Meltdown

by Chuck Holton

  A flash lit up the water behind him, followed by a thunderclap. Samael turned to see a small mushroom cloud of orange flame ascending above the trees from the direction of the coal yard. A surge of adrenaline shot through him at the sight.

  Excellent. A hundred acres of burning coal will blacken the sky for miles around.

  But that was someone else’s problem now. Samael turned and paddled faster. He’d been lucky this time. He would not be so careless again.

  10

  Parishev, in the Dead Zone

  ALEXI BABICHEV DIDN’T OWN a gun. He’d never needed one before. But whenever he didn’t have the right tools, which was most of the time, he made do with those he did have. That was what he would do now.

  He crouched behind a hedge near the church. There was no sign of the terrible men who had imprisoned him. But their truck was still there, the bed full of barrels of the foul-smelling drugs or whatever it was they had been making. He was sure they would be back for it, probably after searching nearby Pripyat for any treasures others might have missed.

  But I will make sure their truck does not go far. He looked down at the bag of sugar in his hand and smiled at the thought of their breaking down halfway to their destination.

  He took another pull on his flask of vodka, feeling the liquid warmth spread through his torso. Mother will be proud.

  His old knees popped as he rose from his crouch. There was not much time. These malenke men might be back soon. He hurried to the side of the truck and put a hand on the gas cap.

  Before he got it free, the warmth in his chest turned to ice.

  Footsteps!

  Sweeney could hear the explosions even before he’d reached the top of the metal stairs. By the time he and Mary reached the outer portico, his legs and lungs were on fire.

  They burst out of the lab’s guard room. Sweeney was surprised to see Rip and John not firing back. Instead, they were crouched on either side of the door, staring skyward.

  What the—?

  At that moment there was a pop from the direction of Pripyat, and a missile streaked over their heads. Several seconds later, a distant crump sounded as the rocket impacted on its target.

  “They’re not shooting at us?” Mary gasped, trying to regain her breath.

  Rip was peering through the scope on his sniper rifle. “Nope. Someone is firing RPGs from that high-rise back in the ghost town.”

  Sweeney was doubled over, waiting for all his body parts to get back to their original shape. “Great. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Not great!” Mary said, puffing. “They’re shooting at the reactor! We have to stop them!”

  Sweeney straightened. “No, that’s the job of the company of ticked-off Ukrainian soldiers that’ll be coming this way in a hot minute. And we’d better scoot before that happens.”

  “No,” John said suddenly. “Olenka said the sarcophagus on the reactor is already shaky. Obviously, someone is trying to help it along.

  If they succeed, we’re talking a major radioactive catastrophe. Who knows how many could die—including all of us. The Ukrainians might not make it in time.”

  “Then what are we waiting for, bro?” Rip jumped up and started running toward Pripyat without waiting for an answer. John was right behind him.

  Mary gave Sweeney a wide-eyed look and sucked in a ragged lungful of air, then jogged off after the others.

  Sweeney groaned and fell in behind her. A siren wailed from the direction of the reactor.

  I wasn’t planning on dying today.

  They covered the distance back to the ATVs in the time it took whoever was firing the RPGs to get off two more rounds toward the Chernobyl reactor. From here, Sweeney could clearly see the top of the abandoned apartment building—twelve stories high and only two hundred meters away. Just before the last shot, he had seen two figures silhouetted against the sky as one lifted the rocket launcher to his shoulder and fired.

  What kind of suicidal idiots…

  John Cooper pointed to the vehicles and shouted, “Rip, you and Phoenix stay here and engage them with the sniper rifle. Try to keep them from firing another round. Bobby and me will try to get up there. Be ready to come get us.”

  “Roger that!” Rip flipped out the bipod on the sniper rifle, while Mary started tearing the branches away from the four-wheelers.

  Sweeney jumped on the nearest one and kicked it into gear just as John threw his leg over the seat behind him.

  “Go!” John shouted.

