The meeting that Dr. Marker called was a good deal more selective than the first set. Department heads only, for one thing. Healthy people, for another. They all fit comfortably in Area Director D'Angelo's board room with an ample selection of chairs. Don found it morbidly amusing that each person chose to sit as far away from his neighbor as possible, as though the C-NO4 was airborne. The only pair actually next to each other was Don and Dr. Arthur.

"I've found the source of the contamination," was Marker's opening volley. "Through careful study and data review, I've discovered that the bacteria was introduced to this building via standard issue plastic cups, specifically the ones designed to hold hot beverages. My computer program was able to pinpoint it with exactitude."

Dr. Arthur and Special Agent Eppes exchanged glances. Marker had spent his time fussing over his program and issuing pronouncements. Robin had gone to him shortly after pulling a package of plastic cups, swabbing them for cultures, and confirming the source of the infection. The entire lot of cups had been dragged off the shelves and quarantined, and Robin's staff were busily engaged in testing the rest of the paper goods in the warehouse. Destruction of the source contaminants would be next on the agenda.

Credit wasn't important at the moment. Let Marker have his little supposed triumph. What was important was to contain the contamination and eliminate it.

"People, I need you to each go through your areas and remove all the paper and plastic eating utensils around. That includes cups, spoons, plates, everything."

"Coffee stirrers," Robin murmured from beside Don. She raised her voice. "Excuse me, Dr. Marker. Let me add to everyone: do not touch any of the paper or plastic that you find. Simply note it, and let our people handle it with gloves. Let's stay on the safe side."

"Thank you, Robin, for that little item." Marker pushed on. "For the next twenty-four hours, we will be watching all personnel inside this building for signs of illness. After that, the danger should be past. We'll get out of your hair after that," he added, trying for a cheerful and entirely inappropriate grin. Area Director D'Angelo merely looked grim.

"Forty-eight hours," Robin muttered under her breath to Don. "Man can't even get the time line straight. And I'll be around here for the next week. Your people will need at least that much recovery time, and I refuse to turn them over to the local medical center. As good as they are, they don't have our expertise in germ warfare. We'll keep this bug contained, no matter what. It's deadly."

Don had other thoughts. "Have we tried finding out who delivered the contaminants, sir?" he asked D'Angelo.

"Good point. Follow up, Eppes," D'Angelo directed.

"Thank you, sir. I'll head down to Purchasing. I'll get my team on it." Most of them, he thought. One of them isn't up to doing more than breathing. Hope he's capable of doing that. Which reminds me… "How's Colby?" he asked, escorting Robin out of the conference room.

"Too early to tell," Robin told him. "I'm hoping that he's going to be one of the lucky ones. He's strong, and he's tough…" She allowed her voice to trail off.

That sounded ominous. "How many?" Don asked, not really wanting to hear the answer.

"Three more. Total of seven." Robin lapsed into a morose silence. "Healthy people, every one of them. They shouldn't have died, Don."

"I guess that's why they call it terrorism." Don tightened his lips. Those were his friends, his colleagues who were dying. That was Colby, lying there, on that cot, white as a ghost. "Take care of them, doc. Take good care of them."

It should have been a wonderful excursion. The sun was shining, and Charlie had earlier walked through the single cloud in the sky that, because of the elevation and the mountain sticking through it, had qualified as a lifting fog. The area had become rocky above the tree line, with small plants low to the ground the only signs of life. That, and a couple of hawks drifting through the air currents, peering at the two-legged creature below and deciding that the human was really too big to qualify as prey. All in all, a glorious day for a hike. A little on the chilly side, but that was the mountains for you.

It should have been a wonderful excursion, but there was too much on Charlie's mind. Larry, in bed at the motel, sick with the flu and needing to get home to feel better. Don, stuck at FBI headquarters battling that terrorist illness with Colby maybe on his death bed. Charlie grimaced. Don wouldn't say much about Colby, and that was never a good sign. And there was the transmission factor to consider. Robin had said that people could be infectious, that they had all the victims in isolation, but what about the rest of the employees in the FBI building, including Don and Megan and David? Would they get it, too?

Nothing more he could do from here. He'd already set up the computer program to track the victims and their activities, had pinpointed the most likely vectors. It was up to Don and Robin and her team; hopefully they'd identified the exact piece and neutralized it or decontaminated it or whatever the proper terminology was. Charlie hustled, dismantling Larry's star-gazing equipment and putting the pieces back into the backpack that he'd lugged up for the purpose. Charlie glanced at his cell phone in the side pocket of the backpack, looking for the little envelope in the window to tell him that Don had called again. Nothing. No word from his brother. All Charlie could do was to finish this job here on the mountain and get Larry home to recuperate.

