He nodded grimly and turned for his office.
People who hadn’t heard from someone in New York or Virginia. And each day fear increases. Maybe he’s unconscious? Maybe she’s trapped? Hope was fading. People everywhere wanting to talk to somebody who would make them feel better.
He picked up the phone and dialed Del. Surprisingly, it connected.
Doc Brown had already been to see Melissa. “She’s just fine, boy!” Del said. “You should see her right now, smilin’ in her sleep!”
As he put down the phone, Mrs. Astor’s actual words burned horribly in his chest: “What kind of person could have done this to us?” He couldn’t imagine. What type of person could push a button that kills a million people?
He tried to form a picture: A man or a woman? A man, he thought for no solid reason, perhaps unfairly. Physically small and emotionally distraught like Patricia Marshal? Maybe large like Mrs. Astor — but ferocious instead of weepy . . . Religious like me? Surely such a person would be bent by revenge. Or would they be coldly rational?
It ached behind his eyes, flowed down through his cheeks, into his neck and shoulders, all the way through his wrists to his fingertips, that same undefined rage he’d felt last night driving back from Ohio —
Maybe that’s the reason a murder victim’s survivors have such a difficult time accepting a not-guilty verdict — even when they suspect the real perpetrator is still out there. So when police accuse the wrong person, there’s somebody to hang their grief on. Someone to hate to help them overcome their loss.
But there’s no one to hate this time.
The government won’t ever find whoever’s doing this. How does someone chase down whoever sets off an A-bomb? Such a tremendous explosion has to destroy all the evidence, doesn’t it? Certainly there are no fingerprints, no footprints. No getaway tracks in the mud to pour tire casts from.
He closed his office door. The anger grew. His eyes took in all the useless books. Biblical translations. “What good are they?” he railed.
But just when he thought he couldn’t take any more, at the very last moment, his rational mind stumbled forward, refusing to allow undirected hate to overpower everything else. He’d used his own sort of hypnosis — the words, their expression, even body position and touch — to effect fundamental changes in the minds of members of the church. Yet he felt reluctant to use it on himself? Forget Ralph! Shouldn’t I be trying to help myself find some other way of dealing with this? A better way of thinking?
He lay down on the green carpet, closed his eyes and pushed against whatever mental block was holding him back. He went deep inside and looked around. He asked the various parts of himself for help:
I want to speak to my creative part . . . an idea . . . I need an idea . . . a way to make myself function . . .
let all the other parts in here sort through each idea . . . until they can agree on something . . . anything that can be acceptable to all my other parts . . .
He waited . . .
9,000 Gallons
Inside Mercer’s control room, Everon could see “Junior” — as Holmes called the jet engine generator — was definitely running. Everon found Turban at the synchroscope — a hypnotic swirling dial the size of a dinner plate mounted on the rear wall. He didn’t dare interrupt.
As the synchroscope spun one way, then the other, the head-wrapped engineer struggled to precisely adjust controls — faster, slower, trying to match Junior’s speed to the smaller blackstart generator.
“Match!” he said loudly, cutting in breakers, connecting the two generators together. Nodding to himself, “Synced!”
Turban pushed two green buttons. “Breakers open!”
He pushed another, watching a digital readout. “Switch off!”
Now all Mercer’s power was coming from Junior, and Junior was self-supporting. Turban had turned off the auxiliary generator. No more fuel wasted there.
The Sikh didn’t even see Everon, so busy checking gauges across the worn gray control wall, twisting a black handle here, engaging a red starter button there — black shoes tapping across the raised white floor, lost in a kind of spastic dance. So deep in concentration, Everon had to walk within several feet.
The turban-headed engineer jumped. “Wha — !”
Like a door opening, Turban’s dark features brightened. “Mr. E! I did not expect you!” His right hand snapped across the console to twist another barbecue grill-size-knob, as if already behind the process he was attempting to manage.
“Isn’t your radio working?” Everon asked. “I’ve been trying to contact you for the last two hours.”
