Zero Day: A Novel (5 page)

For a moment Carlton wondered what she knew, and if that was meant to be a veiled threat. “Well, of course you should go. Thanks for keeping me in the loop. Keep me posted.”

He watched her retreating figure with more than a little regret and sighed. These computer types were always getting worked up over nothing. The few attractive women among them were the worst.

6

KELLOGG, IOWA

SKUNK RIVER NUCLEAR GENERATING STATION

MONDAY, AUGUST 14

11:43 A.M.

Barnett Favor scanned the computer screens with a practiced eye, then leaned back in his chair. He’d begun his shift at six that morning and had just finished lunch. On most days he “assumed the position,” as he jokingly called it—closed his eyes and took a catnap. Either of the other two men on the shift, or the computers themselves, would alert him if he was needed. Favor crossed his hands comfortably on his stomach and closed his eyes.

The Skunk River Nuclear Generating Station was a General Electric boiling-water reactor, located on the Skunk River some forty miles east of Des Moines. It provided nearly half of the electricity of the city, while the rest of its output was distributed throughout the eastern rural stretch of the state and into western Illinois. One of the last nuclear power plants completed in the United States, it had undergone an extensive overhaul in 2005 and was now entirely modern.

In the years since the disaster at Three Mile Island, when multiple human errors had caused a partial core meltdown, enhanced reliance had been placed on computers to handle the complex decision-making necessary if something went wrong. As a result, Favor and his team had almost nothing to do with the plant operation.

Since the overhaul the station had run without incident, not that there had been many in the previous two decades of its operation. Favor had been with the company since high school and was just two years from retirement. He’d cut his teeth on an old coal-fired generating plant, discontinued when the Skunk River Nuclear Generating Plant had come on line. In the early days the operation of the two hadn’t been all that different. Water was still heated and turned into steam, which ran turbines, which produced electricity. The only real difference was how that water was heated.

After several minutes Favor shifted in his seat, then accepted that he wasn’t going to nod off. Instead, he decided to get himself a Coke. If he couldn’t take a nap, he’d take in a bit of caffeine.

The control room of the plant looked like something out of
Star Trek
. A long, curved wall contained a wide range of gauges and dials. At waist level was a shelf the workers used for a desk. Immediately in front of them was a bank of computer screens that told the story. The men used three chairs on wheels to scoot across the floor and along the wall as they monitored the conditions of the plant. In reality, they had little to do.

Just as Favor stepped from the soft-drink machine, every computer screen in the room blinked, twice. “What was that?” he said.

Orin Whistle, who’d worked there nearly as long, looked up from the paperback he’d been reading, a blank expression on his face. “What happened?”

Josh Arnold stood up in place as if he might suddenly need to run. “Something’s going on, Barney.”

At that moment Favor could feel the change. The plant was tens of thousands of moving parts, each performing its specific function. The mix produced a familiar vibration and comforting background hum that changed only when one of the two reactors was taken off-line for maintenance. Otherwise, nothing ever changed.

“The turbines are speeding up,” Whistle said as if to himself. “I’m resetting the control.” He looked at the gauges, the amber lights playing across his face. “No change.”

“Heat’s up, Barney,” Arnold said, touching the temperature gauge in front of him as if to confirm what his eyes told him. “I don’t see why, though.”

The twin nuclear piles were set to run at their standard temperature, allowing the water coursing through them to be superheated to produce the steam that created electricity. A second stream of water ran through the system like coolant from the radiator of an automobile, intended to maintain the core at exactly the right temperature. It was all self-monitoring and self-adjusting. Until this moment, Favor had considered it impossible for the reactor to increase in heat without his ordering the computer to make the change.

“Watch the pressure,” Favor said. Pressure was key to being certain the nuclear core was always covered with water. The crew at Three Mile Island had notoriously failed to ensure that single necessity and, as a result, had brought disgrace on themselves and an end to new nuclear plants in the United States.

“Pressure’s up,” Whistle said, his face paling. “And it’s rising fast.”

The Klaxon sounded, repeating every three seconds. Atop the curved wall, red lights began to blink. The computer had taken them to Code Red.

