Only then did it begin to sink in. Gideon turned to Fordyce. The agent’s face was deathly pale.

“Chalker was hot,” Gideon said. “Hotter than hell.”

“It would seem so,” the agent said.

Almost without thinking, Gideon touched the sticky blood drying on the side of his face. “And we’ve been exposed.”

There had been a dramatic change in the crowd of police officers and professionals assembled behind the barricades. The scene of focused activity, the purposeful coming and going of uniformed people, dissolved. The first sign was a wave of silence that seemed to ripple outward. Even Fordyce fell silent, and Gideon realized someone was talking to him through his earpiece.

Fordyce pressed his finger against the earpiece and went still paler as he listened. “No,” he said, vehemently. “No way. I didn’t get anywhere near the guy. You can’t do this.”

The crowd had become motionless as well. Even those who’d fled the house had paused, watching and listening, as if collectively stunned. And then, abruptly, the crowd moved again—a rebound motion away from the house. The retreat was not exactly a rout, but rather a controlled recoil.

Simultaneously the air filled with fresh sirens. Soon choppers appeared overhead. A group of white, unmarked panel trucks began to arrive outside the barricades, escorted by additional squad cars; their rear doors opened up and alien-garbed figures began pouring out, hazmat suits emblazoned with biohazard and radiation symbols. Some were carrying riot control gear: batons, tear gas guns, and stun guns. Then, to Gideon’s consternation, they began setting up barriers in front of the moving crowd, blocking the retreat. They shouted for people to stop moving, to stay where they were. The effect was dramatic—as people saw they might be prevented from fleeing, panic really began to take hold.

“What the hell’s going on?” Gideon asked.

“Mandatory screening,” replied Fordyce.

More barriers went up. Gideon watched as a cop started arguing and tried to push past a barrier—only to be forced back by several men in white. Meanwhile, the new arrivals were directing everyone into an area being hastily set up, a kind of holding pen with chain link around it, where more figures in white were scanning people with handheld Geiger counters. Most were being released, but a few were being directed into the backs of the vans.

A loudspeaker kicked in: “All personnel remain in place until directed otherwise. Obey instructions. Stay behind the barriers.”

“Who are those guys?” Gideon asked.

Fordyce looked both disgusted and frightened. “NEST.”

“NEST?”

“Nuclear Emergency Support Team. They’re from the DOE—they respond to nuclear or radiological terrorist attacks.”

“You think terrorism might be involved?”

“That guy Chalker designed nuclear weapons.”

“Even so, that’s quite a stretch.”

“Really?” Fordyce said, slowly turning his blue eyes toward Gideon. “Back there, you mentioned something about Chalker finding religion.” He paused. “May I ask…which religion?”

“Um, Islam.”

Anyone who set off the Geiger counters was shoved into the vans like cattle. The partying rubberneckers had fled, leaving their funny hats and beer cans strewn about. Teams of monkey-suited hazmat people were going door-to-door, moving people out of their homes, sometimes forcibly, creating a scene of both pathos and chaos, with weeping elderly shuffling along in walkers, hysterical mothers, and wailing kids. Loudspeakers droned on about staying calm and cooperating, reassuring everyone it was for their own protection. Not a word about radiation.

Gideon and the rest squeezed together on parallel benches. The doors slammed shut and the van started up. Fordyce, opposite him, remained grimly silent, but most of the other people stuffed in the van looked shit-scared. Among them was a man Fordyce identified as the psychologist Hammersmith, whose shirt was bloodied, and a member of the SWAT team who had shot Chalker at point-blank range and who was also now decorated with his blood. Radioactive blood.

“We’re fucked,” said the SWAT team guy, a big beefy fellow with hammy forearms and an incongruously high voice. “We’re going to die. There’s nothing they can do. Not with radiation.”

Gideon said nothing. The ignorance of most people about radiation was appalling.

The man moaned. “God, my head’s pounding. It’s starting already.”

“Hey, shut up,” said Fordyce.

“Fuck you, man,” the man flared. “I didn’t sign up for this shit.”

Fordyce said nothing, his jaw tightening.

“You hear me?” The man’s voice was rising. “I didn’t sign up for this shit!”

Gideon looked at the SWAT team member and spoke in low, measured tones. “The blood on you is radioactive. You’d better strip. And you, too.” He looked at Hammersmith. “Anyone with the hostage taker’s blood on any article of clothing, take it off.”

This set off a frantic activity in the van, the sense of panic rising, a ridiculous scene in which everyone was suddenly stripping and trying to get blood off their skin and hair. All except the SWAT guy. “What does it matter?” he said. “We’re fucked. Rot, cancer, you name it. We’re all dead now.”

“Nobody’s going to die,” said Gideon. “Everything depends on just how hot Chalker was and what kind of radiation we’re dealing with.”

The SWAT guy raised his massive head and stared at him with red eyes. “What makes you such a radiation rocket scientist?”

“Because I happen to be a radiation rocket scientist.”

“Good for you, punk. Then you know we’re all dead and you’re a fucking liar.”

Gideon decided to ignore him.

“Lying peckerwood.”

Peckerwood? Exasperated, Gideon looked up at him again. Could he be crazy from radiation poisoning, too? But no, this was simple, mindless panic.

“I’m talking to you, punk. Don’t lie.”

Gideon combed his hair out of his face with his fingers and looked back down at the floor. He was tired: tired of this jackass, tired of everything, tired of life itself. He didn’t have the energy to reason with an irrational person.

The SWAT team member rose abruptly from his seat and seized Gideon’s shirt, lifting him out of his seat. “I asked you a question. Don’t look away.”

Gideon looked at him: at the engorged face, the veins bulging in his neck, the sweat popping on his brow, the trembling lips. The man looked so utterly and completely stupid, he couldn’t help himself: he laughed.

“You think it’s funny?” The SWAT guy made a fist, getting ready to strike.

Fordyce’s punch to the man’s gut came as fast as a striking rattler; he gave an oof! and fell to his knees. A second later Fordyce had him in a hammerlock. The agent bent over and spoke into his ear, in a low voice, something Gideon did not catch. Then he released the man, who collapsed on his face, groaned, and—after gasping for air—managed to rise back up to his knees.

“Sit down and be quiet,” said Fordyce.

The man quietly sat down. After a moment he began to cry.

Gideon adjusted his shirt. “Thanks for saving me the trouble.”

Fordyce said nothing.

“Well, so now we know,” Gideon went on after a moment.

“Know what?”

“That Chalker wasn’t crazy. He was suffering from radiation poisoning—almost certainly gamma rays. A massive dose of gamma radiation scrambles the mind.”

Hammersmith raised his head. “How do you know?”

“Anyone who works up at Los Alamos with radionuclides has to learn about the criticality accidents that happened there in the early days. Cecil Kelley, Harry Daghlian, Louis Slotin, the Demon Core.”

“The Demon Core?” Fordyce asked.

“A plutonium bomb core that was mishandled twice. It went critical each time, killing the scientists handling it and irradiating a bunch of others. It was finally used in the ABLE shot in ’46. One thing they learned from the Demon Core was that a high dose of gamma radiation makes you go crazy. The symptoms are just what you saw with Chalker—mental confusion, raving, headache, vomiting, and an unbearable pain in the gut.”