No Immunity

people assumed. Locals like Jeff Tremaine might be suspicious. But Grady Hummacher, who was off exploring for oil most of the time, wouldn’t have thought twice about it. Here in this park—it had to be the place Faye talked about, the park Grady Hummacher took the boys—those two homesick boys would have run toward the first green trees and underbrush they had seen since they were hustled out of Panama. They probably thought they were in heaven, not a hellish outdoor laboratory where they breathed in deadly biological agents.
    The game was over, her taunting tone gone, as she said, “Oh shit, Fox. You shoot microbes into the air, microbes for which you have no treatment and you hope—if you even care—that the microbes don’t land on anyone downwind. That’s right, isn’t it?” She banged both hands against the mesh. “That’s right! And if someone happens to be in that park—”
    “That park’s off-limits. There are signs all over the place. And it’s not a park, it’s a testing environment. The only way you know it exists is if you work here.”
    “There was never any Panamanian virus, was there? The threat wasn’t from dreaded aliens, the virus came from our own government. And so you carried off the dead woman’s body—”
    “To protect American citizens from disease—”
    “To protect your secret project.” The woman, Irene, was dead and her body removed from the mortuary. Grady Hummacher was dead. And now all that threatened that secret was the boys. Had Grady been shot while trying to protect them? She could see Fox, gun aimed, demanding the boys. She could see his finger squeezing the trigger. He’d signal his deputies to move the boys....
    The swollen, bloody faces of the dying African patients rushed back into her mind. It was years later and she could still see each face, faces she had seen only once, to whom she had never spoken nor could have called by name. But these boy7s—a squeak startled her, and she realized it had come from her own mouth. How long had it been since their exposure? A little over a week? If they’d had Lassa, they’d be dead by now, or almost. Irene had already been dead for days.
    Why weren’t they dead? Were they just genetically lucky? Had they somehow avoided the exposure she’d had? Only to be nabbed by Fox and his cronies?
    But the sheriff’s deputies wouldn’t have touched the boys, not with their fevers and bleeding faces. Suited, masked naval personnel would have done it. As soon as Fox had seen the inside of the motel room, he’d backed out. And sent Jeff Tremaine in.
    And if the navy had taken the boys, she realized, they would have seized Grady Hummacher’s body too.
    “Fox, you don’t have those boys, do you?”
    “Not yet. We’re counting on you to help us.”
    “Help you how?”
    He didn’t answer.
    In the distance behind a denser, higher fence, a low, square building squatted in the surrounding dirt. She squinted to see the dark slits that broke up the tan facade. Windows? And the hollow in the middle—was that the entryway? The place looked like a space station on Mars. For all the chance of escaping, it might well have been. Despite the sun outside, Kiernan felt a chill colder than any during the night, and she didn’t need Tchernak to tell her about her dire prospects. Military might and self-righteousness were a deadly combination.
    No one was likely to find this place; it was hardly on the AAA map. Fox had been on target about no one worrying about her absence. Who would even know she’d flown to Las Vegas, much less where she’d gone from there? Was she counting on Persis to haul herself out of bonbon land and call... whom? God, she hoped Tchernak had had more sense than she had and gotten himself out of the deputy’s car.
    As they approached the gate, the pavement changed. It was newer, sturdier, a two-laned white road with actual curbs that led to nothing. Had they planned this facility for some other more accessible use, such as to be the headquarters of the landlocked armada? The gatehouse was substantial, and the spike-post fence had to be ten feet high and was clearly electrified. Guard towers rose from the corners. Inside the cement block kiosk she could make out a uniformed figure. The place looked like a one-story Leavenworth, or Lewisburg. Even the car facing away from the gate, a Miata much newer than her own Triumph at home, was painted military tan. It sat ready to speed the guard away the instant his