Halon-Seven Read Free

hinge.
    Pellagrin returned to the bottle three more times, each time drawing another measure of the caustic liquid and dispersing it over each of the remaining hinges. Once finished, he placed the pipette in the sink the returned the cap to the jar before placing it, too, in the sink. It was a volatile mixture and something he didn’t dare spill by mistake. Just dispersing the material with the pipette made him twitchy.
    Funny , he thought. He’d infiltrated a foreign nations most secure military installation and locked himself inside one of their most secret laboratories after a month long cram session to learn anything and everything he could about Russian culture. Even after all that, he was concerned about spilling a bottle of chemicals for fear of burning his face off. That bottle should be the very least of his concerns.
    Speaking of which… turning back to the glass wall, he’d just realized the soldiers outside had become disturbingly quiet. Now they were nowhere to be seen. Somehow that was even more troubling than his caustic chemical brew.
    Cautiously, Pellagrin approached the glass wall. Glancing to the left he found the troops gathered around a satchel on the hallway floor. One of the men reached into the bag and pulled out a spool of wire. Setting it aside, he retrieved a three-stick bundle of TNT.
    Dynamite…
    Dammit!
    Pellagrin darted back across the room. He grabbed the pry-bar from the wreckage of the crates and headed for the steel Fire Star locker. Wasting not a single step, he wound up and smashed the pry-bar across one of the cabinet’s top hinges. The hinge exploded as if made of porcelain. He followed this with another powerful swing that reduced the second top hinge to dust. Pellagrin stepped back as the weight of the doors and gravity did the rest. The plate steel doors tipped forward as the lower hinges shattered under the stress of their load. The doors smashed to the floor. Amusingly, the doors were still intact, their locks still securely in place.
    Inside the cabinet was a large two-foot wide glass cube. This was Fire Star. Looking closely at the craftsmanship of the glasswork, Pellagrin was impressed. The flawless transparent glass box had no visible seams. Surely the cube was an assembly of six individual panes fused along their perimeters, but for the life of him he couldn’t find a hint of a joint. This leant credence to the intelligence SIS had gathered. The report indicated that the glass box was air tight and under vacuum…containing absolutely no atmosphere.
    A small innocuous looking rock sat on the bottom of the cube. It was irregularly shaped, dark gray in color, and about the size of a baseball. A thick black cable ran to the left wall of the cube and was affixed to the exact center of the cube’s left wall. A mirror opposite of that cable was attached to the right wall of the cube. So far all of the intelligence was absolutely correct.
    Looking over his shoulder, Pellagrin saw two soldiers taping three sticks of TNT to the outside corner of the glass wall. This was good , he thought. They were placing the TNT at the corner of the glass where it met the base of the wall. If they were smart, they would’ve placed the dynamite in the center of the pane. There was a chance, however remote, that the TNT wouldn’t breach the wall on the first try.
    Gotta love the Russians!
    His work almost done, Pellagrin returned to the glass cube. To the right of the cube, also mounted inside the cabinet was a large metal switch box. It had heavy gauge wire leads affixed to each side and a large red handled circuit breaker lever in the center. With a deep breath and one final prayer for luck, he pulled the power lever down engaging the circuit and sending a rush of electricity into the vacuum-sealed cube.
    There was a distinctive hum of electricity that instantly made his skin tingle. Pellagrin felt the hair on his arms and the back of his neck stand at attention. Even through the oily