Ferendelli stumbled, tried to recover with his extended arm, and then fell to one knee, totally spent.

Gabe, operating on a rush of adrenaline, grabbed the man's other arm and jerked him unceremoniously to his feet. Their run was awkward and uncoordinated, but they were definitely closing in on the river. Suddenly Ferendelli threw his hands up against his temples, cried out, pitched forward, and fell heavily, facedown, emitting a dreadful gurgling sound.

Gabe dropped down and checked his carotid pulse. If there was any, it was so faint as to be nearly undetectable. Ferendelli was still breathing, but not effectively. In any other circumstance, Gabe would be initiating CPR. But there was only a second or two to make a decision.

The hit man coming from the bridge, the one who had two near misses trying to kill Ferendelli, had stopped about twenty yards away. He had been aiming something at them that was clearly not a gun. Then he lowered his arm. Even through the gloom, Gabe felt certain he could see the man smiling.

"Stop, you bastard!" Gabe screamed. "Stop it!"

There was nothing to stop. The lethal weapon, undoubtedly a transmitter, had done what it was supposed to.

Ferendelli, facedown on the summer grass, was twitching. His agonal, liquidy breaths had quickly grown totally ineffective. The pulse in his neck was gone. On all fours, knowing that he might be moments away from death himself, Gabe moved several feet away, then scrambled to his feet. To his left, he could see the second man, egg-bald, still sprinting across the field from the Buick. He looked taller and more athletic than the one confronting him.

"Go ahead," the taller man cried out. "Go ahead and do it!"

The killer raised the transmitter once more.

Gabe whirled and, in a half crouch, bolted ahead toward the river, weaving from right to left to right again like the running back he had once been.

"Did you do it?" he heard the man behind him cry.

"I did," the one with the drawl shouted back. "It may need to recharge, or… or he may be out of range."

"I don't think so."

At that instant, Gabe became aware of an odd, not totally unpleasant aroma that seemed to be coming from deep within his nose, and a corresponding taste on the back of his tongue. His body felt lighter and more responsive. Head down, he charged ahead, weaving when he managed to remember to do so. The two voices seemed far away now… the sound garbled and unclear. Ahead, the lights from across the river were blurred and in motion.

He was an athlete, an Olympian, sprinting ahead faster than he would ever have thought possible, his feet barely touching the ground. The terror at Ferendelli's apparent murder, and his own mortal fears, had all but vanished. He felt euphoric and was getting more so every second.

Suddenly the moonless night exploded in color-streaks of red and gold, orange and green and white, shot across the sky, then burst over the river like fireworks. Pinwheels of light, now with sound, skimmed across the top of the water.

There were no voices now, only the rich, even sounds of his breathing-in… out… in… out. He was flying-running on air. Invincible. He was Hercules… Batman… Indiana Jones. Splashing through the dark, chilly water, then diving ahead.

Even with his eyes shut tightly, the colors blazed, bathing the inside of his lids and warming them. Shooting down his throat and into his soul, the water was his home. He pulled through it effortlessly, drawing it in through his nose and spitting it out his mouth. He was a fish… a shark… Aquaman. He was immortal.

He was a god.

CHAPTER 49

Mister… hey, mister."

The words were an annoyance, penetrating the void, prodding at Gabe's consciousness until it finally responded.

"Hey, mister, wake up. Are you hurt? Are you drunk? Do you want my momma to call an ambulance?"

Heavy-lidded, Gabe groaned, rolled to his back, and blinked until his vision began to clear. The first thing he saw was the gray-blue sky of early morning. The second was the concerned face of the young black boy who was kneeling beside him. Fragment by fragment, shards of the nightmare with Ferendelli drifted into place.

"Wh-where am I?"

The boy, perhaps ten, had an expressive face that featured huge, dark eyes. He wore a thin navy blue windbreaker and a Redskins cap with the brim pulled forty-five degrees to one side.

"You're up against the fence in the vacant lot at the end of my street."

Gabe pushed himself up onto one elbow and began to take stock. His clothes were sodden and his shoes were gone, as well as his radio, cell phone, and wallet. The lot that the boy had described as vacant was hardly that. It was more the "before" in a commercial for urban neighborhood reclamation-strewn with junk, trash, and garbage. Halfway across to a row of ramshackle two-decker houses Gabe saw a squirrel-size rat scurry from one hiding place to another.

"Is this Anacostia?"

He was sitting now, light-headed and nauseous, with a terrible, dirt taste in his mouth and his pulse pummeling the inside of his eyes.

"A course it's Anacostia," the boy said. "What'd you think it was? Man, I thought you was dead for a while. I cut through this lot on the last half of my paper route. I seen some wild things at this time of day, but never a dead white guy all pressed against a fence."

"I'm not dead."

"Not now, you ain't. But how was I supposed to know?"

Gabe pawed at the filth grating in his eyes.

"What's your name?"

"Louis. What's yours?"

"Gabe. Louis, do you know what time it is?"

"About five. A little after, I guess. I ain't supposed to talk to strangers, you know. You drunk or what?"

"Good question," Gabe said. "I think the answer's 'or what.' "

He sighed deeply and remorsefully as more details of the attack by the Benning Street Bridge drifted into place. Almost certainly, Jim Ferendelli was dead-killed in the exact way that the president would be killed at the whim of whoever was holding the appropriate transmitter; killed by Lily Sexton and by two thugs who would have never found them if Dr. Gabe Singleton had been more cautious and vigilant and had taken the time to try to work out an explanation for an event-the assault on Kyle Blackthorn-that most certainly demanded one.

Now there was another question that needed an answer: Why wasn't Gabe dead, too?

From what he could remember, the ferocious psychedelic response he experienced to having the chemical time bomb in his head set off was not anything like the virtually instant cardiac death induced in Ferendelli. It was far closer to what Drew had probably been experiencing. One explanation was that, like the president, Ferendelli had been dosed a number of times, while Gabe had only been inoculated with the drug-carrying fullerenes during that one session. Other possibilities crossed his mind-higher chemical concentration; more variety of pharmaceuticals; different target organs in their brains; perhaps such sophisticated controls built into the fullerenes and the transmitters that different frequencies triggered the specific release of different drugs.

God damn them!

Gabe tried to haul himself to his feet, but a wave of dizziness and nausea drove him back onto the dirt. He pushed to his hands and knees again and then, without warning, threw up-a mixture of river water, bile, and bits of undigested food.

From Louis's reaction, it was clear he had seen worse.

"That's gross, you know," he said clinically. "My uncle Robbie throws up all the time. Momma says it's because he drinks too much."

"Louis, how far are we from the river?"

"Few blocks. Three maybe."

"And how far from your house?"

"It's just down the end of the street."