The slide locked back on Bunny’s gun and Top spaced out his last two shots to give Bunny some cover and time to reload. Then Top dropped his mag and slapped in his last one.

But it wasn’t necessary. The gunfire from inside had died.

Bunny and Top got to their feet and spun around the smoking edges of the shattered wall and entered the room hard and fast, guns up and out. Nothing moved except the pall of smoke eddying around them like a graveyard mist.

Bunny kicked open the bathroom door. “Clear!”

“Clear!” Top yelled as he checked all points of the small main room. He kicked the weapons away from the slack and bloody hands of the Russians. “Secure this and call it in,” he ordered as he pivoted and ran back out into the hallway to check on Big Bob.

Bunny called a man-down report to the DMS command center, who in turn notified local police and EMTs. He checked Gilpin, but the little computer hacker was as dead as the Russians, his body covered with the marks of savage torture, his throat cut.

“Damn,” Bunny said, and then joined Top in the hall.

Top had used a switchblade to cut away Faraday’s jacket shirt and the straps of his Kevlar vest. Bunny tore the shirt into pieces and they used it to pack the three entry wounds in Big Bob’s chest and the three much larger exit wounds in his back. Top used Faraday’s tie as a tourniquet to staunch the bleeding in his ruined leg.

Big Bob was unconscious, his eyes half-closed and his lips beginning to go pale with the massive blood loss and the onset of shock. Both agents peeled off their own jackets and used them as a makeshift blanket. In the distance they could already hear the wail of sirens.

“Christ, this is bad,” Bunny said as he cradled Big Bob’s head in his lap.

Top was a lifelong expert in karate and knew a great deal about anatomy. He studied the placement of the wounds and shook his head. “I think the rounds clipped his liver and one kidney. There must be lung damage, but it’s not sucking.”

“Is that bad?”

“It’s not good. Lung could be filled with blood already.”

The sirens were louder now, outside. He heard people yelling and then the pounding of feet as EMTs and uniformed cops ran down the hall toward them. The EMTs pushed past them and began their own wound care, but they listened to Top’s professional assessments.

“We’ll take over from here, sir,” they said, and the agents backed off.

The cops circled them and Bunny flashed his credentials. Somebody at the DMS must have made the right call, because the police deferred to them, even to the point of staying outside the crime scene. The DMS operator had assured Top that Jerry Spencer, the head of the DMS’s high-tech forensics division, would be on the next thing smoking.

Top stood in the doorway and looked at the carnage.

“This don’t make sense,” Bunny said, looking over Top’s shoulder. “I mean, am I crazy or were these clowns speaking Russian?”

“Sounded like it to me. Or close enough.”

“Russian Mafia?” Bunny ventured.

“Shit if I know, Farmboy. But these guys were pros of some kind. Ex-police or ex-Russian military. They knew how to ambush a door knock.”

On the floor by the overturned table was a device that looked like a PDA. Someone, presumably one of the Russians, had attached it to Gilpin’s hard drive with narrow cables.

“Looks like they were downloading his shit,” said Bunny. He nudged the device. The PDA and the hard drive had been smashed to junk by gunfire.

“No way to know if they were downloading the data to take it or forwarding it on. Maybe they tortured him to get his passwords.”

“All this for a computer hacker?”

“I think we just stepped in somebody else’s shit.”

Bunny grunted. “It’s our shit now. Big Bob makes it or not, I’m going to want a piece of somebody’s ass for this. Whoever ordered this.”

“Hooah,” murmured Top. “The captain’s going to take this amiss.”

“We’d better call him.”

“He’s at the cemetery this morning.”

“He’ll want to know about this,” Bunny said, but before he could punch in a number Top’s phone rang.

Top looked at the code. “Uh-oh,” he said. “It’s the big man.” He flipped open his phone. “Sir.”

Mr. Church said, “Operations just informed me that there’s been an incident, that one of ours is down. Give me a sit rep.”

Top told him everything. “EMTs don’t like what they’re seeing. Big Bob’s in the ambulance now. We were just about to call Captain Ledger.”

“Scratch that, First Sergeant. We have a more pressing problem.”

“Sir?”

Church told him about the NSA. “It’s possible you men are off their radar because you’ve been operating with Bureau credentials, but now that this has happened the bloodhounds will be running.”

“What do you want us to do?”

“As soon as Captain Ledger surfaces we’ll find you some air transport and the three of you will head west. We’ve lost track of the Denver team and that incident may be separate from this-and it may be a lot more important,” Church said. “I want you two to vanish. Get off the radar and stay off until you make contact with Major Courtland, Captain Ledger, or myself. Don’t get taken. You may use any methods short of lethal force.” He read off a string of possible locations and made Top read them back. “Go to each one in order. Wait ten minutes. If Captain Ledger does not come, proceed to the next one until you rendezvous. He’ll have further instructions.”

“Yes, sir.” Top paused. “But what about Big Bob? We were going to go to the hospital once Jerry Spencer gets here.”

“Agent Spencer will neither need nor want your help, First Sergeant; and as for Sergeant Faraday… he’ll be protected. I have some friends in Wilmington who will watchdog him. I want you and Sergeant Rabbit to get mobile and get gone most riki-tik.”

He hung up.

Bunny, who had leaned close to eavesdrop, stepped back and looked at Top. “What the fuck is going on here?”

“I don’t know, Farmboy, but the man said to get our asses into the wind, so let’s boogie.”

Bunny lingered for one moment longer, first looking at the bodies sprawled in the motel room and then turning to gaze at the smears of blood where Big Bob had gone down.

“Son of a bitch must pay,” Bunny said.

Top nodded. “Hooah.”

Then they were gone.

Chapter Fourteen

Cotonou, Benin

Six days ago

Dr. Arjeta Hlasek sat back in her chair, her pointed chin resting on the tips of steepled fingers. Her expression was a patchwork of doubt, concern, and alarm. The two doctors who sat on the other side of her desk looked road worn and deeply stressed, their eyes hollow with exhaustion. Both of them sat straight in their chairs, their hands fidgeting on the stacks of test results and lab reports they each had on their laps.

“I… don’t know what to say,” began Dr. Hlasek. “This is disturbing to say the least, but what you’re describing… Well, I don’t know.”

The younger of her visitors, Dr. Rina Panjay, leaned forward, her voice low and urgent. “Dr. Hlasek… we’ve done the tests. We’ve had blind verification from two separate labs, and they verify what our own tests show.”

“She’s right, Arjeta,” agreed Thomas Smithwick. “And I can understand your hesitation. I didn’t believe it, either, when Rina first told me. I ran every kind of test I could think of-most of them several times. The lab work doesn’t even vary; it’s not like there’s a margin for error here.”

“But,” Dr. Hlasek said, half-smiling, “a genetic disease that has mysteriously mutated into a waterborne pathogen? There’s no precedent for something like this.”

Smithwick paused, then said, “There wouldn’t be… not outside of a biological warfare facility.”

“You think that’s what you’ve found? A new bioweapon that somehow escaped quarantine and has gotten into the water supply in Ouémé? That’s a lot to swallow, Thomas. Who would do such a thing? Moreover, who would fund research of that kind? It’s absurd; it’s fantasy.”