by Dale Brown
a swig of beer.
"I'm nobody," Patrick replied. "Just came in to
get a beer and take a piss."
As the guy nodded, Patrick's world exploded
right in his face. A boot kicked the side of his left
knee, sending him crashing against the bar in pain
and buckling him halfway to the floor. He heard the
sound of shattering glass, and a second later felt the
jagged edge of a broken beer bottle against his
throat, drawing blood. A hand with the grip of a
steel vise clamped around the back of his neck,
hauling him up tightly against the bar. Several more
bikers had come over, surrounding them.
"You know, you're one stupid motherfucker
commg in here like this, " the guy with the beer
bottle said. "You think you can just march in here
and feed us a line of crap? Who the fuck are you,
pretty boy?"
"I'm nobody," Patrick repeated. "I came in for a
lousy beer!"
"Fucking liar!" the biker shouted. By now, Patrick
was looking for the first opportunity to make a
run for the door, but the hand squeezing his neck
tightened still more, and he cried out in pain.
"Talk!"
"I'm the brother of one of the cops that got shot
downtown," Patrick said through the sheet of pain
slicing through his head.
"What in hell do you want?" Patrick kept his
mouth shut. The grip tightened even more, and he
thought he was going to pass out. "You better talk,
candy-ass, or I'll snap your neck in two!"
"Mullins," Patrick murmured against the pain
and terror. "Mullins set up that robbery. I want
him."
The grip on his neck didn't subside, but Patrick
was relieved to hear some laughter behind him.
"What do you want to do with him?" asked a different
voice.
"I want to question him about the Major, about
who staged that robbery," Patrick gasped out, trying
to struggle free. "And then I want to kick his fucking
ass."
There was another round of laughter. "Hey,
pretty boy, that's good," the guy with the broken
beer bottle said. "But today's not your lucky day.
Because Mullins's got hold of your neck right now,
and in a minute he's going to take you in back. If
you're lucky, he might just fuck your white-bread
ass and carve his initials in your face. But if he takes
what you just said personally, you're going to end
up in a garbage truck on your way to the dump."
Patrick strained to see over his shoulder. The guy
holding his neck was the biker with the shaved
head and the goatee. He didn't look like the police
intelligence description at all. Even his eyebrows
were different; he had colored them with mascara,
like the goatee. "Hey, cop-killer," Patrick said.
"You and me, motherfucker. Let's see how tough
you are without your army."
Mullins laughed in his face, then shoved his head
down onto the bar. Patrick turned his head just in
time to avoid a smashed nose. "Killing those cops
was business, asshole," Mullins said. "But fucking
you up is going to be personal."
"The cops have this place under surveillance,"
Patrick said through clenched teeth, his voice shaking
. He couldn't believe how scared he felt right
now. "They've photographed everyone coming in
and out of this place. If I turn up dead, all of you'll
be murder suspects."
"Maybe so, asswipe," said the guy with the bottle
. Patrick felt hands going through his pockets.
They took his wallet and some cash, but thankfully
missed the tiny quarter-sized listening devices.
"But you'll still be fuckin' dead. Now you're going
to tell me how you found out about Mullins and the
Major, and you'd better talk or I'll-"
"Hey! Look at this! " A different biker ripped
something from Patrick's clenched right hand. He
held up a tiny object-what looked like a shont,
thick cylinder, white, with a round rubber tip. Patrick's
arms were twisted behind his back, and his
head was jerked upward.
"What is this, asswipe?" the guy with the beer
bottle yelled, holding the object up to Patrick's face.
"This looks like a rubber bullet, or some kind of
shotgun shell. You better tell me, asshole, or Mullins
there will twist your fucking head off!"
"Let me go!" Patrick shouted. The tiny shell was
his last hope, Patrick thought grimly, his only
chance to escape. He had hesitated to use it and he
was going to pay for it now. "I'll get out of here. I
won't come near this place again. just let me go."
The guy with the beer bottle gave Patrick a backhanded
swat across the face, drawing blood from a
cut lip. "I guess I'm just going to have to beat it out
of you, sport . . ."
"It's a nerve-gas grenade!" someone said in a loud
voice. They turned to see a figure standing in the
doorway in front of the rear hallway. Jon Masters
was holding up an object like the one taken from
Patrick. "Just like this one. Twenty-five-millimeter
cartridge, filled with a half a milliliter of Novichok,
a V-class anticholinesterase agent that will paralyze
you in about eight seconds. It uses a nitrogen pro-
pellant so it will spray the gas through the entire
room and easily disable just about everyone here.
