Search For Reason (State Of Reason Mystery, Book 2)

by Miles A. Maxwell

  He flicked on the jeep’s radio, surprised to find a station on the air.

  “Damage from the second bomb seems to be centered around the Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Chesapeake Bay Tunnel-Bridge. Perhaps nothing could be worse than New York due to the city’s density of population where so many thousands have been killed. But unlike New York, the damage in Virginia Beach is basically total and absolute. For miles, no buildings remain. The resort town is a wasteland. There is basically nothing left.

  “As many mourn the loss of loved ones, the global manhunt for the most heinous mass-murderer of all time continues. The government, with nothing definite yet as to who is behind the two worst attacks on U.S. soil, has today announced a joint CIA-FBI task force. Officials say persons of interest at present especially include Muslim extremists intent on disrupting our American way of life.”

  Franklin gripped the steering wheel as if to crush it. Snapped the radio off. They don’t know who’s behind it! All he could see was Cyn and Steve wrapped together in that damned Aztec blanket.

  Whatever it was he needed now, he felt the frustration of being denied it. He’d lost something irreplaceable. He didn’t expect the government to offer up anything overnight, or even in a day or two. But the longer they took, the more the pain people felt would demand action.

  It would be so easy, he thought, to let what I feel turn into some crazy, un-Christian-like anger. Some nameless undirected revenge. Fueled by what is probably the same fear everyone feels: the suspicion there’s got to be another bomb headed our way.

  Crossing the border into Pennsylvania, he caught up to an all-black horse-drawn carriage. Centered on its rear was a red triangular slow-vehicle sign. A red lantern glowing to the sign’s left.

  Old Amish. He grimaced wryly, At least that’s one person who won’t think he knows me.

  Franklin had seen plenty of the anachronistic, seemingly primitive families scattered across Ohio and Pennsylvania. No electricity. No computers, no televisions. And they never physically defend themselves.

  Like that one extreme case of martyrdom when a 1500s Amish man was persecuted for his beliefs in the Netherlands. Dirk Willems lost so much weight he slipped through the bars and escaped from prison. When the heavier sheriff pursuing him fell through a frozen pond, Willems went back and pulled him out. The man Willems saved promptly arrested him and threw him back into a cell.

  Two days later they burned Dirk Willems at the stake.

  Could the words of Matthew 5 be any clearer? Not really, Franklin thought.

  DO NOT RESIST EVIL!

  That’s what the Bible said. That’s what Willems had done.

  Franklin drove as far left as the two-lane road would allow, not to spook the shiny black horse that pulled the man’s carriage. Non-resistance seemed to be the Amish way:

  If someone hits you on your right cheek,

  offer him the other also.

  If anyone sues you, and takes away your shirt,

  give him your coat too.

  Franklin often wondered if maybe the Amish were the only true Christians. Everyone was waiting for the President to do something. Problem was, how could any Washington politician stand there and claim to defend the United States — and still be Christian? Their jobs require they defend the country. But then how do they reconcile that with Matthew 4?

  THOU SHALT WORSHIP THE LORD THY GOD,

  AND HIM ONLY SHALT THOU SERVE?

  God first! And God says: Love your enemies as yourself. No! More than yourself. As your friends!

  So the politician backpedals: “Well, Christ didn’t really mean that, you know. It’s complicated. Of course you can’t really allow your enemies to hurt you.”

  The horse’s reins were held by a man with a full dark beard with no mustache. Dressed all in black, he nodded his wide-brimmed hat as Franklin pulled by.

  The way he read it, Amish people have a point. According to the stories, more than anything, Christ gave up himself — his very life — over to his enemies to be destroyed. No self-defense, even unto death.

  Unless this is what you think, unless this is what you really want to do, should you really claim to be a Christian? Franklin shook his head. Can Christianity really include self-defense? Being willing to injure others in this world?

  Maybe self-defense should be called something else. Americanism or self-interest.

  It sure didn’t sound like true Christianity.

