Chapter 35
Daisy opened the control room door and came to an abrupt halt. Her knees wobbled so hard she thought she might fall over.
Lonnie Segall lay slumped against the wall with a surprised look on his face and a bullet hole where his right eye should be.
She dashed forward to check his pulse even though she knew he was dead.
The saliva in her mouth dried up and her stomach clenched hard enough to make her gag. She glanced at the monitors and saw that there were other figures lying on the ground while other people, not wearing overalls, were wandering around and—was that Emilia?—trying to operate the crane.
Where were the others from her lab? Was Emilia being forced to help the terrorists?
Do this or we’ll shoot you and your friends?
But that didn’t make sense.
She’d been here in the control room.
With Lonnie.
Daisy stared at the man’s ruined body and knew in that moment that Emilia Osbourne had been the one to kill him.
She tried to process what was happening on the screen.
She spotted Agent Crabtree walking around unharmed and appeared to be consulting with—she peered closer to the screen as her heart hammered—oh, God, was that Bocharov?
His features were disguised with a blond wig and a big, fat mustache, but it sure looked like him.
She fumbled for her phone and saw she’d missed eight calls from Jordan.
Shit.
She looked nervously around as she dialed him back. She went to the outside door and turned the latch, terrified to make a sound or draw attention to herself. She contemplated doing the same with the inner door, but what happened if one of the others from her lab had escaped and needed help?
She pulled her Glock from her purse and let the bag drop to the floor.
“Daisy?” Jordan’s voice was cautious, as if expecting someone else to be on the line.
“It’s me, but you have to listen carefully.
I think the FBI made a mistake. Bocharov is here, in the Moses Lake reactor, not wherever you think he is.
He’s disguised with a blond wig. They’ve killed a bunch of the workers, including the plant manager who I’m in the control room with right now. ” Her stomach threatened to revolt.
“You need to get out of there.”
Daisy watched the monitors with a growing sense of horror. “I can see everything that is going on from here. Agent Crabtree is working with that monster.”
“How did you get away?”
“Sheer luck and being unable to deal with the general animosity of my colleagues.”
He swore. “Do you know what their plan is?”
“No.” She frowned thinking about what had happened on the floor.
“I thought I smelled plastic and paint on the fuel rod assemblies which I wasn’t expecting.
I asked the shift supervisor”—whom she could now see lying on the floor in a pool of blood—“and he went to check them out. I headed into the shower room and heard someone I presumed was Emilia Osbourne walk out through the changing room. She didn’t stop to put on PPE, which is a big no-no around here.
I’m guessing she shot Lonnie Segall before she headed into the reactor building. ”
Her stomach wanted to rebel, but she wouldn’t let it. She should be dead. If Emilia had seen her in the changing room, her fellow student would one hundred percent have put a bullet in her.
“Did you actually see any explosives or detonators?”
“No.” Dread twisted in her gut like a tangled skein of wool. “The smell reminded me of the C4 Harry Marcus showed me the other day. Would it be possible to shape that into beads and maybe paint them the same color as the nuclear fuel pellets?”
“They’d still need a way to detonate the explosive. C4 won’t explode without a detonator.”
The idea of C4 being anywhere near a nuclear reactor almost made her bones liquify. “I have to stop them.”
“No, you don’t. We’re here at the plant.
Myself, Alex, and Cisco. Gold Team is on the way.
You lock the door and stay away from the windows.
Cisco has tapped into the video feeds so we have them online now and can monitor.
We’re shutting down the other reactors, and knowing you’re safe means we can afford to wait for backup. ”
“What about the others?”
Jordan’s silence made her want to weep.
Daisy stared at the scene and scrunched her brows in puzzlement. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“What doesn’t?”
“Why go to all the trouble of disguising an explosive if you just go and kill everyone anyway? Oh, wait. Let me rewind the footage.” She found an auxiliary screen that allowed her to view recorded footage independently.
She rewound until she and Roger left the reactor floor.
A minute later, she watched Greg Sivik start carefully examining the new rods.
Suddenly, he was waving his hands and telling the crane operator to stop, to lift the assembly he’d just put in the reactor out again.
He’d spotted an issue.
