8.4 (2012)

by Peter Hernon

  Atkins looked at him, shaking his head. It was hopeless. He was staying.

  “John, you’re running out of time.” Booker said. “I’m not going to leave. It’s a simple decision. I’ve made it of sound body and mind. I wish you’d go. Please go. If you stay, it’s safe to say the end will come very quickly. You won’t suffer. If by some miracle we survive the explosive charges, we can look forward to being vaporized. I must say I’ve always been curious about the chemical processes involved, all that radiation your bones absorb in a few nanoseconds. Of course, you won’t feel it because you’ll implode when all those gamma rays shoot through you. Photons, actually. Your body will light up, something like a flashbulb, I imagine.”

  “Dammit, your leukemia is in remission,” Atkins persisted angrily. “You don’t have to do this, Fred. You can live another ten years. You don’t have to commit suicide.”

  “Think logically,” Booker said. “This is the only way we can make sure there’s no screw up. If the ground vents from a one-megaton shot, you’ll have a hot cloud rising to thirty thousand feet within four minutes.”

  “You two better get a fucking move on down there,” Murray shouted. For the first time since they’d entered the mine, his voice showed fear.

  Booker smiled at Atkins. “You get back to Doctor Holleran, John. Get back to her as fast as you can. There’s going to be a lot of work to do after this. They’re going to need both of you.”

  “We’ve got two harnesses up here,” Murray yelled. “They’re ready to pull us up the man shaft.” Moments earlier, Elizabeth and Weston had started on their way to the surface, the rescue lines attached to the helicopter hoists. They were already nearing the halfway point.

  Booker looked at Atkins and said, “It’s your turn, doctor. Don’t do anything foolish like trying to overpower me. This seal has to work.”

  Atkins wrapped the rope under his arms, gritting his teeth at the pain in his right forearm and shoulder. With a push from Booker, he started up the shaft, helped along by Murray and the rope. It was a hard go. He had to make a conscious effort every time he moved his arms and legs, which felt like lead weights hung from them. As he neared the top, he came close to passing out. He held himself in place, wedging against the walls of the shaft with his feet and shoulder blades.

  “Come on, doc,” Murray shouted. “You’re too close to quit on me now.”

  Atkins looked up. He only had another five feet to go. He moved one leg, then another, inching his shoulders higher up the wall. Then Murray had him by the arms and he was out of the shaft.

  When he looked down at Booker, the physicist waved.

  “Remember to make sure everyone’s long gone from this mine at D minus five minutes,” Booker shouted. “That’s when I’ll fire the explosives. It’s going to make a beautiful noise.”

  NEAR KALER, KENTUCKY

  JANUARY 20

  4:10 P.M.

  ATKINS WENT UP THE ELEVATOR SHAFT A FEW minutes after Murray. Strapped into one of the jury-rigged harnesses, he was halfway to the surface when a tremor hit. He no longer doubted it anymore. These were preshocks—the increasingly heavy seismic jolts that preceded a big earthquake. His seat bounced and swayed as rock fragments broke off the walls. Grasping the ropes, he leaned forward as they pelted his hard hat and shoulders. Several large pieces just missed him and crashed onto the elevator cage four hundred feet below.

  The shaft was starting to crumble. The last two hundred feet were agonizingly slow. Atkins kept waiting for the walls to collapse on him.

  When he was closer to the surface, he had to cover his eyes in the glare of powerful spotlights. Squinting into the painful brightness when he reached the top, he saw Elizabeth waiting for him. She was standing next to the president and Steven Draper. Both men were smiling. Draper grabbed Atkins’ hand and pumped it hard.

  “Now let’s get the hell out of here,” he said.

  They had about twenty minutes until the bomb detonated.

  Draper hurried them out of the metal building that housed the entrance to the mine. They emerged into the soft, gauzy light of a winter’s afternoon. The sun was a dull, gray disk, but Atkins and Elizabeth had to hold their hands over their eyes to cut down on the glare.