  The trusting tilt of the man’s head brought tears to Franklin’s eyes; a picture of Cyn, and the words of Luke 14 to his head:

  If any man comes to me,

  and hates not his father and mother and wife

  and children and brothers and sisters,

  and his own life too, he cannot be my disciple.

  Said it pretty simply, didn’t he? Franklin thought. Allow someone to kill your father. Your mother. Your SISTER.

  He couldn’t lie to himself. It wasn’t going to be easy to convince anyone to go along with that type of thinking at the church either. Personally, he wanted to find out who killed Cynthia. And not so he could offer his love. If he was honest, truly honest, like Del, he wanted that person dead.

  In his rearview mirror, he watched the dark horse disappear, back into the night.

  Everon Almost Walks

  He looks worn out, Everon thought as he stepped off the plane and shook Hunt’s hand. Customers probably all over his ass. Hunt Williams’ salt-and-pepper hair was neatly combed. But he stood less erect than when Everon left him at Teterboro, and there were dark moons beneath the senior executive’s eyes.

  “Let’s get out of here as quickly as we can,” Hunt said. “There’s a fire near one of our substations.”

  “We saw it on the way in,” Everon said.

  Everon’s crew hurried equipment into three white Suburbans with red WILLIAMS POWER logos on their doors. Good, Everon thought. Four-wheel-drive.

  “How many people —” Hunt began, his eyes going wide at Rani’s mangled face as the linesman ran by with a toolbox. “Uh, how many of your people have ever worked a major outage?”

  “Three of them have worked ice storms in Michigan.”

  “Well, that’s something.”

  Hunt got in the driver’s side of the lead vehicle. Everon took the passenger seat and introduced Nick, Lama and Scrounge as they got in back. “Lama’s our chief programmer and Nick’s our hardware specialist. Scrounge is my purchasing manager.”

  “Any phones working around here?” Scrounge asked as Hunt pulled rapidly onto the highway.

  “Satellite phones,” Hunt answered. “I have one and it doesn’t work all the time. The nearest working land-lines are a hundred miles west.”

  “That’s pretty far away!” Nick said.

  “When the first bomb went off it wrecked our control circuits,” Hunt said, “causing major transmission line overloads. We’ve actually got line burnout.”

  “Whoa!” Nick said.

  “How are your own crews handling that?” Everon asked. The older executive’s worry was already beginning to bug him.

  Hunt turned up the ramp onto I-95 and pushed the big vehicle faster. The interstate was empty. Everyone was going the other way. “Most of our engineers — superintendents and technicians — were at that OSHA electrical safety convention in New York.”

  “What?” A collective gasp through the truck.

  “They were all checked into midtown hotels the night before —” Hunt took a ragged breath. “Both my chief engineer and my chief operating officer were killed. Probably. I haven’t heard from either of them. And then the Mid-Atlantic States Power Group —”

  “They manage power transmission across state lines around here,” Everon said.

  “That’s right. Under our contract they’ve grabbed most of what was left of our line and turbine people — the ones who didn’t evacuate with their families. Too damn worried there may be a third bomb — maybe even Philadelphia.”
/>   “My grandmother too,” Everon said. “She didn’t want me to come. Look, Hunt, how many people do you have?”

  Hunt kept driving.

  “Hunt?” Everon turned to him.

  “Take it easy,” Hunt’s eyes stayed on the highway. “I’ve got calls out all over the country.”

  Bullshit! thought Everon. “Lay it out, Hunt! How bad is it?”

  Hunt swung the Chevy south onto Route 32. “Should be okay this way,” he muttered, then louder, “A lot of the roads are jammed up right now.” He accelerated to over eighty miles an hour and took a deep breath.

  “In the last fifty years we’ve had two major blackouts. The first when a phase mismatch at the Adam Beck generator up in Canada set off a chain reaction that dominoed all the way down the Eastern Seaboard to Florida.”

  Everon looked back. The country two-lane was not fully cleared and had to be icy in spots. A plume of white followed in their wake, but Nan and Ortega driving the other two Suburbans were right behind.

  “More recently,” Hunt continued, “on a very hot day — and we still don’t know what caused it for sure — something overloaded in Ohio. Another chain reaction.”

