Then, he saw it. A razor sharp spike fastened to the first pine tree it would contact. Maybe fifteen feet up the trunk of the tree. The balloon was now ten feet away from the needle. Nick only imagined what kind of gas the balloon contained. He crouched next to Matt, handed him the binoculars and pointed to the spike. “See that? A spike sticking out of from tree.”
Matt squinted through the lenses and said, in a surprised voice, “Yeah.”
“See the line going from the spike to the cabin? Thin, like a fishing line.”
“Yeah,” Matt said, seeming to get it now.
The balloon was five feet from the spike. Ready to burst open with an array of poisonous gas.
Matt didn’t wait for Nick to say anything. They tuned into each other’s rhythm like a lead and bass guitarist. He aimed his rifle at the narrow gap between the balloon and spike. “You going to catch this thing?”
“I’d better,” Nick said, scrambling out from the thicket and into the open field.
“Where are you going?” McKenna said.
But he was ignored. Matt tightened his finger around trigger and yelled, “Cover Nick.”
Matt squeezed the trigger and the bullet pierced the night sky with a thunderous scream. It was the only shot he would need. He clipped the wire perfectly. The balloon didn’t drop straight down, however. It swung back in an arc away from Nick. He was caught off guard and slipped on pine needles as he shifted his weight from his back foot to his front. From his knees he could see the balloon angling toward the ground thirty feet away from him. He wasn’t going to make it.
Nick was working off adrenalin rather than intellect; he rushed toward the balloon. It was merely five feet from the ground when it came completely free of the fishing line it was attached to and became vulnerable to the laws of inertia. The external force that maneuvered the balloon was a favorable gust of wind. Nick managed to leap at the ground and cup his hand under the balloon as it gently bounced into his fingertips. He held it above his chest, just inches from his face while he tried to control his erratic breathing.
Nick sensed the clumsiness of the balloon in his fingers. He carefully rolled it and felt dense molecules shifting its mass to the bottom of the balloon while his fingers twitched involuntarily. He sat up and cradled the balloon like an infant. His feet wanted to run for cover, while his hands fought to keep the stretched latex in one piece. He was up on a knee when he heard the creak of a window opening.
Nick stiffened. He could barely hear the muffled cough of a silenced rifle behind him, but he felt the bullet buzz past his face. One second he was staring at the balloon between his hands, the next second he was staring at his open hands. The balloon had burst.
Time stood still. His vision blurred and his feet were planted to the ground like cement posts. He saw Matt screaming at him while firing his rifle over Nick’s head. A thousand muzzle flashes sparkled from the tree line as he stood in front of them like a firing squad.
With his eyes almost swollen shut he ran. He dove through a thin bush and landed on a jagged rock that stabbed his ribcage with the pressure of a barehanded uppercut. He groaned as he rolled behind a wide tree trunk. He couldn’t see anything now, but the cacophony of gunfire raged around him like he was in the center of a fireworks display.
Nick wasn’t sure if he’d lost consciousness or if he’d become incapacitated. He reached for his eyes and his hand came back wet. He forced and eye open and saw that his hand was bright red. Blood. Was he hit? He felt something powdery sticking to his fingers.
“Nick.” Jennifer Steele’s voice sounded muffled. He thought his hearing had been damaged until he saw that Steele wore a gas mask. She quickly wiped his face with a wet towel, gently blotting up whatever was there. McKenna shouted orders over the barrage of bullets splintering up the cabin.
Nick found it hard to breath. His chest heaved up but little air was getting to his lungs. This was how it happened. Depending on the chemical, or germ, Nick had a dwindling amount of time left. “I can’t see,” he said.
“Hang on.” Steele forced his left eyelid open and ran a cotton-tipped applicator around the inside of his left eye. Then she blinded him with a blast from her penlight. She moved his head back and poured a sterile saline solution into his eyes, then poured the remainder on his left hand and exposed an open laceration.
“We’re on top of it,” a male voice said. Nick wiped his face and peered through a slit of his blinded eye to see the silhouette of a young soldier. He sensed it was the same one who eavesdropped on the KSF cabin just a while earlier. Nick squinted and was able to focus on the young man. He wore a black baseball cap over his buzzed-cut short hair and an emerald stud on his left earlobe. He had his head down and was working with a black probe that resembled a miniature umbrella. The wide tip had a blue glow to it. He moved with precise little movements back and forth from the probe to his black medical bag. Nick noticed that he worked without a gas mask.
“What are you doing?” Nick blinked constantly trying to improve on the shadows he was coming up with. “I need atropine. Do you have any?”
“Yeah, in my bag.”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
The man didn’t say anything.
“What’s your name?” Nick asked.
“Kelly.”
“Kelly,” Nick blinked, “are you listening to me, or has the biological weapons impaired your hearing?”
Kelly pushed a button on the probe and the blue light grew more intense in the darkness. Nick sensed soldiers advancing on the cabin behind him.
Kelly smiled. “No, Agent Bracco, my hearing is just fine. And there is no chance that we’ve been exposed to any biological weapons.”
“What are you talking about?” Nick gasped, sucking up thimble-sized pockets of air.
Kelly smiled at his handheld device. “This here is the TIMS 2000. It’s the latest in fiberoptic biosensors.” He pointed to the tip of the umbrella-shaped tool like a proud father. “You see this probe is covered with antibodies that bind to specific bacteria-anthrax and the like-then the system pipes light from a laser diode through the fiber probe. It turns orange, we’re in a heap of trouble.” He held the probe closer to Nick. It glowed with a deep purple mist. “You can see that we have a strong negative result. Virtually no chance for a false negative. If there were any biological agents within 100 yards of this spot, this thing would be a sparkling shade of orange.”
Nick tried to get his elbows, but a jolt of pain ripped through his chest. His ribcage pinched every time he took a breath. Steele was tightening a thin butterfly bandage around his index finger to close up the laceration. “What about chemicals?” Nick asked.
Kelly nodded. He reached over to his right and returned with a flat plastic tray that had ridges symmetrically etched into the face. An LED display beamed a numerical value across the screen. It read zero. He showed it to Nick. “Primary Ion Detector,” he said, as if he were handing him something as simple as a screwdriver.
Nick looked up at him. He was confused and Kelly seemed to sense it. He traced a penlight over Nick’s eyes and said, casually. “It hasn’t detected anything pernicious. Plus, if you were exposed to any nerve agents, you’d have tiny, little pupils. Your pupils are quite large, despite constant attacks from our penlights. If it were a blister agent, you’d have obvious lesions. And if it were a choking agent, you’d be, well. . choking.”
The more Nick listened to Kelly, the more confused he got. He could hear McKenna ordering his troops to teargas the windows and moments later the whoosh of the propelled canisters flung upward.
“Then what the fuck was in that balloon?” Nick asked.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Kelly grinned.
Nick’s breathing had slowed considerably. His anxiety lowered itself to a level he could control.