HAROLD SUNDERLAND: Sure, but what if it jumps? All we need is some white guy who can’t keep it in his pants banging some jig and we-

UNKNOWN AMERICAN: [Shakes head] Otto said it don’t [illegible] like that. Otherwise they’d have to [illegible] half of South Africa.

HAROLD SUNDERLAND: Yeah, well, they said AIDS couldn’t jump from a monkey to humans, and then some faggot bones a chimp or-

UNKNOWN AMERICAN: It was a rhesus monkey, Einstein, and I don’t [illegible] it just jumped. I asked Otto about that and [illegible] me a sly-ass wink like he knew something.

HAROLD SUNDERLAND: Yeah, well, that Kraut fuck had better be right about that, ’cause I am not dying of some jigaboo disease.

UNKNOWN AMERICAN: I hear you. [The next sentence is illegible as he has his hand on the cigarette, blocking his lips.]

HAROLD SUNDERLAND: Me, too.

UNKNOWN AMERICAN: I’m sure as hell going to stay [illegible] until after September 1.

HAROLD SUNDERLAND: I thought you trusted Otto.

UNKNOWN AMERICAN: I do, but I don’t like taking chances. When that frigging Extinction Wave hits I don’t want…

NOTE: Remainder illegible.

While I listened every drop of my blood had turned to greasy ice water in my veins. I tapped my earbud.

“Is that all there was?”

“Yes,” said Church.

“I can see why the Kid thought we’d be interested.”

“Comments, reactions?”

“It doesn’t exactly fill me with pride.”

“For being a white man?” Grace asked.

“For being a carbon-based life-form. I’d love to have some playtime with both of those jokers.”

“Agreed.”

“How sure was the translator about the phrase ‘Extinction Wave’?”

“Very. What does it suggest to you?”

“The same thing that it suggests to you, boss. Someone’s about to launch a major plague in Africa that will target nonwhites. Is there such a thing?”

“Dr. Hu is working on that. Most of the diseases that sweep Africa are based more on health conditions, lack of food, polluted water. That sort of thing. Diseases focusing on racial groups tend to be genetic rather than viral or bacteriological.”

“The Otto he mentioned has to be Otto Wirths. What did you come up with on him?”

Church said, “Nothing at the moment. We’ve got MindReader working on it. However, we got a hit on the other name the boy gave you. Cyrus Jakoby. If it’s the same man, he’s the father of the Jakoby Twins.”

“As in Paris and Hecate? Those albinos who keep showing up in the tabloids? She can’t keep her clothes on and he’s always getting thrown out of restaurants. Aren’t they scientists of some kind?”

“They’re geneticists, in point of fact. Superstars in the field of transgenics.”

“Well how about that? Any ties to the Cabal or eugenics?”

“Nothing so far. And nothing much on Cyrus Jakoby except a few offhand references the Jakoby Twins made in interviews to the effect that their father was in poor health. MindReader has found twelve Cyrus Jakobys in North America and another thirty-four in Europe. The cross-referencing will take a while, but there are no initial hits or connections to anything that rings a bell.”

“Very well. Let me fetch our young informant and see what kind of intel we can squeeze out of him.”

“He seems to be on our side, Cowboy,” said Grace. “Squeeze lightly.”

“How lightly I squeeze depends on how forthcoming he is, Grace. The words ‘Extinction Wave’ don’t exactly give me the warm fuzzies.”

I signed off.

Bunny said, “ ’Extinction Wave.’ Holy shit. Who thinks up stuff like that?”

“When I meet him,” said Top, “I’m hoping he’ll be in my crosshairs.”

“With you on that.”

There was another burst of static and then a desperate voice said, “Cowboy? Cowboy, are you there?”

It was the Kid and we were back online.

“I’m here, Kid. Where are you?”

“I’m in the House of Screams.”

“Say again?”

“The conditioning lab. Red district. Look at the floor. Follow the red line. It ends right outside where I am. I had to run and then they tried to grab me, but I got away. I-”

Whatever else he was going to say was suddenly drowned out by the roar of gunfire and the sound of a lot of people screaming. Then nothing.

“Kid! SAM…!”

But I was talking to a dead mike.

The red lines on the floor stretched out in front of us.

We ran.

Chapter Eighty-Five

The Hive

Sunday, August 29, 3:55 P.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 68 hours, 5 minutes E.S.T.

We crashed through another set of double doors that opened on an atrium that was thick with exotic plants and trees in ceramic pots. The plant leaves, the pots, and the floor were all splattered with blood. The floor was littered with shell casings. There were bodies everywhere. The dead were all strangely similar: short, muscular, red-haired, and dressed in cotton trousers and tank tops. None of the dead had weapons on or near them. From what I could see in the split second I had to take in details was that the entry wounds were on their backs as if they’d been gunned down while fleeing.

The atrium was crowded with people. Scores of the red-haired people were fighting to get through an open doorway into a room labeled: “Barracks 3.” A dozen guards stood in a rough firing line, blasting away at the fleeing, screaming people. One guard stood apart. He was a big man with a buzz cut and an evil grin. He was wrestling with a teenage boy who had to be SAM. The Kid was screaming and kicking at the big guy but for all his fury wasn’t doing the guard a lot of harm. The guard even looked amused.

SAM broke free and dug something out of his pocket-a black rock the size of an egg-and then leaped with a howl and tried to smash the guard’s skull with it. The guard swatted SAM out of the air like a bug.

All of this happened in a split second as we pelted across the atrium. Somehow through the gunfire and screams the guards must have heard us. They turned and began swinging their weapons toward us.

“Take them!” I yelled. Easier said than done. With the red-haired people on the far side and the Kid in front, a gun battle was iffy, and we were right on top of them. So we crashed right into them and it was an instant melee.

Bunny hit the line from an angle and it was like a wrecking ball hitting a line of statues. The impact knocked guards into one another, and that probably saved all our lives because suddenly everybody was in one another’s way. Top and I both capped a couple of the guards with short-range shots and then we were up close and personal. Top clocked one guard across the jaw with his M4 and spun off of that to ram the barrel into someone else’s throat.

I went for SAM, but the boy was once more grappling with the big guard. Another guard stepped up and put his rifle to his shoulder. If I’d been five feet farther back it would have been a smart move for him, but I was way too close. I grabbed his rifle and thrust the barrel toward the ceiling and pistol-whipped him across the throat, then gave him a front kick that knocked him down. The guard next to him swung his rifle at me and knocked my pistol out of my hand and damn near broke my wrist. I pivoted and broke his knee with a side-thrust kick, and as he sagged to the ground I chopped him across the throat with the edge of my other hand.

Bunny tore a rifle from one guard’s hand and threw it away, then grabbed the guy by the back of the hair so he could hold his head steady while he landed three very fast hammer blows to the nose. The man was a sack of loose bones, so Bunny picked him up and slammed him sideways into the chests of two other men. Bunny’s strategy was to keep destablizing the line. It was something we’d worked on in training. He was enormously strong and fast and he had a lot of years in judo, so he knew about overbalancing. Top, on the other hand, was lethal at close and medium range and his hands and feet lashed out with minimum effort and maximum efficiency. Top had done karate since he was a kid, and none of it was tournament stuff. No jump-spinning double Ninja death kicks. He broke bones and gouged eyes and crushed windpipes.