Before the engineer could answer, a staticky voice drawled from the hand-held radio on his right hip. “I’m here, Mr. Turban. Sight gauge on the fuel tank is just under the nine mark. 9,000 gallons.”
“Ah —” Turban glanced at a panel gauge, grabbed the radio off his belt. “We are correct. Thank you, Mr. Denny.”
He turned to Everon, “Please excuse me, not hearing your call, Mr. E.” The Sikh’s voice rose and fell in a musical sing-song. He sounded . . . happy. “I was out in the plant. He is very good. No grinding sounds!”
“Grinding?”
“Very encouraging. Any grind, his shutdown was bad. His shaft is bent. Then he is dead.” He frowned, lips pulling on his dark mustache. “Like Schuylkill plant.”
Turban pointed to a row of square three-inch gauges across the top of the gray console, a row of red lights below them. “He is on gear now. Six revolutions per minute. There is no damage — to his shaft.”
“He? Him?”
“The turbine!” The Sikh pushed a red button. “The main generator!”
“Ah —” Everon answered, relief flooding in. “The big coal-fired unit?”
“Yes.”
“Uh —” thinking of what Holmes had called the big generator — “maybe we can call him the Big Mombo? To differentiate from his little brother, the jet combustion turbine — and call that one Junior?”
“Big Mombo? Junior?” the Sikh laughed. “Certainly. Of course, Mr. E! He — Big Mombo is nothing like the one at Schuylkill! Pieces of metal! Fractured turbine blades! Horrible!
“It is extreme strangeness. I cannot guess why he,” teeth flashed within his black beard, “Big Mombo, yes — ?”
“Yes —”
“I cannot understand why Big Mombo is not more damaged.” Turban resumed his spastic dance, depressing and holding for several moments another button.
“Maybe because Mercer is so far west?” Everon suggested. “It’s the farthest Williams plant from New York.”
“Perhaps. But this does not explain the telephone wires.”
Everon frowned and lifted the handset on the corner of Big Mombo’s wide control console. He pressed 9. Shook his head. “There’s no dial tone. The phone company’s backup generators probably went dead a day ago.”
“That is not the cause. The lines into this entire plant were cut.”
“Cut? Where?”
“Outside. Through the pipe. With a saw. Where they enter the property.”
“When?”
“This, I do not know.
There it is again, Everon thought. Now the telephone lines. The missing log file. Somehow connected. Why would someone shut the Mercer plant down right before the first bomb?
Countdown
Who the hell would have cut the phone lines? Everon wanted to get to the bottom of it. There was no time. Junior ran on diesel. Something they would soon be out of.
On the far left of the wide gray console, Turban gripped a black L-shaped pistol switch. “Starting water pumps,” he said. With a twisting action, the engineer bumped the handle once . . . twice . . .
On a square gauge, far left, a needle moved.
“No water-steam backflow. Check valves — okay.”
Exceptional precision, this guy, thought Everon. Good call, Nan.
The Sikh wasn’t waiting. Turban toggled another of
the one hundred or so black right-angle handles — once, twice. “Pre-heat! Filling Boiler Feed Water Tanks One and Two.”
Everon understood his urgency. The fuel gauge was already below the 9,000 mark. When it was gone, Junior would die. And without more fuel to the hospital their emergency generators would die with it. By tomorrow Enya and a lot of other ICU patients could very well be dead too.
Even if we send all the diesel we’ve got to the hospital they’ll still run out. And then what about the prison? The people in freezing-cold houses whose furnaces won’t turn on without electricity to start them?
But we have tons of coal. Five months worth! Unless we get Big Mombo running, everybody’s screwed.
Everon put a hand on Turban’s shoulder. “How much power to turn Big Mombo’s main fans? Bare minimum?”
“Two megawatts,” Turban replied instantly. “Below that he will not run.”
Two megawatts. “How much fuel is that?”
“Nine hundred seven gallons per hour, while we heat his — Big Mombo’s — boiler.”
