Quake (11 page)

Standing amid the wreckage of Times Square, Nick Dykstra recalled a bleak Tom Cruise film called
Vanilla Sky
. He remembered seeing it the day it opened on his birthday in December 2001. It was the first evening he'd spent away from Lauren since Sara had died. He'd been antsy throughout the entire movie, anxious to get back home to his daughter. His “date” was his sixty-year-old secretary, a woman he'd worked with since he'd started as a young lawyer for the U.S. Attorney's Office. She'd insisted he take two hours for himself on his special day, and though reluctant at first, he'd finally caved.

But it was the movie itself he thought of now. The scene where Tom Cruise ran through a completely empty Times Square. Nick couldn't remember now whether the scene was meant to be real life or just a dream (probably the latter), but what had made Nick shiver at the time was seeing another part of New York City suddenly completely devoid of people.

Of course, the movie was filmed prior to September 11. And Nick later learned that the scene was made without using movie magic. They'd actually cleared Times Square to capture the eerie scene. It was probably the only time in history that Times Square was entirely empty of life and utterly silent.

Until now
.

Nick and Sara had been here in Times Square on New Year's Eve when the ball dropped ringing in the new millennium. They'd frequently come to Broadway plays, and it was a tradition he'd carried on with Lauren after Sara's death. Times Square was perhaps the most recognizable, the most vibrant spot in the United States of America, if not the world.

And now it had fallen.

In the moonlight, Nick could see bodies everywhere. Eaten by blacktop, crushed by electronic billboards. Bodies as far as the eye could see. Yet no life whatsoever.

He stepped off the bicycle and let it fall to the ground with a
clank
. He could no longer hold back his tears. He wept for his city.

Not since that terrible day twelve years ago had Nick felt so alone. He thought of Francisco Mendoza and cursed himself for splitting them up.

I should have gone to St. Luke's-Roosevelt with him. What was I thinking?

Nick had allowed his rage over a seven-year-old case to dictate his next move. The Boneta case, he'd always said, was his Achilles' heel. Bring it up during any conversation or argument, and Nick would find himself so lost in thought that he couldn't continue. He'd stood up and left meetings at the mere mention of the case. When it was referenced over the phone by a defense attorney, Nick would hang up.

And it all culminated with Mendoza's confession.

Still, Nick missed his friend. He wondered whether Mendoza had made it to the hospital and whether he found his wife, Jana, alive when he got there. He was so used to living in a world where you could get into an argument with someone one minute and call his or her cell the very next. But that wasn't the world Nick was living in any longer.

He may never live in that world again.

Jasper Howard stared slack jawed at the radiation suit hanging from the wall.

“You want
me
to put one on? What for? I'm just dropping off a ladder.” The technician looked back and forth between Jasper and the security man.

Stephen Jeffries intervened. “We need to get this ladder down into the containment building—part of the radiologi-cally controlled area of the plant—so that our guys can access it. The catwalk system was compromised in the quake; we can't get down there.”

The security man pulled down a suit and began climbing into it. Jasper watched as he removed his sidearm and holster before zipping up the suit, and then fastened the holster on a belt outside the suit. He practiced drawing the weapon with the gloves on a couple of times in rapid fashion. Satisfied, he started to zip up the hood with its integrated face shield, but the tech held up a finger in his direction.

“Hold on, before you zip up, you'll want to take two of these.” He passed the security specialist a blister pack containing a pair of brown capsules. “Potassium iodide. Just a precaution. It'll block your thyroid from being able to uptake anything else, including radiation.”

Jasper shot Jeffries a look of incredulity. “What's going on here? Why are you sending an armed security officer down to the containment area on a ladder? And why do you need me to go?”

Suddenly Jeffries's radio burst forth with a shrill noise—a braying, high-pitched alarm, followed quickly by an intermittent male voice. “. . . ing don't know where they went . . . thing is offline. . . .”

Jeffries silenced his radio and addressed Jasper. “We're having trouble communicating with some of our techs who are already down at the spent fuel pools, and like I said earlier, we can't physically get to them, nor apparently they to us. Mr. White, here—”

“Call me Alex,” the technician said, eliciting a frown from Jeffries.

“
Alex
is the only one of our SFP techs still up here. So I need for you two”—he waved a hand at Jasper and the security specialist—“to escort him down there and make sure that he gets access to where he needs to go. I would do it myself but I need to monitor the control station up here, and not only that, I've already hit my max allowable dose,” he finished, holding up the dosimeter that hung from his neck. Then, in response to the worried look on Jasper's face, he added, “Two thousand millirems of radiation is our self-imposed maximum allowable dose per
year
. The NRC limit is more than twice as high as that, but we like to have a safety margin. I slightly exceeded my two thousand millirem cap in the previous week preparing for the NRC inspection.”

