Germ

His abduction and bondage had been a blur of murky images, viewed through ripples of pain and fear and confusion. Atropos's iron stranglehold had discouraged, through immediate piercing agony, all attempts to break free and rendered him a puppet under the assassin's control. He'd heard the hangar door slam . . . gunshots . . . then nothing. Atropos must have knocked him unconscious, for the next thing he knew he was flying through the plane's portal like a piece of luggage . . . Time stuttered . . . then a body fell to the floor beside him: no, it was a punching bag . . . Cuffs sharp against his wrist, feet tied . . .

Can't breathe!

. . . a noose! How long had it taken for him to realize that it was the weight of his own legs strangling him? It had finally dawned on him, even before full consciousness. When his head had cleared, it throbbed—and told him he was in big trouble.

He didn't recall the takeoff, but that the jet was now airborne was indisputable.

He was alone in the cabin. Recessed spotlights in the arched ceiling cast hard white circles on a chair, a countertop, the floor, and diffused an eerie glow throughout the cabin. Though Allen had flown in a number of private jets—Lears, Hawkers, Gulfstreams—he'd seen none quite like this. The cabin resembled a living room with all the accoutrements of a modern, expensive bachelor pad: The laptop and printer he'd seen earlier. The plasma—now off. DVD player, stereo components. Weights. An extremely comfortable-looking leather chair.

All the comforts of home, with a cruising speed of five hundred miles per hour.

But it was not a home, Allen felt, as much as it was a lair. And he was the hapless victim, waiting for a creature to return for its feast of human flesh.

The cockpit door opened behind him, then clicked shut. An inky shadow fell over him, and Atropos stepped into view. His Wind-breaker removed, a dark green T-shirt clung to the ripples and bulges of his torso and biceps. His face was so taut it might have been forged in steel. He glared at Allen with eyes that revealed nothing but hate.

A cold pressure gripped Allen's jaw. Atropos had seized him, so blindingly fast that Allen wondered if he'd blacked out for a moment. The pressure increased until Allen thought his oral cavity would implode. Atropos slowly pulled his hand back. The fake beard peeled away from Allen's cheeks, breaking free of the spirit gum. The adhesive stretched and snapped like skin. Atropos tossed the hair aside.

Allen tasted blood, salty, coppery. His teeth had lacerated the insides of his cheeks. A gentle probe with his tongue hinted that a few molars may have buckled under the pressure as well.

No words passed between them. The other's cool application of pain, his own refusal to acknowledge it, conveyed mutual disrespect. Beyond that, Allen had nothing to say. Would he plead for life? He'd have better luck negotiating with a frenzied shark. Would he threaten the man, something along the lines of "You won't get away with this!" Frankly, Allen suspected that Atropos would get away with murdering him, just as he had gotten away with it before. And more important, Atropos believed he'd get away with it, so saying otherwise amounted to groveling. And groveling was something Allen would not do.

Atropos turned. He rolled away the punching bag and gripped the body bag in two hands, then dragged it to within three feet of Allen. Crouching, he unzipped the bag and spread it open.

Allen's breath went away. He wanted to scream but found nothing in him to let out. The plane seemed to plunge a thousand feet, spinning, spinning . . . Colors washed away. The pain brought him back. He studied the mess in the bag and raised his eyes to Atropos. He knew then that this went beyond Karl Litt, beyond his virus, beyond anything so . . . widespread.

This was personal.

sixty-six

From where Stephen and Julia watched, the airport security's search resembled a nocturnal sweep of still waters for a drowning victim. Spotlights cut through the black night to pan the tarmac in looping circles. Trucks trolleyed between the parked planes, invisible except for their amber flashers and the cone-shaped projections of searchlights.

Across an untamed field, beyond perimeter fencing and an unlighted street, the van sat unnoticed, positioned so both occupants could observe the airport grounds through the windshield. Inside, Julia used binoculars to track the trucks' activity. The short nail of her right index finger scraped nervously up and down the binoculars' pebbled surface. She panned right, to where two Chattanooga police cruisers formed a crude V in front of the last hangar. Their headlamps illuminated a man dressed in mechanic's overalls. He seemed to be pantomiming the entire gun battle with wildly exaggerated arm movements.

"A witness," she said coolly.