Stephen Coonts - Jake Grafton 5 - Red Horseman

by Red Horseman (lit)

  As the light moved toward him, the thought suddenly occurred to him that he might be in the place where the descending machine was going to alight. Galvanized, he scurried back toward the guardhouse at the entrance to the power plant.

  Safe in his refuge, he looked across the enclosure at the guard kiosk at the main gate, where he could just see his friend Leonid under the light pointing with one hand and covering his mouth with the other.

  Leonid would laugh and tease him; he must have looked like a frightened rabbit running from the helicopter.

  And now it was there in front of him, roaring like an enraged bear and stirring up a hurricane as it settled onto the grass.

  The engines died immediately. The pilot obviously had no fuel to waste.

  Five men climbed out. One of them, wearing a dark suit and dark tie, came toward him. Sergi straightened to attention.

  "Where is the manager?" "I don't know. No one said you were coming." "I'm accustomed to being met by the manager of the facility." "The telephone from the outside is out of order.

  It has not worked all night." "Well, tell the manager I am here." Sergi was at a loss for words. Who was here? Should he ask for identification? The panic must have shown on his face, for the man's expression softened and he growled, "Just get him out here." There was a telephone in his guardshack, a little wooden building that looked as if it had been added as an afterthought right by the concrete wall of the reactor building.

  It was a rotary dial instrument. Sergi wiped his hands on his trousers before he picked up the handset and checked the list of telephone numbers taped to the wall. The list was so dirty as to be almost unreadable. Control room, number 32. That was the only place in the complex where there would be people this time of night.

  The first time Sergi dialed nothing happened. No ringing earpiece. The equipment was old and the electrical switches were worn out, like every other telephone system in the former Soviet empire.

  Still, the only telephone on Sergi's collective farm had belonged to the manager, an important person, and Sergi had never used it.

  Having a telephone waiting for him to pick up to call someone-just within the facility, this instrument could not be used to call elsewhere-made Sergi proud.

  To complain about the quirks of the instrument was an impulse that had never crossed his mind.

  Now he used his thumb on the hook to break the circuit, then lifted it and listened for the dial tone.

  There it was.

  He carefully dialed the number again. This time he heard the ringing.

  As he waited he turned and looked at the helicopter and the big red star on the fuselage.

  One of the passengers was over at the kiosk at the main gate talking to Leonid: Sergi could see them standing together under the light.

  A man's voice answered the telephone.

  "This is the main door guard," Sergi Pavlenko said loudly into the mouthpiece. "A helicopter has arrived. An important person wishes to see the manager." "The manager is home in bed. I'm the watch officer." "Yes, yes. He is waiting here to talk to someone in authority. It is a big helicopter with many rotor blades." This fact impressed Sergi; it should impress the man inside too.

  Apparently it did. "I'll be right out," the voice told him.

  Sergi Pavlenko hung up the telephone and turned to report to the man from the helicopter. As he did so the man used a silenced pistol to shoot him once in the head, killing him instantly.

  The five men worked fast. The main door had a lock that worked only from the inside. When the watch officer opened it they herded Leonid from the main gate, the watch officer and everyone in the building into an empty office and gunned them down with silenced submachine guns.

  They didn't bother to pick up the empty brass cartridge cases strewn about.

  They blocked the front door open with a piece of wood and carried in bags from the helicopter.

  The reactor was operating at 50 percent power.

  The man who had shot Sergi examined the control panel carefully, then led the way through the lead-lined door that led to the reactor space.

  A nuclear reactor is, when explained to schoolchildren a very simple piece of machinery-a large tea kettle is the common analogy.

  True, the first reactor, Enrico Fermi's pile under the University of Chicago's football stadium, was indeed simple. But there was nothing simple about the Serdobsk reactor, a liquid-metal-cooled fast breeder. The core was made up of five tons of metallic oxides of uraniumblebce, plutonium-239, and uranium-238, the breeding material that would be converted into plutonium during the course of the reaction. This material was fashioned into twelve thousand long pins, each less than six millimeters in diameter and arranged with extraordinary precision inside a small core, a hexagonal container only three feet across each face.

  The core sat in a cylindrical stainless-steel pot filled with molten, liquid sodium that was cycled through the core by three pumps.

  Unavoidably the sodium flowing through the core absorbed some neutrons and was converted into sodium-24, a highly radioactive gamma ray emitter, so the radioactive sodium was run through an exchanger where it gave up some of its heat to the secondary cooling system, also liquid sodium. The unpressurized stainless-steel vat that contained the core and the primary and secondary cooling systems was forty feet high and forty feet in diameter.

  Between the surface of the liquid sodium and the top of the vat was a cloud of argon, an inert gas. Lead shielding surrounded the entire vat.

