Stephen Coonts - Jake Grafton 5 - Red Horseman

by Red Horseman (lit)

  If he heard it. And by God, today he had heard it.

  The problem was Tarkington. He was a good man, but at times he was tough to swallow. Jack Yocke took a deep breath and added, "The public prosecutor has the three KGB agents who went to the police station locked up right now. They want to jug me." "Yeah, yeah, I know all that. You've scooped everybody and you're gonna be famous. Now tell me what this broad looked like.

  "Well, she was about five eight or so, dark brown shoulder-length hair, dark brown-almost black-eyes set wide apart, a classic bone structure." "Good figure?" "Well, I suppose so." "You queer or what?" Tarkington asked sharply.

  "She was wearing modest clothes, a good wool suit. Underneath it all she was probably built like a brick shithouse.

  Is that what you want to hear, sailor boy?" Toad met Jake Grafton's gaze. His eyebrows went up and down once in reply to Grafton's silent question.

  "You know her?" Yocke asked Toad.

  "Just curious, Jack. What I'm trying to figure out is why you." "Because she knew I was a reporter." con.th town is full of reporters. Why you?" "You two sailors are a real pair. I thought you'd let me hole up here." His voice rose: "But no, Jack, you might write something that embarrasses the good ol" U.s.

  of A.

  and we probably can't handle-was "That's enough," Jake said disgustedly. "You can sleep on the couch.

  Right now you go into Toad's room--he nodded toward the bedroom door--and write your story.

  When you're ready to send it in let me know. In the meantime don't pick up the phone even if it rings." Jack Yocke stood and hoisted the computer. He had half a mind to tell these two clowns where to go and what to do to themselves when they got there, but... He mumbled his thanks, then his eye fell on the maps and computer printouts. "Say, what is all this paper?" "Not a word to your editor about this one," Jake told him. "But you ain't the only guy with problems.

  The Russians just had another nuclear power plant meltdown." "Holy... to Like Chernobyl?" "Maybe worse." con"Where? Around here?" "Someplace called Serdobsk, about three hundred miles southeast of here.

  Now go in there and shut the door and let us work." After the door closed Toad turned on the radio. Classical music came out.

  "Judith Farrell?" Jake asked.

  "I'd bet the ranch, CAG." Jake Grafton went to the window and stood looking out.

  He rubbed the back of his neck, then moved his shoulders up and down.

  Finally he stretched.

  When he turned around he told Toad, "The Israelis sure get their money's worth out of that woman." "Uh-huh." Toad was looking at the map spread upon the floor. The wind was going to spread that radioactivity over hundreds of square miles.

  He was looking now at the villages in the fallout zone. He couldn't even pronounce the Russian names upon the chart. A great many people from a culture he didn't know were about to die, and it sickened him.

  con'Do you believe in God?" he asked Jake Grafton.

  "Only on Sundays," the admiral replied.

  "There's a military base here in this footprint, sir. a trovsk. Here, take a look. Wasn't that the base we visited a couple days ago?" Jake Grafton looked. "Yes.

  Petrovsk. Missiles with nuclear warheads." "They'll have to evacuate that base, if they haven't already, his Evacuate. That meant airplanes, fuel. And what percentage of the base personnel could be carried on the planes?

  "Wonder if Moscow will even tell those people that a lethal cloud of radioactivity is coming their way?" " I'IF only five or ten percent of them could possibly escape, would you tell them?" Jake Grafton mused, his voice so low that Toad almost missed the comment. "What would you tell them?" A little later he muttered, "A lot of that radioactivity is going to go into the Volga." He looked again at the predicted radioactivity levels. The numbers were two or three times worse than Chernobyl.

  How did people manage to make such horrible messes on this tiny, fragile planet? His finger moved on the map, down the Volga past Saratov and Engels, past Kamyshin, all the way to Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad.

  The water supplies of those cities would be grossly contaminated. The land.

  The food supply. Jake Grafton picked up the estimate of the various isotope levels and their half-lives and stared at it, trying to take it in.

  And on down the Volga to the Caspian Sea.

  How much radioactivity could that closed inland ocean tolerate before it became a dead sea?

  This was worse than a disaster-it was a nightmare.

  When the Russian people finally learned the truth, what would be their reaction?

  The telephone rang and Toad picked it up.

  After saying "Yessir," several times, he replaced the receiver and told Jake, "The ambassador wants you to go with him to the Kremlin.

  In a couple hours our president will announce that the United States will assist Russia any way it can." Jake Grafton took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  "So when is the Yeltsin government going public on this?" "The ambassador's aide didn't say.

  Soon, apparently." Yeltsin had no choice. Gorbachev had waited for days to tell the world of Chernobyl and had been excoriated for it. But Gorbachev had been a Communist and Yeltsin swore he no longer was. "Umm," Jake Grafton said.

