“With immediate exposure to this large an airborne filo sample,” Sadie said, “it’s our estimate that nearly ten thousand people would have been infected in the same period it took the hundred and twenty-five to come down with the disease in our real-world case. Infections would have occurred over a wider area, making quarantine efforts initially less effective. If the filo had reached Miami or Fort Myers, it might have spread at a rate that could easily have resulted in a hundred thousand deaths or more. Our conclusion is that Miami was ultimately the perp’s target. His mistake in detonating the bomb when he did resulted in a stunted spread of the filo that prevented it from reaching the urban center he had hoped to strike.”

A second expanding-circle illustration began in Washington state, east of Seattle. The same expansion, followed by the animated wavy lines pushing north, south, east, and west, played out across the Pacific Northwest. A third sequence illustrated itself in the Chicago area, a fourth in Texas, and a fifth in the northeast, near Boston.

“We’ve modeled ten sleepers detonating similar devices, and releasing a full dose of filo with no preestablished quarantine measures to slow the spread of the fever.” More expanding circles faded into view on the map, in the heartland, Rocky Mountains, then Manhattan. “You should know there is the potential effect, assuming there are other sleepers in this network, of ten to fifteen million casualties. Add to this the threat of overlap-meaning,” she said, “if two or more of the bio-dirty detonations occur within the same prequarantine period-say, forty-eight hours-you could see double the number of deaths, or triple, or worse. The effect would be a nullification of any quarantines. A ‘piggybacking’ rate-of-infection effect would likely activate a series of ‘perfect filo storms,’ or super-plague zones, where, within such areas, all are exposed, and no life is spared.”

Hurricane-like shapes visually connected three of the initial virus zones into three ominous-looking and extremely wide swaths of territory on the map. Casualty numbers beside the affected plague zones shifted from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions, then froze. Finally the image on the wall dissolved back to blue. Sadie closed her laptop and the blue square disappeared from the wall. She returned to her seat.

Sid stood.

“Who sent the filo to him?” he said. “How’d it get delivered? The perp’s profession presents both a problem and an opportunity, since every package with which Achar was associated should have had a tracking number. Bill’s group is working from lists of shipments Achar picked up, delivered, or otherwise handled. It’s a big list with no apparent connections to illegal medical labs or terrorist organizations.”

Sid came around the table to the place where Bill was seated. He reached over Bill’s shoulder, took hold of the dry-erase marker Bill had employed, went to the board, and drew a long arrow from each of the words Bill had circled. Sid’s arrows all led to the same place at the bottom of the board, where he wrote and double-underlined Public Enemy #1.

“We are assuming Achar wasn’t acting alone. He was just early, and ineffective. Why was he early? Why did he go maverick?”

Beneath his Public Enemy #1 line, Sid wrote, Time = Public Enemy #2. Laramie thought briefly of the idea that had shown itself, then escaped her earlier-an idea that had to do with Achar, his wife and son, and Mary’s take on them-but then the idea, whatever it was, retreated again into the abyss.

“What if there are nine, or eleven, or thirteen others out there, and they’re laying low for, what, another two weeks? A month? We don’t find out who they are, where they are, and who’s giving the orders before whenever it is they’re planning their D-Day, then Bill, you can kiss your wife goodbye. Sadie, your brother, and your nephew-hemorrhaged out in an emergency ward. Bob-those five rugrats of yours-they’ll die first.”

He encircled the batch of words he’d just written on the board.

“Public enemies number one and two. Session over.”

14

Cooper watched the landing lights approach, then flare, then douse as the ATR 72-500 cargo plane punched down on the longer runway of Terrance B. Lettsome International Airport. The blank-skinned turboprop charter wheeled into its assigned stall and the engines eased. As instructed, the pilot kept the props whirling. The bridge to Beef Island was sealed off for the night under the guise of midnight repair work-if he leaned back a notch, Cooper could just see the spinning kaleidoscope of blue and white emanating from the Mitsubishi minivan cruiser parked lengthwise across the bridge. They had the airport to themselves.

It was a clear, hot night. Cap’n Roy stood beside Cooper on the tarmac, out of uniform for the first time Cooper remembered seeing. Might, Cooper thought, be decked out in the khakis and sandals you’d see anybody else wearing, but the man doesn’t look one inch less the chief minister. Didn’t matter what you wore-keep a look like that on your face and you could forget going casual.

Riley came out of the terminal behind them with a lanky patrol officer named Tim. The last time Cooper encountered him, the skinny young cop had been carrying a body bag down the Marine Base dock to Cooper’s Apache. It gave Cooper a creepy sort of feeling-he wondered whether Tim’s presence might bring bad luck. It certainly had last time.

Behind the plane now, Riley took hold of the handle beneath the cargo door at the back of the plane’s fuselage. He pulled open the big door, unfolding then locking its ramp in place. Cooper watched as a bulky, tanned, short-sleeved arm appeared from inside the plane. The thick man connected to the arm peered down at Riley and Tim, then at Cooper and Roy. Satisfied, at least by Cooper’s take, that the passengers aboard the plane hadn’t been duped into some form of bust, the guy ducked back inside, then reappeared behind a much smaller man, whom he followed down the stairs.

Cooper knew the smaller man-had summoned him, in fact. When he spotted Cooper, the smaller man stopped, turned, and gestured for his handy-dandy thug to return to the plane. The bigger man climbed back inside, then came out again carrying two overstuffed black canvas bags. The smaller man ignored Cap’n Roy’s presence and came directly across the tarmac to Cooper.

“Give you the benefit of the doubt,” the man said.

Cooper nodded and motioned to Cap’n Roy. The bigger man took the hint and slogged his way over to Cap’n Roy through the torpid heat and handed the chief minister the two bags. Showing little sign of effort, Cap’n Roy took and set them down, unzipped one, reached in, dug around, then zipped it closed-Cooper catching a glimpse of the sea of U.S. currency within as he did it-before doing the same with the second bag.

Cap’n Roy then waved to Riley, who had retreated back near the customs area in the terminal.

“Good enough,” Cooper said to the small man. “We’re in business.”

Because of the ATR 72-500’s engines, he had to say it loud.

The smaller man retreated to the plane with his thug, dug out a cigarette, and had a smoke while he waited, solo, in the wash of the whirling turboprops.

Riley and Tim returned at speed aboard a forklift and a three-car luggage train. The forklift held two reassembled wooden crates, cut down by half to fit the plane’s cargo hold, and the luggage train spilled over with maybe four dozen pieces of baggage. Working quickly, though not without evident strain, Cap’n Roy’s minions loaded the semidisguised contraband aboard the plane, Cooper finding the ordinary-luggage thing amusing-first, because he knew the seemingly typical bags Riley and Tim were hefting around happened to be stuffed with solid gold, and at two-hundred-plus pounds each, were highly likely to do some lower-back damage to this rookie team of baggage handlers. Marveling at the sheer number of bags, he also wondered where the hell they’d got all the damn things-it was as though Cap’n Roy had been seizing a few Samsonites a day for months on end, eagerly awaiting the day when eight crates of stolen Mayan artifacts would arrive in Road Harbor aboard a flame-scarred yacht.