Call it a thousand, Everon figured. You always use more than you think. “How long to heat Big Mombo’s boiler?”
“His temperature of steam decides! Three days cooling. Sorry to say, Mr. E, seven hours.”
“Seven hours? Only 7,000 gallons! So we have enough fuel to get Big Mombo going?”
While Turban’s hands danced across the gray control board, the Sikh considered. And frowned. “I must say no, Mr. E. What we have is not enough.”
“Why not?”
“To get Big Mombo self-supporting we must turn on at least one grinding mill, five pumps, three fans . . . 1,000 to 2,000 gallons more diesel to start his fire . . .” Turban’s voice trailed off . . . His face darkened. “Altogether, Junior must produce fifteen megawatts for the final four hours. 1,000 gallons additional — per hour.”
Shit! 4,000 gallons more! And that doesn’t even include what we’ll need to light the coal! 13,000 gallons!
But — once Big Mombo’s running we’ll have enough coal for five months!
On the control board’s far left, Turban held three red two-inch buttons marked OIL PUMPS, one after another. He watched as a series of green lights turned red. Unlike a traffic light, green meant IDLE — Stopped. Here in the power world, red meant RUNNING.
Turban asked, “Do we begin? Try to fire up Big Mombo?”
In the twenty minutes they’d been talking about it, Junior had already burned through another 400 gallons. By now the gauge would be at 8,600. 4,400 short. Even if Scrounge has half that from Flagler’s gas station in a tanker, we’ll still need another 2,500.
Everon considered — We could shut down Big Mombo . . . If we’re careful, stretch the fuel, send Junior’s power to the hospital, the prison. When the transformers are clear all the way to Thomas we could run at low power.
He shook his head. But even then, the hospital would only get power for the next two days. What if the government doesn’t let any more fuel into the country for another week? What if it’s even longer?
This is the deciding point, he realized. Burn up the last of the spare fuel on a long-term gamble? Or try to stretch it?
It’s a risk either way.
Everon turned to a soft voice on his right. It was one of Hunt’s few remaining linesmen Gib Rhones, whispering: “Do it. Do it. Do it.” Gib looked at him. “My sister Chrissie’s in the hospital.”
“Do it!” Everon said. “Scrounge’ll find the fuel!”
Turban’s finger stabbed a red button on the console’s far right. “Triggering igniters! Fire!”
Together they watched a set of gauges on the right side.
Oil flash!
Twice!
Three times! The needles began to move. The temperature was already rising.
“The oil burns!” Turban said.
Now, Scrounge, find us that fuel!
Phase Imbalance
Everon checked the control panel’s diesel gauge. 7,500 gallons!
The Mercer control room door was yanked open from outside.
“If you think there’s only gonna be two bombs,” yelled one of two men Everon didn’t know, “you’re completely deluded! Won’t be long — you’ll see!”
The two techs took chairs behind the wide control desk.
“Mr. Denny!” Turban said, “Please run to second floor. Open coal powder gates. We cannot move his valve electronically. Push his button, turn his crank. Please.”
“Hand crank the damper drive?” Denny asked doubtfully.
“Please!”
“Okay.” Denny slowly rose from his chair. “What the government has to do,” he pointed at the other tech, “is find out who’s behind these damn explosions!”
“Can’t you see the fuel readout?” Gib shouted at him, as Denny ambled toward the control room door. “There’s no time to talk about that shit!”
Gib ignored the look Denny gave him, and rushed on past.
“Mombo, he cannot wait,” Turban muttered to himself. “The boy will do it in time.” Turban held two more buttons. “Starting primary fans! Pulverizer, Mill One!”
Watching numbers climb on an LED, Everon pictured one of the giant coffee grinders down on the ground floor begin to turn, grinding chunks of coal to dust. Big fans blowing the black dust up through tubes to the furnace on the third floor.
“Ready to fire it up?” Everon asked.