Here-catch!" And he threw the grenade as hard as
he could across the bar and against the wall.
The grenade burst with a loud pop! and exploded
into a thick white cloud of gas that spread throughout
the entire room with astonishing speed. It
looked like an instant fog. It tasted of acidity, like
sulfur, burning the eyes and throat.
The bikers scattered. Patrick dropped to the
floor-but not because of the gas. It burned and it
tasted funny, but it wasn't disabling. He was free!
"Jon!"
"Here, Muck, he-!"
As Patrick looked up, the biker with the beard
ran headlong into Masters coming toward him and
grabbed him. The broken beer bottle flashed in the
foggy air. "Jon!" Patrick screamed. He struggled to
his feet, trying to catch the biker's arm as it lashed
out, but he was far too late. "Jon!" he screamed
again.
Masters's jacket was ripped open across the
chest, and Patrick saw blood spilling out of the
wound. Jon's hands clutched at it ineffectually,
blood seeping through his fingers. "Patrick?" he
said weakly.
"C'mon, Jon, let's get out of here!" But he was
frozen in place. Patrick grabbed him around the
waist and half-pulled, half-dragged him outside. He
felt someone clutch at him from behind, and in a fit
of rage he swung back with his right hand. He connected
with thin bone and tissue, and they heard
the assailant yelp as he let go.
With Patrick half-carrying Jon, the two men
made their way down Del Paso Boulevard to a
Safeway supermarket parking lot, where a rented
Dodge Durango sport-utility vehicle was waiting for
them. "Okay, we can slow down now," Patrick said,
pulling Jon back.
They turned around. Half a dozen motorcycles
were roaring down Del Paso Boulevard, and they
saw men running down the street. "We gotta get out
of here now, Patrick!"
"Calm down," Patrick said, wiping blood from
Jon's jacket front. "Running will only attract attention
now. Try to stay upright, Jon. just a few more
steps. Hang in there, brother."
"I . I need help here, Patrick
"C'mon, let's keep going. You'll be okay." They
forced themselves to walk casually toward the car.
Patrick was out of breath by now, gasping from the
effort of supporting Jon and the aftereffects of the
adrenaline pumping through his veins. When police
cars zoomed past, the two of them stopped to
watch, just like normally curious onlookers.
Patrick helped Jon into the passenger seat and examined
his wound under the dome light. It was a
deep cut, but it was not bubbling or pumping,
which meant that it had not pierced a lung or a
major blood vessel. He eased off Jon's jacket, pressed
it against his chest, used the seat-belt shoulder harness
to anchor it tightly in place, then got into the
driver's seat and started the engine. They pulled out
onto the street. More police cars were racing in
toward Bobby John's, and fire trucks too, but there
was no sign of pursuit. They drove away from the
scene, careful not to speed. They got on the Interstate
5 freeway through the downtown area, then
merged onto the Highway 50 freeway heading east,
away from the city.
Neither man spoke for a long time. The enormity
of what happened had silenced them. Finally, Patrick
said, "Thanks for getting me out of there."
"You're welcome, Muck," Jon answered. "But it's
your contingency plan that did it-those wireless
mikes so I could listen in and carrying those practice
bomblet target markers." Patrick pressed Jon's
hand against his chest to staunch the bleeding further
. This was one contingency he hadn't planned
on.
"Man, that was a close call," he said shakily.
"Jesus, was I scared. I thought I was going to die. All
I could think about was Wendy, and Bradley, and
how we would die in the middle of a filthy beersoaked
barroom floor. God, Jon, I'm so sorry . . ."
"It's not your fault, Muck," Masters said. "It was
a good plan."
"But I didn't mean for you to get hurt
"Hey, c'mon, Patrick. I'm not an innocent bystander
or your blind, faithful sidekick. If I didn't
think I could stay safe, I wouldn't have gone in
there.,,
"But you could've been killed
"Nah. They were just trying to scare us. But we
don't scare that easy, do we, General?" But Patrick
could see through all the bravado that Jon was badly
shaken. God, when he saw that blood spurt out of
Jon's wound . . . Patrick had seen death before,
had even caused death before, but not at this close
range, and never so personally as this.
He wasn't going to allow him to ever go into
harm's way like that again, Patrick decided. Jonathan
Colin Masters was more than one of America's
truly great scientists and engineers, he was his newfound
brother. There was no way he could allow
him to risk his life in Patrick's personal vendetta.
