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“What!” Ben said. “New York? Is the whole country under attack? Who —”
Without thinking, Susan lifted the phone. A dial tone hummed back. “Ours is working.”
At 8:33, Des Moines, Iowa time, the telephone rang in the apartment of Kim Martin and her two daughters. It was Kim’s brother, Brian, calling from Canadian — a town halfway between Lubbock and Amarillo, north Texas.
“New York?” she said. “He called you from Ohio? That’s a pretty close friend for an old college buddy. Did he say who did it?”
“Ben knows we do some nuclear warhead work down here,” Brian explained. “He wanted to find out what I thought. The Amarillo television stations aren’t on the air and my satellite dish isn’t working. I can get one radio station, that’s it. The President hasn’t said anything yet — but look, Kimmie — I’m on my way out the door right now. I’ve only got a few bucks. I’m gonna hit the cash machine.”
Kim ran with the portable phone to the kitchen for a look in her purse. “Shit!” she yelped. “I’ve only got a twenty, Brian.”
“Girls!” she yelled. “Get your coats! You can wear your pj’s underneath. Girls! We have to go somewhere in the car for a few minutes! Now!”
By the time Kim reached her usual ATM, there were already a dozen people in line. When she was one person from the machine, a dark-haired man came walking back toward her counting, and the person directly in front began swearing out the longest string of cuss words she’d ever heard, then turned and ran after the dark-haired man.
A message flashed in the ATM window:
CASH DEPLETED
PLEASE TRY ANOTHER LOCATION
That night, Kim and her daughters drove to three more cash machines.
There was no line at any of them. The first two were empty. She ran nervously from the last machine. It looked like someone had taken a crowbar to it.
In the middle of ten thousand acres northeast of Burlington, Kansas, the head night engineer at Wolf Creek Nuclear Power Plant studied a series of computer readouts. Those two rods on the Number Three Bundle look pretty solid. His systems were operating near maximum output. Good thing too with this New Yor —
He looked up to see a U.S. Army colonel and four soldiers file in through the main control room door.
Colonel Devers Broadmore introduced himself, then announced, “By Presidential Executive Order 16-176, all active nuclear power plants are to be immediately shut down. It is our task to see such procedures as necessary are implemented efficiently and safely carried out.”
The engineer frowned at the colonel. “Shutdown? What!”
“That’s right, gentlemen.”
“But I don’t understand. Why us? Way out here? Some of the plants back East maybe. But us? We’re near peak load. If we —”
“Immediate shutdown, sir!” Colonel Broadmore’s face remained impassive. “Right now!”
The chief engineer hesitated. He thought of his own house twenty miles away — his wife, his family. Though none of the soldiers were raising weapons, he picked up on a sense of increasing tension in the muscles, the tendons of the hands that held them. The engineer’s jaw muscle worked. He took a deep breath, then stepped to the main console. To the shock of everyone on the plant’s night crew, he entered into the computer a series of commands.
Deep within the thick-wall concrete containment dome next door, motors whirred. An ear-deafening hissSSSS grew. Control rods of boron, cadmium and silver pushed downward, absorbing neutrons. The nuclear core’s temperature dropped. Steam reverted to water, losing its ability to produce motive force. Generators slowed.
On the U.S. grid, the sudden gigantic power deficit forced switching engineers to make sudden choices. Like a pebble tossed into a pond, the wave of blackouts rippled outward into Kansas. Lights in ten — twenty — fifty thousand homes went dark as they were taken off the grid. Refrigerators stopped cooling. Hot water heaters stopped heating. Furnaces shut down.
At the Palo Verde plant west of Phoenix, River Bend north of New Orleans — at sixty-three other generating plants across the United States — the procedure was repeated.
Eleven million homes went dark.
In Marysville, Ohio, in the middle of their third phone call, the lights at Ben and Susan Coupe’s house went out. In Des Moines, Iowa, the display on the fourth cash machine Kim Martin tried simply went dead.
It didn’t return her card.
Frustration
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Everon’s fist hammered against the metal door. He leaned back, looked up at Teterboro’s control tower, a concrete building of square foundation, tapering six stories to the observation windows above.
That little red Robinson just sitting over there, he thought, ready to go. Cyn and Steve and Melissa could slide right in the back and we could all get out of here. But once the military shows up — There was no time to waste. Have to get someone to give us clearance right now!
He drew back his fist for another go when — CLICK! — he heard the lock unlatch.
The door was opened by a man wearing a blue bow tie and a brown goatee. A metal name tag on his white shirt said JOHN COATES.
“I need clearance to —” Everon began.
“I’m sorry,” Coates interrupted, “no one is allowed to leave the ground. An FAA director was here fifteen minutes ago. She grounded all flights. The military’s about to take over. Besides, our radios are out.”
