Lethal Exposure

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Bretti would take one last trip on the Concord, and the payoff would be worth more than anything he might have left behind in this crappy, cold, and miserable place. Given the promised reward, Bretti could live like a king, even as a national hero for what he had done.

  If he could get out of here.

  Sealing the suitcase, Bretti looked at his watch. Time to move. He carried the other, nearly empty crystal-lattice trap to the door of the substation and connected wires to the wall, and to the door jamb. The next time the door was opened, it would cut power to the cross-feeding lasers-releasing a few hundred nanograms of antimatter.

  Enough to blow the hell out of the blockhouse.

  Enough to keep the FBI busy for quite some time.

  Bretti had to erase his tracks, create an immediate diversion, and keep away from the relentless federal agents. The stakes were high, the time was now, and everything would depend on how he managed to get through the next few hours. He didn’t have any other choice.

  He already had his ticket for the Concord, a one-way trip to India… and safety for the rest of his life, compliments of the Liberty for All party. He had his passport and packed suitcase waiting in the trunk of the rental car.

  Lugging the main trap with him, Bretti departed from the blockhouse and carefully closed the metal door behind him, connecting the leads and preparing the booby-trap. Not looking back, he set off across the dry, shoulder-high grasses of the restored prairie. It was the most direct way to his car, with the least chance of him being seen, swallowed by the tall waving grass.

  He had just stepped into the shelter of the prairie when he saw a gold rental car racing toward the blockhouse. Kicking up dust, it drove along the narrow access road that followed the curve of the racetrack accelerator. Bretti ducked down in the dry grass, his heart pounding. Already! Shit!

  He backed slowly away, rustling through the grass as he waited for the fireworks to start.

  Minutes earlier, in the first blockhouse around the accelerator ring-where Goldfarb had been shot-Craig, Jackson, and Piter had found nothing, exactly as Craig had expected. Schultz’s evidence technicians had scoured the substation for clues. Among the fingerprints found there, Craig was sure they would identify Bretti’s-but that proved nothing, since the grad student had been authorized to work in that building, after all.

  The site of the second blockhouse held only the glassy crater, which they now guessed had been caused by a failed antimatter trap.

  As they approached the third substation, though, Craig felt the hairs tingle on the back of his neck. He wasn’t thoroughly familiar with the small and ugly buildings, but something about the trampled grass around the exterior, the mussed gravel around the steel door, the way the padlock hung on the latch, made him think that someone had been here not long before.

  Squinting through his sunglasses, he looked over at Jackson. The other agent stood tense, as if he could sense something in the air. The three men cautiously approached the substation door, and Craig nodded to Nels Piter. “Give me the key. Let’s open it up and see what we find inside.”

  The Belgian scientist fumbled with his key ring. Selecting a key and handing it to Craig, Piter stood back and watched. Craig twisted it in the padlock with a click, and hung the lock on the ring, swinging aside the hasp.

  Before opening the heavy door, Craig looked around, squinting into the bright autumn morning. The brown grass stretched ahead of him inside the circle of the buried accelerator, rasping together like witches’ brooms in the brisk, chill breeze. He sensed someone watching him, but he put it down as nerves. Fermilab’s famous buffalo wandered out on the prairie, incongruous among the high-tech substations and high-voltage electrical wires that ran around the lab. An intense silence hung in the air.

  Craig pulled on the door. Before he could say anything, though, before the words could even form in his mind, an explosion ripped through the thick-walled blockhouse.

  The blast hurled Craig backward like a punch from a giant fist. All he could see were dazzling flames and a bright wall of light.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Friday, 11:36 a.m.

  Fermilab Accelerator,

  Beam-Sampling Substation

  The overpressure wave hurled Craig backward into Nels Piter and slammed the battleship-steel door against the outer wall with a thunderous clang. He covered his head with his arms, sheltering Piter with his body. His ears throbbed from the boom, and heat seared his skin.

