It was a peppy little fire extinguisher. He was still sufficiently stunned that he failed to tuck and roll, and I flat covered his eyes, nose, mouth, and chest with that noxious powder until the spray petered out. Then I threw the empty extinguisher as hard as I could at his right knee, achieving an entirely satisfactory crack and a loud grunt from young Billy. A small cloud of white powder puffed out from his lips when he cried out.
I stepped out into the hallway and retrieved his. 45. It looked a lot like mine, a SIG-Sauer model 220. Better than mine, it had a full magazine. I stepped back into my open doorway and then checked the hall. At the far end, to my left, near the elevator bank, stood the older man, leaning against the wall with his hands in his jacket pockets. He was looking at Billy and shaking his head. If ghosts could get nosebleeds, that’s what Billy looked like.
“Good help is hard to find,” I called down to him.
“Ain’t that the truth,” he said. I closed the door so he could retrieve his semi-wrecked, extremely white bad boy. I kept Billy’s gun.
I sighed as I washed some white powder off my own hands. I was pretty sure I’d get to see Billy again one day, and next time he probably would bring his friends. Then again, so would I.
Right now, however, I thought it best to leave town. Billy had been all noise and testosterone, but those other two guys looked like the real deal. Until I knew more about what the hell was really going on here in Wilmington, I’d probably be safer back home. I decided to take a shower, hit the sack, and go back to Triboro in the morning. Or I could call Mary Ellen Goode. I did that and got an answering machine. I told the machine I’d be back in a week and hoped to get together again.
A week later I surveyed my new digs in the village of Southport, a small but pleasant tourist town situated southeast of Wilmington on the estuary where the Cape Fear River pushes a gazillion gallons of fresh water a day into the Atlantic Ocean. The house itself was a two-story, multi-bedroom affair that rented for obscene sums of money for the five months or so of the summer tourist season and then usually sat empty for the rest of the year. It had spacious wraparound screened porches on both levels and overlooked the river beach and the barrier islands across the Cape Fear estuary. I could see the ferryboat that went over to Fort Fisher ploughing dutifully through a light chop as it approached the landing north of the town. The air smelled of seashore and there was a fine layer of white sand on everything.
I was no longer flying solo, having brought two of my original MCAT team members, Tony Martinelli and Pardee Bell, down from Triboro. Pardee had been one of two black detectives in the MCAT. He was a big guy, two inches taller than I was, who had really enjoyed getting in criminals’ faces, especially black criminals, so he could punk ’em out, as he was fond of saying. Everyone thought Pardee had been brought onto the team to provide some in-house muscle, but he happened to have a degree in computer science from NC State and could do some real damage with a desktop. He was married to a whip-smart trial attorney in Triboro, and he’d lasted for about one week in “retirement” from the sheriff’s office before said lady lawyer told him to go find something useful to do besides cleaning the house twice a day and generally driving her nuts. He’d been a level-headed, highly focused, and very professional deputy sheriff, and we were delighted when he’d called in to join the old crew at H amp;S.
Tony Martinelli, on the other hand, was half-crazy, in the southern sense of that term, which connotes wary respect for the truly eccentric. He was a little guy, maybe five-seven or -eight with the right boots on, but an effective cop because no one, bad guys or good guys, knew quite what he would do next. His specialty on the MCAT had been finding and then following persons of interest. We’d learned early on to intervene if Tony had been on someone’s tail for more than, say, a day or so, because he would get bored with it and then things were likely to go sideways. With jet-black hair, emotive brown eyes, and a puckish grin on his face, he looked like an altar boy who’d been caught trying out the sacramental wine. Women usually fell all over themselves to take him under their wings when he went out to party.
And, of course, now that I was in a house instead of a hotel, my trusty German shepherds were along for the ride. Frick was an American-bred sable bitch who would happily amputate the extremities of any intruder. I was her human, and she declined to share. Frack, the larger and older of the two, was an all-black East German border-guard model. He had a disconcerting habit of sitting down and staring at strangers instead of running around and barking like too many shepherds did. He had amber, lupine eyes, and lots of people were more than willing to believe me when I told them that Frack was really a wolf. As any dog owner knows, deterrence is ninety percent of the battle.
I watched Aristotle Quartermain coming down the ocean-front street in an elderly but shiny black Mercedes, holding a piece of paper on the steering wheel and counting house numbers. He finally looked up and saw me waving. The beachfront road was guarded by parking meters on the beach side of the street, and he found one with some time left on it. We gathered in the kitchen, where the coffeepot was happily making a fresh batch of Tony tar.
I’d briefed the whole H amp;S crew back in Triboro about my visit to Wilmington, cautioning them that the information about radiation poisoning was close-hold, at least for the moment. After a collective expression of shock, none of them knew what to make of it, or what to do with Ari Quartermain’s offer of employment. There was general agreement that I should go back, with help, and see what we could find out about what had really happened to Allie independent of whatever the feds were up to. I had asked Mel Lindsay to see if she could figure out what Allie’s personal business might have been about.