  “I remember that one,” Scrounge said. “But you guys had most of the power grid back up in a few days.”

  “This is worse than either of those,” Hunt took a deep breath. “Way worse. In both cases permanent damage was slight.” Hunt pushed the Suburban up over ninety. “This time, pieces of our system are actually missing.”

  “Missing? What’s that mean?” Nick asked.

  “We’ve actually had major conductor meltdowns and broken turbine shafts.”

  “Holy crap!” Scrounge said.

  Hunt slowed only enough to survive a sweeping left turn.

  A thick gray steel support flashed by their windows. It was so dark . . . another one. They were on a single lane bridge, crossing a wide dark void — but for the sudden change in the sound of their tires, Everon wouldn’t have known. There must be a river down there.

  “Trenton Bridge,” Hunt said. “Usually it’s all lit up and you can see the Delaware. We sell power into Trenton through our Jersey subsidiary. Our low-voltage control relays are gone for sure over here.”

  The bridge has to be icy. Everon wasn’t usually one to exercise such caution but he felt like asking Hunt to slow down. He didn’t want to die in the middle of New Jersey. Not tonight anyway. Is it the fire? Or is it that Hunt wants to get us on the job before we can turn around and leave? Hunt still hasn’t given me a direct answer. How many people does he have?

  “Dammit!” Hunt said, standing on the big Chevy’s brakes. They swerved . . . then straightened to a stop — five feet from a parked car blocking their way at the end of the bridge.

  Everon got out. Ran alongside. The vehicle was a white Toyota and it was empty. Abandoned. He tried to push it. The smaller car’s wheels were locked. Obviously in park — or the emergency brake was set. There was no getting around it. What kind of an asshole leaves their car here?

  “Push it out of the way!” he yelled, waving Hunt forward.

  Hunt hesitated, then put the Chevy into four-wheel-drive and eased his front bumper against the Toyota’s rear following Everon’s directions.

  It wouldn’t budge.

  “More!” Everon waved.

  Hunt sucked in his lips. The Chevy’s engine raced and the compact began to slide on the icy pavement. When it had cleared the bridge’s last heavy metal truss, Everon waved sideways and Hunt slowly pushed it off the road.

  Everon felt like just walking away. He climbed in.

  “We’ve been seeing a lot of that the last two days,” Hunt said.

  A moment later they were flying.

  As their headlights flicked past an unlit sign for U.S. 1., Everon began to realize how bad things were. Hell, we’re being chauffeured around in the dark by the CEO of a company that powers more than quarter-of-a-million homes.

  “The Amish are about the only ones prepared for this sort of thing,” Hunt said sourly. “They’ve got plenty of everything, and they don’t need anything.”

  “They don’t use gasoline or electricity,” said Scrounge. He looked to Everon. “Remember what we talked about, E?”

  “Yeah —

  “I brought a fair amount of cash along with me, Hunt. But money may not buy us everything we need. I need your agreement to let me and my guys — mainly Scrounge here — trade power once we get your system running again. Until that time, I want you to let us trade Williams fuel, vehicles, test equipment, anything you’ve got — for whatever we need to get the job done.”

  “That could end up going against some pretty tough regulations. And my board of directors would have a fit if you traded off our trucks, for example.”

  “Look, Hunt, we’ve got to do whatever it takes — if you want to get your system energized anytime soon — considering how bad things are. I hate to put it like this — it’s either that, or we put in a few days doing what we can, and we’re out of here. No use wasting anybody’s time.”

  No one breathed.

  Hunt exhaled. “You’re right of course. You shouldn’t have had to say that, Everon.” He raised his eyes to Scrounge in the rearview mirror. “You trade whatever you have to.” He took his eyes from the road for a moment to glance at Everon. “Do the best you can to get my customers turned on again. If two weeks from now even half of them have two hours of electricity a day, I’ll be very, very happy.”

  Advance Warning?

  Here and there along the streets, house windows flickered. Candles? Everon wondered. The neighborhoods had an eerie feel.