  Surrounding the lead was a concrete vault with walls about three feet thick.

  Pipes brought the secondary sodium out of the vat near the top and took it to a second heat exchanger, where it was used to boil water for steam to turn turbines, then returned it to the vat. The pipe holes in the vat and the lead and concrete shields were all above the level of the liquid sodium.

  The nuclear reaction itself was controlled by dozens of graphite rods that absorbed radiation.

  These rods were withdrawn from the core to start the reaction and pushed into it to kill it. ds. Stand The men from the helicopter began with the ro planted a series of ing on top of the concrete vault, they mecha small explosive charges designed to shatter the rod hance to slide down into the core.

  nisms before they had a c This job took about half an hour. Still on top of the concrete biological shield, they used tape measures and chalk while the man in charge consulted a sheet of paper in his hand. When the chalk marks were precisely where he wanted them, he personally began placing six shaped charges that would vent their explosive force down into the vat. While he was at it several of the men climbed up the ladder and wandered out into the hallway for a smoke.

  One of them came running back. "Colonel, the helicopter is starting!" "What?" "Listen." Yes, he could faintly hear the whine as the engines spooled up, He stumbled and almost fell running for the d along the catwalk toward ladder. He hurried up and race the control room. He arrived outside just in time to see the helicopter transition into forward flight and move away into the darkness. aimed his Two of the men came out behind him and one submachine gun at the departing machine.

  "Nyet," the colonel cried. "That won't do any good." The fool! If he successfully shot down the helicopter the noise of the crash would bring everyone in the army camp over here. And it would be damned hard to fly out of here in a crashed helicopter.

  The colonel stood listening to the noise of the machine as it faded.

  When all he could hear were the night noises of frogs and insects, he still stood undecided. He had expected problems, but not this-to be abandoned by the helicopter pilot! Betrayed!

  The pilot was a Ukrainian. He should have demanded a Russian pilot. The colonel choked back his rage and frustration and wondered what to do. He had, he well knew, miserably few options.

  "What do we do now, Colonel?" one of the men asked.

  The query decided him.

  "Let's set the charges." He was surprised at his own voice. It soun
ded calm, in control, which wasn't the way he felt at all.

  Usually when he was enraged his voice became a hoarse croak.

  "if we hadn't cut the telephone lines we could call for another helicopter," one of the men said disgustedly. "We certainly can't blow this damn thing up unless we have transport out of here." "Back inside," the colonel said. "Let's finish the job while I think," They were reluctant but the habit of obedience was strong. The colonel followed them back into the building.

  It took forty-five minutes to finish setting the charges atop the biological shield. Forty-five minutes of sweating an impossible situation.

  He should have had a backup chopper, should have brought a two-way radio. But there was no time. "No! Do it now! Do it tonight!" the general had said.

  All the careful planning, all the preparations that didn't get done, all the backups that weren't quite ready. That was the trouble with the Soviet system-the remorseless pressure to make "x" happen always forced shortcuts, compromises in quality and Safety. It was infuriating when you saw the disasters everywhere You looked but goddamn catastrophic when it was your life on the line. How easy it was for a bureaucrat or general to shout "Now!" He forced himself to work slowly, with meticulous care, as he set the shaped charges. There would be no second chance. This had to be done right the first time, which, he told himself furiously, would be the only recorded instance of the accomplishment of that feat in Russia since the czar impregnated his bride on their wedding night.

  He was perspiring heavily when he finished. He stood back and used a rag to wipe his face and hands. "Insert the detonators." "Colonel, how are we going to get away from here?" "I said insert the detonators. Wire them up but don't arm the triggering device. I'll go find us some transport.

  Give me a submachine gun." One of the men passed his weapon over.

  "Get busy." The colonel slung the weapon over his shoulder and climbed the ladder.

  When he left the cavernous room two of the men.

  were inserting detonators and wiring them to the firing device as the other two watched.

  The army camp was three kilometers up the road. The colonel cooled off as he walked in the darkness. He was unwilling to use the flashlight, so he stumbled occasionally over uneven places in the road. Still he walked quickly.

  Only two hours until dawn.

  He stopped when he was still fifty meters from the circle of light above the gate and looked the camp over. It was surrounded by a sagging, rusted wire fence. A guard kiosk stood by the open gate. No doubt a sentry was there, the only man awake in the camp. He hoped that no one else was awake.

  There, by that building in the back, wasn't that a truck?

  Yes. It had grass growing around it to the top of its wheels.

  Perhaps there was a car or another truck in the garage.

  The colonel moved toward the sentry's kiosk, staying in the shadows, making as little noise as possible. He kept the submachine gun over his shoulder but held the pistol with the silencer in his right hand.

  He was still fifteen feet from the kiosk, just coming into the light circle, when the sentry inside the unpainted wooden shack saw him and jerked in surprise.