  They covered the two hundred yards to the high-rise in under thirty seconds. Sweeney careened around the side of the building and slid to a stop. The entrance was obscured by overgrown shrubs. He heard a shot ring out from Rip’s Dragunov just as they made the stairs.

  Inside, the building was completely trashed, as if a mini-tornado had swept through and created a tossed salad of broken furniture and appliances and had then garnished it with the stink of rot, rust, and mildew.

  “There!” John said, pointing to a stairwell.

  Sweeney had no energy for talking; he was saving it all for breathing. With a quick nod, he swept up the stairs two at a time.

  I ought to start an elevator business. If I live long enough.

  Chernobyl Guard Barracks, at the Reactor

  Captain Mykola Kirichenko hated his job.

  He sighed and adjusted the olive-green beret that covered his prematurely gray hair. He walked stiffly up the disintegrated concrete path that had once been a sidewalk, his ample bulk assuring that he was winded by the time he reached the door. It led into the gray steel box where he spent half of every month sitting on his backside.

  Though intended to save their lives by shielding him and his men from the radiation that would plague Chernobyl for a dozen lifetimes, the soldiers in his command referred to it as “the tomb.” To Mykola, that was an understatement. For him, the suffocating, windowless space was only one step from hell.

  Mykola stopped before the door and turned to look at the massive concrete sarcophagus that had been hastily erected over the reactor more than twenty years ago. It looked like an industrial-gray cathedral, rising over thirty-five meters into a similarly colored sky and now encrusted in scaffolding. But it was more like a monument to the ineptitude of a broken system—Soviet Communism. He could still remember the lessons he’d learned as a ten-year-old schoolboy: The individual is nothing, society is everything. God is irrelevant.

  But now, it was the Soviet system that had proven to be irrelevant. What that said about him and God, Mykola wasn’t sure.

  As bad as his job was, he felt sorry for the men who composed the work crews that labored in shifts around the clock to shore up the crumbling concrete case that was all that stood between eastern Europe and a total nuclear meltdown. Though some of the workers were allowed as little as two minutes a week at their jobs because of the intense exposure to radiation, most would likely die of lymphoma or some other horrible cancer long before becoming grandparents.

  Mykola, on the other hand, would most likely die of boredom. The platoon of Ukrainian soldiers he commanded was assigned to guard the reactor. What that boiled down to was spending untold hours sequestered in the lead-lined dayroom, watching old movies and rereading tattered men’s magazines until one could no longer stand to gaze at them.

  He actually looked forward to the infrequent patrols through Pripyat and the surrounding area. The unseen, unfelt killer that radiated from every building, tree, and blade of grass no longer bothered him. After all, there were a few who actually lived in the area…like that crazy old farmer in Parishev. Mykola had once asked him his secret for staying healthy.

  “Get plenty of sleep, pray every day, and drink only kvass,” he’d said.

  The old man may have had a point with that last one. Kvass was made from juice of the beech tree, whose roots went deep to find water. This made its sap less likely to be contaminated—a natural filtration system. Maybe the codger wasn’t so crazy after all.

  He
sighed, then spit on the ground. “May you rot, Oleksandr Opanasovich.”

  It was a sort of ritual he practiced every day—curse the lieutenant whose incompetence was responsible for Mykola’s assignment to this toxic wasteland.

  The man had once been his subordinate, when he’d commanded an artillery battalion in Crimea. Mykola had enjoyed a promising career until a gang of Russian mafia had stolen a crate of 9K111 antitank missiles out from under Lieutenant Oleksandr Opanasovich during a field exercise. As his commander, then-Colonel Mykola Kirichenko had also taken the fall. He was demoted, humiliated, and relieved of his command.

  And so here he was, biding his time for another three months before he would finally be eligible to retire.

  Mykola swung the door open and was hit in the face by an acrid blast of stale cigarette smoke. The twelve men watching television in the room barely noticed their commander at the door. He sighed again and stepped inside.

  No sooner had the door swung closed behind him when Mykola heard a crash outside.

