Chemical Burn (40 page)

I already had what I needed, but I wanted to scan the area one more time, and record clear images of the interior with my goggles. With the evidence in hand, I walked out the door, hitting the close button on the panel. The hydraulics spun up again, and the massive door slammed behind me as I approached the limo.

“Gino?” I smiled and used an excessively friendly tone to talk to the doomed gangster.

“Fuck you, Case!”

“I wanted to say goodbye. It’s unlikely I’ll see you again except on TV, okay?” He didn’t say anything. “Okay. Goodbye then,” I said cheerfully and waved like a child. “One last thing … you
really
should stay in the limo until the police come.”

I turned around and walked back to the doorway as Albert stepped out into the night. I brushed my left hand against the concrete wall as I stepped through the door.

Albert closed the door behind us and pulled off the headgear of the Ghillie suit. I casually drifted away from the door.

“Come on over here, Albert,” I said, continuing to drift towards the steel gate. “It is Albert, right?”

“Those are the credentials I am using, yes.”

“By the way, you didn’t happen to cut your way through the fence near here, did you?”

“As a matter of fact, I did. Straight towards the fence, over near the gate. Why? What’s wrong?”

I quickly stepped out through the open gate and looked. “Ahh, I see,” I said, spotting the opening.

“What’s going on, Mister Case?” Albert was clearly curious about the need for haste.

“Oh, nothing,” I said, trying to sound innocent. “What did you use to cut the fence?” I had a funny feeling I knew the answer.

Albert reached into the Ghillie suit and pulled out a vlain identical to the one now in my belt.

I smiled. “From the truck, right?” I held out my hand, motioning with my fingers and drawing Albert closer to me and away from the warehouse. “Can I have it back?”

Albert walked up to me, placed the vlain back in the sheath and handed it over.

“Thank you.” I smiled and peered back at the lab door. “By the way,” I said casually, “how fast can you run?”

“Very. Why do you ask?”

We heard the metallic hiss as the burner I’d placed inside the warehouse door cooked off, and we both heard Gino scream. Albert shot me an accusatory look, and I’m sure I looked as guilty as senator in a whorehouse.

“Because … well … we should run …
NOW
!” I shouted as the roar of a bigger fire
WHOOFED
to life inside the building.

I bolted for the hole in the fence-line just as one of the drums inside the lab exploded. Albert was hot on my tail. We leapt over the piping connecting the main facility to the restricted building and dashed through the gash in the fence. The single explosion turned into a string of them.

O O O

A stack of 55-gallon drums ruptured, bounced and sprayed liquid fire throughout the front area of the bay. A flaming drum, propelled by the explosions, flew over DiMarco’s burning body, bounced off the limo, and ricocheted across the steel grate flooring into the stack of drums, landing directly below the electrical panel. The flame coating the drum heated the contents to the ignition point. The drum ruptured, dousing the double stack of drums around it with flame. The concentrated fire heated them quickly, and they exploded almost simultaneously.

O O O

“
Justin,
we’re coming around in the Bronco!
” Xen shouted over the comm.

A massive explosion shot a chunk of the lab’s roof into the sky with a bright orange plume of flame shooting into the darkness above.

“From the North side!”

“Where the hell have you been?” I screamed.

“Sorry … batteries got knocked loose,” he replied, and I heard the roar of a motor in the background.

“You better
hurry
!” I yelled over the eruptions, laughing as I ran. Albert and I cut right to meet the oncoming four wheeler bouncing across the desert.

O O O

An inferno blazed inside the building, and the liquid that hadn’t burned off in the initial explosion poured under the large row of heating columns along the south wall in a flaming torrent, spreading across the floor. It took only seconds to raise the strictly controlled temperatures of the columns the few degrees necessary to ignite them. Another detonation tore out a chunk of the lab’s wall, and then the pipelines began to blow like giant, bursting fuses.

The twenty-foot section of pipe connecting the building to the pumping station ruptured, and then the pumping house went, setting the piping on fire in both directions. One length led towards the main facility and the other around the back of the lab towards the long, double row of storage tanks on the north side of the compound. Another twenty-foot section cooked off, jetting higher concentrations of the fluid, and then, when the air to fuel ratio hit critical, exploding and igniting the next section.

O O O

The Bronco, headlights off, came at us hard and fast in the rapidly shrinking darkness being chewed up by the fires and explosions filling the desert night. It bounced over the rocks and dunes, shaking the old frame to the point where I worried for its safety … and ours.

Another section of pipe exploded along the fence line between the lab and the main facility. There were only two left before the pipes disappeared into the interior of the main plant and reached the inner pumping housings. Once it got into the superstructure, things would deteriorate quickly.

The Bronco came straight at us, and Xen sat in the passenger seat. The driver wore the mask of a Ghillie suit and had on night vision goggles. I stepped away from Albert as the wheels locked up, and the Bronco skidded to a stop between us. Mag sat in the very back behind the seat. Albert and I yanked open the back doors as another section of pipe lit up the desert with a brilliant orange flash. Only one remained. Albert leapt into the seat and slammed his door closed. The driver revved up the engine, preparing to tear off into the desert and escape the inevitable explosion of the hundred-and-fifty-foot storage towers of the main plant.

Sounding all the world like a mildly enthused tourist, I said, “Wait … I want to take a picture.”

Four heads, including Mag’s, slowly turned and gave me an
Are-you-out-of-your-fucking-mind
look. They all held it for a few seconds as I stared back at them.

“What?” I asked innocently, pretending not to understand what the big deal was.

“Get in the fucking truck,” Xen growled.

“Oh … alright!” I said, dejected.

