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“This is a major highway,” she protested. “It’ll be one of the first roads closed. And Nellis Air Force Base is up this way. They’ve got plenty of cops who can be recruited to close the roads.”

Ian shrugged. “Overton is this direction. That’s where the PHP helicopter was last seen. Thought we’d head up there and see what we can learn about it. We’ve got no other leads to follow right now.”

It was a reasonable plan. She just didn’t think they were going to make it clear of the city before the quarantine was put in place.

She used her spotter’s scope, which was basically a small telescope, to scan the highway ahead.

Sure enough, a cluster of brake lights and the faint blue and red flash of police cars came into view.

Crud. She and Ian were too late to slip out of the net.

Frantically, she scanned the sides of the road with her scope. “Take this exit,” she blurted.

Ian swerved the vehicle off the highway at the last minute as the exit ramp loomed beside them. “You got an idea?” he asked grimly.

She glanced over at him. “Any chance you know how to hot wire a dune buggy?”

He frowned. “I can hot wire a car. I expect the ignition on a dune buggy is the same. Why?”

She pointed at an ATV and dune buggy rental business ahead on the right. “There aren’t all that many roads out of Las Vegas. If we want to get up to Overton, I’m thinking we’ll need to go cross-country to make it.”

Ian grinned. “I like the way you think.” He turned off the headlights and parked in front of the closed dune buggy business. “We’ll need all the fuel we can carry. And we’ll need to bust open that lock on the gate.”

“I’ll get the lock,” she offered.

“You’re not going to shoot it out and make an unholy ruckus like you did in Khartoum, are you?” he asked quickly.

She scowled at him. “I got that door open before we died, thank you very much. And I’ll pick this lock if it makes you feel better.”

He hopped over the low, steel gate and headed for one of the largest dune buggy models, a four-seater with a sturdy undercarriage and big wheels.

It took her a while to pick the double-action padlock holding the lot’s exit gate closed.

By the time the chain fell away from the steel posts, Ian had started the dune buggy and loaded up the back seat with several big jugs of extra gas he’d collected from other dune buggies.

She threw the gate open, waited until he drove through, locked it shut again, and climbed in the passenger seat.

“Okay, let’s blow this popsicle stand and bypass the roadblock and quarantine,” he declared.

She replied, “Are we going to get in trouble for leaving Vegas like this?”

“Do you care? We’re probably exposed to the virus, right? Which means we’re dying if I don’t misunderstand you,” he answered grimly.

There was that.

She braced herself on the overhead sissy bar as they bumped across the rocky desert.

It was surprisingly slow going, even though they were in a motorized vehicle capable of handling the terrain.

Dawn had lightened the sky overhead and tinged the eastern horizon with peaches and pink hues before Ian turned the dune buggy back toward the north and west.

“Where are you going?” Piper asked in quick alarm.

“The PHP helicopter was last in Overton, which is about 60 miles northeast of Las Vegas. We can bump across the desert all damn day, or I can hit the highway north of the quarantine road blocks, and we can be there in an hour.”

It took them more like two hours by the time they rejoined Highway 15 and melded into the heavy northbound flow of traffic. They weren’t the only people from the area around Las Vegas eager to put some distance between themselves and the quarantine zone, apparently.

The buggy’s radio was saying nothing whatsoever about any kind of quarantine. News blackout, most likely. But it was hard to cut off the Internet and phone networks entirely. As the country woke up, word would get out.

Speaking of which, Piper pulled out her cell phone to check its reception. No signal. “Ian, is your phone working?”

He fished it out and took a look. “Nope. I’ve got no coverage out here. We must have mountains between us and the nearest tower.”

“Or else the government has shut down all communications in and out of Las Vegas,” she retorted.

“Trying to control panic?” he asked.

She shrugged. “It’s a pretty normal part of crisis response scenarios at the CDC. It delays attempts to rush police lines. Gives the authorities time to get other assets in place to back up the police and keep the populace in the quarantine zone.

“There’s the turnoff for the airport up ahead,” he commented.

“Do you want to go in now, guns blazing and confront the PHP guys, or are we going to play it low key and wait till tonight to check out the helicopter?”

