“She must leave, Pierce. She must leave now.”
Patty turned and watched as a second figure emerged from the shadows in the front of the room, stopping next to the Japanese mannequin. It was a woman’s figure, a woman she had known almost all her life and loved like a mother: Shimada!
McCracken felt the incredible heat building in the loop as soon as he began his descent. Even through his radiation suit, his skin seemed to be burning. Sweat ran from his forehead into his eyes, steam misting across his faceplate. He had spent his share of time in steam rooms, and that was the only comparison that came to mind — a steam room still pumping heat long after the cycle should have ended.
Blaine passed the fifteenth rung, his breathing labored. He had considered the possibility that Abraham had set up a second firing apparatus to thwart precisely the strategy he had employed. At this point, though, dying from a bullet seemed preferable to radiation poisoning or being boiled alive, both of which were equally real possibilities.
“Can you hear me, Blaine?” came the garbled voice of Jack Tunnel.
McCracken adjusted the communicator built into his helmet. “Loud. Not so clear.”
“Okay. If you look down, you’ll see you’re coming to the first catwalk. You don’t want that one or the next one. It’s the third one you’ve got to reach.”
“How much time?”
“Just over five minutes now.”
Blaine quickened his descent. The rungs of the ladder passed swiftly, his drop falling into a symphonic rhythm of hands and feet moving together. The second catwalk was gone before he knew it, then the third was upon him. He stepped off from the ladder and onto the catwalk.
“Okay, Jack. I’m on it.”
“You should be able to see the water gushing out…thirty yards down on the right.”
“Yup, there it is.”
“The valve you’ve got to close is above the pipe, say about eye level.”
McCracken started for it. He took each step on the thin catwalk cautiously, wondering if Abraham had left more surprises for anyone who managed to get this far. The water rushing out of the burst pipe was superheated now, boiling hot and getting hotter. Approaching it, Blaine realized his flesh seemed to be baking. He was breathing hard and the sweat continued pouring into his eyes from his brow. He felt light-headed and wanted desperately to have something to catch hold of, but nothing was available. He reached the blown valve, choosing his steps carefully to avoid the plume of steam he could already feel through his radiation suit.
“I’m at the valve, Jack,” he said when he was behind the steam’s flow. The valve was circular, six inches in diameter, colored in the same almond shade as the rest of the pipes and valves in this section.
“Reach up and turn it to the left, counterclockwise. Your gloves will insulate you from the heat briefly, but when your fingers start to burn, pull your hands off and let them cool.”
“Hey, this isn’t a pie we’re talking about here!”
“Just go to work. Four and a half minutes left now.”
Blaine ran his fingers cautiously around the circumference of the valve. Along its squat neck, he felt a small attachment no bigger than a matchbox. Abraham’s final precaution would have done the job just fine if the man who had come down here hadn’t known what to look and feel for. Blaine closed his fingers on the small but potent charge and pried it away.
“Son of a bitch,” he said, letting it drop harmlessly to the catwalk and returning his attention to the valve.
“My hands feel hot already, Jack,” he said an instant after his gloved fingers tightened around it. “God, this thing’s tight!”
“Is it moving? If it’s been jammed we’ll have to go to a backup.”
“I can get it…. There, it’s starting to go now….”
McCracken twisted with all his strength. Progress came slowly. Finally he detected a marked slowing in the water sprouting from the pipe. When at last the valve was turned tight against the other side, it slowed to a trickle.
“That’s it, Jack.”
“Halfway there, Blaine. All we gotta do now is reroute the cooling water by opening up a backup valve and bringing it back into the central core. You’ve got to go down to the next catwalk.”
“Four minutes to critical stage.…”
“That bitch has been known to be wrong before,” said Tunnel, venting his tension on the mechanical female voice that sounded through the core area.
“How many times?”
“Twice in simulations.”
“I’m back at the ladder, Jack, and going down.”
“Okay. The valve you’ve got to open is in the same spot as the other, just along the next catwalk. How you holding up?”
“Dizzy. I can’t catch my breath.”
“No wonder. The temperature down there just topped the hundred-and-fifty-degree mark.”
“And I’m not even getting a tan to show for it.”
Blaine reached the fourth sublevel catwalk; the piping was colored blue instead of white. He proceeded down it as quickly as he could through the intense heat and located the valve just where Tunnel said it would be.
“I’m here,” he said.
“Okay, Blaine. This one you want to turn to the right. You’ve got to open it all the way or there won’t be enough pressure to cool the reactor in time.”
“Just how much time is that?”
“Thirty seconds to a minute — or we go to the critical stage.”
“That means we’ve only got something over two left.”
“Turn the valve now and you’ll have time to spare.”
Blaine reached up for it, his hands burning with the intensity of fire. “It won’t give, Jack.”
“Ease off a little. No pressure inward. Just twist.”
“That’s what I’m doing,” Blaine said, the strain of exertion telling in his voice. “It feels like somebody’s—”
He felt it all go at once and realized the valve had come off in his hand.
“Jack, I think I’ve got a problem down here….”
Chapter 36
Through his binoculars, Abraham could see the motorcade edging down Boylston Street. A pair of motorcycle cops, sirens screaming, led the way. There were three more squad cars both in front and in back of the president’s limo. The helicopters were hovering above the steel structure of the building where he was hidden, but they couldn’t possibly spot him. Two to three minutes more and the limo would have reached the stripe lined with his deadly explosives. Abraham felt no excitement, only anticipation.
He had started to reach into his pocket for the detonator when he felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. Something alerted his senses enough to make him swing. He never actually heard the elevator coming, but as soon as he turned he saw the steel coil sliding through the pulleys, unaccompanied by any engine sounds.
Someone was coming up!
Abraham only distantly registered that whoever it was had taken precautions so he wouldn’t be heard. He sprinted across the steel skeleton of the building, strides bringing him from one girder to another. He already knew who it was, did not have to see the big Indian he had glimpsed across rooftops in Philadelphia to know that their fated meeting was about to take place.
He reached the edge of the skeleton just as the exposed elevator had cleared the floor immediately beneath his. He gazed down and locked stares with the Indian once again. Still staring into the Indian’s eyes, Abraham grabbed hold of the cable pulley. The Indian was barely a floor from him when Abraham tore the steel cable from the left slot harnessing it, instantly sending the elevator platform careening downward.