“Right. Let’s do it.” Adonia adjusted herself for stability on the struts. “Ready, ready, now.” She yanked down as hard as she could.
She felt the rope move, this time much more than when they were pulling up the rod. Shawn had used his legs to push back, raising Garibaldi up a few feet with a lurch, then readied himself for another short gain.
She gritted her teeth and they pulled again — two feet, and then another two feet. He rose out of the water, swaying above the pool. Adonia disengaged her thoughts, trying not to think of how long it would take. They methodically heaved the rope and moved the dangling man closer to the crane, foot by foot. Garibaldi just hung there, and water dripped from his clothes back into the pool like widely spaced raindrops.
“When he gets closer, I’ll reach out and bring him in if you can secure the line.”
“Copy.”
After an eternity, they pulled the older scientist high above the pool, almost to their height, but with the angle of the boom, he slowly twisted on the rope a few yards away. “A little more!” Adonia said. “He’s just about here.”
Garibaldi reached out to grab the metal lattice, but missed. His jerky movement made him swing and spin as he dangled, and the rope slipped.
“Hold it! Hold!” Adonia braced herself hard as the dead weight slammed against the framework.
Shawn grunted as he stabilized Garibaldi high above the water. “Stop moving! Let us pull you in.”
“Just trying to help!”
“You’ve done more than enough to save us all.” Adonia still felt the heavy weight of guilt as she tugged on the rope again. Though Garibaldi wouldn’t feel any internal effects of the radiation yet, he must know that he had suffered a fatal exposure. Finally, he swung close enough that she could reach out to grab his outstretched hand as Shawn secured the line around the metal lattice.
Garibaldi’s skin was wet and clammy, but his grip was firm. He clasped her wrist, and she swung him in. His hands were already an angry red, severely burned. His feet hit the boom, and he pulled himself onto a strut. When he was balanced again, he wrapped his arms around the lattice and shuddered.
Adonia broke the tense, awkward silence. “Saying thanks doesn’t come close to acknowledging what you just did. The nation owes you a debt of gratitude, even if they never find out what happened.”
Garibaldi glanced at her, embarrassed. “Sorry about hitting you in the nose. I couldn’t think of any other way to convince you.”
“You didn’t convince me anyway.” She touched her face, felt the sticky blood there. “I’ll get over it.”
Shawn was quiet for a moment before he asked, “How long were you in direct contact with the rod? How much—”
Garibaldi looked at his red and blistered hands. “Don’t dance around it, Colonel. I received a lethal dose, probably many times over. I could see some of the cladding had been scraped off as well.”
“I’m sorry,” Adonia said in a soft voice.
Garibaldi lifted his chin. “Don’t get maudlin. Now, we need to climb out of here, find some way to communicate with Harris. I don’t know how much time is left on the lockdown, or how long the emergency team will take to get in here, or even how long the Senator’s body will plug that leak. Remember that even though I sealed the breach temporarily, there are plenty of stray neutrons that could hit one of Victoria’s warhead cores and trigger a reaction.”
Shawn looked up to study where the air vents converged in the ceiling near the catwalks. An aluminum ladder led from the high catwalk to a hatch in the center vent. “We can climb to that access shaft. Up the boom, drop onto the catwalk, and make our way to the ladder. If you think you’re up to it, sir? Otherwise, you can rest here, wait it out.”
The older scientist nodded wearily. “I feel adequate enough, for the time being. Let’s get moving.”
Shawn nodded and started looping the long rope around his shoulder.
Adonia clung to a different sort of hope. “We also need to get you to a hospital. Several of them specialize in radiation exposure, like one of the Mayo Clinics.”
“Right now, I wouldn’t mind just a comfortable bed, but that’s only prolonging the inevitable. I’ve… only got a few weeks to live, at most.”
“A person can do a lot of useful things in a few weeks,” Adonia said. “If you spoke out, you could focus the nation on solving the problem nobody wants to talk about.”
“You want me to convince them to open Yucca Mountain after all? Or keep storing the waste in here?” He let out a quick laugh. “Maybe I can talk them into using an alternative to nuclear power.”
Adonia shook her head, surprised that she had been distracted into the debate. “I’d rather have this discussion in a more comfortable place — outside the Mountain.”
Garibaldi gave her a curious smile. “Oh, we will have the debate, a very prominent and public one. As I’m dying of radiation poisoning, I’ll have a platform like I’ve never had before.” He wiped at his wet hair. “See, there’s always a silver lining.”
40
In the midst of the emergency, with Hydra Mountain’s systems still rebooting, actions that would have seemed preposterous under normal circumstances now seemed possible. Van Dyckman knew it was time to act.
As he observed Rob Harris through the air ventilation screen, the site manager seemed overwhelmed by indecisiveness, waiting for some superior to give him instructions, not to mention political cover. Regulation Rob had no playbook for this situation, and he never took his own initiative, never colored outside the lines. Now that van Dyckman knew about the Velvet Hammer SAP, he understood why Harris had tied himself in dithering knots: the man just didn’t have the balls or the imagination to bend the rules and find a solution.
He watched as Harris frowned at the touchscreen, wavering his extended finger over the facility map. His standard emergency checklist probably didn’t tell him what to do. Time for van Dyckman to exert his authority and take advantage of Harris’s character flaw. He could get the matter taken care of, right now, start working on damage control to offset this lackluster flunky and prevent him from doing further harm.
Valiant Locksmith was an unacknowledged, waived Special Access Program, and with the right finesse van Dyckman could salvage it, blame the right people, make the right excuses. But it had to be done carefully, and it was all predicated on Harris.
Because of his plodding attention to detail, the site manager no doubt had documentation and justification for all his actions, and that might be problematic. But politically, Rob Harris was deaf as a post, so he would make a good scapegoat.
In contrast, as the national program manager, van Dyckman often left the specifics to others while he concentrated on the big picture. And he always knew exactly what he had to do.
Huddled in the air duct above the Eagle’s Nest, he made his final plans, going over every last detail. He began to convince himself, without a flicker of doubt, that Rob Harris was responsible for the whole mess. The site manager had not only caused it, in fact, but was actively trying to cover it up!
Bad enough that Harris would abandon the high-level review team just before the initial lockdown, but a small plane crash, really? How contrived! And now five people were dead because of the man’s gross incompetence. If Dr. Garibaldi was correct about the potential for catastrophic interaction between the two SAPs, then they were all at risk of a massive nuclear detonation.