Ian glanced over at her. “What are the odds your dad and his cronies have made friends with the managers at the airport? If we go in and ask some questions, will the staff at the airport tip of your old man?”

“Absolutely. My father is charming when he puts his mind to it. The way I hear it, aviators stick together. It’s a tight little club. Kind of like the good ole’ boy network in military intelligence.”

“What good ole’ boy network?” he asked in surprise.

She waved off the question. She did not need to get in to a debate about women in the intel world and workplace inequality. Las Vegas was dying behind them. And besides, the boys had already kicked her out of their club. “Why do you ask about my father?”

“If he’s likely to have made friends, then we’ll need to wait.” Ian drove around for a little while and eventually spotted a crappy motel that looked like it had seen better decades long before the sun baked it to a parched near ruin.

“Betchya they rent these rooms by the hour,” she muttered as they hopped out of the dune buggy.

“Not taking that bet,” Ian retorted. “Let me do the talking. You talk too classy for a place like this.”

Frowning, she listened on as he put on the absolutely worst bubba imitation she’d ever been unfortunate enough to witness. But the clerk forked over a room key dangling from a big plastic teardrop after Ian forked over a wad of cash. She couldn’t resist messing with him just a little, though.

“Hey, save some of that cash for me,” she exclaimed.

The clerk’s bored expression didn’t waver for an instant, but Ian’s ears reddened. Grinning at his back, she followed him outside. It was barely nine a.m. but the day was already heating up fast to oven-like conditions.

The tired-looking motel room was clean after a fashion.

At least it was better than crawling around in the African bush.

She forced herself to stretch out on the bed.

Her head ached a little and she experienced a brief bout of dizziness as she laid down.

Good thing she hadn’t drunk any more of that vodka last night before the FBI call came in.

“Need some hair of the dog?” Ian asked.

“Nope. Just water.”

He carried her a glass full of vaguely brown water from the tap. It smelled like rust and tasted like nails. But it was wet and soothed her headache.

Ian stretched out beside her on the narrow double bed, their shoulders and elbows rubbing. He asked absently, “What does the onset of Ebola look like?”

“Flu-like symptoms. Fever. Body aches. Maybe some vomiting and diarrhea. The heavy bleeding doesn’t happen until the end, and it doesn’t happen in every case. But then, we’re not dealing with plain-jane Ebola. No telling what other effects Yusef’s strain will have.

“The girls in the body bags had red eyeballs.”

“That’s from capillary hemorrhaging. All the small capillaries in their bodies ruptured. They probably had full body bruising, too. Bloody stool, bloating, and skin lesions wouldn’t be surprising once the real hemorrhaging kicks in.”

“So we’re going to die horrible, painful deaths?” he murmured.

“I try not to think about it,” she murmured back. “And we don’t know for sure that we were exposed. Maybe we dodged the bullet.”

“Is anybody sick in Las Vegas, yet?” he asked.

“No idea. I bet that CDC guy is thinking about us, right about now. Bet he’s not calling us crazy anymore.”

Ian snorted. “He’s still in denial. He’ll have to be knee-deep in dead bodies before he believes there’s a crisis.”

“He may get to experience that,” she mumbled as she drifted off to sleep.

Ian stared at the ceiling as Piper napped beside him.

This was seriously not how he’d planned to leave this world.

He felt so damned helpless just sitting around waiting for an invisible little virus to lay him low.

Restless, he got out of bed and rooted around in the go bags he and Piper had been hauling around with them since D.C.

The survival equipment inside was adequate for a trained soldier to live off the land for many weeks if necessary.

He and Piper should just take the gear and go.

Run for the hills and get away from any other human beings.

Just the two of them. No exposure to killer fevers, no outsiders judging them. No jobs. No missions.

That would be nice.

Except she wouldn’t do it any more than he would, at the end of the day. They were both soldiers in their hearts of hearts. They lived to serve a higher purpose.

She’d been calmer about losing her job than he’d expected. And she was still out here risking her neck in spite of having been canned. That said a lot about her core character.

She was more like him than she cared to admit. Or maybe than he’d cared to admit up till now. Lord knew, she’d flown to his defense last night when that blonde was crawling all over him. It had been pretty cute, actually.