Quake (18 page)

There was no train. Charles Leighton had lied about that. No train had crashed between Columbus Circle and Lincoln Center, so Nick remained in the tunnel. If Leighton lied about that, then he almost certainly lied about St. Luke's-Roosevelt as well. So Francisco Mendoza's wife could be fine. She could be in Frank's arms by now, in fact. He sincerely hoped so.

But for now he was just glad that he could stay underground and continue his way north. As long as there really wasn't a crashed train down here, and as long as his trusty flashlight (and gun) held up, this was as good a place to be as any for the trek north. For every one Charles Leighton he encountered down here, there were probably fifty more roaming about topside. There were definite advantages to being aboveground, though. He could find food, for one thing. Leighton had mentioned food and the truth was that Nick was hungry—famished, even—he'd burned a lot more calories today than he was used to. But he had to keep going. Lauren was not that far away now, and she probably needed his help. Must be worried sick about him and about the prospect of being left parentless.

As he walked, he reiterated to himself all the ways he'd be a better father if he and his daughter both made it through this in one piece. He didn't care what happened to his house or his car or his belongings, didn't care if the bank with his safe deposit box full of his only valuables was disintegrated beyond all recognition; he only wanted the chance to be with his daughter again so he could start off on the right foot this time. No more would he pressure her about where to go to school, or whom she should date. He had to let her be her own woman. But he'd be there for her, always just a phone call or e-mail or text or Skype call away. That was fine. He'd give her some space, allow her to grow but make himself available, and that way he'd see what she really wanted from him. Probably just holiday visits home, for a while, and that was fine. She needed to get out there and experience life. God, how he hoped now that she would get that chance. He didn't know why it took so long for him to come to this realization, why it took a New York City earthquake (the guy from the salsa commercial interrupted his thoughts:
New York City?)
to shake him around to her way of thinking, but it had a peaceable effect on him.

He forgot about his hunger pains as he plodded on, shining his light beam far in front of him to see if there were any human threats or large obstacles up ahead, then waving the flood of light by his feet to make sure he wasn't going to trip over anything. At one point, he came across an open manhole or access port cover of some kind on the right side of the tracks, and he thanked his lucky stars that he'd been shining the light close by his feet. It was just a small space large enough for one man to drop into. He shone his beam down into it but saw no rungs leading down, just a dirt floor far, far below. He'd heard of the city beneath a city—the labyrinthine network of subterranean passages that represented a layer of humanity long since built over. He had no idea what the space was, and didn't care.

He kept going.

A long procession of rats passed along the other side of the tunnel, heading fast in the other direction, chittering and squeaking and scratching their claws along the tunnel ground. Nick wondered what they might be running from but could see or hear no potential threats. Then he saw a brown lump of blankets lying up ahead, right in front of him. He stepped around while shining his beam on the disheveled mass. A dead homeless man, curled up in what was likely his only earthly possession. Nick considered the possibility that the man could have been dead in here for quite some time, perhaps before the earthquake even happened. He thought about all the potential for cover-ups in the wake of this disaster, the missing persons cases that would be erroneously blamed on the quake, how it could impact his job as a prosecutor, if he could ever have a normal life again.

On an even more sinister level, Nick knew that some of the scum he'd prosecuted were not above using this earthquake as a cover to commit heinous crimes they otherwise wouldn't have any hope of getting away with. If a floater was to be found in the Hudson River tomorrow, after all, who would suspect foul play? There would probably be several corpses littering the banks of the river when all this was said and done. That business partner you always wanted out of the picture? Today was not the day to be the victim of a violent crime in Manhattan, Nick decided.

He kicked a beer bottle onto the tracks and then conducted another long-distance check with his flashlight, second nature now, without even thinking about it. Nothing up ahead, so he went back to his thoughts.

Feroz Saeed Alivi was exactly the type of man to take advantage of a disaster like this, he decided. What had become of him by now? He liked to think that he was either still in the custody of U.S. marshals, or else had been killed in the quake. But until he had some definitive proof, he wouldn't assume anything. He'd seen that courthouse following the quake. It was deep, deep rubble, and although overall it was devastating and the eventual death count was not something he looked forward to learning, there would no doubt be survivable pockets throughout. He himself had made it, after all. Others could, too. Including Alivi.

He shivered as he thought about the terror leader's threats against Lauren.

If he did survive and had also managed to escape . . .

Nick had to jump down onto the tracks to avoid a pile of shopping carts. He'd no idea how those found their way down here. Another distance check, all clear. Back to one foot in front of the other.

If Alivi did escape, he may come after me. He may even come after Lauren.
Nick wondered if he was being . . .
arrogant? Was that the right word?
. . . by assuming that he held enough importance in the jihad-obsessed man's mind that he would focus on Nick—his prosecutor, but still only a single man—rather than use this opportunity to either flee the country or else take advantage of the quake-distracted authorities to assemble a rapid-strike terror event. Was his organization agile enough for something like that? Nick wasn't sure, but he knew one thing as he spotted a subway sign reading
116TH STREET / COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
.

