Radioactive (The Rayna Tan Action Thriller Series Book 4)

by Wes Lowe

  “Roger that,” said Rayna.

  As Chuck and Andrew headed off, Rayna pulled a small storage box out of the chopper and opened it—there were five miniature drones inside. These highly capable nano-unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were perfect for what needed to be done. Weighing only three ounces and less than seven inches across, these drones were extremely hard to detect, yet could provide live video feeds and be remotely controlled.

  “Okay, Julio. I’m ready,” said Rayna as she marveled at the tiny devices that could easily sit on the palm of her hand.

  Julio’s voice came on. “It’s been almost twenty minutes since Carter’s phone died so he could be anywhere. We’ve got to look on multiple fronts so I need you to release each drone in different directions. We’ll control four of them from here and you take the fifth.”

  “Got it.” Rayna carefully, but quickly, pulled the drones out of the box. Before releasing them into the air, she made sure that Julio had control of them.

  As she was about to launch the last drone, Kenny’s voice came on. “I found a dead woman by the control console next to the reactor. She was wearing a Hazmat suit and the helmet was taken off. There was a hypodermic syringe beside her body. And there was a box that resembles a large suitcase tucked under a table next to the reactor. I’ve checked and it seems to have a similar radiation signature to the one at the drug cartel house and the Explorer.”

  “Keep looking,” said Barry. “There may be others. I know that’s what I’d do. Chuck. Anything to report?”

  “Yeah,” said Chuck. “When I entered the storage bay, there was a van with a dead guard inside. His uniform had been removed and beside his body was a blue flannel shirt and pair of jeans. I headed to the reactor while Kenny was checking out the suitcase and I found fragments of human flesh and a Hazmat suit on the floor outside the reactor.”

  * * *

  “My news is not good either,” said Derrick. “I’ve looked to the bottom of the fuel rods pool, and there appears to be another suitcase of about the same size. I can’t check its radiation signature but like Kenny’s, the one I’m staring at at the top of the pool has a similar radiation signature.”

  Barry asked, “Can you bring it out to the Total Containment Vessel (TCV).”

  “It’s too risky to carry it out to the truck as we don’t know how much movement or agitation might trigger a spontaneous detonation,” said Derrick. And the location and layout makes bringing in the TCVs too difficult. The safest thing to do, and it’s not that safe, is to disable the detonator first.”

  “Which means we’ve got to find it first,” said Barry. “Any sign of Carter?”

  “Not here,” said Kenny.

  “No,” added Derrick.

  “Me neither,” echoed Chuck.

  “I got something,” shouted Rayna. “I’m going now.”

  While Kenny, Derrick and Chuck had been giving their reports, Rayna had launched the final drone and had begun her own personal surveillance of the area. At the far end of CNP’s parking lot, she saw on the drone’s control’s monitor a hole in the wire mesh fence that was big enough for a person to enter and exit from.

  She guided the drone to the other side of the fence and saw a partially hidden trail. About two hundred and fifty yards from the fence, she saw a figure moving rapidly. While she couldn’t control the drone well enough to follow the figure, she could see that the person’s general shape could be Carter’s.

  She put the control down and breathlessly gave a running commentary as she dashed toward the fence’s opening. “I couldn’t tell if it’s Carter or not. All I know is that it’s a single person that I’m going after through the bushes. Julio, can you send a drone to go and check for me?”

  “No! I sent the others inside the buildings,” said Julio.

  Barry’s voice came on. “Be careful, Rayna, but be fast. We’ve done a preliminary calculation of the initial post-blast contamination radius using what we know of the spent fuel rods and of the rods in the reactor, plus the size of the suitcases and how much radioactive material is in them. It could be anywhere from half a mile to two miles.”

  “That’s hardly a calculation,” gasped Rayna.

  “No, it’s not, but it does mean you have anywhere from thirty seconds to maybe ten minutes to find out if that’s Carter or not. After that, he’s safe to blow up the bombs without himself being in harm’s way. I’m going to get Kenny and Derrick to set up jammers to block cellular downlink frequencies. Even if doesn’t stop the detonation, we might be able to buy us some extra time.”

  “How much time?” asked Rayna. Her brain blitzed at a thousand miles a second as she ran. Somewhere on Carter’s body was a detonator, in all probability a cell phone. He hadn’t blown up CNP yet, so this meant he wasn’t out of the blast radius range yet.

  “A few seconds, maybe more. In London, they were able to block a detonation for almost an hour,” replied Barry.

