Read Online The Breath of God by Jeffrey Small - Free Book Online Page B

fertilizer to fuel. He knew that fertilizer alone, which he’d been accumulating and storing in a mini-warehouse for the past three months, could be detonated with a blasting cap, creating a powerful explosion. But pure fertilizer tended to absorb moisture, making detonation unpredictable. His mission wouldn’t tolerate unpredictability. Adding the fuel oil in a precise amount solved that issue. He wished that he’d had access to C-4 like he did in his Army days, but he was confident that the ANFO would be just as effective.
    Reaching to the dashboard for his smartphone, which also doubled as a GPS receiver, Tim noted that the blinking dot of his destination was just a few blocks away. The campus streets were quiet, as he’d expected them to be at four AM on a weeknight. When he slowed to turn onto Clifton Road, he again caught the headlights in his rearview mirror. The vehicle tailing him followed his turn into the heart of the Emory campus.
    He clicked the radio off. He needed to concentrate. Passing the sign for the Rollins School of Public Health, he took the immediate left onto Michael Street and then parked the van on the right curb in front of the complex of beige buildings that made up the main campus of the Centers for Disease Control. He immediately cut the ignition and the lights. Tim glanced into the rearview mirror and smiled. Johnny was no longer behind him. He’d turned his Ford truck onto Houston Mill Road where he would wait, just as Tim had instructed him to do. If they were being watched, no one would’ve guessed that they worked together.
    Tim clicked off the phone and stuffed it into his pocket. From the backpack, he then removed the electronic timer. He’d preset the timer for one hour. Tim then searched the floor of the front seat for anything that might have fallen out of his pack.
    â€œNo evidence left behind,” he mumbled. The heat from the explosion should incinerate everything, but those FBI forensic guys were crafty.
    Next Tim leaned between the two front seats and attached the electronic timer to the two wires coming from the large tank. Building the timer had
been child’s play. When the red LED lights on the timer reached zero, an electrical pulse would travel from the battery across the wires to the detonation charges duct-taped to the container of ANFO. The results would be spectacular.
    He reached a gloved finger for the green button on the timer. Then the itching started. At first Tim felt a slight tingle on his left forearm. Quickly it spread to his right. His fucking eczema. He’d applied his lotion when he’d suited up earlier, but it didn’t matter. The tingle morphed into a full-fledged burn. Tim imagined the scaly surface of his skin cracking like clay mud drying in the summer sun. The desire to scratch became overpowering, but he didn’t have time for that. The streets were clear and the buildings dark. Clenching his jaw, he stabbed at the timer.
    1:00:00.
    59:59.
    Before opening the van door, Tim confirmed that the van’s interior dome light was off.
    57:48.
    57:47.
    Stepping into the night, he blended into the shadows in his black cargo pants and black wool sweater. He was well-concealed, but what was he thinking wearing wool? He pulled off his gloves, stuffed them in his pockets, and raked his fingernails across his forearms as he hurried by the buildings that housed the CDC.
    Atlanta was such a target-rich environment of sinfulness—strip clubs, adult bookstores, CNN, Hindu temples and Islamic mosques, the multiple liberal universities—that deciding which of these to hit first had been difficult. He’d ultimately picked the CDC because of the agency’s global research on women’s health and reproductive issues, which Tim understood was a code for abortion. Then there were the various genetic experiments and the research into Ebola and smallpox as potential biological weapons that he was sure also