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like dusting the Pope in the Vatican, wouldn’t you say? Well, Major? Come on, let’s hop to it!”
    Major Scholz ignored Major Hodge’s insulting tone and concentrated on getting her breathing under control.
    Rico’s alive! she thought.
    Then she shook off her exhaustion and set to work with a vengeance to see that he stayed that way.

Chapter 5
    Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent?
or where were the righteous cut off? Even as I have seen,
they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same.
    —Job

    Harry Toledo ran a trembling hand through sweaty hair and studied his reflection in the glass of the isolette. His dark hair hung into his eyes, and for the first time in his fifteen years Harry saw that he actually needed a shave. Except for a few nicks and cuts, and a major bruise on his right hip, he had survived two plane crashes remarkably well.
    Sonja Bartlett and Marte Chang also survived that last one, and they were penned up in isolettes flanking his own. His remarkable memory that had served him so well in his life got jarred a little in the last crash. Of course, the heavy dose of tranquilizer that his dad had shot him with didn’t help.
    “Dad!” he said to his reflection. “I hope you make it.”
    It felt good to say, after the bad years between them. Harry and Colonel Toledo could be twins if they weren’t different ages—gray eyes, Gallic nose with an indio flare of nostril, thick black hair, usually kept short for the heat. The new scatter of whiskers on Harry’s cheeks added to their remarkable similarity.
    Physical similarity, Harry reminded himself.
    He was sure that he and his father were nothing alike inside. Harry couldn’t stand the smell of alcohol, he was very shy around women, and he was sure that if he ever had a wife and children he wouldn’t beat them. Still, in that few minutes that the two of them had worked together to escape from ViraVax, Harry understood that his father loved him in his tormented way.
    Harry hated his father for so long that he got used to daydreaming him dead from a bullet, a bomb, an accident of the bush. He would review the memories of his father later and come to terms with that.
    When you wish somebody dead, and then they die, does that mean you killed them? he wondered.
    Father Umberto told him in confession that wanting to kill his father constituted a mortal sin in the eyes of the Church. What was there to keep him from actually doing it, then? Nothing but his own will, and his own fear. And did he really want his father dead? “No,” he’d admitted, “I want him back.”
    Colonel Toledo had shot Harry with the trank gun to get him out of ViraVax alive. Harry had to admit now that his father had saved his life.
    Maybe in trade for his own!
    Harry hoped not, but it didn’t look good. He thought back on all the times in his life that he had wished his father dead, and felt a hot blush wash his cheeks. He had gone so far as to figure out ways to kill his father without getting caught. He was glad, now, that he hadn’t tried it.
    “Good Friday,” Harry told his reflection. “Dad always said that anything you do on Good Friday will die on you before sundown.”
    His father wasn’t a by-the-book colonel or a by-the-book Catholic, but he believed in God and Country, in that order.
    That’s it, Harry realized. If his family was anything to him, it was just another state in Country.
    Colonel Toledo had trained Harry in two different karate styles, Tong Soo Do and Tae Kwan Do, and lately he had considered the occasional beating to be part of his son’s training. Karate, and a few other tricks that his father had taught him, helped Harry and Sonja in their escape. Harry wished mightily that his father had escaped with them.
    Harry slapped the glass barrier of his isolette.
    Escaped! What a joke!
    They crawled more than five stories of elevator shaft, stole a plane and got shot down in it, only to be sealed up again by their own