High overhead, but concealed by the storm, he could hear the roar of another helicopter racing toward Port Orlov. Whichever branch of the military or civilian authority had dispatched it, the overall emergency response, he knew, would be growing by the minute. The town of Port Orlov would be under a complete and rigorously enforced quarantine until further notice, and he was lucky to have gotten out when he did. Only he knew the full extent of the deadly cargo Harley and Charlie might be carrying in their pockets — or in their veins — and he was determined to avert any further catastrophe from occurring. As the head of the mission, he was responsible for allowing it to start, and now he was equally determined to be the one to quell it.

For a second, he wondered who would be assigned to replace him. Whoever it was had undoubtedly already been chosen. There was no time to waste.

“Call the sheriff,” he said to Nika as he gripped the wheel with one hand and rummaged around in the console between the two front seats. “Tell him about the women, and tell him not to let anybody in or out of the Vanes’ house until a hazmat team gets there. Full precautions have to be taken.” Although they had both been as careful as they could be — indeed, he could feel a pool of sweat cooling inside the thermals he wore under the damp hazmat suit — viruses were among the sneakiest things on earth. And this one, though its primary mode of transmission was airborne, thrived in the blood and flesh and bodily fluids of its carriers.

While Nika made the call — and he could tell she was getting static from Sheriff Ray — he found in the console a pair of woolly mittens, assorted loose meds, and a petrified Almond Joy bar. When she got off, she said, “I think we’re both going to be under arrest before this is all over.”

“Been there, done that,” he said, with a half smile. “Here, have some dinner,” he said, offering her the candy bar. “You’re looking peaked.”

“Not hungry.”

“Eat it, anyway. You need to keep up your strength.” She was slouched low in her seat though maybe it was just to avoid the stiff breeze blowing through the hole that the shotgun shell had left in the windshield.

With the gloves on, she had to fumble at the wrapper, and as she did so, Slater leaned forward in the driver’s seat and stuffed a mitten into the hole. He was afraid that if he pushed too hard, the rest of the window, crazed with a thousand fissures, would give way, but for the moment it appeared to be holding.

“How can you see around that?” Nika asked.

“Who said I could?”

So far, he hadn’t passed any other cars or trucks, which meant that the roadblock was probably already in place somewhere up ahead. But he feared that if the Vane brothers hadn’t been stopped by now, they might have found a way to slip through the net. And the unfolding of that scenario was too dreadful even to contemplate. How wide would the dragnet eventually have to be? And what kind of panic might ensue if they tried to enforce it on a much more extensive scale?

He rubbed the side of one eye, where a splinter from the tree had hit him, and turned up the heat in the ambulance. From the way Nika was hunching her small shoulders, he guessed she was still chilled.

“You should take off your boots,” he advised her, “and put your feet on the heat vent. You need to warm up.”

Removing her footgear, she propped her stockinged feet up on the dashboard, wiggling her toes. “Frank,” she said, somberly, “what happens if we do catch up to them?”

“I reason with them.”

“That’s it? That’s your plan?” She turned her head to stare out the side window. “These are not the kind of guys who listen to reason.”

Slater was aware of that, too.

“I hope you have a Plan B,” she said.

“I did take the guns from their house.”

She didn’t seem overly impressed with that plan, either, but Slater hoped it would never come to that. The roadblock was still somewhere up ahead, and he prayed that when he got there he’d see Charlie’s van pulled over on the shoulder and the Vane brothers under arrest.

He drove on, the road winding now through rougher terrain. He wondered if Eva Lantos had arrived at the containment unit in Juneau yet … and if she was still fighting for her life. It was a miracle that she had survived at all. The wolf attack could easily have killed her, and so could the viral exposure in the demolished lab, but it was a testimony to her stubborn spirit that she had not succumbed to either one. It was her hardheadedness that had convinced him to enlist her for this mission in the first place.

As he came around a bend, he saw the neighboring hills flickering in the rosy glow of highway beacons that had been set up along the road. Bobbing his head to see around the mitten in the windshield and past the network of cracks in the glass, he still caught no glimpse of a van. He had switched his one headlight to bright, and he slowed the ambulance as he saw an Army officer in a combat helmet stepping out of an armored vehicle parked in the center of the pavement. The officer had lifted both of his hands to indicate that they should stop, and if that wasn’t clear enough, two National Guardsmen were kneeling on the asphalt, with their rifles pointed at the grille of his car.

“Looks like they mean business,” Nika said.

“They should.”

Slater stopped the car and waited until the officer approached. A soldier walked to the other side, his rifle slung over one shoulder but a finger on the trigger. Both of them, he was pleased to see, were wearing gauze face masks over their mouths, latex gloves on their hands, and keeping to a safe distance. Though they had probably never imagined that they’d have to observe these protocols, at least they’d been properly trained in them.

“Okay,” the officer said, “let’s start with who you are.” He had lieutenant’s bars on his helmet, and the mask billowed out with each word. “ID, please.”

Nika passed her driver’s license over, and added, “I’m the mayor of Port Orlov.”

Reaching out his arm at full length to take and inspect the license, he said, approvingly, “You don’t look like any mayor I’ve ever seen.” Wet snow was starting to settle on his helmet.

“Yeah, thanks,” she said, with the weary tone of someone who had heard that line one too many times. She took the license back.

The back doors of the ambulance were thrown open, and the soldier nosed around with the muzzle of his rifle.

Slater proffered his laminated, AFIP badge, and when the lieutenant saw the name and picture on it, he did a double take. “You’re Dr. Slater? The one running the mission?”

“Yes.” For once, inefficiency was his friend; he was still nominally in charge, it appeared.

“Then what the hell are you doing out here, and driving this piece of junk?” He surveyed the broken headlight and windshield. “You hit a moose?”

“No, but we ran into some other trouble.” He was not about to elaborate. The back doors were slammed shut again.

“What have you heard about the Vane boys?” Slater asked, taking back his ID. “Has anyone spotted them?”

“Not yet.”

“Keep an eye out for a blue Ford van. We have reason to believe they’re out in it.”

“Nothing like that’s come through here. We’ve stopped one logging truck and one old lady driving a pickup.”

“Are you sure that’s all?” Nika said, leaning toward the officer. “They must have hit this roadblock by now.”

“No, ma’am, they didn’t. We’ve been up and running since 1800 hours.”

“Then they must have gotten around it,” she muttered to Slater. “Maybe on one of the old logging trails.”

Slater didn’t doubt her.

“But even if they got around this, they can’t get around the Heron River Gorge,” she added. “It’s long and it’s wide, and there’s only one bridge across it.”

“How far ahead?” he asked her.