Three Minutes to Midnight (34 page)

CHAPTER 37

S
AM
B
LACKMON COULDN'T BELIEVE WHAT HE WAS SEEING.
T
HERE
was a drill bit the size of a basketball spinning wildly in the bottom of the pool and eating through the fuel rod racks. The water in the pool was draining fast.

“Have we opened the floodgates in the lake?” he asked. The idea was to have water coming into the pool as fast as it was flooding out.

“We're trying, sir,” Stickman said. “But we're on standby, waiting for a permit from the state.”

“To hell with that,” Blackmon said. He had been under fire many times and wasn't going to lose his cool. But he did feel fear boiling in his stomach. “Open those gates all the way. I'll take the heat for this.”

 

Less than five miles from Sam Blackmon, Grace linked up with watchers Elaine and Brandy in the parking lot of a major shopping mall, behind which the Underground Railroad emptied into a tributary in Durham County. They were anonymous in the mostly vacant lot, and so they stood in the cool evening air. Piper's small hand was cradled in Grace's slender fingers as Grace explained the situation.

“This is the kidnapped kid, Piper Cassidy. Hawthorne rescued her and the mother, but the mother went back in to help him with the drill.”

“Guy's amazing,” Elaine said. “Enough to make me want to go over to the dark side.”

“Let's not go overboard,” Brandy said.

“This is serious business,” Grace said. “These guys are drilling up through the nuclear power plant. Hawthorne knows you were in the Navy, Elaine, and figures you at least know how to use a rifle. He wants us to go up to the boulder and start picking off the workers when he gives us the signal.”

“You're kidding?” Elaine asked. “I haven't shot a rifle since basic training.”

“You've probably never shot his kind of rifle. It's got a silencer and everything.”

“Well, if he needs the help, we'll give it to him,” Elaine said.

“Agreed,” Brandy said.

“You've got to take care of Piper, Brandy. Plus, I've got a bound and gagged Bosnian in the back of my car. Take Piper to Elaine's place and chill until we come get you.”

Brandy nodded. “Got it.” She took the keys from Grace's hand.

Elaine popped the hatch on her SUV, and Grace heaved Mahegan's bag of tricks from the trunk. They all hugged, and then Grace knelt in front of Piper and told her it was going to be okay. Brandy reassured her and then put her in the front seat of Grace's car. Grace leaned into the backseat and stuck her finger in the captive woman's face.

“Don't you dare try anything crazy,” Grace said, whispering out of Piper's earshot. She pointed at Brandy in the driver's seat. “This woman here is just out of jail for murder.”

They watched Brandy pull away in Grace's car, then hopped into Elaine's SUV. Grace made the phone call Mahegan had asked her to make. The Wallaby gas station was practically on the way to their destination. In the parking lot she saw a Buick Electra idling low to the ground. Elaine pulled up so that Grace's door was on the driver's side of the Buick.

“Diablo?”

“It's time. I see you've still got the phone Mahegan gave you. Can you do this?”

Diablo nodded. “I'll try to find Manuela.”

“
Gracias
,” Grace said.

Elaine then pulled out of the parking lot. The drive to the firebreak took about thirty minutes, and it would take them another twenty to get set up behind the boulder. The night sky was cloudless, with a sliver of a moon, like a haunting smile. The women trod softly through the forest paralleling the firebreak. They took turns carrying Mahegan's duffel bag, which carried the equipment they would need. They tried to be careful, aware that their cover might have been blown by all the activity.

“Elaine,” Grace whispered.

“Yes?”

“If we get discovered, just know you can count on me.”

“Never a doubt,” Elaine replied. “And likewise.”

“I mean, don't doubt me. Okay?”

“I won't.”

Upon their arrival at the boulder, Elaine reached into the duffel bag and extracted an M4 carbine, with its night optic scope and silencer. Grace grabbed a pair of night-vision goggles, held them against her eyes and focused the lens.

“Lots of activity down there,” Grace said.

“I don't know a thing about this rifle, Grace. It's like a small M-sixteen, which I did shoot a couple of times.”

