the physique of a college football player, and like his boss he carried two aluminum cases that contained the equipment for detecting nuclear weapons, and for electronically interfering with the weapons’ firing systems.
“This looks like your sort of work,” Gruen said to McGarvey. “But since the shooting seems to be done with, why don’t you get the fuck out of my incident scene.”
“Nice to see you too, Carlos,” McGarvey said. “Well equipped for the job at hand, and on time as usual.”
Marsha had set her satchel on the floor and was pulling out some tools, and other equipment including a stethoscope and several small electronic devices each about the size of a pack of cigarettes or cell phone.
She looked up. “Oh, hi, Mac,” she said pleasantly, a little smile on her full lips. If she was feeling any tension it wasn’t showing. “You guys might want to get out of here, because we could screw this up.”
“She’s right,” Lundgren said, and he too was calm. Behind him the LED counter was passing 22:00. “We’re going to attempt to take the detonator circuit apart and disable the power supply, and it’s going to get a little dicey. Somebody accidentally bumps into something and we could be in trouble.”
Strasser was looking helpless, confused, and angry. This was his facility; he was responsible for the operation of the reactors and everything else of a nonbusiness and nonadministrative nature, and a dagger had been stabbed into his heart. Men he knew and trusted were dead, one of them the killer, the saboteur, and it was all too much for him.
“Leave now,” McGarvey told him. “Find your plant manager and figure out what you’ll have to do if we disarm the explosives, but more important what you’ll need to do if we fail.”
Marsha looked over her shoulder. “Everybody out. Now,” she said.
Strasser left, but Gruen with his second team member remained at the door, just as frustrated as the chief engineer was. But this situation was out of his hands. Nothing he could say or do was going to help, and he knew it, and it made him angry. He needed to be in the center of things, he needed to be in control, and his attitude had always been the same: The road to the directorship was paved with good field decisions, good management of his resources, and innovative solutions, and he wasn’t afraid to tell anyone who would listen.
“Do you need anything for backup?” he asked.
But Marsha didn’t respond. She turned the LED counter on the coolant control panel over on its back, her movements slow, careful, precise, and she began to hum a tune from the back of her throat. She’d once explained that she was always frightened practically out her mind — spitless, as she put it — and humming distracted that automatic part of her fight-or-flight instinct so that she could do her work with a steady hand.
Lundgren was paying close attention to what she was doing, and copying each of her moves, his hands just as steady as hers, as he worked on the LED counter attached to the scram panel for number two.
The counters passed 20:00.
“I’ll be right back,” McGarvey said. He glanced at his wristwatch; it was a few minutes before 1:40 P.M. By 2:00 P.M. the situation would be resolved one way or the other, and for the moment it was just as much out of his hands as it was out of Gruen’s.
“Doug and I will be out in the corridor,” Gruen said. “If you need anything I’ll be within earshot.”
They went outside and McGarvey followed after them. Gruen badly wanted to say something, take a parting shot, but he just shook his head.
“They don’t have a lot of time,” McGarvey said. “So it’s just a suggestion, but you might want to stay out of their way. Cut them a little slack.”
“Get out of here,” Gruen said.
McGarvey hurried down the hall and took the stairs to the second floor, past the blown-out observation window and Wager’s body, and back to the security suite, deserted now, as he hoped the entire facility was.
A pair of offices — Gail’s and Wager’s — were down a short corridor from the reception area, and across from a small room with banks of closed-circuit television monitors built into a long horseshoe-shaped console with positions for two operators. Behind them, another door opened to a room filled with a dozen or more racks of digital recording units.
Mac took a few precious minutes figuring out the system so that he could access the camera watching the visitors center. He brought the image up on one of the monitors. The lot was deserted of civilian personnel, and only a single St. Lucie County sheriff’s unit was parked diagonally across A1A. The legend at the bottom of the screen showed a camera number and a date-time block.
Some of the other cameras showed various places within the facility, all of them deserted except for the parking lot directly outside, where the Air National Guard helicopter was just setting down. Strasser emerged from the building and headed over to a knot of a half dozen people, one of whom McGarvey recognized as Bob Townsend, the plant manager, getting ready to board the chopper.
McGarvey went into the recording room, where it took another minute or two to locate the unit that corresponded to the visitors center parking lot camera, pop the disk out, and pocket it.
Back out in the corridor across from Gail’s office, he hesitated for a brief moment, wondering what he would find inside, what new measure of her he might discover, and in the next moment he wondered why he cared.
The answer came to him reluctantly as he hurried out into the main corridor and headed toward the observation window, Wager’s blood splattered against the opposite wall, and pooled up under his body. He’d cared for someone all of his life, and those kinds of feelings were like unbreakable habits reinforced each time he entered a relationship. At this stage with his wife, daughter, and son-in-law dead, the habit was still alive and active inside of him, perhaps stronger than ever, and he couldn’t help from wondering about Gail; couldn’t help wondering about himself.
He glanced at his wristwatch, it was coming up on 1:50 P.M., as he reached the observation window. Still moving, he glanced down. Lundgren and Marsha had shifted over to the rigged panels for reactor one, and were hunched over their work. Both LED counters on reactor two lay on a tray beneath the panels, their batteries disconnected, as was one of the counters for reactor one, and for the first time since he’d arrived he had genuine hope that they’d come on time because there was still ten minutes left on the last LED counter.
He was just past the window when a bright flash caught the corner of his eye, and he turned his head as the explosion disintegrated Marsha’s and Alan’s upper torsos and heads in a single haze of blood, and metal parts, and dust from somewhere.
It was so fast that McGarvery had no time to react, no time to move a muscle, no time even to stop in his tracks, or to feel anything beyond surprise.
Gruen was shouting something that McGarvey couldn’t make out over the ringing in his ears, and in the next second or two with the sounds of metal and bits of glass falling around the control room, he ran for the stairs to the back corridor and control room door.
“Get out of there!” he shouted, taking the stairs down two at a time, nearly stumbling and pitching headfirst, the images of his wife’s and daughter’s bodies destroyed beyond all hope of salvation, beyond even recognition, rising up in his eyes like a bitter gorge choking his breath.
Gruen, standing at the open door with his other team member, Douglas Vigliaturo, looked around, his movements in slow motion, as McGarvey hit the first floor running. “There was still ten minutes on the counters!” he shouted. “You saw it, too.”
“It was a trap,” McGarvey said. “Whoever set this up meant to kill anyone trying to disarm the explosives. We have to leave now.”
“I need to recall our transportation,” Gruen said, still shouting, panic showing in his eyes. “It’ll take too much time.”
“You can ride with me, but we have to get out of here.”
Gruen looked inside the control room, uncertain what to do next. “What do I tell Marsha’s husband?”
“Christ,” McGarvey said. “Stay if you want, but I suggest you move your ass.” He headed the rest of the way down the corridor, out the back door, and around to the front of the building, sirens wailing everywhere throughout the nearly deserted facility.
NINETEEN
