“Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me. Just inform Cyclops that Ennis Chaney quits for no one. As far as I’m concerned, that boy just rose to the top of my shit list.”

The vice president boards the Sikorsky MH-60 Pave Hawk two hours later. His newly promoted assistant, Dean Disangro, is already on board, along with two Secret Service agents and a half dozen members of the press.

Chaney is angry. Throughout his political career, he has never allowed himself to be used as a public-relations lackey. Party lines and political correctness mean nothing to him. Poverty and violence, education and equality among the races, these are the fights worth fighting. He often imagines himself a modern-day Don Quixote—fighting the windmills, he calls it. That one-eyed Jack may think he can yank my strings, but he just got himself into a street fight with the king of all brawlers.

Dean pours the vice president a cup of decaf. He knows Chaney hates flying, especially in helicopters. “You look nervous.”

“Shut up. What’s this I hear about us making a detour?”

“We’re scheduled to stop at Fort Detrick to pick up personnel from USAMRIID before heading on to the Yucatan.”

“Wonderful.” Chaney closes his eyes, gripping the armrest as the Sikorsky leaps into the sky.

Thirteen minutes later, the chopper touches down at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. From his window, Chaney sees two men supervise the loading of several large crates.

The two men climb aboard. A silver-haired officer introduces himself. “Mr.Vice President, Colonel Jim Ruetenik. I’m the military biohazard specialist assigned to your team. This is my associate, Dr. Marvin Teperman, an exobiologist on loan to us from Toronto.”

Chaney looks over the short Canadian with the pencil-thin mustache and annoyingly warm smile. “What exactly is an exobiologist?”

“Exobiology concerns the study of life outside our planet. This sludge may contain a strain of infectious virus that we’ve never seen before. AMRIID thought I might be of some help.”

“What’s in the crates?”

“Racal suits,” the colonel answers. “Portable, pressurized space suits we use in the field when dealing with potentially hot agents.”

“I’m familiar with Racal suits, Colonel.”

“That’s right, you were in Puerto Rico during the dengue outbreak in 2009.”

“This stuff is going to be a bit nastier, I’m afraid,” Marvin says. “From what we’ve been told, physical contact with the substance is causing immediate crash and bleed outs—profuse hemorrhaging from all orifices of the body.”

“I can handle it.” Chaney grips the seat as the chopper takes off. “It’s the damn chopper that gets me queasy.”

The colonel smiles. “Once we land, our first concern will be to assist the Mexicans in establishing gray zones—intermediate areas between the contaminated sites and the rest of the population.”