Daemon

water.
    He looked to his men and shouted,
‘Gasoline!’
    Before they could turn and run, a high-precision motor whirred in the distant cupola tower. A deep
choom
sound issued from it, and the last thing Merritt saw through his goggles was a blinding green flare arcing over the distance between him and the tower.
    The rolling fireball lit up the sky for a mile around. Its dull roar echoed off the side of the trailer, and the orange light illuminated three hundred horrified faces. Trear still held the radio in his hand. He stood paralyzed as shrieks of agony came over the radio channel. All around him men raced into action – or anarchy, it was hard to tell.
    ‘Get the fire trucks over there!’
    ‘Ambulance! Bring up an ambulance!’
    ‘We’ve got agents down!’
    The fireball climbed to the sky, and in its stark light Trear could see the lawn sprinklers surrounding it still running. They were spraying water – to contain the fire in the precise spot where the HRT unit had infiltrated. Trear felt like he was watching something on TV. It had the surreal feeling of the impossible. People were grabbing him, shouting at him. He couldn’t take his eyes off the raging fire and the wildly thrashing dark forms dancing in the flames like damned souls – then falling. The ten-ton truck was burning like a Texas A&M bonfire.
    Someone shouted in his ear about radio transmissions, and Trear absently looked down at the radio in his hand. Only static hissed out of it now. That’s when it happened.
    Suddenly all the lights went on in Sobol’s mansion, glowing with a frightful intensity. Then lights kicked back on all across the estate. An audible groan ran through the ranks of the besieging agents.
    Trear snapped out of it and shoved the now useless radio into another agent’s hands. ‘Get to cover! Everybody get to cover!’
    The pain (because it must have been pain) was white noise that Merritt had no time for. On the imaginary control board in his mind, every light was flashing red. He ran as only men on fire can run, yanking his Nomex balaclava up to cover his mouth. The whole world had turned into the surface of the sun. He resisted the panic-stricken need to breathe the superheated air. To breathe was to die.
    But then it turned dark again – the bright glow beyond his clenched eyelids had gone away. Had the night vision goggles failed? Probably. But he’d have to open his eyes to find out, and he wasn’t ready for that. But the heat was gone – and now there was only cold. His entire body tingled. It was almost pleasant. Experience told him that, in combat, tingling sensations meant you had just been seriously injured.
    Merritt staggered on blindly. Finally he stopped and tore off his night vision goggles and opened his eyes. Instantly he was blinded by cold water spraying into his face. It felt wonderful. He smelled a combination of gasoline, burnt flesh, melted plastic, and hot metal. He turned in place dizzily – feeling shock creep up on him. He stood in a manicured section of lawn right next to a rising mushroom of orange flame fifty feet tall. The cold water spraying over him made it tolerable to be this close. His men were in those flames somewhere.
    He reached for his bone mic, melted against his cheek. ‘Waucheuer! Reese! Littleton! Report! Kirkson! Engels! Report!’ The microphone pulled off in his hands. His earphones were dead under his Kevlar helmet.
    His men were gone. All gone.
    Merritt was numb. He spun in place to orient himself and saw the mansion blazing white light a hundred feet farther on. He held his arm up and saw that the stock of his MP-5 had melted onto the back of his sleeve. His nylon web belt containing ammunition clips had melted into his jumpsuit and Kevlar body armor. He wasn’t sure whether he was badly injured, but his temper was beginning to flare. He decided to go with it.
    Merritt grabbed the gun’s barrel with his left hand and wrenched the twisted mass free from his arm. The Nomex appeared to have protected him from the worst of it, but he felt the confused buzzing in his nerve endings that was the neurological equivalent of ‘Please Stand By For Pain …’
    Merritt started running, not toward the perimeter wall and safety, but toward the mansion. He raced for the fenced-in pool area and a set of white French doors with polished brass handles – its windows blazing light. His eyes never left it as he leapt over stone benches and herb gardens.
    Around him, in the