AHMM, September 2012

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “Good answers,” I said. “So either the extortionists have the bomb already here and very well hidden, or they intend to shoot it in on a rocket.”

  George's head jerked up, then he decided I wasn't serious and relaxed. “I still think it's a bluff. We should be concentrating on keeping them from getting the money.”

  “You don't intend to pay them?”

  “No, we'll pay,” Rick snapped.

  George stared into space for a long minute, sighed. “We just can't take the risk not to. It would kill the company, and cripple the industry, if they blew up this plant. But if we could be sure we had the bomb...” He trailed off and stared into space some more.

  “Think we could take a quick plant tour?” I said.

  George stood and held Maria's chair for her. “I can tour two people, but only if you promise to stay close to one another.”

  Maria grinned at me and I muttered something about managing to do that and off we went. We walked around the access road until we came to a ground-level door that George carded and pulled open.

  “Swipe your badges through the reader and step inside; I'll be right ahead of you.”

  I raised an eyebrow and held up my badge. “It works?”

  “Yours? Not to open a door, no. But it tells the central computer and security folks exactly who's in each building on-site.”

  “Suppose they're not in a building?” Maria waved a hand at the access road we were on.

  George smirked a little. “Then they're watching you on surveillance TV.”

  The turbine building was the biggest I'd ever seen. It looked like a zeppelin hanger. The steam end had two turbines, a high-pressure and a low-pressure version, using the same steam in sequence, and both howled. George handed us ear protectors. A long walk took us to the production end and the generator. Its howl was less than the turbines, and lower in pitch, but it still stifled conversation. It sounded like they were making watts. Big watts.

  At one time I had been intimately familiar with turbogenerators, but the sheer scale of this one put it in a different league. It sat in the large space like a monument to power, all its support equipment out of sight or built along the walls. One huge wall was nothing but windows, a few open to allow a faint gulf breeze to seep in and temper the heat.

  “Gets right hot in here in the summer,” shouted George. “Even with the cooling systems. The cooling water is coming from both the small lakes. Good thing it isn't full summer, or we'd have to shut one of the units down for lack of cooling water.”

  I pulled my soggy shirt away from my chest, wiped the sweat off my neck, and glanced at Maria. She glowed a little. George opened another door and waited for us to precede him, and we did, almost trotting to get out of the heat.

  We went down a wide corridor between banks of monitoring boards and operating stations. It was by comparison cool and quiet. I pulled the ear protection free and shook the sweat off it. George was doing his tour talk and I'd missed the first few minutes.

  “...only manned on startups and shutdowns. The rest of the time we try, and almost always successfully, to run between ninety-five and a hundred-percent power. Stockholders love those numbers.” He stopped to wipe the sweat from his face, and nodded to the other side of the room. “Over there is the room where the guy huffed himself to death this morning.”

  “Can we take a look in there?” Maria waved her hand at the door. “It's the only thing here that's sort of in my field of expertise.”

  George glanced at me. I kept a blank face. “Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

  He swiped the lock and opened the door; we swiped at it and stepped in. I saw Maria's eyebrows rise fractionally. I figured she was looking for the crime-scene tape that wasn't there. The room was a large storage area, with a few operating panels on the outer wall. Shelves, mostly empty, lined the two side walls. On the floor lay a large plastic bag. A tan gas cylinder with no label lay on the bag. I saw her eyebrows creep a little higher but couldn't tell what she had seen. Or not seen.

  She turned to George and showed a small, puzzled smile. “No crime-scene paraphernalia scattered around?”

  George shrugged and I had an impulse to warn him, but decided not to.

  “Why? There was no crime here—death by misadventure, at worst. It may wind up as an industrial accident when the insurance people get finished with it,” he said.

  “Who decided it was accidental?” she said.

