox and the kick slammed into his hip, just missing the puck but knocking him back against the wall. Gideon went into a defensive hunch, still shielding the puck, and the captain took advantage of his defensive hesitation to advance on him, driving a punch straight into the side of his jaw that broke a couple of teeth and sent Gideon to the floor.

“The smallpox!” Gideon gasped through the blood welling into his mouth, “Don’t—!”

The captain was too enraged to hear. He punched him again in the chest, then slammed his foot into Gideon’s side, almost flipping him over, the jarring movement sending the puck flying out of his pocket and skittering into a corner. For a brief, terrible moment both men stopped dead, watching as it bounced against the wall—and then rolled back a few feet, unbroken and unharmed.

Instantly the captain dove for it while Gideon, now free of restraint, let loose a savage roundhouse to the man’s kidneys, laying him on his knees, and following with another kick to his jaw. But the captain, rising, pivoted with lightning speed almost like a breakdancer, lashing out with his legs, knocking Gideon back down just as he was staggering up. With an inarticulate gargle of rage, Gurulé fell on Gideon, sinking his teeth into Gideon’s ear with a crunch of cartilage. Yelling in pain, Gideon slammed his fist into the man’s neck, causing him to release his hold on Gideon’s ear; as he turned to throw a blind punch, which missed, Gideon seized his scalp with both hands and yanked his head back and forth, like a dog shaking a rat, while simultaneously bringing his knee up into the man’s face so hard it almost felt like he had caved it in. The man flipped over backward and Gideon fell on him, seizing his ears and, with them as handles, slamming the back of the captain’s head into the cement floor, once, twice.

Gideon rolled off the now unconscious man. Their struggle had brought them close to Gurulé’s gun, and Gideon grabbed it just as the side door to the lobby burst open and two soldiers rushed in. Gideon shot one immediately, throwing him back against the wall; the second dove for cover in a panic, firing wildly, the bullets raking the glass wall behind Gideon and shattering it.

Gideon dove through the broken glass, then staggered to his feet, bullets snicking past him and ricocheting off the asphalt of the rear parking lot. He reached the closest parked car and fell behind it as a swarm of rounds rammed through the metal. When he returned fire he could see, through the open door of the building, the white puck of smallpox lying against the wall. Even as he stared Blaine appeared, scooped up the puck, and disappeared again into the back hall, with a yell for his men to follow.

“ No!” Gideon cried out.

He fired again but it was too late; the remaining soldiers vanished into the building with a final, desultory burst of gunfire in his direction.

They had the smallpox.

For a moment, Gideon just leaned against the car, head spinning. He’d been badly beaten, he hurt all over, blood was pouring from his injured mouth—but the surge of adrenaline from the fight, and the loss of the smallpox, managed to sustain him.

Pushing away from the car and sprinting around the corner, he ran along the blank, windowless side wall of the building, which went on seemingly forever. He finally reached the end and tore around the next corner. The front parking lot came into view, and there on the tarmac was Dart’s chopper, a UH-60 Black Hawk, its rotors spinning up. Through the open cabin door he could see Blaine and Dart already seated, with the last of the soldiers just now climbing in. Lying nearby the chopper, in a pool of blood, was a body all too clearly dead.

Fordyce.

Gideon felt a sudden nausea, a choking rage that closed down his throat. All was now clear.

He drew his pistol and sprinted across the grass toward the helicopter. As it began to rise, gunfire erupted from the cabin door. Gideon veered to another parked car and crouched behind it as rounds buried themselves in the vehicle. Half mad with anger and grief, he rose again and—bracing himself on the hood, ignoring the rounds whining past his head—aimed the captain’s 9mm and squeezed off two carefully placed rounds, aiming for the turboshaft engines. One round hit home with a thunkand a spray of paint chips, followed a moment later by a grinding noise. More shots raked the car but Gideon remained in place, easing off a third shot. Now black smoke spurted up from the engines, half obscuring the main rotor blades; the chopper seemed to hesitate as the grinding noise turned into a strident rasp. Then the fuselage began to rotate and tilt, the bird coming back to earth hard, the tail rotor making contact with the ground and shattering, the pieces flying away with a chilling hummm.