Mel and the office manager had finally managed to unearth a phone number for Allie’s sister, who was indeed a Department of Defense schoolteacher at a joint Turkish-American air base. Mel knew from conversations that Allie’s sister’s first name was Meredith, but she didn’t know her last name. They tried Meredith Gardner, but the DOD school system drew a blank on that. They did have a Meredith Thomason at the base in Turkey, so we gave that a try. I’d made the actual call and got a surprise.
The phone connection wasn’t great, but it quickly became clear that Ms. Thomason wanted nothing to do with the aftermath of Allie’s death. Allie’s decision to become a cop in the first place had never met with the family’s approval, and the fact that she’d come to a bad end came as no surprise. She’d said this with more than a hint of comeuppance in her voice. She was neither interested in nor capable of making final arrangements. Basically, Allie was estranged from her family. She was as on her own in death as apparently she’d been in life.
I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, and I surely didn’t understand this woman’s total lack of sympathy. I hadn’t told her precisely what had happened, and was tempted to when she gave me the brush-off. Then she asked me, as Allie’s employers, could we please just “take care of it”? Somewhat appalled, I’d said I would do that and simply hung up on her.
I brought Ari back to the kitchen and introduced him to my crew, both two- and four-legged. There was a big table in the kitchen, so Pardee, Ari, and I plopped there. Tony went upstairs to get something. I offered coffee, but Ari declined when he saw Pardee’s spoon freestanding in his cup.
“So,” he asked, “what changed your mind?”
I told him about the visit from the Helios physical security posse. He frowned when I told him about Billy the Kid.
“Those guys are mostly ex-military,” he said. “Their boss is a retired Army colonel, name of Carl Trask. Nicknamed Snake. He was one of those beret guys-Ranger or Delta Force, something of that ilk. Has been hiring only former military men, and takes himself and his job very seriously.”
“As well he should,” I said. “Talk about a good terrorist target.”
“Not as good as the movies make out, Mr. Richter,” he said. “Still, yes, there is a threat, and when we hear submachine-gun fire in the swamps, Colone
l Trask provides a measure of comfort.”
“Say what?” Pardee asked.
“The government runs intrusion drills on the protected area of the station. They’re called force-on-force exercises. The director’s office knows when one’s coming, but, supposedly, they don’t tell Trask. The NRC uses Navy SEALs, or people from the FBI’s hostage rescue team. The rule is, once physical security detects a possible intrusion, Trask alerts the station director, who gives him a code word that tells Trask it’s a drill. Then they hand out the blank ammo and go play cowboys and Indians with their buddies in the tall weeds.”
“What if real bad guys ever penetrated this intrusion exercise schedule?” Tony asked, coming into the kitchen. “Or had some help from the inside?”
I hadn’t realized he’d come back downstairs. Being quiet was one of Tony’s useful skills. He displayed other traits that were not useful but were always exciting.
“That could be very interesting, I suppose,” Ari said.
Tony put a finger to his lips and then spoke very softly. “As interesting as the fact that you were followed here? And that two guys in a PrimEnergy van are pretending to work on a telephone pole while they listen to what’s going on in here?”
There was a moment of silence around the table, and then we all got up to take a peek through the front window curtains. A white utility van was parked half a block away, with the PrimEnergy logo conspicuous on its side. The rear doors were open, and two men in coveralls were busy doing something at the base of a telephone pole. Their equipment and uniforms looked convincing, except for the cone of a distant sound concentrator propped inside the van and aimed at our front windows.
Tony stood next to one window, turned his back on the outside world, and pulled out a Glock. He nodded to Pardee and me, and we produced our own weapons. Then he racked his weapon right next to the glass and announced in a loud voice that none of us should shoot until he started it. We each racked our weapons and then watched the “utility” men scamper for cover behind their van. The concentrator seemed to be working very well.
“Okay, I’ll take care of this bullshit,” Ari said and went out the front door. We all followed him out onto the porch and stood there in plain view of the van, guns in hand just in case this wasn’t what it looked like. Ari went to his car, got something out of the glove compartment, and then hustled over to the van, where the two men were starting to stand up now that they realized they’d been had. I wondered if Ari had stopped off to get a weapon, but instead he walked up to them and began firing one of those disposable flash cameras in their faces. They tried to block their faces with their hands, then slammed the van’s back doors shut, hopped in, and drove off at a respectable clip.
“Goddamn Trask,” he muttered as he came back up the front steps, pocketing the camera.
“You sure?” I asked.
“Yeah, I think I recognized the one guy. We have a recording scanner at the Pass and ID Office that’ll confirm it.”
“Well, you’re obviously consorting with suspicious characters,” I said as we put away our weapons and went back into the kitchen. I was relieved that none of the neighbors, if indeed there were any, had been out on their porches.
“Did you tell this young man to check for someone following me?” he asked.
“Nope. He’s suspicious by nature and just chock-full of initiative.”
Ari grinned at Tony and thanked him for catching the tail. Tony said you’re welcome and then excused himself to go check for “smooth,” now that we had just chased “rough” away.