  “The chief of security for LoBRA. And me, of course, as the senior executive on-site.” Her eyes were crackling with anger. I was surprised George couldn't hear them. “Police are in the control room, finishing up their report. NRC says ‘no event.’ We told the county sheriff, too, of course, and he'll let the coroner know there was absolutely no evidence of foul play.”

  That did it. Maria came out of her slouch with a snap and marched across the floor. She nudged the big plastic bag. “You think he held this up with one hand while he opened that cylinder with the other, then held on—continuously—until he passed out and died? You think that bag just stood there over his head until he died? You think the gas cylinder rolled over onto the inflated bag after he passed out and turned loose of it?"

  “He was huffing helium, for God's sake! It'd pull that bag upright. All he had to do was grasp it until he fell, then it vented away. Maybe someone kicked the cylinder when they took the body. What don't you understand?”

  She glared at him. “A lot,” she said. “But I do know how huffers die, and I do know that's not a helium tank—look at the piece of red tag on the bottom. It held hydrogen or something flammable, and when you huff that, you throw up before you die, not to mention what the body does when it dies. Where's the vomitus? Over there where the scuff marks are on the floor? Did they pause in moving the body to clean up the floor? Any fingerprints on that plastic bag? It would take nice prints.”

  George had to try one more shot, even though he could see my caution signal. “So what if it wasn't helium? Any gas except oxygen can asphyxiate someone. So maybe it was another inert gas that wouldn't leave physical signs. So he huffed himself to death on argon! Who cares what gas killed him?”

  “Who cares? I care. I care a lot about being professional. And argon is much, much heavier than helium. It'd fall right out of that bag and probably bounce on the floor. Vlad, let's get out of here. These people are as bad as hick-town lawmen.”

  “Look,” said George, “we don't need to argue about this. We know the man is dead and was alone when he died. I'll call and make sure an autopsy is done to find out exactly what killed him.”

  “How do we know he was alone? Anyone check the tracking computer?” Maria was glaring at George.

  “Yes, they did.” George looked pleased. “One other man, a man named Arturo, went in with him, but left after nine minutes. A crew chief found Jimmy's body forty-five minutes later.”

  “And in what part of those fifty-four minutes did Jimmy die?” Maria looked as if she actually expected an answer.

  George looked away, took a deep breath, said: “There's another man out here I'd like you to speak with. Perhaps he can suggest some way these people threatening us expect to cause an explosion.” He turned to Maria. “I apologize for shouting at you; you doubtless have a different view than I do and I should respect it. I'll personally hunt down Arturo, who was in with Jimmy for the first few minutes, and find out what they were doing. I'll let you know as soon as I find out. Can we go now?”

  * * * *

  The man George wanted us to see was the emergency planning manager for LoBRA. He was a tall, heavyset man named Philip Grayson and his office was in the LoBRA Administration Building, up above one of the remaining lakes. Grayson had a front office with windows looking in two directions, both away from the heavily reinforced concrete containment buildings.

  I introduced myself and Maria and explained what we were looking for while George made his escape. Sitting, leaning back, Grayson was nearly taller than I was standing up. St
ill he leaned his head back, peering down at us through the bottoms of his glasses.

  “You want to prowl through my past emergency exercise scenarios to see if you can find something that would really work—in your opinion—to blow up my place of work. That about right?”

  “Not exactly the way I would have phrased it, but yes.”

  “Hmm. Well, perhaps I can save you a tedious day or two of rummaging through all my past exercise folders. Suppose I summarize what's there?”

  “I'm sure that would be helpful,” I said.

  “What is the big event, the threat that you want to see if we ever used? A core meltdown perhaps? Or a meteor strike on containment when at full power? Perhaps a cadre of highly trained and ruthless foreign terrorists assaulting us and then running away with our fuel assemblies over their hearty shoulders? Any of those please you?”

  I walked over to the window and stood looking at one of the lakes. There were a few alligators sunning themselves along the inner berm, a short run from the water. I turned and looked at Grayson.

