Sergio points to the equipment. “Will these protect my agents if there are active germs inside?”

“They should. So long as they decontaminate properly afterward. I’ll show them.”

Sergio steps into his outfit as if sliding on a wet suit.

“Where’s mine?” Alana asks.

Sergio nods to the van. “You don’t need to put it on yet. Not until we have secured the grounds.”

Alana steps up to the van and grabs one of the suits. “I’m coming with you.”

He shakes his head adamantly. “We cannot risk lives. Yours or ours.”

“I’m ex-military, Sergio.”

“No!”

“What if something is released during the raid? You can’t afford to wait. You need someone on scene who understands bioweaponry. In real time. Not afterward, when it’s already too late.”

Sergio hesitates. Finally, he says, “You will stay behind us.”

“Of course.”

They suit up in silence. Sergio reaches inside the van for something else. He holds a gun out to Alana, handle toward her. She takes the weapon from him and weighs it in her hand. It’s lighter than she expected.

“Beretta,” he says. “Nine-millimeter. You are familiar with it?”

Alana nods. She hasn’t been to a firing range since her discharge from the army, but she had always been proficient with handguns, scoring high marks throughout marksmanship training.

Only four others in the garage are wearing breathing apparatuses, but all of the agents are armed. Most of them, including Sergio, carry automatic weapons. They gather in front of the vehicles, where one agent, a balding man with a thick neck and baritone voice, leads them through a short briefing in Italian that Sergio doesn’t translate. After he finishes, Sergio directs Alana and the rest of the respirator-clad team into the back of one of the vans.

The vehicles head out of the garage in a convoy. No one speaks. The taut atmosphere reminds Alana of her experience in an Afghani field hospital, moments before casualties were expected. Her pulse pounds in her ears, just as it used to back then.

Sergio adjusts his earpiece and slips his hood on. Alana does the same as the van hops the curb and slams to a stop in front of a nondescript apartment block. Sergio mutters a few clipped words to his team as the doors slide open and they spill out of the vehicle. Alana rushes along with the others and through the propped-open door into the building. They climb one flight of stairs and step out onto a landing. Sergio brings a finger to his lips and points down the narrow corridor.

They stop in front of the second-to-last apartment. Sergio glances over to her and raises his rifle. Alana nods once and slips off her gun’s safety. Her hands are still and her breathing steady, but the jitters intensify.

Sergio jabs toward the door with two extended fingers. An agent steps forward and raises a compact battering ram in both his hands. Two other men flank him, their automatic weapons leveled at the door. Alana doesn’t breathe as Sergio counts to three with his fingers. The agent thrusts the ram into the door, and it explodes off its hinges with a metallic shriek.