The Serpent's Kiss

18

When Derek cut the wire, Jill flung herself sideways to the hallway floor. She sprawled there for a moment, then, even angrier than ever, got to her feet and stepped into Harrington’s office. Derek was still crouched before the bookcase. His face was gray and coated with sweat.

She slipped her gun back into its clip. “Get up,” she said. “Get on your feet so I can kick your ass.”

“Hear that?”

“Hear what?!”

He held up a finger. It was hard to hear anything over the clang of the alarm. “That hissing noise,” he said.

Jill’s heart dropped. “You think—”

Derek stood up, shaking his head. “No,” he said. “I’d already be dead.”

“I don’t smell—”

”Sarin is odorless. But you’ll feel a burning sensation in your nose and throat. If this was sarin, I’d already be dead.”

He fixed his attention on the filing cabinet. “Still feeling lucky?” he asked.

“Don’t—”

Derek pulled open the top drawer of the filing cabinet. With a pop! a plastic inflatable cobra sprang upright out of the drawer, bobbing back and forth. A tinny recorded voice said, “Ha ha! Ha ha! Ha ha!” over and over.

Derek stared at it, then turned to Jill. He looked pointedly at his watch. Without a word he opened all the filing cabinet drawers. Every one was empty. Beneath the cobra was a familiar red canister. When he cut the wire, it had triggered the canister, which had filled the cobra figure with whatever gas was in the canister and set off the voice recorder. He didn’t know what gas was in the cobra, and had no plans to cut it open and find out. Leave that for the lab boys or the bomb squad.

Derek turned to look at the computer. “Let’s take the disks and get out of here. Let the—”

Jill set her jaw. “We’re not doing any such thing. I want to make something perfectly clear to you. What I’ve seen in the last fifteen minutes makes me suspect that everything you’re being investigated for might be justified. You don’t follow procedures. You don’t take precautions. You’re a goddamn menace. You contaminated what could be the best evidence to this guy — none of it will be usable in court now — and you put both of our lives at risk. For nothing. Besides, you’re not here to run an investigation—”

”Actually, I am,” he said. “Evaluate, coordinate, investigate.”

“Are you listening to me?”

He walked over to the computer, studied the menu, then tapped PRINT, so he could get a copy of the Chemical Terrorism #14 scenario. There was a peculiar click! from the printer. Without hesitation Derek launched himself at Jill. Almost simultaneously the printer exploded, a blast of heat and flame engulfing the office. From the floor Derek felt the energy wave roar over them. The office was an inferno, crackling and roaring.

He rolled off Jill. “Dammit! Where’s the extingui—”

The sprinkler system in the office kicked on, drenching the space in water, further destroying anything that wasn’t already charred or shattered by the blast.

Jill, next to him on the floor, shielded her eyes from the roiling black smoke and oily cold water. “Guess you forgot to check for secondary devices,” she said.

Derek stared into the office. “At least you’re alive. You can thank me later.”