“Go grab him!”
The guards gathered themselves quickly. One saw Dan dart from behind a tree trunk.
They fanned out to catch him.
Nathaniel gazed at the blank screen of the cell phone. The bombs he’d had planted within the Shanghai reactor would have gone off by now. In ten minutes or so the coolant waters would reach a critical pressure and cause the reactor to explode. It wouldn’t be on a nuclear scale, but he estimated several city blocks would blow with the initial blast.
And he’d be rid of Alek Spasky. The Russian had become a liability. Nathaniel had never been able to control him, not like the others, and such a man had to be handled very carefully, and removed once his usefulness was at an end.
The rest of his allies he’d deal with at Attleboro.
Nathaniel heard Dan shout, and there were sounds of a struggle, then a crash, and after, just weary huffing. Moments later, two guards emerged from the trees, dragging a semiconscious Dan between them. One of the guards had a black eye and another was missing a tooth.
Nathaniel admired that. Was that inherited from Grace’s stubbornness or Nathaniel’s own determination? The boy would defy him to the very end, that much was obvious.
Nathaniel took hold of Dan’s hair and raised his head. “I have wasted enough time with you. I need the thirty-ninth clue. I need the formula.”
Dan spat at him.
Nathaniel struggled to hold on to his temper. Why did he hate the boy and girl so much? They were his grandchildren.
No, they are Grace’s.
They both embodied so much of her and so little of him. Their parents had died when they were young, so the only true parent had been Grace. What had it been like, in her shadow? For Nathaniel it had meant being permanently left in the dark. Grace had ruled and ruled alone.
He often wondered how she’d ordered his death, back in 1967. Had she lain awake at night, conflicted? Or had it merely been an entry on her daily agenda?
Item 13. Pick up laundry.
Item 14. Kill my husband.
Item 15. Attend opera.
He’d loved her, hated her, but always admired her.
There was a strong family resemblance, so strong that, it seemed to Nathaniel, it had wiped out all traces of him. Grace had left her mark deeper than their skins—she’d marked their souls.
Nathaniel pulled harder, enough to make Dan wince. He smiled. Old, fond memories flooded back. Perhaps this was the best way.…
“I was in Germany during the Cold War. That was a war of spies and nowhere was it fought harder than in Berlin. It was a golden age of espionage and there was a great demand for reliable truth serums.” He glanced at a pair of steel doors just a few yards away. “No matter how strong you think you are, you will break and tell me everything. Everyone does in the end.”
Shanghai, China
Whatever the evacuation plan had been, it had fallen apart with the first siren. No one seemed to know which way to run. Amy helped one man back to his feet after he’d been hurled over by a screaming security guard.
“What’s happening?” she asked him.
The man tried to pull away, but she wasn’t letting go until she had answers. “The reactor’s overheating! The chamber’s starting to rupture! We have got to get out of here!”
“Overheating? How?”
The man squirmed. “Please, let me go!”
“Tell me!”
He looked around for help, but it was every man for himself. “Excessive heat buildup. That’s usually absorbed by running water as a coolant through the system. But somehow the pumps have failed, so there’s no water flow and no way of getting rid of the heat!”
“Failed? How have they failed? What about backups?”
“Please! I don’t know! All I know is the reactor temperatures are off the scale!”
Amy released him and the man fled.
This is Nathaniel’s disaster replay. What had happened at Chernobyl? The same thing. There had been a spike in energy generated in one of the reactors, but the coolant flow had been too little and too slow to get rid of it. The buildup had caused the explosion.
She needed to get to the control room.
There was a map on the wall and Alek ripped it off. The security doors had all opened, so there was no stopping her from accessing wherever she wanted.
Amy and Alek, dragging Dr. Lin, ran up a steel staircase into a corridor with a large internal window panel. On the other side were control decks and a large electronic schematic of the power station, lit up like a Christmas tree. Bulbs flashed red on all points.
The room was empty. Chairs had been tipped over and there were a few tablets and other electronic devices abandoned on the floor. When the alarm had sounded, they’d left without grabbing anything.
Amy ran up to the deck. The screens pulsed.
All the dials and controls were in Chinese.
She couldn’t hear herself think! The alarms were deafening!
This is hopeless. It’s going to blow!
Dr. Lin scanned the display board. Alarms dazzled and flashed—the whole system was in catastrophe mode. None of it made any sense to Amy; she felt useless.
The panic swelled in her. She fought down the urge, the almost overwhelming urge, to flee. To run and run and not look back.
A tremor shook the complex. Amy gulped, fearing this was the moment the reactor would explode. The steel beams ground against the concrete as the power station shifted.
Amy turned to Dr. Lin. “What’s happening? What went wrong?”
Tears were streaming down Dr. Lin’s face. “I—I can’t tell. It’s all … ”
“There has to be something!” Amy snapped. “Nathaniel couldn’t have sabotaged the entire system! Someone would have noticed!”
Alek approached the wall. “She’s right. It would be something relatively small, easily missed.”
The wall itself was over twenty feet wide and a dozen high. One huge digital screen filled with the schematic of the fusion reactor. On top of that was a 3-D holographic display, projecting sensor readings. She could decipher some. Temperatures. Flow rates. Pressures. All tripping into the red zone.
