earlier, Elizabeth and Weston had started on their way to the surface, the rescue lines attached to the helicopter hoists. They were already nearing the halfway point.
Booker looked at Atkins and said, “It’s your turn, doctor. Don’t do anything foolish like trying to overpower me. This seal has to work.”
Atkins wrapped the rope under his arms, gritting his teeth at the pain in his right forearm and shoulder. With a push from Booker, he started up the shaft, helped along by Murray and the rope. It was a hard go. He had to make a conscious effort every time he moved his arms and legs, which felt like lead weights hung from them. As he neared the top, he came close to passing out. He held himself in place, wedging against the walls of the shaft with his feet and shoulder blades.
“Come on, doc,” Murray shouted. “You’re too close to quit on me now.”
Atkins looked up. He only had another five feet to go. He moved one leg, then another, inching his shoulders higher up the wall. Then Murray had him by the arms and he was out of the shaft.
When he looked down at Booker, the physicist waved.
“Remember to make sure everyone’s long gone from this mine at D minus five minutes,” Booker shouted. “That’s when I’ll fire the explosives. It’s going to make a beautiful noise.”
NEAR KALER, KENTUCKY
JANUARY 20
4:10 P.M.
ATKINS WENT UP THE ELEVATOR SHAFT A FEW minutes after Murray. Strapped into one of the jury-rigged harnesses, he was halfway to the surface when a tremor hit. He no longer doubted it anymore. These were preshocks—the increasingly heavy seismic jolts that preceded a big earthquake. His seat bounced and swayed as rock fragments broke off the walls. Grasping the ropes, he leaned forward as they pelted his hard hat and shoulders. Several large pieces just missed him and crashed onto the elevator cage four hundred feet below.
The shaft was starting to crumble. The last two hundred feet were agonizingly slow. Atkins kept waiting for the walls to collapse on him.
When he was closer to the surface, he had to cover his eyes in the glare of powerful spotlights. Squinting into the painful brightness when he reached the top, he saw Elizabeth waiting for him. She was standing next to the president and Steven Draper. Both men were smiling. Draper grabbed Atkins’ hand and pumped it hard.
“Now let’s get the hell out of here,” he said.
They had about twenty minutes until the bomb detonated.
Draper hurried them out of the metal building that housed the entrance to the mine. They emerged into the soft, gauzy light of a winter’s afternoon. The sun was a dull, gray disk, but Atkins and Elizabeth had to hold their hands over their eyes to cut down on the glare.
As they trotted down a gravel path toward the mine’s parking lot. Draper explained there’d been a change of plans. They weren’t going to use the helicopters. More fighting had broken out in the surrounding hills, mainly skirmishes between small groups of the Kentucky National Guard and Army patrols. It was considered too risky for the president to try to fly out. They feared another rocket attack.
They were going to drive out.
Draper wanted to reach the red shack, where they’d monitor the effects of the blast. It was about four miles south of the mine on a hilltop that had been heavily fortified against attack. The scientists had steadily added to the array of portable seismographs and other instrumentation around the blast zone to record the velocity and direction of the seismic waves, analyze the release of strain energy in the ground, and calculate the yield of the bomb. They were also ready to record and pinpoint whatever seismic activity the explosion generated on the Caruthersville Fault and those adjoining it.
As he jogged along next to Atkins, the president asked about Booker.
“He’s still down there with the robot,” Atkins said. “He’s not coming up.”
He explained.
There hadn’t been many times in Ross’ career, first as a lawyer in Evanston, Illinois, then as a politician, when words failed him. This was one of them. He didn’t know what to say, how to respond. He wouldn’t even try. He’d damn well do it later when he could hope to do justice to Booker’s heroism. He’d make sure the man was remembered.
In a few brief sentences, Atkins also explained what had happened to Walt Jacobs—and to Wren.
Atkins had already noticed Weston staring at him nervously. This wasn’t the time to deal with him. But he would make sure it all came out later. How Wren, Weston, and Marshal had deliberately withheld information about the extent of the damage to the dam at Kentucky Lake. How they’d covered up other problems there, falsified inspection reports, accepted kickbacks.
Atkins wanted Weston and Marshal turned over to the authorities as soon as they were away from the mine. But more immediate worries distracted him. He still wasn’t sure the bomb would detonate.
He’d considered the risk of a misfire. There was no way of knowing if that flimsy-looking timer Booker had installed at the last moment would do the job, or if the flashlight batteries he’d tied together would have enough electrical juice to fire the capacitors.
He remembered Booker’s confidence and thought again of the physicist, saw him standing in the darkness on Level 8, his face streaked with coal dust, gray eyes shining through the grime. He was smiling.
A fine, wonderful man.
“I should never have let him stay down there,” he told Elizabeth.
“Stop it,” she said, touching his hand. They’d reached the trucks that were lined up, engines revving. “There was nothing you could have done. He knew what he was doing. He wouldn’t want you to start second-guessing yourself.” She remembered the first time she’d seen Booker. He’d just parachuted into Memphis. She’d thought his idea about defusing a big earthquake with a nuclear explosion was absurd and had a hard time believing he was serious. She’d changed her mind, mainly because she feared what would happen if they did nothing, but partly, too, because of Booker’s persuasiveness. She liked the man and was grateful she’d had a chance to know him.
The ground suddenly rocked again. The motion was east-west, in the direction of the fault. These S waves were characterized by hard, side-to-side movement. A kind of shear wave, S waves moved through the upper crust more slowly than P waves, but their journey was a violent one. They vibrated like crazy and hit hard.
“That’s very close,” Elizabeth said.
Another, stronger shake followed the first by a matter of seconds.
“We may have a sequence starting,” Atkins said.
If the clock on the bomb was still running, it was eleven minutes until detonation.
The next tremor almost knocked them down. An undulating lateral movement that rippled the surface of the ground.
“Look at the hills!” a soldier shouted.
The surrounding hills, their sloping flanks thick with trees, were moving, shaking as the earth rumbled. Atkins recognized the sound. He’d heard it before, something almost like thunder, distant, more powerful. The trees were swaying as if blown by powerful winds. Some of them cracked and fell, the sound of splitting wood explosive and sharp. Jumpy from the shooting, soldiers raised their rifles and looked for targets.
Atkins recognized the look on their faces. They were frightened. Most had fallen to their knees to wait out the shaking.
The two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters lifted off and climbed rapidly, heading east. Everyone waited and watched, holding their breath. There was no missile shot. The helicopters cleared the ridgeline and disappeared.
Soldiers started jumping into the trucks, Humvees and armored troop carriers. Orders were shouted, clipped words.
In the confusion, Belleau announced another change in plans.
They wouldn’t make it to the command center. There wasn’t time. “We’ll be lucky to get beyond the next line of hills,” Belleau said. “That’s three miles from here. We ought to be just outside the blast zone.”
