P Deutermann - The Moonpool

The building was constructed of heavy, steel-reinforced concrete and presented three layers of security checks before we could access the moonpool itself. Because the spent fuel pool was mostly aboveground, we stepped out of an airlock chamber through a heavy steel door and faced a solid wall of heavily studded concrete. I noted surveillance cameras trained on us through each step of the security points. We had to climb eight sets of steel ladder-stairs to get to the top, passing a mezzanine level on the way. Trask didn’t say much beyond directions on when to step through doors. Interestingly, it took swiping both his badge and mine to get through the doors. Trask explained that this had to do with the two-man rule: No one was allowed to go anywhere in the vital area by himself. Just before going inside the main pool enclosure, he positioned both of us in front of a wall-mounted video camera and verbally identified us to the camera lens. After a moment, the door in front of us was remotely unlocked, and Trask pointed me through it.

Quartermain was waiting for me in what looked like a monitoring anteroom along with some technicians. His eyes looked a bit puffy, and he was moving awkwardly, although that may just have been because he, too, was already suited up in a white whole-body coverall. There were no windows in the building, and the air was humid and surprisingly warm.

The moonpool itself was still spooky-looking. The water was incredibly clear and suffused with that ethereal blue-green light down toward the bottom, caused apparently by the residual radiation. And whereas the reactors were caged in huge hemispherical reinforced concrete domes, the spent fuel storage pool was open to view from catwalks on all four sides. It looked like the water was actually moving a little bit. Quartermain said it was and again explained the mechanics of the pool, the water cooling and the emergency backup refill system.

“So why’d they build them aboveground?”

“Pre-9/11 reactor design considerations,” he answered. “Robotic machines defuel and refuel the reactors, since humans can’t go anywhere near that stuff. There’s a whole tunnel complex underneath this building. The robots pull the fuel elements down out of the core, turn them sideways, cart them through a tunnel to the moonpool, stand them back up again, and then set them up for long-term storage. Takes months to do it, and after a while the pools get full. Then any other elements have to go into cask storage. Basically, it’s easier to transfer the stuff from an aboveground pool to the dry casks.”

“Casks, as in big lead-lined tanks?”

“Yup. Exactly. Steel and lead. We have some here, but they’re empty. So far, anyway. But if they don’t open Yucca Mountain pretty soon, we’ll be using them.”

“Is spent fuel a valid terrorist target?” I asked.

“Yes, there’s some bad shit down there at the bottom. That’s one of the main reasons we have people like Trask and his ex-Rangers here. Now: about last night.”

“Other than your unplanned swim, you got what you wanted, right?”

“I think we did. My spill team still has to write up their report, and we’ll be doing some more analysis on the foam once we get it back here.”

“Anyone tying the material to the stowaways?”

“Internally, Homeland Security and the Bureau are treating it as an attempted RDD attack, although the official cover story is only talking about the runners.”

“RDD?” All the acronyms were beginning to overwhelm me.

“Radiological dispersion device-dirty bomb, in English.”

“Except there was no bomb, right?”

“We had hot stuff and illegal males hidden in the same box. All sorts of conjecture about that. For all we know, there’s a bomb still over there, in another container.”

“They catch any of the runners?”

“Two,” he said. “South American, not Middle East. The ICE guys are baffled.”

More acronyms. “ICE?”

“Immigration and Customs Enforcement. More feds. You need to brush up on your alphabets.”

“I’m trying not to. So now what?”

“They’ll determine the destination for that container, and then screen the entire system for any other containers going to the same destination. If they find one, that’s where they’d expect bomb components to be.”

I thought his reasoning was a little tenuous. “You didn’t exactly find a thermos of bad stuff in that container, Ari,” I said.

“Yet,” he shot back.

“Okay, so let the big dogs run with it. You no longer need me or my people, right?”

He didn’t answer right away. He glanced sideways at three fully masked technicians who were taking readings from some instruments suspended in the pool. We turned our backs to them and the glowing pool before he replied. Frick, who seemed nervous, stayed close by my side. I wondered if the dog could sense the presence of something dangerous down there in that shimmering water.

“Actually,” Ari said, “I’d like you to stay. Remember my telling you that we might be able to trace marker isotopes when Ms. Gardner was killed?”

I nodded, although that hadn’t worked out with Allie’s postmortem.

“We have been able to recover the isotopic markers from our spill team’s monitors.”

“And?”

“The markers aren’t unequivocal,” he said grimly, indicating the moonpool with a sideways nod of his head, “but one could make the case that they point right here.”

“Who knows that?” I asked, wanting suddenly to get out of this foreboding building.

“At this moment, nobody but me and my lab people. They’d just brought me the report when I called you. But I will have to notify the company and, more importantly, the NRC. And then we’re probably going to experience some more interesting times, in the Chinese sense.”

I remembered Creeps saying they’d shut the plant down if they could prove the water came from the moonpool. “You’re saying you now think somebody did take radioactive water or materials, or both, out of this facility?”

“Seems impossible, doesn’t it,” he said. “You’ve seen the security. And, of course, it could have come from another BWR plant. But we’re the closest. Plus, you can’t and you wouldn’t get near an operating power reactor, so…”

I looked around as I digested this bit of news. The pool was contained in a sealed concrete building, swarming with radiation-monitoring instruments, accessible only through three layers of security checks, one manned, two electronic, and under constant television surveillance from a control room. So it wasn’t likely that someone just wandered up here with a rope and a bucket.

“Who’s the guy in charge of this area?” I asked.

“Not a guy,” he said. “Her name is Anna P. Martin. Doctor Anna Petrowska Martin, to be specific.”

“Judas Priest!” I said. “You’ve got a damned Russian on your management team?”

“Now, now, don’t rush to judgment. We also have Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and, yes, one Russian, and even some native-born Americans.”

“You do?”

“Consider the state of public education in this country these days, Mr. Richter. You think America’s producing bumper crops of nuclear engineers? If it weren’t for technically educated foreigners, there’d be no nuclear power or any other high-tech industry in this country. What we can’t rape and pillage from the Navy’s nuclear power program, we make up with foreigners. All of whom are fully vetted American citizens, by the way, as is Dr. Martin.”

I shook my head. I had strong views on Russians even being in this country, having dealt with my share of them in the Manceford County major crimes office. The Russian gangs made the Mafia look like pasta-bellied pussies. They were vicious beyond belief, and I firmly believed we should deport every damned one of them back to their beloved rodina tomorrow.