McGarvey motioned for the pilot to get them out of there, and the chopper began a wide, swinging arc off to the south, away from the plume, as Gail got on her cell phone to contact the authorities on the ground, and Gruen got on his own phone to the NNSA hotline.
“You guys are going to have to deal with that,” McGarvey told Townsend and Strasser. “Will it be impossible?”
“It’s no Chernobyl,” Strasser said. “But it’ll take the better part of a year or more to get back online.”
“If ever,” Townsend said bitterly. “We’re going to be faced with public opinion. Especially if any civilians get hurt.” He looked away, overwhelmed for just that moment by the enormity of what had just happened, what was happening. He’d worked with nukes for the better part of his career, and this was in lieu of his gold watch and twenty-five-year service pin. He and Strasser would not be remembered so much for leading the cleanup efforts, but for the fact such efforts had been needed in the first place.
Nuclear power was unsafe, the headlines would blare. Worldwide.
If not for Lundgren and Marsha it would have been much worse, but McGarvey had the unsettling feeling that this incident was just the beginning. Hutchinson Island had been sabotaged, and he knew in his gut that this incident was only one part of something much larger.
TWENTY
It was ten in the evening in Washington when President Howard Lord entered the main conference center in the complex of offices that was collectively called the Situation Room, on the ground floor of the West Wing. Already seated around the long cherrywood table were the director of the CIA, Walter Page, who had been a Fortune 500 company CEO; the National Security Agency Director, Air Force General Lawrence Piedermont, who was short and slender with thinning hair and a titanium stare, and who was said to be the most brilliant man in Washington; FBI Director Stewart Sargent, who was tall with a stern demeanor, who’d worked his way from a New York street cop to chief of the entire agency, while at the same time acquiring a Ph.D. in criminal science; the president’s adviser on national security affairs, Eduardo Estevez, who’d been deputy associate director of the FBI, specializing in counterterrorism; Director of Homeland Security Admiral Allen Newhouse, who’d been commandant of the Coast Guard; and Department of Energy Deputy Secretary Joseph Caldwell, who’d been in nearly continuous conferences all afternoon and early evening with Joseph S. French, who ran the NNSA’s Division of Emergency Operations. The only key player missing was Director of National Intelligence Avery Lockwood, currently on his way back from Islamabad.
The main flat-panel television screen on the back wall facing the president’s position was running scenes from the Hutchinson Island disaster, as the media had dubbed it, and it was immediately obvious that the meltdown could have been much, much worse.
Everyone got to their feet.
“Good evening,” Lord said. At six-six he was the tallest U.S. president ever, a full two inches taller than Abraham Lincoln, and he’d been a decent basketball player at Northwestern, though the team was lousy. He was also one of the brighter men ever to sit in the Oval Office, but with that intelligence came a fair amount of arrogance that sometimes got in the way of his accepting advice from members of his staff who he thought weren’t as smart.
The vice president, who sometimes sat in on emergency meetings such as this one, had been sent to Offut Air Force Base in Omaha along with several key members of Congress and two Supreme Court Chief Justices. After 9/11 no one was taking anything for granted; Hutchinson Island had been hit, and it was possible that more attacks would be forthcoming, maybe even here in Washington.
“Good evening, Mr. President,” Admiral Newhouse said. “I’ll be giving the briefing.” He was a short fireplug of a man with a dynamic personality, and he was one of the men in the room whom Lord genuinely respected and liked. During a particularly disastrous hurricane season a few years ago, the Coast Guard, under Newhouse’s direction, had been the only federal organization that actually knew what it was doing.
“What’s the word on casualties?” the president asked, taking his seat at the head of the table. The preliminary briefing book was on the table in front of him, but the information it contained was already two hours old, and he ignored it.
“We caught a couple of breaks,” Newhouse said, moving to the podium to the right of the main monitor. “Nine people were killed inside the plant, counting the suspected terrorist—”
“He blew himself up,” Stewart Sargent said. “I think that makes him more than just a suspect.”
“But he probably had help,” Newhouse said, obviously disliking the interruption, and Lord motioned for him to go on, thinking that although Sargent was a good fit at the Bureau, he never knew when to keep his mouth shut.
“Two of the casualties — Alan Lundgren and Marsha Littlejohn, both of them National Nuclear Security Administration Rapid Response team members — managed to disarm the explosives on one of the reactors, preventing its meltdown. But they were too late to completely disarm the second one. Apparently it had something to do with defective detonating units. The explosives were triggered as they were working on the detonators, killing both of them instantly.”
“They were true heroes,” Joseph Caldwell said. “I never personally knew them, of course, but the public should be made aware of their sacrifice.”
For which the DOE would take the credit, Lord had the nasty thought. “We’ll hold on that for the time being,” he said, and Caldwell wanted to protest. “We don’t want to announce our abilities to the enemy.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“What about civilian casualties?” the President asked.
“A few cuts and bruises during the evacuation of the facility, and a fairly high number of traffic accidents on the highways within a twenty-mile radius, but reasonable considering that more than one hundred thousand people tried to get away from the possible damage path.”
“Deaths?”
“Only three, Mr. President, which is remarkably low,” Newhouse replied. “The biggest problem authorities on the ground are trying to deal with is convincing people at least five miles out to return to their homes. The winds all day were mostly out of the west, which pushed the bulk of the relatively small radiation leak harmlessly to sea.”
“How soon before the cleanup operation can begin?” Lord asked. No one enjoyed briefing this president, because he hammered the presenter with an almost continuous barrage of questions.
“Actually some cleanup operations have already begun,” Newhouse said. “A fair amount of debris, mostly concrete in sizes ranging from eight to ten pounds all the way down to dust, along with some metal slag, and water fell in the immediate area around the containment dome and the South Service Building where the control room was located. We’re dealing right now with the outside areas, along with about one mile of A1A — that’s the only highway on the island.”
“How long before the plant is back up and producing electricity?”
“That’s up to the nuclear engineers and waste disposal people. Could be a year, could be a lot longer.”
“Could be never?” the president asked, already thinking ahead to the trouble the industry would face as the more than thirty permit applications for new nuclear-powered generating stations were ruled on. Granting any of them would be almost entirely dependent on public sentiment.
Newhouse nodded. “No one wants to admit the possibility, Mr. President, but I think we need to consider that Hutchinson Island may never reopen. It may have to be capped, and the immediate area evacuated and quarantined, much like Chernobyl.”
“How many families would be affected?”
“I don’t have that number yet.”
“Get it by morning,” the president said. “Include it with your overnight update.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What about the radioactive material that fell into the sea? How much of it has or will drift ashore?”
“That was another break,” Newhouse said. “It looks as if the bulk of the material is migrating into the Gulf
