Black Monday: A Novel

When the first planes go down -- in Europe, in California, in Asia -- authorities blame terrorists. All flights are grounded as world leaders try to figure out how the global assault has been coordinated. And when cars, ships, and factories stop running too, it becomes clear that the common link more >>

When the first planes go down -- in Europe, in California, in Asia -- authorities blame terrorists. All flights are grounded as world leaders try to figure out how the global assault has been coordinated. And when cars, ships, and factories stop running too, it becomes clear that the common link is oil. Somehow a microbe, genetically engineered to destroy petroleum, has infected the world supply. The world descends into a new dark age.

Dr. Gregory Gillette, an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control, is a disease hunter specializing in microbes that attack human beings. When the Pentagon taps him to be part of the Rapid Response Team assembled to track and kill the devastating Delta-3 bacteria, he quickly discovers that his expertise is ignored, his presence meaningless. The leader of the task force is an old nemesis who sidelines Gillette.

Gillette returns home to Washington, where he watches in horror as food becomes scarce, neighbor attacks neighbor, and government collapses. With winter approaching, the capital faces anarchy and Gillette faces a choice: to stay with his family or to disobey orders and find the microbes' antidote through clues that may not even be real.

October 27th. 6 hours before outbreak.

A plague that will cause the death of millions. A plague that will destroy countries. A plague that will plunge the world into a dark age.

A plague that will make nobody sick.

Lewis Stokes -- or so the false name on his Nevada driver's license reads -- feeds another dollar into the Wheel of Fortune machine in the lobby of hotel New York-New York in Las Vegas and feels his heartbeat pick up, but not because of the game. The onetime beggar boy -- whose mother was publicly beheaded -- has just spotted the twenty-year-old University of Nevada English major that he's flown six thousand miles to kill.

The boy -- slovenly-looking and dark-haired -- is weaving toward him, past the single-deck blackjack tables, heading for the reception desk. He's drinking from a foot-long glass beaker filled with bright red liquid, probably a Singapore Sling or mix of rums and fruit juices. The boy looks tipsy, unaware, alone.

The kid must be killed by 12:14 tonight.

"Not one minute later," Lewis's mentor had said when he'd provided the usual range of perfectly made false IDs.

Lewis tenses to stand, to follow. But he realizes that the boy is too tall to be Robert Grady.

He just looks like Grady.

Lewis curses under his breath and puts another dollar in the machine.

Normally a handsome blond, Lewis is disguised as a balding dark-haired man today. Normally lean, he looks heavy and clumsy from the belly-extender bladder and black-framed glasses. His posture is slumped. He walks with a limp. The few people who notice him register a nerd in a box-cut sports jacket. A cheapo off-the-rack design.

Playing slots enables him to sit within view of the reception desk, invisible to the bellboys, desk clerks and house detectives. One more gambler among hundreds. Butthisgambler conceals a Glock under his jacket and a serrated K-bar knife in the pit of his back. Lewis killed his first person at age twelve, in self-defense, in a tent.

"Wheel...of...Fortune," shouts a chorus of tinny mechanical voices in his machine as the wheel spins on top and multicolored lights flash, and potential amounts of winnings, $800, $100, $20, rotate in pie-wedge shapes on the wheel.

He hates Las Vegas, the brashness, the noise, the anarchy that reminds him of the refugee camp where he grew up. The damn ground floor is the worst. It's like Fellini designed the place. It's a madhouse of rock music, kids running, machines clanging, drunks laughing. No windows << less