He needed to get to Lauren, and get to her fast.

The closer Jasper and Peterson came to the reactor building, the more the damage was increasingly evident. More and more fallen utility fixtures littered the walkway and the surrounding work areas. Birds' nests of loose wiring hung suspended from the ceiling. Then the walkway itself that led them away from the cooling station had ended abruptly in a snarl of unadulterated wreckage, a shocking display of force that the earthquake must have unleashed in order to rip the iron structure from the concrete wall and upend it.

Adding to their general unease, the radio channel had been silent since leaving the cooling controls. Had the terrorists left Jeffries's control room looking for a way down here and not even put on the radiation suits? If they were jihadists, maybe they wouldn't bother with the suits, sort of like the 9/11 pilots who supposedly de-emphasized the landings portion of their flight training. Perhaps they weren't aware that the suits contained radios? Jasper and Peterson had no way of knowing, but they maintained radio silence in case it was a ploy to get them to think no one was listening. Now they found themselves picking their way across a barely lit concrete floor crowded with machinery and equipment to the reactor—the container within a container where atoms were split in order to generate the heat that would boil water and spin a turbine.

Peterson pointed his light beam in front of them and Jasper followed its path with his gaze. Immediately he could see the problem. An iron staircase wound its way up and around the outside of the cylindrical concrete reactor building in a colossal spiral, but a section of it had come loose and fallen over the ground level doorway, obscuring it almost completely. In addition to the stairs, there were also numerous chunks of displaced concrete. Peterson waved an arm, indicating for Jasper to follow. They had to skirt around a downed tank of some kind in order to walk up to the blocked doorway.

Peterson handed Jasper the flashlight and he gripped the mangled stair ladder with both hands. He yanked on it several times with full strength but it did not budge. He rested a moment before moving his grip to different points of the broken structure and trying again. Still, the displaced stairwell held fast. Peterson looked at Jasper and shook his head. Then Jasper aimed the light toward the ceiling, tracing the stair ladder along its course up the reactor containment building. It was still there, but it dangled precariously in some sections and was outright missing in others, leaving gaps that would have to be climbed somehow in order to reach the top. And they couldn't see from here what its condition was as it wound up the other side of the structure. One of the missing sections was at the bottom of the stairs, beginning just above the span that blocked the reactor door.

Jasper waved to get Peterson's attention and handed him the flashlight. He opened the logbook to a fresh page and penned a message.

He pointed up the stair ladder to the top of the reactor containment structure, then followed with another note.

Jasper pointed around the side of the containment structure and traded Peterson the logbook for the flashlight. Peterson gripped the pen and wrote.

He paused his pen for a moment while he tipped his head back to look at the stair ladder's condition along the length of the containment cylinder, then wrote again.

Jasper nodded agreeably, not at all liking the fact that they were even entertaining the notion of climbing the broken stair ladder. They set out to the left along the containment cylinder, toward what appeared to be the path of least resistance. Peterson led the way with his light, Jasper close behind. Both of their heads were on swivels, hyper-alert for threats not only due to the damaged nuclear facility, but also from the terrorists somewhere in the vicinity. Jasper hoped the intruders wouldn't find a way down here that he and Peterson had missed.

As they worked their way around the reactor containment structure, they noticed cracks and buckling in the steel-lined concrete, though none was large enough to be actual openings to the inside. Jasper saw Peterson consult his dosimeter once, but he didn't try to see the reading himself. He just kept putting one foot in front of the other, trooping toward that other door. He hoped that they would be able to get into the reactor somehow, that when they did, there would be a tech in there, and that whoever had shot Jeffries wouldn't be able to get down here.

After a few more minutes of negotiating the industrial surrounds, Peterson waved his light around in a bid to catch Jasper's attention. As soon as he could lift his gaze from the jumble of corrugated pipes he was stepping over on the floor, Jasper looked up and saw Peterson shaking his head. Jasper walked over to him and shrugged.
What's the problem?
Peterson was illuminating the side of the containment building with his light. The concrete was cracked into what looked like fallen blocks, but it was nothing they couldn't walk around to continue moving around the structure. Then Peterson took the logbook and wrote fast.

He stared up at the broken concrete wall, the steel liner ruptured in a long seam beginning about ten feet up and continuing for thirty feet or so. On either side of that seam were loose pockets of exposed concrete and jagged rips of protruding rebar. Jasper traced the damage down to the door and saw how everything that had been knocked loose from above had piled up in the doorway—probably on both sides, he figured—effectively entombing the entrance and exit in chunks of raw building materials.

