But no blood.

The woman called to him from the shadows. “Liquid body armor.”

Gray dropped lower, attempting to pinpoint the woman’s location. The dive under the table had jarred his helmet’s internal heads-up display. Its holographic images flickered incoherently across the inside of his faceshield, interfering with his sightlines, but he dared not abandon the helmet. It offered the best protection against the weapon still in the woman’s hand.

That and his body suit.

The assassin was right. Liquid body armor. Developed by U.S. Army Research Laboratory in 2003. The fabric of his body suit had been soaked with a shear-thickening fluid — hard microparticles of silica suspended in a polyethylene glycol solution. During normal movement, it acted like a liquid, but once a bullet struck, the material solidified into a rigid shield, preventing penetration. The suit had just saved his life.

At least for now.

The woman spoke again, coldly calm, as she slowly circled toward the door. “I rigged the building with C4 and TNT. Easy enough since the structure’s already scheduled for demolition. The Army was nice enough to have it all prewired. It just took a minor detonator modification to change the building’s implosion to one that will cause an explosive updraft.”

Gray pictured the resulting plume of smoke and debris riding high into the early morning sky. “The vials of anthrax…” he mumbled, but it was loud enough to be heard.

“It seemed fitting to use the base’s own demolition as a toxic delivery system.”

Christ, she had turned the entire building into a biological bomb.

With the strong winds, it was not only the base at risk, but the entire town of nearby Frederick.