Three soldiers piled out of the now burning chopper and came at him, firing their M4s on full automatic, followed a moment later by Dart and Blaine. The bullets shredded the car he’d taken cover behind, spraying him with bits of glass and metal as he crouched, only the heavy engine block stopping the high-velocity rounds.

And then the shooting stopped abruptly. He took a deep breath, rose to return fire, but realized it was a waste of ammo—they had veered away and were now out of range for a handgun. And they were no longer concerning themselves with him. Dart, Blaine, and the soldiers were piling into a Humvee, evidently the vehicle Blaine had arrived in. The doors slammed shut and the vehicle laid rubber, fishtailing out of the lot and heading for the long service road out of the base. The chopper was now leaning precariously, making a gruesome grinding sound, the rotors flapping, smoke billowing upward; a moment later it erupted in flames and, with a thumpthat made the air tremble, exploded in a ball of fire.

Gideon shielded his face from the heat with a curse. They were getting away—getting away with the smallpox. He jumped up and pursued them, running past the burning chopper to the far end of the parking lot, pulling the trigger again and again in impotent frustration until the magazine was empty.

Then he stopped and looked around, breathing hard. Blaine’s Jeep was parked in the rear lot, but if he ran back to get it the game would certainly be lost: Dart and Blaine would be so far ahead by that time he’d never catch them.

The base’s main motor pool stood on the opposite side of the road, gate closed. He ran across the street, flung himself onto the fence, scrambled up it and dropped down the far side. A row of Humvees and another row of Jeeps were parked to his right; he ran to the first Humvee, glanced inside. No key. No key in the second or third Humvee, either. Running wildly now, he dashed over to the Jeeps. None of them had keys in the ignition.

He turned left and right in desperation. On the other side of the motor pool were the larger military vehicles: a couple of M1 tanks, MRAPs, and several Stryker armored fighting vehicles, looking like huge, bristling tank turrets mounted on eight massive wheels. One of the Strykers had been moved into an open area and had apparently just been washed down with a hose. Gideon vaguely recalled seeing a mechanic working on the vehicle when he and Fordyce had arrived. Even as the thought occurred to him, the mechanic appeared, wrench in hand, leather holster flapping, running from a distant shed, staring at the burning helicopter. “What’s the hell’s going on?” he cried to Gideon.

Gideon knocked the wrench from his hand, grabbed him by the collar, pushed the empty 9mm pistol into his face, and aimed him at the nearest Stryker. “What’s going on,” he said, “is we’re going to get into this vehicle and you’re going to drive it.”

74

The mechanic opened the door. They climbed in the cave-like interior, the mechanic first, Gideon following with the gun. With the mechanic in the gunner’s seat, Gideon slid into the driver’s seat.

“Give me your gun,” Gideon demanded.

The mechanic opened his holster, passed over his sidearm.

“Now give me the key.”

The mechanic fumbled in his pocket and handed over the key. Gideon shoved it in the ignition, turned it. The Stryker immediately rumbled to life, the big diesel purring. Weapon trained on the mechanic, he quickly glanced over the instrumentation. It looked straightforward enough: before him was a steering wheel, shift, gas and brake pedals, no different from a truck. But these controls were surrounded by electronics and numerous flat-panel screens of unknown function.

“You know how to operate this thing?” Gideon asked.

“Fuck you,” said the soldier. He had evidently collected his wits and Gideon could see a combination of fear, anger, and growing defiance in his expression. He was young, skinny, with a whiffle-cut; no older than twenty. His name was JACKMAN and he carried the insignia of a specialist. But the most important information was written on his face: this was a loyal soldier who was not going to cave at the muzzle of a gun if it was against his country.

With an effort Gideon forced himself to slow down, take a deep breath, push aside the fact that every minute that passed put Blaine and the smallpox farther away. He needed this man’s help—and he had one shot at getting it.

“Specialist Jackman, I’m sorry about pulling a gun on you,” he said. “But we’re in an emergency situation. Those people who tried to take off in the chopper stole a deadly virus from USAMRIID. They’re terrorists. And they’re going to release it.”

“They were soldiers,” said Jackman, defiantly.

“ Dressedas soldiers.”

“So you say.”

“Look,” said Gideon, “I’m with NEST.” He went to reach for his old ID but realized it was gone, lost at some point during the desperate chase. God, he had to do this fast. “Did you see that body on the tarmac over there?”

Jackman nodded.

