Force equals pressure times the area affected. You take a wall, twenty feet long by eight feet high, that’s a hundred and sixty square feet, or a little over twenty thousand square inches. Times a pressure of a hundred pounds per square inch, and you get an impulse force of a little over two million pounds. That is somewhat outside the normal load-bearing specs for buildings.”
“So you’re saying this explosion might really have been accidental?”
Janet asked from the back of the room, remembering what Farnsworth had told her. Agents turned to look at her.
“Like a natural buildup of methane or some other bad shit left over from when the plant was open, and when that guy went down there to open the building with a cigarette in his mouth, boom?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Travers replied.
“As you may or may not know, that’s our official conclusion. Originally issued to choke off media speculation. But that’s in fact what it’s coming down to—a gas explosion. We found piping connections between the turbine hall and a large underground chamber where cooling water for the turbo generator condensers was discharged. There are chemical residues of all kinds, including nitric acid, of all things, in that chamber.”
“I have some personal knowledge of that chamber,” Janet said. There were some covert grins around the room.
“I don’t remember smelling nitric acid down there.”
“Would you recognize it if you did smell it, Agent Carter?”
“Yes, I would.”
“Well. That’s a mystery, then. The explosive vapors may not have originated in the underground area. There are several gases that can become explosive air-gas mixtures, and they have no scent whatsoever. For that matter, the gas in your house comes odorless—the gas company puts the sulfur smell in to alert people to leaks.” He stopped for a moment to look at his notes.
“That place has been shut down for a long time. The security company’s records don’t indicate that they ever went into that power plant.
There were rumors of toxic wastes and even chemical weapons going around about the Ramsey Arsenal. A small accretion of methane, which occurs in nature, could build up in that building over the years, creating a huge bomb. Which is what we got, folks.”
“And that’s how you’re calling it?” Farnsworth asked.
“An act of God?”
“Basically, yes, sir, that’s what we’re calling it. There is no evidence of any chemical or commercial explosive residues, and the way that heavily reinforced-concrete building blew up—it all points to a gas explosion.”
“Could it have been hydrogen?” Farnsworth asked, shooting Janet a cautionary look.
Travers frowned. He had obviously heard about what Lynn Kreiss had said.
“No, sir, I don’t think so. I mean, hydrogen would certainly have done the job, but it doesn’t occur in nature in concentrations like that. It tends to dissipate, rather than concentrate, due to its molecular structure.
No, my guess is methane, and though we can usually smell methane, this explosion so completely leveled the building that there was nowhere for any residual gas to pocket. I think it was methane, coming up from that underground cavern, where, I’m told, they used to dump chemically unstable batches of feed stocks when a reaction went out of limits.
God only knows what kinds of things are lurking down in that cavern, or in what amounts.”
There was a surprised silence in the room. Everyone had been thinking a conventional, chemically based bomb. Farnsworth stood up.
“Okay, folks, there we have it. These people are the foremost experts in reconstructing explosions in the country. How many bombing incidents has the aTF investigated in the past five years, Mr. Travers?”
“Sixty-two thousand and counting,” Travers said. This produced expressions of surprise and some low whistles.
“Good enough for us country folks,” Farnsworth said.
“All right, everybody, it’s Monday and there’s paperwork to be done. I’ll have word about the funeral service this afternoon.”
The meeting broke up and Janet started back to her office. She had to wait for the crowd that was bunched up at the elevator. Ben Keenan escorted Travers to the front door of the security area. She was toying with the idea of going home to get fresh clothes and a shower, when Farnsworth gave her the high sign that she was to join him in his office.
She had to wait for a few more minutes while some supervisors cornered the RA. When they were finished, she went into his office. Ben Keenan was already there, along with someone she had not expected to see: Foster.
Her heart sank when she saw Foster.
The RA, his deputy, and the Washington executive assistant. This isn’t over, she thought. Foster had another man with him, someone she did not recognize. Everyone sat down. Farnsworth looked at Keenan.
“No word on finding Kreiss?”
“No, sir, he plain vanished. We have local law looking for his vehicle, another pickup truck, like McGarand’s, but no hits so far.”
“And he didn’t return home last night?” Foster asked.
“No, we had some of our people in position.”
“Now that aTF has taken a formal position on this explosion,” Farnsworth said, “we’ve got to find Kreiss.”
“Why?” Janet asked.
“We’ve got too many pieces to this puzzle: The McGarands are linked to Waco, Kreiss is linked to jared McGarand’s homicide. Jared’s truck has been physically linked to the Ramsey Arsenal via samples from his truck’s tires. Kreiss has revealed that he was the one the state cops sighted driving the other McGarand’s truck south on the interstate, not McGarand. We have a very large explosion that aTF is classifying as an
act of God. But now Browne McGarand, ex-chief explosives engineer at the Ramsey Arsenal, is missing, Kreiss is missing, Jared McGarand’s dead, and Kreiss’s daughter was heard ranting and raving about a hydrogen bomb and Washington, D.C. Mr. Foster thinks we still have a problem here.”
“Do we think Kreiss killed Jared McGarand?” Janet asked.
“Maybe,” Farnsworth said.
“The local cops say that it could have been an accident. They’re all hung up about some goo they found on the trailer and also on the body.”
“Goo?” the man with Foster said.
“What color was it?” He was what Janet would have called “an M-squared, B-squared” if she had to describe him: medium-medium, brown-brown, and totally forgettable.
“I have no goddamn idea,” Farnsworth replied, obviously exasperated and also still very tired.
“Purple,” Keenan said, consulting his notes.
“It was purple and very sticky. And who are you, sir?”
“This gentleman is from the Agency,” Farnsworth said.
The man nodded as if introductions had been made.
“That ‘goo,”” he said, “is a substance used in something we call ‘a capture web.” It comes in a spray can. It’s like a spiderweb, only much thicker. Very sticky. The more you fight, the more you get entangled, until you are immobilized.
When you’re ready to release your subject, you hose him down—it’s totally water-soluble.”
Jared’s body had been wet when they found it, Janet remembered.
“Okay, so maybe it was Kreiss who got Jared,” Janet said.
“But I’m willing to bet that was about his daughter, not any bomb plot. And, Kreiss was right: They did have his daughter. So if they had his daughter captive at the arsenal, the McGarands weren’t using that place for a fishing hole.
They were doing some bad shit out there. If this is about Waco, we need to warn Washington.”
“That’s going to present a problem,” Keenan said, and Farnsworth nodded, obviously already knowing what
