The Moonpool cr-3

by P. T. Deutermann

  Hopefully Trask had decided to cut his losses and get his plan under way. I tried to move sideways, toward the bank, but that current had me nailed to the fence. A moment later, Tony surfaced next to me like a Polaris missile and then went right back under as he, too, was smacked into the fence and held. I reached down into the black water and hauled on his shirt, managing to get his head above water, but just barely.

  He hung there like a dead man, and for a horrible second I wondered if I was holding a corpse, but then he coughed, threw up, went back down, and came up again spewing water everywhere. He grabbed on to the wire, saw me, and grinned. He mouthed the words “Hi, Wendy,” and I snorted out a desperate-sounding laugh.

  It took us twenty minutes to claw our way across the bulging fence wire and onto the concrete side of the channel, where we flopped like a couple of belly-hooked catfish. Cue the shepherds, I thought. This was when they were supposed to appear out of the darkness and lick my face. That didn’t happen, though, and I couldn’t avoid a pretty bad feeling. They were probably either trapped in the rotor or pinned down on the bottom of the channel, right below where we were recovering. Fuck.

  “Who we gonna call?” Tony asked from his supine position on the wet concrete.

  “Fresh out of cell phones,” I said. “Did Ari get hit?”

  “He might have,” Tony said, propping himself up on one arm. “I had it pointed out the window, but Billy was shooting up the whole backseat, so…”

  Then I remembered what Trask had said, about planting the video of our coming through the fence to distract the guard force. They’d be coming right here, and very soon, if that five-minutes business was accurate. Tony realized the same thing.

  “We gotta move,” Tony said. “We have to stop this thing.”

  “Or,” I said, “we wait right here for the guards to find us, tell ’em what’s going down, and let them get in there and stop those assholes.” I didn’t say what was really on my mind: Then I can go look for my dogs.

  “You think they’d take us seriously?” he asked. “Their boss is going to fuck with the moonpool? This from the two intruders they just saw on the cameras breaking into the protected area?”

  “He’s supposed to be meeting with the feds across the river,” I argued. “Why isn’t he there instead of being in the spent fuel building?”

  “Because the guards don’t know that, and besides, he’s Trask and they never know where he’s going to pop up. Plus, he’ll have Quartermain with him to make it look legit.”

  “How the fuck do we get in there?”

  “By evading the same guards he’s distracting. Hell, we’ll kick the damn doors down if we have to.”

  “Then what?” I persisted. “There are at least three doors to get through, all keyed to plant security.” Trask had help. We had nothing.

  I think Tony understood my real hesitation to go after Trask, but before he could respond, I looked over his shoulder at the blue strobe lights flickering through that big cloud of condensation. He saw where I was looking, swore, and then we were up and running down the perimeter fence, away from the tailrace channel.

  C’mon, mutts, I thought: This is when you come running out of the darkness. But they didn’t, and I wondered if I’d ever see them again.

  The ground sloped up from the tailrace for about a hundred yards, and then it fell off again. We made it to that low crest just about the time the security vehicles emerged from the spray cloud. If Trask had been telling the truth, they’d have seen us coming through his hole in the fence on their cameras, so that’s where they’d go first. Our problem, besides being soaking wet, unarmed, and very definitely unwanted, was that we didn’t know what other cameras might be reporting right now as we ran toward the industrial area surrounding the plant. Tony pointed toward some large steel tanks, and we zigged right to get in among them.

  The three big buildings were right in front of us, with perhaps a hundred yards or so of open ground to cover before we could get to the middle one, home to the moonpool. There were light towers everywhere and absolutely no way for us to get close to the main buildings if anyone was watching for us. The lone, thin smokestack was blowing air and steam beyond the generator hall, and subdued red strobe lights pulsing along some of the buildings indicated that the reactors were running and that the plant was online. I was starting to shiver in the night air, even though my clothes had begun to dry out.

  “Just run for it?” Tony said. He was staring across the open ground at some small outbuildings that were close to the moonpool building’s main entrance.

  “Maybe walk for it, like we belonged here,” I said.

  It was worth a shot, because time was ticking away and we couldn’t just stand out here in the dark for very much longer. We couldn’t see what was going on down at the tailrace, but the security people wouldn’t stay there forever, either. And Trask was already inside.

  We stood up and started walking toward those small buildings. I hoped that we would look like two shift workers headed toward the building. We didn’t have hard hats, there were no ID badges dangling from our necks, and this wasn’t the time for shift change. All we could do was hope that no one in the security control room was reaching for the zoom controls.

  It was a tense hundred-yard stroll, but we made it to the small buildings. We stopped in front of one of them. We were on a concrete sidewalk. Beside us the straight steel walls of the spent fuel storage building rose into the night. The even taller reactor containment buildings flanked us on either side, some two hundred yards apart. Steam pipes and other utility lines snaked overhead. The sign on the building in front of us said that it contained spill kits, decon suits, and firefighting equipment. Unfortunately, it was locked, or we might have been able to put on some suits and at least look like we belonged there.

