“Where do I put it?”
“If you’re looking at the bomb head-on, place the stick five degrees to the left.”
“Why five degrees?”
“I like the number five, John, always have.”
Puller placed the stick in that spot and confirmed that with his brother.
Robert said, “Good. Now you obviously have to set the timer for the stick to go off before the bomb timer. With a nuclear weapon even a millisecond difference in the timing of the explosions is sufficient. Stick detonates, punches a hole in the lenses, causing a series of staggered explosions. The sequential detonations will destroy the sphere along with the compression phase. The pit will squeeze through the created holes and critical and supercritical stages will never be reached. With no pit the plutonium can’t be compressed and the entire thing collapses.”
“And that’s real good?” asked Puller.
“Let me give you the three scenarios as I see them. If we’re real lucky we go low-end. That means you just have a dirty bomb with nothing nuclear in the detonation. The most we have is a small boom with some radiation exposure, which three feet of concrete should be able to contain. That would be as good as it gets. The second or medium outcome is the half-kiloton fizzle. It obviously helps that you’re in the middle of nowhere covered by three feet of concrete. Collateral damage should be manageable.”
“This county is full of a lot of people, actually,” said Puller, as Cole stared at him from behind the light she held. “And they’re basically having a real shitty life right now. So the last thing they need is a mushroom cloud popping into their misery.”
“I’m sorry, John, I didn’t know.”
“No reason you should.” Puller drew a long breath. “And the third scenario?”
“My plan works, but it doesn’t work that well, and we still go nuclear.”
“And that means?”
Robert didn’t say anything for a few moments. “I’ve never lied to you, John, and I won’t start tonight. That means that a large chunk of where you are will be completely vaporized. Like a hundred hurricanes hitting all at once. There won’t be anything left for miles. That’s just how it works.”
“Okay.” Puller thought of something. “Give me a few minutes,” he said.
“What?” asked his brother.
“This thing is going to go boom under any scenario, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then give me a few minutes.”
He set the phone down, jumped up, and ran off. Cole rushed after him.
“Puller, what are you doing?”
He reached the barrels, sized them up, eyed where he would be taking them, and decided on the best way.
“Mineshaft is over there. I’m going to roll these barrels into the shaft as far as I can. When the boom hits, if we’re lucky, the concussive force will send these suckers deep into the rock and then bury them under tons of crap. It’s our only option at this point.”
“Better than into the West Virginia air,” said Cole.
His muscles straining, Puller tipped the first barrel onto its side and quickly rolled it into the mineshaft. There was a slight downward slope and the barrel rolled on its own down into the darkness. Puller ran back to the other barrels and found that Cole was trying to topple one over too, but her strength was not enough.
“Just hold the light on it,” he said. “I’ll supply the muscle.”
A few minutes later all of the barrels were in the mineshaft. Puller and Cole ran back to the nuke and he picked up the phone.
“I’m back.”
“What the hell were you doing?” demanded his brother.
“Putting barrels of nuclear shit in a safer place.”
“Oh, right. Good idea. Okay, you ready?”
Puller said, “Do you feel lucky?”
His brother replied, “More to the point, do you feel lucky?”
Puller licked his lips and glanced at Cole. She stood there as though marbleized.
He set the timer on the dynamite stick to thirty minutes. That would give them plenty of time to get out of the blast area.
They heard a groan.
Cole said, “Roger is waking up.”
Her brother-in-law was indeed stirring.
Puller said, “Go untie him and make him understand that we need to get out-”
“Puller,” Cole shrieked. “Look.”
Robert apparently heard this. He said, “What’s going on?’
Puller didn’t answer. He was too busy staring at the nuke bomb timer.
It had just gone from forty-seven minutes and eight seconds to five minutes flat.
Another booby-trap that they had engaged, perhaps by removing the cover.
Puller reset his detonator for the only time he could.
Less than five minutes.
He closed the lid on the bomb and he and Cole raced over to Roger Trent. Puller used his KA-BAR knife to cut the bindings and they got him to his feet and then ran like hell to the filtration shaft.
“John!” screamed Robert Puller’s voice from the phone.
His brother didn’t answer. He’d dropped the phone next to the nuke.
Now all that mattered was getting out of the Bunker.
But even as he ran next to Cole, both of them propping up Trent beside them, Puller knew one thing for certain.
We’re dead.
CHAPTER
90
As they raced along a groggy Trent said, “What’s going on? Who are you?”
“Just shut up and save your breath for running, Roger,” snapped Cole.
They made it through the filtration system far faster than when they had to come the opposite way, even with Trent in tow. They raced up the steps, through the firehouse, and out onto the concrete drive in front. Puller and Cole had no time to stop and shed their hazmat suits. Their sweaty hair was plastered to their faces. They had stopped sweating so much only because their bodies were running low on fluids.
Trent’s face was flushed and he was breathing heavily. “I think I’m having a heart attack.”
“Keep going!” yelled Puller. He ripped off his glove and glanced at his watch. Nearly four minutes had passed. They had less than one minute. Maybe five hundred tons of TNT. A million pounds. The potential blast radius was far greater, even with the containment dome, than the distance they could run in the next minute, even if they were Olympic athletes. And if it went nuclear, in about fifty-five seconds there would be nothing left of them except vapor.
Cole saw him glance at his watch and noted the expression on his face. Puller sensed her watching and looked over at the woman. Their gazes locked even as they sprinted along.
“Nice working with you, Agent Puller.” She managed a weak smile.
“Been my privilege, Sergeant Cole.”
They had thirty seconds left to live.
In that time they managed to cover another twentieth of a mile. The dome was clearly visible behind them. Puller didn’t look at his watch again. He kept running. He picked up his pace. So did Cole. So did Trent. The fresh air had helped revive him and he had somehow realized that they were running for their very lives.
Puller wondered briefly what the shock would feel like. He was about to find out.
Inside the Bunker the dynamite stick detonated.
Robert Puller’s method worked, however. The staggered explosions, off by only milliseconds, allowed a seam to develop in the sphere and the pit shot right through it.
There would be no thermonuclear explosion.
Now it became just a bomb.
But it was a big bomb. And Drake County, with all of its coal mining over the years, had never witnessed a detonation such as this one.
The earth trembled beneath their feet, but they felt that for only a second, which was the length of time their feet were actually on the dirt. An instant later Puller, Cole, and Trent were thrown twenty feet in the air. They slammed into the dirt, and were rolled head over heels by the concussive blast coming from the Bunker. They ended up separated and nearly a hundred feet from where they had last stood. Puller barely missed colliding with the trunk of a pine tree.