Germ

Gregor cursed. "They're after the planes," he said. "I just saw Atropos—the Atroposes—heading for the Quonsets. One of the Cessnas got hit. Karl, get out of there. Get—"

The room shook. Static.

"Gregor? Gregor?"

Litt bolted from the bathroom and headed for the bedroom door. The monitor on the dresser showed several people running past in the hall. He tripped over something and fell to the floor. He got to his knees, and his handheld jangled, an incoming call. Without looking at it, he answered.

"Gregor?"

"Hello, Karl," Kendrick Reynolds said.

Litt glanced around the darkened room, half expecting to see the old man standing there, grinning down at him.

"I'm surprised how quickly we found your number," Kendrick said. "Once we knew where to look."

Litt rose to his feet. He had always believed Kendrick's assault, if ever he found Litt, would entail an elite division of commandos quietly killing its way into the compound and slipping into the subterranean complex to kidnap or murder the evil Karl Litt. Explosions didn't fit the model.

"Karl?"

"I'm here." He opened his bedroom door. The corridor fluorescents appeared unaffected. Several were out and others flickered, but they'd been like that as long as Litt could recall. Squinting against the light, he remembered the sunglasses in his hand and slipped them on. The siren blared, piercing his ears.

"You don't think you'll get away, do you?" Kendrick asked. "The sort of air strike we have planned for you will take some time, but I assure you, it's quite comprehensive. The explosions you're feeling now are merely a prelude. My advisors thought it would be prudent to knock out any aircraft you have in the hangars. Next, we'll pelt the surface above your head with earth-penetrating tomography bombs. Those will give the Vikings flying at forty thousand feet with their ESM suites and Inverse-Synthetic Aperture Radar clear pictures of the area's subterranean architecture. We'll see your underground complex as if it were topside."

Litt stopped moving down the corridor. "How . . ."

The sirens stopped.

Kendrick said, "That's better. Did your alarms stop because of a lull in our bombing? I'm sure the next wave will commence shortly."

"How did you figure the underground part?" Litt asked. He could not imagine that Despesorio's information was so detailed.

"You got sloppy, Karl. You let a tracking device get in."

That thing inside Allen Parker. It must be more sophisticated than the devices he had surgically installed in his staff—always under the guise of repairing an "accidental" injury. His could not be detected under so much earth and concrete, and they did not provide the altitude relative to ground level. Leave it to Kendrick to have the best.

He pressed the handheld into his face until his cheek and ear hurt. It was Gregor who had become sloppy, inviting Atropos. He hoped that last interrupted transmission from him marked his death.

"After the Vikings get a handle on the layout, we'll send in the F-15s. They'll drop GBU-28 bombs. You know about those, Karl? Bunker Busters? Forty-seven hundred pounds. Designed to punch through packed earth and twenty-two feet of reinforced concrete before exploding. Boggles my mind, the weapons we have these days. FA-18 Hornets will sweep in next. They'll cover the whole area— especially inside the smoking craters—with Maverick missiles and napalm. That stuff burns at 3,000 degrees, Karl, enough to make your germ just . . . disappear. Want to know what's next?"

Litt ran an arm over the perspiration on his forehead. All the lab doors were open, the workers gone. He went into his private lab, where he squatted in front of a cabinet and opened it, revealing a safe.

The floor shook, a prolonged vibration that cracked the tile. Explosions rumbled in the distance, deep and low. If Kendrick had faithfully described the attack, either the tomography bombing had started or they were still striking at the hangars and the assassins' Cessnas. He hoped the Hummer he had stashed in the jungle was small enough and distant enough to escape the bombing. He hoped he could get to it before the serious ordnance rained down. He hoped he wouldn't stumble into the ground troops Kendrick would surely send in last.

And while he was hoping, he hoped to someday see Kendrick feel the bite of his germ and watch him as he died.

"How can you do this?" he asked. "You're bombing a foreign country."

"Haven't you heard? You're operating the largest methamphetamine laboratory in the world there. Side things too—refined cocaine hydrochloride, heroin, marijuana, a little money laundering for the Colombian and Bolivian cartels. All kinds of nasty stuff we created the Anti-Drug Abuse Control Commission to stamp out. Considering how much anti-drug money Paraguay and Brazil get from us, they were more than happy to cooperate."

Inside the safe was a Halliburton briefcase. Litt pulled it out and stood. Its heft made him feel a little better.