Tiger by the Tail (42 page)

“Works. In fact, that might be perfect. Depending on what’s going on down here, the reinforcements will probably come in handy. When they touch down, have them hold at the airport for further orders.”

“Roger that. What’s your next move?”

“I’ve got to find out what is up with the nuclear reactor around here. If there even is one. We’re trying to figure out a way to find it, or find someone who knows about it here.”

* * *

Mike’s conversation gave Jace an idea. He tapped Adams on the shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”

Heading outside, he walked among the prisoners, most of whom were outfitting themselves for the trek through the jungle. Finding Maung, Jace told him what he needed. The Burmese man nodded. “I know exactly who you should talk to. Come on.”

A few minutes later, Jace entered the radio room with a short, older, Burmese man in tow. “Hey, Kildar, I found the guy you needed.” He waved the small man forward. “Khin here actually worked on the damn thing.”

“Really? And you know where it’s located?” Mike asked.

Khin nodded. “It is not far from here. Can take you there if you want to look at it. There is not much to see, however, since it has not gone online, as far as I know.”

“Jace, did you tell him about the boards?”

“No, because I didn’t have that information.”

“Then get ready to translate a lot, ’cause we’re about to have an in-depth conversation about them.”

* * *

“Let me get this straight. Poor-ass Myanmar teamed up with North Korea to create a nuclear reactor in the middle of the jungle? Where did Kim get the plans and the technology to do this?” Adams asked ten minutes later.

“Apparently the one constructed here is an Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor,” Jace translated. “Since the deal with the Russians fell through back in 2007, the military had been looking around for a feasible replacement with whoever was willing to deal with them. Before he died, Kim reached an agreement with the ruling junta to supply material and personnel to build a test facility in the middle of the jungle out here.”

“Makes sense, especially since Myanmar is already on most countries’ ignore list, so no one would be watching it so closely. Also, it has plenty of thick jungle for cover. North Korea, on the other hand . . .” Mike said.

Jace continued. “The Generation III+ ESBWR was the most suitable choice for several reasons. First, it has no recirculation pumps, associated piping, or heat exchangers, nor the various control systems associated with those, greatly simplifying ongoing maintenance.”

“Wait a minute. What prevents a meltdown if there’s no heat exchangers or pumps or any of that shit?” Adams asked.

When asked the question, Khin launched into a long monologue, complete with gestures, that Jace attempted to boil down. “That is the other reason this particular reactor system was chosen. It has three redundant safety systems to prevent a reactor breach. First is the Isolation Condenser System, a passive heat exchanger located above the containment unit in a pool of open water. Excess decay heat produces steam, which is piped to the condenser, which does what its title suggests. The heat enters the atmosphere and the condensed water falls back into the pool, which is slowly boiled away, and must be refilled periodically. Next is the Gravity Driven Cooling System, which are large pools of water inside the containment unit above the reactor itself. If this system is initiated, the water flows down into the reactor, taking on the decay heat and also transferring it out in the form of steam, which is released after the reactor has been depressurized. Lastly, there is the Passive Containment Cooling System, another series of passive heat exchangers in the upper part of the reactor building. Container steam from the reactor rises to these exchangers, where it is condensed, with the heat escaping again, while the water flows back down to the GDCS pools and back to the reactor pressure vessel.”

Jace took a deep breath. “Both the ISC and the GDCS pools are large enough to maintain a cooling cycle for at least seventy-two hours, even in the event of a power loss. The pools can also be easily refilled through pipes to local water sources, or even trucked-in water if necessary.”

“Like the Irrawaddy River, right?” Mike asked.

Upon hearing the English name of the major river in Myanmar, Khin pointed at the Kildar and nodded.

“Okay, great. And the military wants to keep it under wraps not only because North Korea is subsidizing it, which wouldn’t go over well in the nuclear community, but there is also all that increased scrutiny about whether any nuclear plant in a foreign country could be used to process waste into material for nuclear weapons,” Adams said.

“Got it in two,” Mike replied, then turned back to Khin with a frown. “Wait a minute. He sounds like an engineer. How did he end up here?”