  The concrete-block walls split and cracked, squirting flames like blood leaking from a cracked scab. A secondary fire crackled with plumes of greasy, noxious smoke, but the blaze found little fuel inside the blockhouse. Broken fragments of cinderblock and metal rebar rained around them like a snowstorm of junkyard objects.

  Moments later, Piter groaned and rolled to the side. Craig stood up, shaking his head. His suit jacket was torn, dusty, battered, and he did his best to brush himself off.

  Jackson had tumbled to the rough ground, skidding his shoulders across the gravel and into the autumn-dead grass. Now he got to his hands and knees, cradling his skull, disoriented and stunned. “Was that another antimatter release?” he asked. “Did we set one off?”

  When Craig shrugged, his head throbbed with the sudden movement. His ears continued ringing. “If so, this one wasn’t as powerful.”

  Piter sat down heavily on the gravel pathway, looking comical with his dapper appearance now smudged with soot and dust. “We shouldn’t go inside the rubble, in case there’s residual radiation.” He gripped his knees with long, angular hands and blinked his pale blue eyes. “We’re lucky the blockhouse walls and the heavy door were thick enough to absorb the prompt radiation-otherwise, we’d be going to the hospital like Dr. Dumenco.”

  Jackson was silent for a long time. “Bretti set that up deliberately,” he said finally, keeping his voice under control. “A boobytrap.”

  “Just like how he must have boobytrapped Dumenco in the beam-dump alcove,” Piter said quickly.

  “After he locked me down in the tunnel, he knew we’d come looking for him. So he was waiting for us here. Could have been a diversion, or maybe he’s just homicidal.” Jackson ’s voice was a growl. “That guy is really starting to annoy me.”

  “After this explosion, and after shooting Goldfarb, and after dumping the lethal exposure on Dumenco, it’s safe to say he’s got a bloodthirsty streak a mile wide.” Craig placed his hands on his hips, scanning the silent prairie that stretched around them for miles. “I’ve got a gut feeling, though, that we missed him by only a few minutes.”

  He heard sirens swelling in the distance, emergency response crews from Fermilab racing to the site of the explosion. Bretti had grabbed their attention, all right- but by now the grad student could be anywhere.

  They would comb the area inch by inch, get all available FBI and law-enforcement personnel to barricade the exits. They had to trap Bretti here before he did anything else.

  From his hiding place in the thick grass, Bretti watched the explosion. He had jury-rigged the power to disengage from the crystal-lattice the moment the substation door opened the merest crack; but he didn’t think the FBI would be so close behind him. He should have had more time, even just a few more minutes.

  He hadn’t wanted to kill the agents outright-just incapacitate them, get them out of the way so he could make his last run, escape from this place forever. Of course, he had already shot another FBI agent, the curly-haired one, even though he hadn’t meant to. At this point, with everything that had happened, with everything he had already done, Bretti hoped the other agents would make a distinction between Attempted Murder and Murder.

  But those FBI men looked really pissed off.

  All the more reason to get out of the country, politically safe from any possible extradition. He’d gotten in much too deep to talk his way out, and he had to keep plunging forward no matter who else he had to step on. He just wished he had a little more faith in Chandrawalia and the c
rackpot nuclear weapons schemes of a renegade political party.

  Fermilab was already crawling with FBI, and the new explosion would only draw their attention. He had to create another diversion, a major one. Seven thousand acres was one hell of a large area to search. If he could keep them busy with several emergencies, it would dilute their manpower, limit the FBI’s ability to watch for a single man who knew his way around.

  Luckily, Bretti had parked his car outside the Fermilab perimeter, near the temporary living quarters for visiting scientists. He shouldn’t have a difficult time getting there… if he played his cards right.

  Out in the grass, the wandering herd of buffalo-great shaggy beasts as stupid as they were large-stood aligned like iron filings to a magnet, staring at the site of the blockhouse explosion, as if the loud noise had somehow penetrated their fuzzy awareness. He could get past them without a problem, given a sufficient distraction.