The engine revved as I stepped into the Bronco. The driver dropped the clutch the moment my butt hit the seat, and the tires ripped giant gashes out of the sand beneath us. The force threw me back against the seat and slammed the door closed.

We tore through the desert, rocking and bouncing over stones and dunes. As I reached for my seatbelt, the Bronco lurched to the right and hit a big dune. Mag had dug her claws into the carpet glued to the floor, but I got tossed up and down like a doll in a dryer. I bounced off the ceiling, then floor then ceiling again, laughing like a maniac the entire time.

“You might want to take it easy on those, Natalia,” I said between the laughing. “This thing is older than you are, and I think we need to get farther away.”

Albert and Xen turned surprised faces at me, but the driver never took her eyes off the desert in front of us. Nobody said a word. I looked out the back window and saw the next section of pipe detonate. Seconds later the first section inside the superstructure went. I could see flaming shrapnel ricocheting around inside the piping and supports of the plant. A triple explosion inside the superstructure—
boom
 …
Boom
 …
BOOM!
—rocked the desert.

I watched in fascination as a bright, jagged, orange seam opened up in the side of the main tower, starting at the bottom and streaking up. As the tear widened, gouts of flaming liquid jetted out of the steel tower, pouring onto the spot where the Bronco had stopped for us. When the jetting flame reached the top of the column, the entire top opened up like a kernel of popcorn. It inverted itself and came apart in large pieces. A thick pillar of flame shot into the sky and spread out like a brilliant orange and yellow mushroom. I watched several large sheets of flaming steel separate from the main section and drop towards the row of storage tanks in the northeast corner. I could see the shock wave heading straight for us.

The storage tanks went off like a string of massive firecrackers, only moments between each burst, and those columns of fire joined the main one, burning their way towards the heavens. The remaining two towers of the facility, north of the main one, went off simultaneously, seams rupturing and the tops popping off in unison. The shockwave looked like a hazy, orange storm front racing towards the back of the Bronco.

“Cool,” I said, enthralled.

Natalia looked into the rearview mirror and yelled “Hang on!”

I covered my face, and Mag dropped down as the shock-wave hit and the back window shattered. Shards of glass peppered everyone like confetti, and I felt a few cuts open and blood trickle down my face. Another bounce of the Bronco sent me ricocheting around inside the cabin, prompting another round of laughter from me like a kid on a roller coaster. With the major explosions behind us, Natalia slowed down to a more reasonable speed, and we rolled over a desert floor still brightly illuminated by the raging fires of VeniCorp.

“How long have you known it was me?” Natalia finally asked, her voice muffled slightly by the Ghillie mask.

“I was pretty sure that night in the alley behind VeniCorp.”

Xen turned his head and gave me a truly hateful look. “How could you?”

“I had my reasons, Xen. I’m sorry,” I said sincerely.

Xen turned towards the front and didn’t move. His shoulders were as tense as Natalia’s must have been. It was strangely quiet, considering what they’d gone through.

“You two can stop being mad at each other, you know,” I offered. Both of them snapped their heads at me, Xen glaring and, although I couldn’t see it in behind the goggles, Natalia must have been too.

“He had no choice but to fake his death, Natalia,” I touched the nerve on purpose.

“Yeah,” Xen accused.

“You could have told me! I could have helped!” she yelled at him.

“But he had no idea if you were using him or not, Natalia. Put yourself in his shoes. He’s seen enough spy movies to know that beautiful women generally don’t go for the underdogs … no offense, Xen … and I know for a fact he is still amazed that you fell for him. He had no choice.”

Natalia’s shoulders relaxed slightly.

“And you had to have seen me at VeniCorp!” Xen accused heatedly. “You could have let me know you were alive!”

“Xen,” I said gently. “She did see you. No doubt. But put yourself in her shoes. She’s got a job do to, and Albert here took them underground. If she’s dead, then neither DiMarco nor Pyotr are looking for her. She had no choice … Right, Albert?” I asked, giving him a sidelong glance.

“That’s correct,” Albert said, staring at me, an impressed look on his face. “For what it’s worth, Mister Li, she even asked. I could not permit it.”

“You two did exactly the same thing to each other for exactly the same reason. You had no choice. Xen …” I prompted.

“What? I’m still pissed at you.
You
could have mentioned something to me. You knew all along! You said so. I was in
agony
!”

Natalia’s head turned when he said that. I saw her hand start to reach out to Xen and then pull back.

“I’m always calculating, Xen. You know that. What if you’d gotten caught and been forced to roll her over? Besides, I figured we’d probably have this exact conversation at some point. I did it so that both of you would know that you each did what you had to, did it to each other and that neither of you had a choice. The score’s even, if you think about it. You both
know
I’m right.” I let that hang there between them for a minute, but the silence carried on.

“So … when we pull up to the black Audi parked out here somewhere, I expect you to get out of this heap, kiss, and make up. You hear me?”

They stayed silent, but the tension that had filled the space between them grew softer as they pondered the circumstances.

“There is one question I have, Natalia.”

“You mean you don’t know everything?” she asked a bit curtly.

“Not by a long-shot … although placing the bug under the kitchen counter was very smooth.” Natalia and Albert both looked at me with astonished faces. “No. What I couldn’t figure out was how you managed to pick up my trail at Grady’s from the get-go. You and I had never been there, and I don’t recall mentioning it. Xen, did you ever talk about Grady’s?”

“Not that I recall.”

“There were several Grady’s t-shirts in Rachel’s closet as well as the one I slept in. I took a chance.”

I smiled. “Clever.”

A black Audi came into view at the bottom of an abandoned rock quarry.

***