At that moment, a man came out of the moonpool building carrying three clipboards. He was in his late fifties, wore glasses under his white hard hat, and had a sizable paunch. He was listening to a cell phone as he came out of the building and didn’t see the two of us standing there until he was almost upon us. Then he did, and he stopped dead in his tracks. Tony coldcocked him and then grabbed him before he fell backward onto the concrete.
I snatched up the cell phone and heard a woman’s voice saying, “Tommy? Tommy? What was that?”
I switched the call off and then dialed 911. An operator came on immediately and asked what was my emergency.
“This is a police emergency call,” I announced in my most authoritative tone of voice. Tony was dragging the inert worker into the space between the buildings and removing his ID tags. “I am Lieutenant Richter of the Manceford County Sheriff’s Office, and I need to contact Sergeant McMichaels in Southport concerning an emergency situation at the Helios power plant.”
I think it was that last bit that did it, because she didn’t say a word, and a moment later I was patched through to the Southport police station dispatcher, who said he was looking for McMichaels as we spoke. Another minute, and McMichaels himself came on the line.
“Sergeant McMichaels,” he said. “Who is this again?” He sounded sleepy. I woke him right up.
“Cameron Richter, Sergeant,” I said. “Listen hard: Trask is inside the spent fuel storage building at Helios. He has Dr. Quartermain hostage. He intends to release radioactive water into the municipal water supply. County and Wilmington. Shut it all down, Sergeant-it’s starting right now.”
I hung up before he could ask any more questions. Tony had the fat man’s badge chain in one hand and was swiping the green one through the reader at the door marked SPENT FUEL STORAGE. The LED went from red to green and we were inside, although nowhere near the moonpool. That was the good news. The bad news was that we were facing a steel desk in the anteroom, behind which were sitting two very surprised-looking security guards.
Tony and I both had the same idea, and we simply did it: We ran at the desk, grabbed the front edge, and turned it over on the two guards, who still hadn’t begun to move. It was a heavy desk, and, unlike such desks in police station anterooms, it wasn’t bolted down. It went up and over, spilling logs, telephones, coffee cups, radio chargers, and newspapers all over the place. The two guards went over backward in their chairs, and then the leading edge of the desk came down on their chests and shoulders, pinning them to the floor. The upside-down chairs kept the desk pointed at a slant, so we were able to reach down and retrieve guns, cell phones, cuffs, and Mace cans, and then jerk their shoulder-radio wires out of the belt-mounted base units. Then we snatched the upset chairs out and buried the two guys under the full expanse of the desk with only their lower legs showing. They struggled until Tony stood on the desk, at which point I yelled at them to shut up and listen.
“Off,” I heard one of them squeak. I hadn’t gotten a good look at them during our surprise attack, but these guys were inside desk cops and definitely not the twenty-something, ex-military types like the tough boys in the reaction force. Tony told them to be still and then stepped off the desk so they could breathe. Both of us checked our newly acquired weapons, Glock nines, to see if they were ready to work. They were.
“Listen to me,” I said. “We’re not here to damage anything. Your Colonel Trask has gone nuts, and he’s in here and he’s going to melt down the moonpool.”
“Bullshit,” said the second guard, who sounded like he was regaining his composure. “You’re the retired cop with the dogs. He said you two were loose in the perimeter and that you’re gonna try to break in and sabotage the storage system. That it might be real or it might be an intrusion drill. There’s a dozen SWAT guys on their way here right fucking now. Either way, you guys’re toast.”
More confusion from Clever Carl. “Is Dr. Quartermain with him?” I asked.
Neither responded. Tony stepped back up onto the desk, and they both said yes.
“Billy said he shot your dogs, by the way,” one of them offered, with just a hint of a sneer in his voice. Tony looked over at me to see how I was going to react to this bit of news. For an instant I wanted to shoot them both, but then got control of myself. Then I saw what looked like spots of blood on the floor leading to the access stairway.
“Is Quartermain hurt?” I asked. Silence again. Tony started jumping up and down on the bottom of the desk, and they both yelled for him to stop. They said Quartermain had a bloody necktie wrapped around his head, and that all three were topside at the moonpool.
“That bloody necktie’s because your friend Billy, who shoots dogs, tried to kill us in Trask’s Bronco and got Quartermain instead. That sound like a security exercise to you, asshole?”
More silence. Tony pointed at the access door to the stairway. The card reader was dark. There was no little red LED glowing next to it. Had Moira managed to turn them all off?
“When’s the last time you heard from Control?” I asked the inert forms under the desk.
No answer. I knew there had to be some kind of duress or other emergency signal that these guys could send to Control in an emergency. Every site security system had one. Had one of them managed to mash the button as we attacked? I didn’t think so, but it might be a passive system: Call in every x minutes or we’ll come running if you don’t.
I tried to think it through while Tony bent down, cuffed the guards’ legs together, and then extended the second set of cuffs to wrap it around one of the steel desk’s legs. It had taken a card reader to get into the anteroom, but it looked like the interior access system had been disabled. Wouldn’t that fact alone alert the main control room? Then again, if Moira, with Trask’s help, had been able to jimmy the video surveillance system, perhaps she’d also been able to replicate the everything’s-okay signal from this anteroom back to Control. They might not know anything was going on, other than the video images of intruders down by the tailrace.
The real question in my mind was this: Was Trask’s moonpool story more bullshit? Another diversion? Was he going to do something here or over in one of the reactor buildings?
The guards weren’t going to tell us anything more than they had to unless we hurt them, and I wasn’t willing to do that, not yet, anyway.
Billy shot the dogs? When the hell did he get a chance to do that? More bullshit? Billy trying to psych me out if we managed to get this far? The little black spots on the glistening linoleum led to the access door; Trask had either been in a real hurry or he’d gotten really careless. Maybe it was the timeline-he had to move because Moira was going to initiate stage two, whatever that was. The desk phone, lying on its side with the handset on the floor, began to make that off-the-hook noise.
“Watch ’em,” I said to Tony while retrieving the phone. I had this awful feeling we needed to get topside, but I wanted to get some cavalry moving if that was at all possible. I put the handset back on the base, waited a second, and then picked it up. I heard a strange dial tone-typical of a Centrex system. I dialed 9. Nothing happened.
“How do you get an outside line?” I asked.
No answer.
“Take your knife,” I said to Tony, “and stab that foot right there.” Tony just blinked. He didn’t have a knife, but the guards didn’t know that.
“Dial 8-1,” the older man said in a muffled tone. His face was probably pressed sideways against the floor, but I suspected he was up for only so much heroics just now. I dialed 8-1. There was a click, and I heard a normal dial tone. I hit 9-1-1.
“What is your emergency?”
“Armed intrusion at Helios,” I shouted. “Physical security has been compromised. We need help over here-they’re trying to breach the reactors. Tell the FBI-quick!”