Page 8 (2/2)

So it was that Deputy Director Horace Guilder (were there any actual directors any before the Joint Chiefs (enough stars and bars around the table to start a Girl Scout troop) to offer his official assessment of the situation in Colorado (Sorry, we ood idea at the time) A full thirty seconds of du to see ould speak next

Let ht, the chairman intoned He leaned his folded hands over the table Guilder felt a bead of sweat drop froth of his torso You decided to reengineer an ancient virus that would transform a dozen death row inmates into indestructible monsters who live on blood, and you didn’t think to tell anybody about this?

Well, not exactly "decided" Guilder hadn’t been with DSW at the outset He’d coe of administration, so much money and so many man-hours already down the rat hole that he couldn’t have put the brakes on if he tried Project NOAH was under a chain of command so obscure, even Guilder didn’t knohere it had originated-probably NSA, though he’d gotten the sense it her than that, even to the White House itself But sitting before the Joint Chiefs, he understood that this distinction was pointless Guilder had spent three decades working in agencies where so much was a secret that nobody was actually responsible for anything Ideas seemed to flower of their own accord We did what? No, we didn’t And so, off into the shredder it went Which was exactly as about to happen to Special Weapons; probably even to Guilder himself

But in thehad quickly devolved into a shoutingverbal punch after verbal punch He felt relieved when he was banished fro that the situation was out of his hands Henceforth, the military would deal with this the way they dealt with all probleht, Guilder ht have put the situation more diplomatically But the CDC’s projections spoke for themselves Three weeks, four at the outside, and the virus would take out Chicago, St Louis, Salt Lake Six weeks and they were looking at the coasts

Va?

What had everyone been thinking?

And yet there was no doubt that Lear had been on to soreat Jonas Lear-even Guilder was intimated by the man, a Harvard biochemist with an IQ of a zillion who had, for all intents and purposes, invented the field of paleovirology, retrieving and resuscitating ancient organisenerally assumed that Lear was a shoo-in, so death row inotten ahead of the with his oars entirely in the water But you had to admit the idea had possibilities Such as, for instance, not dying Ever Aa not-inconsiderable personal stake

His only hope was the girl

Amy NLN The thirteenth test subject, snatched from a convent in Memphis, Tennessee, where her mother had abandoned her Guilder hadn’t felt exactly co off on that A kid, for the love of God Soast had brought her in, everybody frohway Patrol to the US Marshals was scouring the country for her, and Richards, that lunatic, had left a trail of bodies a mile wide The nuns at the convent, shot in their sleep A pair of small-town cops Six people at a coffee shop whose only ast and the girl

But the request for the girl, which had co Guilder could make hihtly altered variant of the virus, though the effects had been the sa you knew they were hanging upside down fro a rabbit But the A, the Coluotten excursion to Bolivia; it had coroup of tourists who’d started the whole thing-terle with an ecotour group called Last Wish They’d all died within aapart But in the meantime, they’d shown rerown back a full head of hair-and they’d all died cancer-free Reading Lear’s mind was a fool’s errand, but he’d come to believe this variant was the answer The trick was keeping the first test subject alive For this he’d chosen Airl

And it had worked Guilder knew it had worked Because Amy was still alive

Guilder’s office, on the third floor of an otherwise nondescript low-rise federal office building in Fairfax County-DSW shared space with, ay Assessy Task Force, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and a day care-looked out on Interstate 66 Monday of Memorial Day weekend, yet there was almost no traffic A lot of people had left the city already Guilder i called in A mother-in-law in upstate New York A friend with a cabin in the rounded, people could get only so far, and it wouldn’t make much difference in the end You couldn’t hide froirl had nature in southern Wyo in the first few hours Which meant she was in a vehicle, and not alone-so After that, she’d disappeared The transe, too weak for the satellites; she had to be within a few miles of a cell tower, and not so network Which, in southern Wyohways, would be easy to avoid She could be anywhere now Whoever ith her was sht; Guilder swiveled from theto see Nelson, the depart in the doorway Christ, what now?