Guo Kang continued around the bend at a leisurely pace, looking through the trees at the private airstrip and million-dollar homes on the other side. Despite the presence of the NCIS special agent and a man whose identity he still didn’t know, Guo Kang knew the doctor and her daughter were inside one of those homes. With a grin, he continued past the gated entrance to another estate community and turned south, down a road lined with white ranch rail fences on both sides. He drove away from the airport and pulled off onto the dirt shoulder before turning the ignition off.

18

Punky stared through the front window at Shen Li and Cher chasing each other. The little girl’s laughter was infectious, and she couldn’t help but smile at such a heartwarming scene. It was a shame it had to happen under such ominous circumstances.

As if sensing the need to bring her back to reality, Margaret walked up to her and said, “Do we know who is after her? Or why?”

Punky turned and looked at the older woman and saw genuine concern on her face. Jax had introduced her as a Security Protective Officer — an accredited law enforcement officer charged with the protection of Agency facilities. Of course she wanted to know more about the threat. Punky shook her head, then glanced over her shoulder at Tan Lily, who sat on the edge of the sofa with an anxious and forlorn look on her face. “Maybe we should find out.”

Punky turned away from the window and sat in a chair across from Tan Lily. Margaret followed and hovered at her side, but Jax remained standing at the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the runway. She chewed on her lip, hesitating to broach the subject of trying to figure out who was after the doctor. Punky wasn’t a mother, but she had a good sense of the myriad of emotions Tan Lily would be feeling.

But the doctor was the one to break the silence. “Why are they after me?”

Jax turned and looked at Tan Lily, then made eye contact with Punky.

“Why do you think?” Punky asked.

Tan Lily focused on her. “It must have something to do with my husband working for the CIA.”

“Did you know he was working with us?” Jax asked.

She nodded. “Before I took Shen Li and fled, we talked about how to stop the regime from moving forward with their plan to develop synthetic bioweapons. The last time I spoke with him, he had said he believed they were going to scrap the program and focus their efforts in other areas.”

“So, why would they still need him?” Punky asked.

“And why are they after me?” Tan Lily said, repeating her initial question.

Jax joined them in the living room and sat down in a chair next to Punky. “Why don’t you tell us more about these synthetic bioweapons, and maybe we can figure that out.”

Punky saw the doctor relax, as if the topic was something she was comfortable discussing. “You have to understand that when we’re talking about synthetic bioweapons, we’re not talking about something that is extremely difficult to do. This isn’t science fiction. It’s science fact. Twenty or thirty years ago, it might have been difficult. But not today.”

“What would it look like?” Jax asked.

Tan Lily nodded as if formulating her thoughts to put them in a way they could understand. “There’s two parts to it. First, there’s the construction of the weapon. Then, there’s what we will call switches, that will turn the weapon on.”

“Like a trigger,” Punky said.

Tan Lily nodded. “In the early days of biological warfare, scientists would take a naturally occurring virus and weaponize it. Today, I don’t need to go to Africa and find a sample of Marburg. I can buy a DNA synthesizer that is completely untracked and construct the virus at home. The recipe is out there. How do I create Marburg? The genome is there, and all I have to do is take bits and pieces and ligate them together.”

“Ligate?” Punky asked.

Tan Lily gave a little shake of her head. “It means to join molecules or molecular fragments together through a new chemical bond. It’s something even high school students are capable of.”

“How long would it take a group of teenagers to do this?”

Tan Lily shrugged. “If they wanted to, they could create — from scratch — one of the world’s most deadly pathogens in only a few weeks.”

“A few weeks? Wouldn’t that be cost-prohibitive?” Jax asked.

“Oh no. It would cost maybe only thousands.”

“So, constructing the virus isn’t difficult,” Punky concluded. “Why would they need someone with your husband’s expertise? Or yours?”

“Because developing the trigger is a bit more challenging.”

“And what does that look like?” Jax wasn’t taking notes, but Punky could tell he was hanging on the doctor’s words.

“When constructing the pathogen, you can create a switch so that exposure to a drug or a molecule will trigger what is known as promotion, or the expression of these genes.” Tan Lily paused before locking eyes with Punky. “Did you have chicken pox as a kid?”

Punky nodded, though she had been so young she couldn’t remember it. “When I was four or five.”