“He was my partner. Special Agent Stone Fordyce. The bastards murdered him. They’ve stolen a vial of smallpox and are going to use it to start a war.”

“I’m not buying your bullshit,” the specialist said.

“You’ve gotto believe me.”

“No way. Take your best shot. I won’t help you.”

Gideon felt close to despair. He tried to pull himself together. He told himself that this was a social engineering situation, no different from any other he’d encountered. It was just that the risks were infinitely greater this time around. It was a question of finding a way in, discovering how to reach this man. And doing it in seconds. He looked into the frightened but absolutely determined face.

“No, youtake yourbest shot.” He handed Jackman his 9mm, butt-first. “If you think I’m one of the good guys, help me. You think I’m one of the bad guys, take me out. It’s your decision now, not mine.”

Jackman took the proffered weapon. His look turned to one of uncertainty, struggling with a strong sense of duty. He gave it a quick inspection, ejected the magazine. “Nice try. There’s no rounds in here.” He tossed the weapon aside.

Son of a bitch.

An uncertain silence fell. Gideon began to sweat. Then, in an almost impulsive movement, he passed the mechanic’s own handgun back to him. “Put it to my head,” he said.

Jackman made a brusque movement, seizing Gideon in a hammerlock and pressing the gun against his temple.

“Go ahead. Shoot me. Because I’m telling you right now: if they get away, I don’t want to live to see the result.”

Jackman’s finger tightened visibly against the trigger. There was a long, ticking silence.

“Did you hear me? They’re getting away. You’ve got to make up your mind—are you with me or against me?”

“I…I…” Jackman hesitated, flummoxed.

“Look at me, judge me, and damn it, make your decision.”

They stared into each other’s eyes. One more hesitation—and then the face cleared, the decision made. He took the gun away, reholstered it. “All right. Shit. I’m with you.”

Gideon peered out through the driver’s periscope. Then he jammed the gearshift of the Stryker forward and released the clutch. The vehicle lurched back and smashed into a Humvee, knocking the heavy vehicle back several yards.

“No, no, the shift works the other way!” Jackman shouted.

Gideon yanked it back and the vehicle lurched. He floored the accelerator but the Stryker only lumbered forward, gaining speed slowly because of its great weight.

“Can’t this damn thing go any faster?” he cried.

“We’ll never catch them,” said Jackman. “We can’t do more than sixty. A Humvee will do eighty, ninety.”

For a moment, Gideon took his foot off the accelerator, almost freezing up in despair. They had too big a lead—it was useless. Then he remembered something.

Pulling the map of the base out of his pocket—the one he’d been given at the front gate—he tossed it at Jackman. “Look at that. The base access road winds all over the place. We can still cut them off if we head straight for the front gate.”

“But there’s no road going straight to the front gate,” said Jackman.

“With this thing, who the hell needs a road? Just point me toward the gate. We’ll take it cross-country. And when we get there, be ready to operate the weapons.”

75

Gideon accelerated the Stryker across the long parking lot, past the burning helicopter, and hit the pavement, making fifty miles an hour, the vehicle’s eight wheels humming loudly on the service road.

Jackman examined the tattered map. “Take a heading of a hundred ninety degrees. Here, use this.” He indicated an electronic compass on the dashboard.

Gideon turned to one hundred ninety degrees south, the Stryker leaping the curb and churning across a wide expanse of grass, heading toward a line of trees.

“What do we have for weapons?” Gideon called out.

“Fifty-cal, Mk-9 automatic grenade launcher, smoke grenades.”

“Can the Stryker cut through those trees?”

“We’re going to find out,” said Jackman. “Shift into eight-wheel drive. That lever, there.”

Gideon pulled the lever and accelerated for the trees, the diesel roaring. God, it was a powerful engine. The trees were spaced far apart, but not far enough. He steered toward an area of what looked like younger, thinner trees.

“Hold on,” he said.

The vehicle struck one, then another, slamming through them with a loud thwackas each tree snapped off at the base, the vehicle bucking and lurching, the engine roaring, trunks flying aside, leaves whirling. A minute later they broke into a grassy clearing.

A red light glowed on a nearby flat panel and a flat, electronic voice sounded. “Warning, speed unsuitable for current terrain conditions. Adjusting tire pressure to compensate.”

