the growing light, but he was confident that no one around the pool would be able to see him, even once the sun came up. He had seen no evidence around the inside penstock area that anyone else had come through the tunnel recently. Besides, Lynn hated confined spaces, so if the kids had come to the arsenal, it wasn’t likely they had come
through that tunnel. On the other hand, a creek this big probably did not originate within the restricted area, which meant there had to be another water cut through the fence, perhaps over on the higher, western side of the reservation.
The creek appeared to run east-west.
His plan was to follow the south bank of the creek all the way across the arsenal and to look for signs of recent human intrusion along the way.
If that effort turned up nothing, he would follow the north bank back and then cut over into the industrial area, which was north of the creek. He wasn’t even puffing after the exertion of getting through the tunnel and getting set up in the crawl suit, which was a good sign. He was not in the shape he’d been when he was active, but he hadn’t gone entirely soft, either. Except in the head, maybe, he thought. Those two agents had warned him against interfering, and he knew they were right. But since they weren’t actually doing anything, he didn’t feel too bad about it. He also knew that he might not like what he found. He took one last look around the pool area and then started west into the woods.
Browne McGarand sat in what had been the main control room of the power plant, watching the band of morning sunlight advance across the control room’s wall from the skylights. He was keeping an eye on the pressure gauge of the operating hydrogen generator, which was a five foot-high glass-lined stainless-steel retort into which he had put a sponge of copper metal. Suspended above the retort was a glass container of nitric acid, which was dripping down a glass tube at a controlled rate into the retort. The nitric acid combined with the copper to produce a slag of copper-nitrite and pure hydrogen gas. The reaction was exothermic, which required that the bottom of the retort be encased in a large tub of cold water to draw off heat. When the pressure in the retort rose to five pounds per square inch, a check valve lifted in its discharge line. The physical movement of the check valve activated a pressure switch, which, in turn, closed a contact connecting a small gas-transfer pump to its power supply. The pump drew the hydrogen gas out of the retort and pumped it through the wall into the tank of a propane truck that was parked in the maintenance bay next to the control room. When the pressure in the retort dropped back down to three pounds, the check valve reseated, shutting off the transfer pump, and then the whole process would wait for hydrogen pressure to rebuild in the retort.
Five pounds of copper took about two hours to produce as much hydrogen
as it was going to make. Once the reaction began to decay, indicated by a steady drop in temperature, Browne would open valves to bring a second retort on line while he replenished the first one. He would don a respirator, divert the discharge line of the pump into the atmosphere of the control room, and operate the gas- transfer pump with a manual switch until a small vacuum was established on the retort. He would then close all the transfer valves by hand. He would wait, watching the gauge to make sure that it didn’t creep back into the positive pressure range.
Once certain that the reaction had stopped, he would open a vacuum breaker valve on the retort, and then the main cover. He would remove the slag residue using tongs and rubber gloves, add five more pounds of metal, and close up the retort. He would run a short air purge on the retort, using the transfer pump again, until he had once more established a small vacuum in the retort vessel. Then he would start the nitric-acid drip going again.
It was slow, painfully slow. But it was a fairly safe way to make hydrogen, and, ultimately, an absolutely untraceable bomb. He had read with great interest all the news reporting on the Oklahoma City bombing investigation, and he knew all about the authorities’ increasing scrutiny of all materials that had even the slightest explosive potential. This was why Browne had elected to make a hydrogen-gas bomb instead of using conventional explosives. And the container, well, that was going to be the really clever part. After nearly forty years of being a chemical engineer, assembling his little production lab had not required an elaborate scheme.
The retorts he’d bought from a lab that had gone out of business. He’d obtained the small gas pump, as well as the larger one that would be required later to pressurize the truck fully, from a refrigeration and air-conditioning catalog. The small diesel generator, which putted away inside one of the two steam generators out in the boiler hall, was a WalMart special. The rest of the hydrogen setup was conventional plumbing and catalog instrumentation, built into the existing piping of the power plant’s boiler-water treatment and testing lab.
Jared had stolen the propane truck, with Browne’s help. They’d hit a West Virginia propane company’s lot one rainy night. While Browne kept watch, Jared hot-wired the truck and drove it away. They’d taken it to the arsenal and parked it out of sight down a fire lane close to the front gates.
The next time the security truck came in, Jared had been waiting. The guards were in the habit of leaving the front gate unchained while they did their tour, which allowed Jared to drive the truck in once they were down in the industrial area. He’d hidden it in an empty warehouse
until the security people had finished, and then he and Browne had maneuvered it into the power plant maintenance bay. They’d let the propane in the truck boil off to the outside air through its delivery hose for a week before sealing up the maintenance bay again and cleaning the truck tank and putting in new seals.
The pump came on, making a small racket in the room. Browne worried about the noise, and he knew the bigger pump would be even louder.
He walked over to the interior control room door, which had a window in the upper half, and peered out into the cavernous steam-generation hall.
The plant was about one-third the size of a commercial power station, but the two boilers were still forty feet high. He was pretty sure that the pump noise could not penetrate to the outside of the power station building, but he made frequent checks. His concern was that one day he would find a couple of deer hunters or college kids standing out there, poking around to see what that noise was. Just like the ones who had drowned in the creek.
Browne alone ran the hydrogen generator, working at night and on weekends. Jared, his older grandson, provided security. Jared had done his job well. Of his two grandsons, Jared was the one who looked most like his father, William. He was of medium height but strongly built. He worked as a telephone repairmen for the local telephone company, and he had been helping Browne with the bomb-building project right from the beginning. Browne knew that Jared held no great affection for his long gone father, but, like his grandfather, Jared was sympathetic to the beliefs of the Christian Identity. He hated the government and all its works.
William’s death during the Mount Carmel incident had just about shattered Browne. He had loved that boy in spite of everything that had happened—his disastrous teenage marriage, his slut of a wife running off like that, leaving William, and ultimately Browne, to raise the two kids.
Jared had been a handful, no doubt about that, but Kenny, Jared’s younger brother, had been born mildly retarded, and that had been really difficult.
Although he had been angry at the time, he later came to sympathize with his son when he finally bailed out of Blacksburg. A high school education, two squalling kids, the cancer that rose up right about then and claimed Browne’s wife, Holly—well, William never had a chance. Browne had had such high hopes. William had been bright enough to go on to college, maybe even Virginia Tech, right there in Blacksburg. With Browne’s connections at the arsenal, William would have been a
shoo-in for a high paying job, except, of course, that the goddamned government had seen fit to close the arsenal, hadn’t it? Damn near wiped out the town.
Jared had survived, which just about described it. He had been a dutiful, if resentful, child after both his mother and father left home. Raised in the orbit of his increasingly embittered grandfather, Jared had been a plodder. He had never talked to Browne about how he felt about being deserted by his parents, and Browne, with troubles of his own, had never raised the issue. He did often wonder how it might have all turned out if William had had a better shot at life. He had been such a great kid, full of life, friendly, easygoing, always trailing a clutch of giggling females, smart enough not to have to work very hard in school, and the apple of Browne’s eye. Jared wasn’t much like his father, except in one respect: He went through life seemingly obsessed with women. But Jared liked to live dangerously—he only fooled around with married women. Browne thought that this was probably Jared’s way of guaranteeing that he would never repeat his own father’s sorry family history.
Browne sighed as he thought about William and what might have been. All of Browne’s hopes for the future
