Chapter One Hundred

The Deck

Monday, August 30, 6:14 P.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 41 hours, 46 minutes E.S.T.

“The Deck is in Work Mode,” said the voice from the speakers. “All duty personnel return to assigned tasks.”

There was a pause and then, “Supervisor protocols are in place.”

The doors and hidden panels shifted again and the multicolored swarms of people emerged. I found a men’s room and ducked inside. Once I made sure I was alone I said, “What was that all about?”

Church said, “A Learjet owned by White Owl, a dummy company that MindReader traced back to Paris Jakoby, just landed and picked up three passengers. From the satellite image SAM thinks that the passengers were Otto Wirths and Cyrus Jakoby. We didn’t get a good angle on the third man.”

“Swell. Looks like I came to the wrong party.”

“Amazing and Alpha Team are in follow-craft. They’ll assess and take the next steps to find the device.”

“What about me?”

“Your call. If the Jakobys are heading to the Dragon Factory, then Amazing will infil and attempt to secure the device. Once she succeeds, the fist of God in the form of three DMS teams and National Guard units will pound the Deck.”

It was a crappy set of choices. If I left I still wouldn’t catch up to Grace before she caught up to the Jakobys. If I stayed here I might learn something, but I might also get caught.

“Keep SAM on the line and give me a quick tour. I’ll see what I can see, and then I want to collect Echo and follow Alpha to the frat party.”

“Roger that.”

Chapter One Hundred One

In flight

Monday, August 30, 6:36 P.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 41 hours, 24 minutes E.S.T.

Maj. Grace Courtland sat hunched over her laptop watching a white dot move across the satellite image of the southern United States. The dot kept just inside U.S. airspace, cruising fifty miles north of the Mexican border as it crossed Arizona and New Mexico; then it cut across the Texas midlands and out over the Gulf of Mexico south of Houston.

She tapped her commlink. “Bug, have you gotten through to the FAA yet?”

“Just finishing with them now. The jet filed a flight plan for Freeport, Grand Bahama Island. The FAA have records of the same jet making the run twice monthly for the last few years.”

“That’s it, then. Brilliant, Bug.”

Grace sat back and closed her eyes. It was going to be a couple of hours yet until touchdown, and there was nothing much she could do until then. She’d eavesdropped on the command channel while Joe infiltrated the Deck, and her heart had been in her throat the whole time. Partly because of the oppressively huge stakes they were playing for and partly for Joe.

Joe.

Early this morning, after making love, she had told him that she loved him. She’d said the words that she swore that she would never say to anyone as long as she wore a uniform. It was stupid, it was wrong, and it was dangerous.

Later that morning she hadn’t said a word to him. She was too embarrassed and too frightened of the damage their pillow talk might reveal in the light of day. And then, of course, everything started happening.

Grace wished she could roll back the clock to this morning so she could take back those words. Or, failing that, to have had the courage to stay all night and talk with him later that morning. Instead she had fled-the one act of cowardice in a life filled with risk taking.

That morning, when she’d said those words, Joe should have given her the pat lecture on the dangers of getting too close to a fellow combatant. It was never smart and it usually worked out to heartbreak of one kind or another, and that included the very real possibility of getting drummed out of the DMS and shipped back to England with a career-ending reprimand in her jacket. She’d never work in covert ops again, not unless she wanted to gallop into battle behind a desk.

She felt sick and stupid for saying those words.

What made it worse… so very much worse, was that Joe had said them back.

I love you, Grace.

She could hear the echo of those words as if Joe was whispering them into her ear as her pursuit craft tore through the skies.

I love you, Grace.

“God,” she said, and Redman-her second in command-glanced up.

“Major…?”

She shook her head and closed her eyes again.

Chapter One Hundred Two

The Deck

Monday, August 30, 6:40 P.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 41 hours, 20 minutes E.S.T.

I moved through the Deck quickly but casually. I found a clipboard on an unoccupied desk and took it. Every time I saw someone who looked vaguely official I studied the clipboard and mumbled meaningless computer words to myself. Bug must have heard me, because I heard him chuckling in my ear.

SAM steered me through the common areas toward the research centers. His knowledge of the Deck ended there, but that was fine. I wasn’t going to stick around very long. The Deck was multileveled and I took a combination of escalators, stairs, and moving walkways to get around. A couple of times I thought I saw SAM again-or the kid who looked like him-but each time there were other people around and I couldn’t risk trying to make contact. It was another mystery to be solved later.

I reached a level that was marked: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, which I thought was kind of funny since this was the secret lab of a maniac out to destroy the world. But I guess there’s bureaucracy everywhere.

I used another of Bug’s sensors to reset my master keycard and then slipped inside the restricted area. Just inside was a glass-enclosed metal walkway that ran along all four sides of a huge room in which sat rows of big tanks in massive hydraulic cradles that rocked them back and forth. The tanks had glass domes with blue lights that filled the room with an eerie glow. There were at least thirty of the tanks connected to computers on the floor and a network of pipes and cables above. I leaned close to the glass and looked down to see a half-dozen technicians in hazmat suits adjusting dials, working at computer stations, or taking readings. There were huge biohazard warning signs everywhere.

“Are you seeing this?” I whispered.

Church said, “Yes.” He didn’t sound happy. “Walk around and see if you can get a better angle on the tanks.”

I moved along, pretending to make notes on my clipboard, until I found a spot that offered the best view of the closest tank.

“Whoa!” It was Dr. Hu and for once he seemed disturbed rather than jazzed by something science related.

“What am I looking at?”

“Something that I’ve only ever heard talked about but never expected to see,” he said. “This setup is like a gigantic version of a vaccine bioreactor. But the scale!”

“Bioreactor?”

“It’s a device in which cell culture medium and cells are placed in a sterile synthetic membrane called a Cellbag, which is then rocked back and forth. The rocking motion induces waves in the cell culture fluid and provides mixing and oxygen transfer. The result is a perfect environment for cell growth. I mean, GE was making these back in the mid-nineties but for a max of like five hundred liters. Those things are the size of… they must be able to hold…”

“ ‘Five thousand gallons,’ ” I said, reading it off of the side of the vat.

“Jesus…”

“I kind of doubt they’re making vaccines down here,” I said. “Could this be how they’re mass-producing the pathogens?”

“It… could,” Hu said hesitantly, “but if so, whoever designed this is heading off into some new areas of production science. That’s some scary shit right there.”

“Believe me when I tell you, Doc, I’m shaking in my boots.”