  One of the men looked up and said, “Oh God, someone fell off the scaffolding again.” Nobody made a move to investigate the sound.

  “Well, don’t everyone jump at once,” Kirichenko said, laying on the sarcasm. “I’ll have a look.”

  He stepped back out into the fresh air but saw nothing. Then he noticed a wisp of smoke coming from the side of the reactor, partially obscured by the tall chain-link fence that separated his building from the plant.

  Now he saw workers running—some toward the smoke and some away from it.

  Oh no. Something has exploded!

  Every nightmare he’d had for the last two years flooded into his mind. Everyone knew the sarcophagus was unstable, but the consequences of a collapse were too terrible to contemplate.

  Before he could call to anyone, something streaked in from the east and detonated with a flash in the yard between him and the reactor. A fireball erupted skyward, accompanied by a blast that hit him like a sledgehammer to the chest, knocking him off his feet.

  He fought for breath as his men poured from the building behind him. Unaware of what was going on, they crowded around their commander, looking down at him with half-amused smiles as if he’d slipped on a banana peel.

  “What happened, Capitan?” one man inquired.

  Mykola struggled to his knees, gasping for air. “A…ah…attack!” he sputtered, gesturing to the wispy trail of smoke that traced the missile’s path.

  Bedlam descended on the platoon, and men went running in all directions.

  Suddenly the thought of another boring day in the tomb sounded very appealing. But Mykola was not going to watch his retirement go up in smoke. He rose to his feet, feeling the muscles on his thick neck bulge in anger. “Sound the alarm!” he roared.

  He could not fathom who would be trying to bring down the reactor, but Captain Mykola Kirichenko would stop the madmen, or die trying.

  11

  IT SEEMED STRANGE to Maxim that he should feel so alive on the day of his death.

  A butterfly flitted past as he hurried along the path to the village. The mist had disappeared, and everything seemed more vivid. Even the sun peeked through the clouds, as if to entice him to delay his departure for the next life.

  But Maxim wasn’t to be swayed. A glorious death had been the focus of his life for decades. He had anticipated this day ever since he was a child, sitting together with the other youths at the mosque while the imam painted in their minds glorious pictures of martyrdom, Paradise, and virgins. And despite his having resisted the infidel bravely in three countries, Allah had not granted his wish until today.

  The plan was working perfectly. He had gone with Kyr, Ayad, Omar, and Khamzad before dawn, each of them packing three rockets. They carried no delusions, however, that the Soviet-made weapons would actually cause the two-foot-thick concrete walls of the sarcophagus to collapse. The distance from the apartment building to the reactor was almost eleven hundred meters—the extreme edge of the shoulder-launched missile’s range. It was unlikely they’d do much damage.

  But once the firing started, that made little difference. As soon as the first rocket dropped inside the tall chain-link fence around the reactor, the view through Maxim’s binoculars resembled an anthill that had just been kicked. It was obvious that the Ukrainian defenders were mobilizing almost every man to Pripyat to deal with the threat.

  For a few moments, at least, the reactor would be virtually unguarded.

  Smiling, Maxim broke into a run. His truck was loaded and waiting with almost two thousand pounds of homemade ammonium nitrate explosives that he and his men had cooked up in the last few days. He imagined what the blast would look like—knowing he would not see it, as he would already be stepping into Paradise. But those left behind would likely see a mushroom cloud of radioactive poison thrown high into the heavens, only to be carried across Europe and Russia by the wind.

  The news of it would reach around the world within seconds. Those who shared his jihad would celebrate this day forever. There would be songs and poems written about him.

  He reached the truck where it was parked by the church, and circled around to the driver’s side, already rehearsing the route that would take him to the reactor. He jerked the door open and climbed inside.

  The heavy gasoline engine coughed, then roared to life.

  He smiled. It was a good day to die.

  Eighth floor.

  Sweeney’s heart pounded like a high school drum section, but he was spurred upward by every clatter of automatic weapons fire echoing through the jagged holes that had once been windows.

