“You can take them off. None of us have it.”

“How do you know?” Danny said.

The old man shrugged. “Faith?”

It seemed silly to be standing there in their uniforms and masks while still trying to find their sea legs as the launch bounced through the chop. Ridiculous, really. Danny and Steve removed their masks. Gray followed suit. Gray’s partner, though, kept his on, looking at the other three cops like they were insane.

“Peter,” Gray said, “really.”

Peter shook his head at the floor and kept that mask on.

Danny, Steve, and Gray sat across from the doctor at a small table.

“What are your orders?” the doctor said.

Danny told him.

The doctor pinched his nose where his glasses had indented. “So I assumed. Would your superiors object to us moving the sick by way of army ground transport?”

“Move them where?” Danny said.

“Camp Devens.”

Danny looked over at Gray.

Gray smiled. “Once they leave the harbor, they are no longer under my purview.”

Steve Coyle said to the doctor, “Our superiors would like to know what we’re dealing with here.”

“We’re not exactly sure. Could be similar to an influenza strain we saw in Europe. Could be something else.”

“If it is the grippe,” Danny said, “how bad was it in Europe?”

“Bad,” the doctor said quietly, his eyes clear. “We believe that strain may have been related to one that first appeared at Fort Riley, Kansas, about eight months ago.”

“And if I may ask,” Gray said, “how serious was that strain, Doctor?”

“Within two weeks it killed eighty percent of the soldiers who’d contracted it.”

Steve whistled. “Fairly serious, then.”

“And after?” Danny asked.

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“It killed the soldiers. Then what did it do?”

The doctor gave them a wry smile and a soft snap of his fingers. “It disappeared.”

“Came back, though,” Steve Coyle said.

“Possibly,” the doctor said. He pinched his nose again. “Men are getting sick on that ship. Packed together like they are? It’s the worst possible environment for preventing transmission. Five will die tonight if we can’t move them.”

“Five?” Ethan Gray said. “We’d been told three.”

The doctor shook his head and held up five fingers.

On the McKinley, they met a group of doctors and majors at the fantail. It had grown overcast. The clouds looked muscular and stone gray, like sculptures of limbs, as they moved slowly over the water and back toward the city and its red brick and glass.

A Major Gideon said, “Why would they send patrolmen?” He pointed at Danny and Steve. “You have no authority to make public health decisions.”

Danny and Steve said nothing.

Gideon repeated himself. “Why send patrolmen?”

“No captains volunteered for the job,” Danny said.

“You find amusement in this?” Gideon said. “My men are sick. They fought a war you couldn’t be bothered to fight, and now they’re dying.”

“I wasn’t making a joke.” Danny gestured at Steve Coyle, at Ethan Gray, at the burn-scarred Peter. “This was a volunteer assignment, Major. No one wanted to come here except us. And we do, by the way, have the authority. We have been given clear orders as to what is acceptable and unacceptable action in this situation.”