by Mark Lemke
CHAPTER 42
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THE SEA WATER INTAKE STRUCTURE
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I moved through the brush, down the side of the cliff to the water's edge, as silently as I could.? I doubted if anyone was around to hear me, but I didn't want to chance it.? It came naturally to me from years of doing it, and there was simply no reason to make noise.?
I got to the water's edge without falling in, though there were moments that challenged me.? The terrain was steep and slippery, and I had to use the prickly brush as handholds.? I was glad I was wearing gloves or my hands would be torn up pretty bad by now.? I was about 10 feet from the skiff where the Old Man waited with several duffle bags full of gear.? I worked my way over to it, tossed in the small grip I was carrying, and gingerly stepped into the little boat, not wanting to overturn it and dump us, and our gear, into the frigid Pacific Ocean.?
"Good to see you again, Old Man," I said as if we were meeting over a beer and a burger instead of preparing to break into a secure nuclear power facility.? "You still up for this?"?
I was still not thrilled about the idea of having the Old Man come along, but I needed his knowledge of the inside of the power plant.? I only knew some basics about how the plant worked, and I was going to need more than that to have any chance of being successful.? Once inside, I'd need to move fast, and I didn't have time to look around and guess where I was going.? I wasn't an expert on the plant layout.? He was and we both knew it.?
"I'm okay.? Don't worry about me," the Old Man replied.? "Hey, I brought along a Thermos with some hot coffee in it.? I thought it might be cold out here.? Guess I was right!"?
He handed me a cup.? We both knew it was important to get something warm inside us before we started our dive.? The warmth wouldn't last too long, but my guess was we weren't going to be in the water long, anyway.? The liquid was hot, dark, and strong and tasted good as it went down.? It provided a short moment to calm our nerves.? The Old Man was smart.? I wouldn't have thought of this.
As we sipped the hot coffee we pulled the gear out of the duffels.? We each had wet suits, buoyancy control vests, regulators, fins, boots, masks, weights, digital dive computers, and tanks. Wet suits come in various thicknesses.? Normally we'd be using ones that are several millimeters thick for cold-water dives such as this one.? But the ones we brought were only 1mm thick to allow us to slip between the bar racks more easily and get inside the circulating water pump.? So staying warm could be a challenge.
The fog, while adding to the cold, also provided us some measure of protection from prying eyes.? We were just outside the intake cove and around an outcropping of rocks.? It was doubtful that any security patrols would be out here tonight.?With a threat situation, the station security posture would likely pull in a bit and stay closer to the plant itself.? Cameras would be used for the more remote locations, but I knew there wasn't one here.?
I looked at the Breitling watch my dad had given me when I got my Green Beret.? It wasn't a dive watch but it was good to ninety meters, which was significantly deeper than we were planning on going.? "We have about twenty minutes to get suited up and in the water," I said quietly to the Old Man.?"They should have the 1-1 circ water pump shut down by then."
"Okay.? Remember, we need to be mindful of the backflow," the Old Man warned.? "There's a lot of water in that tunnel, and it's all going to flow back out here when they shut the pump down."
"What do we do about that?" I asked, as I unpacked my gear, doing a quick mental inventory.
"Make sure you tie yourself off or you'll likely get swept back out to sea."
I turned and smiled at the Old Man, though the dark prevented him from seeing it.? It was clear to me he was going to be invaluable on this mission.
"More of a concern to me is do we have someone on the inside ready to let us out of the water-box?" he said with concern in his voice.? "That's one nasty place to be trapped."
"That's the plan.? I guess we'll find out soon enough."
Besides the dive gear, I'd packed some rope, two watertight flashlights, two pistols and extra magazines.? We also had an extra air tank each.? By my estimations, and depending on how much air we used up getting through the pump, we'd need the extra capacity to stay alive in the tunnel until the hatch was opened and we could get out to fresh air.?
I looked around and located the laser torch I'd brought, which was specifically designed for underwater use.? It was light and portable and could cut through metal underwater much quicker than a gas torch.? Designed for Special Forces, it wasn't something you could find on the market but was key to covert underwater jobs such as this.? I had access to such gear from time to time.?
