“We can at least give them the information we have.”

“You’re still thinking like a negotiator, Gideon. That’ll take hours. And then what? You think they’ll believe us? You think Dahlgren will believe us? You think President Wade will believe us?” He spat out Wade’s name as if it were a poisoned cherry pit.

Gideon knew his brother was right. Even if they had the time, they would be working against Dahlgren’s natural antipathy and suspicion of their efforts. He wouldn’t listen, and he would do everything in his power to stop them. They didn’t have all the details of the attack, so there was only one thing for them to do.

Gideon turned to Klotz. “You need to give us time to get inside. Will you do that?”

Klotz pursed his lips, then nodded.

“Promise me, Doctor.”

“I promise.”

“The cops will be here before long. Tell them it was a home invasion and a private security guard fought them off. Tell them he went downtown to file a report.”

Klotz agreed. “Please,” he asked. “If you see my wife, tell her we’re okay.”

“I will.”

Tillman shook his hand, then he and Gideon walked down to the car. Millwood was sitting quietly inside.

“Oh, this is interesting,” said Tillman.

“Long story,” said Gi;I Q; said Gideon. He uncuffed the officer. “How do you feel about a little ride on the Metro?”

49

PRIEST RIVER, IDAHO

It was nearly five-fifteen when Nancy Clement saw the farmhouse in the distance. The bulldozer had been chugging steadily along the winding country road for two hours and she had not seen a house or a car the entire time, and still had no cell phone signal. The dozer’s tank was nearly empty.

But now she had hope that whoever lived in the farmhouse might help her get through to somebody in DC. The Caterpillar was going so slow, it almost seemed to be going backward.

“Hello!” she shouted. “Hello!”

But nobody answered. She realized she was still a long way away.

She wound around a curve and the house was lost in the trees. Then it appeared again, then it was lost again, then it appeared again.

“Hello!” she shouted again.

She saw movement now, a man out in the yard, doing something. She chugged closer and closer. Chopping wood. The guy was chopping wood.

As he heard the engine of the bulldozer, the man set down his axe and walked toward her in a leisurely fashion.

When she’d almost reached him, she pressed the decelerator pedal, then switched off the dozer’s engine so she could be heard.

“Taking the dozer out for a spin?” he said.

“Do you have a phone?”

“Lines are down.”

“What about Internet?” she said.

The man looked at her like she had asked him if he was a space alien.

“Internet?” she said. “Have you got Internet access?”

The man continued to look at her with a puzzled expression. She took in the axe, the tiny house with its peeling paint and sagging porch, the battered pickup truck, the cockeyed chicken coop, and she felt a wave of despair. Internet, hell, she’d be lucky if this guy even knew what a computer was.

“Internet?” she repeated feebly.

“Of course I’ve got Internet,” the man said, tossing his axe on a pile of split logs. “Who doesn’t have Internet?”

It turned out he was not a redneck farmer but an IT guy from Boise who had bought the farm as a vacation place and then moved there as a temporary cost-saving measure after losing his job the previous year. His name was Hank Adams. He was a big fan of The X-Files and other conspiracy-themed TV shows and books and movies. He didn’t have cable, but he had a big satellite dish that brought in all his favorite channels and the Internet. When she explained the nature of the fix she was in, he eventually came around and started to grow excited.

Soon she was sitting in front of a brand-new iMac with a m82222222222 T‡assive screen logging into the man’s Skype account. She typed in the number for the burner cell phone that Gideon had given her.

“Gideon?” she said, when he answered.

“I was wondering what the hell happened to you. Are you okay?”

“It’s going to be a gas attack,” she said breathlessly. “Hydrogen cyanide, I think. But I haven’t figured out the target.”

“It’s the State of the Union address,” Gideon said. “We’re on our way to the Capitol right now. Tillman and me.”

It took Nancy a moment to process this before she could respond. “A guy by the name of Dale Wilmot is behind this. He built a factory in Idaho to synthesize the stuff from some kind of root vegetable. It volatilizes at seventy degrees. They can smuggle the stuff into the Capitol in liquid form then spray it or spill it and it would vaporize.”

“Assuming the ambient air was above seventy.”

“Right.”

“It’s twenty-five degrees in Washington, DC, today.”

Nancy felt a stab of irritation at herself. How had she missed a thing like that? There was some piece of the pie that she was missing.

“They must have figured out some way to atomize it,” she said. “We need to call the Secret Service. We’ll meet them at the Rayburn building.”

“No. Dahlgren told them I’m nuts and you’re a rogue agent under suspension who’s fantasizing about some phantom attack on American soil. They’ll never listen to me, or you. We’re on our own. Here’s what we know. Verhoven and Lorene were holding hostage the family of a Secret Service agent named Shanelle Klotz. They told her she had to open a door or her family would be killed. She must be with them now. If we can find out where she’s posted at the State of the Union address, we’ll have a chance to stop them.”

“Give me a minute. There might be something I can do.”

“Hurry up. We’re on 66 right now. We’ll hit Washington in about ten minutes. If the Secret Service won’t do anything, we’ll have to get in there ourselves.”

“You’ll need my help.”

“I’ll call you back, okay? Just work on where Wilmot and Collier are.”

The phone clicked dead, leaving Nancy staring at the blue-and-white Skype logo.

“What about heating ducts?”

Nancy turned around. “What about them?”

Hank was hanging over her shoulder, looking at her expectantly. “I was listening in,” he said. “Let’s say hydrogen cyanide turns to a gas at seventy degrees. If you injected it into the firebox of the heating system, the air temp will be like one hundred degrees. It’ll stay hot all the way through the ducts and blow right out into all the rooms in the building. You’re guaranteed to deliver plenty of gas that way.”

Nancy squinted thoughtfully at the blank computer screen. “Yeah, but how would those two guys get into the Capitol at all? How could they get access to the heating system?”

Hank reached over her shoulder and tapped the keys. She couldn’t help noticing that he smelled like woodsmoke and aftershave. It wasn’t an unpleasant smell at all.

“You ever heard of Google?” Hank said with a wry smile.

On the screen the first entry on the list of entries pulled up by the search engine read:

PRESS RELEASE: National Heat & Air Conditioning, a subsidiary of Wilmot Industries, was this year awarded the contract to refurbish the aging HVAC system of one of America’s most famous buildings, the United States Capitol. The Capitol has been rebuilt several times since its inauguration on . . .”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Nancy said.

Suddenly she understood why the buildings in Wilmot’s little manufacturing complex contained such massive heating and air-conditioning equipment . . . and why the room in which the workers lived had been so large. It was a test facility, probably an exact duplicate of the House chamber and the HVAC unit that served it. That’s why the place smelled of cyanide. They’d tested it on the workers, injecting the hydrogen cyanide into the heating system, and then watched the workers die.

It made her sick to her stomach.