Critical Mass Read Online Free PDF Page B

would be an important route of investigation, assuming that he survived.
    But he had to survive— had to . If they broke this one little link in the chain, the bomb would be free and clear. He cursed himself for hitting the road before making his emergency calls.
    He smelled the sourness of new sweat, the sharp sweetness of old, some sort of liquor, and many cigarettes. There was a human being within feet of his position, and upwind of him. He could taste this man, and the fear that would make him an animal in an instant.
    If the man had professional experience, Jim was about to be caught. He’d seen it many times, the way a pro would just know his adversary was there and fire into him, and the guy had better have good cover. This man, however, blundered past his quarry. But then he stopped. Took a step back. Now he was two feet to Jim’s right, facing in this direction.
    Jim listened to the man’s breathing. It was soft, meaning a relatively light individual. Then there was a rustle, and the sound of the breath ended.
    The man had turned away.
    Jim did not like to use his killing skills, but this was a situation that demanded every resource at his disposal. In this incredible situation, millions of lives might depend on his life.
    He didn’t even have his pistol, because he had stashed it in the glove compartment to avoid any metal detectors in the hospital. It was still there.
    He deserved to be put up on charges. And now, maybe, they would need to include murder.
    He stood up and was behind the man in a step, and grasped his head between the flats of his hands, and did something that he had done just twice before in his life, and detested. He snapped the man’s neck, using the hard sideways motion he’d practiced on dummies and used in Iran when a camphe had established to take readings near an underground nuclear facility’s venting system had been spotted by a couple of poor damn shepherds.
    The body went instantly limp, but he wasn’t dead yet, Jim knew. There was still air in the man’s lungs that could possibly be used to make a sound. Jim had heard that sighing croak before. It wasn’t a loud noise, but it would be audible in this silence.
    As soon as Jim lowered him to the ground, he stepped on the man’s back hard, pressing until he heard the air hiss out of his nose. He would smother now, as he slid into death, and Jim would add that last bubbling hiss to his own nightmares.
    To his left, more breath. Another man, a larger one. Now to Jim’s right, the rustle of a shoe pressing something dry.
    And then the sun, so bright it seemed to roar, and he knew that he had been pinioned by a searchlight. “Now,” a voice said in English with a Mexican accent, “now come.”
    For an instant, shock froze him—and not only the shock of being hit by the light but the fact that the voice had a Mexican accent. But no, he’d heard it on the bridge, all right. It was Kenneally. Scratch the accent. The kid was no actor.
    Jim threw himself to the left, to the ground, then pushed himself with his feet. As he reversed course, the light wove about. He took off as fast as he could, because he knew that these seconds were his life.
    The searchlight lost him, then came racing back. He dropped down; it passed him, returned . . . then went on.
    He had been able to use its beam to see ahead, and now twisted and turned among the trees for a hundred feet, moving silently away while it sought him in other directions.
    Abruptly he burst into clear land, felt the give of softness under his feet, saw the dark building more clearly now. His heart thundered; his breath roared.
    There was a house, but he also knew that the three hundred open feet stretching before it could be where his career ended.
    He sprinted ahead, pushing himself as hard as he could, hunched low, legs churning. But still it seemed slow, a kind of drifting dance, and from behind him there came the unmistakable, resounding crash of a .45 automatic.
    Stumbling