Gideon peered through the driver’s periscope. “Shit. There are some really big oaks ahead.”

“Slow down, I’ll try to clear them with the grenade launcher.” Jackman pressed a series of switches, and the weapons system screen flickered to life. He peered intently through the gunner’s periscope. “Here goes.”

There was a series of whooshes and, a moment later, an eruption of sound. The oaks disappeared in a wall of flame, dirt, leaves, and splinters. Even before the area had been fully cleared Gideon floored the accelerator again, the wheels spinning, and the Stryker lumbered forward, bucking over a mass of broken trunks, then plowing back in the forest, knocking down smaller trees on the far side: whap, whap, whap.

They broke free of the woods with a final crash. Looming ahead, across a road, was a chain-link fence surrounding a residential neighborhood: neat rows of bungalows, driveways, cars, postage-stamp lawns covered with all the accoutrements of suburban living.

“Oh shit,” Gideon murmured. At least nobody much was around, the families largely evacuated. He aimed the Stryker toward the path of least resistance. They hit the chain-link fence, peeling it up like a ribbon before tearing through. He careened across a backyard, pulverizing a jungle gym and sideswiping an aboveground pool, causing an eruption of water across the yard.

“Jesus!” cried Jackman.

Gideon kept the accelerator pinned to the floor, the massive vehicle slowly continuing to accelerate. Ahead, the street took a sharp right angle. “I can’t make the turn in time,” Gideon shouted. “Hold on!”

A single-story bungalow lay directly before them: checked curtains hanging in the living room picture window, yellow flowers framing a beautifully kept lawn. Gideon realized he could not avoid the house entirely and aimed for the garage. They impacted with a terrific blow, the Stryker’s engine screaming as they knocked aside a pickup truck, then tore out the back wall of the garage, trailing wooden beams and wallboard and clouds of dust.

“Warning,” came the electronic voice. “Speed unsuitable for current terrain conditions.”

Looking through the periscope, Gideon could see people running out of the houses, shouting and gesturing at him and the trail of ruin he was leaving behind.

“Sure you don’t want to go back?” Jackman asked through clenched teeth. “I think you missed something.”

Pushing the vehicle forward, Gideon tore through another chain-link fence on the far side of the neighborhood. Beyond an empty parking lot, a grid of Quonset huts loomed ahead, the narrowest of alleys between each of them; Gideon headed for the broadest looking of the alleys, but it wasn’t quite broad enough. The Stryker chewed its way through, crumpling the walls on either side like so much tinfoil and knocking the flimsy huts off their cheap foundations.

Bounding into an open area, they blew across a set of baseball diamonds, smashed through some cheap wooden bleachers, burst through a brick wall, and—quite abruptly—emerged onto the base’s golf course. As he worked the controls, Gideon remembered vaguely that a golf course was the first thing he’d seen on entering the base: they were almost at the entrance.

He rode over a tee-off area and ground his way down the fairway, the few golfers out and about dropping their clubs and scattering like partridges. He crossed a narrow water hazard, boiled through the mud on the far side, and churned over a second green, sending huge divots and gouts of turf flying—and then, as they topped a rise, Gideon could make out, a quarter mile away, a cluster of buildings and a fence that marked the front gate.

…And along the service road paralleling the golf course, speeding at right angles to them, was the Humvee carrying Blaine and Dart.

“There they are!” Gideon cried. “Bust up the road ahead of them! But for God’s sake, don’t hit them or you’ll spread the virus!”

Jackman was frantically working the remote weapons system. “Stop the vehicle so I can aim!”

Gideon ground to a stop, gouging two huge, trench-like furrows in the fairway. Jackman peered through the commander’s periscope, adjusted some gauges, peered again. The Stryker rocked slightly as the grenades were launched, then percussive flashes went off ahead of the Humvee and the road in front of it erupted into the air, chunks of asphalt spinning skyward. The Humvee skidded to a stop, backed, turned, and started driving across the grass.

“Again!” Gideon cried.

Another shuddering series of explosions. But it was useless—the golf course was too broad, the Humvee had nearly limitless paths to the base exit.

Gideon gunned the Stryker forward, peeling across the greensward. The Humvee was still outpacing the Stryker, on the verge of getting away.

Ahead, Gideon could see a few panicked soldiers milling around the gate buildings, running this way and that. “Can you call the gate?” he yelled over the roar of the engine.

