Anyway, I wasn't paying enough attention to my front because when I looked up, the ambulance sat right in front of me, no more than fifteen feet away. I stopped dead, drew my pistol, and dropped to one knee. Through the rain, I could see that a huge tree had toppled over and blocked the road in front of the ambulance.

The ambulance took up most of the narrow road and I edged around it to the left, knee-deep in the torrent of water from the drainage ditch. I got to the driver's side door and peeked inside, but there was no one in the cab.

I wanted to disable the vehicle, but the cab doors were locked, and the engine hood was latched from the inside. Damn. I crawled under the high chassis and drew my knife. I don't know much about auto mechanics, and Jack the Ripper didn't know much about anatomy. I slashed a few hoses that turned out to be water and hydraulic, then for good measure, I cut a few electrical wires. Reasonably certain I'd committed enginecide, I crawled out from under, and continued on, up the road.

I was in the midst of the artillery fortifications now, massive concrete, stone, and brick rums, covered with vines and brush, looking very much like the Mayan rums I'd once seen in the rain forest outside of Cancun. In fact, that had been on my honeymoon. This was no honeymoon. Neither was my honeymoon.

I stuck to the main road though I could see smaller lanes and concrete ramps and steps to my right and left. Obviously Tobin could have taken any one of these passages into the artillery fortifications. I realized that I'd probably lost him. I stopped walking and crouched beside a concrete wall that abutted the road. I was about to turn back, when I thought I heard something in the distance. I kept listening, trying to still my heavy breathing, and I heard it again. It was a sharp, whiny noise, and I finally recognized it as a siren. It was very far away and barely audible over the wind and rain. It came from the west, a long, shrill sound, followed by a short blast, then a long sound again. It was obviously a warning siren, an electric horn, and it was probably coming from the main building.

When I was a kid, I'd come to recognize an air raid siren, and this wasn't it. Neither was it a fire signal or an ambulance or police car siren, or a radiation leak signal, which I'd heard once in a police training film. So, partly by process of elimination and partly because I'm not really stupid, I knew-though I'd never heard this signal before-that I was listening to a warning siren for a biohazard leak. "Jesus…"

The electricity from the mainland was down and the backup generator near the main building must have died; the negative air flow pumps had stopped and the electronic air filters were breached. "Mary…"

Somewhere, a big, battery-powered siren was putting out the bad news, and everyone who was pulling hurricane duty on the island now had to suit up in biohazard gear and wait it out. I didn't have any biohazard gear. Hell, I didn't even have underwear. "… and Joseph. Amen."

I didn't panic because I knew exactly what to do. This was just like in school when we went into the basement as the air raid sirens wailed and the Russian missiles were supposed to be streaking toward Fiorello H. La Guardia High.

Well, maybe it wasn't as bad as all that. The wind was blowing hard from the south to the north… or was it? Actually, the storm was tracking north, but the wind was blowing in a counterclockwise direction, so that conceivably whatever the wind picked up at the main laboratory on the west end of the island could wind up here on the eastern edge of the island. "Damn it."

I crouched there in the rain and thought about all this-all these murders, all this chasing around through the storm and narrowly escaping death and all that-and after all this mortal foolishness and silly vanity, greed and deceit, then the Grim Reaper steps in and clears the board. Poof. Just like that.

I knew in my heart that if the generators conked out, then the entire lab was leaking everything it had inside into the outside air. "I knew it! I knew this would happen!" But why today? Why did this happen on the second day of my whole life that I was on this idiotic island?

Anyway, what I decided to do was run as fast as I could back to the beach, get Beth, get in the Whaler, get on the Chris-Craft, and haul ass away from Plum Island, hoping for the best. At least we'd have a chance, and the Grim Reaper could take care of Tobin for me.

Another thought passed through my mind, but it wasn't a nice thought-what if Beth, recognizing the warning siren for what it was, took the Whaler to the Chris-Craft and left? I mulled that over a moment, then decided that a woman who would jump aboard a small boat in a storm with me wouldn't abandon me now. Yet… there was something about plague that was more terrifying than a storm-tossed sea.

As I hurried down the sloping road toward the ambulance, I came to some realizations and conclusions: one, I'd come too far to run away now; two, I didn't want to discover what Beth had decided; three, I had to find and kill Fredric Tobin; four, I was a dead man anyway. Suddenly ashamed at my loss of nerve, I turned back toward the fortifications to meet my fate. The siren continued to wail.

As I approached the crest of the road, my eye caught a flash of light-a beam, actually, that brushed past the horizon to my right for a second, then disappeared.

I explored the area around the side of the road and found a narrow brick lane that led through the vegetation. I could see that someone had been through there recently. I made my way through the tangle of brush and fallen branches, and finally came out into a sort of sunken courtyard, surrounded by concrete walls in which were iron doors that led to the underground ammunition storage areas. At the top of the circling hills, I could see the concrete artillery emplacements. I realized that I'd stood atop these emplacements on my last visit here and had looked down into this courtyard.

Still crouched in the bushes, I peered across the open expanse of cracked concrete, but couldn't see any movement and neither did I see the light again.

Drawing my revolver and moving cautiously into the courtyard, I began working my way in a counterclockwise direction around the perimeter, keeping the lichen-covered concrete wall to my back.

I came to the first of the big steel double doors in the concrete. They were closed, and I could tell by the hinges that they were outward-swinging doors. I could also see by the rubble and debris in front of them that they hadn't been opened recently.

I continued on around the perimeter of the courtyard, realizing I was a sitting duck, a dead duck, and a cooked duck if anyone was on the parapets overlooking this open space. I came to the second door and found the same thing as the first-old, rusted steel doors that apparently hadn't been opened in decades.

On the third wall of the courtyard, the south wall, one of the double doors was slightly ajar. The debris on the ground had been swept aside when the door had been opened. I peered into the four-inch crack, but couldn't see or hear anything.

I pulled the door toward me a few more inches and the hinges squeaked loudly. Damn it. I stood frozen and listened, but all I could hear was the wind and the rain, and the faraway cry of the siren telling everyone that the unimaginable had happened.

I took a deep breath and slipped through the opening.

I stood very still for a full minute, trying to sense what kind of place this was. Again, as in the firehouse, coming in out of the rain was a treat. I was pretty sure that was the end of the treats here.

The place felt damp and smelled damp, like a place where there was no sunlight, ever.

I moved quietly to my left for two long paces and came into contact with a wall. I felt the wall and determined that it was concrete and that it was curved. I took four paces in the opposite direction and again came to a curved concrete wall. I assumed I was in a tunnel such as the one we'd seen on our first trip here-the tunnel that led to the Roswell aliens or the Nazi laboratory.