“How hard can it be? Just put the bullets in it and aim it,” Grace said, turning toward Elaine. She removed the night-vision goggles and watched her friend fumble with the weapon.

Elaine found a box magazine with shiny metal cartridges that held bullets and slid it into the well of the M4 until Grace heard a click. Elaine pulled on the charging handle and chambered a round more loudly than she meant to. She thumbed the safety to off and sighted through the scope.

“All black,” she said.

“Turn the scope on,” Grace said. She watched Elaine feel for an on-off switch, find the knob, and flip it.

“Much better. Bright green. I can see Petrov at the wellhead. Some of those idiots are smoking cigarettes. The lights actually help,” Elaine said. “Let me give this thing a test run.”

Through the night-vision goggles, Grace watched Elaine spin to her left and pick out a target beyond the drill rig, a small Eiffel Tower–like structure.

“Truck tire. About six feet tall. Just below the trailers. Shooting at it ought to tell me whether I can hit anything with this. It's about three hundred yards.”

Grace knew that at one time Elaine had been a reasonable hunter. She had learned to hunt with her father near the farm where she grew up. Not a particularly rich family, they had actually had to hunt for provisions. Her parents had stocked the freezer with deer, bear, and birds. She knew that Elaine's love of nature had fueled some of her opposition to the fracking.

Grace heard Elaine flick the safety lever to the single-shot position. Elaine leaned the accessory rail against the boulder, steadied her aim, and pulled back on the trigger with the pad of her index finger. Grace heard Elaine exhale slightly; then she jumped at the cough of the weapon as it fired. She settled down quickly enough to put the goggles to her eyes and find the tire. It had deflated with a pop, which she'd heard above the din of turbines and shouting at the wellhead. Grace watched the workers at the wellhead for any sign that they had heard the shot. The men continued to push and pull at ropes and pipes, apparently none the wiser.

“Pretty easy,” Elaine said. “Tell Hawthorne I can do it. And I see five workers down there, including Petrov. And I see your idiots smoking cigarettes. I'll just aim at those, and it's not a problem to shoot them if he really wants me to, but I would prefer he deal with them.”

“Conflicted, are we? These guys are about to create a radioactive fire inside the Shearon Harris Nuclear Power Plant. We're all toast if that happens.”

“I said I will do it. Just text him and tell him we're ready.”

Grace worked her thumbs across the smartphone, letting Mahegan know their ready position and the status of the wellhead. She also sent a note saying that she had met with Diablo, but Manuela was present at the time, so the Mexicans were not a sure thing.

As both women watched Petrov and his men extract the drill cable, Grace's phone vibrated with a text from Mahegan.

As the message came in, Grace and Elaine used the optics to scan the far wood line. A car was snaking its way up the road.

“Car coming up the road. Maybe it's the Mexicans,” Elaine said.

“Let's hope so,” Grace said.

Grace relayed the information to Mahegan.

“Okay,” she said, turning back to Elaine. “We're good to go, as Mahegan would say.”

“Too bad he's not here with you,” said a third voice.

Griffyn had found them.

Grace spun upward and faced off against her boss. Her stomach dropped when she noticed the faraway look in his eyes. His head was canted sideways, as if he was a rabid animal considering which threat to attack first. A shotgun slanted across his body like a hash mark.

“I'm so glad you're here, Griff. Finally,” Grace said. “Where have you been?”

Grace watched Elaine out of her periphery. Elaine began to move Mahegan's rifle, triggering a reflexive response from Griffyn, who raised the butt of his shotgun and smashed it into Elaine's face.

Grace clenched her stomach but remained stoic. Her friend fell backward on top of Mahegan's rifle.

“Been trying to find your ass for two days,” Griffyn said. “Where the hell
you
been?”

“It sure as hell took you long enough to get here,” Grace said. “You told me to get in good with the lesbians, so I did. You told me to get close to the Indian, so I did. What haven't I done for you?”

Griffyn hitched his shoulder, as if he had a nervous twitch. “Well, go ahead and kill her,” he said, handing her the shotgun. Before taking the weapon, Grace knelt and placed her hand against Elaine's neck.

