The Omicron Legion (41 page)

Patty recalled Takahashi’s story of how he was the only overseer of the Children of the Black Rain to survive the onslaught of an unknown militant in their midst. It was this militant who had so drastically changed the rules, opting to expand Japanese revenge into the deadly nuclear scenario. And she knew that this must be that man. He regarded her with inexplicable indifference as she approached him.

“Where’s my father?” she demanded, fighting to sound strong and fearless. “Where’s Phillip Hunsecker?”

The Japanese just stared at her. Patty stopped, then came closer.

“I want to see my father. I want to—” Patty froze when she was close enough to see why the figure was so silent, so still.

The figure was an elaborate mannequin!

She had started to back dazedly away when a voice echoed through the hall’s gaping expanse.

“I’m here, Patty.”

And she turned to see a figure emerging from another section of the room into the light. The figure was her father.

“
Eight minutes to critical stage.
…”

Along the green, florescent-lighted corridor directly above the Pennsylvania Yankee reactor complex, the temperature was already in excess of a hundred degrees. Sweat poured from Jack Tunnel’s face as he helped Blaine fasten himself into the layered radiation suit.

“Gonna be close to a hundred and fifty at the bottom of the ladder—if you make it that far.”

“I’ll make it, all right.”

“Temperature’s rising a degree every five seconds—that’s gonna increase as we get closer to critical stage. Even in the suit you can take maybe three minutes down there. Probably less.”

“It’s all I’ll need.”

“The valves are clearly marked. I’ll stay up here and direct you to them.”

“That ring on your finger tells me you’ve got a family, Jack. Might be a better idea for you to hightail it out like everyone else.”

“And let you take all the credit for saving the greater Northeast? Not on your life, McCracken.”

Back near the hatch that led onto the ladder, two volunteers from the control room had finished stuffing towels and padding into another radiation suit. They were tying the rope under the filled-out suit’s arms when Blaine approached.

“Show time,” McCracken said as he eased the makeshift dummy through the opening. “You boys better stand back and cover your ears.”

And with that he began to lower the thing down, giving slack on the rope to match the pace of a man’s descent down the ladder. “
Seven minutes to critical stage.
…”

Just after the fifteenth rung, the firing began, the motion sensor having picked up the dummy’s descent. Bullets ripped through its suit and stuffed innards and clanged off pipes and ladder rungs, ricocheting off walls in all directions. The metallic echoing burned Blaine’s ears, and several times he flinched when bullets flew maddeningly close to the open hatch. Through it all, he continued to lower the dummy at a pace designed to draw continuous fire from the rifle Abraham had planted until its ammo was exhausted.

At last he heard a repetitive clicking sound that told him the firing pin was striking an empty chamber. McCracken let the dummy drop the rest of the way down the ladder and reached back for his helmet.

Jack Tunnel touched his arm. “With the coast clear, I can get the job done better than you, friend.”

“Coast might not be clear, Jack. Might be more surprises waiting for anyone who goes down there. It’s got to be me.”

“Sounds like a song.”

“Hopefully a happy one.”

Tunnel tightened Blaine’s helmet into its slot, but didn’t clamp the faceplate down. “Look, if she goes to critical stage the rest of us will still be able to get out with limited contamination. But you, friend, are gonna get zapped by enough rads to make your skin glow.”

“Get to save on my electric bills then, won’t I?” Blaine said, flipping his faceplate down before disappearing into the rancid heat of the loop below.

“
Six minutes to critical stage.
…”

To Johnny Wareagle, this all had a shade of familiarity cast over it, as if he’d already been through it before. Perhaps he had. In the many dreams the spirits had sent to prepare him for his
Hanbelachia,
a battle with the greatest enemy he had ever faced, they had shown him all.

Abraham could have chosen anywhere along the motorcade’s route to strike at the president, but Johnny knew the spirits would guide him in the right direction. Suddenly Wareagle gazed up at a nest of buildings squeezed claustrophobically against one another on Boylston Street, five blocks away from the Ritz Carlton. The entire city seemed to be choking on its own progress. The beginning structure of yet another skyscraper was piercing the sky where a parking lot had been just months before. Gazing that high up from ground level, there was nothing that could be seen clearly.

