Strangers

where he had gone; no one had seen him in almost six hours. "Obviously he's putting it together, piece by piece. One more reason to call off the cover-up and go public, before we're all caught in the act anyway."
        Leland Falkirk suddenly felt that everything was flying apart, out of control, and he had trouble breathing, for he had dedicated his life to the philosophy and principles of control, unremitting iron control in all things. Control was what mattered more than anything else. First came self-control. You had to learn to exert unfaltering control over your desires and ignoble impulses, or otherwise you risked destruction by one vice or another: alcohol, drugs, sex. He had learned that much from his ultra-religious parents, who had begun drumming the lesson into him before he was even old enough to understand what they were saying. And you also had to control your intellectual processes; you had to force yourself to rely always on logic and reason, for it was human nature to drift into superstition, into patterns of behavior based on irrational assumptions. That was a lesson he had learned in spite of his parents, from attending Pentecostal services with them and watching in shock and fear as they fell to the floor of the church or revival tent, where they screamed and thrashed in wild abandon, transported by what they claimed was the spirit of God - though it was actually just hysterical Holy Rollerism. You had to control your fear, too, or you could not hold on to sanity for long. He had taught himself to conquer his fear of his parents, who had routinely beat and punished him while claiming it was for his own good because the devil was in him and must be driven out. One way of learning to control fear was by subjecting yourself to pain and thereby increasing your tolerance for it, because you couldn't be afraid of anything if you were sure you could bear the pain it might cause you. Control. Leland Falkirk controlled himself, his life, his men, and any assignment that he was given, but now he felt control of this situation slipping quickly out of his grasp, and he was closer to panic than he had been in more than forty years.
        "Polnichev," he said, "I'm going to hang up, but you stand by your phone. My man will set up a scrambled conference call between me, you, your director, Riddenhour in Washington, and our White House contact. We're going to agree on a tough policy and the best way of implementing it. Damned if I'll let you gutless wonders fall apart on this. We'll keep control. We're going to eradicate the infected people if that's necessary, even if some of them are cute little girls and priests, and we're going to save our asses. By God, I'm going to make sure we do!"
        

        
        When Faye and Ginger returned from Elko at two-forty-five in the motel van, the green-brown car followed them down the exit ramp from I-80. Ginger was half-convinced it would swing into the motel lot and park beside them, but it stopped along the county road, a hundred feet short of the Tranquility, and waited in the slanting snowfall.
        Faye parked in front of the motel office door, and Dom and Ernie came out to help them unload the purchases they had made in Elko: ski suits, ski masks, boots, and insulated gloves for those who didn't already have them, based on sizes everyone had provided last night; two new semiautomatic.20gauge shotguns; ammunition for those weapons and the others; backpacks, flashlights, two compasses, a small acetylene torch with two bottles of gas, and a number of other items;
        Ernie embraced Faye, and Dom embraced Ginger. Simultaneously, both men said, "I was worried about you." And Ginger heard herself saying, "I was worried about you, too," even as Faye said it. Ernie and Faye kissed. With snowflakes frosting his eyebrows and melting into jeweled beads of water on his lashes, Dom lowered his face to Ginger's, and they kissed, too-a sweet, warm, lingering kiss. Somehow, it was as right for her and Dom to greet each other in such a fashion as it was for Faye and Ernie, husband and wife. That rightness was part of everything Ginger had felt for him since arriving in Elko two days ago.
        When everything had been unloaded from the van and stashed in the Blocks' apartment, all ten members of the Tranquility family adjourned to the diner. Jack, Ernie, Dom, Ned, and Faye brought guns.
        As she pulled some chairs up to the table where Brendan and