pulsed with barely restrained power. Then he dropped the bottle and leveled a killing gaze at Harper.
'You lame, worthless, feeble piece of dog shit.' Braxton's voice started faint and low like the preamble to a prayer, then rose in pitch and volume as Harper and his captor grew closer. 'You traitorous old fool!'
'Yes, I am an old fool,' Harper said. Braxton nodded and the guard halted next to the wine rack. 'And I am a traitor for saving your life.'
Braxton flew apart. 'You damned fool! Look at the damage you have done!' The General swept an outstretched arm around the cellar. He turned then and pulled his security chief's sidearm from its holster.
The guard holding Harper leaped to the side as Braxton shot the old man in the face, slamming him back against the wine racks. The crack-shot former general shot Harper again as he slumped toward the tile. Harper died before he hit the floor.
Shock and disapproval registered in the eyes of the SWAT-clad men holding the rest of us. Killing innocent people was not part of a professional soldier's charter. The grip on my arm loosened.
'And you!' Braxton stepped away from his big security chief and leveled the man's own gun at his chest. 'You were supposed to prevent this!' Dried spittle stuck like cotton to one corner of Braxton's mouth.
'But you let these amateurs ruin the perfection of the world's greatest wine collection! Just look at it now! It was complete and now… ' Braxton trembled. Around the room, the security troops were stunned by the sight of the General and the security chief locked in mortal combat. Their training had never prepared them for this
'You ruined it, ruined it!'
When Braxton shot his security chief, Gabriel, Kilgore, and I broke for the hole in the wall. As we turned the corner, the two guards who had not seen the shootings raised their weapons. We ducked back around the end of the wine racks and saw Braxton standing over the head of his security detail as the man struggled to sit up.
Two of the guards moved toward the General as he aimed the gun down at the fallen man's head and pulled the trigger again. Behind us, we heard one of the guards move away from the hole in the wall, his boots crunching on the broken glass.
Then, from beyond the window, out where the sun had begun surrendering to darkness, a toy airplane bobbed toward us. I turned and took shelter at the base of the wine rack along with Gabriel and Kilgore.
The explosion rocked the cellar and filled the enclosed space with glass and wine.
CHAPTER 98
'Okaaay, there went the security cam,' Tyrone said as he and Jasmine raced to launch a second radio- controlled airplane.
'We'll put this and the other two in about the same area,' she said. 'If Brad's still alive, he'll be heading away from there. Maybe we can pull security to where he isn't anymore.'
She paused.
'Then we get the hell out of here.'
The cellar noise receded quickly as we stumbled down the dark stairwell. 'What took you so long, kemo sabe?'
Rex appeared out of the darkness with a small, bright LED light. 'Lead the way, Tonto,' Kilgore replied.
'Right this way asshole.'
At the bottom, we found no guard in the barrel cave and none in the tunnels or on the loading docks. We did hear another explosion faintly as we made our way to the wine delivery truck, gridlocked in a panicked tangle of traffic.
'You gentlemen up for a jog?' Gabriel said. 'I know a nice trail to the road.'
'I'm allergic to running,' Rex said. 'But not as allergic as I am to lead.'
Outside the service area and beyond the beautiful green curtain that kept it from blighting the visions of important people, we found chaos like the last helicopter out of Saigon. Guests in evening dress came off the aerial gondola and were hustled by their own security people to waiting limousines, all of which jammed the driveway out.
We followed Gabriel in the shadows of the trees. At first, we walked to avoid attracting attention, then ran swiftly through the trees toward Silverado Trail.
We had walked through a shallow stream and were crawling up the bank when Rex asked us to stop for a moment.
'You finally going to quit smoking now?' I asked him.
'You can be a true asshole,' he said only half-joking. 'I have half a mind to tell your lady here'-he tapped at the walkie-talkie-'tell her you didn't make it… and see to it myself that I ain't lying.'
He pulled the earbud and lavalier from his ear. 'But I promised y'mama, you know.'
He handed me the earbud and the walkie-talkie.
It was Jasmine.
EPILOGUE
A score of postdoctoral and medical school students jammed themselves around a long, elliptical plastic- laminate table, took notes, and sipped coffee when I paused and listened to me with an embarrassing degree of intensity as I shuffled my way toward the last pages of my notes.
Around the perimeter of the windowless room stood a collection of people who would be my classroom students in the fall, and a sprinkling of faculty members I vaguely recognized but whose names I could not recall.
'I realize its a big shock for many, but the theoretical and practical successes of quantum theory expose classical physics as a primitive tool. For the purposes of studying consciousness, it's like using a muzzle-loading cannon when you really need a particle accelerator. Regardless, the classically misled consciousness establishment remains mired in the seventeenth century wearing Sir Isaac Newton about their necks like an albatross.' I glanced hopefully at the door for an instant, then back to my notes. 'This stubborn refusal to relinquish obsolete ideas has damaged our ability to understand consciousness and to examine and discuss the existence of free will.'
I turned to the big white board at the front of the room, erased my previous notes dealing with the technological verifications of quantum theory-semiconductors, nuclear bombs, GPS satellites.
'Quantum physics and superstring theory invalidate classical physics as follows: First, classical physics says any action must be caused by current, local, and totally mechanical circumstances.' I wrote as I spoke, turning back to make eye contact between each point. 'Second, classical physics holds there is matter and there is energy, sometimes equal but always separate. But as we have seen, quantum entanglement and superposition destroy the first proposition. The second crumbles because matter and energy are manifestations of the same thing, and neither exists as a simple either-or dichotomy.
'Furthermore, the universe is far weirder than we think because everything we know about matter and energy totally ignores ninety-six percent of everything.'
A coherent wall of blank stares greeted this.
'Think for a moment about the studies from NASA and others in 2003 that proved that ordinary atoms-the stuff we're made of-comprise a mere four percent of the entire universe.' I held up four fingers. 'On the other hand, dark matter makes up twenty-three percent, and the rest, a whopping seventy-three percent, is dark energy.
'And we know virtually nothing about dark matter and energy! I have no doubt that this missing ninety-six percent of the universe affects our consciousness. When we learn more I believe we will lose our bifurcated outlook on matter versus energy and find a third way that will invalidate much of the truth we hold dear.'
A hand shot up.
'Yes?'
'Professor, why are you talking about cosmology in a biology lecture?'