But Johnny didn’t have to see. He felt a sudden chill pass through him. The high steelworkers were clustered on Boylston Street, where everyone was waiting for the motorcade to pass by. The steel skeleton was deserted.

Not quite.

Johnny could feel the presence quite clearly now, could feel it as clearly as if it were a yard away. It was something cold and vile, with a manitou as dark as the night itself. The stink of its spiritless soul reached him, assailing his senses.

The motorcade was coming.

Johnny jumped the fence enclosing the structure and rushed to one of the scaffold construction elevators.

“Stray Seven to Alley Cat! I’ve lost him! Goddammit, I’ve lost him!”

“Not again!” Arnold Triesman shouted, rushing down Boylston Street toward Stray Seven’s last reported position. In the streets around him a number of agents were doing the same on his orders. A nag had suddenly hit Triesman’s gut about this one. He probably should have ordered the motorcade back to the airport; it was in his power. But everything he had been taught advised against panic, and, if this proved to be a false alarm, he’d be finished.

“Wait a minute!” Stray Seven’s voice echoed in his ear. “I think I just caught a glimpse of him!”

“What’s the twenty?”

“Near the Commonwealth Insurance Building.”

Right along the motorcade route,
Triesman thought. But he couldn’t reroute without taking the president into an unsecured area. And a slowdown or outright stoppage would subject Top Guy to more danger than letting him go on. The situation, in any case, was under control. They had their man sighted.

“Did he enter any building, Seven?”

“No way to be sure, Alley Cat.”

“Get sure! Do you hear me? Get sure by the time I get over there!” Triesman switched his communicator to all bands.” All Stray teams, converge on the area of the Commonwealth Insurance Building shell. Choppers, do you copy that?”

“Roger,” the three pilots replied in virtual unison.

“All buildings considered compromised. Let’s move!
Everyone
move!”

“Dad?” Patty asked tentatively, tremors rising through her stomach and chest.

“I’m sorry,” Phillip Hunsecker said.

“You should be,” Patty blurted out.

“Not for what I’ve done. Sorry that you came here. You should leave.”

“Not unless you leave with me.”

He kept approaching, shaking his head. “I can’t do that.”

Patty’s eyes flicked about the room. “This is more important to you than your family, your life?”

“This is my family, my life. Always has been.”

The man who had come to a halt a yard from her did not look like her father. Oh, it was him all right, but she barely recognized him. Part of her had envisioned herself running into his arms; now those arms might as well have been a stranger’s. Patty shivered.

“I can get you out of this,” she made herself say. “McCracken will help me. He can fix things.”

“It’s too late for that, Patty.”

“It’s never too late.”

“This time it is. We’ve failed. Our identities are known. Our plan is known. For our honor to be preserved, we must disappear, become the past.”

“What are you saying?”

Patty heard a second set of steps behind her just before the voice reached her.

“She must leave, Pierce. She must leave now.”

Patty turned and watched as a second figure emerged from the shadows in the front of the room, stopping next to the Japanese mannequin. It was a woman’s figure, a woman she had known almost all her life and loved like a mother: Shimada!

McCracken felt the incredible heat building in the loop as soon as he began his descent. Even through his radiation suit, his skin seemed to be burning. Sweat ran from his forehead into his eyes, steam misting across his faceplate. He had spent his share of time in steam rooms, and that was the only comparison that came to mind—a steam room still pumping heat long after the cycle should have ended.

Blaine passed the fifteenth rung, his breathing labored. He had considered the possibility that Abraham had set up a second firing apparatus to thwart precisely the strategy he had employed. At this point, though, dying from a bullet seemed preferable to radiation poisoning or being boiled alive, both of which were equally real possibilities.

“Can you hear me, Blaine?” came the garbled voice of Jack Tunnel.

McCracken adjusted the communicator built into his helmet. “Loud. Not so clear.”

“Okay. If you look down, you’ll see you’re coming to the first catwalk. You don’t want that one or the next one. It’s the third one you’ve got to reach.”

“How much time?”

“Just over five minutes now.”

