12
Without warning, an ear-splitting siren wailed through the tunnels and echoed in the granite-walled chamber. Adonia spun to van Dyckman. “That’s a safety alarm, Stanley. We need to leave.”
He looked more confused than worried. “I’m sure it’s a drill,” he said, trying to sound reassuring. “Probably for our own protection.”
“You don’t know for sure, Mr. National Program Manager?” Garibaldi said with clear sarcasm.
Victoria Doyle added a biting comment: “Stanley’s often more enamored with the job title than with the job knowledge.”
Van Dyckman stiffened. “We’ve had dozens of drills and test exercises here in the Mountain, not to mention false alarms. Makes it hard to get work done, let me tell you.” His chuckle was strained. “Just wait here for the drill to be over.”
Amidst the alarms, Adonia saw the heavy storage chamber door was automatically closing, which would shut them inside the chamber. She called, “Everybody out, unless you want to be sealed inside!” Leading the way, she herded the nearest person — Victoria Doyle — through the opening with her. Van Dyckman was right on their heels.
Instead of bolting out into the corridor, though, Mrs. Garcia ran to an embedded console on the far interior wall, where she furiously keyed codes into the LED display. “All of you, get out to the corridor! This isn’t supposed to be happening. These vault doors should remain open to let people escape. I have to disable these sensors.”
Even as Adonia and Doyle rushed out, Senator Pulaski hesitated, like a deer caught in the headlights, blocking the chamber opening. Shawn shouldered him hard. “Senator — out, now!” He knocked the man unceremoniously out into the tunnel, charging out after him.
With a constant hum, the heavy door continued to close, leaving Garibaldi and the technician inside. Mrs. Garcia called to him. “Stay here. We’ll just wait it out.”
Though the gap seemed too narrow, the tall scientist raced through it, desperate. He twisted, squirmed, and Adonia was sure he would be crushed. But with a gasp he squeezed through the vanishing inches just in time. The vault door snagged the back of his tweed jacket and crunched shut against the stone wall.
Caught in his jacket, Garibaldi struggled. He tugged so hard he ripped the fabric. Shawn helped him shrug out of the coat as Adonia hurried to assist them. “You could have been killed!”
Garibaldi was gray and sweating, clearly shocked. “I wasn’t going to be locked inside.” He swallowed hard.
“It’s just a drill,” van Dyckman said, sounding more embarrassed than terrified. “Harris will reset it soon enough. You were overreacting.”
Out in the tunnel, Senator Pulaski sat on the concrete floor, indignant, nursing his elbow. Undersecretary Doyle stood looking incredulous.
Garibaldi brushed his shirt, looking back at the torn jacket caught in the heavy door. “And that technician is trapped in there! We’ve got to get her out.”
Van Dyckman dismissed the problem. “Believe me, the radiation levels are so low in there it’s no worse than getting a dental X-ray. Mrs. Garcia will be fine.”
“But what happened?” Adonia asked, then narrowed her eyes. “What triggered it?”
“Harris went to investigate something, so he probably did what the manual told him to do,” van Dyckman said. “He’s too cautious. Whatever happened, I’m sure the systems functioned exactly as designed.”
Adonia looked back at the sealed vault doorway, realizing how much it reminded her of a crypt. “But Mrs. Garcia said it shouldn’t have closed. And she’s right — that was a safety alarm, and chamber doors are supposed to remain open, so people can escape, not be trapped inside. Something’s wrong, Stanley.”
Shawn said, “She’s in no immediate danger. The chamber has power and plenty of air, and she knows that. Mrs. Garcia will just have to cool her heels.” He glanced down at Adonia’s feet. “Speaking of which, you lost one of your pumps.”
Adonia looked down, realizing that in her scramble, she must have knocked off one of her shoes and left it inside the chamber. Since she couldn’t walk in only one shoe, she removed the other one, dropped it on the tunnel floor. “They weren’t very practical inside a mountain anyway. I knew I overdressed for this meeting.”
The sirens continued to wail, reverberating off the granite walls.
Queasy, Garibaldi stepped close to the sealed chamber door, tugged uselessly at his dangling jacket, and then placed his palms against the metal. “That woman is in danger… sealed in the storage chamber.”
Van Dyckman spoke over the alarms. “Like all the staff here in Hydra Mountain, Mrs. Garcia believed in Valiant Locksmith, so she did her job, stayed behind to disable the chamber’s sensors. I think she’s a hero.” He nodded, reaffirming what he had said. “Yes, a hero. She’ll be fine.”
A flare of anger ignited in Garibaldi’s gray eyes. “If the radiation levels are so low, you sure seemed in a hurry to get out of there, Dr. van Dyckman. Have you ever been locked inside a nuclear vault?”
“Stanley normally stays locked behind a desk in his Washington office,” Doyle said, drawing her mouth thin. Van Dyckman shot her a glare.
Senator Pulaski sat against the wall with his knees pulled up, more upset than frightened, despite the ratcheting alarms. “Why would Harris pick today to stage a drill? That’s an idiotic thing to do. We were supposed to have a straightforward, thorough review to show that everything works perfectly.”
Why indeed? Adonia thought. Unless a genuine crisis had initiated the alarm.
Shawn tried to help the Senator to his feet, but the man brushed him aside. “Can someone stop this infernal noise? Van Dyckman?”
Garibaldi was agitated. “Does it indicate a radiation leak? Some kind of spill?”
Van Dyckman shook his head, yelled so he could be heard above the noise. “No, it’ll cycle off shortly. Whatever it is, I’m sure we aren’t in any danger. Someone probably just opened a door without getting the proper approval.”
Garibaldi pounced. “So there’s been a security breach? Terrorists taking over Hydra Mountain?”
Adonia knew that was unlikely, but she still had a sick feeling as she remembered the suicidal plane streaking down toward the wet-storage pools at Granite Bay. “Stanley misspoke. That safety alarm is identical to what we use at my site. It’s standardized across the nuclear industry.”
Suddenly, the siren stopped, leaving their ears to ring in the silence. “Thank God,” the Senator muttered. Adonia could hear only the low thrum of air exchangers in the metal ventilation duct overhead.
Shawn looked toward the main corridor where they had entered from the operations center. The massive entry door had also sealed off this side tunnel from the main corridor. He frowned. “How are we supposed to get out?”
Though she felt a growing chill, Adonia kept her voice calm. “Like it should be open. Safety systems are designed to allow people out of areas, not keep them inside.”
Shawn considered. “You’re right. If anything, that main tunnel door should let us exit the secure facility, and allow the guards access.”
Adonia drew in a breath. Maybe we are all trapped just like Mrs. Garcia, but in a much bigger cage. She remembered that she was technically in charge, even if she didn’t know what Rob Harris had in mind for them. “Just stay calm. Mr. Harris is in the operations center, trying to figure out the problem. We need to stay here, wait until this exercise ends.”
“And then what?” Pulaski demanded, climbing to his feet and looking up and down at the sealed chamber doors. “We all get infected by radiation? I can feel it in the air right now.”