The room shook with a second explosion. The floor cracked, and Amy heard a threatening roar from deep within the bowels of the power station.
The display crackled and a panel went blank.
Dr. Lin couldn’t stop shaking. “It’s too late … it’s too late.”
Amy dragged the doctor to the wall. “You have to tell me what’s wrong!”
They faced each other. Amy took a deep breath. Attacking Dr. Lin would do no good. She needed her. “How does the reactor work? Just explain it to me. Simply.”
Dr. Lin straightened. She was going into lecture mode. “The reactor is basically a heat generator. In its simplest form it’s nothing more than a steam engine. The heat from the reactor heats the water that turns the turbine, which generates the electricity that is then transmitted throughout the city.” She pointed to a complex series of lines weaving in and across the schematic. “Here is the generator. There are the flow pipes. Water going in, and water going out, heated to extreme temperatures. It expands to steam, it drives the turbines.”
The station rumbled and the display flickered. They didn’t have long.
Dr. Lin raised her head and listened. “The pressure is building somewhere. There must be a blockage.” She adjusted her glasses and busied herself over the console. “We’ve got a heat buildup reaching catastrophic levels. That’s the problem.” She gasped and stabbed her finger at a gate symbol. “One of the coolant valves is jammed shut. That’s what’s going wrong. And the backup’s been taken off line. Who would do that?”
Alek joined them. “Can you switch it on?”
Dr. Lin grimaced. “With the temperature buildup we need both valves open. I can open the backup from here but it won’t bleed off the heat quickly enough.” She darted to the control desk. “The valve needs to be opened.” She clicked o
n the keyboard. “There are microcameras within the pipes, all used as part of the maintenance program.”
One of the panels transformed into a screen, viewing the inside of a pipe. Bubbles distorted the image and the camera had been twisted out of position, but there was a circular steel gate, mostly closed. The coolant frothed and whirled as it tried to get through the small gap between gate edge and the valve frame.
“How do we open it?” Alek asked.
“It has to be done by hand.” Dr. Lin shook her head. “It’s suicide. You’d have to enter the flow pipes themselves. The pipes pass through the reactor, so the coolant itself is radioactive.”
Alek looked from her to the display. “How long would you have before getting a lethal dose?”
Dr. Lin stared. “You cannot be serious.”
“How long?”
Dr. Lin brushed her hair from her face. Her lips moved silently as she scanned the readings. “The coolant is absorbing radiation, so you’ll need to move fast before they build to fatal levels. The suits have radiation counters on them. Get out before they light all the way through red.” Dr. Lin glanced at the display. “Which gives you about ten minutes, given the rate of contamination.”
Ten minutes to do such a simple thing. All she had to do was turn a bit of steel, push it open, and they’d save a city. Amy stared at the screen, trying to guess how heavy it might be.
Just put your feet against one side and push. The water pressure will do the rest.
Don’t think about the radiation seeping into your bones.
“I’ve got to get into the flow pipe,” Amy said.
“You’re insane.” Dr. Lin sank into the chair, a look of disbelief still covering her face. “And you can’t do it alone. The gate needs to be locked into position, otherwise it’ll just slam shut again.”
Alek met Amy’s gaze.
His wife had died in a reactor. Amy wondered if Natalia thought she’d been a hero, or a fool. She’d saved thousands of lives, but had her death changed Alek? What sort of man would he have been if she’d lived?
Alek smiled. “I am an assassin, not a mass murderer. I’ll help.”
Dr. Lin donned an abandoned headset. “Take the elevator to level minus six. That’s the maintenance level. Go to access hatch sixty-three. There should be a set of full breathing gear, comms, and sealed suits that will offer some protection. The maintenance men use them, but they’re prototypes. No one’s tested them against anything above five hundred. Make sure you seal them properly. Any gap will mean contamination. Got it?”
Amy cupped her hand around the hologram of the gate. “And when I get to the gate?”
“Get it open as fully as you can. Then get out.”
They rushed down to the maintenance room. The whole complex was shaking now, and the walls bent and cracked under the strain. Amy’s heart raced like it had never done before. The whole reactor could blow any second.
Alek pushed open the steel door and in they went. The emergency lights filled the room with an eerie red glow, and goose bumps crept along Amy’s flesh, despite the stagnant heat that was building.
The sealed suits were folded up neatly within transparent plastic containers. Amy knocked the lid open.
Alongside the suits were small air tanks, breathing apparatus, and a chunky wristband with a digital reader. Nice and simple, with a row of twelve bars, green to orange to red.
“Radiation counters?” Amy guessed.
Alek handed her a headset. He hooked his around his ear and wrapped the throat mic around his neck. “Dr. Lin? Do you hear me?”
“Yes. Are you ready?”
Amy put on her headset and spoke to the waiting scientist as she suited up. “Where do we go now?”
“Through the maintenance door. You’ll come up to a pressure hatch. Once you’re in that, hit the flood button. That will equalize the pressure on both sides, the side you’re in and the pipe. Open up the second hatch at your feet and swim twenty meters to your left. You’ll see the jammed valve gate.”