“Two thousand's not bad,” Mr. White interjected as he removed his lab coat and grabbed a hazmat suit off the wall rack. “You get about three hundred millirems per year just from the being outside, anywhere. I need your help, guys. Just get me down there, I'll do my job for a few minutes, and back up we go. Next time we can get to a happy hour in the city, drinks are on me.” He looped a dosimeter around his own neck and then passed one each to Jasper and the security man. While Jasper was looking at his device (he noted it read “10” on the screen), White pressed a pill pack into Jasper's hand, squeezing it. “Take these, Mr. Howard.”

“Call me Jasper,” he said, popping the pills into his mouth.
What the hell. Take a pill, drop down the rabbit hole.

At that moment a flashing red light activated on the ceiling of the small room, accompanied by a low buzzing. “Temperature alarm. I have to get down to the control rod station,” Alex said, donning his helmet.

Jasper awkwardly wriggled into his suit, accepting assistance from Jeffries, who pulled the headgear into place for him.

“—radio link,” Jasper was surprised to hear White say from inside his helmet. “Operations channel's gone to hell.” Apparently this was directed at the security man, who nodded in reply and said, “Understood.”

“Jasper? You hear me?” Alex said. Jasper heard him as if he were inside his head. “There's a two-way UHF radio inside your helmet with a voice-activated microphone. Talk to me.”

Jasper eyed the technician through his face mask. “I hear you.”

“Great. Mr. Peterson?” Alex looked at the security specialist and Jasper realized that it was the first time he'd heard the man's name. Not that he supposed it mattered. How many times had he done something like set up a ladder on a jobsite with some guy who didn't even speak English?

“I copy you both,” the security man said.

Jeffries, still unsuited, grinned at the three of them as he spoke into his handheld radio. “Control to Response Team Three, I copy. Do you read?”

Jasper wondered if that designation meant there were two other response teams, and if so, what had happened to them, but he merely uttered, ”Yes.”

“Let's move out.” Alex White led the way to the door, clearly experienced at walking in the bulky suit. Mr. Peterson and Jasper hefted the ladder and then moved with it slowly out onto the stairwell landing. Behind them, Jeffries closed the door to the little room and ascended the stairs while the rubber-suited trio continued downward. By the time Jasper and Peterson had settled into a working gait with the heavy ladder, they came to a wire mesh door with a sign reading:

It was a scary warning referring to the highest level of hazardous materials shielding, but for some reason it comforted Jasper to know that even if he were visiting this area of the plant without the earthquake, the hazmat suit would still have to be worn. White used a key on the gate and held it open while Jasper and the security guy got the ladder through. “Don't worry, these are Level A suits,” White directed at Jasper. Were his thoughts that readable?

“Good to know,” Jasper replied, pulling the ladder back from the wall as the security man turned a half a flight of stairs below him.

“Containment building,” White announced. He stopped walking as soon as Jasper reached Peterson's level. They set the ladder down on the polished concrete floor and stared at another closed door, this one larger than the last two. When Alex had manually keyed it open, Jasper took in the new view.

Although in his years of service to the plant Jasper had seen the outside of this building countless times, never before had he witnessed the sheer enormity of the facility's interior. Words like
massive
and
cavernous
seemed inadequate to convey its vastness. They stood at the top of a roughly square-shaped building, at the bottom of which sprawled a bright blue body of water, lit from below by underwater lights, which might have looked like a swimming pool but for the odd matrix of cerulean latticework at the pool's bottom. By contrast, the rest of the space in the air above the pool was illuminated only by a scattering of utility lights on tripod stands, the overhead rack lights apparently having succumbed to the earthquake.

None of the three men spoke for a few seconds as they took in the situation. None of them needed to, for the problem they faced stretched out before them in the form of a dangling catwalk. Jasper shivered involuntarily as he comprehended what they needed to do. Then White spoke, giving a voice to his trepidation.

“As you can see, this bridge used to connect to the other side of the pool, where the stair-ladder is that allows access to the pool's operating deck, twenty feet below us. The pool itself is twenty-three feet deep below that. I need to get down there to see what I can do about the spent fuel rods, some of which seem to have been jammed in place in their control rod columns—see, each one of those little squares down there in the pool houses a fuel rod assembly—and some of them are close to . . . Never mind, the upshot is I need to get down there,” he finished, directing his gaze to the catwalk. The end nearest them was still connected, but the suspended walkway dangled down over the pool where it had been torn from its structural support on the other side in the earthquake.

Jasper guessed there was probably twenty-five feet of open space from the edge of the hanging catwalk to the far edge of the pool. “My ladder's twenty-eight feet, fully extended,” he said. While he and White were appraising the gap, mentally calculating if twenty-eight feet was enough, eyeing the mangled end of the little bridge they'd have to put themselves out on in order to mount the ladder, Peterson had produced a flashlight from his belt and was shining its beam down around the pool's operations deck.

