Leviathan (21 page)

“
We've got to kill Leviathan!” Frank replied, pained. “If GEO ever tracks Leviathan entering the lake, it'll detonate the fail-safe immediately! We've got to keep it down here! We've got to kill it down here!”

“
Didn't you people ever worry about what it would look like to have a nuclear explosion in the Arctic Circle?” Connor grated. “Didn't that little problem ever occur to you?”

“
The bomb was designed to look like a volcanic eruption,” Frank replied, breathless. “And there's something else!”

“
What?”

Frank gasped.
“Once Leviathan ruptured the containment cavern, GEO initiated a countdown!”

Even without asking, Connor knew.

“A countdown?” he snarled. “A
countdown
?”

“
Twenty-four hours!” the scientist shouted. “If Leviathan is still alive and loose in this facility in twenty-four hours, GEO is going to initiate the fail-safe anyway! There's no way to stop it!”

With a curse Connor threw the scientist back.
“You're crazy!” he snarled again, turning with wild hostility toward Chesterton. “You're both crazy! You put the lives of my family in danger, and you never told us about any of this!” His voice grew colder. “I should kill both of you.”

“Don't make me pull rank on you, Connor,” Chesterton replied, turning full into him. “This is still a military operation.”

“
Don't even try it, Chesterton.” Connor walked away.

“
Where are you going?”

Connor turned back.

“You heard him, Colonel. We've got twenty-four hours to kill that thing. That's exactly what we're gonna do.”

* * *

Chapter 15

Chaos and frantic cries for assistance dominated the spot-lit camp as Thor rode through the unmanned gate on Tanngrisner. It was obvious that some catastrophic event had shattered the usually peaceful and relaxed atmosphere of the facility.

Grabbing his hunting rifle, Thor dismounted and walked purposefully toward the men at the elevator shaft. As Thor neared the entrance they turned together, staring at him. There were no Army personnel.

“What has happened?” Thor rumbled.

Speaking at once, they stumbled over one another. Maybe a cave-in, a natural gas explosion, a volcanic eruption ... The cavern's vault had shut, locking everyone underground . . . They had lost all communication ... And the only way to reach the cavern was to make the dangerous 1,000-foot climb down through the elevator shaft
...

Thor asked, but he knew.
“Where is Connor?”

A burly electrician, the one Thor had lifted during the wrestling match, Tom Blankenship, spoke nervously.
“He went down into the cavern about four hours ago, Thor. And that crazy colonel came up and got Beth and Jordan earlier in the day. They're all down there, and there ain't no way to get to them!
There ain't no way out
!”

Thor stared down the elevator shaft; the darkness was complete. He picked up an industrial flashlight and angled the beam downward. Heavily greased elevator beams and cables gleamed black in the piercing light. Long, evenly spaced drill lines were visible in the walls.

Leaning back, Thor slung the rifle around his shoulder, cinching the strap tight to keep it snug against the battle-ax. Then he looped the flashlight strap around his shoulder and neck, hanging the light at his ribs.

“
Where does this shaft end?” he growled. “Does it go to the heart of the cavern?”

Blankenship stared in horror.

“Tom!” Thor shouted and Blankenship jumped back. “Where does the elevator shaft end? What is down there?”

Blankenship wildly shook his head.
“There ain't nothin' down there, Thor! The elevator shaft ends at the entrance of the cavern, and there's a steel vault that's shut down like an anvil! Even if you reach the bottom of the shaft, you'll be staring at a hundred tons of burn-resistant steel! And there ain't no other way to enter the cavern!”

Thor frowned. Wind and white flakes froze over him while blackened, flesh-scented tendrils of smoke drifted up the shaft.
“How is it that the smoke finds a way past the vault, escaping the cavern?” he asked.

Blankenship seemed scared to tell him.

“Tom!” Thor roared. “How does the smoke escape the cavern?”

“
It's probably coming through the ventilation shaft!” Blankenship shouted. “It's a shaft located to the left of the vault!”

“
And is this ventilation shaft wide enough for a man to crawl through?” Thor asked.

Blankenship stared widely.
“Man, I don't know if you could get through it or not, Thor. I mean, you might be able to. But that thing is pretty tight where it hits the cavern. And there's a steel rebar-grate over the entrance. It would take a bulldozer to pull that thing out of the wall!”