“She's dead. No pulse. Check it out for yourself. Besides, we don't need anyone to hear the blast from the shotgun. You can call it in.”

Griffyn said, “You're the technician. You say she's dead, she's dead.”

Grace looked at Elaine, who was lying motionless in the dirt, and nodded. “She's dead. We done here?”

“Nope. Not until we get the Indian. Let me make this call.” Griffyn pulled out a handheld radio and said, “Base, this is rover. Watchers neutralized.”

Grace listened for the reply and heard a voice say, “Roger. Return to base.”

“Let's go then,” Grace said.

As they stepped along the narrow trail leading away from the boulder, she heard movement behind her.

“Not so fast, you two,” Elaine said.

CHAPTER 38

M
AHEGAN STOOD BEHIND THE DOOR AND LISTENED
. H
E HEARD
Brand Throckmorton and his wife, Sharon, arguing.

“This thing's falling apart, you stupid moron!” Sharon shouted. “One person has single-handedly shut your ass down. If you weren't thinking with the head in your pants, maybe you could have pulled this off.”

A muffled cough followed Sharon's outburst, and Mahegan knew it was a pistol report.

After a moment, Throckmorton screamed, “You bastard! You killed her!”

“Did you a favor,” said a male voice. Mahegan's sense was that it was the elder Gunther's voice, but he couldn't be sure. “We can blame it on the Indian. Griff's got Grace Kagami and killed the dyke. Just cleaning up, Throck. That's all.”

Mahegan heard a slight whimpering, the sound of Brand Throckmorton crying. He pictured him hovering over Sharon, imagining all he had lost, despite his infidelity.

If the watchers were out of play and Grace was a captive, Mahegan thought, the battlefield geometry had changed. What he had calculated as three different moving pieces now became two at best. He had no idea how reliable Diablo and Manuela would be in a combat scenario, but without the watchers pinning down the roughnecks at the wellhead, Mahegan would have no supporting fire. His freedom of maneuver would be restricted.

He left the door that separated the hallway from the main lodge. He turned around and looked to his left where the door to the tunnel was ajar. To his front was the door to the observation room. He took a few steps and turned right through the door to the control room, where Maeve was watching the chaos inside the nuclear rod pool. She looked catatonic.

“Look at me,” Mahegan demanded.

Startled, Maeve turned and stuttered, “Y-yes?”

“Is there another control room anywhere around here? I need to find where they follow the cell phones.”

“There was always a lot of activity down there in the infirmary, or what became the infirmary once you showed up.”

Mahegan walked into the hallway and through the door to the tunnel. He checked several doors, all of which led to empty rooms, before he found one that was locked. Mahegan's knife made quick work of the flashing and the doorjamb, and soon he was in the cool air of the server room. From floor to ceiling he saw server racks and blades, as well as routers and high-tech gear he didn't recognize. He found a monitor that had twelve small insets with maps on them. Each showed the location, or the last known location, of a cell phone. It was a Stingray. Mahegan had used this technology in Afghanistan and Iraq to find the enemy. Now the enemy was using it to track employees, the watchers, and, ultimately, him.

Modern technology tracked the phones in the cloud, which required passwords he did not have time to hack. Knowing the phones could be tracked from another computer, Mahegan was banking on the idea that if he destroyed this setup, he might shut down the tracking of all communications for the operation. If he couldn't track anyone, then he didn't want anyone else having that capability, either. He did need to keep cell phone communications operational, however.

He carefully unplugged every wire and plug he could find that led into the monitor and the server feeding the monitor. Then he smashed the hardware on the dusty cement floor. Knowing that was the best he could do, he glanced at the other blinking and flashing servers. He didn't want to damage those, because that might impact Maeve's ability to maneuver the drill and see into the channel, which were other key elements of his plan.

Mahegan exited the server room and walked along the dark tunnel, listening to the cries of the wounded EB-5 workers he had locked in the room where he had found Maeve and Piper. He walked back to the door separating the lodge from the control room. He listened at the door, behind which Sharon had been shot.

“Jimmy, go back there and check on Ting and Chun. Blow the door with C-four if you have to,” James Gunther directed. “I'm gonna take this knife and go cut up the Indian.”

