“You okay?” I called out.
Owen reappeared, clutching a large Styrofoam cup. He was staring down into it. I couldn’t see from where I was standing, but I was guessing it wasn’t coffee.
“N-stoff,” he said, finally.
N-stoff? I looked at him blankly. It certainly wasn’t my first blank look since we’d been together. “Excuse me?”
“That was the code name of chlorine trifluoride at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Nazi Germany.”
Great. More Jeopardy! I’ll take Random Trivia When You Least Expect It for six hundred, Alex….
At my continued blank stare, Owen went on. “The Nazis experimented with chlorine trifluoride as a combined incendiary weapon and poison gas. What a big surprise, right? Thing is, though, it was too volatile. It would literally explode in their faces.”
“And that’s what you’re holding in your hand?” I asked. “Three feet away from me?”
Owen tilted the cup so I could see the slightly green-and-yellowish liquid inside it. “It doesn’t react with closed-cell extruded polystyrene foam,” he said.
I shot him a deadpan look. “You mean Styrofoam?”
“Yeah, sorry,” he said. “Of course, if this were most any metal, like an aluminum can, for instance … then boom.”
I swallowed hard. “Then thank God for Styrofoam,” I said. “But what does chlorinated—”
“Chlorine trifluoride,” he said. “CTF.”
“Yeah, what does CTF have to do with the serum?” I asked.
“I’m not sure it has anything to do with the serum.”
“Why are you holding it, then?” It seemed like the obvious question, as did my follow-up. “How did you even know it was here?”
“It’s listed in the binder,” he said.
“Under what?”
“Inventory.”
How neat and organized of them. “So they needed it for something, right? If not the serum, then what?”
I watched Owen. He was thinking. At least, that was what I thought. His head was cocked to the side, his eyes narrowed to a squint.
Of all things, he began removing his sneakers. Huh? I then watched as he tiptoed past me oh-so-quietly in his bare feet—he wasn’t wearing socks—and carefully placed the Styrofoam cup on the center island in the room before picking up my SIG, which he’d set down. What’s going on?
I was about to ask that very question when his index finger shot up in the air, stopping me. Right then I knew. He wasn’t thinking; he was listening.
He’d heard something.
And the next second, I heard it, too.
CHAPTER 70
IT WAS the sound of someone trying not to make a sound, an otherwise quiet set of footsteps betrayed by the wet pavement outside the building.
My guess was running shoes, maybe cross-trainers. Something with a soft and forgiving sole, perfect for sneaking around.
Unless, of course, it happened to be after a rainstorm. Rubber and water don’t play quietly together.
I looked at Owen. He looked at me. We both looked at the light switch by the door. If those footsteps were coming for us, they already knew we were inside. No point making it any easier to be seen.
Owen grabbed the binder, stuffing it in his backpack before killing the lights. He settled in the doorway of the kitchen area by the entrance while I slipped off my Pumas and quietly lifted my duffel over to the doorway of the bathroom opposite him.
With our shoes off and bags in tow, we looked like we were about to go through airport security. Of course, what we wouldn’t have given for an X-ray machine to see through the door outside.
No one could blame us for being paranoid, and hopefully that was all we were being. But better to be safe than dead.
We had the door covered. Our shoes were back on our feet. I was on one knee with my Glock raised, the xenon light turned off and the laser sight aimed waist high.
Next to me, Owen was standing with his strong-side leg slightly back like a boxer and his elbows bent just a little. The Weaver position, as it’s commonly called among police and military. Smaller profile, greater stability.
Somewhere in his nineteen years, someone had clearly taught him that. Not surprisingly, the kid had paid attention.
A minute passed with Owen and me having an entire conversation without words. Just nods, shrugs, and prolonged stares.
Neither of us could hear what we’d first heard. In a glass-half-full world, that meant it was just some passerby. A random. Maybe some Starbucks employee—excuse me, barista—taking the back way into work.
Of course, in the glass-half-empty world …
We kept listening, our eyes now trained on the door. I could feel the sweat forming in my palms, my right calf cramping, the strain building in my left shoulder from trying to hold my gun steady. It was like a thousand needle jabs.
But all in all, the feeling was relief. The longer we went without hearing anything, the better. Way better.
Isn’t that right, Owen?
I glanced over at him, just a quick snapshot as I’d done before. It was so fast my eyes were already turning back to the door without really focusing on what I was seeing.
After all, I already knew what I was seeing. It was Owen in the same stance he’d had from the get-go.
We were maybe four feet from each other, give or take an inch or two. Of course, sometimes that’s the difference between life and death, isn’t it?
An inch or two.
CHAPTER 71
MY HEAD swiveled back to Owen so fast I could literally feel a breeze in my left ear.
He had moved ever so slightly to his right, just enough that his head—barely half of it, really—was now peeking out from the doorway of the kitchen area. Exposed.
And just like that, the red dot at the end of the laser sight from my Glock was trained on the back of his skull.
Only it wasn’t my gun. It was someone else’s.