Thor stared at the cables and girders. A large, double-sided steel beam descended into the darkness, but everything was coated
in thin oil, exceedingly thin, to prevent freezing. Climbing down on the slick-coated steel would be difficult, if not impossible.

“
Do you have enough rope to reach the bottom of the shaft?” Thor rumbled.

“
No, Thor.” Blankenship seemed astonished by the question. “We don't even have enough rope to go even halfway. We never figured on anything like this.”

“
What about wire?”

“
Wire?”

“
Yes.” Thor turned to him. “A coil of wire! Do you have a coil of wire that will reach a thousand feet?”

Blankenship gazed over the spot
-lit camp. “Well, we've got a thousand-foot roll of eight-gauge that's probably strong enough to hold your weight, Thor. But the elevator shaft is really more like eleven hundred feet. So when you get to the end of the wire you'll still have another hundred feet or more to climb down. It's gonna be tough.”

Thor stared down into the darkness.

“Get me the wire,” he growled.

Blankenship stared.

“Tom!” Thor turned his head with a roar. “Get the wire for me!”

Instantly Blankenship raised a portable radio, speaking quickly with concise instructions before he looked down again.
“It's on the way, Thor. It's on the way. It'll be here in a few minutes.”

“
Good, Tom.” Thor frowned. “Tom, my friend, I want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to me closely! It is vital that you and your men and your families abandon this island as quickly as possible! Do you understand? Because what has happened in the cavern may be far worse than you think. Can you contact Iceland on the radio?”

Blankenship shook his head.
“No way, Thor. We've already tried that. Those military guys put some kind of jamming on the radio, and the Communications Center was busted up in the big fight. We can't contact anybody.” He was shaking. “Why would they do that, Thor? What have those guys done down there? You act like you know more about this place than we do!”

“
No, Tom. I only know that my friend and his family are down there.” Thor turned his head, glaring at the docks. “You have two forty-ton cruisers, Tom. Those ships are large enough to easily accommodate all of your families. Is that not true?”

Blankenship also turned his head to the dock.
“Yeah, we could get everybody on the ships. We could even load up all the military guys that were busted up in the brawl.”

Thor frowned, squinting.
“Those boats have probably been mechanically disabled by the military, Tom. But your people are expert mechanics, are they not?”

“
Yeah, we can fix anything. That's what we do.”

“
Good. Then quickly make those ships seaworthy and take a heading 230 to 330 degrees south-south-east for Iceland. And continue to hail the universal maritime frequency for assistance until you see land. Don't look back! Don't come back to this island!” Thor glared ominously into the shaft. “There is death here.”

Blankenship replied,
“Okay, Thor. We can get those boats working in no time. That ain't gonna be a problem. We've already rushed the MPs guarding the warehouse. We've got their guns, got everything.” He paused. “We can probably get the boats working in less than an hour. But what are you gonna do?”

Grim, Thor stared into the darkness.

“I'm going down into the cavern,” he rumbled.

Blankenship stepped back.
“Thor, come on, man. There ain't no telling what's down there! I hate to say it – ” His face twisted in pain, “ – but everybody's probably dead! And there ain't nothin' we can do! Why don't you come with us? We can fix those boats and get off this island! We'll be in Iceland in three hours!”

“
Because my friend is down there,” Thor answered somberly. “And I will not leave him.”

“
Well,” Blankenship began, hesitating, “Connor's a good boss, Thor. And he's a good man, a real good man. I ain't never worked for nobody better. But I'm tellin' you the truth. I wouldn't go down there for nobody.” He nodded, in pain. “I'm sorry to say it, Thor. But I just wouldn't do it. 'Cause if I go down there, I'd die, too.”

An engine approached and Thor glanced up. It was a front-end loader, forks locked around a pallet bearing a large coil of wire. Quickly they secured the wire to the elevator and pushed the coil into the shaft. It descended, rebounding, uncoiling quickly and easily. Thor moved to the edge, testing the makeshift rope with a tug. It held.

“Be wise, Tom,” Thor growled, poised at the edge of the chasm. “Repair the boats and be gone. Save your families.”

“
We'll be gone in an hour, Thor,” Blankenship nodded. “All of us! You can bet your life on it! And we won't be coming back, either. We're finished with this place.”