  "Maybe you'd better wear your uniform, sir," Toad said gently. "It looks like it's going to be one of those days." "Jack Yocke has just been had by a pro. She conned him good and he's so anxious for a story-any story-that he swallowed it without even tasting it." Toad Tarkington nodded. "I'll buy that." "She may try again." "Naw. She's not that stupid. Too big a risk." "When the stakes get this large any risk is justified. Any risk! We've got to get to her before Jack Yocke does." Captain Herbert "Tom" Collins was the naval attache.

  As the senior naval officer he supervised a staff of just three other officers: one a marine lieutenant colonel, one a navy commander, and the other the politically impure lieutenant, Spiro Dalworth. A surface warfare officer with a destroyer command behind him, Collins had acquired a degree in Russian from the U.s.

  Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, while he was still a lieutenant.

  Tonight Jake recalled with a jolt that Collins' first assignment after the Naval Academy had been to nuclear power school. After graduating, he then spent his first tour tending a reactor aboard a nuclear-powered frigate.

  These days Collins tried to keep track of what was happening in the former Soviet Navy as the ships, planes and sailors were divided between the newly independent republics. The job was impossible.

  In the past the naval officers heggd subsisted on a mere trickle of information, mainly what the Soviets wanted them to see and hear-now they were drowning in it. The Russians were showing them everything, telling everything, talking openly about weapons capability, maintenance problems with ships, engines, radars, planes, problems with personnel, training, recruitment, supply, food... everything. If there were any secrets left in the new Commonwealth, Collins had yet to bump into one of them.

  Two nights ago he told Jake Grafton, "Today the Russian Navy would lose a fight with the Italians. Honest to God, since the collapse they can't get food or fuel to steam with.

  They can't feed the sailors; they can't maintain the ships; they got "em tied up rusting at the pier.

  A couple more years of this and most of those ships will be beyond salvage." Tonight in the courtyard Tom Collins turned up the volume on his portable radio, which was tuned to a Russian station playing American jazz. They were standing in the shadow of the new embassy complex, empty and condemned because it was hopelessly infested with bug"...he electronic kind.

  "Isn't one of your chiefs a communications specialist?" Jake asked.

  "One of my two, sir. Senior Chief Holley." Collins was eyeing Jake's uniform and the ribbons displayed there. The admiral had just returned from the Kremlin with the ambassador.

  "I need to borrow him for a while. Holley and Dalworth." "We're drowning in my shop, Admiral.

/>   I've got them working twenty hours a day." Collins and the other military people were using every contact they had to try to discover what the Russian military knew about the extent of the damage from the Serdobsk meltdown. Jake had spent the day helping, trying to analyze information received in dribbles from all quarters.

  "I understand. This is important." "Aye aye, sir." Jake Grafton felt like ajerk. He merely needed two people he could trust-anyone really-and Collins had an important job to do. Still, if he could get to Judith Farrell.

  "So what are the Russians saying?" Jake asked.

  "Same old story. It's all Yeltsin's fault." "Is it?" "Well, there's no money to maintain reactors and they're all in terrible shape. An American inspector from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would have a heart attack if he saw one of those plants, but they've been like that for years. This country is too poor to properly build or maintain or operate nuclear power plants. They just don't have the technical expertise or the trained people." Collins" shoulders sagged.

  "They're like monkeys with a computer." "Nobody over at the Kremlin Will even hazard a guess about why that thing melted." ins grunted. "There are meltdowns and there are meltdowns," he said.

  "The accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl could be classified as radiation leaks.

  This one was a real whing-ding, snap-doodle of a meltdownthere isn't much left out there. The satellite sensors show unbelievable temperatures. The first reading they got was thirty minutes after the thing went. We got a fax of a satellite photo half an hour ago and you wouldn't believe it.

  Looks like the damn thing was hit with a ten-ton blockbuster. The structure is gone-steel, concrete, everything.

  Nothing left but some rubble and a hole in the ground." After a bit Collins added, "Of course, there's not a chance in a zillion that anyone survived it." Grafton whistled. "You're saying it's almost like it blew up." "That's precisely what it did. In the argot of the trade, la power excursion," or a runaway. In lay terms, the son of a bitch blew up." Jake was stunned. Today no one had mentioned an explosion, nor had the word passed the lips of anyone at the Kren-din. "I thought nuclear reactors couldn't explode." "A popular misconception. Fast breeders can.

  This one did." Jake was still trying to take it in. "Exploded?" "The core exploded." con'A nuclear explosion?" "Boom." "How could that happen?" Collins rubbed his face. He looked around, then by reflex turned up the volume on the radio.

  "Serdobsk was a liquid metal fast breeder reactor, one of the first ones the Russians built.

  The core is made up of uranium-235, which is surrounded by rods of uranium-238, which breed into plutonium. In a water-cooled pressure reactor, bleeding off the water causes the core to melt and fission to stop. Of course the hot core can melt the containment vessel and release radioactivity, but fission stops. In a breeder, loss of coolant has the opposite effect: the fission reaction increases. The more rapid the coolant loss, the worse the effect. As the temperature rises the core melts and fills the spaces between the rods. When the material is compact enough, it can detonate in a nuclear explosion." Collins waved a hand impatiently. "It's been years since I studied this stuff, but as I recall, theoretically you could get an explosion about the equivalent of ten tons of TNT if the core is really cooking when the coolant goes. That looks to me about what they had. An explosion like that would blow maybe half the core material into the atmosphere-that's tons of really filthy uranium, plutonium, iodine, strontium-90, that kind of crap." Jake Grafton felt like a sinner listening to God's verdict.

