Powerless
Page 1
POWERLESS
TIM WASHBURN
PINNACLE BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
SEPTEMBER 29
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
ONE WEEK AFTER
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
CHAPTER 63
CHAPTER 64
CHAPTER 65
CHAPTER 66
CHAPTER 67
CHAPTER 68
CHAPTER 69
CHAPTER 70
CHAPTER 71
CHAPTER 72
CHAPTER 73
CHAPTER 74
CHAPTER 75
CHAPTER 76
CHAPTER 77
CHAPTER 78
CHAPTER 79
CHAPTER 80
CHAPTER 81
CHAPTER 82
CHAPTER 83
CHAPTER 84
CHAPTER 85
THREE YEARS LATER
CHAPTER 86
CHAPTER 87
CHAPTER 88
CHAPTER 89
Copyright Page
To Gary Goldstein,
for believing,
and to Tonya,
for hitching your wagon to mine
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Gary Goldstein for being willing to take a chance. My deepest gratitude to all those at Kensington who worked on Powerless, including Lou Malcangi, for the terrific cover design, and Arthur Maisel. Thanks to my agent, Jim Donovan, for his advice and guidance through the intricacies of the publishing business.
Although Powerless is my first published novel, there was much that came before. The one person other than my wife who’s read everything I’ve written is Kristi Goodwin Self, M.D. Thanks, Kristi, for your comments and advice. Thanks also to Marcus and Pamela Whitt for perusing some of my earlier work.
I don’t know who’s more excited about the novel’s release, me or my parents, Loren and Frances Washburn. It’s here, Mom! Our children are the center of our universe. Thanks, Kelsey and husband, Andrew Snider, Nickolas, and Karley for brightening our world. Without you, life would be an empty shell. Thanks to Jack and Sue Cress for creating the woman who became my wife.
And finally–Tonya. You are a wonderful wife, a caring physician, a nurturing mother, who also happens to be my best friend. Your support has never wavered and I’m forever grateful. Thanks for being the love of my life and for journeying with me on this meandering path called life.
SEPTEMBER 29
CHAPTER 1
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Space Weather Prediction Center, Boulder, Colorado
Wednesday, September 29, 6:42 A.M.
The hushed darkness of the observation room is a breeding ground for sleep—especially for Daniel, this semester’s intern. Tasked as the lone overnight worker, he is waging war against the heaviness of his eyelids during the final hour of his shift at the Space Weather Prediction Center. As his head droops to his chest a shrill noise pierces the silence so harshly he claps his hands over his ears.
Daniel rockets out of the chair as if being ejected from a flaming-out fighter jet and stumbles from one computer monitor to another in a frantic search for the alarm’s source. With a shaky finger he thumbs his thick glasses farther up his nose as he races around the small room. This is the first time any type of warning has sounded during his two-month stay. His panic escalates. An alarm signaling . . . what? An asteroid on a collision course with Earth? The explosion of the sun? Or simply a minor malfunction?
His predecessor had briefly mentioned something about alarms but no further explanation had been offered. “Not a concern,” he had been told. But now Daniel’s concerned. His heart is pumping faster than a freight train going uphill. He comes to an abrupt halt in front of the computer attached to a direct feed from the Tucson observatory perched atop Kitt Peak.
The data scrolling across the screen looks more like ancient Greek to Daniel than some decipherable problem: a stream of numbers and words, most of them flashing red.
“This can’t be good,” he mutters as he fumbles with the keyboard in an attempt to silence the ear-piercing noise. His fingers gouge at the keys, trying every possible combination including the old standby: Control-Alt-Delete. No luck. Daniel is breathing fast and what began as a quiver is now a full-on shake as he glances up to see Dr. Kaylee Connor, one of the paid scientists, racing toward him.
“What the hell did you do, Daniel?” Kaylee shouts, hipping him away from the monitor.
“I didn’t do a damn thing. It just went off.” He leans in closer for another look at the screen. “What the hell is going on?”
Kaylee doesn’t answer. Her gaze is focused on the data scrolling upward like a machine possessed. Her fingers punch a precise combination of computer keys, and the alarm stops. Daniel releases a long sigh. But then he notices the worry on Kaylee’s face.
Without turning her gaze from the screen, Kaylee says, “Daniel, get Sam on the phone and tell him to get his ass over here, pronto.”
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“I don’t know, damn it. Just get Sam on the phone.” She glances up at Daniel. “Now!”
Daniel races to the nearest desk and grabs the handset only to slam it down a moment later. “I don’t know his number.”
Kaylee shimmies her cell from the back pocket of her too-tight black jeans and tosses it across the room. “Sam’s in my contact list.”
