Everyone trotted to the door. As Remi was about to open it, the buzzer sounded loudly and made her jump. Zoltán began to growl, but she whispered to him and he went quiet.

“Our two friends must be back,” said Sam. “We’ve got to let them in.”

Tibor stepped to the side of the door where the guard had pressed a button to open the cage before. He read the label, then nodded. The others all moved to the sides, backs to the wall, with guns drawn. Tibor pressed the button to buzz the guards in while Remi swung the door open.

The two men stepped inside, each carrying two paper cups of coffee, their rifles slung across their backs. As soon as they were in, Sam and János were beside them, holding pistols to their heads.

Tibor snapped some orders, and the men set down their coffee cups, set their rifles on the floor, stepped away, and lay down on their stomachs. János removed the handcuffs from the leather cases on their belts and handcuffed them to two steel girders that served to support the roof.

Remi and the dog went out, with Sam right behind. Albrecht followed, and then Tibor and János, carrying the two AK-47 rifles. When Sam looked at them questioningly, Tibor whispered, “Would you rather we had them or they did?”

They moved quickly, in loose formation, along the drive between the rows of buildings toward the spot where they had left their van.

There was the sound of a truck moving along the roadway on the far side of the buildings to their left and then a second truck coming along the paved surface outside the tall chain-link fence. They stopped in front of a building for a moment, using its bulk to hide from the truck moving along the fence. Sam and Remi moved to the corner of the building to see that it passed. The vehicle was a stake truck with about fifteen men inside, on two benches along either side, all in gray guard uniforms and holding AK-47 rifles, muzzle upward, between their knees.

When the truck had moved away along the outer perimeter, Sam moved close to the others. “So much for going over the fence.”

Suddenly there was the sound of running feet somewhere to their left beyond the next row of buildings. Sam, Remi, and Zoltán began to run ahead toward the gate, and the others moved up with them. “We’ve got to keep from being boxed in,” Sam said. “Stay ahead of them.”

The group ran harder until they reached the double-fenced building with the warnings about Contagious Disease Research. Sam said to Tibor, “Go over one row and see if you can keep those guys from flanking us. I’ll give them something else to think about.”

He waited until the others were around the next row of buildings and out of sight. Then he ran up to the Contagious Disease building and threw his body against the gate in the fence. There was a loud ringing alarm and a louder electronic siren. The red lights above the gate flashed, and a set of floodlights came on, illuminating the outside of the building. Sam ran along the drive on their original route.