  “I do have some good news,” Hunt said, taking the next corner onto a wide snowy boulevard. None of the stoplights were working. Storefront businesses were dark.

  “We could use a little,” Everon said.

  Hunt switched on the dome light. “Here.” He handed Everon a sheet of paper. “That was recorded February 7.”

  “The night of the first bomb?” Everon traced a finger down what was obviously a computer log. He stopped at three circles halfway down the page.

  He pictured the Williams grid map. “Mercer? That’s one of your big generating plants, isn’t it?”

  “Our biggest.”

  Heavy main power lines ran in groups of three. The time stamps between three main lines coming from the plant were different: 579 milliseconds on the first power line; 589 milliseconds on the other two.

  “Ten milliseconds apart?” Nick said over Everon’s shoulder. “That’s an eternity. “With the Phase A line disconnected like that, the imbalance tripped the other relays and disconnected the whole plant.”

  “Exactly,” Hunt agreed. “I know the timing is a little strange. But the good news is Mercer might have suffered very little damage. Which could make it an easy restart.”

  “This happened ten minutes before the New York bomb went off?” Lama asked, his high voice catching Hunt off guard.

  The CEO’s eyes glanced in the rearview mirror. “Uh, I know it’s a bit unusual. I don’t really understand it. Our system was loaded up heavy that night, so I don’t know why someone would have pulled our biggest generator off the grid at that time. But I’m awfully glad —”

  “It almost looks like somebody protected Mercer by causing a line fault,” Lama interrupted.

  “That’s ridiculous!” Nick said. “Why would someone issue a command to cut the biggest generating plant right before the bomb went off?”

  “What are you saying?” Hunt glanced at him.

  “I don’t know what we’re saying,” Everon answered. “Where did you find this?”

  “A programming kid who works for us, Ewing Dacker, noticed the time discrepancy when he was using the logs to see what equipment wasn’t online when the bomb went off.”

  Lama spoke up. “It looks like the command was carried in over one of the high-tension lines. This won’t tell us where it came from, or who generated it though.” />
  “Could have been anywhere on the grid,” Nick said.

  “Only a control message coded with the Williams protocol would be recognized by your system,” Lama said.

  “I guess that’s right,” Hunt agreed. “It’s a 300-digit key. But at least —”

  “One thousand twenty-four bit encryption!” Lama’s voice rising even higher than usual. “No way this was just random.”

  Hunt nodded uncomfortably.

  “I’ll take a look at the whole log,” Lama said.

  “As soon as we get to Juniata Center,” Hunt said, turning into a surprisingly well-lit street. “First we need to see what can be done about saving one of our substations.”

  Up ahead the sky was filled with smoke and flame.

  Ralph’s Uncomfortable Warning

  As Franklin pulled into Erie, he felt the lake air drifting through the edge of the jeep’s canvas top, colder the closer he got to home.

  Downtown Erie was in nice shape. Well-maintained office buildings, the relatively new Sheraton complex on the edge of the bay. The white bandstand at the park was lit, though the walks were still covered in snow. The big lake storms were rolling in.

  A young kid from the church named Charlie Regal, who usually shoveled around the park, was dressed warmly and hanging out on the corner. As Franklin drove by, Charlie surreptitiously handed something to a scruffy-looking character, pants halfway down his rear. Franklin wondered how the guy wasn’t freezing his rump off.

  Charlie turned. For a second his eyes locked with Franklin’s, made him want to pull over, have a word with the kid.

  Charlie turned away. Franklin drove on.

  As Franklin turned onto Lake Road, he glanced into the side streets flashing by. The churches always looked good. He passed St. Patrick’s. Then Mount Calvary. Catholics were big in town.

  He took the right fork onto Iroquois. He usually smiled at the thought of one of the big Catholic churches buying a manse on Priestly as the street went by. Houses there were long structures, more like apartments, sharing common side walls between multiple units. Sections of the town here seemed to be dying. Run-down houses let go by the people who lived in them. He frowned. Time, doing what the bombs had done to Queens and Brooklyn and Virginia Beach.