“Shut it down!” Barney shouted. “Josh, call Central Iowa and inform them we’re going off-line now!”

“Jesus, Barney, they’ll raise hell. Half of Des Moines will go dark.”

“Do it, Orin, shut it down now!”

Orin hesitated. “We’ve got a few minutes to figure this out, Barney. There’ll be hell to pay if we act too fast.”

“We aren’t going to figure this out.” Favor knew there was no point in delay. Trying to outthink a computer, even one making a mistake if that proved the case, was foolhardy. “The computers run things now. Tell them we’re shutting the reactors down now!”

Orin typed commands on his keyboard and punched the
ENTER
button.

“Didn’t you hear me?” Favor asked when nothing changed.

“Sure thing, Barney,” said Orin, his eyes frantically scanning the gauges. “But there’s no response.”

Josh cupped his hand over the mouth of the telephone. “Central Iowa wants to know why they aren’t getting the standard three-hour notice so they can pull juice from elsewhere.”

“Tell them we’ll call back,” Favor said. “Orin, give it the command again. Josh, check the temperature. And turn off the damn Klaxon and lights!”

Favor had moved so he could monitor the key indicators, his soft drink unopened and unnoticed in his hand. The noise stopped and the red lights were extinguished. Several workers from other sections had filed into the room, but they stood well back, watching nervously.

“The temperature’s spiking, Barney. I’ve never seen it this high,” Josh said. “The turbines are screaming.”

The men heard a high-pitched whistle. “What’s that?” Orin said, his face now chalk white.

“Oh, shit,” Favor muttered. “We’re venting coolant. The water’s turned to steam. Orin, shut the fucker off!”

“I’ve given it the command four times, Barney. Nothing’s happening! Don’t blame me.”

Though a nuclear reactor is complicated, in one aspect it’s quite simple. Left alone, uranium runs into an uncontrolled chain reaction. But it’s not left alone. Control rods are inserted in a regular pattern through it. They absorb neutrons and have the power to turn the core cold. The plant is heated simply by raising the rods. All that is necessary to regulate heat, or shut the plant down, for that matter, is to lower the rods.

But the computers were refusing to do just that.

Favor flashed back to a key meeting held during the overhaul. The systems analyst who’d installed the computers and multiple backups had just explained to the company’s operations director and his deputy that nothing could go wrong. “This system is utterly foolproof.”

The deputy had learned forward and said, “Nothing’s foolproof. We’re dealing with a nuclear power plant. What if all your fancy systems go wrong?”

“That can’t happen, sir. Not if you follow directions and update the software.”

“Of course it can happen. Where’s the fail-safe?”

“I don’t understand.” The systems analyst had looked genuinely perplexed.

“If it all goes to hell and we’re facing a meltdown and don’t want those boys to be stuck telling some computer what to do, how do we pull the plug ourselves?”

“I assure you—”

“There isn’t one, in other words,” the deputy said to his boss. “They want us to trust the computers to do it.” He fixed his gaze on the analyst. “We need a mechanical switch to crash this plant, if it comes to that.”

The director had agreed, and at a cost in excess of $1 million, a fail-safe had been installed. Both the director and his deputy had been forced out the following year for spending too much money on the overhaul, but the safety system had remained in place.

“Josh, Orin, come with me,” Barney said now, before running to the far wall and two large red handles, much like those of a fire alarm. Above them was written
MECHANICAL SHUTDOWN. USE ONLY IN AN EMERGENCY
.

“Josh, yank that one.” Barney grabbed the first and pulled. The handle refused to budge. Josh tried his, with the same result. “Orin, give me a hand,” Barney shouted. The Klaxon and the pulsating red lights resumed. Some of the workers who’d been watching bolted from the room, making their way to exits.

“We’re in overload, Barney,” Orin shouted as he wrapped his hand around half of the lever while Favor took the other. “On three. One, two, three!” The men pulled. Slowly, the handle moved. It stopped some five inches out. Applying leverage to it, they forced the red handle fully down.