  At that moment, a man came out of the moonpool building carrying three clipboards. He was in his late fifties, wore glasses under his white hard hat, and had a sizable paunch. He was listening to a cell phone as he came out of the building and didn’t see the two of us standing there until he was almost upon us. Then he did, and he stopped dead in his tracks. Tony coldcocked him and then grabbed him before he fell backward onto the concrete.

  I snatched up the cell phone and heard a woman’s voice saying, “Tommy? Tommy? What was that?”

  I switched the call off and then dialed 911. An operator came on immediately and asked what was my emergency.

  “This is a police emergency call,” I announced in my most authoritative tone of voice. Tony was dragging the inert worker into the space between the buildings and removing his ID tags. “I am Lieutenant Richter of the Manceford County Sheriff’s Office, and I need to contact Sergeant McMichaels in Southport concerning an emergency situation at the Helios power plant.”

  I think it was that last bit that did it, because she didn’t say a word, and a moment later I was patched through to the Southport police station dispatcher, who said he was looking for McMichaels as we spoke. Another minute, and McMichaels himself came on the line.

  “Sergeant McMichaels,” he said. “Who is this again?” He sounded sleepy. I woke him right up.

  “Cameron Richter, Sergeant,” I said. “Listen hard: Trask is inside the spent fuel storage building at Helios. He has Dr. Quartermain hostage. He intends to release radioactive water into the municipal water supply. County and Wilmington. Shut it all down, Sergeant-it’s starting right now.”

  I hung up before he could ask any more questions. Tony had the fat man’s badge chain in one hand and was swiping the green one through the reader at the door marked SPENT FUEL STORAGE. The LED went from red to green and we were inside, although nowhere near the moonpool. That was the good news. The bad news was that we were facing a steel desk in the anteroom, behind which were sitting two very surprised-looking security guards.

  Tony and I both had the same idea, and we simply did it: We ran at the desk, grabbed the front edge, and turned it over on the two guards, who st
ill hadn’t begun to move. It was a heavy desk, and, unlike such desks in police station anterooms, it wasn’t bolted down. It went up and over, spilling logs, telephones, coffee cups, radio chargers, and newspapers all over the place. The two guards went over backward in their chairs, and then the leading edge of the desk came down on their chests and shoulders, pinning them to the floor. The upside-down chairs kept the desk pointed at a slant, so we were able to reach down and retrieve guns, cell phones, cuffs, and Mace cans, and then jerk their shoulder-radio wires out of the belt-mounted base units. Then we snatched the upset chairs out and buried the two guys under the full expanse of the desk with only their lower legs showing. They struggled until Tony stood on the desk, at which point I yelled at them to shut up and listen.

  “Off,” I heard one of them squeak. I hadn’t gotten a good look at them during our surprise attack, but these guys were inside desk cops and definitely not the twenty-something, ex-military types like the tough boys in the reaction force. Tony told them to be still and then stepped off the desk so they could breathe. Both of us checked our newly acquired weapons, Glock nines, to see if they were ready to work. They were.

  “Listen to me,” I said. “We’re not here to damage anything. Your Colonel Trask has gone nuts, and he’s in here and he’s going to melt down the moonpool.”

  “Bullshit,” said the second guard, who sounded like he was regaining his composure. “You’re the retired cop with the dogs. He said you two were loose in the perimeter and that you’re gonna try to break in and sabotage the storage system. That it might be real or it might be an intrusion drill. There’s a dozen SWAT guys on their way here right fucking now. Either way, you guys’re toast.”

  More confusion from Clever Carl. “Is Dr. Quartermain with him?” I asked.

  Neither responded. Tony stepped back up onto the desk, and they both said yes.

  “Billy said he shot your dogs, by the way,” one of them offered, with just a hint of a sneer in his voice. Tony looked over at me to see how I was going to react to this bit of news. For an instant I wanted to shoot them both, but then got control of myself. Then I saw what looked like spots of blood on the floor leading to the access stairway.

  “Is Quartermain hurt?” I asked. Silence again. Tony started jumping up and down on the bottom of the desk, and they both yelled for him to stop. They said Quartermain had a bloody necktie wrapped around his head, and that all three were topside at the moonpool.

  “That bloody necktie’s because your friend Billy, who shoots dogs, tried to kill us in Trask’s Bronco and got Quartermain instead. That sound like a security exercise to you, asshole?”

  More silence. Tony pointed at the access door to the stairway. The card reader was dark. There was no little red LED glowing next to it. Had Moira managed to turn them all off?

  “When’s the last time you heard from Control?” I asked the inert forms under the desk.

  No answer. I knew there had to be some kind of duress or other emergency signal that these guys could send to Control in an emergency. Every site security system had one. Had one of them managed to mash the button as we attacked? I didn’t think so, but it might be a passive system: Call in every x minutes or we’ll come running if you don’t.

  I tried to think it through while Tony bent down, cuffed the guards’ legs together, and then extended the second set of cuffs to wrap it around one of the steel desk’s legs. It had taken a card reader to get into the anteroom, but it looked like the interior access system had been disabled. Wouldn’t that fact alone alert the main control room? Then again, if Moira, with Trask’s help, had been able to jimmy the video surveillance system, perhaps she’d also been able to replicate the everything’s-okay signal from this anteroom back to Control. They might not know anything was going on, other than the video images of intruders down by the tailrace.

