Anderson, Kevin J Lethal Exposure

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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 di-version, 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,
compli-ments 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
be-hind 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 !
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He backed slowly away, rustling through the grass as he waited for the fireworks to start.
Minutes earlier, in the first blockhouse around the ac-celerator 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 ex-terior, 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. Se-lecting 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 bur-ied 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 any-thing, 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
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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
sec-ondary fire crackled with plumes of greasy, noxious smoke, but the blaze found little fuel inside the
block-house. 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 anti-matter release? he asked. Did we set one off?
When Craig shrugged, his head throbbed with the sud-den 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 oth-erwise, 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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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