The recording continued. From the main room came shouts of authoritative voices telling the command center’s occupants to exit single-file, no delays, everybody out.
She shouldn’t leave the storeroom, not without knowing where he was, but she was tired of this cat-and- mouse game, so she burst into the hall, gun raised, ready to kill or be killed.
No one was there.
Andrus had left the area.
So what to do?
Make a run for it, she decided, join the crowd fleeing out the door. Leave Andrus down here, if he chose to hide and die. The VX fumes would get him-and if not, he would be trapped, caught in another standoff, like the one that had started it all in 1968.
She started down the hall, checking every door she passed, aware that Andrus could be concealed behind any one of them. The PA system bleated its insistent message all around her.
Turning the corner, she saw the main room straight ahead. Already it had mostly emptied out. The two LAPD representatives-the ones whose voices she’d heard-were hustling stragglers through the doorway.
And on a chair in the middle of the room, neatly draped without a crease-Andrus’s jacket.
That was where he’d left the bomb. Under his jacket, on the chair.
She opened her mouth to cry out, tell the policemen to grab the jacket and fling it away And the room exploded.
44
Noise, light, a shattering blast, and Tess pivoted and dived around the corner before she could be spattered with debris.
Her ears chimed. Bluish lights shimmered across her field of vision.
This bomb had been more powerful than the one in the subway. Mobius-Andrus-wasn’t fooling around here.
She struggled to her feet and dared a look back.
The main room was hidden in a cloud of smoke and dust and shining droplets that made rainbows in the air. The droplets were VX, and they were everywhere in the room.
She peered toward the exit. Had the last evacuees made it out? She couldn’t tell. The haze of debris was too thick.
All she could make out were a few overturned chairs and smashed computer consoles, and ragged pieces of Andrus’s jacket fluttering in the breeze from the air-conditioning.
The air-conditioning…which even now was drawing in the mist of VX, to circulate it throughout the complex.
The filters were designed to screen out toxins only from outside. Against a nerve agent already inside the command center, the filters would be useless.
She couldn’t exit through the main room. To go in there would mean instant death.
But there was no other way out.
She was stuck in here, and all she could do was wait until the AC system brought the gas to her. It wouldn’t take long.
Her best bet was to take refuge in the rear of the facility, as far from the main room as possible.
She retreated down the hall to the last two doorways, the office and the storeroom. The office, she supposed, was a better refuge. It had a phone and a computer-maybe she could get in touch with the outside world. There was nothing in the storeroom except the PA system, still repeating its idiot spiel, and some boxes and gear and The hazmat suits.
A rack of them. She’d seen them when she’d entered, though she had barely registered their existence at the time.
She darted into the storeroom, and yes, there they were, five orange suits and matching helmets.
Five…
There had been six before.
Then she understood.
Andrus had forced open the door in order to draw her out. He hadn’t wanted to engage her in a firefight. He had wanted-needed-access to the suits.
While she’d gone down the hall and nearly walked right into the explosion, he’d been suiting up. Now he was in a mobile self-contained environment, breathing filtered air, protected from exposure. He was safe even in this toxic atmosphere.
And she could be, too.
She grabbed a suit from the rack and spread it out on the floor, then prepared to step into it. To do so, she would have to put down her gun. For a minute or two she would be completely vulnerable. If Andrus crept up, he could take her out before she had any chance to react.
Couldn’t be helped. She had to get into the suit or the fumes would kill her.
She set the gun down, then slipped her feet inside the baggy socks built into the suit. She pulled the suit up around her armpits, then worked her arms into the sleeves until her hands had filled out the heavy-duty rubber gloves attached by gaskets. A row of yellow rubber boots lay underneath the suits. She slipped into the nearest pair.
The suit wasn’t heavy, but it was large-at least one size too big for her-and awkward to handle, and she found herself struggling with the thick folds of neoprene rubber. A seam, similar to the closure of a Ziploc bag, ran up the suit from the midsection to the chin. She pressed the flaps together, sealing the front of the suit.
Now only her head was exposed. She removed a helmet from the shelf above the rack. It was not a hard plastic shell like an astronaut’s helmet, but rather a loose tent of cloth with a flexible face mask in front, and when she dropped it over her head she felt as if she were enclosed in a bubble. Another Ziploc seal secured the bubble helmet to the suit, and now she was fully protected.
A rush of claustrophobia drained her strength, and for a moment she had a suicidal impulse to remove the helmet. She fought off the fear.
The air trapped in the suit would go stale in only a few minutes. She groped for the battery-operated air pack at the back of the suit and turned it on.
The electric blower came to life, and the suit puffed up with an inflow of air. Filters in the built-in air circulation system would screen out VX and any other toxin. At least, that was the theory.
The suit, inflated, had swelled to twice its original size. Instead of hanging off her, it was now as hard and smooth as an exoskeleton. She must look like the Michelin Man. The thought almost made her smile, but the smile died when she noticed a fine mist clouding the room.
The VX had made its way through the complex’s air-conditioning vents. The storage room was filling with it. If she’d been a minute slower in donning the suit, she would be dying right now.
45
She picked up her gun, holding it awkwardly in her gloved hand. Carefully she tried inserting her forefinger between the trigger and the trigger guard. Couldn’t do it. The glove, swollen with air, made it impossible to get a grip on the trigger. She was unable to shoot.
Of course, Andrus couldn’t use his gun either.
Over the roar of the blower, the PA continued its announcement. She turned to the control panel and shut it off.
'Hi, Tess.'
Andrus’s voice, close to her ear. He was right behind her. She tried to pivot, but the clumsy suit made any