We each finished our coffee and put the Thermos and cups aside.? We wouldn't be coming out the way we were going in, so it didn't much matter what we did with them.?
I took a small package from the bag I'd brought with me and opened it carefully.?
"What's that?" the Old Man asked as he saw how gently I handled it.
"It's what we call a 'distraction.'? It's a remote-controlled charge that I'll place in the back of the boat by the motor and the gas tank.? Once I activate it, my team can detonate it.? Should make a pretty good show and draw their attention down here.? We'll be long gone by then."
We each suited up with our dive gear, put on our weight belts, booties, hoods, and inflatable vests.? Tanks were next, then fins, and finally gloves.? I checked out the Old Man's regulator and gear to make sure it was all in working order.? I patted him on the back.? The time for encouragement and bravado-false or otherwise-was over.? We were getting down to business.? The Old Man then checked out my gear.? Just standard safety precautions, which almost seemed absurd, given what we were about to attempt.? But I like to take the little things off the table when I can.?
"Ready to go?" I asked the Old Man.
"Ready as I'll ever be.? Let's do it."
I checked my watch again.? We were right on time, assuming Dave was able to uphold his end.? I put on my mask, put in my mouthpiece, and glanced over at the Old Man doing the same.? I bent down, held my facemask, and quietly slipped over the side of the boat and into the black, unfriendly water.?
It was much colder than I'd expected.? Given that we had on only thin wet suits, my body immediately started to lose its warmth, but we had no choice.? We were counting on being out of the water in ten minutes or less.?
I had a bungee cord stretched around my tank.? This was a good way to 'talk' to another diver.? All I had to do was snap it and the sound it made as it slapped the tank was enough to get another diver's attention.? Sound travels well underwater.?
Once in the water, I turned on my flashlight, snapped the bungee cord twice, and waited until the Old Man swam over to me.? I gave him a thumbs up, a standard diver gesture to ask if everything was all right.? He returned the signal.? We then dropped down about fifteen feet and started swimming around the rocky outcropping where we were hiding, and into the intake cove.?
It didn't take us long to cover the short distance to our destination.? I knew we are getting close because I could start to feel the current pull us in, as the huge circulating water pumps took suction from the bay we were in, pumping an enormous amount of water all the way up the hill to the plant.?The pull was noticeable but not too bad.? At least it was pulling us in the right direction.? But, of course, this meant that the pump was still running.
I looked down at the iridium dial on my watch.? It was about at the thirty-minute mark-the time I expected the pump to be shut down, if Prichard had been successful with the shift manager.? I swam a little quicker to get to the thick bar racks.? Based on the Old Man's warning, we needed to get tied off pretty soon.? I looked around to see if the Old Man was with me.? He was.? Moving as quickly as we could underwater, I got out the rope, tied one end to the bar racks, and looped the other end through a carabineer on my weight belt.? Then I did the same for the Old Man.?
One more look at my watch.? Just as I did, I could hear the noise l
evel change, even under water.? It was quieter.? Suddenly, the current stopped pulling us in.? I looked at the Old Man and gestured for him to hold on.? I didn't need to.? He'd heard it, too; and he, more than I, knew precisely what that meant.? Just then the current reversed and started to push against us, heading out to sea, instead of pulling us in.? I had a good grip on the bar racks and hoped like hell The Old Man did, too.? I didn't want to have to trust the rope.? If we became disconnected, we'd get swept well away from the intake and this mission would be scrubbed.?
Since the tunnel was draining, that meant Prichard was successful, and that, at least, was encouraging.? The Old Man had forewarned me that this would last for several minutes.?The effect of the backwashing was that the water coming back down the tunnel pushed seaweed and small fish off the screens and back out through the bar racks.??As we clung to the bar racks, the water around us got cloudy from all the accumulated debris that the screens collected.? Because the other circulating water pump in the adjoining bay was still running, much of this was going to be sucked up in its suction.? I didn't know if that was a problem or not.?
I hadn't anticipated the water being so cloudy.? If the reduced visibility didn't improve soon, it'd make cutting the bar racks more difficult.? Fortunately, after a few minutes I felt the back surge slow and saw less debris clouding the water.?