  As they trotted down a gravel path toward the mine’s parking lot. Draper explained there’d been a change of plans. They weren’t going to use the helicopters. More fighting had broken out in the surrounding hills, mainly skirmishes between small groups of the Kentucky National Guard and Army patrols. It was considered too risky for the president to try to fly out. They feared another rocket attack.

  They were going to drive out.

  Draper wanted to reach the red shack, where they’d monitor the effects of the blast. It was about four miles south of the mine on a hilltop that had been heavily fortified against attack. The scientists had steadily added to the array of portable seismographs and other instrumentation around the blast zone to record the velocity and direction of the seismic waves, analyze the release of strain energy in the ground, and calculate the yield of the bomb. They were also ready to record and pinpoint whatever seismic activity the explosion generated on the Caruthersville Fault and those adjoining it.

  As he jogged along next to Atkins, the president asked about Booker.

  “He’s still down there with the robot,” Atkins said. “He’s not coming up.”

  He explained.

  There hadn’t been many times in Ross’ career, first as a lawyer in Evanston, Illinois, then as a politician, when words failed him. This was one of them. He didn’t know what to say, how to respond. He wouldn’t even try. He’d damn well do it later when he could hope to do justice to Booker’s heroism. He’d make sure the man was remembered.

  In a few brief sentences, Atkins also explained what had happened to Walt Jacobs—and to Wren.

  Atkins had already noticed Weston staring at him nervously. This wasn’t the time to deal with him. But he would make sure it all came out later. How Wren, Weston, and Marshal had deliberately withheld information about the extent of the damage to the dam at Kentucky Lake. How they’d covered up other problems there, falsified inspection reports, accepted kickbacks.

  Atkins wanted Weston and Marshal turned over to the authorities as soon as they were away from the mine. But more immediate worries distracted him. He still wasn’t sure the bomb would detonate.

  He’d considered the risk of a misfire. There was no way of knowing if that flimsy-looking timer Booker had installed at the last moment would do the job, or if the flashlight batteries he’d tied together would have enough electrical juice to fire the capacitors.

  He remembered Booker’s confidence and thought again of the physicist, saw him standing in the darkness on Level 8, his face streaked with coal dust, gray eyes shining through the grime. He was smiling.

  A fine, wonderful man.

  “I should never have let him stay down there,” he told Elizabeth.

  “Stop it,” she said, touching his hand. They’d reached the trucks that were lined up, engines revving. “There was nothing you could have done. He knew what he was doing. He wouldn’t want you to start second-guessing yourself.” She remembered the first time she’d seen Booker. He’d just parachuted into Memphis. She’d thought his idea about defusing a big earthquake with a nuclear explosion was absurd and had a hard time believing he was serious. She’d changed her mind, mainly because she feared what would happen if they did nothing, but partly, too, because of Booker’s persuasiveness. She liked the man and was grateful she’d had a chance to know him.

  The ground suddenly rocked again. The motion was east-west, in the direction of the fault. These S waves were characterized by hard, side-to-side movement. A kind of shear wave, S waves moved through the upper crust more slowly than P waves, but their journey was a violent one. They vibrated like crazy and hit hard.

  “That’s very close,” Elizabeth said.

  Another, stronger shake followed the first by a matter of sec
onds.

  “We may have a sequence starting,” Atkins said.

  If the clock on the bomb was still running, it was eleven minutes until detonation.

  The next tremor almost knocked them down. An undulating lateral movement that rippled the surface of the ground.

  “Look at the hills!” a soldier shouted.

  The surrounding hills, their sloping flanks thick with trees, were moving, shaking as the earth rumbled. Atkins recognized the sound. He’d heard it before, something almost like thunder, distant, more powerful. The trees were swaying as if blown by powerful winds. Some of them cracked and fell, the sound of splitting wood explosive and sharp. Jumpy from the shooting, soldiers raised their rifles and looked for targets.

  Atkins recognized the look on their faces. They were frightened. Most had fallen to their knees to wait out the shaking.