Ari blinked at that and then grinned again. “You guys are good,” he said.
Tony slipped out the back door while we resumed our conversation at the kitchen table. Quartermain explained what he wanted from us.
“Just as the federal government runs what we call force-on-force drills on the fences,” he began, “I have some budget money to run technical intrusion drills on my side of the perimeter.”
“Define your side of the perimeter,” I said.
“There are three security circles around a nuclear plant: the so-called corporate area, the protected area, and the vital area. Corporate means the public can be there-hunting, fishing, et cetera-if they abide by the company’s rules for the use of the land.”
“No fences?”
“Nope-the first fence defines the protected area. That takes pass and ID access to get in. That’s the area around the industrial plant and its buildings.”
“And the vital area?”
“That’s where the dragon lives-defined as the area where access makes the release of radiological materials possible.”
“That’s a little fuzzy, isn’t it?”
“By design-the vital area is what we nukes say it is. Think layers. Snake Trask and his people patrol the corporate area. They’ll protect the fenced perimeter; they’ll defend the vital area, with deadly force if necessary. The system works in reverse, too.”
“You mean protecting the rest of us from the reactor?”
“Exactly. The nuclear reaction happens inside a stainless steel reactor vessel. That vessel lives in a concrete, lead, and steel containment dome. The dome lives in a steel building. Trask keeps bad guys out; my people and I keep the dragon in.”
“Which puts you in charge.”
Ari smiled. “Like I said before, if my dragon gets loose, the security of the physical perimeter is no longer the issue.”
“Can it get loose?” Pardee asked.
“Yes, most likely through human error, compounded by an instrumentation failure,” Ari said. “The Russians hold the world records, plural. The Chernobyl melt was a classic example of unsafe design compounded by human error. The low-order detonation in the Chelyabinsk district back in 1957 was simple Communist stupidity.”
He went on to describe how the Russians had kept filling a radioactive waste tank until it overpressurized, started a partial reaction, and then literally exploded, contaminating a six-hundred-square-mile area. They then took to dumping their waste into a nearby lake. When the lake dried up in a drought and the radioactive sediments blew away in the wind, it created a no-man’s land the size of Maryland, which exists to this day.
“How about our own Three Mile Island?” I asked.
“The RCS, that’s the reactor control system, detected a problem and shut itself down. Should have been end of story. But then a valve opened and stayed open, while reporting to the control room that it was closed. That drained out all the cooling water.”
“If the reactor was shut down, why was that a problem?”
“Because even after the fission reaction shuts down, the residual heat of decay is still very high. Without cooling water, it can melt the core assembly. That’s what happened at TMI before they realized the instruments were lying. What’s forgotten is that it all stayed inside the containment structure, that movie not withstanding.”
“We’re not exactly qualified in nuclear engineering,” I pointed out.
“I know,” he said, “but I’m talking about helping me with a different problem.”
“Somebody who is technically qualified, and who might be screwing around?” I said.
“Exactly.” He sipped some coffee and made a face. “Like what happened to Ms. Gardner.”
“So you do think that came from your plant?”
“Officially? That would be an unequivocal no. And I’ll defend that position for as long as I want to keep my job.”
“But.”
“Yeah. But. Fortunately for PrimEnergy and Helios, the feds are focusing elsewhere. There’s apparently been intel that the Islamists have given up the idea of smuggling in a nuclear bomb in favor of trying something with nuclear waste.”
“A dirty bomb instead of a Hiroshima bomb.”
“Yeah. A plutonium or a highly enriched uranium bomb has a very distinctive signature, and the ports-airports, seaports-are pretty much wired for that. Nuclear waste products, by definition, come in radiation-tight contain
ers. No signature.”
“And Wilmington has a big container port,” Pardee said.
“Big enough. Not as big as Long Beach or L.A., but big enough, and about to double in size. A radioactive DOA in Wilmington set off all sorts of alarms. They’re going through the motions at Helios, but officially no one really believes that’s where this stuff came from. It would, simply stated, be much too hard.”
“But not impossible?” I asked.
He stood with his back to the sink and shrugged. “Actually, as an engineer, I’d think it would be very difficult, but, no, not impossible. And as the security officer it’s my job to exercise a little paranoia here.”
“You have somebody in mind?” I asked.
“It’s not so much one individual,” he said. “Look-technical security depends on three things in our industry: rigid adherence to approved engineering practices, a personnel reliability program, and the power industry’s version of what the military calls the two-man rule.”
“I believe,” I said, and he smiled.
“Okay. Briefly, here’s the idea. The two-man rule means no one individual is ever left in a situation where he could put the atomic reaction process at risk. Personnel reliability, or what we call fitness to serve, means that a guy who gets a DUI or gropes an undercover cop in a public men’s room gets looked at to see if he should keep his ticket as a plant or reactor operator. And procedure means just that: line-by-line read-back procedures for everything that happens in the control room or in the plant itself. One guy reads the operating procedure, say, for lining up the steam system, and a second guy reads it back to him before actually doing it.”
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