The thunderous blast tore at his clothes and sent him skittering across the floor. White-hot fragments hissed overhead - smashing jagged holes in the adobe walls and shattering lights.
Nearly deafened by the explosion, with his ears still ringing, Smith uncurled and slowly sat up, amazed to find himself unhurt. His submachine gun lay close by. He grabbed it. There were raw gouges along the plastic-stock and hand guard, but it seemed otherwise undamaged.
His ears were clearing. He could hear high-pitched screams now. They were coming from across the corridor, by the door to the Nomura lab. Flayed by dozens of razor-edged steel splinters, the two men wearing coveralls writhed in agony - smearing blood across the tiled floor. The third man, luckier or blessed with quicker reactions, was unwounded. And he was reaching for the Uzi he had dropped.
Smith shot him three times. The gray-haired man fell forward onto his face and lay still.
Then Jon looked over at Diaz. He was dead. The bulletproof vest he was wearing had stopped most of the grenade fragments - but not the one jagged shard that had torn open his throat. Smith swore softly, angry with himself for dragging the other man into this fight and angry at the fates.
Another grenade bounced across the corridor and rolled toward the head of the stairs. This one did not explode. Instead it hissed and sputtered, spewing thick, coiling tendrils of red smoke into the air. In seconds, the two intersecting corridors were blanketed in billowing smoke.
Smith peered down the barrel of his MP5, looking for any sign of
movement in the smoke. Firing blind would only give away his position. He needed a target.
From somewhere ahead, deep in that red, roiling cloud, two Uzis stuttered on full automatic, spraying a hail of bullets down the hall. Copper-jacketed 9mm rounds punched new holes in walls or ricocheted off steel doors. Ceramic vases shattered. Shredded pieces of yellow and purple wildflowers swirled madly in the bullet-torn air. Smith fell prone, desperately hugging the floor while the Uzi rounds ripped right over his head.
The shooting stopped abruptly, leaving only an eerie silence in its wake.
He waited a moment longer, listening. Now he thought he could hear feet clattering down the smoke-filled staircase, growing ever fainter. He grimaced. The bad guys were falling back. That fusillade of submachine-gun fire had been meant to keep his head down while they escaped. Worst of all, it had worked.
Smith scrambled upright and went forward into the blinding red cloud. He strained to see what was ahead of him. His feet sent spent shell casings tinkling across the tile floor and crunched on powdered bits of adobe. The top of the stairs loomed up out of the smoke.
He crouched, peering down the stairwell. If the intruders had left someone behind to guard their retreat, those stairs would be a death trap. But he did not have time to run all the way back to the central staircase. He had to either chance it - or stay here and cower.
With his submachine gun held ready, he started down the wide, shallow steps. Behind him, blinding white light suddenly flared across the corridor. The whole stairwell swayed violently from side to side, rocked by a series of powerful explosions rippling through the Nomura PharmaTech and Institute nanotech labs.
Reacting instinctively, Smith threw himself down the stairs, rolling and tumbling head over heels while the building above him erupted in flame.
Chapter Six
Dr. Ravi Parikh swam slowly upward through darkness, blearily trying to regain full consciousness. His eyes fluttered open. He was lying with his face pressed against the floor. The cool brown tiles bucked and jolted beneath him - shuddering as carefully placed demolition charges systematically smashed the other North Wing lab complexes into splintered, flaming ruins. The molecular biologist groaned, fighting down a stomach-churning wave of nausea and pain.
Sweating with the effort, he forced himself up onto his hands and knees. He raised his head slowly. He was looking at the floor-to-ceiling picture window that ran the whole length of the Harcourt lab's outer-office area. The blinds, usually drawn tight, were wide open.
Close to his head, the strange metal cylinder he had wondered about was still clamped to a desk facing the window. A blinking digital readout attached to one end of the cylinder flickered through a series of numbers, counting down: 10...9...8...7...6...5...
Small shaped charges attached to the picture window detonated in a rapid-fire succession of orange and red flashes. Instantly the glass