Blaine quickened his descent. The rungs of the ladder passed swiftly, his drop falling into a symphonic rhythm of hands and feet moving together. The second catwalk was gone before he knew it, then the third was upon him. He stepped off from the ladder and onto the catwalk.

“Okay, Jack. I’m on it.”

“You should be able to see the water gushing out…thirty yards down on the right.”

“Yup, there it is.”

“The valve you’ve got to close is above the pipe, say about eye level.”

McCracken started for it. He took each step on the thin catwalk cautiously, wondering if Abraham had left more surprises for anyone who managed to get this far. The water rushing out of the burst pipe was superheated now, boiling hot and getting hotter. Approaching it, Blaine realized his flesh seemed to be baking. He was breathing hard and the sweat continued pouring into his eyes from his brow. He felt light-headed and wanted desperately to have something to catch hold of, but nothing was available. He reached the blown valve, choosing his steps carefully to avoid the plume of steam he could already feel through his radiation suit.

“I’m at the valve, Jack,” he said when he was behind the steam’s flow. The valve was circular, six inches in diameter, colored in the same almond shade as the rest of the pipes and valves in this section.

“Reach up and turn it to the left, counterclockwise. Your gloves will insulate you from the heat briefly, but when your fingers start to burn, pull your hands off and let them cool.”

“Hey, this isn’t a pie we’re talking about here!”

“Just go to work. Four and a half minutes left now.”

Blaine ran his fingers cautiously around the circumference of the valve. Along its squat neck, he felt a small attachment no bigger than a matchbox. Abraham’s final precaution would have done the job just fine if the man who had come down here hadn’t known what to look and feel for. Blaine closed his fingers on the small but potent charge and pried it away.

“Son of a bitch,” he said, letting it drop harmlessly to the catwalk and returning his attention to the valve.

“My hands feel hot already, Jack,” he said an instant after his gloved fingers tightened around it. “God, this thing’s tight!”

“Is it moving? If it’s been jammed we’ll have to go to a backup.”

“I can get it…. There, it’s starting to go now….”

McCracken twisted with all his strength. Progress came slowly. Finally he detected a marked slowing in the water sprouting from the pipe. When at last the valve was turned tight against the other side, it slowed to a trickle.

“That’s it, Jack.”

“Halfway there, Blaine. All we gotta do now is reroute the cooling water by opening up a backup valve and bringing it back into the central core. You’ve got to go down to the next catwalk.”

“
Four minutes to critical stage.
…”

“That bitch has been known to be wrong before,” said Tunnel, venting his tension on the mechanical female voice that sounded through the core area.

“How many times?”

“Twice in simulations.”

“I’m back at the ladder, Jack, and going down.”

“Okay. The valve you’ve got to open is in the same spot as the other, just along the next catwalk. How you holding up?”

“Dizzy. I can’t catch my breath.”

“No wonder. The temperature down there just topped the hundred-and-fifty-degree mark.”

“And I’m not even getting a tan to show for it.”

Blaine reached the fourth sublevel catwalk; the piping was colored blue instead of white. He proceeded down it as quickly as he could through the intense heat and located the valve just where Tunnel said it would be.

“I’m here,” he said.

“Okay, Blaine. This one you want to turn to the right. You’ve got to open it all the way or there won’t be enough pressure to cool the reactor in time.”

“Just how much time is that?”

“Thirty seconds to a minute—or we go to the critical stage.”

“That means we’ve only got something over two left.”

“Turn the valve now and you’ll have time to spare.”

Blaine reached up for it, his hands burning with the intensity of fire. “It won’t give, Jack.”

“Ease off a little. No pressure inward. Just twist.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” Blaine said, the strain of exertion telling in his voice. “It feels like somebody’s—”

He felt it all go at once and realized the valve had come off in his hand.

“Jack, I think I’ve got a problem down here….”

Chapter 36

THROUGH HIS BINOCULARS,
Abraham could see the motorcade edging down Boylston Street. A pair of motorcycle cops, sirens screaming, led the way. There were three more squad cars both in front and in back of the president’s limo. The helicopters were hovering above the steel structure of the building where he was hidden, but they couldn’t possibly spot him. Two to three minutes more and the limo would have reached the stripe lined with his deadly explosives. Abraham felt no excitement, only anticipation.