He finished unscrewing the final cylinder, and stood up to stretch, trying to work the kinks out of his back. The job of dismantling had taken longer than putting it up, which made sense, since the first time Charlie was up here with Larry who had done his half of the work. Charlie glanced at the sky; the sun was almost past the zenith. Lunchtime; Charlie wondered about taking out the sandwich that he'd packed, figuring that it would be one less item to tote back down the slopes.

Nope. His insides felt just this side of queasy, and the thought of food riled them up a bit more. The sandwich could stay where it was for the moment. The bottle of water however, sounded more appealing.

Suddenly Charlie found himself sitting on the ground, the rocks cold beneath him, clueless as to how he'd gotten there. The world swirled dizzily around him. He blinked, blinked again to try to focus. What was going on?

Thirsty. Horribly thirsty, all of a sudden. Not hungry—Charlie suddenly leaned over and lost his breakfast.

Damn. He'd caught Larry's flu. Wouldn't this make getting down the mountain an interesting feat to accomplish?

Still thirsty. And, as an added bonus, the water was in the pack where the last piece of equipment needed to be stored. No matter what, Larry's data was safe. As soon as he felt he could, Charlie crawled to the backpack, cylinder in hand, to pull out the water.

Better. He must have allowed himself to become dehydrated up in the high mountain elevations. Maybe it wasn't the flu but just old-fashioned high altitude sickness. The water was good, but the bottle was now empty. Lighter, but empty. Charlie stashed it back into the pack. No trash cans up here. The humor fell flat, even to himself.

No comfortable beds, either. The motel room had never seemed so enticing. He'd have to get back down the mountain and fall into the one beside Larry who by now would hopefully feel better enough to drive them both home. If not, well, the motel wasn't so full that renting the room for another night was out of the question. He sighed, feeling his head clear just a trace. Having the flu was something less than exciting. Hopefully it would turn out to be merely the high altitude, and he'd feel better as soon as he got another thousand feet lower. Then Charlie could finish this job and get them both home as quickly as possible.

At least if it were the flu, he could avoid having to teach Langerton's two hundred level course on Monday. Dark clouds, silver linings, and all of that. He hefted the backpack onto his shoulder and tried to stand up. He didn't notice the patch of water that had turned into ice overnight beneath his boot. Despite the daytime sun, the patch of ice hadn't bothered with the effort needed to return to a liquid state.

The backpack fell off of Charlie's shoulder and rolled into a ravine. Charlie himself fell to the ground and rolled off in another direction.

"Uh, yeah." The warehouse manager, one Frank Wilder, wasn't used to having a team of irritated FBI agents descend on him unannounced. Come to think of it, he wasn't used to having them appear with an invitation, either. Meeting with customers who ordered paper plates and cups tended to be someone from Marketing, someone who could close a deal. It was paper and plastic stuff, for cripes' sake! What was the big deal?

He got clued in very quickly. Someone had sprayed several packages of plastic cups with a poison; Don carefully didn't mention what. Several people had become sick, and seven had died. More could die—not Colby! Please, not Colby! That made it a murder rap. Was the warehouse manager involved?

No, the warehouse manager was not, most emphatically was not, and to prove it he'd be happy to open his records for the nice FBI agents right now. Would the FBI agents like some coffee, perhaps? Something hot, make the morning a little better?

Not served in plastic cups, they wouldn't.

"I'm not finding anything here, Don." Megan sifted through the lading bills, trying to find something out of the ordinary. "Everything looks like it should. All of the receipts are signed by Jeff McMahon on our end, no problem. Looks like he accepted things into the Loading Dock as usual. They made a delivery on Monday, and another one on Thursday. Their usual runs." She whistled. "We go through that many cups per day?"

"It's a big place," Don said, distracted. "Takes a lot of coffee to keep it going."

"Not on my end," David said grimly. "After this, I'm switching to stuff I bring from home. And buying stock in any company that makes thermoses." He thumbed through his own set of records. "Hey, look at this. They hired a couple of new drivers just two weeks ago. Couple of guys named John Delaney and Clarence McGee."

"Doesn't ring any bells here. Megan?"

"No, but look at this: those were the two that made the delivery to Headquarters on Thursday." She handed the papers to Don, who turned to the warehouse manager. "You hire these two?"

