“Malone!” Bellasar shouted from inside.

“Where is she?”

“Have you still got your cell phone?” Staying hidden, Bellasar shouted numbers.

What’s he doing? Stomach cramping with apprehension, Malone sank lower behind the shattered tree. He took the phone from his windbreaker and pressed the numbers he’d been given.

“Chase?” Sienna answered immediately, frightened.

“Are you okay? Where are you?”

“In the Cloister’s basement. Locked in a room.”

“What room?”

“I don’t know! He blindfolded me once he brought me down here!”

Malone tried to keep his voice calm. “Don’t be afraid. I’m coming to get you.”

He pressed the disconnect button and shouted toward the Cloister’s open door, “Bellasar!”

No response.

“Bellasar!”

Silence, except for gunshots in the distance.

Malone pulled a tear-gas grenade from his belt, freed its pin, and hurled it through the open door.

Vapor filled the opening.

He darted toward the side of the Cloister, used the butt of his rifle to smash a basement window, and threw a tear-gas grenade into the opening.

As vapor filled the room below, he raised his gas mask from where it dangled around his neck. He put it on, knocked the remaining shards from the window, and climbed through. At the bottom, he aimed around the haze-filled room, seeing no targets, hearing no coughing. He rushed to the side of an open doorway, tossed his final grenade into a corridor, and followed it, stalking invisibly through the dense gas. He still didn’t hear any coughing. Bellasar couldn’t have anticipated a tear-gas attack. He wasn’t likely to have had a gas mask in easy reach. Was Bellasar using Sienna as a decoy while he ducked out the back of the building?

Bellasar doesn’t matter! I have to find Sienna!

He moved along the corridor, checking each room.

Empty.

He reached stairs that rose toward the gas-filled entrance.

Other stairs led down. Malone followed them.

The temperature cooled. The rocks that formed the walls became larger, the construction cruder, older, as if from a thousand years ago.

He came to the brightly lit bottom, where a shiny metal door blocked his way. Silently praying that it wasn’t locked, he pulled, exhaled when it budged, and stepped carefully to the side as it swung open.

Was Bellasar hiding on the other side, waiting to shoot him?

Malone took off his gas mask, held it at head level, and inched it around the doorjamb as if peering beyond the door. No bullet struck the mask from his hand. He readied himself, lunged through the doorway, and dropped to a crouch, aiming.

No target presented itself.

Instead, he saw the bright corridor of a laboratory. Along each side, windows showed research rooms. He hurried along, not seeing anyone.

“Sienna!”

She didn’t shout back.

“Sienna!”

He came to another steel door. It, too, was unlocked, but this time when he lunged through, aiming, he found the two Russian bioweapons experts, their faces ashen.

As he straightened, they stared from him toward a window, beyond which was another window.

“Sienna!”

She didn’t react. Past the first window, a corridor, and a second window, she sat at a table, looking dismally at her hands. Her face was battered.

“Sienna!”

“She can’t hear you,” said the stoop-shouldered Russian whom Malone had seen arrive by helicopter so long ago. His English was thickly accented, his tone heavy with discouragement. “She can’t see you, either. The glass on her window works only one way.”

Malone rushed toward a door, tugged, but couldn’t budge it. He pulled with all his strength.

“It won’t do any good,” the Russian said. “Even if you had a key. Not for six hours.”

“Six hours?”

Malone pounded the butt of his rifle against the glass. The window trembled. He pounded harder, but the glass wouldn’t yield.

“You’re wasting your time,” the Russian said. “You can’t get through that glass with a sledgehammer or a bullet. To be doubly sure, she’s in a chamber within a chamber. Anything to prevent a leak.”

“Leak?” Malone felt dizzy.

“I never believed he’d do it.” The Russian looked dazed. “Bellasar said he was going to make an example to the man he was negotiating with, but I never dreamed…”

“An example? Jesus, what did he -”

A phone rang in an office behind him.

Malone stared at it. As it rang again, he suddenly knew whose voice he would hear. Rushing in, he answered it. “You bastard, how do I get her out of there?”

“You can’t,” Bellasar said. “Not for six hours.”

“Six hours?” Again that time limit. Malone vaguely remembered having been told about its significance. When? Who had told him? “What’s so damned important about -” His skin turned cold when his memory cleared. Laster. At the Virginia safe house.

“What makes the weapon so unique is that Gribanov and Bulganin genetically engineered the smallpox virus so it can’t infect anyone unless it combines with another virus, a benign but rare one,” Laster had said. “You release the benign virus first. As soon as the target population is infected, the lethal virus is then released.” The benign virus had a six-hour life span, Laster had continued. After that, even if you had smallpox, you couldn’t spread it to anyone who hadn’t come in contact with the benign virus within the previous six hours. The time limit was a way of controlling the weapon and keeping it from spreading beyond the target area.

“I promised I’d give her to you,” Bellasar said, “but I didn’t guarantee in what condition.”

“You released both viruses at once?” Malone’s legs felt weak.

“Tell anyone anything you want about me. It won’t make a difference. When my enemies understand what I’m capable of, they’ll be twice as afraid of me.”

“You exposed her to smallpox?” Malone screamed.

Raging, he charged up the stairs. I’ll catch him! I’ll get my hands on his throat! I’ll – But as Malone neared the top, he heard gunfire, not just the rattle of assault rifles but the roar of the chopper’s machine guns. The whoosh of a rocket was followed by an explosion. At the top, the gas had dissipated. Rushing from the Cloister, Malone stared to the left, toward where he had last seen Jeb and his men. Dust, flames, and smoke obscured his vision.

The chopper wasn’t where he had left it. A rumble cramped his muscles. On his left, the haze dissipated as whirling blades and the chopper appeared. Like malignant growths, a new array of weapons emerged from its belly. It stopped a hundred feet up and a hundred yards away. Even at a distance, Bellasar’s stark features were vivid behind the Plexiglas. From a loudspeaker beneath the fuselage, his voice boomed. “I don’t sell equipment I can’t handle!”

Before Malone could run back to the Cloister, a burst from a machine gun tore a crater behind him. The force of it threw him to the ground as dirt, stones, and redirected bullets flew around him. He rolled to get farther from the crater, only to see the chopper alter its angle of fire, a machine gun tearing up another crater, this one to the right of him, the chaos making his ears ring.

He could have killed me! The son of a bitch is toying with me!

Frantic, Malone pivoted as if to run to the left, but the moment Bellasar guided the chopper that way, Malone changed direction and raced to the right.

Away from the Cloister.

Away from Jeb and his men, if they were still alive.

Toward the weapons-testing range.

Behind him, he heard the chopper’s motors change pitch as Bellasar pursued him. Even with the ringing in his ears, he heard it come so close, he had to dive to the ground, the chopper speeding over him, wind from it ruffling his hair. Before Bellasar could turn and come after him again, Malone scrambled to his feet and raced onward.