Heart in her throat, Alana storms into the apartment with the others. There is shouting and the sound of glass shattering. Feet stomp. Chaos. Two bearded men kneel on the floor with their hands clamped to top of their heads. Between them, a dining table is piled high with coils, pipes, and wires.

Suddenly the bedroom door bursts open. Alana sees the flash of a muzzle even before the sounds of the gunshots erupt in her ears. A bullet whizzes past her head. The agent in front of her cries out and drops to the floor. Alana swings her gun toward the source of the gunfire. Before she can squeeze the trigger, the shooter topples backward, still firing shots into the ceiling. More gunshots. One of the two suspects kneeling by the table falls over as if tipped, while the other screams in protest and waves his hands above his head.

The next minute passes in what seems like an hour. Dropping her gun, Alana sinks to her knees and applies pressure to the right side of the fallen agent’s chest. She can feel blood and air leaking out between her fingers, as his chest moves weakly up and down.

Sergio hovers over her shoulder, speaking urgently to the injured agent, who doesn’t answer. “Is he alive?” he asks Alana.

“Yeah, but his right lung is collapsed,” she says. “His chest is filled with blood and air. It needs to be drained. Now! Where are the paramedics?”

Sergio barks into his headset and then says to Alana, “Coming!”

The fallen agent breathes choppily, his chest hissing with each aspiration. Alana holds her hand as tightly as she can against his chest, trying to form a seal. He looks up at her with the glassy eyes of someone in hemorrhagic shock.

She’s catapulted back in time to her trauma residency. If she had a chest tube and a scalpel, she could insert it in two minutes or less. But the only tool available is her own palm, so she keeps it clamped to his chest.

“Slow deep breaths,” Alana says in the most soothing voice she can muster. “You’ll be all right. The paramedics will be here soon.”

He only mutters unintelligibly.

Alana can’t tell whether he understands English, let alone is conscious enough to hear her. But she keeps repeating her reassurances anyway.

Sergio taps her on the shoulder and then motions to the table piled with equipment. Beside it, the other agents are pinning the third suspect face-first to the floor. “There is no lab here,” he says. “Not for germs, anyway. Those are all bomb-making supplies.”

Chapter

Twenty-Eight

The bathroom is no cleaner than the rest of the grimy motel room. He is repulsed by filth, but it’s just one more hardship, along with the loneliness and isolation, with which he has to cope. None of them are real sacrifices; not compared with the honor of doing the Lord’s work.

He sorts the pill bottles alphabetically along the edge of the sink. He has been told it makes no difference which he swallows first, but the order appeals to him. He reads each label, including the directions, even though he could recite the words in his sleep. He extracts a pill from each of the bottles labeled DOXYCYCLINE and the CIPROFLOXACIN—the two medications that are supposed to protect him—and swallows them with a sip of bitter water from the tap. He leaves the other containers untouched.