CHAPTER
12
AN HOUR LATER Puller was leaning against a fifty-gallon oil drum in a workshop facility near the DB. The man he was talking to, Al Jordan, had been the crew chief for the group that had repaired the blown transformers. He was in his early fifties, with pewter gray hair and a barrel chest set atop skinny legs.
“So it was definitely the storm that fried the transformers?”
Jordan wiped his hands on a rag and then lifted his cap and wiped sweat from his brow. “That’s sure what it looked like to me. The two transformers were part of a small substation. Encircled by a chain-link fence that was locked. The station had lots of safety devices built in, but that storm had enough power to do just about anything it wanted to. You can’t trump Mother Nature.”
“And the transformers were connected to DB?” asked Puller.
“Yep. Along with other facilities around here. We got them back up and running as fast as we could. We didn’t even wait for the storm to stop.”
Puller understood this. The military was mission first, not safety first.
“So anything unusual you might have noticed?”
Jordan considered this. “I can’t say that there was. Those transformers just blew. Probably hit by the lightning. They were all burned up.”
“Isn’t it unusual that they both blew?”
“Well, they’re connected. One gets hit, there’s gonna be an effect on the other as well. Too much juice, anything can happen.”
“You said they had lots of safety devices built in. Don’t they ground them?”
“Yes, in addition to other protections like an arrestor for secondary induced surges, but none of them are perfect. You get a direct hit with enough power I don’t care what you’ve done to avoid damage. That sucker is going. A lightning bolt can carry one hundred and twenty million volts or more. You slam that into a transformer in a millisecond, well, can you say ‘boom’?”
“So, like an explosion?”
“Very much like one.”
“Could it have been a bomb?”
Jordan looked at him in surprise. “A bomb? In a transformer?”
“Yes. It could have taken out both transformers.”
“What, to knock power out to the prison, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“But they got backups,” protested Jordan.
“They failed too. And a prisoner escaped. Which is the only reason I’m here.”
Jordan scratched his cheek. “I don’t know if it was a bomb. I guess people who know bombs can check it out.”
“Have they?”
“Don’t know.”
“You talked to anyone else who’s investigating this?”
“I have. They asked the same sort of questions you did.”
“But not about a possible bomb?”
“What makes you say that?” Jordan asked suspiciously.
“Well, you were surprised when I asked you about the possibility of a bomb. If they had asked you as well, I don’t think you would have been surprised when I did.”
“Oh, right. Well, they didn’t ask about a bomb, as a matter of fact.”
“Where are the transformers that blew?”
“They took them away.”
“Who took them away?”
Jordan shifted his stance a bit. “Some people.”
“Those people have names or credentials?”
“They outranked me. That’s all that mattered.”
“So no names?” Puller persisted. “No releases signed? You had to cover your butt somehow.”
Jordan shrugged. “I just took it on faith, I guess.”
Puller gave the man an incredulous look. “Then you should reconsider your faith.”
The next stop for Puller was the backup generator. It was housed in a concrete bunker about a hundred yards to the rear of the DB. The gas lines powering it ran underground. The bunker was also partially underground and surrounded by a ten-foot-high fence topped with concertina wire. There was a guard stationed there. Puller had called ahead and two men were waiting for him.
He climbed out of his car and approached. They were in uniform and carried the ranks of E-4 specialists. With their glasses and scrawny builds they looked to him like nerds playing soldier. He gave a detailed explanation of why he was there, and they led him into the bunker and down a short flight of stairs until they arrived at three mammoth generators.
“I thought there’d only be one of them,” said Puller.
“The electrical load requirement for DB is very substantial,” said one of the E-4s. “These generators are run in parallel but with sophisticated control features. It’ll provide the load required but not more, so the waste is minimal.”
“What was the cause of the failure?” asked Puller.
One specialist looked at the other, who cleared his throat. “It was a fuel problem.”
“Fuel? I thought the fuel it ran on was natural gas.”
“These are bi-fuel systems,” said the other E-4. “Natural gas and diesel.”
“Why two fuels?”
“Natural gas puts us at the control of the utility. Army doesn’t like that. Something happens to the gas flow, we’re shit out of luck. The way the system works, the main power fails, the diesel fuel component to the generator comes on and runs the system initially. Then the natural gas feed will be introduced by the system’s controller into the fuel mix after certain criteria are satisfied—the requisite electrical load acceptance, for example. The diesel also serves as the pilot light for the natural gas, which has an ignition temperature of about twelve hundred degrees Fahrenheit. That way if the natural gas flow is interrupted we have on-site fuel under our control. The system will typically run on a seventy-five to twenty-five gas to diesel mixture.”
“So what happened to cause it to fail? You said there was a fuel problem?”
“The best we can tell, there was either a diesel oxidation degradation problem or a microorganism contamination issue.”
“In English?” said Puller patiently.
The E-4 explained, “Diesel can degrade over time. Oxidation can occur in the first year of storage, forming sediment and gum. When introduced into the system they can clog fuel filters and injectors, just like gunk in a car engine. Now, microorganisms are introduced via water condensation in the fuel lines, which promotes bacteria and fungi. They feed on the fuel. They can form colonies that clog the lines as well.”
“But I presume you have protocols in place that would prevent those problems from happening.”
When the men said nothing, Puller exclaimed sharply, “The Army has procedures for toilet paper usage. Are you saying they had none for maintenance of a power system for the military’s most important prison?”
The same E-4 said hastily, “No, no, they do. Lots of them. But it might have still happened. There was a lot of rain this year and we got some underground seepage into the bunker. That could have caused excessive condensation buildup. And these generators are very near the end of their useful life. In fact, they should have been replaced about two years ago.”
“Sequestration cuts brought the hammer down on that,” pointed out the other E-4. “And the Army also bought some bad diesel that’s been working its way through the system.”
“Okay. So you checked out the generator and found the lines all, what, gummed up, with microorganisms, sediment?”
“That’s pretty much what we did find, yes sir.”
“And that caused the generator to fail?”
They both nodded. One added, “And without the diesel serving as the pilot light, you can’t ignite the natural gas. So, no fuel source connection. That means no power.”
“And a prison with no locked doors,” said Puller as he stared at both men. “So you two are the principal caretakers of this equipment?”
“Yes sir,” they said together.
“Well, you might want to make alternate plans for your future.”
“Meaning exactly what, sir?” asked one of them anxiously.
“Meaning that the Army, in its infinite wisdom, must affix blame for this clusterfuck. And you two are as likely candidates as any I’ve seen so far.”
The E-4s exchanged a shocked glance as Puller headed out of the bunker and back to daylight.