'Wouldn't that be a kick in the b.a.l.l.s?' the second marine said. 'Finding this douchebag and having him die like this.'

'You're not helping matters. So please shut up,' Levin snapped. Frantic now, he was trying to figure out what else he could do. Whatever was making Al-Zahrani haemorrhage internally might be visible under a microscope, he reasoned. With the constant threat of weaponized biological agents turning up in Iraq, Levin's acclimation training had also included advanced microscopy. So if he could isolate and identify the culprit ...

Collecting himself, Levin swiftly unpacked the battery-powered microscope, which resembled an espresso maker - a state-of-the-art tool developed exclusively for the US military in response to the growing need to a.s.sess bioterror threats in the field. Next, he turned on his laptop and connected the microscope's USB cable. Within seconds, the operating system identified the plug-in device and launched its a.s.sociated software application.

With renewed vigour, Levin pulled on a fresh pair of Nitrile gloves and peeled open a lancet. Grabbing a gla.s.s specimen slide, he went over to Al-Zahrani, p.r.i.c.ked his finger and squeezed a blood drop on to the slide.

Without warning, Al-Zahrani's wounded hand arced up and clamped down on Levin's wrist. Levin reeled, tried to pull free from the iron grip. Their eyes met and Levin noticed immediately the tiny veins webbing out from the prisoner's irises. There was raw terror in those dark eyes and for just that moment it so satisfied Levin that he couldn't help but grin.

The marine reached over and yanked Al-Zahrani's hand away. 'Looks like he's still got some fight in him.'

Levin hastened back to the table, placed a second gla.s.s slide over the first, and gently sandwiched the specimen into a dime-sized splotch. He centred the specimen over the microscope's diffusion screen. Then he used the software controls to adjust magnification. A darkfield condenser lit the specimen from the sides, so that bands of light fluoresced the blood's living components.

Since viper venom attacks blood cells, Levin expected to find visible proof in the specimen: sphero-echinocytes, or compromised red blood cells that had lost their definitive doughnut shape and sprouted short, blunt spicules. As he adjusted the resolution, he immediately spotted anomalies. And the damage wasn't limited to the red blood cells.

Many of the red cells were indeed misshapen and coagulated into clumps, plus many spiny platelets' and ovoid white cells' membranes had also been compromised and were lysing - proof that a foreign invader was aggressively killing the cells from the inside out.

'What in G.o.d's name...?'

He set the microscope to its maximum magnification. In micro-scale, an invading force - definitely not venom - was engaged in a fight to the death. But he'd need an electron microscope to effectively a.n.a.lyse the virions. Whatever it was, its primary objective was plainly evident: replication.

Dread poured over him. 'Jesus,' he gasped.

'Everything all right, Doc?' the guard nervously inquired.

A pause.

'No,' Levin replied grimly, his complexion ashen. Would the troops' inoculations protect against this elusive killer? If not, the repercussions were unimaginable. 'My G.o.d, we could all be infected.'

'Infected?' The marine shifted uneasily. 'Wh-what do you mean by that, Doc?'

But before the medic could respond, the sound of gunfire pierced the night.

50.

LAS VEGAS.

Agent Flaherty accelerated the rented silver Dodge Charger and smoothly manoeuvred around a tractor trailer that was moving sluggishly north up Interstate 515. He checked the display on the dashboard-mounted GPS unit the rental agency had provided. Only eight miles to go, he thought.

The GPS software still registered Our Savior in Christ Cathedral as an unknown parcel along North Hollywood Boulevard. So Flaherty chose a random street number that was in the same range as the cathedral. Plenty of signboards along the interstate pointed to another major landmark immediately north of the cathedral, which did show in the GPS's outdated database: Nellis Air Force Base. Isn't that convenient for Stokes, thought Flaherty.

In the pa.s.senger seat, Brooke held Flaherty's laptop and was studying an enlargement of one of the pictures transferred from his BlackBerry. Even when they'd driven past the opulent resorts and casinos along the Strip, her focus hadn't budged. He'd given her his pocket notepad and a pen to jot down her transcriptions. She'd already filled one page and was starting on a second.

'You're awfully quiet,' Flaherty said finally.

'Sorry,' she said, giving him a quick, apologetic glance.

'Anything useful in those pictures?'

'Oh yeah,' she said. 'Hang on just a minute ... almost finished.'

'The suspense is killing me.'

She smiled. 'It should. This is really intense.'

He drove on in silence for a solid minute, and just after the GPS's bland female voice-command prompted him to 'exit on to Charleston Boulevard in point-five miles', Brooke exhaled, sat tall in her seat and folded the laptop shut. She rolled her neck.

'Done?' Flaherty said. He glanced over at her and saw concern in her eyes.

