I stood up to behold the sight of those two giant plumes of water lifting out of the nozzles to crash into the channel almost a hundred yards below the generator hall.
“Gotta get higher,” Tony shouted over the din of the thundering water, and I could immediately see why: The channel was swelling fast, and the water was already climbing the next terrace level below ours. I looked for the shepherds, but couldn’t see them in the cloud of mist that was growing above the impact zone from the nozzles.
I looked up. The terraces were about five feet high, and the concrete was getting wet from all the spray. There was nothing to hang on to for a pull-up, and neither of us could jump five feet.
Tony pointed at my shoulders, and I understood at once. I got down on my hands and knees and braced myself. I could feel the rising water lapping at my boots. Tony stepped up on my back and then hoisted himself up to the next terrace. Then he pulled me up. We repeated the procedure twice more before we were on the top of the channel walls. Fine for us, but where the hell were the dogs? Then I realized we were standing out in full view of the cameras, and we started running toward the nozzles, if only to get away from those light towers. The noise from the jets sounded like a pair of 747s turning up on the takeoff ramp as we got closer to the generator hall. I wondered who’d decided to put the plant back online.
We made it to a stack of what looked like giant concrete barrels sitting next to the perimeter road. There were two rows of them, and they were fifteen feet high and easily eight feet in diameter. We ducked down between the two rows while I scanned the tailrace area for the dogs. I had this terrible feeling they’d been swept down the channel and were now pinned against the water fence. What I saw instead was headlights coming around the corner of the six-story generator hall.
Regular patrol? Or the response team?
We couldn’t hear anything over the roar of those tailrace nozzles. All we could do was watch the headlights. The vehicle was coming directly toward us on the perimeter road, so we put one of the barrels between us and the lights and waited to see what they would do. As I clung to the smooth concrete sides, I saw the radiation triangles painted on them and realized these must be the storage casks Ari had talked about.
The security vehicle, a Bronco with a light rack on top, passed the casks and kept going on the perimeter road. Regular patrol. I looked over at Tony, who mouthed the words “Now what?” over the thunder of the nozzles. I was worried sick about the shepherds, but if Trask and his hostage were somewhere ahead of us and inside the plant, then that was the priority. The next big trick was going to be getting into the plant itself. Trask solved our problem when he and Billy the Kid stepped out of the darkness and pressed guns into our necks.
Billy relieved us of our weapons and phones as we stood spread-eagled against the concrete sides of a cask. He was thorough enough to check for ankle guns and boot knives. I had a knife, and Tony had one of each. He took our cell phones and smashed all of them, mine, Ari’s, and Tony’s, against the wall of a cask while Trask stood cover. Then we marched in single file, Billy ahead, the two of us, and Trask behind, toward the second Bronco, which we’d apparently missed while concentrating on the first one. Billy opened the right rear door and pointed. Tony got in first, then me. We joined a frightened-looking Ari Quartermain in the backseat. Billy stood outside, pointing his weapon at us, while Trask got into the driver’s seat. Then Billy got in, sitting sideways to keep us covered. He was doing his strong-arm trick, holding the weapon high at an unnatural angle, but covering all three of us just fine. Once he closed his door, we could hear again.
“Welcome to my game, Lieutenant,” Trask said. “I was almost hoping you’d find your way in.”
“We found your way in,” I said. “The rest wasn’t all that hard until the waterworks started.”
“Yes, isn’t that something? I wish I could claim credit for the timing, but I was very impressed with your resourcefulness. First the snake, now this.”
“You were watching?”
“I’ve been busy, Lieutenant,” he said. He looked tired but determined. “I’ve reworked those two tailrace cameras to send two signals, one to the security control room, one to a portable monitor. When you showed up in the woods, I diverted the real picture until you were through. Yes, I was watching.”
“Sir?” Billy said, without taking his eyes or that gun off us. “The time?”
“I know, Billy, I know,” Trask said, glancing at his watch. “So what would you do with our two interlopers here?”
“Pop ’em and drop ’em in the rotor,” Billy said promptly. He looked really eager to take care of that matter personally for his favorite colonel.
Trask looked at me. “Know what a rotor is, Lieutenant?”
“As in mechanical?”
“As in hydraulic. There’s one at the base of every waterfall. The water comes straight down and then it rolls, under the surface, in a permanent horizontal vortex. That’s why people who go over a waterfall often never come back. They get trapped in the rotor, where they roll around for a year or so until they, how shall I put this-return to the biosphere. There’s a beauty of a rotor at the end of that tailrace out there, and if they happen to turn off the jets, the underwater section of the fence keeps things, um, confined.”
Ari hadn’t moved or said anything since we’d joined him in the backseat. His hands were folded in his lap, and then I noticed that his wrists were bound together with a white electrical cable tie. He was gray-faced, staring straight ahead like a condemned man.
“Well, hell, Colonel,” I said. “If we’re going into the disposal, you can at least tell us what this is all about, can’t you?”
“Just dying of curiosity, are you, Lieutenant?” Trask said.
“It would appear so,” I said.
“Billy, I think you have the right idea, and I’m even going to let you do the honors.” He turned back to me while he started the vehicle. “You see, Lieutenant, I can use Dr. Quartermain here, but I don’t need you-I just needed film of your intrusion. At the appropriate time, I’ll inject that back into the surveillance system, which hopefully will pulse the reaction team to come out here and run around in circles while we’re in there, doing our thing. Neat, hunh?”
“Sounds like a good diversion,” I said. Neither Tony nor I had been cuffed, and I knew Tony wasn’t going to just sit there and eat a round or six. Billy was watching both of us like a hawk, though, and he looked entirely ready to shred the both of us and the backseat. “But diversion for what, exactly?”
“The moonpool, Lieutenant. The moonpool. I’m going to show this decadent society what the future will look like once we cut and run over there in the Middle East. Give them a little taste of real twenty-first-century terrorism.”
“You’re going to drain it? Cause some kind of meltdown?”
“No, Lieutenant. That’s much too messy. Why spoil a perfectly good atomic power plant? No, this has to do with a vulnerability they haven’t thought about. That’s why Dr. Quartermain there is looking so glum.”
He put the Bronco in drive and turned back out onto the perimeter road.
“You have some more inside help, don’t you?” I asked.
“In a manner of speaking, Lieutenant. I have somebody by the balls, and, as usual, when you have people by the balls, their hearts and minds tend to follow. The best part is, he won’t know what he’s done until it’s much too late. But Dr. Quartermain here-he knows. Why don’t you tell them, Ari?”