“Conner isn’t scheduled today.”
“Yeah, I gathered that, yet another half-drunk brain-fart on his part. I’m going to kill him if you fools don’t kill me first.” David tipped his hands forward and nodded, silently saying, well are you or aren’t you? When the guard said nothing, David said, “Dude, shoot me, or let me go.”
The man reluctantly holstered his gun, still looking thoroughly unsatisfied. “Where are you going?”
David walked toward him. “Getting the hell out of here, what’s the quickest way?”
The man turned and pointed but didn’t get a word out. David knocked him out cold with a sharp blow to the base of his skull.
He had to move fast now. He ran deeper into the facility. There was another problem, one he’d pushed to the back of his mind, given the more pressing survival issues. But now he had to think about how to cut the power. His best idea was not to attack the nuclear reactors directly — they would be insulated and well protected, assuming he could even get close to them. And there were three of them. The power lines were his best guess. If he blew the lines, it would cut the power to the entire facility — permanently, including any power they may have stored up from the reactor. But he was out of his element. What if the lines were buried under the facility or otherwise out of reach? Or routed through a heavily guarded building outside the reactor facility? Would he even know them when he saw them? There were a lot of what-ifs…
David found another schematic on the wall and scanned through the areas. Reactor 1, Reactor 2, Reactor 3, Turbine, Control Room, Primary Circuit Room. Circuit room — that could work. It was positioned opposite the reactors, and it looked like lines from every reactor flowed into the room.
He turned from the schematic just as two guards rounded the corner and marched toward him. He nodded and made his way to the circuit room. As he approached it, he could hear the low drone of machines and the buzz of high voltage power. It seemed to come through the walls and up through the floor. The floor didn’t vibrate, but as he scanned his badge and entered the room, his body began to shake from the pulse of the massive machines.
Inside, the room was huge — and cramped. Pipes and metal conduits seemed to snake in every direction, buzzing and popping periodically. He felt like he had been shrunk and beamed inside a circuit board on a computer.
David climbed deeper into the room and placed charges on the larger conduits at the points where they entered the room. There were several metal “closets” for lack of a better word. He placed charges on them as well. He only had a few explosives left. Would they be enough? How much time? He typed 5:00 minutes in the detonator and hid it at the base of the closet. Where to put the last charges?
He heard another noise over the din of the lines. Or maybe he didn’t. He took a charge out and shoved it between two smaller lines. He held it there for a second, withdrawing his hand slowly to make sure it would stay.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw them — three guards, in the room, closing fast. He couldn’t talk his way out of this one.
CHAPTER 55
The six guards surrounded Kate.
One man said into a radio, “We have her. She was wandering around in corridor two.”
“What are you doing?” Kate protested.
“Come with us,” the man with the radio said.
Two of the guards took her by the arms and began leading her away from the voices at the nurses station.
“Stop!”
Kate turned to see a woman jogging up behind them. She was young, maybe in her twenties. She was dressed so… wrong, so provocatively, like some sort of playboy bunny. She looked very out of place.
“I’ll take her,” she said to the men.
“Who are you?”
“Naomi. I work for Mr. Sloane.”
“Never heard of him.” The guard who was clearly in charge motioned to another man. “We’ll take her in too.”
“You’ll be sorry if you do,” Naomi said. “Call it in. I’ll wait. Ask your boss to call Mr. Sloane.”
The guards looked at each other.
Naomi grabbed one of their radios. “I’ll do it myself.” She clicked the button. “This is Naomi, I need to speak with Mr. Sloane.”
“Standby.”
“Sloane.”
“It’s Naomi, I’m bringing a girl to you, but there’s a pack of guards harassing us.”
“Hold on.” Then, Sloane’s voice said to someone in the background, “Tell your buffoons to quit harassing my people.”
Another voice came on the line. “This is Captain Zhào. Who is this?”
Naomi handed the radio back to the man, but he stepped back, dodging it like a plague blanket. Naomi tossed it to the man who had spoken. “Good luck.” She grabbed Kate by the arm and said under her breath, “Be quiet and follow me.”
Naomi led Kate away from the guards who were desperately trying to apologize to the man on the radio.