“Down!” I yelled, diving across the hallway.
The sounds of the shot fired, the broken glass, and my shoulder barreling into Owen’s rib cage all rolled into one piercing crack! as a second breeze hit my left ear, this one courtesy of the bullet that had just barely missed me.
By an inch or two.
Owen and I crash-landed on the linoleum floor of the kitchen. Immediately, he had it figured out—the mistake we’d made ignoring the windows. Just because the blinds were closed didn’t mean the shooter was blind.
Two words. “Thermal imaging,” he said.
The next sound was the blinds being violently yanked down, followed by more glass breaking. We scrambled to our feet.
“He’s coming in,” I said.
“No, but something else is. In five seconds, it’s going to get real smoky in here.”
Actually, it was more like two seconds.
The canister landed with a thud, the sound of it rolling to a stop quickly overtaken by the hissing of the tear gas. I couldn’t help stating the obvious.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I said.
“Not quite yet,” said Owen.
Not quite yet?
The gas was pushing toward us, filling the hallway. Our eyes and throats were about to get scorched. All I knew was that staying put gave us no chance. The fact that we were armed gave us at least a fighting chance.
But Owen didn’t even look at the SIG I’d given him, still gripped in his right hand. In fact, he put it down.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
But he was too busy doing it to answer. He was searching the cabinets above the counter, opening one door after another.
Until he found it.
Owen turned back to me, holding another large Styrofoam cup, this one empty. I had no idea what he was thinking.
“Please tell me that cup has something to do with our getting out of here,” I said.
Owen nodded. “It does,” he answered. “Now take off your socks.”
My socks?
&nb
sp; CHAPTER 72
THERE WAS no time to ask why, not with my eyes feeling the first sting from the tear gas filtering into the kitchen. The first cough couldn’t be too far behind.
I quickly took off my socks and gave them to him. Hell, if he had asked me to stand on one leg and clap like a seal, I probably would’ve done that, too. Anything to speed things along.
“Now I need some cover,” he said.
But Owen didn’t pick up his backpack as if we were leaving. And when he stopped just shy of the doorway, waiting for me to line up behind him with my Glock, he wasn’t looking left toward the door. He was looking right. As in, right into the line of fire.
That was when I knew. He was getting that chlorine stuff, the CTF.
Not that either of us could actually see it by this point. He’d left it on the island in the middle of the room, but the cup holding it—along with the island itself—had disappeared in the cloud above the canister.
Owen lifted the neck of his T-shirt over his nose for a makeshift mask. Clearly, I’d picked the wrong day to wear a button-down.
“Go!” I said.
I squeezed off a few rounds through the shattered windows as Owen flung himself toward the island. For better or worse, whoever was out there, singular or plural, knew we were armed.
But there was no red stream of light aimed our way, no return fire.
Meanwhile, the coughing officially kicked in. Owen was doing the same. On the plus side, it was the only way I could get a read on where he was.
I was waiting for his signal so I could spray a few more bullets as he came back. He didn’t bother, though. Next thing I knew, he was crawling into the kitchen on his hands and knees.
Or, at least, one hand. In his other were my two socks. I didn’t need to ask what was inside them; Owen had put a cup containing some of the CTF in each one.
In fact, I was pretty sure I had it nailed, especially when the first thing he did was grab a lighter from his backpack. What he’d created was akin to a couple of Molotov cocktails straight out of the MacGyver school of impromptu weaponry. Light the fuse, aka my dirty socks, and let her rip.
Turns out, I just got the chemistry backward.
I knelt down with Owen, the only breathing room left being a foot off the floor. We were coughing up our lungs now, our throats burning. Tears were streaming down our cheeks.
Which made the question he managed to get out all the more bizarre.
“You ever play cornhole?” he asked.
Once, at a tailgate party before a Yankees game. Though I never could bring myself to call it that. It was beanbag toss, as far as I was concerned.
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Good. Because it’s not the fire, it’s the water,” he said. “Fire’s just the accelerator.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you’ve got to hit a puddle and you’ve only got one shot.”
Cornhole.
“Okay,” I said.
What the hell else could I say? It wasn’t exactly the best time to raise my hand and question how water could turn this liquid into a small bomb. Sometimes you’ve just got to go with the flow.
We grabbed our bags.
“Maybe there’s only one guy out there, but I’m guessing more. We draw their fire, and we fire back,” he said. “You throw left, I throw right, and then we both run straight as fast as we possibly can.”
“What about the car?” I asked.
Owen looked at me, and of all things cracked a smile. We were at death’s door—quite literally—and yet somehow he managed to seem more excited than scared, like a mad scientist about to flip the switch.
“Dude,” he said. “If this works … there won’t be a car.”
CHAPTER 73
HERE GOES everything …
I yanked open the door, barely jumping back into the bathroom in time to evade the barrage of bullets littering the hallway.
Owen had it pegged; there was definitely more than one shooter. The crisscrossing of all the red laser sights looked like a Pink Floyd concert, complete with the tear gas as smoke.