'All done,' she said. 'My G.o.d, Tommy.' Flipping to the first page, she shook her head in disbelief. 'You're not going to believe this.'

'Try me.' He hit the GPS's mute b.u.t.ton.

'Probably best to just read this to you first,' she said. 'This is all a bit rushed, so this may not be 100 per cent ...'

'Just let me hear it, will you.'

Brooke cleared her throat. 'It starts with this pa.s.sage.' She began reading: She came from the realm of the rising sun She who holds dominion over beasts and men She who is the Screech Owl, the Night Creature She who sows vengeance and retribution on all men Before the moon had twice come Fathers and sons, all, were dead Her hand touched them not Bathed in blood they perished, destroyed from within No mother or daughter did she punish She commanded the rivers to consume the land The demon who killed the many The one sent by the great creator to end all 'Okayyyy,' Flaherty said. 'That is creepy.'

'Tommy, those skeletons Jason found in that cave were all the men in that village. And this is saying Lilith killed all all of them,' Brooke emphasized. of them,' Brooke emphasized.

'How?'

'If she didn't use physical force, then I'd a.s.sume she spread some kind of disease that made them bleed to death.'

'What kind of disease kills everyone in two days? And only males?' The car interior was silent for a moment as they contemplated what they'd just heard. 'Whoever wrote that must have been exaggerating,' he suggested. 'Maybe they all got food poisoning or something and just didn't know who to blame.'

'Food poisoning would have killed the women too,' she muttered, looking back at her notes.

'Well, at least it explains why all those teeth found at Fort Detrick all came from males. What good are the teeth, anyway?' But when he looked over, he saw that she was deep in thought. 'Brooke?'

Teeth. Pestilence. Males. 'Oh my G.o.d,' she said suddenly.

'What?'

'Just recently, in an archaeology journal I read about these excavations of ma.s.s graves in France and Germany where plague victims had been buried,' she explained. 'In ancient specimens, plague leaves an imprint in the pulp of victims' teeth. These archaeologists had found perfectly preserved Yersinia pestis Yersinia pestis DNA in the teeth.' DNA in the teeth.'

'Yur-what DNA?'

'Yersinia pestis is the bacterium that causes bubonic plague. It gets into your lymph nodes, replicates like crazy, and makes you slowly haemorrhage to death,' she explained. is the bacterium that causes bubonic plague. It gets into your lymph nodes, replicates like crazy, and makes you slowly haemorrhage to death,' she explained.

'Pleasant.'

'During the sixth century, it was called the "Plague of Justinian", killed a quarter of the people in the eastern Mediterranean and stopped the Byzantine emperor, Justinian, from reuniting Eastern and Western Europe under the Holy Roman Empire. And remember from history cla.s.s when in the fourteenth century the Black Death killed half the population of Europe?'

He nodded. 'Actually, I do.'

'That was bubonic plague too. It became a pandemic and killed over a hundred million people worldwide ... at that time, almost a quarter of the world's population.'

'Jeez, and we're worried about the lousy flu,' he said. 'But the Black Death didn't just kill men,' he pointed out. 'And you're saying it might have killed half of them ... not all all of them.' of them.'

'True,' she admitted. 'And the Black Death took a lot longer than two days to spread. It took months.'

'So you think something like the Black Death killed these guys?'

'With such a high mortality rate, probably something worse. I'm no epidemiologist. I mean, humans have been fighting these kinds of diseases ever since they started living in sedentary settlements. Since Iraq was home to the earliest cities and gave birth to agriculture, Mesopotamians would have been among the first people to transmit infectious disease. They'd have picked up all sorts of germs from domesticated cows, sheep, chickens, you name it. So it makes sense. And these men that Lilith killed belonged to a sizable, relatively isolated population. If they had no immunity to a disease brought in by an outsider, it would have spread like wildfire.'

Flaherty slowed to make a left on to North Hollywood Boulevard. 'All right, let's hold off on this for a little while, because we're almost there. We need to talk about how we're going to handle this Stokes character.'

'He may not even be here, Tommy.'

'He'll be here,' Flaherty replied confidently. 'Remember: he needs that encrypted phone line to talk with Crawford.'

Nestled at the foot of a desert mountain, the modern edifice of the megachurch glinted in the afternoon sun.

'Holy cow, will you look at that,' he said.

'Wow. It's huge huge.'

'Supposedly seats up to ten thousand.'

51.

IRAQ.

Jason was inside the tunnel entrance when he heard the rat-tat-tat-tat-tat rat-tat-tat-tat-tat of automatic gunfire. He dropped the rubble-filled bucket he'd just taken from the marine in front of him, ran to the opening, and squatted low. Then he cautiously poked his head out and scanned the camp. Behind him, four marines queued up. of automatic gunfire. He dropped the rubble-filled bucket he'd just taken from the marine in front of him, ran to the opening, and squatted low. Then he cautiously poked his head out and scanned the camp. Behind him, four marines queued up.