I reached into the equipment bag strapped to my belt and took out the highly proprietary military laser torch.? I'd been trained on how to use it but didn't have a lot of experience with it.? If that wasn't bad enough, the cold water was starting to numb my fingers.? My gloves were also thin to allow me the flexibility to work the gear.? It's surprising how quickly cold can debilitate you.? In northern latitudes, where the seawater was actually below freezing, if you fell in without the proper protection you'd be dead before someone could pull you out two minutes later.? I happened to know that because I'd trained off the coast of Scotland putting together a take-back strategy for an oilrig.? I hated the cold.?
Despite the temperature, I was able to get the torch set up and turned on.? A bright red light shot forward like an angry demon, vaporizing the water around it.? I guided it toward the bar racks.?
Within minutes, I had cut through two of the huge bars, providing a hole sufficiently big enough to let the two of us swim through.? I turned off the laser and put it back in the bag.? I might need it again-perhaps to get out of the tunnel.?
I looked at my regulator to check on my air supply.? We were okay but needed to get moving.? I looked back at the Old Man and just nodded.? I turned back and worked my way through the hole, careful to avoid ripping my wet suit or catching my gear on anything.?
I made it through easily enough.? Little successes are often encouraging; though I knew the challenging parts were yet to come.? Once through, I turned and motioned for the Old Man to follow me.? He, too, got through without incident.? We were now both passed the bar racks.? I unhooked us from the rope but coiled it back up-keeping it in ready reserve.
A few feet ahead of us were the traveling screens.? The Old Man told me that part of the process for turning off the circulating water pump involved shutting down the screens.? So the screens stand there, motionless in the dark water.? I swam down to the bottom of them.? According to the prints, the screens do not go all the way to the bottom.? Most everything the station personnel are worried about that could be in water was buoyant and tended to float up more toward the top half of the screens.? So room was left at the bottom to ensure the screens didn't catch on something heavy that may have gotten through the bar racks.? I was hoping this space was enough for us to slide under and get into the suction of the massive pump.? According to the prints, this should be possible.? There were clearly a lot of fail points to this plan.?
At the bottom of the screens, I found that the space between the screen and the bottom runner was not as big as I'd hoped.? My only chance of getting through was to take my tanks off and try to wiggle underneath it.? I snapped the bungee cord to make sure the Old Man knew where I was.? He was only two feet away, but visibility was still pretty bad and it would be easy to get disoriented in the cloudy water.? He moved over to me and saw what I was doing.? I assumed he was going to figure out why.? It didn't take him long.? I saw him giving me a thumbs up, indicating that he understood what I was trying to do.?
I rolled over onto my back and, with my tanks off, tried to slide underneath the screen headfirst.? It was a tight fit and I would have had a much harder time if I were any bigger around.? It was at times like this that I was glad I wasn't a bulkier guy.? It took a minute of wiggling, but I was able to make it underneath, with my tanks in tow.?
On the other side of the screen, it got even darker, causing my heart to start to beat a bit harder.? I was exerting myself and I found myself in a closed space that could clearly take my life if I wasn't careful.? I'd been put through a battery of physical tests to see if I could handle tight spaces, and passed all the exams, but I couldn't say I enjoyed them.? If anything, confined spaces like this were what I struggled with the most.? So it was natural that I worried now about the Old Man. I didn't know how he was with confined spaces.? He hadn't been through the same kind of training I'd had, so he may not really know.? Sometimes it's like that.? You didn't know how you would do until you were tested.? Some people adapt well and quickly.? I hoped the Old Man was one of them.
I looked down at my regulator again.? Tick, tock.? I couldn't waste a lot of time worrying about it now.? We'd find out soon enough as I saw the Old Man follow my lead.? With his tanks off, he wiggled on his back and moved under the screen.? I kept my flashlight on him through the still-murky water.? Having that 'light at the end of the tunnel' often helped the next guy by letting him know he wasn't alone.? That expression would be put to the test before we were done tonight.
It took the Old Man a little longer than it took me, but he finally emerged on my side of the screen, where he looked around, saw me, and gave me another thumbs up. If the Old Man had a problem with small, tight spaces, he wasn't showing it.? Besides, it was too late to do anything about it now.?