  The two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters lifted off and climbed rapidly, heading east. Everyone waited and watched, holding their breath. There was no missile shot. The helicopters cleared the ridgeline and disappeared.

  Soldiers started jumping into the trucks, Humvees and armored troop carriers. Orders were shouted, clipped words.

  In the confusion, Belleau announced another change in plans.

  They wouldn’t make it to the command center. There wasn’t time. “We’ll be lucky to get beyond the next line of hills,” Belleau said. “That’s three miles from here. We ought to be just outside the blast zone.”

  “Then let’s move it,” Ross said.

  Troop carriers armed with .50-caIiber machine guns flanked the convoy. They were going to leave the same way they’d come in, following back roads and cutting across open pastures. No one doubted that it was going to be a wild, dangerous ride.

  Atkins, Elizabeth, and Murray jumped into one of the Humvees. “Tighten your belts to the max,” said the driver. He had a light blond mustache and a boyish face. “This road’s a bitch, and we’re gonna be making tracks.”

  FRED Booker tucked up his legs and sat with his back against the wall. The stone was warm. The amount of heat being generated deep in the ground still amazed him. He unzipped his jumpsuit. He was already soaked to the skin with sweat, and it was getting more difficult to breathe. He thought about putting on his face mask, then smiled to himself. The damn thing was hot and uncomfortable and in a few minutes it wouldn’t matter anyway.

  He had his headlamp turned on, a tapering wedge of light illuminating the darkness. The repeated tremors were knocking the hell out of the mine. He heard a tunnel collapse in the depths. Chunks of rock broke off the ceiling.

  The temblors were coming with greater force.

  He held three strands of non-1 detonating cord. He’d already connected them to an old-fashioned twist-action blasting machine, which rested on his lap. When the moment came, he’d give the handle a hard, clockwise twist. The twist would supply just enough electrical current to trigger the blasting caps attached to the plastic explosives he’d placed in quantity on Level 8. He’d wired thirty sticks in the short time since Atkins had left.

  That was more than enough to seal all of the shafts.

  Neutron was positioned ten feet away in the middle of the tunnel. The robot’s powerful mechanical arms were extended, holding up a section of the roof that had cracked wide open during the last strong shake. A block of stone the size of a garage door was sagging against the exposed steel roofing bolts. The bolts were starting to give way. The robot had pushed the slab back in place.

  Booker took off his digital wristwatch and placed it on top of the blaster. Another ten minutes.

  He’d detonate the plastic gel six seconds before the bomb exploded. He would have preferred to set it off two or three seconds before, but didn’t trust the precision of the timer. Better to take a few more seconds and play it safe.

  The risk of firing too soon was that the explosions might trigger landslides or a massive cave-in. If that happened the bomb could be damaged before it detonated. Booker doubted that was likely. The weapon’s hard case was designed to withstand a severe impact long enough to hit a buried target. Years of field and laboratory tests had proven the strength of the design. And yet a bullet had easily punctured the case. That still worried him. So did the jury-rigged battery pack and timer he’d attached to the weapon.

  He had less than eight minutes.

  Booker took off his hard hat and placed it so the lamp shined directly on his watch face. It was a relief to take it off. He took one last look at Neutron, who stood ten feet from him. The robot had performed superbly. He hoped Jeff Burke would hear about that. He was sure John Atkins would tell him.

  Booker remembered the old joke in the National Laboratory’s Robotics Lab: it was time to switch careers when you started talking to the robots.

  He smiled.

  He wasn’t going to talk to Neutron. He was going to sing—an old Appalachian song about working in coalmines. It had been years since he’d heard it, but he still remembered some of the lyrics.

  He hummed the haunting bluegrass melody played by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, trying to remember the words. When he had them, he began to sing softly.

  Where the dangers are many and the pleasures are few.

  Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines.

  It’s dark as a dungeon … down in the mine.

  He looked at his watch. Five minutes.

  NEAR KALER, KENTUCKY

  JANUARY 20

  4:23 P.M.