Neither of them had anything else to write. This was not going to be a way in or out for anybody. But then Jasper happened on a loose length of rebar and an idea occurred to him. He picked it up and walked over to the ruined doorway, looking for a good place to bang on that might resonate well enough for the men inside to hear. He could at least let them know they were trying to get to them, sort of like the old submarine movies he'd seen where a diver would rap on the hull of a doomed sub, even though he couldn't gain entrance to the craft himself. But then it occurred to him it might be a cruel act, since the techs trapped inside would assume they were being rescued, when in fact even if Jasper and Peterson did manage to free them from the reactor, they would only be going from the proverbial frying pan to its complementary fire, for they would still have to fix the water cooling problem, and fast. And beyond that—they still had no way out of the larger handling building. Jasper forced himself to calm down and focus on one problem at a time. If the trapped men knew someone was out here, maybe they could help somehow, perhaps by clearing debris from the inside?

Jasper banged the pipe against another piece of rebar poking out from the wall. Peterson gave his approval in the form of a thumbs-up and Jasper was surprised to feel a minor swelling of pride. He came down here to work. This was his plant, too, even though he was in an area that he normally had nothing to do with. But he could still be useful here. Even so, after a couple of minutes of banging and listening, banging and listening, no indication had come that they had been heard. At first, Jasper had been concerned that they wouldn't be able to hear ambient noises well enough with the suit hoods on, but he could hear his own hammering well enough and it was not being transmitted through their headset microphones.

Jasper dropped the metal rod and turned to Peterson with a shrug.
Now what?
Peterson jotted a note on the pad and held it out for Jasper to read.

Jasper nodded. Might as well, although he didn't hold out much hope. If something opened up, then the guys trapped inside probably would have gotten out already, right?
What the heck were they gonna do? And at any moment the terrorists could find their way in here.
Peterson's frantic light waving commanded his attention long enough to duck under some hanging cables. Then they continued on around the mostly intact wall. Jasper examined the sides high up the wall and didn't notice any further significant damage.

He had just stepped around a forklift when he stopped in place. This one was actually still upright.
Why walk when you can ride?
Although it had been a while, Jasper had operated them before and felt comfortable enough behind the controls. He took a look at their immediate path ahead, though, and realized that with all of the fallen machinery and debris it would be easier just to walk. But then a thought occurred to him.

Jasper took a seat inside the forklift and was pleased when it came to life after hitting the start button. He took a few seconds to get a feel for the controls and then put the thing into gear, rolling slowly across the debris-strewn floor. He caught up to Peterson and was going to honk the horn, but then recognized that spooking a guy with a gun in an iffy situation wasn't the brightest move, so he refrained. Peterson heard the approaching motor, though, and whirled around. He threw his hands up when he saw Jasper behind the wheel. Jasper ducked out of the machine and held up the logbook. Peterson tapped a foot while he shone the light for Jasper to write by.

By the glow of the flashlight Jasper saw Peterson's eyes widen behind his faceplate before he smiled and gave a vigorous thumbs-up. Jasper got back into the forklift and put it into gear again, moving slowly behind Peterson, who scouted ahead to remove obstacles for their new hope.

Fifteen minutes of careful maneuvering later, Peterson signaled that they had reached the first doorway. This also meant that they had completed their circumnavigation of the reactor containment building, leaving only two possibilities for entering: One, climbing the downed external staircase to access the rooftop infrastructure. Or two, using the lift to clear enough wreckage from the doorway that they could walk through on floor level. As Jasper backed the forklift into position, he fervently hoped for success in the latter possibility.

Peterson stood off to one side of the blocked doorway and aimed the light onto the displaced section of stairway. Jasper put the lift into forward gear and positioned it so that the lifting forks were beneath the metal. Then he raised the lift. At first nothing happened and he feared the wreckage was immovable. But then suddenly the forklift lurched as the bulky obstacle moved. He could see Peterson nodding. It was working! Peterson also grabbed on to the stairs and was able to pull them aside where they crashed to the floor with a discordant shriek.

Jasper continued his excavations with the machine, patiently backing up and moving forward into a new piece of debris. Behind the stairs were numerous chunks of concrete. Sometimes he found he could use the industrial machine as intended and lift large pieces up and then back them away and lower them back to the ground, with Peterson helping to kick them off the forks. Other times, he had to use the vehicle like a battering ram to run into a piece of concrete in order to dislodge it. In this manner he worked doggedly for half an our, and then Peterson approached the opening with his flashlight probing.

Jasper dismounted the forklift and saw Peterson crouch, duck-walking forward. He frantically signaled with his light. Jasper joined him at the jagged aperture, taking care not to snag any part of his suit as he ducked inside.

Light!

He couldn't see much with Peterson in front of him, but in a few more seconds Peterson was standing, out of sight on the other side. Jasper was astonished to see a mammoth, open room. The cavelike space was perhaps a shade brighter than the fuel handling building they'd been working in.

After a fretful look behind to see if anyone might have observed them, Jasper stepped into the reactor building.