Blowout (7 page)

“How much power are you producing right now?” she shouted.

“Actually none,” Magliano told her. “We're electrically running the turbines to check balance, bearing tolerances, stuff like that. Keep the shafts from sagging out of true.”

“I only noticed the one smokestack. Not much of a rig for a coal-burning plant. And where are the storage yards and pulverizing plants? I didn't see any conveyor belts or mining equipment for that matter.”

In fact when she'd followed Magliano in the Hummer her first impression was that this place was some sort of a scam, some sort of a government boondoggle, what some of the contractors over in Iraq and Afghanistan had been playing at, sucking billions of dollars from the public trough while returning little or no service of any value. Like the Alaskan bridge to nowhere.

“This project is not about burning coal to produce electricity to run the communications system.”

“You're on top of a coal seam.”

“We've injected a series of microbes into the seam, and we think that we'll be able to produce enough methane to run the turbines.”

“I've heard of that work. Still produces carbon dioxide emission into the atmosphere.”

“Not the sort of methane we're going to produce.”

“Methane is methane. I know my basic chemistry.”

“Ours has a bacteria attached to it,” Magliano said.

Ashley was startled. “Are you talking about sequestration before the smokestack?”

“In the smokestack, actually,” he said. “But I'm no scientist, so I'm at the limit of my knowledge here. Dr. Lipton can explain it better than I can.”

Ashley walked over to the huge, science-fictiony turbine supported by four concrete cradles that raised the bottom of the thick steel cover six feet off the tiled floor and reached up and brushed the case with her fingertips.

The thing was alive, incredibly smooth, nearly vibrationless, and yet she could feel its heartbeat, or actually the currents or something along its nerves, almost as if the machine were communicating with her. Almost ESP.

She turned and looked at Magliano who was smiling patiently, and she wanted to think that he was an ass, but she decided on the spot that his smile was anything but disingenuous. “How many people are here right now?”

“Here in the turbine building, just Tim Snow, who's our chief project engineer, and Mike Ridder, who runs the control board upstairs. Plus you and I, and I think Jim Cameron our chief of security, might be running around here someplace, unless he went back to the party. We're conducting our first test in the morning. And the others are probably over at the rec center, too.”

“What about Dr. Lipton?”

“She's on her way, but usually she and her techs and scientists spend most of their time over at the R and D Center. No need for them to be here, just about everything is mostly controlled by computers.”

None of this was really adding up for her. Like Magliano she was no scientist, but she knew enough basic science from high school and from college where Chemistry 101 was the lesser of two evils when matched against Physics 101 that took a lot more math.

“Why the secrecy about the power plant?” she asked.

“I don't know what you mean.”

“The AP at the gate said there was no one by the name of Dr. Lipton working here. This place has all but been off-limits to the press—and when we were out here a couple of years ago you gave us a lot of stuff about a long-range communications system, almost none of which made much sense. I can tell a snow job when I see one because my father's had to lie all of his career with military intel and I'm used to it.”

“Then you know when not to push,” the lieutenant said, his smile a little forced. “You're your father's daughter and all, but you wouldn't have been let through the front gate if we'd been able to reach him. You're here because I was ordered to try to calm you down, maybe put a lid on whatever you think you know, and whatever else it is that you want to find out. What we're doing here, how we're doing, and why we're doing it, is top secret. A matter of national security.”

“Come off it, Lieutenant,” Ashley said. “You're converting coal to methane to make electricity to supposedly power another ELF system like over in Wisconsin. What's so earth-shattering about that?”

“I'll leave that one up to Dr. Lipton. She's the boss lady. I was just told to bring you out here and hold your hand.”

Which also made no sense to Ashley. Why put a CDC microbiologist, practically a Nobel Prize laureate, in charge of a power plant to supply a communications center?

She turned and walked beneath the turbine, trailing her fingers on the case, the vibration going completely through her body. Melodrama, she thought, and she looked back at Magliano to tell him just that, when the side of his head erupted in a geyser of blood and he was flung backwards off his feet.

 

7

BARRY, CARRYING A
Knight PDW 6x35mm compact automatic carbine, appeared at the doorway to the power plant primary control room three stories above the turbine floor as one man was grabbing for a telephone and the other, a look of fear and anger on his face, was turning away from the large plate glass window.

“What do you want?” the man at the window, who Barry identified as Mike Ridder, the system's board operator, shouted.

“You know,” Barry said, and he shot the man, driving him against the window, then switched aim and fired a two-round burst at Tim Snow, whom he also recognized from photographs he'd studied, one of the rounds catching the chief engineer in the side of the head, driving him to the floor.

“The male down by the turbine,” Moose's voice came over Barry's earpiece.

“Two down up here. What about the woman?” Barry radioed.

“No sign.”

“Take her alive if possible. And get the doctor started. I'm on my way to beta.”

“Roger.”

“Team two, copy?” Barry radioed as he turned and raced down the corridor and took the stairs to the main floor.

Brenda came back. “They're all in the rec center. North double-wide. Looks like party time.”

“Give me a head count.”

“Six.”

“One missing,” Barry radioed. “Stand by, I'm en route.”

“Wilco.”

Two loose ends, Barry thought as he reached the back door on the main floor, went outside, and took his Honda across to the cluster of mobile homes all lit up. Even from a quarter of a mile he could hear the music from the party in the main trailer. The first was the head count at the rec center, and the other was the newspaper reporter somewhere inside the power station. It wasn't likely that she was armed, so she wouldn't interfere with Dr. Kemal's work—the primary reason for this operation—but he'd thought of a number of interesting possibilities for her. Maybe as a bargaining chip with Kast for even more money.