  “Mr. Grayson, I'm aware that we're asking for a lot of your time, but we are seriously interested in finding, and stopping, whoever is planning to blow your plant off the face of Texas. The more you amuse yourself by playing on our presumed ignorance of your importance and knowledge, the more time they'll have to make your job redundant. Now, can you help us, or shall we find another way to get the information?”

  Still leaning back, Grayson said “Would I be right in thinking that if I amuse myself further, I might see more and more of you?”

  “A certainty.”

  He leaned forward, bringing his head back level. “An explosion, eh? Let's do it chronologically.... The first year we did a full exercise was in 1984, but they didn't do much terrorism or bomb simulations back then. They stayed with the more probable events—tornadoes, simultaneous equipment failures, hurricanes. First consideration of explosions was, oh, around 1990.” He spun his chair around and considered the bookshelf, then pulled a thick binder from the shelf. He flipped to the third tab and glanced at the page there.

  “In the 1990 exercise they removed some of the guard force with simulated grenades. Then later on there was a simulated steam explosion—limited damage to the secondary plant, no effect on the primary side. Not that one, eh?”

  I agreed, as did Maria. Nothing there for a model.

  Grayson continued, sometimes touching a volume lightly, shaking his head and skipping it without comment.

  “Now here, 2003 was a good year for antiterrorism. They postulated bringing in small amounts of plastique and TNT in the group's lunch boxes—you know sliced plastique looks a lot like cheese?—and assembled it at the end to destroy the cooling for the spent-fuel pool. Now that would have shut down the plant, but not blown it away.”

  He finished, blew the dust from his fingers, and looked at us. “Anything?” he asked.

  I looked at the shelves. The volume for 2007 was missing. I asked about it.

  “That scenario disappeared last year. One of our emergency planners took it, along with all the copies. We think it was a man named Gruber. He was angry at us, claimed that we owed him a great deal of overtime pay for development of that exercise's data.”

  Grayson sighed. “He was getting more and more radical. I finally had to transfer him to the corporate offices in Houston. Keep him from distracting the team, you know. I heard they finally had to fire him.”

  “Do you recall what events were exercised in that one?”

  Grayson waved a hand at the bookshelves filling the wall. “Afraid not. After a few years one tends to mix all the events together in one's mind. Someday I'll find another copy somewhere.”

  He looked at us. “Did any of this help clarify your problem?”

  “Nothing springs right out at me,” I said. “Maria?”

  “No. I didn't hear anything that could do what was threatened.”

  “Then...?” Grayson stood and held his hands, palms up, at shoulder level.

  We also stood. I stared up at Grayson, who was looking down through the bottom of his glasses. “Thank you. Both for your time and your patience.”

  He nodded and seemed more relaxed. When I stuck out my hand, he shook it. Then an escort arrived and we left. I was feeling pretty good about the day until Maria stepped into a blob of sun-soft tar in the parking lot.

  * * * *

  The next morning, before it got hot, we sat on the high deck and ate breakfast while we kicked around ideas on the LoBRA problem. After a few minutes we decided that we didn't know enough to even guess at answers, so Maria took to the Internet and I the phone, and we began looking for Mr. Gruber. I had just put down the phone when it rang. For her, and the voice sounded like Oklahoma.

  She took the phone and began grunting and saying cryptic words back to it, ending with, “Two days max. If you can't clear it up by then there will be nobody left standing. No. Two days! Max.” She listened a bit more and said, “Tonight,” and hung up. She looked at me and said, “Crime wave in Tulsa. Five dead gangbangers. They think they need help confirming the mode of their deaths.”

  She poured herself another cup of coffee and stared at the long, slow swells sliding almost to the dunes. Finally she said, “I need a ride to Hobby Airport.” She went back to staring at the gulf. “Can I catch a plane today?”

  I thought about it. “Better wait until tomorrow. Might miss the ferry.”

  “Oh. The ferry. Right, we'll wait. Play it safe.”

