The guy with the beer bottle gave Patrick a backhanded swat across the face, drawing blood from a cut lip. “I guess I’m just going to have to beat it out of you, sport…”

“It’s a nerve-gas grenade!” someone said in a loud voice. They turned to see a figure standing in the doorway in front of the rear hallway. Jon Masters was holding up an object like the one taken from Patrick. “Just like this one. Twenty-five-millimeter cartridge, filled with a half a milliliter of Novichok, a V-class anticholinesterase agent that will paralyze you in about eight seconds. It uses a nitrogen propellant so it will spray the gas through the entire room and easily disable just about everyone here. Here-catch!” And he threw the grenade as hard as he could across the bar and against the wall.

The grenade burst with a loud pop! and exploded into a thick white cloud of gas that spread throughout the entire room with astonishing speed. It looked like an instant fog. It tasted of acidity, like sulfur, burning the eyes and throat.

The bikers scattered. Patrick dropped to the floor-but not because of the gas. It burned and it tasted funny, but it wasn’t disabling. He was free! “Jon!”

“Here, Muck, he-!”

As Patrick looked up, the biker with the beard ran headlong into Masters coming toward him and grabbed him. The broken beer bottle flashed in the foggy air. “Jon!” Patrick screamed. He struggled to his feet, trying to catch the biker’s arm as it lashed out, but he was far too late. “Jon!” he screamed again.

Masters’s jacket was ripped open across the chest, and Patrick saw blood spilling out of the wound. Jon’s hands clutched at it ineffectually, blood seeping through his fingers. “Patrick?” he said weakly.

“C’mon, Jon, let’s get out of here!” But he was frozen in place. Patrick grabbed him around the waist and half-pulled, half-dragged him outside. He felt someone clutch at him from behind, and in a fit of rage he swung back with his right hand. He connected with thin bone and tissue, and they heard the assailant yelp as he let go.

With Patrick half-carrying Jon, the two men made their way down Del Paso Boulevard to a Safeway supermarket parking lot, where a rented Dodge Durango sport-utility vehicle was waiting for them. “Okay, we can slow down now,” Patrick said, pulling Jon back.

They turned around. Half a dozen motorcycles were roaring down Del Paso Boulevard, and they saw men running down the street. “We gotta get out of here now, Patrick!”

“Calm down,” Patrick said, wiping blood from Jon’s jacket front. “Running will only attract attention now. Try to stay upright, Jon. Just a few more steps. Hang in there, brother.”

“I… I need help here, Patrick…”

“C’mon, let’s keep going. You’ll be okay.” They forced themselves to walk casually toward the car. Patrick was out of breath by now, gasping from the effort of supporting Jon and the aftereffects of the adrenaline pumping through his veins. When police cars zoomed past, the two of them stopped to watch, just like normally curious onlookers.

Patrick helped Jon into the passenger seat and examined his wound under the dome light. It was a deep cut, but it was not bubbling or pumping, which meant that it had not pierced a lung or a major blood vessel. He eased off Jon’s jacket, pressed it against his chest, used the seat-belt shoulder harness to anchor it tightly in place, then got into the driver’s seat and started the engine. They pulled out onto the street. More police cars were racing in toward Bobby John’s, and fire trucks too, but there was no sign of pursuit. They drove away from the scene, careful not to speed. They got on the Interstate 5 freeway through the downtown area, then merged onto the Highway 50 freeway heading east, away from the city.

Neither man spoke for a long time. The enormity of what happened had silenced them. Finally, Patrick said, “Thanks for getting me out of there.”

“You’re welcome, Muck,” Jon answered. “But it’s your contingency plan that did it-those wireless mikes so I could listen in and carrying those practice bomblet target markers.” Patrick pressed Jon’s hand against his chest to staunch the bleeding further. This was one contingency he hadn’t planned on.

“Man, that was a close call,” he said shakily. “Jesus, was I scared. I thought I was going to die. All I could think about was Wendy, and Bradley, and how we would die in the middle of a filthy beer-soaked barroom floor. God, Jon, I’m so sorry…”

“It’s not your fault, Muck,” Masters said. “It was a good plan.”

“But I didn’t mean for you to get hurt…”

“Hey, c’mon, Patrick. I’m not an innocent bystander or your blind, faithful sidekick. If I didn’t think I could stay safe, I wouldn’t have gone in there.”

“But you could’ve been killed…”

“Nah. They were just trying to scare us. But we don’t scare that easy, do we, General?” But Patrick could see through all the bravado that Jon was badly shaken. God, when he saw that blood spurt out of Jon’s wound… Patrick had seen death before, had even caused death before, but not at this close range, and never so personally as this.

He wasn’t going to allow him to ever go into harm’s way like that again, Patrick decided. Jonathan Colin Masters was more than one of America’s truly great scientists and engineers, he was his newfound brother. There was no way he could allow him to risk his life in Patrick’s personal vendetta.

Sky Masters, Inc. had rented office and hangar space at Sacramento-Mather Jetport when it was obvious that the McLanahans were going to be in town for a while, and they had planned that it would be their destination after the bugging operation. They took the Mather Field Road exit from eastbound Highway 50 a few minutes later and drove around the east end of Mather’s eleven-thousand-foot runway to the former Strategic Air Command alert facility, now converted into a secure research and development site. The facility still had its twelve-foot-high chain-link fences topped with barbed wire and fitted with cameras and intrusion sensors; the vehicle entrapment and inspection area; the two-story underground building, complete with offices, conference halls, and a kitchen; and the alert-aircraft parking area, now with two large jumbo-jet-sized hangars at the south and west sides. A right turn past the deserted weapon-storage area, down a long road, past the alert-crew picnic grounds, and they were at the front gate of the old B-52 bomber alert facility, where B-52 bombers and KC-135 aerial refueling tankers once sat nuclear ground alert, ready at any time to fight World War III.

Sky Masters security personnel were on duty, and one of them, Ed Montague, confronted Masters and McLanahan at the vehicle entrapment gate. “Evening, Dr Masters, General McLanahan. How’s Dr McLanahan and the new…” He stopped short when he saw Jon’s blood-soaked jacket. “My God!” He looked at Masters, whose face was as white as a ghost. “What the hell happened, sir?” He waved to the guard shack, and they admitted the Durango into the entrapment area.

“Ed, we’re going to need a first-aid kit,” Patrick said. Montague retrieved a large kit from his office, and administered first aid while the vehicle and Patrick were searched. Once inside, they brought Jon to the security office, where they spent the next twenty minutes cleaning and dressing the six-inch gash that the biker had carved in Jon’s chest.

“Want me to call the sheriff’s department, General?” Montague asked.

“No thanks, Ed,” Patrick replied as he put a clean shirt on. “But we do need that industrial-medicine doctor we hired, Dr Heinrich I think his name is, to look at Jon. Get him on the phone and get him out here, and make sure he brings a surgical kit.”

“I’m fine, Muck,” Jon protested.

“It doesn’t look too bad, but I want him to look you over anyway,” Patrick said.

“Doc’s on the way,” Montague reported a few moments later.