“We’re getting a mag 3 or better every ten or twenty minutes,” Thompson told Steve Draper over the radio. “I’m thinking maybe we’re building up to something.”
President Ross and Draper felt most of the tremors, the alternating vertical movement and side-to-side swaying. So far, nothing serious.
Gunfire broke out again, more distant this time. Automatic weapons. Ross had been told that the 101st Airborne continued to run into pockets of resistance. The patrols were keeping the pressure on the rebellious National Guard troops and militia units still scattered in diminishing numbers throughout the surrounding hills. Remote, thickly forested, the country offered superb cover and the Kentucky soldiers were making the most of it.
The president’s Secret Service chief, Phil Belleau, kept pushing him to withdraw to the red shack. The position—it was on a hilltop—was more secure and easier to defend.
Ross refused. Two UH-60 helicopters were parked near the entrance to the mine, ready to fly him out at a moment’s notice. One was a backup in case the first was disabled. Both engines were kept idling, the crews on standby.
Ross was hardly aware of the shooting or the drone of helicopter gunships as they circled the hills, hunting for targets. He was engrossed, watching a strong-motion seismograph record the vibrations coming from the deep earth.
“See if you can get them on the radio,” Ross said. “Let’s find out how they’re doing.” He wanted to keep such calls to a minimum, afraid of distracting them.
Draper turned on the portable radio. There was a long burst of static before he got through to Atkins. “John, what’s your situation down there?” he asked.
“We’re starting to pick up some methane,” Atkins said.
“How bad?” Draper asked.
“Over four percent.”
That wasn’t good news. If methane reached high enough concentration levels, there was always the danger of spontaneous combustion and an explosion.
Listening to this exchange, Lauren Mitchell remembered how the Golden Orient was notorious for the deadly gas. There’d been at least three methane explosions before the big one that had killed her husband.
Spontaneous combustion.
Those two words were a miner’s curse.
The radio crackled again. “We’re approaching the skip shaft,” Atkins said. The long, steeply inclined tunnel had once housed the coal conveyor. “It shouldn’t be too much longer before we’re in position.”
Lauren Mitchell knew it was time to leave. She’d done everything she could and wanted to get away from this place. She missed her grandson. Her house was in the evacuation zone, but she’d made up her mind not to leave or let anyone run her off. If the worst happened, she wanted to be on familiar ground.
She also knew what could happen in the mine and didn’t want to be around to see it if it did.
She’d promised Murray she’d pray and had been praying steadily. But she knew what a 4-percent-and- climbing methane level meant. If it went too high, all the prayers in the world wouldn’t stop the explosion.
NEAR KALER, KENTUCKY
JANUARY 20
10:40 A.M.
THEY’D REACHED THE SKIP SHAFT. THE BELTED conveyor that once brought a black stream of coal to the surface had been dismantled, leaving a rough, steep tunnel that was narrower with less headroom than the air shaft. They had to walk in a stiff crouch, their hard hats often scraping against the roof. Even Neutron’s football helmet occasionally grazed the top of the shaft.
Following Murray, they descended another three hundred feet to Level 18. Slow going, it took nearly thirty minutes to cover the distance. They were as far down in the mine as they could go—eighteen hundred feet below the surface. Beyond that point, cave-ins had blocked both air shafts and the skip shaft.
Atkins checked his watch. They’d been underground a little more than ninety minutes. He was surprised. The time had seemed much shorter.
Murray took them another five hundred feet up the main tunnel on Level 18 to the base of the collapsed man shaft.
“Here’s what I was talking about,” he said, playing his spotlight on the gaping black hole where the elevator cage had once descended another two levels to the bottom of the mine. The earthquake had opened a crevasse that had swallowed the man shaft. A ragged hole about fifteen feet wide descended to depths unknown. Murray shined his powerful light on the jagged walls of the trench as Atkins and the others cautiously approached the edge and peered over. They couldn’t see the bottom.
“God knows how far down that goes,” Weston said.
Ever since they’d started their descent, Atkins had found Weston unusually subdued but had no complaints with his performance. He’d done whatever Murray asked without objection. So had Wren, who’d always been reasonably pleasant and cooperative.
“I tried this the last time,” Murray said. He picked up a hefty piece of rock and dropped it into the crevasse. They didn’t hear it hit bottom.
Operating Neutron’s control panel, Booker had the robot gently place the bomb on the floor of the tunnel about five yards from the edge of the drop-off. “I suggest we lower it two hundred feet into that hole,” he said. “That will put it at roughly the two-thousand-foot mark.” That was the depth Thompson and the other seismologists had calculated was needed for the weapon’s shock waves to achieve maximum effect on the fault.
“Will your climbing ropes support four hundred fifty pounds?” he asked.
“No problem,” said Murray.
First Booker had to arm the device, punching in the coding sequence, the same eight digits he’d used earlier to activate the bomb’s electronic circuitry. Then he flipped the red switch on the small control grid on the bomb’s hard case, the fail-safe companion to the green switch he’d already thrown.
“The bomb is armed,” Booker said quietly. He’d never done it manually before. Arming procedures at the NTS were carried out electronically, using cables that ran to the warhead, which usually sat at the bottom of an eight- hundred- to thousand-foot-deep borehole or in a tunnel carved into the side of a hill. This was definitely a first for him. He noticed that his hands were trembling.
He’d completed the first critical step. The second was to set the timer and firing mechanism.
Opening his backpack, Booker took out the capacitors and batteries. The four dry-cell batteries, taped together, would provide the electrical pulse needed to charge the capacitors, which, in turn, would activate the fuse and fire the warhead. The whole process would be triggered by a small, digitally programmed timer.
“Doctor Booker, that’s as far as we’re going with this.”
Atkins had been watching Booker. Turning, he saw Walt Jacobs, who was holding something in his right hand. It was hard to make it out in the dark. Then Atkins recognized it. A small pistol.
“Walt, what are you doing?” he said, not believing what he was seeing. The man had finally snapped. Atkins was angry with himself for letting it happen. It was his own damn fault. He should have seen it coming, should have kept him out of the mine. Without thinking, he took a step toward his friend.
Jacobs held up a hand. “Stop, John. I don’t want to shoot anyone. But I will if I have to. This bomb can’t be detonated. It could start an earthquake the likes of which we’ve never seen. I can’t allow that.”
Atkins’ head was swimming. He knew that he had to choose his words carefully, try to make a persuasive argument about why they had to risk it. But there wasn’t time for more discussion, and he could see that Jacobs was in no mood for it anyway.
“Walt, you’ve studied the data, the seismic reports,” Atkins said. “You know that strain energy is building up here. My God, you’ve felt the ground shaking. It’s been moving ever since we entered this mine. We’re going to have a big earthquake here. You know that as well as anybody.”
“You… can’t… do… this! Not a nuclear shot,” Jacobs said in a burst of anger. He was about five feet from