Everon studied the man in the white shirt. “All flights?” he asked doubtfully.
“Everything except military and EMS.”
“My sister’s in there somewhere,” he pointed to the distant flames. “I have a helicopter. You expect us to just sit here on the ground?”
“Afraid so,” the man told him and began to pull the door closed.
Everon persisted, not realizing he was holding onto the door. “That’s it?”
“Absolutely it! . . .” he said more strongly, “Sorry!” forcing the door out of Everon’s hand.
“I-have-a-spare-radio-I-can-let-you-have!” Everon spat into the closing crack.
The door hesitated. It opened. “That would be a help.”
Two minutes later Everon was back from the jet with a black hand-held the size of a walkie-talkie.
“Thanks!” the controller said, widening the crack he’d been peering through. “Really appreciate it! At least we’ll be able to communicate with the EMS flights now, talk in other pilots trying to figure out how to get in here. We’ve had six crashes in the area already . . .”
The blue lights along the runway’s sides were glowing even more faintly than when they’d landed.
“Thanks!” He began to pull the door closed again.
“How long till your backup batteries fail?” Everon asked quickly.
The door stopped. “Not long. Our backup generator didn’t come on like it was supposed to,” Coates said.
“Maybe I can take a look?” Everon urged. “I know something about power systems. Have any tools?”
“Hmm.” The door widened. “Well, I guess — We have an engineer on call but —” His words choked off, eyes turning to the city. He let out a long breath and stepped aside. “We have some tools in the cabinet. None of us know how to fix it.”
Coates turned on a flashlight, led the way down a wide hallway.
“It’s a diesel in back here on the ground floor. Watch it there, the backup lighting on the stairs is out.”
Everon followed him past a handrail to where Coates unlocked a set of double doors.
The middle of the room was filled by the long diesel generator. Its engine should have started automatically — already loud and running!
It was silent. He pictured the dimming lights outside.
Along the far wall sat banks of batteries in steel racks three rows high. First thing, Everon looked from the big generator to the battery gauge. 112 volts. The red display flipped to 111.
“When it drops under a hundred, forget about ever starting this thing! Tools?” Everon urged.
The goateed controller swung open a wall-mounted metal supply cabinet. Its door looked like it’d been opened with a crowbar. “No one had a key.”
It was a jumble of wrenches, pliers, a hammer.
Everon grabbed a screwdriver and undid a large screw on the generator’s control box. Inside was a melted mess. The bomb’s electromagnetic pulse had traveled up the wires and stopped at the transfer switch. The automatic relays were frozen solid.
He glanced at the readout. 109 volts.
In the dim light, he looked more closely at the automatic starting circuit. The tiny black optical isolators had been turned into small plastic globs.
Everon studied the wiring diagram.
“I’m going to run your radio upstairs,” the airport guy interrupted.
“No problem. Check on flights trying to land. Then come down and let me know soon as it’s clear to cut the batteries. I’ve got to cut power before I can get this thing started. From the look of your runway lights, you don’t have much time.”
“Okay.” Coates started to take the flashlight with him, not thinking.
“Uh — you have a penlight or anything?” Everon asked.
“Oh.” The controller seemed surprised at himself. “Yeah, I guess it won’t do much good — No, no penlight. I guess I won’t kill myself. I ought to be able to feel my way along the handrail in the dark, I’ve run those stairs enough times. If you hear a scream, it’ll be me falling down six flights.”
108 volts.
Everon grabbed a pair of cutters. He’d have to bypass the transfer mains. There was a big spool of heavy wire shoved into a corner of the room. He cut off several three-foot sections.
Shit! Out of all of us, why Cyn? Married to a smart, good-looking, loving guy. Their beautiful new daughter.
107!
Hands automatically shoving old wires out of his way, stripping, bending, forming loops to replace them. That helicopter! Just sitting there outside across the airport! The controllers have my radio. Maybe if I can fix this damn generator they’ll let us go in there!
He yanked out the shadowy mess of melted wire. Threw it on the floor.
If this works, they’ll HAVE to give me permission to take that helicopter in.
Everon examined his effort, brain turning in a hundred directions. All he had left to do was bypass the main power leads. “Where’s that controller?” He had to disconnect the master.
He glanced at the meter. 105 volts! The airport’s runway lights are running the batteries down! A couple more minutes and there won’t be enough power to start a lawnmower! Where is he?
He checked a gauge on the generator’s side. Fuel level looks okay.
The goateed controller ran through the double doors out of breath. “Sorry! We had a flight landing.”
“I was beginning to wonder. Anybody coming in?”
“Not at the moment. You’ve got a few minutes.”
A few minutes. Everon gripped the big breaker handle with two hands and pulled it down with a sharp bang. Now the airport was completely dark.
He flipped several switches. While they waited for the diesel’s glow plug to heat, Everon quickly pushed the
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