Bile filled her throat as she watched with horrified resignation as Bocharov and Crabtree came inside the reactor doors. A dark-haired woman in a gray pant suit stood on the other side of the truck. She wore thick, dark sunglasses, her hands tucked under her jacket.
Then the shooting started, and that was the noise she’d heard. People being shot, dying, because of her.
Her mouth tasted like ashes. “I think I know what happened. After I asked if there was plastic on the fuel rods, the shift supervisor checked them out, and then it looks like he shut down the installation process.” She looked at the hole in Lonnie Segall’s face.
“It’s my fault they killed these people. ”
“No, it’s Bocharov’s and his co-conspirators. They killed them. You may have helped prevent a reactor meltdown.”
She swallowed. She hadn’t prevented it yet.
“Are you safe?”
She flipped the deadbolt into the reactor building. “Yes, but if they have a keycard or key, they’ll be able to get inside. I have my gun. Security never checked our belongings for weapons.” She tucked the weapon into the back of her borrowed pants and covered it with her T-shirt.
“Something they’re gonna regret for the rest of their very short careers.”
Her teeth chattered—shock, stress, the decided chill in the air all catching up to her at once. “What do I do, Jordan?”
“Hang tight. We’re going to come in from the west side.
Gold Team is almost here but don’t want to be seen or heard, so they landed a mile back and are approaching on foot.
We’ve had management shutting down the other two reactors and moving people out, but slowly.
We don’t want to warn Bocharov that we’re here. ”
She watched on screen as Emilia figured out how to operate the crane and slid the next metal grid into the core.
Her mind whirled in fear. The idea there might be C4 in some of those rods was terrifying. “Is there any way you could detonate C4 in water without using some kind of det cord?”
“What about using sodium or potassium?” She recognized Alex Parker’s voice in the background.
Both metals exploded in water. She blinked.
Her brain flaring with ideas. “Coat it in some sort of soluble material that dissolves when the water heats up to a specific temperature as the chain reaction builds…” It was a clever idea.
“The metal explodes and ignites the C4. Enough of both, and you’ll compromise the structural integrity of the core, and it’s doubtful the staff here would have the means to prevent a meltdown under those circumstances. ”
“Is that really possible?” Jordan asked.
Daisy swallowed the knot in her throat. “Theoretically, it could work. And no one would be any the wiser until it was too late. Except Greg Sivik took me seriously and realized something was up. He ruined their plans, so Bocharov and the others improvised instead.”
“And now we’re going to ruin their plans again. You stay exactly where you are and don’t come out for anything.”
She watched Emilia loading the metal lattices into the framework. “Please hurry. And Jordan?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you too. Even though it’s a risk, and I don’t want to feel this way. I do anyway.”
“Don’t you fucking die on me now, Daisy.”
“I’ll try not to, but you have to remember, if I do, it’s not your fault.” She hung up and then spotted a button that governed the power to the crane and other mechanical equipment. There was another button for the main water pump needed for cooling the reactor and producing power.
She watched Emilia grab yet another half-ton assembly in the automated jaws of the crane.
If Daisy killed the power, they’d know she was here and might come hunting for her. But they already knew she was alive, and she was sure they wouldn’t leave until she was either dead or captured.
Jordan was nearby, as was Gold Team.
Surely, the more she could slow them down, the less radioactive material in the core, the better.
It was a risk, but with the stakes so high? It had to be worth it.
Her heart thumped madly.
And what was the alternative? Sit here safe in her secure castle until the bad guys were all gone, but in the meantime the core blew?
The reactor would take a few hours to heat up so the chain reactions could reach a level that then became impossible to slow down. Once the fission started, once the core itself was blown wide open, there would be no easy fix. It would be Fukushima all over again.
Bocharov was fixing something to the hinges of the outer doors. She leaned closer. Some kind of explosive device. Her jaw ached from gritting her teeth.
He was planning to blow the doors and destroy the last of the three Cs. Containment.
By blowing the reactor core, they’d eliminate any chance of controlling the reaction and probably damage any effective way of cooling the radioactive material, and, by blowing off the doors of the building, there went the chance of containing the radioactive fallout in the short term.
It would rival Chernobyl, creating a contaminated wasteland for hundreds of miles that would last for decades and decades to come.