“There’s nothing else we can use,” Shawn said, resigned. “And if we don’t do it, the alternative is a big nuclear flash, turning the Southwest into the world’s largest glass parking lot.”
Adonia remained doubtful. “How would we move the fuel rod that’s pinning the Senator to the bottom? They weigh nearly a ton — too heavy to lift, even in water.”
Garibaldi patted a horizontal strut on the boom. “Make a pulley by looping Colonel Whalen’s rope around this strut and lowering one end to the pool. We tie the rope around the top of the rod, and lever it up, two of us pulling down, as a counterweight. Once the rod is lifted off the Senator, the person in the pool can move the body.”
“Brilliant.” Shawn tried to jockey around Garibaldi. “I’ll tie the rope, then wrestle the body into place at the bottom of the pool to seal the breach. It has to be done.”
“Not a chance, Shawn,” Adonia said. “I already told you that requires swimming skills, and at that depth it’s easier for me. Arguing is only going to delay us until the nukes go off! Now let me do this.”
They were partway up the crane’s extended boom, directly above the pool, but still nearly twenty feet higher than when they had jumped from the ledge. Adonia’s stomach lurched at the thought of missing the side and hitting one of the rods. No margin for error.
Then she had an idea. “The rope,” she said to Shawn. “Drop it down into the water, and I can shimmy down before I tie it to the top of the rod.”
“I don’t like this—”
“You’re wasting time arguing.”
His face set, Shawn looped the rope around a horizontal strut, secured one end on the lattice, and knotted the rope several times on the boom framework. He dropped the other end, and the yellow line snaked down until it hit the surface fifty feet below them, leaving plenty of slack for Adonia to pull to the bottom.
“I’ll keep it tied, so we won’t strand you in the pool,” he said, avoiding her eyes, looking angry and ashamed. “We can rotate the rod, then pull you up. If we’re quick enough, we can limit your exposure.”
Shawn didn’t say anything more, but she knew he was churning through numerous arguments in his own head, failing to convince himself.
Adonia forced herself to inhale deep breaths, getting ready to work her way down the rope to the pool. She was sure her mind was playing tricks when she smelled faint wisps of sweet gas stirred up from far below. Water continued to spray out from the puncture, but in a wider stream, clearly growing. If the pool suffered a catastrophic failure, she could never stop it.
Adonia also knew in her heart that when she wrapped the rope around the fuel rod to move it, she would receive a massive lethal exposure. Before long, she would be just as dead as Senator Pulaski, although her death would be much slower and more painful.
But she would have averted the catastrophe and saved countless lives. That was what mattered.
She focused her thoughts, concentrating only on what she had to do. Simple, easy steps: slide down the rope, drop into the water, swim to the bottom, wrap the rope around the fallen fuel rod, free the Senator’s body, then press his skin against the breach in the wall as a temporary plug.
As she performed the task, Adonia didn’t dare think about what the radiation would be doing to her cells, her internal organs. Even if she made it back out, she wouldn’t feel the effects immediately. But the damage would be done, and her body would quickly, painfully, fall apart in the next days or weeks.
But if she didn’t do this, the water would keep pouring out and the plastic wall would soon fail. And that would be an incredibly bad day for everyone.
Standing beneath her on a horizontal strut, Garibaldi leaned out and took hold of the rope, tugging it to him.
Adonia pulled back. “What are you doing?”
But the older scientist had already looped the rope around himself and was swinging half of his body away from the boom and out over the pool. He stared at the water below as he levered himself out farther. “I am perfectly capable of swimming deep and moving that man’s body. You may be the best swimmer, Ms. Rojas, but you’re too small. I’ve got the weight and height to move him.” He screwed up his face. “As soon as I free the Senator, you and Colonel Whalen need to escape up that maintenance shaft while there’s still time. Tell Harris everything that’s happened down here. You know what needs to be done to make the Mountain safe again. Don’t let them cover this up!”
Precariously balanced, Adonia reached down to grab him by the arm. “I won’t let you do it. Don’t be—”
Garibaldi used his momentum and pulled himself back toward the boom, balling his free hand into a fist. He punched Adonia full in the face, taking her completely by surprise. A bright flash of pain exploded from her nose, behind her eyes, and into her head.
She reeled, nearly lost her grip, but hooked her elbow around one of the vertical struts. White and red flashes sparkled in front of her vision. Shawn was shouting. She drew back her hand from her nose and saw it covered with blood.
“Sometimes you have to use more than pacifist methods,” Garibaldi said.
She cleared her vision just in time to see him count silently to himself, then let go at the apex of his swing and slide fifty feet straight down into the pool.
38
After his ordeal so far, van Dyckman was surprised to be so flustered by something as trivial as a second sneeze, but the noise echoed inside the cramped metal duct, and it was damned annoying. As he crawled along on his bloody hands and knees, he stirred the dust buildup, and as the air flowed past him, it blew more grit and dust into his face. He sneezed again.
Crawling through the cramped, dusty duct was better than climbing up those endless metal rungs, but the rectangular galvanized steel vent seemed to go on forever. At least he was still alive, unlike Victoria and the rest of the team. He was good at finding silver linings.
He kept his head down, rehearsing what he would do once he found an exit, what he would say when he reached the operations center. Right now his entire universe consisted of a three-foot-wide and two-foot-high metal box that was infinitely long. He kept slithering ahead.
Every twenty feet he passed a grid on the side of the duct that vented air into the tunnel, but he could see only concrete floor and granite walls covered with steel mesh. At last, he came to a larger vent grid, and when he peered through the slats, he found himself above one of the dry-storage side tunnels. Squinting, he could see a huge vault door, just like the one that had trapped them inside the Mountain when the shit first hit the fan. Through the vent he saw individual chambers — was Mrs. Garcia still trapped in one of them?
He tried to orient himself. With all the administrative paperwork he had completed for Valiant Locksmith, he had seen maps of Hydra Mountain, the tunnels and lockdown vault doors, but he had never paid close attention to the details. During the first part of the inspection tour, he recalled seeing the metal air ducts along the tunnel ceiling. That must be where he was now, which meant he was crawling toward the interior corridor — not far from the operations center.
No one could have predicted that a civilian plane would make an emergency landing inside the fence and trigger a cascade of chaos. Van Dyckman couldn’t be blamed for that, but the fool Pulaski had made the situation a thousand times worse by using his damned cell phone. The Senator had been Valiant Locksmith’s staunchest ally, but he was also an idiot.