  That evening we went up the peninsula to a restaurant that sat on stilts next to the Intracoastal Waterway and had seafood so fresh that I stabbed mine before I started to eat. Afterwards we sat on the restaurant porch, sipped Mexican beer, and watched the few tows and yachts slide silently along the canal. It was a good evening.

  “Vlad?”

  “Yes.”

  “Doesn't that ferry run every hour?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thanks for not remembering earlier.”

  “You're welcome. Shall we go home? I'll help you pack.”

  “Not going. Gonna set up a teleconference every morning with the Tulsa team, and help you find out whodunit.”

  * * * *

  The work began. Maria set up a computer link with her team. In between questioning them and offering suggestions, she began tracking down the elusive scenario writer Charles Gruber. After Houston's office fired him, he had dropped out of sight. His phone had been disconnected they said, and his address abandoned. There were no police or hospital reports on him. The unemployment office had never heard of him. He had not signed up for gas, water, electric, or phone service anywhere near Houston or the nuclear plant. He was in the wind, she said.

  I kept going out to the LoBRA nuclear plant and pouring over prints and the plant design specs, still looking for the invisible bomb that just had to be somewhere around. Even desperate criminals don't try big league extortion without something to back their story, even if it's a bluff. I took tours, when I could get an escort, and spent a lot of time looking in dark, hot corners. I even took a portable explosives sniffer around the plant. I found nothing, not even out near the generator, which was still howling at ninety-six percent power.

  When I got home, more of my walls were covered with sticky notes. They all had cryptic statements on them. I read a few. “Res address not changed on driver's lic. Misdemeanor in Texas?,” “No new SS sign-up,” “auto registered in C. Gruber name—new vehicle added—an Airstream?” “No Gruber air flights—in or out.”

  The phone in my den began ringing, interrupting my reading of the notes. It was George.

  “Thought you'd want to know, we found Arturo, who was in the room with Jimmy. He was here all the time, out by the Colorado River pumping station, on the edge of the owner-controlled area. It's taken us several days to identify him, but we're now sure it's Arturo. Looks like he was shot in the back of the head.”

  “What did he do?” I said.

  “Hell,
I don't know. Really annoyed someone I guess.”

  “I mean, what did he do for your company?”

  “He was a tech.”

  “Come on, everyone out there's a tech. What did he do?"

  “Oh. He worked with gases, all those we use around the plant. And he handled the plumbing and storage facilities for them, that kind of thing.”

  “Hmm,” I said. “Anything else new?”

  “Well, they found that Jimmy died of asphyxiation. And the coroner changed the rules on smoking in the autopsy room. Something about opening lungs full of hydrogen.”

  “Ah-ha.”

  “Why did you say ah-ha?"

  “I could have said ‘Ah so,’ but I was afraid it would sound like an old Charlie Chan movie. I'll call you when I make some progress, but it looks like our extortionist is starting to cut back on overhead costs.”

  I hung up and went back to the strategy room, my former living room, where Maria was standing and looking at the notes on the wall.

  “Want to go out to dinner?” I said.

  “What's an Airstream?” she answered.

  “Sort of a smaller travel or camping trailer. Really popular some years back. Now, about dinner...”

  “That's what I thought. I made sandwiches,” she said. “They're under the maps in the dining area. Wine's in the fridge.”

  “Wine?”

  “It's okay, it's a local variety.”

  “Local?”

  She nodded over her shoulder. “Mr. Bajinsky, up the beach about a quarter mile, he made it. He also loaned me his extra car for a couple days. He said he only keeps it in case his Harley breaks down. It's an electric.”

  So we spent the evening eating sandwiches, drinking local wine—which wasn't bad after the first glass or two—and closely inspecting maps for a hundred mile stretch of the Gulf Coast.

  “What am I looking for again?” I said.

  “State Parks, National Wildlife Reserves, federal parks—anything that rents camping spaces. You have any idea how hard it is to find someone hiding in one of those?”