Lethal Exposure (20 page)

CHAPTER 33

Friday, 9:53 A.M.

Experimental Target Area, Fermilab Accelerator

Craig and Piter reached Fermilab some time before the backup agents from the FBI’s Chicago office. Using his own keys, Nels Piter took him through the access doors and beyond Restricted Area fences down into the underground experimental target channel.

They ran down concrete stairs into the thick-walled underground tunnels. Before them sprawled low ceilings, naked pipes, and garish lights that vanished to a point in the distance, which made the high-energy facility seem like to go on forever. The walls were smooth and painted a thick yellowish-white.

Piter nodded to the left. “We haven’t used that beam-dump facility since Dumenco’s accident. No need to worry about residual radioactivity, though. It dies down quickly . . . well, fairly quickly anyway.”

“You really know how to inspire confidence,” Craig answered.

In the opposite direction was the main entrance to the underground passages and the Tevatron control rooms. Technicians, graduate students and contractors for scientific teams set up equipment for international experiments, making the underground corridors bustle like a subway station. In the midmorning rush of activity, they took advantage of the beam’s down time. People in lab coats or dark coveralls moved about in the main target areas and diagnostics alcoves, intent on their own work, trying not to get in each other’s way.

An announcement came over the scratchy, echoing intercom that everyone was supposed to remain where they were and to offer whatever assistance the Federal agents requested. But Craig didn’t think he would find anything in the crowded areas—the Tevatron accelerator was four miles in circumference, and the experimental target tunnel was nearly a mile long.

They briskly set off away from the main entrance. They had a lot of empty area to cover, many places to hide, many places to set a trap. What disturbed Craig most, though, was that he couldn’t get in touch with Jackson. The tall agent did not answer his cellular phone.

Piter brushed aside his concern. “Don’t worry. With all the copper shielding, high-energy equipment, and thick walls, cell phone transmissions are difficult under the best of circumstances. It’s like being in a Faraday cage.”

Still, it just didn’t feel right to Craig.

Piter hurried along the tunnel at a brisk pace, puffing; sweat glistened at his blond temples. “We should first check the other beam-dump alcoves,” Piter said, out of breath. “They’re rarely inhabited and would be an ideal place to hide suspicious equipment, such as this alleged antimatter trap. Few workers ever have reason to go inside. Dr. Dumenco shouldn’t have been there either—as he’s learned too clearly.”

Craig jogged easily alongside the dapper scientist. “Unless someone intentionally caused the crash and the exposure.” He watched for Piter’s reaction out of the corner of his eye.

Piter snorted. “Intentionally killed him? Preposterous. I can believe someone may have wanted an experiment to backfire or be delayed, for whatever reason—but murder is another thing entirely.”

“Yes,” said Craig dryly. “Yes it is.”

They hurried down the long corridor, running so intently that technicians and scientists hustled out of their way. A repeat of the announcement came over the intercom, and Craig knew that other Chicago agents must have arrived, descending into the tunnels of the giant accelerator. Bandaged and on administrative leave, Agent Schultz might even have used a little influence.

Craig listened to the humming of the upper and lower accelerator rings built into the side of the corridor. The superconducting magnets throbbed, barely audible. When the Tevatron operated, the magnets formed a shaped field that curved the beam of high-energy particles in a precise circle. When the beam was on, the protons and antiprotons accelerated around and around, picking up energy with each trip through a booster. The flow was like an atomic fire hose, gushing currents powerful enough to slam a deadly dose of radiation onto anyone who stood in their way.

As they neared the first beam-dump alcove, Craig was surprised to observe that the door had been wedged tightly shut and barricaded from the outside.

Piter frowned. “Those doors are supposed to remain open at all times. It’s for general equipment and diagnostics storage.” He stopped in front of the barrier, shaking his head. “This makes no sense.”

At the sound of their voices, someone pounded against the heavy door from the inside, and Craig heard a muffled yell. Surprised, he and Piter rushed forward to unwedge the lock and pry away the barricade, tugging and grunting to swing the heavy hatch open. They heard more banging, a push—and then Randall Jackson staggered out into the tunnels, blinking in the wash of fluorescent light.