Mahegan walked back to the control room, where Maeve appeared more alert and was playing with the controls.

“I have an idea,” she said.

“I'm open,” he said. “Talk.”

“This channel is very narrow from the base of the pool to this second kickoff point. It's three thousand feet below ground level but only about two feet wide, maybe eighteen inches in some places where I was more precise. The volume is pi times the radius squared times the height, which, like I said, is three thousand feet. One cubic foot is seven-point-four-eight gallons, so you've got to get word to the nuclear plant that they have to replace 281,990 gallons of water if I can block it at this kickoff point.”

“You can collapse it at the kickoff point?” Mahegan asked, pointing at the display, which showed the vertical channel from the pool to where it made a horizontal turn, the kick off point.

“I can try. Had to do this once in Pak. It would be better if I had the perforating charges down there, but I can chew at it with the drill and try to block it. At least I can slow down the loss of water. I'll have to come about fifty yards back into the pipe to build a decent rock pile.”

“And if we can't make that happen?”

“The pools drain, they're all connected, and we've got a nuclear explosion on the East Coast.”

“If that's our best play, do that. I'll try to get word to Shearon Harris,” Mahegan said.

He had no idea how he was going to contact the nuclear plant, but then a thought occurred to him. He heard Jim, he presumed, pounding on the door.

“Open up, Ting. Let's go. This is our operation, too.”

Jim's hammering sounded like gunshots echoing down the long hallway. Mahegan looked at Maeve, who was staring at him with wide eyes. She needed him to buy her some time to collapse the channel, or they would have radioactive water spewing like a geyser into the wellhead in fifteen minutes or less.

 

Sam Blackmon stared at the image of the drill bit retracting into one of the many holes it had created in the bottom of the cooling pool. Red lights were flashing and sirens were wailing, as if a bombing raid were inbound.

“Stix, we've got to open the floodgates on the lake and fill the pools faster than they drain.”

“I'm working it, boss. We haven't rehearsed that in a year, and there's some rust welding the door shut.”

“Get down there with a crowbar and pry that puppy open if you have to,” Blackmon said calmly in his commander's voice.

“Roger that,” Stickman said. He punched a small button at the base of his ear that controlled the radio in his ear canal. “How we coming on opening the dam?” His voice was calm, like Blackmon's. They had operated together in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Philippines, among other combat zones, and one thing they knew was that while the pressure was building, they had to react inversely, as they had trained themselves to do. The more pressure you had, the calmer you had to be.

“I'm heading down there,” Stickman said.

“Boots on the ground. Can't beat it,” Blackmon nodded as Stickman dashed through the command center doors.

The cooling pools were located in the basement of the nuclear reactor facility. A steady stream of water from the lake circulated through the facility, and some of it was diverted for the pools after extensive filtration and chemical testing. There would be no time for that, Blackmon thought. They would just need to bum-rush the lake water in like a flood. The idea would be to replace more than they were losing. But how the hell would they ever stop the loss with five holes in the bottom of the pool?

Blackmon could think of one way. He was a trained frogman, a certified military diver who could swim for miles underwater. There wasn't much Sam Blackmon couldn't do from a combat perspective, and if saving his country meant possibly sacrificing himself at the bottom of a highly radioactive pool, then that would be a risk worth taking.

He thought about his three daughters and his wife, who had endured their fair share of deployments and his absence from the home front. They lived in Holly Springs, North Carolina, just around the corner from the nuclear facility. Only in passing had they ever considered a nuclear catastrophe wiping out the Triangle region. It was the kind of jokey talk that he and Stickman and the rest of their buddies slung around during backyard barbecues.

“Let me just hold this burger up. All that radiation will cook it in a minute. . . .”

“Went fishing in the lake the other day. All the fish weighed ten pounds and had three eyes. . . .”

That kind of thing. Meanwhile, their children would be playing in the expansive backyard, on the swing set or in the tree fort. It was about as apple pie as you could get, Blackmon thought, and he wanted to keep it that way.

Stickman returned, breathing heavily. He knelt over in the doorway to the command center, with his hands on his knees.