Sky Masters, Inc. had rented office and hangar
space at Sacramento-Mather Jetport when it was obvious
that the McLanahans were going to be in
town for a while, and they had planned that it
would be their destination after the bugging opera-
tion. They took the Mather Field Road exit from
eastbound Highway 50 a few minutes later and
drove around the east end of Mather's eleventhousand-foot
runway to the former Strategic Air
Command alert facility, now converted into a secure
research and development site. The facility
still had its twelve-foot-high chain-link fences
topped with barbed wire and fitted with cameras
and intrusion sensors; the vehicle entrapment and
inspection area; the two-story underground buildmg
, complete with offices, conference halls, and a
kitchen; and the alert-aircraft parking area, now
with two large jumbo-jet-sized hangars at the south
and west sides. A right turn past the deserted
weapon-storage area, down a long road, past the
alert-crew picnic grounds, and they were at the
front gate of the old B-52 bomber alert facility,
where B-52 bombers and KC-135 aerial refueling
tankers once sat nuclear ground alert, ready at any
time to fight World War M.
Sky Masters security personnel were on duty,
and one of them, Ed Montague, confronted Masters
and McLanahan at the vehicle entrapment gate.
"Evening, Dr. Masters, General McLanahan. How's
Dr. McLanahan and the new . . ." He stopped short
when he saw Jon's blood-soaked jacket. "MY God!"
He looked at Masters, whose face was as white as a
ghost. "What the hell happened, sir?" He waved to
the guard shack, and they admitted the Durango
into the entrapment area.
"Ed, we're going to need a first-aid kit," Patrick
said. Montague retrieved a large kit from his office,
and administered first aid while the vehicle and Patrick
were searched. Once inside, they brought Jon to
the security office, where they spent the next
twenty minutes cleaning and dressing the six-inch
gash that the biker had carved in Jon's chest.
"Want me to call the sheriff's department, General
?" Montague asked.
"No thanks, Ed," Patrick replied as he put a clean
shirt on. "But we do need that industrial-medicine
doctor we hired, Dr. Heinrich I think his name is, to
look at Jon. Get him on the phone and get him out
here, and make sure he brings a surgical kit."
"I'm fine, Muck," Jon protested.
"It doesn't look too bad, but I want him to look
you over anyway," Patrick said.
"Doc's on the way," Montague reported a few
moments later.
"Good," Patrick said. "If he releases you, Jon, Ed
will take us back to Paul's apartment in a security
vehicle. Ed, then I want you to get the Durango
cleaned up and turn it back in to the rental company
first thing in the morning. I want you to take
care of it personally." The security officer nodded
that he understood.
They met the doctor twenty minutes later. He
was, needed. Heinrich, who had been hired as a
consultant and to oversee safety and medical operations
at the temporary Mather operations plant, put
a total of forty stitches in Jon Masters's chest, fifteen
of them in
ternal dissolving sutures. Despite
plenty of local painkillers Jon passed out three
times during the procedure-the first time when he
saw the doctor threading the first needle. He was
like a little kid at the doctor's office, flinching at the
slightest touch and muffling a cry whenever the
needle pierced his skin.
Not that he didn't have good reason. The bottle
had cut about a quarter of an inch into his chest at
the initial blade-impact point, piercing two inches
of muscle, and then slashed another four inches of
skin across to his shoulder, leaving bits of glass
along the hideous gash. The doctor had to lay open
the deepest part of the wound to work on it from
the inside out. To Patrick, watching and at times
assisting Heinrich, the wound looked so deep and so
red that he swore he could see down to Jon's lungs.
Heinrich prescribed antibiotics, a mild painkiller,
and bed rest for the next three days, and sent them
home.
Patrick felt devastated. Even worse than the hell
of watching it was the recognition that he alone was
responsible for the assault.
With Montague at the wheel, they headed for
Paul's apartment downtown; it would be easier to
watch over Jon there than in his hotel room. Police
cruisers were all over the downtown area when they
reached there half an hour later-it looked as if martial
law had been imposed on the city. They were
stopped at the intersection of I and Second streets.
A sign read DUI Checkpoint-All Vehicles Must
Stop. Two Sacramento police officers surrounded
the car.
"Good evening, folks. We're conducting a routine
check of all vehicles for compliance with underageand
impaired-driving laws," the officer on the
driver's side said as if reading off a cue card. The
other officer shined a flashlight into the two faces in
the backseat, the powerful beam easily penetrating
the tinted windows. "We won't take up any more of
your time than is necessary. Where are you folks
coming from tonight?"
Patrick noticed that the officer who spoke to
Montague didn't stick his head right down close to
his face so he could sniff for alcohol on the driver's
breath, as was usual at most DUI checkpoints Patrick
had encountered. Ed Montague noticed it too.