Michael Prescott - Next Victim

Tess opened the office door, risked a glance into the corridor.

Gunshot.

There was no sound this time, only a spray of drywall fragments inches from her head.

She ducked back inside, slammed and locked the door.

A silencer. He’d fitted his service pistol with a silencer.

And he’d been waiting for her-she wasn’t sure where-another office or an intersecting hallway. He intended to make sure she didn’t get out to warn the others.

In the subway he’d planted a vial of VX attached to a bomb. Probably he’d done the same thing here. He could have easily smuggled in the package, left it in the main room.

When the bomb went off and the vial burst, everyone within range would be sprayed with deadly droplets. No one was wearing any protective gear. Penetration of the skin, the eyes, the nostrils would be instantaneous-and fatal.

With only a few drops of VX dribbled into her motel room air conditioner, he had nearly killed her. Now he would release a hundred times as much-in a windowless subterranean chamber. Even those victims who weren’t splashed in the explosion would have trouble getting out before the fumes, rapidly circulating, began to do their work.

And all of this would happen at any minute. As soon as the bomb’s timer went off.

She had to clear the station. There must be a way.

By now Andrus might have left. He couldn’t hang around until the explosion, not if he wanted to survive.

She risked another look into the hall. Across the way, the door to another room hung open. Through the doorway she saw cardboard boxes, piles of equipment. Some sort of storage area.

Had the door been open when she’d come down the hall? Or had Andrus opened it, and was he hiding inside?

She glanced in both directions. To her left, a blank wall-dead end. To her right, several more doors, all closed, with the continuing hubbub of the main room audible in the distance, around the corner.

She had to risk leaving cover, even though in the corridor she would be exposed, vulnerable to Andrus if he was hidden anywhere along its length.

She lifted her gun, took a breath, and moved into the hall with one quick step, crossing to the far side and hugging the wall.

No sound but the distant voices.

No movement.

Except…

A crack of light, widening, in a doorway down the hall.

Someone was behind that door, easing it open, preparing to shoot.

On blind reflex she leaped into the storeroom, then shut and locked the door behind her.

Andrus hadn’t left.

And now she was trapped in here.

She looked around the room. Cartons, cleaning supplies, a rack of hazmat suits and helmets, six in all…

And the control panel for the public-address system. A microphone, a bank of illuminated push buttons, a pair of amplifier cabinets.

She scanned the panel, saw something labeled a voice-storage module with a list of prerecorded announcements pasted below. Announcement One was titled ALERT amp; EVAC.

She powered on the amplifiers, activated the first announcement, and a female voice, deeper than her own, blared over the speaker in the ceiling and the other speakers throughout the complex.

"This is an alert. The premises are not secure. Evacuate immediately. This is an alert. The premises…"

Behind her, the door shuddered.

Andrus, shooting at the lock.

Tess ducked behind the PA console, and the door flew open.

She fired three rounds at the doorway before realizing that no one was there.

He’d shot off the lock, flung the door wide-and taken cover.

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.

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.