  The real question in my mind was this: Was Trask’s moonpool story more bullshit? Another diversion? Was he going to do something here or over in one of the reactor buildings?

  The guards weren’t going to tell us anything more than they had to unless we hurt them, and I wasn’t willing to do that, not yet, anyway.

  Billy shot the dogs? When the hell did he get a chance to do that? More bullshit? Billy trying to psych me out if we managed to get this far? The little black spots on the glistening linoleum led to the access door; Trask had either been in a real hurry or he’d gotten really careless. Maybe it was the timeline-he had to move because Moira was going to initiate stage two, whatever that was. The desk phone, lying on its side with the handset on the floor, began to make that off-the-hook noise.

  “Watch ’em,” I said to Tony while retrieving the phone. I had this awful feeling we needed to get topside, but I wanted to get some cavalry moving if that was at all possible. I put the handset back on the base, waited a second, and then picked it up. I heard a strange dial tone-typical of a Centrex system. I dialed 9. Nothing happened.

  “How do you get an outside line?” I asked.

  No answer.

  “Take your knife,” I said to Tony, “and stab that foot right there.” Tony just blinked. He didn’t have a knife, but the guards didn’t know that.

  “Dial 8-1,” the older man said in a muffled tone. His face was probably pressed sideways against the floor, but I suspected he was up for only so much heroics just now. I dialed 8-1. There was a click, and I heard a normal dial tone. I hit 9-1-1.

  “What is your emergency?”

  “Armed intrusion at Helios,” I shouted. “Physical security has been compromised. We need help over here-they’re trying to breach the reactors. Tell the FBI-quick!”

  Then I pressed the switch hook down, detached the handset, and crunched it under my foot. I pointed to the access door, and Tony nodded.

  “You wait here and watch these two,” I said in a loud voice while we both went to the door. “They start some shit, you finish it, okay?”

  “Got it,” Tony said in the same stage tone, giving the desk a kick and racking the slide on his Glock.

  “And Sergeant?” I said. “Deadly force is authorized.”

  “Yes, sir,” Tony replied dutifully.

  The term “deadly force is authorized” was something both guards, even civilian rent-a-cops, would recognize. It might give us a few more minutes before they figured it out. Tony tried the door handle. The door opened. We went through and softly shut the door. A video camera looked right at us as we stepped through the door-but, once again, no red light. Mad Moira was good, really good.

  The spent fuel storage building was built like a two-layered Chinese box, a building within a building. The inner box was the moonpool, surrounded by its really thick concrete walls. It was four and a half stories from top to bottom. The outer box contained the support systems for the moonpool on three levels: ground floor, mezzanine, and top floor. The bottom level was concerned with access and maintenance spaces, surrounding the inner box on four sides. The mezzanine contained pumping and handling machinery, and the top level gave access to the surface of the moonpool and the control room. One main stairwell gave access to all three levels via separately locked vestibules, supervised by access card readers and video surveillance systems. There were four flights of steel stairs between each two levels. We were standing on the bottom, looking up, when all the fluorescent lights went out.

  The first thing that happened was that the emergency battery-powered lights came on, providing at least some illumination in the concrete stairwell. I tried the door marked EQUIPMENT ROOM NO. 7, but it was locked. Tony tried to pry open the door back into the guards’ anteroom without making any noise, but it, too, was locked. We had our borrowed guns out now, and we each put an ear to the anteroom door to see if we could hear the guards moving around in there, but it was all quiet on that front.

  “Up?” Tony whispered.

  “Can’t dance,” I muttered, so we started up the steel stairs. We could see between the flights all the way to the top of the stairwell, bu
t the higher we looked, the darker it got. Four flights later we arrived at the mezzanine level. There was one door that led into the moonpool’s section, marked TRANSFER amp; HANDLING MACHINERY, and three unmarked doors leading out into the exterior ring of the building. The three exterior doors were locked; the machinery room was not.

  This door opened out into the landing area. We looked inside, but saw nothing but large pumps, switchboards, a maze of piping, and what looked like the top section of an elevator hoisting cable assembly. We couldn’t figure out how all this tied into the pool’s access, although I caught a glimpse of a wall ladder leading up to the next level all the way at the back. The emergency lights didn’t reveal how high it went.

  “Next level’s the pool deck and control rooms,” I said. “There’s another security force anteroom up there.”

  “So why didn’t they react to the ruckus down below?” Tony asked while he made sure no one was lurking behind the big pumps.

  I patted the wall, which Ari had said was ten feet thick. If the slabs between floors were anywhere near that thick, no sounds would penetrate. Large radiation warning triangles were painted all along the back wall of the pump room.

  “Let’s see where that ladder goes,” I said and worked my way through all the machinery to the back wall. The emergency lights barely shone back here, and the ceiling of the room, some fifteen or even eighteen feet above us, was dark. Tony went to one of the emergency lights and took it down off its mounting so he could point it upward. At the top of the ladder we saw a steel scuttle hatch, complete with a circular operating ring on the underside.

  “Emergency escape hatch?” Tony said.