“No phone.”

Gideon thought quickly. “The smoke grenades! Cover them with smoke!”

They plowed through a sand trap, attained another rise, and Jackman let loose. The canisters arced through the sky, bouncing ahead of the Humvee and erupting into enormous clouds of snow-white smoke. The wind was in their favor, rolling the smoke back over the vehicle. It immediately vanished.

Gideon headed into the huge smoke bank. “Got any infrared on this baby?”

“Turn on the DV, set it to thermal,” Jackman said from the gunner’s seat.

Gideon stared at the banks of instrumentation. Jackman leaned over, hit one switch, then another, and one of the innumerable screens flickered into life. “That’s the Driver’s Video screen, set to thermal,” he said.

“Nice,” said Gideon as he headed deeper into the smoke bank. “And there they are!”

The Humvee was still off the road but much closer to them, moving blindly, edging from the fairway into the rough, heading for a line of trees.

Gideon peered at the ghostly image on the videoscreen. “Shit. They’re going to crash.”

“Let me handle it.” Jackman threw himself back into the gunner’s seat. A moment later the fifty-caliber machine gun erupted, firing remotely, kicking up divots of turf behind the Humvee.

“Careful, for God’s sake.” Gideon watched as Jackman walked the automatic fire up and across the back of the Humvee, shredding its tires. The car slewed sideways, then came to a shuddering halt.

On the DV, Gideon saw the doors fly open. The three soldiers boiled out, crouching and firing their weapons blindly through the smoke. Then two more figures emerged—Blaine and Dart—and both began running toward the gate at top speed.

“I’m going after them,” Gideon said. “Give me your weapon.”

Gideon threw open the hatch of the Stryker and jumped out, suddenly enveloped in smoke. He could hear the soldiers firing blindly, stupidly, somewhere. He took off in the general direction he’d seen Blaine heading, running along the fairway and quickly emerging from the smoke. The soldiers had also found their way out and turned toward him, raking him with fire. He hit the ground at the same moment the fifty-caliber machine gun sounded from within the smoke; the three soldiers literally came apart in front of him.

He jumped up again, continued running. Blaine was a hundred yards ahead, approaching the final green, but he was old and rapidly losing steam. Dart, younger and more fit, had pulled ahead and was leaving Blaine behind.

As Gideon approached, Blaine turned and, wheezing heavily, pulled out his Peacemaker and fired, the shot kicking up the grass in front of Gideon. Still he ran; Blaine got off a second shot, which also missed as Gideon launched himself at the older man, tackling him at the knees. They fell heavily and Gideon grappled the revolver away from him, flinging it aside, pinning Blaine. He pulled out Jackman’s sidearm.

“You damn fool!” Blaine screamed, gasping, spittle on his lips.

Without a word, holding the gun to Blaine’s throat, Gideon slipped his hand into the man’s suit coat, groped about, and located the telltale puck of smallpox. He slipped it out, placed it in his pocket, and got up.

“You god damnfool,” Blaine said, weakly, still lying on the ground.

A sudden eruption of gunfire sent Gideon to the ground. Dart, fifty yards away, had turned in his flight and was now firing at him.

There was no cover and Gideon scrambled to get low and carefully aimed, returning fire. His second shot brought the man down.

And then he heard choppers. Following the sound with his eyes, he made out a pair of Black Hawks approaching fast from the east; they slowed, then turned, coming in for a combat landing.

More backup for Blaine and Dart.

“Drop your weapon and give me the smallpox,” came the voice.

Gideon turned to see Blaine, standing unsteadily, the Peacemaker back in his hand. He felt sick. And he’d been close—so close. His mind raced, trying to figure out a way to escape, to protect the smallpox. Could he hide it, bury it, run with it? Where was the Stryker? He looked around desperately, but the vehicle was still enveloped in the streaming clouds of smoke.

“I said, give me the smallpox. And drop your weapon.” Blaine’s hands were shaking.

Gideon felt paralyzed, unable to act. As they faced each other off, the choppers settled down on the fairway, their doors flew open, and soldiers poured out, weapons at the ready, fanning out in a classic pattern and advancing on them. Gideon looked at the approaching soldiers, then back to Blaine. Strangely, tears were streaming down the older man’s face.