  Taking out his disposable cigarette lighter, Bretti bent over, struck a flame, and ignited the dry grass in front of him. He checked the wind, judged which way it was blowing, and ran the opposite direction.

  The flames gnashed at the dry grasses. It was about the time of the year for the community service groups, the ecology-minded volunteers, to come into the prairie restoration areas and set their autumn fires. By simulating a natural lightning strike, they burned the dry grass to promote the growth of the ecosystem they were trying to restore.

  Bretti himself would be the lightning today.

  He ran along, dipping the cigarette lighter to the dry vegetation, like a graffiti artist with a spray can. The flames spread like acid soaking into filter paper. Bretti crouched to ignite another flashpoint, sprinted ahead, then lit another island of dry grass.

  The numerous blazes swelled rapidly. Even against the breeze the flames began to eat their way back toward him, hungrily consuming the dry fuel. Bretti ran at top speed, sweating and panting, in a direct line across the featureless prairie toward the shallow holding ponds, the accelerator ring, and the outer boundary of the site.

  If everything worked right he could be home free in less than an hour.

  With his head still ringing from the explosion, Craig scanned the waving, crisp brown prairie. He rubbed his nose, finding a trickle of blood from one nostril, but he figured he could survive. The grass blades spread out like a lake of kindling enclosed by the boundary of the particle accelerator. He froze, as dread formed a chip of ice in his chest.

  Out in the sea of grass, another column of smoke rose. A brush fire that spread rapidly toward them.

  Craig saw the figure running behind the flames. Though the prairie grass was tall, the man’s head and shoulders rose above the swaying blades once he stood up to run.

  “There he is!” He grabbed Jackson ’s arm.

  “Let me at him.”

  Craig spun about to face the Belgian scientist. “Stay here, Dr. Piter. Jackson, call for immediate backup. Tell the fire crew to worry about the grass blaze more than the blockhouse.”

  Jackson yanked out his cellular phone, punched in a number for the local FBI team already responding to the explosion.

  Piter smoothed his suit jacket, still trying to regain his dignity. “I’m going back to my office,” he said. “This is no game for me.”

  Ignoring him, Craig ran at full speed into the grass, pumping his legs, heading toward where he had seen the figure run. But the smoke grew rapidly thicker. The flames rushed onward, pushed by a stiff October breeze.

  As Craig approached the edge of the flames, he cut left, trying to find a thin patch of smoldering ground he could stomp through. The air smelled of thick pungent smoke, burning vegetation. Birds flew up from their hiding places, but the tearing-paper crackle of the blaze drowned out their squawking cries.

  Jackson puffed up beside him. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you you’re not supposed to run into an oncoming flame front?” he said. “Head over to the pond. We can skirt the fire there and get past it.”

  Craig saw what the other agent meant and took off, plowing through the grass, stumbling on insidious weeds, old lichen-covered branches, and rocks that protruded from the uneven ground. He swiped blades of grass out of the way like a safari explorer plunging through an uncharted jungle.

  Black smoke filled the air. His quarry, Bretti, had fled far on the other side of the fire while he and Jackson struggled to continue their roundabout pursuit.

  Soot and ashes and sparks flew around him, and the blaze swept toward them no matter how fast they ran.

  Jackson pounded Craig on the shoulder to smother an ember that had settled on his suit jacket.

  The downside to the other agent’s plan about getting to the holding pond was that the vegetation also grew thickest around the water’s edge. The two agents stumbled through the weeds with the flames hot on their heels.

  The rippling wall of fire approached with a hissing roar. Craig turned to see they had no choice but to head into the pond itself. Without a pause, Jackson rammed into him, knocking him down the slope toward the muddy water. Craig maintained his balance in greenish-brown pond scum up to his knees, while Jackson, overexerted, stumbled, and sat down in the water.

