He flailed impotently at the tongues of flame that were darting upward through the crotch of his trousers and igniting his shirt. His struggles sent a shelf of chemicals crashing to the floor. There was a second explosion. Zimmermann's right arm disappeared at the elbow.
Still, he stayed on his feet, lurching in purposeless circles, staring at the bloody remains of his upper arm, and screaming again and again. A third blast, from just to his left, sent his body, now more corpse than man, hurtling across the slate tabletop, through what remained of the glassware. Zimmermann's screeching ended abruptly as he toppled over the edge of the table and onto Arlen Paquette. The chemist, though shielded from the force of the explosion by the counter, was far too dazed from the blow he had absorbed to react. Macfarlane and Nunes both went down before the blast of heat and flying glass. Jared, still outside the laboratory door, was knocked backward, but managed to keep his feet. He stumbled to the doorway, trying frantically to assess the situation.
Intensely colored flames were breaking out along the benchtops, filling the air with thick, fetid smoke. To his right, Walter Macfarlane and the gunman lay amidst shards of glass. The side of the watchman's face looked as if it had been mauled by a tiger. Both men were moving, though without much purpose. To his left there was also movement. The man he assumed was Arlen Paquette was trying, ineffectually, to extricate himself from beneath the charred body of William Zimmermann. Crawling to avoid the billows of toxic smoke, Jared made his way to Zimmermann, grabbed the corpse by its belt and the front of its smoldering shirt and heaved it onto its back. "Paquette? " Jared gasped. "Are you Paquette?"
The man nodded weakly and pawed at the blood-his and Zimmermann's-that was obscuring his vision. "Notebooks, " he said. "Get the notebooks."
Jared batted at the few spots on Paquette's clothing that were still burning, pulled him to a sitting position, and leaned him against the wall. The fumes and smoke were worsening around them "I've got to get you out of here. Can you understand that?"
Paquette's head lolled back. "Notebooks, " he said again Jared glanced about. On the floor beneath Zimmermann's heel was a black looseleaf notebook. He tucked the book under his arm and then began dragging Paquette toward the doorway. Several times, glass cut through Jared's pants and into his leg. Once he slipped, slicing a flap off n off the edge of his hand. The wooden cabinets and shelves had gun to blaze, making the room unbearably hot. Paquette was making the task of moving him from the room harder clawing at Jared, at one point getting his hand entangled in Jared's "For Christ's sake, let go of me, Paquette, " Jared shouted. "I'm trying to get you out of here. Can you understand that?
I'm trying to get The smoke was blinding. His eyes tearing and nearly closed, Jared hunched low, breathe through his parka, and with great effort, pulled Paquette's arm over his shoulder, hauling the man to his feet. Together they staggered from the lab. Jared was about to set Paquette down against a wall in order to return for Macfarlane when he remembered the oxygen. There were thirty or forty large green cylinders bunched in the far corner of the storage area. They possessed, he suspected, enough explosive potential to level a good portion of the building.
"Paquette, " he hollered, "I'm going to help you up the stairs. Then you've got to get down the tunnel and as far away from here as possible.
Do you understand? " Paquette nodded. "Can you support any more of your own weight?"
"I can tly." Paquette, his face a mask of blood, forced the words out between coughs. One arduous step at a time, the two made their way up to the landing on the basement level. Acrid chemical smoke, which had largely filled the storage area below, drifted up the stairway around them. "Okay, we're here, " Jared said loudly. "I've got to go back down there. You head that way, through the tunnel. Understand? Good.
Here, take your book with you and just keep going." He shoved the notebook into the man's hands. At that instant, from below, there was a sharp explosion. Then another. Jared watched as Paquette lurched away from him and then pitched heavily to the floor, blood pouring from a wound on the side of his neck. Jared dropped to one knee beside the man, surprised and confused by what was happening. "Paquette!"
"Notebook… Kate…" were all Paquette could manage before a torrent of blood sealed his words and closed his eyes. It was then Jared realized the man had been shot, that the explosions he had heard were from a gun, not from the lab. He turned at the moment Nunes fired at him from the base of the stairs. The bullet tore through his right thigh and caromed off the floor and wall behind him. The man, blackened by smoke and bleeding from cuts about his face, leveled the revolver for another shot. Distracted by the burning pain in his leg, Jared barely reacted in time to drop out of the line of fire. Behind him and from the mouth of the tunnel, alarms had begun to wail. Below him, the man had started up the stairs through the billowing smoke. Notebook… Kate… Jared plucked the black notebook from beside Arlen Paquette's body, tucked it under his arm like a footba and in a gait that was half hop and half sprint, raced down the tunnel toward the main hospital. Zimmermann, Paquette, and probably Walter Macfarlane as well, all dead, quite possibly because he had gone to the subbasement rendezvous without enough help. The distressing thought took his mind off the pain as he pushed on past the security gate. Paquette had promised answers for Kate, and now he was dead. Silently, Jared cursed himself. A gunshot echoed through the tunnel. Hunching over to diminish himself as a target, Jared limped on, weaving from side to side across the tunnel, and wondering if the evasive maneuver was worth the ground he was losing. The main tunnel was less than thirty yards away. There would be people there-help-if only he could make it. Another shot rang out, louder than the last. The bullet, fired, Jared realized now, from Macfarlane's heavy service revolver, snapped through the sleeve of his parka and clattered off the cement floor. He stumbled, nearly falling, and slammed into the far wall of the main tunnel "Help, " he screamed.
"Somebody help! " The dim tunnel was deserted. A moment later he was shot again, the bullet impacting just above his left buttock, spinning him a full three hundred and sixty degrees, and sending white pain lancing down his leg and up toward his shoulder blade. He tumbled to one knee, but just as quickly pulled himself up again, clutching the notebook to his chest and rolling along the wall of the tunnel.
Somewhere in the distance he could hear another series of alarms, then sirens, and finally a muffled explosion. He was, for the moment at least, out of the killer's line of fire stumbling in the direction away from the main hospital and toward the boiler room and laundry. Despite the pain in his leg and back, he was determined that nothing short of a killing shot was going to bring him down. With Paquette and Zimmermann dead, the black notebook, whatever it was, might well represent Kate's only chance. The gunman, crouching low and poised to fire, slid around the corner of the Omnicenter tunnel just as Jared reached the spur to the laundry Jared sensed the man about to shoot, but there was no explosion, no noise. Or was there? As he pushed on into the darkened laundry, he could swear he had heard a sound of some sort. Then he understood. The killer had fired. Macfarlane's revolver was out of bullets, tapped dry. Now, even wounded, he had a chance. The room he had entered was filled with dozens of rolling industrial hampers, some empty, some piled high with linen. Beyond the crowded hamper lot, Jared could just discern the outlines of rows of huge steam pressers He gave momentary consideration to diving into one of the hampers, but rejected the notion, partly because of the helpless, passive situation in which he would be and partly because his pursuer had already turned into the tunnel and was making his way, though cautiously, toward the laundry.