Jace asked, and the small man’s face darkened as he spat out a stream of words. “He is a safety systems engineer with a degree in nuclear engineering. He says one day he overheard a conversation between one of the military leaders and the lead engineer that he wasn’t supposed to hear. It had to do with the safety precautions, and more importantly, how they could be circumvented. When he inquired about it later to the lead engineer, he was told that the general was merely asking about precautions in the event of a local terrorist action against the plant. But it didn’t sound like that’s what they were talking about at all. It sounded like the general was asking about ways the reactor might malfunction from
inside
the plant. When the reactor was completed, except for the fuel rod delivery and the master control boards, the lead engineer died in a car crash. The next night, Khin was taken from his home and brought up here, with no papers or any way to contact the outside world. That was two months ago.”

“So, why haven’t they killed him too?” Adams asked.

As quickly as his face had darkened, Khin smiled again. “He says they killed the lead engineer too soon. The reactor still has issues. However, they are desperate to get it online. They’ve been keeping him here in order to break him so he’ll go back to work for them. But after seeing what happened to the last guy, he’d rather work up here and live than go back down there and die.”

“Really?” Mike thought for a moment. “Ask him how he would feel about gaining his freedom and sticking it to the guys who put him in here?”

Jace had barely finished translating when Khin nodded so hard he thought the little man was going to give himself whiplash. “He’s in. What does he have to do?”

“First, we have to get word to the commander of the plant that you’re ready to make a deal. And I know just the guy to make that call.”

* * *

An hour later, they were heading down the NH 31 highway toward the site of the nuclear facility. Mike had filled in Vanner and told him to pass the information on to Bob Pierson while he went to personally investigate the site.

Jace, Khin, and he were riding in the armored car. In a truck behind them was Katya and half of Team Jayne, with Oleg at the wheel. Accompanying them were several prisoners who had volunteered to help take over the facility while Mike got to the bottom of what was going on there. The rest were busy loading up the other Aeolus truck and scrounging whatever other vehicles they could find so they wouldn’t have to walk to Mandalay. Before he left, Mike promised that he would send something back for the rest of the men if possible. As he watched the road, he wondered just how in the hell he was going to keep that promise.

“This is the sign for Chaunggyi. Here’s the turnoff,” Jace said as he turned right onto a rough dirt road. Khin had said they had set the plant about nine kilometers off the main road so it wouldn’t be immediately detectable from above. They had found a suitable site near a stream that emptied into the Irrawaddy as their coolant source.

After putting a tourniquet on his leg, Mike had “convinced” Warden Sein to make the call to the head of the nuclear facility and tell him that Khin was ready to discuss the terms of his returning to work. The colonel, one Ront Ohnmar, was all too eager to have Khin come to the reactor immediately. Mike had Sein confirm that he was sending the engineer over under heavy guard. Mike also had Khin change into a guard uniform so he could talk them past the guards at the gate.

Several kilometers later, they came to a nine-foot-high chain-link perimeter fence with an electric gate. The barrier was topped with razor wire, and Jace spotted the conductors that indicated it was electrified. A guard checkpoint was on the right side of the fence, and a uniformed soldier came out to watch the two-vehicle convoy pull to a stop.

Khin popped out of the turret hatch. “I have Safety Engineer Khin to see Colonel Ohnmar,” he said.

The soldier immediately saluted and ran back inside the gatehouse. The gate trundled aside on wheels as Khin disappeared back inside. The second the opening was wide enough, Jace drove through.

“You’re sure it’s just a skeleton crew?” Mike asked.

“The reactor isn’t operational yet, so there isn’t really a lot to guard here,” Khin replied through Jace. “They keep a rotating staff on three eight-hour shifts. From what I saw, the fence does a lot of the work.”

The site looked pretty much like someone had built a standard power plant in the middle of the jungle. The main building, a dull gray, concrete structure, was straight ahead, with a parking lot in front holding about thirty vehicles. To their left was what looked like a large row of metal building blocks.