“Boss, we got it open about a foot. Damn thing is rusted bad. But water's flowing into the holding pool.”

“We need to make it a straight pass,” Blackmon said. “No time for chemicals or cleansing. Just need the cold water on the racks and the rods that are now lying on the bottom of the pool.”

“Roger that.”

Blackmon grabbed his dive suit.

“That ain't what I think it is, is it?” asked Stickman.

“Depends on what you think it is.”

“You will fry with those open racks and fuel rods down there. Ain't nothing you can do.”

“I can plug the gaps,” Blackmon said.

“With what? That damn thing punched five holes in the floor. It's all funneling out fast.”

“I'll try to slide some of the casks over the holes. That'll slow it down.”

“And then what?” asked Stickman.

“Have the pressure washer and the soap ready for me when I get back. It's the best we can do. Everyone needs to put hazmat suits on now.”

Blackmon's friend and combat buddy stared at him for an eternity, eyes locked onto his. Stickman shook his head and said, “There's another way.”

A security guard ran in, panting, as Stickman had before him.

“We've got the valve to the lake water open more. We've got a hundred gallons a second coming in from the lake. We're losing about that much, so it's going to be close.”

“Your dive can wait, sir,” Stickman said. “We've got this.”

Blackmon suited up, walked to the air-lock chamber, and opened it with a swipe of his identification card.

“You know me. I've got to be where the action is,” Blackmon said. He then stepped into the pressurized chamber, waited until the command center door closed, and pressed a button, opening the door to the stairwell that led down to the cooling pools.

 

Mahegan watched Maeve maneuver the joystick.

“I can buy you ten minutes, maybe,” he said.

He quietly undid the locks that the Chinese had evidently put in place to keep Gunther and Throckmorton out of the control room as the mission moved into its final phase. Looking over his shoulder, he could see Maeve manipulating the drill bit as she reversed its course through the channel it had just scoured. She cursed a few times as her hand worked the joystick. Then he stepped out of the command center, into the hallway, and walked toward the door that led to the lodge. He leaned against the wall, steadied his breathing, and thought about his next move.

The rock wall pressed into his back as he listened to footsteps scrape along the dusty cement and dirt floor that led from the lodge to the door behind which he was hiding.

“Little bit of C-four never hurt anybody,” Mahegan heard Jim say. “Not anybody that I cared about, anyway.”

Mahegan tucked himself into the corner of the hallway where the doorjamb was located. The blast would be on the doorknob side of the door frame opposite his position. The door would blow outward, and the hinges next to his shoulder would either hold or be the last to give.

Mahegan looked at Maeve through the observation window of the control room. He could see on the display that the drill bit had reached the three-thousand-foot bottom kickoff point and that she was retracting it to her fifty-yard point. He saw her angle the drill upward to try to get enough rock to fall and block the water.

“Stand clear, Dad,” Jim said on the other side of the door. Then, from a more distant vantage, he added, “Fire in the hole!”

The explosion was about the right size to knock a door down, Mahegan thought. The door flew open, mostly because Mahegan had removed the locks, and it still hung from the top hinge. He had braced for the blast, which landed directly on him, but his left shoulder took another hit that it didn't need to take. In a combat situation he didn't worry about it, but he made a note that he needed to do more swimming.

As the smoke settled, he heard Jim say, “I'll go in and find the Chinese. You go kick the Indian's ass.”

Jim stepped into the hallway. The blast had knocked out the emergency lights, which the generator had been powering. The ambient glow of the monitors cast enough light for Jim to step past Mahegan without noticing him.

“Let me know what you got in there, son, before I drag my ass down there. Throck's up here, moaning about his old lady.”

“You killed my wife!” Throckmorton was repeating from beyond the hole in the wall where the door once was.

“Shut up, Throck,” said Gunther. “I have to think of every damn thing. I'm going to go put this gun in the Indian's hands, let him shoot it a few times against the wall so he gets some gunpowder residue on him, and then stick it in his mouth. Problem solved. I'll even drop your wife down there with him. Make it look like a fight of some sort. Hell, she was boning everybody else. Why not the biggest guy around?”