position them and install the detonators and fuses.
“Come back in two hours,” he said. “If my legs don’t give out, I ought to be finished by then.” He entered the operating room through another pair of air-locked steel doors.
At the plant manager’s invitation, Atkins rode with him to his office.
There was news from Memphis.
Guy Thompson was calling on a satellite hookup.
“We’ve got it pretty well nailed,” Thompson said. In his excitement, he spoke too fast and Atkins had to slow him down. “A one-megaton underground explosion would approximately equal an earthquake in the magnitude 6.5 range, maybe a little less.”
“What distance are we talking about?” Atkins asked.
“Maximum intensity up to twenty-six to thirty miles,” Thompson said. “We’ve done some wave-form modeling that suggests a one-megaton explosion would release large amounts of tectonic strain energy.”
The estimate, he explained, was based on the results of the 1969 Milrow shot, the second of three underground explosions conducted in the late 1960s and early 1970s near Alaska in the Aleutians. One of the key indicators was the amplitude of Love waves such a blast produced. Love waves—seismic surface waves with a horizontal shear motion—were evidence of the release of tectonic strain energy. The more waves picked up by seismographs, the greater the tectonic release.
“The Love waves from Milrow were incredible,” Thompson said. “It produced a main earthquake of magnitude 6.5 and dozens of aftershocks in the magnitude 3 and 4 range.”
“How deep did they set it off?”
“Thirteen hundred meters,” Thompson said. “And there was absolutely no triggering of large earthquakes along other faults in the area.” That had been a major worry because it was one of the world’s most active plate boundaries. The seismic behavior was virtually identical on the other Aleutian blasts—Longshot in 1965 and Cannikin in late 1971.
Atkins almost shouted out loud. That was good, good news. The fear that a nuclear shot in the New Madrid Seismic Zone would trigger quakes on other faults was everyone’s nightmare. Here was solid evidence that it hadn’t happened before.
His fear all along had been that a nuclear explosion might set off a chain reaction on other faults. There was no question in his mind they had to try something. The stakes were too horrendously high. A big quake was a virtual certainty. He was resigned to Booker’s nuclear explosion, but he’d been worried sick about the risks.
Now some of that fear had been lifted. He began to think that they might be able to stop the earthquake cycle, or at least slow it down.
“The only problem is the depth of the shot,” Thompson said. All right, here it comes, Atkins told himself. He was saving the bad news for last.
“Everyone agrees we’ve got to get lower than thirteen hundred meters for maximum effect,” Thompson said. “The Caruthersville Fault is about eighteen miles down. The closer we can get to it, the better.”
That sure as hell eliminates boreholes, Atkins thought. It would take weeks to drill down that far. They didn’t have that kind of time.
“We’ve got one option.” Thompson said. “There’s an abandoned coal mine within five miles of the place where the Caruthersville Fault intersects with the New Madrid Seismic Zone and the fault that opened up after the 7.1 earthquake. It’s two thousand feet deep.”
Atkins understood why the mine was perfectly located for their purposes. Seismic stress was most likely concentrated at the ends of a fault or at the point where one intersected with another. The two newly discovered faults and the eastern edge of the New Madrid system all came together in roughly the same area.
The mine was near that bull’s-eye.
“We’re trying to get a team there to scout it out. Right now it looks like the best site. Walt Jacobs tells me you’ve already been there. It’s called the Golden Orient.”
Atkins remembered their trip to the mine—how frightened he’d been from start to finish.
“John, are you all right?”
Atkins was aware of Guy Thompson’s voice on the other end of the line. He noticed how the plant manager was watching him.
“I’m fine,” he said. He was lying. He didn’t want to have anything to do with that mine. But the issue was already settled. They had to explode the bomb at depth. The mine was their only option.
He was going to have to go down there again.
At the mention of Jacobs’ name, he wondered how his old friend was doing. He continued to worry about Jacobs and his ability to cope with the loss of his wife and daughter and still do his job. The man needed professional help.
Atkins quietly asked about Elizabeth Holleran. He’d had no idea when he left for Texas how much he’d miss her, or how often he’d find himself thinking about her.
It was Guy Thompson’s turn to fall silent. He hesitated before he said, “Something’s happened, John. She’s all right. We’ll talk about it when you get back. We had some trouble with our equipment.”
MEMPHIS
JANUARY 19
6:30 A.M.
ELIZABETH WASN’T SURE HE UNDERSTOOD HER, or that he was even listening.
“Walt, did you hear what I just said? Someone stole my laptop. It had to be the same person who turned off the emergency generator. It happened at the same time.”
Elizabeth Holleran had gone to Walt Jacobs’ partitioned workspace after catching several hours of sleep in the equipment room. This time she’d kept the door locked. The sun had just come up. She’d found Jacobs sitting at his desk, staring at printouts of seismograms from aftershocks that continued to occur along the new Caruthersville Fault. The activity hadn’t slowed.
Jacobs looked up as if hearing her for the first time.
“Someone… stole your computer?” He sounded incredulous.
“In the equipment room. When the power was out.”
Elizabeth spoke softly. They were in the library annex. Across a hallway, Guy Thompson and some of his people were feverishly working at an array of computer terminals, trying to calculate the seismic effects of underground nuclear explosions. They’d worked right through the night. Thanks to the president, Thompson had four new high-speed computers to help them crunch numbers. He’d brought the machines back from Washington. Fortunately, they hadn’t sustained any irreparable harm when the generator went out. They’d lost some real-time seismic data on the aftershocks but had arranged to have it retransmitted.
Anger had replaced Elizabeth’s shock. She regretted she hadn’t gotten a good look at the thief. She couldn’t even guess his size or weight and was upset with herself for not reacting more quickly. She’d let him get away.
Elizabeth had already told Thompson, someone she knew she could trust completely. Then she’d gone to Jacobs, who listened quietly as she described what had happened. He seemed distracted.
Before leaving for Texas, Atkins had told Elizabeth about Jacobs’ wife and daughter.
She wanted to respect the man’s need for privacy to deal with his grief and would have preferred not bothering him at all. That’s why she’d initially gone to Thompson, but Jacobs was in charge of the lab. He had to know.
She wished Atkins were back. She needed to talk to him, to be close to him. She admitted to herself for the first time that she was falling in love with him. It was a strong, warm feeling and one she didn’t want to lose.
A single fact haunted her. The man who’d entered her room had to be someone who worked at the annex and knew she slept alone, someone she’d seen before. One of the scientists. Someone who knew her movements and was probably still in the building, keeping an eye on her.
Guy Thompson was sure that it was deliberate sabotage by the same person who’d turned off the