Favor turned to the other. Josh had managed to move the switch an inch from the wall. All three men grabbed a piece of it and pulled. Slowly the handle moved until it too was in the down position. The men stood silently, panting, waiting.

The fail-safe was a direct cable to the control rods. The levers severed the cable holding them aloft. In theory, the control rods would drop into the core by gravity, shutting down the reactors.

“Do you think it worked?” Orin asked in a near whisper.

“I hope to God it did, Orin. I sure hope it did.”

Josh glanced nervously toward the door. “Maybe we should get out of here, just in case.” Nodding their agreement, the others followed.

At the door, Favor turned back and looked at the elaborate control panel one more time.
How could this happen?
He wiped his bare hand across his face, which was drenched with sweat. A thought chilled him to the bone.
What if the thing isn’t dead? What if it is just playing possum?

Favor turned and walked away. Within a few feet, he was running.

7

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

MERCY HOSPITAL

MONDAY, AUGUST 14

5:09 P.M.

At Brooklyn’s Mercy Hospital, the fourth hospital Daryl Haugen had visited in the city since arriving early that afternoon, she presented her US-CERT credential to the IT manager. “How many now?” she asked once he’d closed the door to his office.

Willy Winfield was perhaps thirty-five years old, balding, with thick glasses. He understood the question at once. “Still four, so far. We’ve taken all the patients off the computers and are handling medication manually, as we used to.”

“Have you figured out yet what happened?”

“Our medication software was scrambled.” Winfield’s tone was matter-of-fact, but Daryl could hear the heartache behind it. “Patients were given medicines and dosages unrelated to their needs. It’s been a disaster and put us at considerable risk from lawsuits. My people are working on it, but we can use all the help we can get. Would you care to see?”

“Yes, I would. That’s why I’m here.” This was one reason why she’d insisted on getting into the field. Whatever this was, it had already shown itself to be deadly, and she needed to be on the ground to understand its true scope and impact.

They walked along hallways with confusing turns. Modern hospitals had been expanding so rapidly there was often little logic to their layout. Winfield steered right, then right again, then left three times. Some of the hallways turned off at less than right angles. Within a few turns, she was hopelessly lost.

At last he said, “Here.” Winfield took her into ICU, where a young girl lay fighting for her life. She looked perhaps eight years old. The number of wires running from her body were distressing, as was the steady beep of the monitor. A nurse hovered beside the girl poised for immediate action. Daryl was anything but sentimental. As she gazed at the inert form of the helpless child, though, the objective software engineer threatened to give way to the woman who adored children and was devastated to see one in such condition. Pulling herself together, she asked, “What happened?”

“Her medication was mixed, like the others. Her heart stopped—for an undetermined period of time, since she wasn’t on a monitor. There was no need…” The man was near tears.

Not far away a young couple watched the girl through a large window. Seeing where Daryl looked, Winfield said, “Her parents. Very nice people.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“We’re waiting for her signs to improve before we take her off the ventilator.” He touched Daryl’s sleeve and gently led her away. “The doctor believes she suffered severe brain damage. She’s young and strong. He’s hoping she’ll recover, but it’s not looking good. I wanted you to see the human toll this has taken.”

Daryl nodded. “I see it. I’d like to look at your system, if I could, and talk with your IT people.” She forced herself to remain steady. She’d need a clear head to unravel this disaster.

“Of course.” As they walked back through hallways toward the computer room, Winfield asked, “Why would anyone do something like this?”

“I have no idea.”

8

MOSCOW, RUSSIAN FEDERATION

DMITROSVSKY ADMINISTRATIVE DISTRICT

MONDAY, AUGUST 14

11:07 P.M.

A cold drizzle streaked the cracked window. It was already fall in Moscow. It seemed to Vladimir Koskov as if summer had been the briefest illusion. He reached out and pressed the aging tape back against the pane, but it rolled away almost immediately. He could feel the cold air leaching through the glass onto his hand.

Vladimir sighed, then picked up the butt of his unfiltered Turkish cigarette and used it to light another. He inhaled deeply, then coughed as he jabbed out the old cigarette and laid the fresh one on the edge of the ashtray.