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 crackpot 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.