“Just park in the lot there.” Khin pointed to an asphalt lot next to another dull concrete building. “We’ll be heading to the administration building to see the colonel.”

“Where’s the cooling towers?” Adams asked as he looked around.

“They decided to go with a series of crossflow cooling towers, in which the hot water is piped in and flows perpendicular through the flow material to the bottom where it is collected. At the same time, air is drawn in and is heated, then the moist, hot air is expelled through the top of the tower by the fan.”

“Convenient that it also doesn’t look like the typical ‘nuclear reactor’ design. Hell, with the right containment unit, you guys could probably pass this off as some kind of manufacturing company, as long as no one gets inside,” Mike said.

“That had been discussed more than once,” Khin admitted as they got out of the Cascavel. “Come with me.”

“One second.” Mike and Jace went to the back of the large truck. “Everyone knows their assignments, right?” The mixed group of Keldara and Burmese all nodded. “All right, everyone head out.”

Joined by Katya, who was transmitting the video of the site back to Vanner, and Adams, Mike, Jace, and Khin headed toward the administrative building. They were only a few steps away when the door was opened by a soldier. They all walked inside, the guard frowning at the three Americans dressed in Myanmar army uniforms. As he started to say something, Mike nodded at Adams, who was the last man in.

The master chief took one step past the door guard, then drew his pistol, pivoted, and whipped the butt across the man’s face. His cheekbone and nose shattered, the guard hit the floor and didn’t move while blood flowed down the front of his shirt.

The door led into a large, open office with four desks, two of which were occupied by a man and a woman. Both stared in shock at what had just happened. Pistol drawn and a finger raised to his lips, Mike motioned both of them to raise their hands. He had them get up and stand near the wall, away from any telephones. Quickly patting all of them down, Mike found a cell on the man and pocketed it. Assigning Adams to watch both them and the front door, he joined Khin and Jace at the door at the back of the office. About to burst in, Mike stopped as a moan was heard on the other side, along with the familiar sound of someone getting blown.

“Guess there really isn’t anything to do here but bang the secretaries.” Mike gently twisted the handle, only to find it locked. Shaking his head, he put his boot into the door just below the lock. The door flew open hard enough to crash into the wall next to it.

Mike walked in to see exactly what he thought he would see. The stacked brunette who had been on her knees behind the desk was frantically trying to cover herself while the colonel, dressed only in short-sleeves, yanked up his boxers and shot out of his chair.

“What is the meaning of this—” was all Jace could translate before Mike rounded the desk and smashed the butt of his pistol into the man’s face. Blood squirted from his crushed nose, and the man clasped his hands to his face with a strangled scream as he fell back into his chair.

“Tell Khin to get her dressed and outside,” Mike said. “Let the master chief know he’s got another person to watch.” He brought the pistol butt down on the colonel’s hand, which had been inching toward the desk phone. The man screamed again through gritted teeth and clasped his broken fingers to his bloody chest. “Katya, close the door while Jace and I have a chat with the colonel.”

* * *

Vanel had been assigned the job of clearing the crew out of the main reactor building. With him was Marko and a young Burmese named Bourey who had worked on building the exterior of the reactor building. He had been exiled to the gem mines when he was caught stealing construction materials to try to fix the roof on his parents’ house. Between the three men, they knew just enough English to make themselves understood to each other.

“Control room here,” Bourey said as he led them around the side of the reactor building to a smaller structure that jutted out the side. He tried the door, but it was locked, with an electronic keypad next to it.

“Too bad Mouse is not here,” Marko said.

“Why do you not just shoot the lock off?” Bourey asked.

“Because we still have surprise on our side. Also, do not wish to cause undue alarm to other teams,” Vanel replied.

“I have idea.” Stepping up to the door, Bourey banged hard on it with a fist. Behind him, Vanel and Marko exchanged puzzled glances.

To everyone’s surprise, the door opened. “Htun, I’ve told you a thousand times that you cannot keep banging on the—” the radiation-suited worker, complete with full-face helmet and independent air supply, looked as shocked as Vanel and the others did at seeing him. “You’re not—”