Part 12 (1/2)

In the stall across the aisle, wooden boxes marked in Chinese had been stacked-supplies for fireworks, possibly. An ax leaning against the wall had been used to break some of the boxes into kindling. Molds covered a plastic shelving unit-bigger molds cut in half longitudinally from pieces of metal pipe, smaller ones carved from pieces of wood-for packing charges.

A regular clandestine whizbang factory.

Brewer, baker, candlestick maker...

In a stall to his right, he saw a pile of plastic parts, topped with what looked like the workings from a computer printer-thin bars of steel forming a track within a carriage, a plastic ribbon striped with copper leads dangling to one side. Three ink capsule holders lay near the back of the bench, wrapped in baggies.

'Closer in, please,' Rebecca said.

'Some sort of computer printer,' Griff said, and turned.

'Go back, Griff. Let me see the brand.'

Griff obliged. 'Epson, I think,' he said. 'Older model. What's it to you?'

'How many?'

'Just this one, so far.'

In the next stall, two box kites leaned worn and ragged in a corner, frames snapped and tangled up with string.

For checking wind direction.

Griff shook his head, a useless gesture behind the helmet plate. A filthy gray place. Junk everywhere, but with a pattern, a selectivity-not the normal acc.u.mulation of debris from farm life. If only he could figure out the pattern.

His light stabbed down at something broad and white on the gray dirt floor. He tried to focus on it.

'Can you guys see this?' he asked. There was no answer, only a digital speckle of notes. He bent over, reached down as best he could-but his hand could not reach the ground. He would have to kneel. Slowly, gingerly, he got down on one knee and lifted the edge of a strip of paper. It was part of a city map. It had been torn in thirds, the rips following the folds, and leaving behind only part of the name of the city.

-esia, Ohio 'Can you see this?' he asked again, holding up the paper in his lamp.

'It's fuzzy,' Sch.e.l.l said. 'Not enough resolution, and besides, we're losing-'

More digital bird-notes.

Watson peered over his shoulder. Her gloved hand touched the partial name of the city, brus.h.i.+ng away gray dust and sparkles. 'What are these?' she asked, her thick mitt following red arrows and curved lines advancing over the interrupted streets.

'Wind direction,' Griff said. 'Drift.'

The wire grid. The powder on the leaves. They could have been measuring wind drift in the yard. But what were they packing in the charges?

Yeast?

He got to his feet, trying to fold the map and put it in his pouch. He smelled something like ethanol and singed rubber.

Watson leaned back and again aimed her light high. The air was fogged by drifting curtains of sparkling dust. Griff saw it then. He saw it all. The frames hanging from the ceiling were being vibrated by an electric motor. A few yards in front of him, he saw and understood the device, the arrangement-a short rubber pulley, an off-center cam with a jiggling post, thin cords attached to all the frames. The dust was falling through fine holes punched in aluminum foil laid in the frame troughs.

The entire apparatus was like a gigantic flour sifter.

At the far end of the room, behind the workbenches, something sizzled. In the corner of his eye, Griff saw a tiny flash of light. In the suit, he had to move like the Sta-Puft marshmallow man. He faced the south wall with three ponderous steps. Two wires had been strapped vertically to the rough concrete wall, inches apart. They looked like copper centipedes.

'That is sure as h.e.l.l a spark gap,' Watson said. 'Let's-' She was interrupted by another sizzle as a loop of electricity surged. It curled and snapped between the ends of the wires and then stopped.

Griff let out his breath.

The strip of map fell from his gloved hands.

Fine dark gray powder lay an eighth of an inch thick all over the floor. The sifters had been vibrating for at least thirty minutes-filling the air with a fog of tiny particles.

He moved toward one of the stalls. 'Rip-and-zip,' he told Watson. 'Let's get out of here.'

'It's partly aluminum powder,' Watson said. She held up her gloved hand and brushed it with a thick finger. Her voice was childlike, filled with discovery. 'Mixed with sh.e.l.lac or rubber, maybe. Jesus, Griff-isn't that what they use for solid rocket boosters?'

'Get behind a wall,' he said, watching the spark gap.

'Screw this,' Watson said, her voice going up a notch.

He could no longer see the back of the cellar. The fog was too thick. He could see the sparks, however, reaching out like greedy white fingers in the murk.

He began to pull at the releases. They might make it if they ran as fast as they could up the ramp and out of the barn. Dropping and flattening a few yards from the barn, they might survive-if they weren't hit by shrapnel or falling debris.

He could imagine the pathways of the force-echoing, compressing, like a monster pus.h.i.+ng up with its shoulders, doubling in size each thousandth of a second. The blast would shove against the reinforced concrete, squeeze between the ceiling and the walls, escape through the wood floor at each end, then blow out the concrete floor and lift the entire barn like a cracker box.

Alice tore at her releases in the gray billowing pall.

The gleeful sparks leaped. He would not get out of the suit fast enough. It was so quiet in the bas.e.m.e.nt-just his breath and the jiggle of the racks and a faint sizzle.

Andrews whispered in his ear. 'The whole sky's on fire out here, Griff. You should see this.'

Oh, he did.

It came down for him as an instant wall of flame and grabbed him by the neck and the crotch and the armpits, a huge swirling brightness that seared his eyes. His ears went quickly, so he heard nothing as he was tossed to the back of the stall at the speed of an angry thought.

Years later, when, miracle of miracles, he thought he might have gotten away, the pain struck.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

Quantico.

The study lounge was quiet for seconds after the screen went blank. No one could believe what they had just seen.

William could not breathe. His eyes had misted over and his hand had actually broken the chair arm.

The barn had blown apart at both ends. A split-second later, the middle had lifted and flown outward in pieces chased by hungry, ugly curls of red and orange flame. Agents had dropped to the ground behind black bomb s.h.i.+elds lined up like tombstones. Rubble had rained. A large chunk of frame and siding had crushed the roof of the bomb truck, dropping the truck on its shocks like a stunned bullock.