It was Us and Them, all right. They had a small army and automatic weapons. We had pistols.
Oh, yeah. And socks.
The split second the first wave ended, I crouched low and peeked outside with the xenon light, squeezing off shots while looking for the nearest potholes filled with water.
Not too near, though. Collateral damage is no way to die.
I jumped back as the second wave came; this one was even more furious than the first. The drywall was literally disintegrating all around us, every bullet launching a bit of white chalk through the air. Mixed with the tear gas, it was like we were in a snow globe from Hell.
“Where?” yelled Owen.
“Fifteen feet at ten o’clock,” I yelled back.
“And yours?”
“Twenty feet at two.”
He lit the bottom of his sock and tossed me the lighter. “I’ll throw first, then you,” he said.
“Fine. Age before beauty, dude.”
I flicked my thumb. The sock caught fire immediately. I’d say the feeling was like holding a live grenade, but it wasn’t like that. It was that.
Spinning around again, I sprayed bullets back and forth like a windshield wiper before stepping aside so Owen could throw. I was giving him light from my Glock the best I could. As soon as he released his sock, he unloaded the rest of his magazine and peeled to the side.
My turn.
There was no time to aim, but there was also no time to think about it and choke. I just let it fly.
It was the second little fireball tossed through the air. Who knows what they must have thought? Maybe nothing at all. They were too busy trying to gun us down as we dove back out of the doorway.
I tossed another magazine to Owen, who quickly reloaded. There was one thing he’d forgotten to mention. When this CTF stuff mixes with water, how long does it take before—
BOOM!
The explosion shook and shattered everything around us. Every wall, every nearby window. Suffice it to say, anyone standing outside was no longer on their feet. The proverbial rug not just yanked out from beneath them, but incinerated.
But how long until one of them got back up? Good question.
Run! Right now!
Owen and I did our best Butch and Sundance, launching out of the building with guns blaring. We were sprinting as fast as we could, hoping against hope that we’d bought ourselves enough time. That made for an even better question.
Was that boom the result of one sock or two?
That was when I saw him. Looking over my shoulder—it was one of the shooters. A clone of the two guys up in New York. Was there a factory somewhere?
Dazed but clearly determined, he was staggering to his feet with his arm raised, and it wasn’t to wave hello.
Thank God it was only one sock.
BOOM!
Owen and I caught the edge of the second blast; it seared our backs and sent us hurtling forward across the pavement for the Evel Knievel of road rashes. It hurt like a son of a bitch, like I was being skinned alive.
And I’d never felt luckier in my life.
As we helped each other up, we looked back to see we were the only ones still standing. Not that we were about to linger.
“I’d high-five you, but I have no skin left on my palms,” said Owen.
“Me, neither,” I said. “C’mon, I know a doctor we should see.”
CHAPTER 74
THERE’S ANGRY. Then there’s smoldering. And then there’s literally smoldering.
“What’s that smell?” asked the cabdriver. “It’s like something’s burning.”
“It’s just our clothes,” I said matter-of-factly. The smell was also our singed flesh, but I didn’t feel the need to mention that.
Either way, that little tree-shaped air freshener hanging from the guy’s rearview mirror didn’t stand a chance.
We’d been burn
ed, all right. Set up big-time.
And now it was time for a little follow-up visit with Dr. Douglas Wittmer. No appointment necessary.
He was so convincing in his kitchen. Of course he was. He was telling us the truth. The only lie was his allegiance. Who the hell did he call after we left him?
We had the taxi drop us off one block down from his town house. There was no telling if Wittmer was still alone, but first we had to see if he was there at all.
Maybe he’d gone to church for confession.
If he had, he’d walked. His black Jaguar was still there, parked in the driveway as when we’d first approached him.
Too bad he hadn’t given us a second key, the one to his front door.
“How soon before a neighbor calls nine-one-one?” I whispered to Owen, only half joking as I peered inside one of the windows.
With our tattered, bloodstained clothes and shredded hands, knees, and elbows, the two of us looked like we’d just wandered off the set of The Walking Dead. At best, we were a couple of burglars. At worst, it was the zombie apocalypse.
I turned back to Owen when he didn’t respond. He’d been right behind me.
Now he wasn’t anywhere.
Finally, I found him back down by the street. He was staring up at a telephone pole.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Looking for the camera.”
“What camera?”
“They were watching from either inside or outside. Actually, probably both,” he said. “Inside, though, gave them audio.”
I stood there trying to reverse engineer what he was saying. If we were being watched when we first showed up to see Wittmer, then that meant …
“Jesus, why didn’t you say anything?” I asked. “We were coming here to confront him; he ratted us out.”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to. It was a given,” I said. At least, I thought it was. “You mean, he didn’t tip them off?”
“Highly unlikely.”
“Then why are we even here?”
Owen was still staring up at the pole. “To search for more evidence,” he said. “Stuff he didn’t share with us.”