D’Agosta shivered, thinking how he’d blithely crossed this very threshold not ten minutes before.
They passed carefully through the rest of the building, warning creaks of wood sounding occasionally over their heads. Beyond lay the broad field. It looked to D’Agosta like a lake of blackness. Pendergast lit another cigarette, then knelt and moved forward cautiously, blowing smoke before him once again, until the first laser beam became visible, pencil-thin and glowing dully. Pendergast nodded over his shoulder, and they returned to the laborious work of crawling through the field, keeping under the beams.
This time the process seemed interminable. When D’Agosta finally allowed himself a glance ahead, he was shocked to find they had only reached the middle of the field.
Just then there was a sudden commotion in the grass ahead of them. A family of hares burst into view, startled, leaping in several directions at once and bounding off into the blackness.
Pendergast paused, took in another lungful of smoke, and blew it at the spot where the rabbits had been. A crisscrossing of laser beams became visible.
“Nasty bit of luck,” he said.
“Triggered the beam?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“What do we do now?”
“We run.”
Pendergast leaped up and flew like a bat across the field. D’Agosta rose and began to follow, doing his best to keep up with the agent.
Instead of heading back the way they had come, Pendergast was making for the woods to their left. As they approached the trees, D’Agosta heard distant shouts and the starting of car engines. A moment later, several pairs of headlights came sawing across the meadow, trailed by the much more brilliant beam of a mounted spotlight, as a pair of military-style jeeps came tearing around the ruined buildings.
Pendergast and D’Agosta crashed into the dense undergrowth of the woods, clawing through brambles and heavy brush. After a hundred yards, Pendergast took a sharp turn and continued at a right angle to their previous course, the haversack bouncing wildly on his shoulder. D’Agosta followed, heart hammering in his ears.
Pendergast took another sharp turn and they plunged on. Suddenly they emerged onto an old road filled with waist-high grass. They pushed through it, D’Agosta struggling to keep Pendergast in sight. Already he was growing winded, but fear and adrenaline spurred him on.
A powerful beam lanced down the length of the road and they dived to the ground. Once it swept past, Pendergast was up and running again, this time into another copse at the far end of the abandoned road. More beams flickered through the trees, farther away, and voices floated toward them over the sullen air.
Inside the copse, Pendergast stopped to pull out his map and scan it with the green flashlight while D’Agosta caught up. Then they continued on, this time along a gentle rise. The woods grew thicker, and it seemed they had managed to put space between themselves and their pursuers. For the first time, D’Agosta allowed himself to hope they might escape, after all.
The trees thinned and D’Agosta saw a scattering of starlight. And then suddenly rising before them was an immensity of black—a wall, twenty feet high, all rotten bricks, dangling vegetation, and vines.
“This isn’t on the map,” said Pendergast. “Another blast wall—a late addition, it seems.”
He glanced in either direction. Through the trees below, D’Agosta could see the flicker of flashlights. Pendergast turned and ran along the base of the wall. It curved along the top of a gentle ridge, its overgrown rim outlined against the night sky.
Ahead, where the wall descended, D’Agosta could see dancing lights through the vegetation.
“We climb,” said Pendergast.
He turned, seized a root, pulled himself up. D’Agosta did likewise. He grabbed a stem, another, found a foothold. In his haste, one of the plants tore out of the wall, sending down a shower of rotting brick. D’Agosta dangled, recovered. He could see Pendergast already far above him, climbing like a cat. The lights below were coming up the hill, while another group to their right was also closing in.
“Faster!” Pendergast hissed.
D’Agosta seized a vine, another, slipping, scrambling, one leg scrabbling in space.
He now heard a cacophony of voices behind him. Pendergast was just reaching the top of the wall. There was a shot and the thud of the bullet on the wall to his right. One more hoist up, one more foothold.
Two more shots. Pendergast was reaching down, grabbing him by the arms, hauling him to the top. The lights had now reached the open area just before the wall, bobbing frantically, flashing up on the wall and hitting them.
“Down!”
D’Agosta was already throwing himself down on the crumbling, overgrown top of the massive wall. It was at least ten feet from side to side.
“Crawl.”