Austin was trying to buy time, hoping to talk his captors into freeing him from his chair. His immediate plan was to grab a gun. It was a throw of the dice, but was all that he had.

“A futile effort, Mr. Austin,” she said. “I no longer care whether Kane lives or dies. His project is near completion and his services are not needed . . . Good-bye.”

Austin expected the Ghost Devils to move in again, but they had hoisted their weapons high on their chests and were staring toward the rear of the warehouse.

The hologram shimmered.

“What is that?” she asked.

In answer, an amplified voice came from outside.

“This is the FBI. Throw your weapons aside and come out with your hands up.”

It was a woman’s voice, speaking through a bullhorn.

Gordon Phelps had been off to the side, watching the exchange between Austin and the hologram. He stepped out of the shadows and into the spotlight. He yelled a command in Chinese to the Ghost Devils, then in English said to Austin and Zavala, “Don’t go away, boys.”

Then he and the guards ran back toward the loading-dock door.

Austin and Zavala exchanged a glance.

“No time like the present,” Austin said.

He jerked his wrist against the cuff, rose from his chair, and dragged it behind him, moving toward the Dragon Lady. After a few steps, he raised the chair to his chest, with the legs sticking out straight in front.

Zavala followed suit and got his chair into a similar position.

Together, they charged the table.

An actual person would have ducked or run for her life. But the system of camera, projectors, microphones, and computers that were the lifeblood of the holographic projection were not endowed with human instinct.

The figure seemed frozen in place. Only the facial features changed, and Austin and Zavala almost hesitated when the Dragon Lady morphed into a fierce-eyed man wearing a scarlet silk hat, then a series of fearsome male and female faces. Then the last face fuzzed at the edges and broke up into a cloud of swirling and sparkling motes.

There was only empty space by the time Austin and Zavala crashed into the table, overturning it. They climbed to their feet and saw Phelps standing under the spotlight where they had been sitting a moment before. He had the Bowen pointed in their direction.

“The boss isn’t going to like that,” he said in his lazy way.

“No, I suppose she won’t,” Austin said. “And that’s too damned bad.”

The corner of Phelps’s mouth turned up slightly.

“What were you saying about the lab vaccine and the virus?” he asked.

“The American and Chinese governments have been secretly working to develop the vaccine to head off a deadly virus, but your boss’s outfit stole the lab.”

“I know all about the lab,” Phelps said. “I’m the one who hijacked the damned thing.”