Alana shakes Monti’s strong hand and, assuming he doesn’t speak English, glances over to Sergio. “How soon do we leave?”

Monti answers for him. “Forty-five minutes, Doctor,” he says with minimal accent. “After the briefing. Come now, please.”

Monti leads Alana and Sergio inside the ship and into a long narrow conference room where several men are seated in rows of chairs, all wearing the same dark green fatigues. The room goes silent. Monti stands with arms folded below a screen that fills the wall above him. Alana counts eleven other men. Each one of them is stone-faced and sits bolt upright. There are a few impassive nods for the guests after Monti introduces them.

Alana and Sergio claim two empty chairs near the front. Sergio leans closer and says in a low voice, “The capitano described you as a soldier with the NATO counter-bioterrorism force.”

“Does that mean he will let me join the raid?” she whispers back.

“I believe so, yes.”

Monti clicks a button in his hand, and an image of a modern freighter fills the screen. The sheer size of the Cielo di Asia is daunting. And the vessel appears even bigger when the image flips to a cross-sectional blueprint. Modular containers are stacked six stories high and there are three levels belowdecks.

Monti speaks rapidly. Sergio can only translate in snippets. Alana gleans enough to understand that if Stefano is not immediately found, the soldiers will scour the ship in pairs from top to bottom.

Monti clicks the button again, and the screen fills with a photo of a smiling Stefano that Alana hasn’t seen before. There’s something lonely in his self-conscious grin. Monti advances through a few more photos of the monk. Then he extracts a printed photo from his front pocket and waves it around, indicating that everyone should be a carrying the same picture.

Monti advances the slide and an image of a self-contained breathing apparatus appears on the screen. He switches to English. “Dr. Vaughn will discuss the safety requirements now.”

Surprised, Alana rises to her feet. She pulls Sergio up by his arm. “Will you translate for me?” she asks, and he nods.

She walks the soldiers through the steps involved in securing their biohazard suits and then describes contact precautions, stressing the importance of washing their hands during decontamination, especially their thumbs, which she knows people, even doctors, sometimes forget. She reminds the soldiers to avoid any direct contact with potentially infected people or with rats, and emphasizes the importance of sealing any trapped or dead animals inside biohazard bags.

“We believe Stefano is carrying several infected rats,” she says, and waits for Sergio to translate. “Ideally, we would capture the rats alive. But do not take chances with them. A bite through the glove could lead to infection. If you’re in doubt, kill the animal.”

Monti says something in Italian and a grim laugh ripples through the room. “The capitano says that the same applies to Stefano,” Sergio translates.