  The colonel pointed the pistol at the soldier and said, as calmly as he could and just loud enough to be heard, "Don't move. Just stay exactly as you are and you won't get hurt." The man froze. He was young, in his late teens.

  "Now very carefully, step outside." The soldier complied. He was trembling.

  "Where is the other sentry?" The soldier merely shook his head.

  The colonel pointed his weapon and repeated the question.

  "I'm the only one, sir." "If you are lying you will be the first to die. Do you understand?" "Yes, sir." "Let's go look at the truck." The colonel snapped on his flashlight and used it to point the way. He followed the W; soldier, who had now decided to raise his hands a little.

  The truck was a rotting hulk. The tires were flat, the glass was broken from several windows, weeds peeked through the radiator grill.

  "Where is the other truck?" he demanded, his voice a forced whisper.

  "In the garage." "Open it, quietly. If anyone wakes up.

  . The truck in the garage was fairly new, painted olive drab and had air in all the tires.

  Keeping the weapon pointed at the soldier, the colonel eased the driver's door open and shone the flashlight on the instrument panel. No ignition key was required. Merely switch on the electrical system and push the starter button. The colonel reached in and flipped the electrical switch. The proper lights came on. He examined the fuel gauge. The needle rested on the left side.

  Empty! The colonel flipped the switch off.

  "Where's the gasoline?" "We haven't had any gas for a month." The young soidier's hands were down and his voice unnaturally loud.

  The colonel lowered the barrel of the pistol and fired a round into the dirt at the soldier's feet.

  The report was merely a soft pop. "You'd better find some." "Over there." The gesture was quick, jerky.

  There were some cans against the wall, beside a motorcycle. The colonel hefted one. Half full. The others were empty-all eight.

  "This motorcycle-4oes it work?" "Oh yes. The captain rides it every day over to the reactor. And into town on Sundays. He- "Shut up!" The colonel quickly checked every other fuel can in the garage. All empty. He examined the controls on the motorcycle, the tires, then opened the cap on the fuel tank. At least hal f full. He made the trembling soldier fill the tank from the only can containing fuel.

  "Okay, push it out of here and down to the kiosk at the gate. I I Under the light at the gate the colonel examined the machine. He turned the petcock and let gasoline flow to the carburetor, twisted the throttle, checked the chain and the clutch.

  The only way to see if it would run would be to start it.

  But not here.

  was Start pushing." He gestured to the northwest, toward the reactor facility. The soldier did as he was told.

  It was hard work pushing the motorcycle along the dirt road in the darkness. The machine fell once and the soldier went on top of it. The colonel waited while he righted the thing and got it going again.

  When they had gone about half a kilometer the colonel told the soldier to stop and put down the kickstand. Then he shined the flashlight into the soldier's eyes and shot him while he stood blinking helplessly.

  The man went down without a sound. The colonel dragged the corpse off the road into some weeds.

  With his gun in one pocket and the flashlight in another, he climbed aboard the motorcycle and eased the kick starter down until he felt compression. Then he raised himself up and gave a mighty kick.

  No.

  Again.

  Nothing.

  Again.

  The fourth time the machine chugged once, but he fed it too much gas and it died.

  This time he got all of his body weight into the downstroke of his leg and the machine gurgled into life.

  As he sat astride the saddle and waited for the engine to warm, the colonel used the flashlight to check his wristwatch. Almost an hour gone. One hour of darkness left.

  Carefully he disengaged the clutch, popped the transmission into gear, and eased the clutch out. The engine almost died but he caught it with the throttle and let the clutch engage. The sound the engine made was well-muffled since the machine was fairly new.

  The colonel brought it to a stop a hundred meters short of the gate to the reactor facility.

  He walked from there.

  Two of his men were waiting by the door.

  "We thought we heard an engine a few moments ago," one told him.

  "You did. A car. I parked down the road in case someone comes by. Are the detonators set?" "Yes, sir. All you need to do is set the timer. Do you want us to go on down and sit in the car until you come?" "Okay. I need maybe ten minutes. I'll send the others along.

  When these two were about twenty-five feet away with their backs to him, he used the sil
enced submachine gun.

  It wasn't fair, but there it was. He had transport for one.

  The reactor had to be destroyed. After he had shot them he walked over to where they lay and put a bullet into each man's skull.

  One of his men was in the control room. "I've got a car parked down the road out of the light," he said. "Go sit in it until I get the device armed." "How much time are you going to give us?" "What's the maximum possible time?" "One hour." "Then that's what we have." "That would be a lot if we had a helicopter," the man objected reasonably, "but we don't.

  What if we have a flat tire or this car breaks down?" The colonel wasn't in the mood. "We take our chances.