I gave him a warm smile. “Your family is safe. They’re on their way to Ukiah with a member of my team. You can talk with them in a bit. But right now, the plant is under attack.”
Dave’s mouth fell open as he stood there looking dumbfounded. ‘Your family is safe’ was all he heard. But he also had a dead guy on the floor of his office. And the plant was under attack. That was a lot to process for anyone.
“You’re sure my wife and kids are okay?”
“Yes sir. That’s what Marti was on her way over here to tell you.”
Unabashed tears of relief started to stream down Dave’s face. He hung his head for a moment, sobbed a bit, and tried to gather himself. He knew everyone was staring at him. They had no idea what was going on. He looked up at me again.
“I suggest you brief your crew. Marti can stay here to help you with that.” I knew that familiar faces were important right now. And I needed to leave the control room. I had something else I needed to do. “The best thing you can do,” I added, “is to stay calm, stay here, and keep the unit on line. Keep the doors closed and lock them if that’s possible. There may be explosive charges placed in the plant, and we’re looking for them right now.”
Dave said, “We can inflate the door seals. Nobody will be able to get through them once we do that.”
“Good. I have your private number. I’ll use that if I need to get in touch with you.”
Marti came out of the shift manager’s office looking drained and exhausted and took hold of my hand. She gave it a squeeze as if to convey a message that we’d see each other again.
With that, I left the control room. It was time to end this.
CHAPTER 58
Rob reacted to the PA announcement about the security intrusion with dread. Something was terribly wrong. By the look on Jansen’s face, he could tell he was just as taken aback by it.
“Who the hell is assaulting the plant perimeter and why? Is this your doing?” Rob asked, knowing immediately that it was a stupid question to be asking the terrorist sitting across from him.
Jansen didn’t answer, so Rob continued, as if saying it aloud would somehow make it all make sense.
“It’s not the FBI. They surely wouldn’t come in like this. And it can’t be your men. You told me you lost touch with your team. Is this some stupid backup plan you had if you lost contact with them? Or did they decide to act on their own for some reason?”
Jansen still didn’t answer and just sat there, stone-faced.
Rob was staring at his phone, willing it to ring so he could find out what was going on. It wasn’t ringing. He knew calling CAS was the wrong thing to do. He’d trained the CAS operators not to answer calls during situations like this. At least, not in drills. But he needed information. Only one way to get it now.
“Fuck it! I’m going over to CAS and get some answers,” Rob said impatiently. As he got up, he looked one last time at Jansen, as if expecting something… anything. Jansen said nothing to him. Rob was furious at the man and his apparent laze’ faire attitude. He left him sitting there and hurried out of the room.
Jansen watched him leave, glad to be rid of him, though starting to wonder just what was going on. He realized his plan was unraveling. First he loses contact with his men. Now this. It might still be possible to get away with this, but it’d take some improvising now. If everyone didn’t panic, this still might work. The FBI and local law enforcement would be showing up soon — sooner than expected. They’ll still want to evacuate the site and turn it into a crime scene. They’ll most likely evacuate everyone to an off-site location, with the help of some armed responders from the site, and want to question everyone there. That would be his opportunity to slip away, along with his team members who would be acting as the armed responders helping get people off site.
He decided it was best to wait right there for the time being. Nobody will think the security manager’s office was harboring the leader of the assault force. His guys were supposed to rendezvous with him there when their jobs were done, anyway. Given what was going on right now, they may opt to stop and regroup with him to decide what to do. In a few minutes, he’d have a small army around him.
CHAPTER 59
Jerry was trying to concentrate on his task, which was to find where Jansen’s team had been in the last couple of hours. He’d managed to put together a short list of vital areas that had been entered, cross-referenced the badge numbers, and found that the guys who’d entered all those areas were Waxman Industries contractors. That was it. He had the information he’d been looking for. He knew where they’d been, and it wasn’t good.
Worried now, Jerry turned around and gave the list to the Old Man. As he did so, he looked more closely at the person in front of him. He still didn’t know who this guy was — he was clearly not the usual contractor type they got to help out at the plant. He was much too old and looked like he should be retired, not running around a nuclear plant under attack. But he was there and seemed to be in the know. Jerry was past trying to figure it all out. There was a problem and the gentleman standing next to him was — hopefully — going to help them out.
The Old Man took the list and looked at it anxiously. As expected, there were doors that had been opened into the vital emergency diesel generator rooms. Explosives there would damage backup power to vital equipment. One guy could have gone in all three D/G rooms easily enough.
Further down the list were a couple of places in the auxiliary building, inside the radiological controlled area. Two of those areas seemed to be unimportant, at least as far as vital equipment was concerned. The Old Man reasoned that they might be used to create a distraction or spread contamination around. They were in areas related to radiological waste systems.
Then he saw what he was looking for, but hoping he wouldn’t find; the emergency air lock vestibule outer door on Unit 1. Shit! He knew a door like that would have an alarm on it, so control room personnel would know if anyone had opened the door. He needed to confirm that, on the remote chance the computer was in error.
“Call the control room and find out if the Unit 1 emergency airlock has been opened recently,” he said. “They should have an alarm on it.”
Jerry speed-dialed a number. “This is Jerry Sims in SAS. Did you recently get an alarm on Unit 1 containment emergency airlock?”
The Old Man was watching Jerry. It was a short conversation. Jerry thanked the person on the other end of the line, hung up, and said, “The Unit 1 containment emergency airlock door had just been opened prior to the security event that’s in progress. They were going to send someone out to check on it, but with the security lockdown in progress, they hadn’t done anything yet.”
That call must have prompted a discussion in the control room too, because moments later the SAS phone rang. Dave was now on the phone.
“This is Dave Street, shift manager. Who’s in charge in there?”
Jerry said, “Hector’s in charge.”
“Let me speak to him, quickly.”
Hector took the phone. “This is Hector.”
“Hector, this is Street. I’m declaring a General Emergency. People tried to take over the control room. We have one fatality; a terrorist. We’ve secured the control room. I’m notifying State and County authorities.”
Hector breathed out a sigh of relief. He’d been waiting for some kind of confirmation. “So I assume by your comment that Nick was successful?”
After a moment of silence, Dave said, “Hector, what the hell’s going on?”