He headed immediately over to the back stairwell and ran all the way down to the 91-foot elevation to the 1–4 reactor coolant pump room. He was breathing hard. The heat was incredible, and his aerobic conditioning was good, but only for a man of his age. He ran inside, looked at the pump seal package, and saw a device strapped to the side of it. The bomb looked just like the other one. He looked at the timer immediately, hoping he wouldn’t see the same gibberish he saw on the other bomb, but to his horror, that was exactly what he saw. As he was looking at it, the timer display went normal and showed six minutes! Then it changed back to gibberish. He had only six minutes until it detonated!
He still had Hector’s knife, got it out and worked feverishly to cut the device loose. He had to work fast. The timer flashed back to normal again and shows five minutes, then gibberish again. Shit! He’d never get it out of containment in time. The heat was starting to affect him now. His skin had reddened, his fingers felt burned, and he could smell the acrid stench of burned hair. His breathing was labored and he felt faint. No matter, he had to get this done.
He finally got the device cut loose.
Gibberish — four minutes — gibberish.
He knew the amount of C-4, as a shaped charge, could do considerable damage to what it was attached to, but not if it were out in the open. The containment structure was seven feet thick at the base, so there was no way this bomb would hurt containment itself. He just needed to get it away from sensitive equipment. And then he needed to get away from it.
Gibberish — three minutes — gibberish.
He took the bomb and ran back out of the labyrinth, looking around for a place to put it. No time! No time! The best he could come up with was to put it down on the floor with its back to the concrete wall of the bio-shield, aiming at the outside containment wall 10 feet away. The explosion would be contained in a localized area of mostly concrete and steel, with little in the way of equipment. It was the best he could do.
Gibberish — two minutes — gibberish.
He could run upstairs, but then there’d be nothing between him and the bomb but distance. He needed shielding, too. Besides, he was worn out and he knew he wouldn’t get too far running upstairs. All he could do was to put concrete between him and the bomb, and then pray. He ducked back inside the labyrinth, putting several feet of concrete between him and the bomb.
Gibberish — one minute — gibberish.
The Old Man sat down on the floor with his back to the wall, and pulled his knees up to his chest, not knowing why, other than it felt like a good defensive posture. He put his hands over his ears and tried to put his head between his knees as if on an airplane and preparing himself for a crash landing.
Gibberish — twenty seconds — Gibberish.
Dave was talking with Nick on the phone when the control room recorded a momentary pressure spike in containment. Normally reading less than one pound of pressure, it spiked to just below the reactor trip set point of three psig. Dave didn’t know it yet, but a bomb had just exploded in the Unit 1 containment of The Headlands Nuclear Power Plant.
CHAPTER 66
The Headlands, remote as it was, had a small medical facility on site. It wasn’t staffed at that time of day so Hector called Dave and asked for one of the paramedics he had on the fire brigade to get down there ASAP to take a look at Eric and me.
While we were all waiting, I asked for an update. Hector told me that Unit 1 was still at 50 percent power. Members of my team had accompanied Hector’s handpicked men to the locations Jerry had identified from SAS and found four devices; two on emergency diesel generators, one in a high radiation area near a highly contaminated demineralizer — which they needed the key for — and one near a Safety Injection pump. Had all these devices gone off as intended, including the ones in containment, the plant would have sustained serious, if not unrecoverable damage. And the political fallout would surely have prevented it from ever being repaired and restarted. It would have been an engineering and political disaster of unimaginable proportions.
In the process of finding the bombs, Hector told me his men had found and killed two of Jansen’s team, wounded a third, and dropped one in containment. That was four of six they knew to be in the plant somewhere. He didn’t know where the other two were or where Jansen was until they found me standing over the remaining terrorists in Rob’s office. That accounted for everyone they knew about.
He did not, however, know about Stone. Seems that he, like Jansen, had a key card made for him by Rob. He came into the plant just a few hours after shift change. Hector was appalled at how easily all this had been accomplished. He was sure the plant security programs would be scrutinized with a fine-tooth comb in the very near future — perhaps with the help of NeXus.
When he finished briefing me on the terrorist situation, Hector just looked at me and sighed. “What a mess. We’ve got dead guys all over the place. And if I can believe you, we’ve got several more in the hills behind us. About the only good news is that none of the dead guys are mine. There’s a hole in my fence — that you made — there’s debris at the intake from some kind of small boat that I suspect you blew up, and we’ve violated several dozen laws concerning security at a nuclear power plant. Not the least of which is you don’t have a badge or a key card,” and he held out his hand for Jerry’s key card, which I promptly returned to him.
He continued. “I’ve got the federal government and a cast of thousands camped on my doorstep ready to come in here and take over. I’m really looking forward to that,” he said with considerable sarcasm. “You’re in a heap of trouble, son.”
“What about Rob?” Eric asked.
“Got his ass in custody. He’s crying like a little girl. Seems he doesn’t really have the stomach for this kind of thing.”
Hector was looking at me with concern for my injuries, no doubt.
“When you’re feeling better, but before you leave my sight, you will explain how you and that partner of yours got inside my power plant without my knowing about it.”
He paused for a moment, and then asked with something between awe and confusion. “And then you can explain who the hell Eric Jansen is.”
I wasn’t going anywhere for a while, waiting for medical attention. “What I’m about to tell you can’t go any further. You understand?”
Hector slowly nodded his head.
“We’ve been involved for some time now tracking a group of Chinese businessmen, intent on destabilizing the US domestic nuclear industry.”
“Why would they want to do that?”
“They’re trying to get into nuclear power generation in a big way, and in a big hurry. They figured if they could cause the US industry to second-guess themselves, they could pick up parts on the cheap. This is worth billions of dollars to them.”
“So they were behind all this?”
“It appears that way, yes.”
“And they’d do this by blowing up The Headlands?”
“Yup. We didn’t know exactly how they planned to do it and needed to catch them in the act. So we leaked information about Eric to Waxman Industries. Made him look like a malcontent. Figured he’d make a good recruit for them.” I looked at Eric, smiled and said, “He does looks like an unsavory character, doesn’t he?”