'I heard it too,' one of the marines said. 'What's going on?'

Jason held up a fist to signal for them to remain quiet.

In the moonlight, he could see a marine crossing the roadway - presumably the shooter. On the other side of the road, the scout swiftly moved around a hillock with the stock of his M-16 raised up against his shoulder. The other marines stayed back and hunkered down to cover him.

Then the scout lowered his weapon and shook his head, pointing to something that lay on the ground behind the hillock. Jason couldn't hear clearly what the scout was saying, but saw five marines go out to have a look at what he'd shot. When the scout reached down and held up a limp, b.l.o.o.d.y fox by its tail, they all lowered their weapons and gave him a good ribbing.

Jason didn't like the fact that the scout was so quick to shoot a suspicious target. What if instead that had been some curious Iraqi kid who just wanted to see what was going on? He sighed and turned to the others. 'False alarm.'

Disappointed, they went back to their positions as Jason grabbed his bucket and lugged it outside.

As he dumped the stones down the slope, he was surprised to see that the carefree marines remained out on the open road, cl.u.s.tered together, heckling the shooter. Why wasn't Crawford or Richards reprimanding them?

'Not smart, fellas,' he grumbled to himself.

Jason scanned the area, but Crawford and his officers were nowhere to be found. Probably back in the tent grilling Al-Zahrani again, he guessed. Ten minutes ago, one of the marines who'd been a.s.signed to watch over the prisoner came looking for Crawford, visibly distressed. But another man had redirected him down the hill to where Crawford had gone to check on the men working inside the MRAP. Now Jason was wishing he'd asked the guard if there was a problem.

If something was wrong, would Crawford have said something? Jason wondered. Studying the area around the tents, he thought: No, that stubborn jacka.s.s wouldn't say a d.a.m.n thing.

Something wasn't right ... he could feel it.

'Guys, I'll be back in a few minutes,' he called to the men in the cave.

As he loped down the steep incline, a whump whump-hsssss sound - like Fourth of July fireworks being shot up into the sky - made him stop dead in his tracks. He crouched low at the same time as his eyes locked on to a fiery orange light streaming through the night ... on a direct path for the loitering marines. sound - like Fourth of July fireworks being shot up into the sky - made him stop dead in his tracks. He crouched low at the same time as his eyes locked on to a fiery orange light streaming through the night ... on a direct path for the loitering marines.

Jason cupped his hands and yelled, 'Get off the road!'

But it was too late.

The marines had no time to react. The RPG mortar struck directly at their feet and popped, tearing them to pieces in a billowing fireball. Shrapnel spray took down three more marines posted nearby.

Jason looked over his shoulder and saw the marines streaming out from the cave. Hazo and Camel were with them. They'd clearly figured out what was going on.

'We're under attack!' one of them yelled to the others still inside the cave. 'Everyone out!'

Down below, chaos broke out as the marines tried to determine where the enemy was positioned.

Another mortar fired at the camp from a different angle. This time, Jason traced the exhaust trail and pinpointed a gunman sinking below a hummock situated fifty metres south from the camp. The grenade struck one of the Humvees and threw out a huge fireball, sending marines dashing for cover.

At the same time, automatic gunfire started raining down from elevated positions along the neighbouring mountaintop. That's also when Jason spotted trucks less than a klick south along the roadway. He scrambled down to the camp, his sights locked on to the tent.

The chaos happening outside the tent - gunfire, explosions, shouting - rang loud and clear, but Lance Corporal Jeremy Levin was unfettered as he pleaded with Crawford, 'But we can't move him now! I just told you he's infected!'

'Stand down, Corporal,' Crawford said. He turned to the two guards. 'You two go outside and make sure no one comes near this tent ... and I mean no one.'

The marines rushed to the door and disappeared.

'Colonel ...' Levin pleaded, grabbing Crawford's arm. 'This man is very, very very sick! He's got-' His fearful eyes went to Al-Zahrani, whose face and tunic were pasted with b.l.o.o.d.y vomit. sick! He's got-' His fearful eyes went to Al-Zahrani, whose face and tunic were pasted with b.l.o.o.d.y vomit.

'Get your mangy paw off me, Corporal. I know d.a.m.n well what he's got.' Crawford's crazed eyes went wide. He forcefully shoved the medic back into the table, sending the laptop and microscope hurling to the ground.

Groaning, Levin picked himself up off the ground. The horror of Crawford's words came crashing down upon him. 'Wait. What did you say?'

Crawford looked away, calculating his options.

'What do you mean you know what he's got?' Levin's voice was tremulous.

A malevolent expression came over Crawford. 'Don't you worry about that,' he hissed. 'Just have Al-Zahrani ready for transport. This is your last chance.'