  THE DRIVER HIT A CURVE ON THE NARROW, BACK-country gravel road at fifty miles an hour. The rear end of the Humvee fishtailed through the turn, narrowly missing two big trees that formed a corner where the road veered sharply left. They were descending a hill single file, engines groaning in low gear as helicopters swept overhead, looking for snipers.

  By Atkins’ estimate, they had about seven minutes to get as far as possible beyond the hills that sheltered the Golden Orient.

  Four miles!

  They weren’t going to make it. Not over this kind of muddy, rugged terrain, where the road was knotted with switchbacks. There was no way. They rounded another curve, then made a tight S-turn. The side of the road fell sharply forty feet into dense woods, then dropped some more, becoming a sheer cliff. Far below them, a band of silver twisted through the trees. A shallow stream or river.

  “How many miles have we gone?” Elizabeth asked. She sat next to Atkins. Both were clutching the Humvee’s roll bar, trying to hang on. They were pitched up and down, rocking like a carnival ride as the tires banged over ruts and washouts.

  “Maybe two,” Atkins said.

  The driver, focused completely on keeping the vehicle from spinning out, didn’t answer. The windshields were streaked with mud.

  Strung out in a ragged line, the convoy hit the floor of a valley, smashed through a wire fence, and cut across a freshly plowed field, the tires throwing up rooster tails of reddish-brown dirt. If they could get beyond the next line of hills, they’d be out of danger.

  Provided we’ve calculated correctly, Atkins reminded himself. He hoped that Guy Thompson’s people hadn’t screwed up when they ran their figures.

  They’d concluded that a one-megaton bomb detonated at two thousand feet would have only minimal effect on the topography. The risk of significant ground subsidence extended up to a half-mile from ground zero. But they weren’t absolutely certain of these conclusions. There were too many exceptions and variables. Some of the one-megaton underground blasts at the Nevada Test Site had cracked and settled the earth up to two and three miles from the bomb crater.

  Atkins had a more serious worry: if they’d made a mistake about the venting hazard, huge amounts of radioactive debris, mainly dirt and crushed rock, would be hurled miles into the sky.

  And at the top of his fear list: What if the explosion actually triggered a major earthquake instead of stopping it? What if it ignited other quakes along the many faults that ran like deep furrows through the unstable basement rock in th
e Mississippi Valley?

  From the start, that had always been their biggest concern. Fear of that possibility was partly to blame for Walt Jacobs’ death. It’s what had pushed him—Atkins was sure of it—to try to sabotage their effort. They’d never know for sure, or how much the death of his family had affected his reason.

  The Humvee banged up into the air. All four wheels momentarily leaving the ground. The earth had shaken again and the floor of the valley started moving in undulating waves two and three feet high. They’d hit one of them, then another.

  A jet of muddy water, black sand, and lignite or “wood coal” blasted into the sky. A foaming geyser shot into the air fifty yards to their left.

  A sand blow. First one, then another, and another. All of them shooting thick fountains of muck as high as trees.

  The convoy changed directions to steer away from it. The ground was churning, shaking. Yet another sand blow erupted, throwing up a stream of water, silt, and cottony-white sand. One bubbling hole after another opened up in the field. One of them was about a hundred feet wide.

  “You better push it!” Atkins shouted to the driver. “We’ve got to get across before the whole field liquefies.” If that happened, it would be like trying to cross a lake of quicksand. They’d never make it.

  “John, over there!” Elizabeth said, pointing to steam billowing from a narrow fissure that had split the ground open. A couple feet wide, the tear ran up the side of the facing hill like a scar.

  “Did the bomb explode?” Elizabeth asked.

  “It’s not time yet.”

  Elizabeth, like Atkins, knew these were all preshocks leading to a major earthquake. Strain energy was rapidly building toward a rupture. When this one hit, the tectonic explosion was going to be immense.

  The convoy was climbing the hill, the studded, oversize tires churning up the soft ground. Elizabeth and Atkins were snapped back in their seats as the Humvee rolled over a fallen tree.

  They were almost to the crest.