“Not ready,” Turban answered. The Sikh appeared to have his entire attention on a temperature gauge in the wide console’s center.
“All set!” An out of breath Gib fell through the side door, Denny nowhere to be seen. “You have coal flow.”
“What was wrong with it?” Everon asked.
“The damper drive was frozen,” Gib gasped out. He held up a three-foot-long pipe wrench. “I used a persuader.”
Everon turned to Turban. “Now?”
“A moment.” Index finger in the air, the engineer’s lips moved silently. He was counting . . .
“Yes!” Turban pushed two more buttons. A rumble moved through the control room.
And then it roared! An ocean storm magnified ten thousand times.
They were making steam.
Seven more hours, Everon thought. He pictured Enya, in her hospital bed, trying to breathe . . .
Scrounge! Get us some more fuel over here!
He couldn’t reach half his crew from this location. He needed to be back at Juniata near the radio station’s antenna. Or at least in the air. He picked up his hand-held radio. Metalhead and Ortega were too far away and not high enough to receive. He wouldn’t be able to reach Thomas either.
“Deters!” Everon transmitted. “How’s it going?”
“On schedule, E,” Right radioed back. “Another five, six hours should do it. By the way, I can’t reach anyone at Thomas.”
Not good. “Nan?”
“Here, E!” The HALO whooshed like a windstorm in the background.
“How’s it going?”
“Just got cable onto Tower Eight. I can’t reach Thomas Sub either.”
“Okay . . . Rani?”
“Here, E.”
“Call me as soon as you have a feel for what shape the lines are in.”
“They’re fine!” Holmes’ voice. Everon could hear Holmes huffing as he crawled. “I don’t know why, boss, but there’s no damage at all here. Strange, considering the way Nicola’s transformer yard looked. I don’t think there’s a thing wrong with these wires.”
Everon could picture the guys, two hundred feet in the air, one kneepad on either line, the thick metal cable, round and undamaged?
“I agree, E,” Rani chimed in. “Okay, maybe we haven’t done the whole run between Mercer and Nicola, but so far there’s not a bit of distortion. I don’t understand it. It’s really strange. Doesn’t even feel like they’ve been hot. They’re perfect. It’s really a waste of time to go any further with this.”
Then how the hell did Nicola’
s transformers blow like that?
But Holmes sounds so certain. And I know I can trust Rani! Have to take a chance!
“I’ll pick you up in twenty,” Everon growled. “If you guys haven’t found anything wrong by then, we send power to Nicola as soon as its first transformer’s finished and Turban’s able to send it.”
“Sounds good, E.” Rani.
“Okay, boss.” Holmes.
Power into the neighborhoods! If Turban can get Big Mombo running before Junior runs out of fuel. Everon looked at his watch. If, if, if!
Like blood draining from his body, he could almost feel Junior sucking it from the tank.
Miles away in the Nicola yard, Right Deters turned a crank. Three six-foot-long silvery aluminum tubes — open-air switches — pivoted smoothly downward to horizontal, their balled ends dropping into slots. It would take only Everon’s command to manually close the final circuit breakers that would send Mercer’s power all the way to New Jersey.
Everon could see Turban had things moving here as fast as humanly possible. It was time to go.
There hadn’t been enough of Everon’s guys available to leave someone at Thomas running things. He had to get over there. Make sure it was on schedule. Leave Holmes there to make sure they kept on moving.
But on the far left of Mercer’s big control board, he saw something that made his heart stop.
Two of the big red digital voltage displays, the numbers were the same. The third was dropping. Fast. Something’s drawing the generator’s Phase C more than the other two! Like a leak in a water main, something was siphoning off their power!
But we’ve hardly cut in any load! Just Big Mombo’s fans and grinders, some of its water pumps. Nothing was connected outside Mercer’s fence. Everon had checked all the outputs himself.
A siren wailed across the control room.
Before Everon could even think what to do, Turban yelled.
Search For Reason (State Of Reason Mystery, Book 2) Page 22