The Face

him concealment as completely as the sea had conspired to hide Nemo and the Nautilus.
        Corky sat on the ridge line, facing the pipe. This vent, which penetrated the roof to a height of one foot, led through the attic and to the bathroom in the security office.
        Reaching over his shoulder, Corky unzipped the top compartment on the backpack. He fished out a ten-gallon plastic trash bag and a roll of all-weather tape.
        A peaked and flared metal cap had been mounted on four-inch legs to the top of the pipe itself. This prevented rain and windblown debris from getting into the vent, while allowing air to be cycled out of the room below.
        Corky pulled the trash bag over the flared cap and with one hand snugged it as tight as possible around the pipe.
        [540] If the bathroom exhaust fan had been in operation, it would have pumped the trash bag full of air, and he would have been forced to delay this critical phase of the mission until the fan was switched off. The limp plastic did not swell into a balloon.
        With the all-weather tape, he quietly fixed the mouth of the bag to the pipe shaft, creating a relatively airtight seal.
        Reaching over his shoulder once more, he withdrew a hairspray-size can from the backpack. This was not an ordinary spray can, but a “weaponized aerosol-dispersal unit (ADU) with a super-accelerant feature,” which had been designed by one of his university colleagues working under a generous grant from the Chinese military.
        The ADU would release its entire highly pressurized contents in six seconds. The molecules of the active ingredients were bonded to a gas that boasted such a highly efficient expansion factor that both floors of the groundskeeper’s building would be contaminated in fifty to seventy seconds.
        The ADU had been designed to contain anything from a sedative to a deadly nerve toxin that killed upon first inhalation.
        Corky had been unable to get his hands on a unit containing the nerve toxin. He’d had to be satisfied with the sedative gas.
        Sedating the two guards suited him well enough. Although deeply committed to societal collapse and its rebirth, he was not a man who killed indiscriminately. Lately, of course, more murder than usual had been required to advance his noble cause. But he liked to think of himself as one who could exercise restraint as easily as he could, in a pinch, let loose the beast within.
        With one finger, he poked a hole in the plastic sack, widened it, and slipped the upper half of the aerosol can into the bag. Using the all-weather tape, he created a seal where can and trash bag met.
        Holding the exposed end of the can in his left hand, he felt through the plastic with his right hand until, between thumb and forefinger, he was able to get a firm grip on the ring-pull, which functioned [541] much like that on a grenade. He plucked out the ring and let it slide down the inside of the bag.
        The ten-second delay between activation and dispersal of the contents allowed the can to be thrown through an open door or window. Corky held fast to it and waited.
        When the contents erupted out of the revolutionary nozzle, the can vibrated in his left hand and instantly turned so icy cold that he could feel the radical temperature change through his glove. If he had been holding it barehanded, his skin would have frozen to the aluminum.
         Whoosh! The trash bag inflated as abruptly as an automobile air bag in a head-on collision. Corky thought it might pop in his face, bathing him in sedative gas.
        The vent offered a route for expansion, however, so instead of stretching the plastic to the bursting point, the gas traveled down the pipe, past the stilled exhaust fan that would have blown it out if activated, into the security-office bathroom, and from there into the entire building.
        Closed doors would not inhibit dispersal. The sleep-inducing vapors would rush between door and threshold, between door and jamb, through any tiniest crack and crevice, through heating vents and plumbing chases.
        Prior to the scheduled nine o’clock foot patrol of the grounds, both guards were in the office below Corky. The sedative was so fast-acting that in ten seconds from the time the ADU emptied, the two men would have collapsed unconscious.
        He waited more than half a minute before departing the ridge line for the north slope of