Their helmet earpieces crackled with the sound of Jeffries's voice. “Control to Response Team Three: what's your status?”

White responded. “On site at the pool catwalk. Deploying ladder now.”

“Good. Get it done. Out.”

White looked at Jasper and the security man, then out to the edge of the catwalk. “I'll go first; you follow me with the ladder. Nice and slow.” He walked out onto the catwalk, motioning for the ladder-carriers to follow. To Jasper it looked as though the first half of the catwalk was reasonably stable, but beyond that he had no idea. He looked Peterson in the eyes. “You want to go first, or me?”

“You go first.”

Jasper immediately regretted offering the choice. He'd been bringing up the rear up to this point, and he should have left it alone. But at the same time it felt silly to stand around arguing about who would take which end of the ladder. The security guy probably didn't like having to work outside of his normal area either, Jasper supposed.

“Let's go, guys,” White transmitted from a few feet out on the precarious bridge. Peterson lifted his end of the ladder and waited for Jasper, who was looking out to the jumble of twisted metal at the far end of the catwalk. He lifted his end of the ladder and turned out onto the catwalk, making sure the end of the ladder fit between the waist-high metal railings on either side. Peterson followed with his end. Jasper wished they had more light as they carefully stepped out along the compromised metal span.

White stooped on the walk about a dozen feet in front of Jasper to pick up a length of cabling that had fallen there. He coiled it up and sidearmed it like a Frisbee where it landed on the far side of the pool's deck, the same place he himself needed to get to. Jasper felt the catwalk sway with White's throwing motion. The reactor tech continued out along the walk. Jasper and Peterson slowed their pace a bit, but then resumed their own progress.

White halted when he reached the snarl of metal where the walk had parted ways with the other side, holding a hand out behind him. He was maybe three feet from the edge of the catwalk. “Set the ladder down, and walk slowly out to me please,” he instructed. “Let's look at this.”

They eased the ladder to the floor of the walk and both made their way out to the end. Jasper was relieved to see Peterson's flashlight come on. He wished the radiation suits had headlamps in them. Weren't they supposed to have headlamps? He wanted to ask White, but didn't want to appear stupid or distract him at the moment. The unlikely trio huddled at the end of the destroyed walkway, a few feet back from where it bent sharply downward, and gauged the distance to the other side.

“Gotta be at least twenty feet, maybe more,” Peterson said. They briefly discussed how they should bring the ladder to this point, extend it, and then raise it straight up and push it over, letting it drop to the other side. In agreement, Jasper and Peterson went back to retrieve the ladder. They got it into position at the end of the walk, White holding Peterson's light for extra illumination. It wasn't easy but Jasper and Peterson managed to get the ladder fully extended, sticking straight up. They gave it a shove and it fell through the air in a slow arc, dropping onto the safety railing on the other side with a resounding clang.

“Hold it down!” Jasper said, knowing their end of the ladder would bounce when it hit on the other side. The three of them pounced on it, keeping it in place. Jasper looked out along the ladder and saw that it had hooked nicely over the rail.
So glad I ordered the model with the hooks. And to think Finance gave me a hassle over that “superfluous expense.”
White put both hands on the ladder and shook it hard.

“That should do,” he said. Then he stood up and turned to Jasper and the security guy. “Just hold it in place for me. As soon as I get over there, it shouldn't take me more than ten minutes to do what I have to. I'll need you to hold this thing in place so I can get back.” He handed Peterson his light.

Jasper and Peterson nodded while Alex got into a crawling position on the ladder. After one last little bounce to test its stability, he crawled out past the edge of the catwalk. Peterson shone his light beam a little in front of him.

Their earpieces buzzed again with Jeffries's voice. “Control, Team Three: status?”

Suddenly they heard a shriek of metal and felt a jolt. Jasper's end of the ladder went airborne for a second before coming to rest again.

“Catwalk's falling from this end!” Peterson shouted.

And then it actually went, buckling at its remaining attachment point. Reflexively, Jasper clutched at one of the metal rungs and the next thing he knew he was freefalling through the air. The bottom of the ladder slammed into the wall on the far side of the pool, Jasper—and Peterson a couple of rungs below him—hanging on for dear life.

Jasper saw a bluish blur pass before his field of vision. He looked down in time to see a human form splash noiselessly into the spent fuel pool twenty feet below.

“Alex?” he screamed. “Mr. Peterson?”

“What's happening?” This from Jeffries.

“I'm right below you,” Peterson said. “Climb up, hurry!”

The ladder was still hooked to the railing above, but now hung vertically along the concrete wall. Jasper looked only at the handholds in front of him, his feet naturally falling into place from years of ladder experience. Soon he was throwing a leg over the metal safety railing and dropping over onto the other side. He immediately turned around and held a hand out for Peterson, helping the security man over the rail.