“Got it,” replied Amy.
Alek and Amy checked each other to make sure their suits were fully sealed. The mask covered the entire face and included a headlight, allowing them to see each other clearly and talk through their comm sets. Amy just hoped she didn’t look as terrified as she felt.
Alek tested his mic. “Can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear.”
They walked to the hatch and together wound it open. Below was a steel tube, about five feet wide. A short ladder led them down four meters to a second hatch in the floor and a big red toadstool-shaped button on the wall.
Amy waited there while Alek reclosed the hatch above them. It was dark except for the light coming from their headlights.
Alek joined her. He tapped the radiation counter on his forearm. “We won’t have long.”
Three green bars glowed out of the twelve. A quarter of their time was already gone.
We can do this. In and out.
Amy punched the FLOOD button. Jets of water shot in at their ankles, rising to their knees in a couple of seconds, to their waist in a few seconds more.
Amy slowed down her breathing. She’d done enough scuba diving to know that slow, deep breaths were the best way to conserve oxygen and prevent carbon dioxide from getting trapped in her lungs. Bubbles swirled around her and the water roared, deep and thunderous.
The pipe filled and they both worked at turning the wheel lock on the hatch below them. The steel groaned as it opened, and Alek dropped down first.
Amy checked her reader. The fifth bar was flashing. It was all happening faster than she’d expected.
Could they fix the valve and be back up in time?
She didn’t know.
Amy gritted her teeth and descended.
The water surge almost knocked her off her feet, but Alek grabbed her wrist and they both hung on to the lip of the connection and scanned ahead.
“Twenty yards to the left,” said Amy. “See anything?”
Alek shook his head. “Too murky.” His voice crackled in Amy’s earpiece.
The coolant water had a sickly greenish tinge and was filled with bubbles, reducing visibility down to only five or six yards.
The water was dragging them toward the blockage valve, so they used the flow to their advantage. But as Amy glided along the five-foot-wide pipe, the whole thing shook, and the metal groaned and buckled. Kinks appeared in the steel surface, and the weak spots, the joints between pipe sections, were giving way.
“Watch out,” Amy warned. She braced herself against the wall. “Look ahead.”
They had reached the broken valve.
The gate valve was simply a circular steel plate, damaged by the sabotage, that was hinged along its center. The plate controlled flow, opening and shutting depending on the needs of the system. But the system needed it open right now, to help reduce the temperature buildup in the core. Now only a sliver of the edge had turned, forcing the water to tear through that gap at high velocity.
Three feet in front of the plate, fixed to a control mechanism in the side of the pipe, was a steel rod. It had been bent out of shape and needed to be eased back into position if the plate was to be opened, and kept open.
“I’ll push the plate, you move the rod,” said Alek. He tapped his reader. “And we need to be quick.”
Half the bars were glowing. They were heading into the red zone.
Amy’s headset crackled and Dr. Lin came on. “The pressure in the reactor core has hit a hundred and fifty percent. The shielding’s going to rupture if you don’t get that flow going right now.”
Amy gripped the rod. “Ready!”
Alek pushed the side of the plate, forcing it to turn on its axis. The steel didn’t want to move—the explosion had shifted it out of position and its edge was twisted, jagged metal.
The first red bar started flashing. They were into the last two minutes.
Amy pulled, feeling the rod shift ever so sligh
tly.
But if it was going to move a little, she could make it move the whole way.
“On the count of three, Alek!” she shouted. She braced herself against the side of the pipe wall, spreading her feet out to avoid being swept away. “One! Two!” She flexed her fingers and got the best grip she could. “Three!”
Alek roared as he pushed and Amy heaved at the rod, pulling until her arms trembled with pain. “Come … on … ”
The water flow increased as the gate began to open. It pushed Amy, trying to drag her down the pipe. The rod was sliding back into the locking mechanism. Only another few inches …
Amy fell forward as the rod slipped back into place. The water gushed over her but she held on even as her feet were lifted up from under her so she dangled like a fish on a line.
“You’ve done it!” yelled Dr. Lin. “Now hurry back and get out!”
“Come on, Alek!” shouted Amy, more relieved than she’d ever been.
“Cahill … ”
Amy turned.
Alek was hanging on to the edge of the plate, now fully open. He was slipping in the high flow. Amy’s headlight caught the hard grimace on his face as he clung on.
Amy reached out, one hand hanging on to the rod, the other stretched out toward Alek. “Grab it!”
She saw the bars on his arm. Nine flashed.
“Just get out!” he yelled.
“Give me your hand!”
He snarled, and Amy saw his arms quiver with the strain. Then his palm slapped into hers and they locked fingers.
Together, weights combined, they crawled against the flow, heads bowed as the water beat upon them.
Dr. Lin’s voice broke through on Amy’s headset. “There’s an emergency hatch another six feet ahead.”
Amy peered forward and saw the circular panel. Too tired to speak, she dragged herself to it and twisted the steel plate open.
The maintenance hatch fell open and the water rushed out of this fresh hole. The pair of them tumbled out, and Amy crashed onto bare concrete, gasping with total exhaustion.
Mission Atomic Page 11