"Yes." Nervous. "Personnel checked 'em out thoroughly. They had papers, their trucking licenses legal. We do that for everyone who works here. That's the law."

"Yeah?" Don pulled out his cell and called into FBI headquarters. The answer came back quickly. "I think your Personnel people better start getting a little more thorough if they want to continue to do business with the FBI, Mr. Wilder. The State of California has no record of any truck driver's licenses being issued to either of those names."

Wilder paled. "I…They…"

"Gonna blame it on Personnel, Mr. Wilder? I've got a better idea." Don stood up. He readjusted his shades. "How about we go visit your Personnel people, maybe get a home address for these drivers?"

"I…"

"Yes, Mr. Wilder?" Don turned back around to stare at the man through the dark lenses. "Something you want to share with us? Right now, perhaps?"

"I…" The warehouse manager swallowed hard, and tried again. "The okay from Personnel hasn't come through, yet."

Why was Don not surprised? "And you used them anyway."

"I was short drivers!" Wilder wailed. "The flu has been hitting everyone! It was either that, or the shipments wouldn't get out. They were helping me out! They looked legit," he added. "Their licenses looked okay."

Right. Terrorists tended to be pretty good at forging those sorts of things. "I need those addresses, Mr. Wilder," Don told him. "I need them now. Do you have them?"

"They filled out applications—"

Great. More dead ends, Don was certain of that. But they'd go through the motions, hoping for something better to pop up. A thought occurred to him. "Megan, you go upstairs to Personnel, check out the addresses. Mr. Wilder, these drivers; are they out on a run right now?"

"Yes! Yes! I can pull those records! I can call them in!"

"Do that. Pull the records; we need to know where they are at this moment. But don't call them," Don cautioned. "Don't let them know that we're here."

Even better. Wilder's records showed that the pair had just made a delivery of plastic utensils to the FBI headquarters in San Diego, some two hours drive south. Both FBI buildings had taken advantage of their location to go for a joint contract with the company, get the disposable goods for a cheaper price. The company had been glad to oblige, sending their drivers to both locations on regular runs. Delaney and McGee had just finished delivering the goods to San Diego, and, as far as the Loading Dock manager in San Diego knew, were back on the Pacific Coast Highway heading north to home base. It took only a few words from Don to ensure that the recently received goods were placed in quarantine. Another phone call, this one to Dr. Robin Arthur, sent a medical team scrambling for a car to go check out the delivery. San Diego had had the same sort of warnings. With luck, they wouldn't have the same sort of fatalities.

Don looked at his watch. An hour to wait until Delaney and McGee pulled in with the empty truck. He considered calling for a chopper to try to spot the vehicle, but decided against it. That would only spook the pair, and send them running for the hills and cover. Don wanted to apprehend them, wanted them in custody. So far, the pair hadn't a clue that they had been nailed.

An hour to kill. A couple of minutes were dealt with by calling Charlie's cell to let him know the progress. Voice mail picked up, proving that once again Dr. Eppes was so fascinated by whatever it was he was doing that mere considerations of communication were only for the intellectually challenged. Don wasn't concerned. He had told Charlie that he would call him around dinner, and it was still several hours before.

Some of the hour he took up with examining the pair's lockers, with keys and permission provided by the thoroughly terrified Mr. Wilder. Nothing. Nothing beyond an extra jacket and a half-empty pack of cigarettes in Delaney's locker. "Those things will kill you," David muttered.

"So will this bug," was Don's reply. "Wait a minute. What's this?"

'This' turned out to be a small syringe, all but hidden among the detritus dumped onto the top shelf of McGee's locker.

Don felt his blood run cold. "Let's quarantine this area," he suggested, "and get a team down here. Mr. Wilder, how people do you have out sick?"

"Sick? Are you kidding? It's flu season! Half my guys are down with it. It's what got me into this mess," he added bitterly.

More fear. Robin had said that this thing could be contagious, that if quarantine procedures weren't followed it could get out into the general population. Not a good thing. Another phone call. "Robin?"

"Don? I'm almost ready to leave for San Diego."

"Don't go," he requested. "We've got another problem on this end. Can you get over here right away?" He filled her in.

Robin turned grim. "I'll have someone drive me over to your location with a team. Nobody touches that locker or gets within ten feet of it, okay?"

"More than okay. What about us?"

"Wash your hands, Don. Lots of soap, lots of friction. I'll be there as soon as L.A. traffic lets me. Your traffic is worse than Atlanta's," she complained, then added, "wash your hands a couple of times."