  It wasn’t much of an answer but there was still time, maybe seconds, maybe minutes.

  But when Rayna found Carter, she couldn’t just kill him. The slightest wrong movement or inadvertent bump could set off the detonator.

  51

  Seduction

  Damn! As soon as he put on Rob’s guard uniform, Carter realized that someone might see that he wasn’t a member of the security staff, especially since the outfit didn’t fit him properly at all.

  Instead of going through the regular entrance, he would have to leave via the pot patch.

  He bolted from the reactor building and headed straight for the hole in the fence. Good thing too. It was almost seven o-clock and he didn’t want to be anywhere close to CNP by the time the early shift started.

  It took him all of twenty seconds to get from the reactor building to the hidden trail. This gave him a chance to slow down, not because he needed to catch his breath—that could come later when things were under control-but that in the semi-darkness, he couldn’t risk tripping on an errant tree root or rut in the trail. He was also trying to figure out how far and which way to go to get to civilization should he stay hidden in the bushes instead of getting onto the highway. He did have his modified cell phone with him but it was turned off. Even though it had not been used except for testing purposes, he didn’t want it on, giving the opportunity for someone to detect his or the phone’s presence. And then the prayers that he didn’t make were answered. As he approached the pot patch, he heard a couple of voices. Was working at CNP so bad that one needed to get high first thing in the morning so you could last the day? Or were these clowns so addicted that they could no more do without a morning toke than they could give up their daily quota of caffeine jolts?

  It didn’t matter because voices meant people, and people in the woods meant cars, and cars meant escape and kaboom!

  Carter walked into the parking clearing and encountered two startled clerical types. “Boy am I glad to see you,” he said in a desperate tone. “Something’s going on at CNP and we gotta get out of here as fast as possible.”

  “CNP’s dead. Nothing ever goes on there,” giggled a thirty-something redhead. “And I ain’t moving until I had my morning joint. Or should I say my morning joints?”

  “Or maybe if you want to leave, I can take you to the moon,” said the other woman, a dyed blonde with her brunette roots showing. She stepped up to Carter with a joint in her mouth and took it out, blowing smoke into his face.

  Carter whipped out the dead guard’s Glock from his back pocket, but before he could squeeze the trigger, Rayna came flying, arms outstretched like Supergirl.

  Carter flinched, flabbergasted, as he recognized the same Asian vixen, the one with a red dress and dragon tattoo, from his announcement party. Caught completely off-guard, Rayna yanked the Glock from his hand while in flight. She hit the ground and rolled to a knee, then fired a bullet that traveled directly into his heart.

  She dropped the weapon and leapt forward to grab his body as it crumpled forward, cradling it as c
lose to her as she could.

  “Carter’s dead,” she said into her comms.

  “Check his body. See if there’s a cell phone on him. About eighty seconds ago, we detected the presence of a new cell phone right around where you are.”

  She carefully checked his body, and found an ultra-slim detonator phone strapped behind his left thigh.

  Oh shit. She pressed the screen. “I found a cell phone but the screen is locked and I can’t get in.”

  “Try Carter’s fingers and thumbs on the home screen. Let’s hope bio-recognition works because we don’t have time to crack a password,” said Kenny.

  “Right.” Rayna started with Carter’s right hand and carefully placed each finger and then his thumb onto the home button, trying different positions to see if it would unlock. None of the digits worked. She started with his left thumb and the screen unlocked! There were six minutes and twenty-eight seconds left on the timer and going down.

  “Got it! Do I just press the stop button or is there something else to do?” she asked.

  “Just hit the stop button.”

  Rayna gently tapped the stop button with her index finger, then cringed, hoping that that was the right move.

  She saw the beautiful sight of the timer stopped at six minutes and nineteen seconds.

  “Done,” she said.

  The happy voice of Derrick came on. “We’ve just managed to open the casing of the bomb we found by the pool and saw the timer stop. Good on you, Rayna.”

  “The timer has stopped. We’re safe,” said Andrew a moment later.

  “Ditto,” said Chuck. “Nice job, Rayna.”

  “Thanks for saving us,” giggled the blonde woman.

  Rayna looked at the two women. Both were as high as kites. “You’re welcome… The dope here seems pretty powerful.”

  “Should be,” guffawed the redhead. “They’ve been breeding it here since the days of the hippies. Want a toke before we go to work?”

