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room. The aides all talked at once into their headsets. The ambassador, looking hot and wilted, pulled her damp hair back with both hands, closed her eyes and walked away from the group.
    “What is it?” Nancy asked. “What’s happening now?”
    Ambassador Simpson pinched the bridge of her nose and kept her eyes closed while she answered in a hollow voice.
    “Somebody blew the Jaguar Valley Dam,” she said. “ViraVax is gone.”
    Hodge leaned into the snoopscreen, his heart pounding.
    The final coup, he thought. The Angel carried it off!
    “But the kids . . . Sonja and Harry. My dad . . . Secretary Mandell said that’s where they’re being held. What about them?”
    The ambassador shook her head.
    “We don’t know,” she said. “The Agency office received the ViraVax emergency shutdown signal just before the blast, so this may involve contamination, as well. Garcia’s forces say they shot down a Mongoose trying to get out. We don’t know yet if there are survivors to tell us. . . .”
    Nancy’s legs gave out and for the second time she dropped, stunned, into the chair. This time Hodge was sure that her memories were flooding back; shock often overtook his most meticulous work. He watched as her wide, dilated eyes played back horrible images of Red Bartlett’s shattered skull, along with the sensation of a hot pistol in her hand. Someone was screaming, then, and by the expression on her face Hodge saw Nancy realize that she was the screamer, but still she couldn’t stop.
    Major Hodge wanted his own team to get to that Mongoose first. If Toledo was on it, he should have an accident as quickly as possible.
    “Excuse me, Major,” his aide said. “Your scramble to McAllen is ready in booth A.”
    “Thanks, Sergeant. Any news on Colonel Toledo?”
    “None, sir. The dam and ViraVax are gone. One plane crash-landed outside the compound, but we have no word on survivors.”
    “Get a team on the ground now!” he ordered. “Nobody leaves that crash alive until we’re clear on contamination.”
    “Yes, Major.”
    Hodge dismissed her with a wave of his hand and proceeded to the ultrasecure transmission booth. Hodge had one last deception to carry off, the perfect theatrical finale that would decapitate the Gardener leadership and infect the United States in one fell swoop. The Angel had done his job; it was time for Ezra the Invisible to give Flaming Sword some breathing room.

Chapter 4
    I am the Lord’s trumpet, His plow and His sword.
You who have the ears to hear, know this: The Children of
Eden are sown, and it’s a mighty arm guards the seed.
Unbeliever, tread you not on the Garden of the Lord.
    —Calvin Casey, Master, The Children of Eden

    Major Rena Scholz watched the clock on the warehouse wall turn 20:00 as she pressed Quik-Bond onto the last sheet of Plexiglas. She and her crew had removed several interview chambers from the nearby women’s prison and converted them into makeshift quarantine isolettes on less than three hours’ notice. Each was three meters on a side, networked into a mainframe for communication and jiffy-plumbed by a drop team from the Corps of Engineers. The isolettes were double-walled, sealed atop a fiberglass holding tank salvaged from a freighter in the nearby harbor, and each contained a cot, sink and sea toilet from the same ship. The air was her biggest worry.
    Sergeant Trethewey looked worried, too.
    “I can see how the air gets in, Major,” he said, pointing to the compressor huffing away in the opposite corner. “But I’m more worried about the air that comes out.”
    The sergeant helped her lift the last piece of Plexiglas into place, then tightened the corner-clamps and stepped back. Like the major, Trethewey was drenched in sweat.
    Major Scholz pointed to a fire hose coupling Quik-Bonded to a hole in the glass.
    “We’ll run hoses from here to the cold-storage facility next door,” she said. “We’ve got a dozen plastic water bladders in there from the