Once we were both on the inside of the screens, we put our tanks back on and checked our air gauges.? We were exerting ourselves, which caused us to use up our air more quickly than we'd wanted, and we had a long way to go yet.?
I reached over to the Old Man and put one hand on his arm in the dark cage we were in.? I didn't bother with a thumbs up at this point.? I just squeezed his arm, letting him know I was there with him.? I didn't know if he needed it, but it never hurt to take care of your team.? He looked over at me and nodded his head slowly in acknowledgment.? That also gave us a few seconds to slow our breathing to conserve our air.? So far, so good.
From what I could see, we were in a man-made area that I assumed was the suction plenum of the pump.? You could look at prints and all the pictures you wanted to, but often times the real thing looked different. ?In this particular case, it didn't matter because I couldn't see much of anything anyway.?The water was still very murky, and visibility was limited, flashlights notwithstanding.? We'd have to go with a mental picture of where we were.? I took the lead and started swimming up, away from the direction we had just come.?Swimming was a misnomer. ?I really just sort of pulled myself along as best I could.? With my light shining ahead of me, I soon came across the smooth metal of the pump impeller.? It was a bit of a surreal sight.? The impeller was a huge spiral that wound upward.? I reached out and touched it gingerly, as if to satisfy myself that it really wasn't moving.? I only hoped it stayed that way. ?If the pump started right now, I'd be crushed inside this impeller.? That was another cheery thought that lingered briefly in my subconscious.? I'd feel a lot better when we were safely through and on the other side.?
From the schematics we looked at before we came, I knew it was about twelve feet high, and I'd estimated I'd have to bend around the impeller at least twice before I came out on top.? If I got stuck, I'd run out of air and drown.? In the back o
f my mind, I kept hearing Prichard saying it can't be done.? I thought of all the times I'd heard that before.? Bullshit!? With grim resolve, I put that out of my head.? Never quit, my dad would tell me when I was small.? Just don't quit.?
Once again I took off my tanks, only this time I also took off my weight belt and my satchel with the gear in it.? I tied it all off to a short length of rope to keep it close to me but allowing me room to maneuver. ?Then I dropped the rest of the rope down so that the Old Man could tie off to it.? The idea was that I would pull him up and along once I got to the other side.? It was like mountain climbing.? The first guy would free climb and put in pitons for the next guy to use-something I learned to do in the Ranger course.? That was the plan, anyway.? But first, I had to get to the other side.?
I started to ease my way up the serpentine impeller.? It was tight and cramped.? I had to let my air tanks dangle to free up my hands, but I had only so much air hose from the tanks to my mouth.? I had to bite down hard on the mouthpiece to keep the tanks in tow, which tired my jaw quickly.? It was as if I was dragging the tanks with my mouth, which was exactly what I was doing.
The cold water was starting to affect my motor skills, and I felt my feet and fingers getting stiff.? I had to bend myself around the shaft, which would be hard to do warm, let alone in this numbing cold.? But the water was acting as a cushion that let my natural buoyancy move me along and upward.? The impeller was just big enough to allow me to wrap around it and, with significant effort, work my way up and through it.? I had to push and pull myself up as best I could.? If I had more fear of small spaces, this would have been my undoing.? I was underwater, breathing from a hose, and I had nowhere to go but up a spiral shaft.?
Despite the cold, I could feel myself sweating.? The myth of the Green Berets was that we weren't afraid of anything.? I knew better.? The Green Beret training could be counted on to find a man's weak spots, and every man had them.? But rather than destroy him with that, the knowledge was used to help him find ways to overcome them.? Once you did that, you became a very capable and dangerous warrior. ?A brave man isn't the one who knows no fear.? A brave man is the one who knows fear but continues on in spite of it.?
A few minutes later, the pump impeller opened to yet another gloomy, wide space.? I'd made it through!? I did what they said couldn't be done.? However, I was still underwater, it was still cold and dark, and I was running low on air.? But I was through.? And for the briefest of moments, I let myself feel damn good about that.? Now the Old Man needed to get through the impeller as soon as possible, and he'd need both his hands to do that.
I put my tanks back on and secured my equipment to my belt.? I then gave two quick tugs on the rope to signal that it was okay for the Old Man to move next.