  “Thanks for the offer, but not today. I suspect that you’re not going to have to go to CNP anyway,” said Rayna as she tossed her head in Carter’s direction.

  “All the more reason for you to stay and celebrate with us.”

  “I think I’ve got a better offer” said Barry through the comms. “You want to come back now, Rayna? The boys can cover everything that’s left to do now that you’ve finished the hard part. Andrew can take you in the chopper to JFK. You’ll be in Los Angeles by lunchtime and can see Steve then.”

  “That’s an offer I won’t refuse.”

  52

  Decision

  Her plane wasn’t going to leave for another hour, so Rayna took advantage of the shower facilities in the first class lounge to scrub off every bit of makeup that she had lived in for what seemed like forever. The ever-efficient Gina made sure there was a change of trendy casual clothing from Lululemon waiting for her when she finished.

  After boarding the plane, Rayna was so tired that she fell asleep as soon as she lay back on her contoured leather seat and slept solidly for the entire six-hour flight.

  As Barry promised, she was sitting in the hospital room with Steve by noon. A young man in prime health, he had made a fast recovery. Fortunately there was no TB, HIV, or malaria, and he was symptom free of cholera after his intense rehydration treatment.

  Her dad and Steve’s parents were also in the hospital room when Rayna got there, and after initial friendly pleasantries, she asked if she might have a private moment with him.

  Rayna sat on the bed, holding Steve’s hands. Up until that moment she had no idea what she was going to say, but it was time to begin the conversation.

  “Steve, I’ve been thinking about what you asked me,” she began.

  “And what have you decided?” asked Steve expectantly.

  She said hesitantly, “I… I can’t do it.” Rayna could feel Steve’s hands go limp.

  “It’s not you, it’s me. You’re a wonderful guy and would be a fantastic husband for almost any girl…”

  “But not you.”

  “No, but not me. When I told Barry that I was turning down his offer of joining Fidelitas’ leadership, it wasn’t because I didn’t think I wasn’t ready. No one is ever ready for something like that. But I have some things that I need to get out of my system. Some that are not very nice. I don’t expect you or anyone else to understand.”

  Rayna released his hands, stood up, and turned to the door. She stepped out and saw her father standing there waiting by himself. The moment Henry saw her face, he wrapped his arms around her.

  And then her tears began to flow.

  Henry asked gently, “Why don’t you take a bit of time off? I’ve already okayed it with Barry. You you could come back to Vancouver with me. We could talk about… things.”

  Things? Rayna’s pained eyes looked up to meet her father’s. She could see that this was more than a dad wanting to cheer his daughter up. Neither of them had ever properly dealt with the death of Vivian, Rayna’s mom and Henry’s wife, since she was murdered three years ago.

  Maybe this was the time. She pulled Henry in even tighter and whispered, “That sounds like a good idea.”

  Thanks for reading RADIOACTIVE. If you enjoyed reading it, I think you’ll enjoy VENGEANCE, the next book in the Rayna Tan series.

  What’s Vengeance about? Without giving away too much, I can safely say it’s a shocker. When Rayna gets back to Vancouver, she discovers that her father is harboring her mother’s killer.

  OUCH!

  It will be coming out in the fall. If you’d like to be informed of when it comes out, just sign up for my newsletter. Just hit SUBSCRIBE

  In the meantime, if you haven’t checked out my other books, why not visit www.weslowebooks.com to find out more?

  Books by Wes Lowe

  THE NOAH REID ACTION THRILLER SERIES

  Fury Unleashed

  Venomous

  Manipulate

  Forbidden Cargo

  The Dragon Conspiracy

  The Noah Reid Box Set (Books 1-3)

  THE RAYNA TAN ACTION THRILLER SERIES

  American Terrorist

  The Mandarin’s Vendetta

  Unholy Alliance

  Radioactive

  Vengeance (Fall 2021)

  Visit www.weslowebooks.com or more info or if you are a member of KINDLE UNLIMITED, you can borrow the ebooks for free.

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  About the Author

  Wes Lowe began as pianist and composer for film & tv, including four seasons on Sesame St. Expanding to writing and directing, his books have appeared on numerous best seller lists, and his films are recognized with international awards and nominations.

  Lowe’s novels focus on crime action thrillers. Contemporary worlds infused with mysticism. Breathless, brain-twisting plots. High-stakes suspense. Relentless, warp-speed action. Intertwining cultures. Colliding and colluding worlds.

  * * *

  Thrillers that grip the soul.