  Rip’s voice sounded in his headset. “We’ve engaged shooters on the rooftop and are taking return fire!”

  Sweeney never thought he’d be glad to hear that his buddies were under fire. But if the guys on the roof were shooting at Rip, maybe they wouldn’t be shooting at the reactor. And that was definitely a good thing.

  John responded curtly. “How many?”

  “Two personnel that we can see.”

  “Roger,” he gasped. “Keep shooting.”

  “No problem.”

  Tenth floor. Sweeney’s lungs were going to explode.

  As they had on each previous level, once they reached the top of a flight of stairs, they had to run down the hallway that traversed the building from front to back in order to reach the next flight. The floors were layered with plaster dust and large flecks of paint that had fallen from the crumbling concrete walls and ceilings like misshapen, man-made leaves. Light filtered in through long-destroyed windows and reflected off the dust thrown up by the men’s passing.

  Sweeney knew they ought to be progressing more carefully, since the enemy might well have booby-trapped the way up. But in this particular clash between speed and safety, speed took the upper hand.

  Sweeney vaulted over the remains of an old bed frame and had almost reached the next stairwell when a finger of white smoke stabbed toward the reactor from the roof above. He slid to a stop, watching the RPG round streak toward its target, then explode with a puff of flame against the side of the reactor.

  John skidded up next to him. “That thing is going to cave in with another round or two.”

  Sweeney’s earpiece crackled. It was Mary. “Valor One, please hurry. We can see Ukrainian forces heading this way.”

  The two men stepped up to the window, panting.

  John hit his transmitter. “Break contact, Phoenix. If you stop shooting and lie low, maybe they won’t see you.” He turned to Sweeney. “We don’t have much time.”

  “Well, quit talking! Go!”

  “God help us,” John said as he pushed past Sweeney and charged up the stairs.

  “You can say that again.” Sweeney fell in behind him. It was the closest thing to a prayer he’d uttered in years.

  Twenty seconds later they reached the top landing and heard another shot ring out from below. Hopefully that’s Rip keeping them occupied. As they rounded th
e corner, Sweeney could see a large wardrobe lying across the hallway, blocking it.

  John looked back at him and held a finger to his lips, then signaled for Sweeney to cover him while he navigated the obstacle.

  But just as John turned his head, Sweeney saw a face peer out from the stairway at the end of the hall. “Down!” he shouted, bringing his weapon up.

  Without hesitating, John dropped to a crouch just as Sweeney slapped the trigger on his assault rifle.

  A round exploded from the barrel of his AK, followed by a cry of pain as the terrorist went down.

  John jumped back up, weapon at the ready, just as Sweeney saw something drop from the wounded man’s hand and roll across the floor.

  “Grenade!” He tackled John and drove him back to the floor as his world erupted with a roar.

  A stab of fiery pain shot through Sweeney’s left shoulder. His head rang like a tin washtub rolling down a hill. He groaned and rolled off his team leader.

  “You dead?” John asked, coughing.

  Sweeney spit and got to his knees. “I think so.”

  John stuck his head over the top of the wardrobe. “Let’s go, then.” He vaulted over the cabinet.

  Sweeney hauled himself to his feet in time to see John collide with a large bearded terrorist with an assault rifle who had just reached the bottom of the stairs. The swarthy man was fat, no match for the stocky and athletic Special-Ops warrior, but his momentum drove them both to the ground.

  Sweeney dove clumsily over the cabinet and rolled onto the floor as John fought the terrorist. The man’s rifle discharged, just missing Sweeney and punching a hole in the wooden barricade where he’d just been.

  As he stumbled to his feet, John rolled on top of his opponent and delivered a vicious head butt to the bridge of the man’s nose. By the time Sweeney reached them, the man appeared to be unconscious, with John astride him.

  “Go!” John rasped.

  Sweeney stepped through the haze lingering from the grenade and sighted his weapon up the stairs. They were empty. He stepped over the crumpled body of the first terrorist and took the stairs two at a time, keeping his weapon trained on the open metal door at the top.