“Now take the wheel. Keep going straight, and as fast as you can.”
Wendy grasped the steering wheel. “Felix, you’re a goddamn menace.”
“At least I’m not boring.” With my left hand on the door and my right against the edge of the windshield, I cocked my body. The massive grill of the semi rushed at me.
“Don’t look back. Don’t slow down,” I shouted to Wendy. “The guards will be too busy with me to chase after you. Take care. I’ll see you later.”
Shoving back against the seat, I sprang through the air. For an instant I glided free and then smashed against the radiator grill, hitting hard with as much grace as a squirrel about to become roadkill. My brains rattled inside my skull. My feet scrambled to catch the lip of the front bumper. The truck swerved from side to side as if the driver had sensed my impact.
The Humvee preceding us slowed and closed the gap. Gravel kicked up by its tires pelted me. A roof hatch opened and a helmeted guard in combat gear appeared. He trained a spotlight on me. The circle of white illumination caught me splayed across the radiator grill. I was the center circle of a bull’s-eye. I clung to the radiator, glowing in the glare of the spotlight, my clothes rustling in the wind whistling past.
The guard in the Humvee took aim with a submachine gun. The red thread of a laser beam shot from beneath the gun and quivered on my face, like death’s finger tracing against my cheek.
I clambered over the hood just as a spray of bullets stitched into the radiator, venting jets of steam.
The driver of the truck and his guard became pie-eyed with shock at seeing me. The guard leaned to one side and flipped open a gun port in the right side of the windshield. I grasped the windshield wipers and hauled myself tight against the windshield, out of his line of fire.
The guard on the Humvee fired again. His bullets scratched the armored glass about me. I snaked over the windshield and lay atop the roof.
Two bullets punched from inside the roof and exited inches from my face. I stabbed my claws through the roof, tearing the metal, and peeled the roof back. A long burst of automatic fire shot through the void.
A pause. The guard had to be reloading. I looked into the hole I had made. The guard shrank away in terror and whimpered like a puppy. His hands clutched at a fresh magazine. I seized the guard by his collar, lifted him out of the cab, and tossed him screaming over my shoulder.
I slithered into the cab and bared my fangs to the driver.
He hollered into his radio microphone and groped for his holster. With my right hand, I grabbed him by the throat while my left hand twisted his wrist until he yelped in pain. The truck weaved across the road, left and right.
I reached around him, popped the door open, and shoved him out. Grasping the rim of the big steering wheel, I straightened the truck’s path. Waves of steam curled from the punctured radiator.
The guard in the Humvee let fly another burst that pinged harmlessly against the thick windshield.
Chortling with glee, I accelerated and rammed the rear of the Humvee. The Humvee careened back and forth across the highway. The guard flopped in the hatch like a sock puppet before dropping inside. I rammed the Humvee again. It swerved, tipped on two wheels, and rolled over.
The temperature gauge on the instrument panel sprang into the red zone. I had perhaps a minute before the engine seized.
Up ahead, the Suburban spun around. In my rearview mirrors, another Humvee raced closer to box me in.
I flicked off the headlamps and running lights. I veered to the right and smashed the darkened semi and trailer through a barbed-wire fence bordering the road.
Using vampire vision, I navigated around the largest of the big rocks littering the plain. The truck bellowed as it crashed over the treacherous ground. The trailer groaned on the fifth wheel. I dropped into low gear and flogged the engine, dragging us through the snow.
The transmission started to grind. The engine whined. The tachometer redlined. The truck bogged down and stopped with a wheeze and a grunt of steam.
I kicked open the door and stood on the running board. The Humvees were a half-mile away, picking their way around the stones that had pummeled my truck. Searchlights washed over the glistening snow.
I had but a few short minutes to find out what was hidden in the trailer. Unfastening a pick ax lashed to the back of the cab, I dropped to the snow and hustled to the trailer. A padlock the size of a clay brick held the rear doors. I jammed the thin end of the pick head between the lock and the hasp. I twisted the pick and turned until the handle broke.
A gentle tap-like the tripping of a bomb fuse-whispered from behind the doors. The stink of polyurethane and isopropanol farted into the air. I sprang upward and landed on top of the trailer roof. From under the rear of the truck, out shot streams of foam the size of railroad ties. The streams snaked on the ground and melted a swath through the snow. The foam set and hardened. To anyone caught in it, it would be like getting doused with instant-setting concrete.
Just to make sure that no more surprises waited, I stamped my foot on the roof of the trailer. Nothing happened. I jumped up and down once. Again, nothing happened.
Certain that this booby trap had run its course, I dropped from the roof and balanced on the knots of hardened foam. I grabbed the pick head with my bare hands and twisted again, grunting, and flexed my legs to get better leverage.
The padlock cracked apart. I flung the pieces aside and unbarred the doors.
A second metal door protected the cargo. The seal of the Department of Energy warned me not to proceed.
Stop me.
This door I grasped by the hinges and tore it loose. I stepped over the threshold and into the deepest secrets of Rocky Flats.
CHAPTER 30
I ENTERED AN ARMORED VAULT. Six black boxes the size and shape of coffins were lashed with cargo straps to platforms on the floor trunnions. Along the left and right walls stood black metal drums marked with radiation symbols and placards announcing Hg-209, red mercury. Were these the boxes and drums the RCTs discovered just before they first became contaminated and then went sex crazy?
I stepped between the first two of the black boxes. A pair of metal shipping bands secured each of the lids. I chose a box and plucked at the bands with my talons until each band snapped apart with a twang.
Poised on the edge of my destination in this mystery, I hesitated, out of apprehension that what lay in the box was either nothing but disappointment, a hoax perhaps, or the kernel at the heart of the darkest of conspiracies. Could this be proof of the spaceship, the Roswell UFO, as the vânätori had claimed?
In the distance, the flashing lights and headlamps of the convoy escort flicked across the snow. I didn’t have much time before the security force closed upon me.
Breathless, as if reaching into a lion’s cage, I raised the lid. The aura about my hands changed from orange to yellow, exactly as it had earlier in the presence of Dragan’s red mercury. Startled and suddenly afraid, I closed the lid. Thankfully, my aura returned to orange.
The effect seemed temporary. In any case, since I might already be contaminated, there was no point in stopping. I raised the lid again, and again my aura turned yellow. And the more I opened the lid, the farther the color change progressed down my arms.
The auras of the contaminated RCTs had turned an identical hue when the nymphomania took hold. Just as before, when Dragan had brought the vial of red mercury close to me, an electric twinge now shot along my spine and down to my crotch, filling my groin with a pleasant warmth. I couldn’t help but smile despite my apprehension.