Lauren figured they’d parked on her driveway near the blacktop. When she heard an engine kick over and the squeal of tires, she lowered the gun.
She stood there, breathing heavily. There was a streak of blood on the gravel. Lauren let the feeling pass. It had taken possession of her. As she started to come out of it, she realized she would have done anything to keep them from her grandson. The boy was all she had, the only reason her life was worth living. The murderous feeling she’d experienced was overwhelming. She’d wanted to kill them all.
MEMPHIS
JANUARY 14
2:50 P.M.
THE FLAMES SEEMED TO LEAPFROG DOWN THE street. Atkins and Elizabeth had taken cover behind a low brick wall that extended from the side of a building. They felt a hot wind blast over them, a gale pulled along by the fire.
All the buildings that lined the street were burning. Flames poured from windows and shot through roofs. These were mainly commercial buildings in this part of town. They were going to burn for a long time.
Atkins could only shake his head in disbelief and gratitude. He grabbed Elizabeth and hugged her. It had been her idea to use the brick wall as a shield. It had saved their lives—and their equipment. He’d cradled the laptop and seismograph they’d used in Blytheville. Elizabeth had the computer disks and tapes from the building they’d just left.
“I wasn’t sure it would work,” she said.
“I wasn’t worried for a minute,” Atkins said, grinning.
Fortunately, the flames hadn’t coalesced into a firestorm that would have kept burning until it consumed every scrap of combustible material. If it had, both of them knew they wouldn’t be having this conversation.
They quickly retraced their steps and were soon out of the worst of the smoke. It was easier to breathe. Atkins saw a street sign. Poplar Avenue. Somehow they’d worked their way back to the street that he hoped would take them near the University of Memphis.
The streets were completely blocked with stranded cars. Many of the drivers had simply walked away, often leaving their keys in the ignition.
Atkins and Elizabeth reached Overton Park. A large sign said: MEMPHIS ZOO AND AQUARIUM.
“Listen,” Elizabeth said.
They heard the howls of terrified animals trapped in their cages. Some of the trees in the park had ignited in the fire.
An olive-colored Humvee with Tennessee National Guard markings pulled up next to them.
“Better watch it around here,” the driver called out. “We’re using explosives.” Two soldiers had walked around to the rear of the vehicle and removed what looked like backpacks. Each man slung one of the packs over a shoulder and moved off into the neighborhood.
Atkins and Elizabeth kept walking. They’d gone a couple more blocks when an explosion jarred them. It was followed in rapid succession by three more.
They saw flames spurting into the sky.
Elizabeth knew immediately what they were doing. She’d seen it once before in California when fires raced through the scrub hills surrounding Los Angeles and threatened to get out of control.
“They’re dynamiting homes, trying to set up firebreaks,” she said. “Those fires must still be spreading.”
Another military vehicle with a loudspeaker moved slowly down the street, often driving up on the sidewalk to get around the abandoned cars and trucks. A soldier warned residents to evacuate.
This was an exclusive residential area with fine, old homes. Almost all of them appeared to have sustained major damage. Many had already been abandoned. Some people had pitched tents in their yards.
The explosions continued. They were blasting the firebreak right along Poplar, hoping they could stop the fire before it spread too far into the mid-city area. People were rushing up to the soldiers, begging them not to destroy their houses, young and old, some of them in tears. Atkins saw a sergeant grab a man who’d swung at him and throw him to the ground.
Elizabeth remembered reading accounts of how soldiers had fired on residents in San Francisco who tried to stop them from blowing up homes after the 1906 earthquake. They’d also used their bayonets on looters. Thieves had been shot on sight.
The wind had changed again. Atkins noticed that it was blowing hard in their direction. The sky had the same reddish cast.
“Do you smell that?” he asked Elizabeth.
“Gas,” she said. The odor was very strong.
“Think you can run?”
Elizabeth nodded.
The smell of gas was almost overpowering. A single spark could ignite it. Atkins thought. Even one from a flashlight being turned on.
They’d run about two hundred yards when the explosion ripped through the neighborhood. They’d managed to get about three blocks away from Poplar. Looking back, they saw flames shooting out of the sewers. A row of fine, half-timbered homes Atkins had admired moments earlier no longer existed.
OAK RIDGE, TENNESSEE
JANUARY 14
10:20 A.M.
“I’D GENERATE A SMALL QUAKE BY DETONATING A nuclear explosion,” Booker said. In his increasing excitement to show exactly what he had in mind, he rolled a green blackboard out of a closet and set it up in the center of the room. Booker often worked at a blackboard. It helped him think to see the ideas and calculations spread out in front of him in large letters and numbers.
Ever since he’d heard Graves and Miller theorize about “defusing” an earthquake by setting off a series of smaller quakes, Booker had been thinking about his experiences at the Nevada Test Site back in the 1960s. An idea had quickly taken shape. It wouldn’t let go of him.
“I can recall two shots that triggered pretty good quakes,” Booker said. Miller and Graves sat near the wood-burning stove in the living room of Booker’s spacious A-frame. Through the windows, they could see the distant smoke of the few fires still burning at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Y-12 plant. They’d both noticed how animated and excited Booker had become. He was normally more laid-back, professorial. Not now. It was almost a personality change.
“Both were part of the Plowshare series,” Booker said as he began to sketch out the design of a nuclear weapon on the blackboard. “You remember those? It was back when we were trying to come up with peaceful uses for nuclear fission. One of the shots was called Benham. Don’t ask me why. We did them out in the Yucca Flats. I think the Benham shot triggered a Richter 4 or 5.”
Miller and Graves stared at him. They knew Booker had spent nearly ten years as a control engineer at the NTS, the 1,350-square-mile area in southern Nevada where the United States and United Kingdom had done their primary nuclear testing. Before the test ban treaty shut it down, 828 nuclear explosions were detonated there, over half of them underground. Most of these took place in the Yucca Flats, a wide, twenty-mile-long valley that was the most bombed place on earth.
Booker’s job was to supervise the firing sequence. He’d never talked much about his experiences in Nevada. And for a man who liked to talk, loved it, it was a noticeable omission that Miller and Graves assumed had to do with security issues.
“But how would you control it?” Graves asked. He’d never considered the idea of deliberately using a nuclear