I didn't have much to secure myself to, so I couldn't provide a lot of pull on the rope.? All I could do was to pull gently and hope it was enough.? As I lay there in the dark, watery, potential grave, I gave in to a moment of regret again at having brought him along.? It wasn't that I didn't want him here, but that I felt I'd put him in jeopardy and that wasn't a good thing to do.? But the decision had been made, and I needed to stop re-hashing it.
I put a strain on the rope to help the Old Man up and through the pump impeller.? Just then the rope stopped moving.? My heart missed a beat, thinking the Old Man got wedged in there somewhere.? But then it went lose again, and a couple of minutes later, I saw a head peek up out of the impeller.? I had to give the Old Man credit.? None of this was easy.? I was impressed with his abilities.? I'd have to tell him that next chance I got.
Once we were both up, we took some precious, not to be wasted, time and got all our gear accounted for.? We swam on for another thirty feet and then surfaced.? It felt like we were on a beach, coming out of the water.? We were now in the tunnel-and behind schedule.? Our air was depleting rapidly.? I flashed my light around and, despite being out of the water, resisted taking off my mouthpiece.? I had to remember that there was no breathable air in there.? The tunnel was pitch black and empty but I heard a distinctive noise, which was unsettling.? I looked around and couldn't see anything that would be making the eerie sound.? I didn't know if something was coming my way, but it sounded like it.? I stood still for a moment, debating what to do, but nothing came.? The sound was constant and was not varying.? It then occurred to me that there was still a circulating water pump running, and the sound I heard was the flow in the other tunnel.? It was good to know, but I just hadn't been expecting it.
The tunnel itself was a huge rectangular space.? The sides, top, and floor were coated with some kind of plastic epoxy paint that was supposed to be slippery so barnacles and mollusks couldn't cling to it or grow on it.? The coating must have worked well, because there wasn't much growth-at least on the floor of the tunnel.? The down side to this modern miracle was that it made the floor very slippery to us, too.? But with our fins off, our rubber boots gave us some good footing.?That was a good thing, because we needed to get to the condenser water box-somewhere up ahead of us-and out.
There was some air in the tunnel because the operators had opened a vacuum breaker to allow the water to run back out when the pump was secured.? But it wasn't a lot of air for a space this size, and the odds of it being particularly breathable air were slim.? Decay from the barnacles and other sea life would make what little air there was putrid in short order.? It wasn't something I wanted to have to find out.? So we kept our regulators on and in our mouths, grabbed only the equipment we needed now, and headed up toward the water-box and our next challenge.?
The tunnel was several hundred feet long, with an incline of ten percent or so, making it a difficult climb.? The weight of our gear was more than I'd expected, and carrying it was slowing us down.? We'd lost the buoyancy the water provided. Tick, tock.
Several long minutes later we emerged at a ninety-degree bend in the tunnel, where it turned and headed straight up and into what I assumed was the condenser water-box.? We'd made it.? But I saw no light other than what my flashlight provided.? I looked up and scanned the overhead.? I could see a wall of small-diameter tubes through which the saltwater was forced when the circulator was running.? On either side of this water-box was a hatch, some twenty feet up.? Much to my chagrin, neither hatch was open-and there was no hand wheel on either.? They were just round, smooth surfaces.? There was no way they could be opened from the inside.? It was never anticipated there would be people on the inside with the hatch shut.
A ladder was attached to the wall underneath each hatch.? This must be used during maintenance periods to allow people to get out of the tunnel through the water box.? We'd have to climb up one of these ladders to get out, but there was no point in doing that just yet.? Hanging onto the slippery ladder waiting for the hatch to be opened would only cause more exertion for us, and oxygen was a precious commodity right now.? Besides that, I didn't know which hatch would be opened.? So we opted to stay down below, conserve our strength and energy, and hope someone would open a hatch soon.?
Time was running out.? More accurately, our air was running out.? The Old Man's breathing was becoming labored.? This had been far more of an exertion for him than for me.? I checked his regulator and saw he was well into the red zone and had only a minute or two of air left.? I had about five minutes left on mine.? We would have to buddy breathe if necessary.? That would draw down our air reserves even faster.
My watch read 0158.? I looked up at the two hatches that remained firmly locked in place.