“While you were away, I told one of those people you have following me around that we’ve synthesized the toxin.” She turned and gestured at the glass partition. “This is our fermentation, cell-culture, and analysis lab. Your boss will be able to take the vaccine culture with him and go into full-bore production immediately.”

Scowling, Phelps said, “That’s not good.”

“Why?” Lois asked. “Wasn’t that the purpose of this whole project, to produce a vaccine that can be given to the world?”

“You tell her,” Phelps said with a shake of his head.

“Once they have the vaccine,” Zavala said, “they’ll let the epidemic run until they bring down their government. Then they’ll offer the cure to the rest of the world. Pay or die. You and your lab have become expendable.”

The color drained out of Lois Mitchell’s already pale features.

“What have I done?” she wailed.

“It’s what you’re going to do that counts,” Phelps said.

There was a hard knock on the door. Phelps opened it and one of the guards leaned in close and whispered in his ear. Phelps stepped back inside.

“You haven’t said what you want me to do,” Lois implored.

“Whatever we do, it better be fast,” Phelps said. “Chang’s chopper has left Pohnpei for his ship.”

Zavala’s head was still reeling from its encounter with the six-hundred-foot-long Typhoon, and he was suspicious of Phelps’s abrupt change from foe to friend. But the announcement that the Triad’s enforcer would soon arrive at the lab had been more effective than having a bucket of cold water thrown in his face.

Since he didn’t have many options, Zavala decided to put his money on his former adversary. He grabbed Phelps by the arm, and said, “We need to talk, soldier.”

Unknown

NUMA 8 - Medusa

CHAPTER 42

THE SEAHAWK HELICOPTER FLEW WITHOUT ITS RUNNING lights twenty-five feet above the sea, almost skimming the wave tops, as it sped toward the atoll at two hundred miles an hour. Tension in the cockpit mounted as the chopper neared its destination, but Austin remained an island of calm. He sat in the passenger’s seat dressed in a lightweight wet suit, his eyes fixed on a satellite-generated hybrid chart spread out on his lap, etching every detail into his brain.

He had marked three Xs on the chart with a grease pencil. The first X showed the position, a quarter mile from the atoll, where the helicopter would drop him off. The second X showed the narrow breach in the coral reef. The third X, from overhead, showed the dark streak in the lagoon.

The pilot’s voice came over the headphones.

“Five-minute warning, Kurt.”