  Kicked onward by the increasing breeze, the fire struck the obstacle of the pond and curled around it, devouring the grass at the water’s edge. Frogs hiding in the shore weeds splashed into the pond, while indigenous birds took flight. Craig ducked and kept his face low to the water.

  Finally, once the fire line had passed, Craig helped Jackson splash out of the pond. Dripping, they sprinted across the burned stubble, the ground still smoldering and charred beneath their soggy shoes. Thick with smoke, the air scraped Craig’s throat and lungs raw. His eyes burned, stinging from the heat and the soot, but he kept racing toward where he had last seen Bretti.

  The grass fire had already consumed an amazing section of ground. Helicopters thrummed overhead, and emergency response teams finally arrived at the newly destroyed substation half a mile behind them. Ground fire crews rushed out across the flat ground to control the blaze, but it would take them a long time to get up to speed and pull their act together.

  Craig was in close pursuit now. Bretti had to be near. He staggered into the smoke, unable to see, frequently losing his balance. Once, he barely caught himself from plunging face-first into the hot embers of a burned tree.

  Just ahead, though, he spotted a dim figure moving through the murk. He yanked out his handgun and bellowed an ultimatum. “Bretti! Federal agents-give up now, sir!” Craig’s smoke-clogged throat made his voice hoarse, and his words came out as a raspy croak. The soot burned his throat and eyes and nose, which were still raw from breathing chlorine gas less than two days earlier.

  The fleeing suspect, barely seen, did not respond. Instead, the figure moved closer, threatening. Craig blinked his burning eyes, desperately trying to get a positive ID. “Bretti, this is the FBI!”

  “Craig!” Jackson shouted from the side, and then pointed, forcing him to take a closer look. “It’s not hunting season yet.”

  Craig realized that the large form was one of the domesticated male bison, its hide singed. Lost and disoriented, the beast lumbered past, snorting, its huge round eyes red-rimmed. Frightened and aggressive, the bull thundered away from the flames, avoiding their noise.

  “You have a lot of faith in your firearm, if you expect a weapon of that caliber to do anything more than piss off a buffalo.”

  “It’s a Sig-Sauer,” Craig said, abashed, “a little more powerful than my old Beretta.” He continued running after the fleeing grad student. They dashed across the blackened ground until finally-covered with soot and drenched with both perspiration and stagnant pond water-they reached the end of the burn zone.

  Craig bent over, placing hands on his shuddering knees as he squinted into the distance beyond the Fermilab boundary, toward the cluster of buildings in Batavia, the streets, parked cars… a wealth of places to hide. He removed his sunglasses, blinking
in the light, straining to see ahead-but he saw no sign of their suspect.

  Craig took a deep breath shaking his head. Sweat dripped into his eyes from his chestnut-brown hair. Once again, Nicholas Bretti had escaped.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Friday, 11:44 a.m.

  Fox RiverMedicalCenter

  On the last day of his life, Georg Dumenco’s exiled family members began to arrive-spectators at a premature wake. Paige led them in, hesitant but proud to perform one last service.

  On his hospital bed, Dumenco looked hideous with his skin blistered, reddened, and sloughing off in wet flakes; it seemed a mercy for him to remain drugged, but the scientist rallied and fought, insisting on a last few hours of use out of his brilliant mind.

  Upon learning that his prediction was correct after all, but that the antimatter was being bled off and thereby ruining the data from the detector apparatus, Dumenco sagged into stunned relief, as if prepared to die now that he had verified his precious theories.

  The Ukrainian struggled to wakefulness and squinted at the new visitors in his hospital room, trying to see through the translucent curtain surrounding his bed. Paige thought Dumenco’s face bore a dreamlike expression, as if he couldn’t believe that his family had finally come to him, that this wasn’t just radiation-induced delirium.

  Paige stood beside the visitors, trying to remain unobtrusive. This was their moment with their long-lost Georg. She had the flight schedules. The FBI had arranged for their tickets with the greatest expediency, rushing them from their hiding places across the mid-western United States.