While he places the call, Kaylee turns back to the monitor. “Not fucking possible,” she whispers.
She glances up to see Daniel racing across the room, the cell phone extended like a relay-race baton. “Sam,” he says, thrusting the cell into her hand.
She slaps the phone to her ear. “We have a serious situation.”
“What’s happened?” Dr. Samuel Blake, director of the Space Weather Prediction Center, says.
“A massive CME triggered an alarm.” Her voice is laced with fear.
“How ma
ssive and when?”
“Off the scale. Our instruments recorded the ejection”—she glances at the clock on the wall—“about fifteen minutes ago. What do you want me to do?”
“I’ll be there in five. Print out all the data and start calling everyone back into the office. No excuses. I want everybody on site and ready to go in thirty minutes.”
Kaylee punches the off button on her phone and begins printing out all the material from the computer. Glancing up between tasks, she spots Daniel standing off to the side, a befuddled expression on his face. “Do something, Daniel. Start calling everyone and tell them to get their asses in here as fast as they can.”
Daniel spins away.
“Wait! First, print out everything from ACE, concentrating on the last four hours.”
“Is the coronal mass ejection headed this way?”
“We won’t know anything until you print out the data. Now move your ass.”
Daniel rushes to the workstation where the information from the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) satellite is viewed. His hands are shaking so severely he can hardly type. He logs on and begins to print out the data just as the computer screen winks out, as if the plug had been yanked from the wall. “Kaylee,” he shouts across the room, “ACE is down.”
She turns away from her workstation and moves to his side. “What do you mean ‘down’?”
“The screen just went black.”
“What’s happening?” a deep voice booms across the room. They both glance up to see Samuel Blake, dressed in his usual khaki slacks and light blue shirt, striding in their direction. At six-two, he towers over both of them.
“ACE suddenly went off-line,” Daniel says.
“I’ve told them a thousand times that satellite could die at any minute.” Sam nudges Daniel away from the computer. “All those budget cuts are killing us.”
“Why is this particular satellite so important?” Daniel says.
“Without that bird, we’re blind.” Sam’s fingers race across the keyboard, holding down certain keys while punching others. When the screen doesn’t respond, he slams his hand on the desk. He whirls the chair around and stands. “Kaylee, get on the horn to NASA. Find out what the hell is going on with the satellite.” He makes a beeline toward his office down the hallway.
Daniel follows, tugging his jeans up with every step. “What about the telescopes? Will we be able to see the plasma clouds?”
“No. There won’t be any visible indicators. It’s just a seething mass of highly charged particles.” Sam pauses at the doorway to his office. “If ACE is out of action we’re blind. Without that data we won’t know a damn thing.”
Daniel turns away, but stops when Sam says, “Did you call everyone?”
“I’m in the process.”
“Make sure they understand the urgency.”
“Yes, sir.” Daniel hesitates. “Dr. Blake, how long do you think before it hits here?”
Sam rakes his hand through his thinning hair. “Maybe twenty hours, if we’re lucky. But it’ll be a crapshoot without that satellite.”
CHAPTER 2
Rural Oklahoma
Zeke jackknifes up in bed, gasping for breath as the horrifying images slowly fade from his mind. He leans up on his elbow to check the time. The glowing red numerals indicate it’s either very late or very early. The air from the ceiling fan produces a rash of goose bumps across his sweat-drenched skin.
Zeke collapses back on the mattress and stares at the ever-circling ceiling fan, the blurring blades just visible in the faint moonlight leaking through the curtainless window. Next to the bed, Lexi whines. He reaches a hand down to comfort her. Her body is also trembling as he spiders his fingers through her curly black-and-white coat. It’s as if she experienced the same dream. But do border collies have nightmares?
The dreams/nightmares aren’t unusual, and though the frequency has diminished over time, their intensity hasn’t. He wipes his other hand across his damp face while struggling to vanquish the remaining remnants of the dream. Tonight’s episode is one of two recurring nightmares that crowd his unconscious thoughts. In this one the night is bitterly cold as he leans against the frigid metal interior of the rumbling Humvee as it travels along another of the treeless ridgelines that dot Afghanistan’s northern border. He’s not alone—four members of his squad are with him. With every nervous exhale their breath creates a thin fog within the confines of the lightly armored truck.
This movie in his mind almost always ends at the same moment: when the IED explodes beneath their vehicle and the screams of agony overwhelm the concussion of the explosion.
The second recurring nightmare is more recent, but no less terrifying.
