“That’s my take on it too,” Kane said. “The people behind the attack on the lab must have figured that I’d be ripe for the picking in the bathysphere.”

Dr. Sophie Pappas, the sole female member of the scientific board, asked, “Why didn’t the people behind these events wait until you were back on the lab? Instead of two simultaneous attacks, they only would have had to mount one.”

“Good question.” Coombs turned to Kane. “Could the work of the lab go on without you?”

Kane nodded.

“Sure,” he said. “As director, my job is to ride herd on the project. I’m a scientific coordinator now rather than a researcher. Lois Mitchell, my assistant, knows more about the actual nuts and bolts of the project.”

“You’re saying that the project could continue without you, but not without her,” Coombs said.

Kane said, “I have more experience working with the government bureaucracy, but she could easily wrap up this project in days without me. On the other hand, I know enough to reconstitute the work with the scientists remaining at Bonefish Key. It would take time, but I could get things moving again.”

“Not if you’re dead,” Coombs said. “But the lab’s work could continue without you, which means that it may not have been destroyed.”

“Your theory makes sense in a nutty sort of way,” Kane said.

“Thank you. A devious mind is essential at the higher levels of government. Have we informed the Chinese government of the attacks?”

“After the meeting, I’ll contact Colonel Ming, who is my Chinese counterpart on this project,” Lieutenant Casey said. “He’s corrupt as hell, I hear, but well connected. Perhaps he knows something that can help.”

“I hope so. This incident with the lab couldn’t have come at a worse time,” Coombs said. “The other shoe is about to drop.”

Coombs snapped his fingers, and his assistant went over to a large-screen computer at the end of the table and brought up a map of China.

“This red spot shows the village where the original outbreak occurred. These other three dots show that the epidemic has broken the quarantine and is spreading beyond the original source. We think the virus may be moving through the water table. The bug is leaping from village to village. Eventually, it will hit the big cities. Once it gets into the populations of Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai, there will be no stopping it from spreading to the rest of the world. It will be in North America within weeks.”

There was silence around the table for a moment, then Casey said, “How long before it strikes an urban area?”

“The computers say seventy-two hours from midnight.”

“That still gives us time to stop it with the vaccine,” Casey said. “Presumably, we’ll be able to reestablish contact with the lab. Once we have the cultures, we hope to produce the vaccine in quantity.”

“We’re whistling in the dark,” Coombs said. “We won’t know what happened to the lab until the Navy does its job.” Coombs leaned back in his chair and tented his fingers. “Let’s back up. Who would benefit from scuttling the work of the lab?”

“I’ll pass on that one until we know more,” Kane said, and the others at the table nodded their heads in agreement.

“Okay, then,” Coombs said with a shrug of his shoulders. “Maybe somebody can answer the question about how the attackers knew about the existence and location of a top secret facility.”

“Leaks may have been inevitable,” Kane said. “When this committee first approached the government with our findings and Uncle Sam set up Bonefish Key as a front, we were pretty inexperienced at this whole spook thing. The instinct of a scientist is to make information public, not withhold it.”

“Which is why the research was removed from Bonefish Key to the Locker,” Coombs said, “so we could keep a tight lid on it and be closer to the resource.”

“There were safety reasons as well,” Kane said. “We were working with a waterborne pathogen and tinkering with altered life-forms. The Bonefish Key lab is near populated areas that could have been impacted in the advanced stages of research.”

Coombs frowned.

“The Locker’s existence was under tighter security than the Manhattan Project,” he said. “What about that woman at your lab? The scientist the Chinese sent over as a liaison?”

“Dr. Song Lee? I’ll vouch for her. She was a whistle-blower during the SARS epidemic. She risked prison by speaking out. Her contributions to the project have been vital.”

“So were Oppenheimer’s during the original Manhattan Project,” Coombs said. “That didn’t keep his loyalty from being compromised.”

“Before you indict Dr. Lee, I’d like to point out that I was the only one at Bonefish Key who knew the exact location of the lab. That information could have come from an outside source. What about the security company?”

Lieutenant Casey said, “The security people didn’t know what the lab was for, but they knew where it was. And they might not have been as tight-lipped as government operatives.”

The lieutenant had made no secret of his opposition to outsourcing the security arrangements for the lab to a civilian company.

“The use of civilian contractors has been widespread,” Coombs said, “especially since the Iraq War.”

“Where it was proven time after time that the government had limited oversight-and-control capabilities,” Casey said. “The taxpayers pay for a professional Navy, not a bunch of oceangoing cowboys.”

“You’re out of line, Lieutenant,” Coombs said. He had lost his cool demeanor, and his face was flushed with anger.

The lieutenant’s phone trilled, heading off a heated argument over the use of private warriors. He had a brief conversation with the caller and hung up.

“The ROV is on the lab site,” he announced with a cutting glance at Coombs. “It’s transmitting photos of the bottom.”

He rose from his chair and went over to a computer at one end of the table, which was connected to a PowerPoint setup. He clicked the mouse and an image of the ocean bottom appeared on the projection screen. There was no trace of the lab, no wreckage to suggest that the Locker had been destroyed.

“Are you sure you’ve got the correct location?” Coombs asked with irritation in his voice.

“Absolutely,” Casey said. “Look closer. You can see the big circular indentations in the sand. That’s where the lab’s support legs rested.”

“What’s this all mean?” Coombs demanded.

Casey gave him a bleak smile.

“Taking a wild guess, Mr. Coombs, I’d say this means that Davy Jones’s Locker has been hijacked.”

Kane still didn’t believe it.

“How could anything that big simply disappear?” he asked.

“You fellows figure out how this facility was hijacked under the nose of the U.S. Navy,” Coombs said. “I’m going to see that Dr. Kane does a similar vanishing act.”

Coombs raised his hand to cut Kane’s next question off, reached into his suit jacket for a cell phone, and hastily punched in a number.

“We’ve got a problem,” he said into the phone.

After a quick conversation, he hung up.

“You’re going to a safe house, Dr. Kane,” he announced.

When Kane protested, Coombs again cut him off.

“Sorry for the temporary inconvenience,” he said, “but someone wants you out of the picture. These attacks show that unauthorized people have found out about the lab even though we have gone to a great deal of trouble to keep it a secret. Even without the natural disaster you suggested, the political repercussions would be staggering if word of this research gets out.”

“I can’t see that happening,” Kane said. “Whoever tried to torpedo our research seems to like secrets too.”

“The difference is, we were prepared to go public once we had a vaccine,” Coombs said.

There was a quick knock at the door, and Jones stepped into the room. He was still wearing sunglasses. Kane felt as if he were being placed under house arrest. He said good-bye, then followed Jones out into the hall.