“Craig!” he said, leaning against the smooth wall for support, “I’m always glad to see you—but more so now than usual.” He panted heavily.

“What were you doing in there? You were supposed to be looking—”

“I was
trapped
! I caught our man in the act trying to set up something. I thought he ran in here, but he tricked me. It’s Bretti—Nicholas Bretti, Dumenco’s grad student. The twerp sealed me in, and I’ve spent the last half hour just waiting here, knowing I was standing right in the high-energy bull’s-eye. Not a pleasant feeling, I can tell you!”

“But Dumenco’s grad student is on vacation. He left days before the lethal exposure.” Piter turned pale. “And the substation explosion.”

“I bet he never went on vacation,” Craig said. “His parents had no idea where he was. He knew that if he was out of state, we had no reason to suspect him.”

“Until now,” Jackson growled. “I kept thinking any second the accelerator would crash and send another blast of radiation in here just like the one that hit Dumenco.”

Jackson struggled to regain his composure. He brushed himself off and straightened his tie, as if trying to pretend he wasn’t bothered anymore. “It was like he was trying to retrieve something he’d hidden. He was carrying something, but I didn’t see what.”

Craig swallowed hard. “An antimatter trap. It could be one of those unstable crystal-lattice traps.” Piter clamped his mouth shut, indignant at that characterization of his invention that had been Nobel Prize worthy.

Jackson said, “If Bretti goes on the run, we’ll never catch him—and he’s already got half an hour head start, thanks to my stupid clumsiness.”

Piter said, “I think he’ll be up top. If he’s got antimatter traps planted elsewhere, they’ll probably be in the beam-sampling substations outside.”

“Like the one that vaporized,” Craig said.

Jackson nodded. “Yeah—and the one where he shot Goldfarb.”

Craig spun around. “Let’s get out of this sewer and into the open air. We’re too late to do anything down here, but we can stop Bretti at the substation before he gets away.”

Piter huffed at the insult to his giant accelerator, but Craig paid him no attention. He turned to Jackson. “Get to a phone and have all gates and entrances to Fermilab closed off. We’ll converge on the substations around the ring. Nicholas Bretti is our man. I don’t want him slipping through our fingers now that he’s so close.”

Carefully, feeling a shiver of awe crawl beneath his skin, Nicholas Bretti pulled the small crystal-lattice trap through the access port in the beam-sampling substation. In the garish light of the cramped and chilly blockhouse, he held up the tiny container. It would only take a few minutes to transfer its antimatter to the other crystal-lattice trap, but he would keep a tiny fraction of the p-bars embedded in the salt. They could still be useful—as a diversion. Now, for the last time, he had to cover his tracks.

After today, he wasn’t planning on coming back. With the additional p-bars added to the antimatter already inside the main trap, it would keep even Chandrawalia off his back.

Bretti checked the LCD diagnostic panels on the crystal-lattice trap as he started the transfer. The solid-state diode lasers were aligned, confining the antimatter. Each p-bar oscillated in precarious balance within a tiny electropotential trap of crystalline salt molecules.

He knew now that Chandrawalia’s pretext of needing the antiprotons for “medical applications” was just a sham, a lousy story to cover their nuclear weapon schemes. Maybe now they would be willing to pay him even more—certainly, they wouldn’t brush him off . . . not with this much antimatter in hand. He knew what it could do.

Finished with the transfer, he carried the crystal-lattice trap toward the half-open door of the substation as if it were filled with nitroglycerin. He longed for a cigarette, but couldn’t take the time. If the antimatter containment grew unstable, he’d be gone in a flash of incandescent energy—himself and most of the prairie inside the Tevatron’s ring. Bretti could have calculated the exact amount of energy released from the annihilation of so much antimatter, but his stomach tightened at the thought.

Of course, the survivors and investigators would take years to piece together what exactly had happened, what had turned most of the Fermilab accelerator into a glassy-smooth crater . . . if the bumbling detectives
ever
managed to figure it out.