Mission one was securing the power plant. Which had been accomplished. Mission two was taking down the remainder of the personnel, which was going to happen within the next four or five minutes—except for the one missing warm body. Mission three was introducing Dr. Kemal's counterbacterial strain into the borehole. And mission four was setting enough charges to take out the furnace and boiler, the turbine and generator, and the wellhead that was secured top and bottom by a series of blowout preventers, just like on an oil rig. Only these preventers were controllable. They could be opened and closed in any sequence. Presumably to allow the introduction of Dr. Lipton's coal-eating bacteria.

Mission five—the bonus—was to take out the good doctor if she was on site. They were not to take a chance of trying to reach the main research center two miles away, so Dr. Lipton's presence here would have to be a piece of good luck.

Brenda and Ada were hunched up flat against the back of the double-wide trailer when Barry pulled up, dismounted, and joined them. Even over the loud country and western music they could hear people laughing and singing at the tops of their lungs. The stupid bastards were having a party instead of taking care of business as they should have been.

“Base, one,” he radioed.

“One, base,” Gordy came back. “Plus fifteen, seventy-five remaining.”

“Are we clear?”

“Roger.”

“Do it now,” Barry told the women. “I'll check the other trailers,” he said, and he got to his feet and headed in a dead run to the first of the three single-wides.

The two women stepped around the corner of the double-wide and began firing, walking the rounds about chest height from left to right, the bullets easily slicing through the thin aluminum skin, insulation, and inside wall board.

The techs and roustabouts inside screamed in pain and desperation, someone shouted someone's name, and the music abruptly stopped.

Reloading, the two women fired another sixty rounds into the side of the double-wide and the screaming stopped.

Barry turned back for just a moment to see the girls jumping up and down. Didn't matter who they killed as long as they got to kill someone. He'd chosen well. “Team two, I want a body count in three.”

“Wilco,” Brenda radioed. She and Ada would enter the double-wide to search for and deal with survivors.

“Rendezvous at alpha.”

“Roger.”

Barry burst into the side door of one of the trailers, which served as living quarters for the crew, and swept through the four bedroom layout. But no one was at home, as he expected would be the case. It was the night before the experiment and everyone was partying.

Except for the one missing man.

Trailer's two and three were also empty, and when he emerged Brenda and Ada had mounted their machines and were headed back to the turbine building.

“Team two, what's your count?”

“Six down.”

“Are you sure?”

“Roger, we made a sweep of the trailer. Nowhere to hide.”

“Roger, understood,” Barry radioed. “Base, one.”

“One, base.”

“Clear?”

“Roger. Plus nineteen, seventy-one remaining.”

Moose's job was to secure the floor of the turbine building, which would allow Dr. Kemal a full fifteen minutes to introduce one gallon of his bacterial strain into the primary check valve for the main methane line coming off the wellhead. The soupy liquid would remain aboveground until the morning when the well was opened and methane was allowed to flow up from the coal seam, at which time it would begin to mix with the gas. Within minutes, the scientist had promised, possibly sooner, the new bacteria would interact with what was coming out of the well to produce oxygen. A lot of it, creating a highly explosive mix.

They'd been seated across the conference table in the cabin at their training ranch outside of Kalispell, Montana, when the doctor had explained what was likely to happen.

“Certainly an initial explosion that will destroy that end of the operation,” he'd said. “And then most likely the coal seam will catch fire, perhaps even it, too, will explode. Should be quite spectacular.”

“Better than nine-eleven?” Gordy had asked, and Dr. Kemal, who'd helped with the initial planning for the al-Qaeda attack, had nodded vigorously.

It had been Kemal who'd predicted that when the towers came down the dust and smoke sent roiling through the streets would contain a toxic concentration of bacteria from the human remains. A lot of the first responders would develop horrible health problems over the coming years. And he'd been right.

Barry reached the power plant two minutes behind the women. Brenda was already molding lumps of plastique explosive on the turbine case and Ada was right behind her, inserting fuses and stringing wire to the detonator box. They had fifteen minutes allotted to wire the turbine, the generator, the cooling water and boiler feed-water pumps, the surface condenser, and the base of the furnace itself.

They didn't look up as Barry passed them and ran through the length of the building to where Moose and Dr. Kemal were at the wellhead, Moose using an electric nut driver to remove the twelve bolts holding the access port to the check valve chamber.

“How long until you're operational here?” Barry asked.

“Five minutes, plus or minus two, if my battery holds out,” Moose said. “The son of a bitch bolts are stiff.”

Dr. Kemal looked owlish behind his wire-rimmed glasses. But he was calm. Know the plan, follow the plan.

“Base, one.”

“One, base,” Gordy came back. “Still clear, though I'm starting to get a data pileup. Nothing my mainframe can't handle for now. Plus twenty-eight, sixty-two remaining.”

“Roger,” Barry said, and he went looking for the newspaper reporter who had to be somewhere in the building.

 

8

WHEN ASHLEY WAS
nineteen she'd dated a Special Forces second lieutenant, who in an effort to make an impression, snuck her on to the nearly two hundred square mile survival training wilderness of Fort Bragg with only a KA-BAR knife, flint, compass, and fifty meters of light nylon cord. It had been absolute freezing hell for three days until, totally lost, they were finally picked up by the MPs. At this moment she wished she were back there.

She'd managed to make her way along the base of the turbine to a cubbyhole halfway back within a towering structure of complex machinery, pipelines, gauges, and other things incomprehensible to her, except that she thought she was somewhere under the furnace where the methane would be burned. The space was barely three feet on one side and perhaps eighteen inches deep, about ten feet above the main floor, and pulling her legs up beneath her she tried to make herself invisible.

Two men in white coveralls were down on the floor to the left, about fifty feet away. Their backs were to her so she couldn't see their faces, but one of them was large with a mane of black hair, while the other was small, and she got the impression he was a much older man.