Peter Hernon - 8.4

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 seconds.

“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.