Chapters (96)
- Cover
- Berkley titles by David Ricciardi
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- CHARACTER LIST
- PROLOGUE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- FORTY-FIVE
- FORTY-SIX
- FORTY-SEVEN
- FORTY-EIGHT
- FORTY-NINE
- FIFTY
- FIFTY-ONE
- FIFTY-TWO
- FIFTY-THREE
- FIFTY-FOUR
- FIFTY-FIVE
- FIFTY-SIX
- FIFTY-SEVEN
- FIFTY-EIGHT
- FIFTY-NINE
- SIXTY
- SIXTY-ONE
- SIXTY-TWO
- SIXTY-THREE
- SIXTY-FOUR
- SIXTY-FIVE
- SIXTY-SIX
- SIXTY-SEVEN
- SIXTY-EIGHT
- SIXTY-NINE
- SEVENTY
- SEVENTY-ONE
- SEVENTY-TWO
- SEVENTY-THREE
- SEVENTY-FOUR
- SEVENTY-FIVE
- SEVENTY-SIX
- SEVENTY-SEVEN
- SEVENTY-EIGHT
- SEVENTY-NINE
- EIGHTY
- EIGHTY-ONE
- EIGHTY-TWO
- EIGHTY-THREE
- EIGHTY-FOUR
- EIGHTY-FIVE
- EIGHTY-SIX
- EIGHTY-SEVEN
- Children of Fallen Patriots Foundation
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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Jake got to his feet, lifted the RPG out of the grass, and fired.
The pickup disappeared. Dead men flew through the night like chunks of lava from an erupting volcano.
Jake reloaded the RPG.
He was thirty yards from the delivery truck—a can’t-miss shot, even for a novice—but he didn’t know for sure if the warhead would burn hot enough to destroy the weaponized bioagent or if the explosion would simply disperse the virus into the air, infecting him and anyone else who visited the site.
There was only one way to destroy it for sure.
He shifted his aim to a spot ten feet in front of the delivery truck and fired again.
A crater exploded in the dirt. The front of the truck was shredded, its windshield shattered and blown in. Smoke rose from the engine compartment.
Jake ran to the dirt bike. He had a minute, maybe two, to finish the job before the helicopter returned—call it a hundred seconds. He kicked the bike to life and sped down to the road at top speed, skidding to a halt in front of the delivery van. There were two men in the front seat wearing the sky blue uniforms of the bottled water company. They were dazed, and their faces were peppered with fragments of glass, but they were conscious. Jake recognized them as one of the patrols he’d seen guarding the hills around camp.
Jake drew the pistol from his leg holster and punched two pairs of .45-caliber holes through the windshield to ensure the men would never make their intended delivery.
He leaned the bike against the van. For all the violence that had occurred, the scene was strangely quiet. The smoldering pickup truck and the dead gunmen were silent. Only the soft idle of the dirt bike and the distant thrum of the helicopter penetrated the dawn air.
The van’s rear doors hung at odd angles, partially blown from their hinges by the force of the RPG. Jake pried them open and hauled himself inside. Easily five hundred cases of bottled water were stacked in front of him, shredded by shrapnel. Water was everywhere—in the air, on his hands, running across the floor, and dripping from the ceiling.
Jake had been inoculated against anthrax and everything else the U.S. government had vaccines for, but a weaponized virus was a different animal altogether. His chances of survival would be next to zero if it had already been mixed into the bottles.
But Jake didn’t have time to ponder his own fate. He heard the pitch of the helicopter’s rotor change as it turned around. At most he had sixty seconds before it was on him.
He knocked over several cases of water and found what he was looking for tied down in the center of the refrigerated van.
It was a large black case with heavy-duty latches, airtight seals, and a biohazard logo.