them as handles, slamming the back of the captain’s head into the cement floor, once, twice.
Gideon rolled off the now unconscious man. Their struggle had brought them close to Gurulé’s gun, and Gideon grabbed it just as the side door to the lobby burst open and two soldiers rushed in. Gideon shot one immediately, throwing him back against the wall; the second dove for cover in a panic, firing wildly, the bullets raking the glass wall behind Gideon and shattering it.
Gideon dove through the broken glass, then staggered to his feet, bullets snicking past him and ricocheting off the asphalt of the rear parking lot. He reached the closest parked car and fell behind it as a swarm of rounds rammed through the metal. When he returned fire he could see, through the open door of the building, the white puck of smallpox lying against the wall. Even as he stared Blaine appeared, scooped up the puck, and disappeared again into the back hall, with a yell for his men to follow.
“No!” Gideon cried out.
He fired again but it was too late; the remaining soldiers vanished into the building with a final, desultory burst of gunfire in his direction.
They had the smallpox.
For a moment, Gideon just leaned against the car, head spinning. He’d been badly beaten, he hurt all over, blood was pouring from his injured mouth—but the surge of adrenaline from the fight, and the loss of the smallpox, managed to sustain him.
Pushing away from the car and sprinting around the corner, he ran along the blank, windowless side wall of the building, which went on seemingly forever. He finally reached the end and tore around the next corner. The front parking lot came into view, and there on the tarmac was Dart’s chopper, a UH-60 Black Hawk, its rotors spinning up. Through the open cabin door he could see Blaine and Dart already seated, with the last of the soldiers just now climbing in. Lying nearby the chopper, in a pool of blood, was a body all too clearly dead.
Fordyce.
Gideon felt a sudden nausea, a choking rage that closed down his throat. All was now clear.
He drew his pistol and sprinted across the grass toward the helicopter. As it began to rise, gunfire erupted from the cabin door. Gideon veered to another parked car and crouched behind it as rounds buried themselves in the vehicle. Half mad with anger and grief, he rose again and—bracing himself on the hood, ignoring the rounds whining past his head—aimed the captain’s 9mm and squeezed off two carefully placed rounds, aiming for the turboshaft engines. One round hit home with a thunk and a spray of paint chips, followed a moment later by a grinding noise. More shots raked the car but Gideon remained in place, easing off a third shot. Now black smoke spurted up from the engines, half obscuring the main rotor blades; the chopper seemed to hesitate as the grinding noise turned into a strident rasp. Then the fuselage began to rotate and tilt, the bird coming back to earth hard, the tail rotor making contact with the ground and shattering, the pieces flying away with a chilling hummm.
Three soldiers piled out of the now burning chopper and came at him, firing their M4s on full automatic, followed a moment later by Dart and Blaine. The bullets shredded the car he’d taken cover behind, spraying him with bits of glass and metal as he crouched, only the heavy engine block stopping the high-velocity rounds.
And then the shooting stopped abruptly. He took a deep breath, rose to return fire, but realized it was a waste of ammo—they had veered away and were now out of range for a handgun. And they were no longer concerning themselves with him. Dart, Blaine, and the soldiers were piling into a Humvee, evidently the vehicle Blaine had arrived in. The doors slammed shut and the vehicle laid rubber, fishtailing out of the lot and heading for the long service road out of the base. The chopper was now leaning precariously, making a gruesome grinding sound, the rotors flapping, smoke billowing upward; a moment later it erupted in flames and, with a thump that made the air tremble, exploded in a ball of fire.
Gideon shielded his face from the heat with a curse. They were getting away—getting away with the smallpox. He jumped up and pursued them, running past the burning chopper to the far end of the parking lot, pulling the trigger again and