“
Good, Tom. Now gather your families and be gone!”

“
Are you sure you want to do this?” Blankenship asked, staggering. “There ain't no tellin' what's down there!”

Thor's face was grim as he descended over the edge.

“I know what's down there,” he growled.

Was gone.

* * *

Connor kicked the cover off the ventilation shaft and descended quickly from the crawl space into the power plant. Then Frank came out of the shaft, followed by Barley and four soldiers. Chesterton and the remainder of the platoon had stayed in the Command Cavern, awaiting Leviathan's renewed attack against the vault.

Upon gaining his feet Connor raced to the generator. He saw quickly that the Class-A Power Grid Switch for facility lighting had been thrown off, like a normal breaker would throw itself off under a power surge.

That's what Connor had figured. He knew that, because of the Lockdown Mode, GEO wasn't going to let any electrical power flow through the breaker. The computer would automatically reroute power to throw the breaker off again if Connor just threw it back on, so Connor knew that he had to go around the control system, somehow. He had to defeat the supercomputer's ability to control this electrical junction.

Connor took out a Leatherman pocket tool and began unscrewing the cover. Behind him, the rest of the soldiers emerged fully from the shaft, moving in the red half-light.

“Give me some light over here!” He yelled.

Instantly Barley was beside him, shining a weak regulation-issue Army flashlight as Connor removed the fiberglass box cover, laying it to the side. He knew that inside the box, leading into the switch, the incoming wire would be hot, because it fed power directly from the Norwegian
Power cable. And GEO had no ability to interfere with the incoming current. It just had the ability to keep power from flowing through the breaker at this junction.

Connor studied the situation.

He had always found it easy to work with electricity, thinking of it in the simplest terms, like water flowing through pipes. Because, like water, electricity would simply flow where it was allowed to flow, incoming or outgoing. It was not a difficult thing to understand.

Volts of electricity were comparable to the speed of current flowing through a line, the highest volt rating meaning the fastest currents. In this cavern they had used mostly lines of 110, 220, and 440 volts, all of them deadly. But there were much, much more powerful lines used in the facility, including everything from 10,000 to 300,000 volts. Simply looking at a line was never a safe way of determining what amount of voltage it contained. A line of 220 volts was no thicker or more insulated than a line of 10,000 volts. They were both the width of a finger.

Amps were comparable to the amount of current flowing through a line. Connor often thought of an amperage measurement in terms of larger and larger water pipes, each pipe containing a tremendous amount of water but with the water capable of moving at any speed, from slow to fast. Amperage had nothing to do with the speed of the electrical current, it was simply a measurement of the amount of it. Usually, though, any line rated above 11 amps was considered exceedingly dangerous because it probably carried high velocity, or high voltage, currents. A 1,000-amp line was almost as thick as a man's wrist.

Wiping sweat from his eyes with a forearm, Connor concentrated on the box. The incoming current was cut dead at the breaker, where it should be flowing into the rest of the cavern. He studied the
feed line; it was a 1,000-amp cable, probably carrying enough power to light up a small town.

Figures.

If this didn't work, he'd be fried.

Connor grabbed a wooden sawhorse, a relic from when the cavern had been built, and placed it beside the power box, where he could sit when the moment came. Then he placed one hand over his chest and stuck the screwdriver in the box, removing the brackets holding the hot, heavy-amp line. He intended to bypass the breaker, main
-lining the light current into the facility.

“
How come you're putting one hand on your chest?” Barley asked.

“
Always work with one hand,” Connor responded, blinking. “That's what they taught us in electrical school.”

Barley seemed nervous. He always seemed nervous when he got around electricity. It was the only sign of fear Connor had ever seen in the muscular man.
“Why?” the burly lieutenant asked finally. “Why are you supposed to work with one hand?”

Gently, Connor pried at the insulated section of the 1,000-amp line, lifting the thick bronze strand from its bracket. He knew that a ton of power was poised at the end of the bare copper.

“Because there's less chance of getting electrocuted,” Connor whispered. “If you're touching the box with both hands, one hand might take the current and the other hand will ground you out. That's where the current leaves your body and goes into the ground. Electricity is always trying to find a way to reach the ground.”