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He hurried through the door into Warehouse Three, and was in the act of rolling the next forklift into position when he heard the unmistakable, ear-splitting roar of a chain-saw starting up down at the far end of the warehouse, followed by a terrible screeching noise as someone obviously started to cut through the far metal wall of the warehouse. He couldn't see through the forest of steel shelving towers, but he could sure as hell hear it. What the hell was this?! Had he miscalculated? They had chain saws?!
He grabbed the bags and zigged to the right, instinctively heading towards the rear wall fire doors at the back of the warehouse. The rear wall fire doors all led into the back alley, his escape route to his truck. As suddenly as it started, the chain-saw went silent. He stopped ten feet from the fire door and crouched down behind a shelf tower. He peeked between two shelves in time to see a large, helmeted man wearing oversized goggles about two hundred feet away down the aisle, trotting towards him between the shelving tiers, casually throwing things into the lanes as he came. And then the shadows behind the man erupted into dazzling, sun-bright light, accompanied by a whoomping sound and then the roar of fire. Stunned, Carson saw other blooms of incredible, fiery radiance exploding in the warehouse to the right and left of the lane where the helmeted man was still coming, each succeeding blast of the incendiaries throwing every detail of the high, metal roof beams and trusses into stark relief, even as clouds of bright white smoke billowed above the shelving tiers.
Carson finally moved when the helmeted man was only sixty feet away. Scrambling on his hands and knees, he pulled the bags with him, desperate now to reach the end of the shelf tier and the fire door before the helmeted man got there and threw one of those things at him. Keeping low, he pushed backwards to open the fire door with his feet, even as one of the thermite bombs clattered up against the back wall in the next lane down to his right and then exploded in a blinding wash of incredible light, producing a wave of heat that singed his cheek as he rolled through the fire door into the alley behind the building. He kicked the door shut just in time. As he got to his feet there was that terrifying whoomp sound behind the door and then the cracks around the door turned arc-light white, and the door vibrated as if the Devil himself was behind it and badly wanted out.
He dragged himself and the bags across the alley to the fence, staying low, skinning his knees on the concrete, and then got up and started trotting down the alley towards the nearest cut in the fence, which was behind the de-mil building. As he ran he felt rather than saw that each of the warehouses was being wracked by internal explosions, the gable vent screens of each building now etched in bright white light as the old steel shook and rumbled from the sudden release of energy inside. Glowing white clouds of smoke were starting to pump out of ridgeline ventilator cowlings.
When he got to the cut in the fence he dropped the two bags and then began to pull apart the chain link. But then he stopped. He was right behind the de-mil building, which apparently had not been fired yet. There were clear sounds of shouting and vehicles on the other side of the de-mil building, but no one had come around back. He could just see the snout of the semi-truck where he'd hidden the cylinder. Maybe forty feet away. There was a loud roar to his far right as Warehouse Three's roof lifted off, releasing a huge bolus of yellow and red flame into the night sky. Christ, he thought. I was just in there.
He made his decision. Leaving the bags, he sprinted down the back wall of the de-mil building, reaching the truck in a few seconds. He climbed up two steps to reach the outside toolbox, and cracked it open. There was pandemonium going on around the corner out on the tarmac, a cacophony of shouting men, vehicle engines, and the rising rumble of a major fire. Incendiaries exploded inside the de-mil building, sending a sheet of flame into the alley as the rear fire door opened momentarily.
The cylinder was right where he had left it. He grabbed it and ran back to the fence, barely avoiding the sheets of white flame howling out around the deformed fire door, only to find that the two sides of the cut fencing had sprung back together again. He pushed the cylinder through the cut in the fence, and then started to struggle with the obstinate fencing.
"You!" thundered a voice from behind him "Halt! Freeze!"
He looked over his shoulder and was stunned to see two uniformed men pointing shotguns at him from the corner of the de-mil building. Soldiers! As he stared in shock, the de-mil building's back wall began to shake like a single sheet of steel, and then the back edge of the roof opened like a loose sail and belched out a sheet of flame from one end of the building to the other. Some of the roof truss ends were snapped off and there was a sudden rain of hot steel and rivets clanging all along the alley. The two men jumped back around the corner of the building to avoid the hail of hot shrapnel, at which point Carson threw his whole body through the opening, and then turned to grab the bags, but the damned fence wire had sprung back again. He grabbed the cylinder but the bags jammed in the wire when he tried to pull them through. A great sucking sound from the de-mil building just then caused him to look up, and he saw that the whole back wall was bulging towards him, about to come crashing down into the alley.
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