The night sounds drift through the window. Coyotes howl in the distance, and the buzzing of what sounds like thousands of insects floats in on the faint breeze. Another night in rural Oklahoma. No honking horns or the laughter of people departing a bar or traffic noise, just the sounds of nature’s nightlife. They wash over him until he fades into a restless sleep. A faint warmness on his cheek. He opens his eyes to see the sun hovering on the horizon, casting a slash of light on the far wall, turning a right angle where it meets the floor before spreading across the bed.
Zeke pushes the covers off and pads barefoot into the kitchen, cracking the back door so Lexi can escape to do her business. He throws on a pot of coffee.
He rubs his face with both hands, feeling as if he hadn’t slept at all.
While the coffee brews, he shuffles across the hand-hewn wood floor and switches on the old thirteen-inch television. The ancient tubes warm and the grainy image of a newsreader on the set of the Today show fades onto the screen. Zeke turns back for a cup of coffee, half listening to the story playing behind him: “Residents in Alaska, Canada, and the northern portion of the U.S. were in for a treat during the night, with an unprecedented display of the aurora borealis. Scientists say the unusually high level of activity on the sun’s surface will produce numerous solar flares, which will continue to light up the night skies. They emphasize, however, that there are no concerns about the sun’s current volatility. That’s good to hear. Matt, any unusual lights out on the plaza?”
He tunes out the rest of the chatter, and instead of letting Lexi in when she scratches at the door, Zeke joins her outside. He takes a seat in one of the four handmade chairs occupying the recently completed wooden deck. The attached house is a rustic one-bedroom, one-bathroom log cabin built from wood harvested from the eighty acres his parents inherited from Zeke’s grandfather. Five of which acres his parents carved out for him when his life shattered for the second time.
The ringing of the old phone he salvaged from the barn interrupts his solitude. He pushes out of the Adirondack chair and hurries into the house. He already knows the identity of the caller. The only person who ever calls. He picks up on the fourth ring.
“Good morning, Mom.”
“Zeke, would you like to join your father and me for breakfast?”
He sighs, struggling with their attempts to heal him. “Sure, Mom. Be right up.”
He slips into the bedroom, pulls on a pair of well-worn jeans, and slides a flannel shirt carefully over his scarred shoulder. He walks through the kitchen and whistles for Lexi at the back door. It’s only about a quarter mile of gravel road to his parents’ home—far enough away for privacy yet still close enough if there’s trouble. There hasn’t been any since moving down, but today will prove different.
CHAPTER 3
NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center
Wednesday, September 29, 7:38 A.M.
All the scientists have trickled in and the control room is humming with a mix of concerned voices. Twenty people crammed into a room made for ten. Down the hall, Sam Blake sits in his office, the phone to his ear as he discusses the situation with other experts at NASA and the Air Force Weather headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. Everyone is aware of the massive solar eruption as well as the pressing n
eed to discover the ensuing path of the storm, but not one knows how the hell to go about it with the devastating loss of their eye in the sky.
Sam glances up at the knock on his door to see Kaylee leaning against the doorframe. Six years out of Cornell with a Ph.D. in space plasma physics, Kaylee just celebrated her thirty-first birthday. She is tall and lean. Her unnaturally dark black hair sports an asymmetrical cut streaked with purple highlights, and her pale skin is stained with tattoos. Today, she’s dressed in skinny jeans that hug the contours of her long legs, and she’s topped off with another of her vintage T-shirts, this one featuring Led Zeppelin—a band that last toured when her parents were still romping around an elementary school playground. Despite the crisis, Sam smiles and waves her in.
Kaylee sits in a chair facing the desk and begins pumping her right leg up and down. Sam raises a finger in the air, answers one final question, and hangs up the phone. “What do you have?”
“NASA is clueless. According to their techies, ACE suddenly went dark. I mean, duh, you don’t need to be an astronaut to uncover that little clue. But they’ve tried a reboot, a resend, and a dozen other re-somethings, all to no avail. They can’t determine if the preliminary effects of the coronal mass ejection knocked it off-line or what.”
Sam leans back in his chair, twirling his rectangular wire-rimmed glasses between his thumb and forefinger. “We are screwed.”
“Tell me about it. What are we going to do, Sam?”
“I don’t know. But we need to come up with some type of plan and do it quickly.”
“How quick?”
Sam leans forward in his chair, resting his elbows on the cluttered desk. “No way to really know without that satellite. Remember studying the 1859 Carrington event?”
“Of course. The sizzling telegraph wires and the flash in the sky.”
“And how long did it take for the telegraph wires to sizzle after the flash?”
Kaylee places a black-lacquered nail to her dark red lips. “Something like seventeen hours, wasn’t it?”