Although he knew that testing the electrical system was also crucial, he didn’t want to activate the actual electrical connections on the device without the graphite and mercury electrodes in place — and they hadn’t yet arrived. But he did fire up all four diesel electric generators, connecting them to a dummy circuit for testing. The circuit wires led up the hill behind the barn to two metal poles, held off the ground by old truck tires.
When he closed the circuit, the crack of sustained lightning echoed from the direction of the testing poles. He checked the power output gauge. It read.8 megawatts. Perfect. Resistance created by the lightning jumping the air space between the two poles accounted for the deficiency from the 1.1 megawatt expected maximum. There was plenty of electrical power available to energize the electromagnet. The electrical system appeared to be operating correctly.
He hadn’t been able to test everything, but this would have to suffice for today. He would ask John for the more powerful cooling system this afternoon. John also needed to get him those special electrodes and the argon gas. In the meantime, Farris would hide out in the lab. Maybe he would take the opportunity to supplement his prayer ritual. It had been interrupted by the demands of the potassium processing.
The Umbers, breathing heavily, continued shoveling and hauling the waste pile from Point A to Point B — occasionally stopping to smoke a cigarette. Every hour or so, Urland would grab two Old Style beers out of the large styrofoam cooler he had filled specifically for this job, and husband and wife would sit together on the concrete slab of the lean-to, and take a break.
CHAPTER 27
In Minnesota, if you are in the rock and gravel business, you can probably get a permit to store your explosives in a semi-trailer. You have to lock it, of course. You have to keep an inventory of your dynamite, blasting caps and so forth — although, you can pretty much make that up as you go. No one actually counts your explosives, or audits your inventory levels. Oh yeah, you can’t leave your dynamite trailer parked in a residential neighborhood. But otherwise, pretty much anything goes.
John had been monitoring a limestone quarrying operation near the small community of Vasa, in Ottawa County, for almost a year now. He knew what time of day the explosives shipments arrived. He just didn’t know on which days they would come. He couldn’t think of a more sophisticated way to get this information than simply watching. So like a Vegas tourist at a quarter machine, he kept playing until he hit the jackpot.
It had been more than a month since he’d last seen the unmarked dynamite tractor-trailer arrive at the quarry. And there had been a lot of blasting, grinding and hauling of lime going on. Road construction season was in full swing. Another dynamite shipment should be due soon.
Today was his lucky day. In the predicted time slot, he saw the black Volvo truck-tractor and silvery metal trailer arrive at the quarry. It looked like many other semi-trailer combinations you might see on the interstate. But it didn’t resemble anything else that traveled the rustic gravel road back into the quarry.
Having seen what he was waiting for, John slowly pulled the Chevy out from its hiding place behind an abandoned barn across the valley, and headed for the farm. When he arrived there, he knew he would have to share at least a few more details of the overall plan. Billy Bob and Lulu were getting restless.
It was about a thirty minute drive to the farm. As John was about to enter the driveway, he saw the sign he had asked Urland to make and display. It was four feet wide and three feet high, hand painted on a piece of plywood, and planted in the ground with a single metal fence post. The post was apparently screwed onto the back of the sign, because there were some spots where the screws poked through.
The sign read, ‘BEWAR OF DAWG.’
The letters were painted with a two-inch-wide brush in an unpracticed hand. Below the main message was an extra line that Urland and Brenda must have made up. Block lettered in the same style, but with a smaller stroke, were the words, ‘Really Mean Basterd.’ As he got closer, John could see a magazine picture of a drooling Rottweiler glued to the sign’s bottom right corner.
He had to chuckle. At least making the sign had given them something to do. Nothing like a bit of arts and crafts to occupy the kids.
Halfway up the drive there was another wooden sign, this time nailed to a large tree. ‘DANGER! WARNING! DON’T GO NO FURTHER! REALLY MEAN!’
John laughed again. The Umbers had certainly gotten into this project!
As he pulled into the turn-around, he saw Brenda and Urland sitting by the front door in plastic-webbed folding lawn chairs, cigarettes blazing, a cooler between them. He wondered if they missed the front porch of their ancestral home, back along the Oklahoma interstate… or wherever it was. He didn’t see Farris; but he would almost certainly be sequestered in the lab.
John stopped to visit with the Umbers for a few minutes. Had they completed the waste pile moving assignment?
"Actually," Urland said, "we needed to call it a day. We’ll hit ‘er again tomorrow."
Since there was no firm deadline for this project, John nodded his approval.
Heading for the lab, John suppressed the ever-present ache that bored through his stomach and into his back. Damn cancer! He fumbled for a medicine bottle in his pocket and downed three small pills. Gotta keep this project on schedule — especially with someone ‘watching his ass.’
Thus far, Farris had proven to be as capable a chemist as Al Qaeda had promised, albeit a pompous little shit. John knocked on the metal lab door.
"One moment," came Farris’s voice from the lab. Presently, he opened the door a crack, saw who it was, then opened it the rest of the way.
"Just checking in to see how you’re doing," John said.
"Since you finally got me the argon and the special electrical elements I was missing, I have been making good headway. Care to see?"
Farris couldn’t resist the urge to show off to someone. And John was the only intelligent life form within earshot of the farm.
He waved John through the door ahead of him. The lab smelled like a swimming pool. Farris explained that chlorine gas was a byproduct of the chemical reaction. Though he had done a decent job of rigging a chimney and blower to vent the gas to the outside, there was still the piercing stench of it. John made a mental note to install a more effective chlorine venting system.
"I know it smells bad," said Farris, "but the chlorine levels in here are not toxic."
That was good to know.
On the lab table, a fire burned furiously beneath the potassium device. Even with the big new A/C unit on full blast, the radiant heat was fierce.
In a glass enclosure attached to and integrated with the cooking device, John could see what he assumed to be the molten potassium metal condensing on a white cooling plate. When the droplets got large enough, they would drip down the plate and into a ceramic tray. He remembered buying these trays for Farris long ago. John had had no vision at the time of their intended use.
Once in the tray, the molten metal cooled to a dull silvery-white as it solidified into ingots of pure potassium. The ingots were small. Maybe one inch wide, two inches long and a half inch thick.
Farris explained that the glass chamber — in fact, the entire apparatus — needed to be filled with argon gas at all times to avoid explosion. He indicated the blue rubber hoses attached to stainless steel argon injection nozzles on both the heating and cooling chambers.
Farris had devised a method of removing the ingots from the argon atmosphere, and bringing them out into the lab, without exposing the volatile metal to the air. He explained that the metal had to be quite cool before he could do this.