  "Tons?" Collins was merciless. "If you want all the trade words, a liquid-metal cooled breeder is autocatalytic-it's its own catalyst for manufacturing power excursions. The process of compaction and excursions that result in more compactions is a little like what happens in a collapsing star at the end of its life. Power melts the core, it crashes down, more power, more rebound or crashdown, poof! Think of it like a little supernova.

  The nuclear reaction stops only when the core disassembles-blows itself to smithereens." "What could cause this... core compaction?" "Well, I'm no expert, but-was "You're as close to an expert as I've got." "As I recall, there are a bunch of theoretical possibilities.

  Basically any event that causes the core to be compacted can start the process. The reactor is cooled by liquid sodium, which is hotter than hell: molten steel could cause the sodium to vaporize and explode. A sodium vapor explosion is the most likely way, but fuel vaporizing could trigger it. Or an external explosion that damages the core and compacts it, or coolant loss or surges that damage the core-was Jake had had enough. He stopped the recitation with a raised hand. "So how bad is it?" "Bad?" Collins stared at him as if he were a dense child.

  "This reactor was old, full of plutonium and really raunchy crud.

  Plutonium is the deadliest substance known to man.

  It has a half-life of twenty-four thousand two hundred years. One would have to wait for about ten half-lives, call it two hundred and fifty thousand years, for the stuff to cool off to the tolerable level." "Forever." "Essentially forever." "How much land will have to be permanently abandoned?" "I dunno. They're trying to figure that out in Washington. And I'm trying to make some estimates. Depends on the winds and how much atmospheric mixing there was, how much rain, all that stuff." "So guess," Jake Grafton said.

  "Maybe fifty thousand square miles. Maybe twice that." Collins shrugged.

  "Yeltsin's fault," Jake Grafton said slowly.

  "It's somebody's." Collins weighed his words.

  "You know, I got out of nuclear power after my first tour. Oh, I was a gung-ho little nuke all right-had my interview with that troll Rickover and did my time in Idaho and thought we had the fucking genie corked up tight. But this stuff"...he looked around again, searching for words-"God uses fusion to make the stars burn. We use fission now and we're working up to fusion. We're playing God... toddlers sitting in the dark playing with matches.

  The consequences... I just decided I wanted no more of it." "Serdobsk blew. Man's hubris? Or did someone help this supernova compaction along?" "What do you want, Admiral? Probability theory?" "Yes." "Never bet on God. Go with the main chance, Men build em, men screw 'em up." "If you were going to blow a breeder, how would you go about it?" Collins was in no mood for what-if games, yet a glance at Grafton's face made him concentrate on the question.

  "Shaped charges on top of the vessel. Blow down and in.

  Put some hot molten steel into that sodium stew.

  The charges wouldn't have to be very big since the containment vessel is unpressurized. With luck I'd get a little sodium vapor explosion that would send a shock wave down into the core. The first shock wave would lead to a power excursion and another-bigger-shock wave, and so on. If I were willing to meet my maker with that on my conscience, that's the way I'd do it." Jake Grafton just grunted.

  The telephone rang at midnight. "Admiral Grafton." "This is Richard, Admiral. I've got it." Jake came wide awake. Richard Harper.

  "This isn't a secure line, Richard." "Okay." Two seconds of silence. "It was a hell of a trail and they were damn cute, but I got it. How do you want it?" "I'll have someone call you. Can you write it out?" Sure.

  THE STORM BROKE IN RUSSIA THE NEXT MORNING. THE speaker of the Congress of People's Deputies managed to call the house to order, but that was the last thing he accomplished.

  While the world watched on television the deputies brawled. Finger pointing and shouting gave way to shoving and fists. Before the camera was turned off several deputies were seen to be on the floor being kicked and pounded with fists by their colleagues.

  A huge, angry crowd gathered in Red Square. Conspicuous today were the red flags, the ugly mood. Then, as if someone struck a match, the crowd exploded. A truck was overturned and set on fire. Policemen were beaten, several to death. Then the rioters spilled out of the square and headed for the nearby hard-currency hotels and restaurants, which they looted. One hotel was set ablaze. Foreigners were attacked on
the streets and beaten mercilessly. Somehow CNN managed to televise most of the riot live to a stunned, angry, frightened world.

  Although the sense of fear and betrayal was strongest in Russia, the rest of the world felt it too. Nuclear power plants stood throughout the Western world. Their safety had long been an issue, but the debate seemed esoteric to electorates concerned with the mundane issues of jobs, wages, education and housing. The massive, catastrophic pollution from the Serdobsk accident was something the public could understand.

  They were seeing the consequences of an accident that advocates of nuclear power said would never happen.

  In Italy the coalition government fractured and the premier resigned.