He had no idea how soon it would be before the trapped FBI agent down in the beam tunnel would be found. But the black agent had recognized him, called him by name—and now Bretti was royally screwed. He had hoped just to slip in, grab the p-bars, and duck out again. Now, he had to keep them off his trail, get the hell out of Dodge, and stay one step ahead until he could board the plane to India and demand asylum or diplomatic immunity, or whatever it was called.

Getting away was worth sacrificing a few precious antiprotons, he decided.

Squinting in the exaggerated shadows of the cramped blockhouse, Bretti carefully inserted the main crystal-lattice trap into a foam-padded suitcase shell, a disguise that would make it appear to be mere carry-on luggage. As far as any inspection would show, he was simply taking a paperweight full of salt. And if Chandrawalia was true to his word, he wouldn’t have trouble with any inspections at all.

Bretti would take one last trip on the Concord, and the payoff would be worth more than anything he might have left behind in this crappy, cold, and miserable place. Given the promised reward, Bretti could live like a king, even as a national hero for what he had done.

If he could get out of here.

Sealing the suitcase, Bretti looked at his watch. Time to move. He carried the other, nearly empty crystal-lattice trap to the door of the substation and connected wires to the wall, and to the door jamb. The next time the door was opened, it would cut power to the cross-feeding lasers—releasing a few nanograms of antimatter.

Enough to blow the hell out of the blockhouse.

Enough to keep the FBI busy for quite some time.

Bretti had to erase his tracks, create an immediate diversion, and keep away from the relentless federal agents. The stakes were high, the time was now, and everything would depend on how he managed to get through the next few hours. He didn’t have any other choice.

He already had his ticket for the Concord, a one-way trip to India . . . and safety for the rest of his life, compliments of the Liberty for All party. He had his passport and packed suitcase waiting in the trunk of the rental car.

Lugging the main trap with him, Bretti departed from the blockhouse and carefully closed the metal door behind him, connecting the leads and preparing the boobytrap. Not looking back, he set off across the dry, shoulder-high grasses of the restored prairie. It was the most direct way to his car, with the least chance of him being seen, swallowed by the tall waving grass. . . .

He had just stepped into the shelter of the prairie when he saw a gold rental car racing toward the blockhouse. Kicking up dust, it drove along the narrow access road that followed the curve of the racetrack accelerator. Bretti ducked down in the dry grass, his heart pounding.
Already! Shit
!

He backed slowly away, rustling through the grass as he waited for the fireworks to start.

Minutes earlier, in the first blockhouse around the accelerator ring—where Goldfarb had been shot—Craig, Jackson, and Piter had found nothing, exactly as Craig had expected. Schultz’s evidence technicians had scoured the substation for clues. Among the fingerprints found there, Craig was sure they would identify Bretti’s—but that proved nothing, since the grad student had been authorized to work in that building, after all.

The site of the second blockhouse held only the glassy crater, which they now guessed had been caused by a failed antimatter trap.

As they approached the third substation, though, Craig felt the hairs on the back of his neck tingle. He wasn’t thoroughly familiar with the small and ugly buildings . . . but something about the trampled grass around the exterior, the mussed gravel around the steel door, the way the padlock hung on the latch, made him think that someone had been here—not long before.

Squinting through his sunglasses, he looked over at Jackson. The other agent stood tense, as if he could sense something in the air. The three men cautiously approached the substation door, and Craig nodded to Nels Piter. “Give me the key. Let’s open it up and see what we find inside.”

The Belgian scientist fumbled with his key ring. Selecting a key and handing it to Craig, Piter stood back and watched. Craig twisted it in the padlock with a click, and hung the lock on the ring, swinging aside the hasp.

Before opening the heavy door, Craig looked around, squinting into the bright autumn morning. The brown grass stretched ahead of him inside the circle of the buried accelerator, rasping together like witches’ brooms in the brisk, chill breeze. He sensed someone watching him, but he put it down as nerves. Fermilab’s famous buffalo wandered out on the prairie, incongruous among the high-tech substations and high-voltage electrical wires that ran around the lab. An intense silence hung in the air.

Craig pulled on the door. Before he could say anything, though, before the words could even form in his mind, an explosion ripped through the thick-walled blockhouse.