Greg Bear - Quantico

‘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 pushing 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 basement-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.

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 shields 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.

William had seen one agent, unable to get behind a shield fast enough, fly backward with feet dangling like a doll’s. Smoke and dust had immediately made viewing almost impossible. And then the entire screen had blanked.

A chair creaked. Fouad put his hand on William’s shoulder. Then, shouts and everyone standing, talking. William jumped up from the soft cushions and slammed into the end of a couch. As someone reached out to steady him, he threw up his hands, glared, then ran up the steps for the phone bank. He didn’t have change. Fouad was right behind him, and somehow, Fouad had his phone card out and quickly dialed in his access code.

To William this was all transparent. He hardly saw any of it. He had bitten his tongue again. He tasted the blood in his mouth and knew it was going to hurt. But a certain bitter irony lapped up like a salty sea around his broken thoughts and fear. Here he was, in one of the nerve centers of the law enforcement world, and he was calling his mother to find out what had happened, to see if she knew anything.

Fouad was not judging, he was just there, and then so was Jane Rowland. William, who towered over them both, saw Pete Farrow striding down the short hall toward them.

‘Who’re you calling, Griffin?’ Farrow asked.

He had not finished dialing the number. He could not remember the last four digits. ‘My mother,’ he said. She had moved into an apartment recently, selling the big old house. The house where he had grown up.

‘I think we should take care of that. We don’t know what happened out there. Not yet.’

William stared at the receiver in shock. ‘Okay,’ he said. Then, plaintively, ‘Did anybody see? Did Griff get out?’

‘I don’t know,’ Farrow said. He took the receiver out of William’s hand, gently prying loose his fingers, and hung it up. Then he gripped William’s elbow. ‘Let’s go.’

Fouad and Jane Rowland followed. Rowland’s face was pale as a sheet. Behind them, members of their class stood in a cluster, staring.

Then they were walking back down the hallway past all the pretty prints. Past the chapel. The chapel was empty. For some reason that struck him. They climbed a flight of stairs. William wasn’t sure where they were going. He could hardly see. He stumbled on the steps. He was crying. He felt ashamed for a moment then looked to one side and saw that Farrow had tears on his cheeks.

They all converged on Farrow’s office. Rowland pulled up a chair. William sat. Someone handed him a cup of water. He sipped. Farrow gave him a handkerchief. William looked down and saw a little blood on his shirt, from his tongue. He wiped his lips and blood came away.

‘Take a deep breath,’ Farrow said. William took it as an order and sucked in a scant mouthful of air.

‘I need to know,’ he said and dabbed at his lips again.

‘We’ll all know soon,’ Farrow said.

‘I want to fly out there. Can you get me on a plane?’

‘We’ll see,’ Farrow said.

‘I’m sorry,’ William said. ‘I’m a mess.’

Farrow bent over him. ‘You have to maintain, Agent Griffin,’ he whispered in William’s ear. ‘This hell is just beginning.’

An agent whom William did not know stepped into the office doorway and spoke in a low voice to Farrow. William caught part of the conversation. At least one dead, several injured. That was all they knew. The barn, what was left of it, was burning. He tried to stand but Jane Rowland was behind him, hands on his shoulders, and for some reason she was holding him down. He looked up at her, twisting his neck painfully. She stared straight ahead and dug in her fingers.

Somehow that calmed him. He stopped struggling.

Farrow knelt in front of him. ‘They haven’t found your father. We’ve lost people outside the barn. One at least. A lot more are injured. It’s an inferno. They’re bringing in fire trucks. You saw what happened, William.’

Graduation would have been the day after tomorrow. They would all drink beer in the boardroom. They could hang out with the instructors and the National Academy people, listen to their stories, smiling and nodding and being humble like the rookies they were. Rowland, Fouad, nearly all of the others, would get their credentials. They would be agents. Agents behaved in a certain way, the FBI way, different even from cops. Learning the FBI way-by osmosis, observation, cruel comment, or just plain being emotionally pounded on-was part of what Quantico was all about.

William stilled an urge to shiver. With Fouad in front of him and Jane Rowland holding on to his shoulders, he kept himself stiff as a ham.

Farrow was right.

This hell was just beginning.

Temecula, California

Tommy’s mother and father had been in their late fifties. Ten years before, using money they had earned in the stock market boom, they had paid a premium for the sprawling Temecula property. They had then invested two thirds of their life savings to turn the old hillside estate into a boutique winery.

Their plan had come a cropper in the wine glut of the last years of the twentieth century, and then had ended with an insect invasion and Pierce’s disease. Never very savvy about either business or the needs of their strange child, they had fallen to arguing, and then to planning for divorce.

Tommy was sensitive to noise.

The world had become too noisy.

In 2000, his parents had died from food poisoning. Sixteen-year-old Tommy had been spared. Everyone around Tommy in those awful days had considered him incapable of taking care of himself. Not quite an imbecile, but strange and inept both socially and financially, so the will had described him: a naïve incompetent.