Meltdown Read online

  Alexi surprised himself by smiling, wishing Andrei were here now to help him. He’d left with his wife and two boys after the reactor fire, and Alexi had never heard from them again.

  “Well, Andrei, you’d be proud of me now, you would. I’m going to get out of here.”

  He stepped once again on the creaky broken chair, holding tight to the window ledge. With a deep breath, he stood and started pulling himself through the opening, just as he’d seen Pasha do.

  A moment of exertion…and he was through.

  He crouched on the roof of the church, feeling more alive than he’d felt in ages. The clouds were being pushed along by gusts of wind that shook the spring leaves on the trees. There was no sign of life in the village. The only evidence of the foreigners who had locked him inside was an old gray cargo truck parked beside the church. Its bed was covered with a brown tarpaulin.

  Whoever these men were, they were evil, malenke. Very bad. I’m coming, Mother.

  The old wooden fence stopped against the side of the church, reaching to within a foot of the eaves. Alexi shuffled down to the edge of the roof on his rear end, ignoring the splintery wooden shingles.

  Frantic to get home, he clambered down onto the top of the fence. But the wood was older than he was, and just as he put his full weight upon it, the planks groaned and gave way.

  Alexi’s heart nearly stopped as he toppled backward, arms wind-milling behind him. He stifled a cry just before landing with a crunch in an overgrown shrub that broke his fall.

  He was laughing again. “Ah, Andrei, if you could see me now.” Still chuckling, he rolled several times and landed on the ground with a thud. He got to his feet and brushed the twigs and leaves from his clothes, noticing for the first time the trickle of blood from a cut on his hand.

  Rather than risk being seen on the road, he took the path through the woods. When he arrived at his home, the front door was open.

  Fear gripped him, only to be quickly replaced by anger. After all he’d been through, he was ready to fight for Mother if need be. She never wanted to leave this house. He would give his life before he would let them take her away.

  He stepped inside. The house had been ransacked. Blood rose in his face when he saw that the icon of Saint Nicholas had been torn from its place on the wall and thrown on the floor. Varvary! He picked it up and clutched it to his chest. What men could be such barbarians?

  Stepping farther inside, over the shards of his broken shaving mug, he spied the door to Mother’s room—and froze. It was open. Mother’s door is never open. Mother likes her privacy.

  Suddenly timid, he moved to the doorway and peered inside, his heart beating as if it wanted to escape from his chest.

  Tears welled up in his eyes when he saw her, there under her covers as she had been the last time he had peered into her room. It seemed like a lifetime ago. They hadn’t taken her after all.

  He let out a ragged sob. “I’m sorry, Mother. Foreigners came and made a mess of the house, and they locked me in the vestry. But I got out the window. Now everything will be all right. I won’t let them take you. Don’t worry. They won’t take you away. I promise.”

  He sobbed again, the tears running down his face. He turned away and went to his room and yanked open the bottom drawer of the dresser he’d had since he was a child. With trembling hands, he dug through a pile of clothes until he felt the bottle of vodka. They hadn’t taken that either. He snatched his father’s old brass lighter off the floor and stomped out the door to the kitchen where he found a bag of sugar still in the cupboard.

  “Don’t worry,” he called over his shoulder. “I’ll make sure they don’t bother us again!”

  When he slammed the front door, the breeze carried into Mother’s room, causing a wisp of white hair to fall down over her shriveled and lifeless eye sockets. Eyes that hadn’t seen in over fifteen years.

  Near the Reactor the Dead Zone

  A breeze rustled through the trees, and the noise it made was a good thing. Mary fretted, though, tapping her finger on the trigger guard of her assault rifle as she waited for John and Sweeney to finish covering the two ATVs with brush. What was making her impatient was the reading on the Geiger counter, which had been hovering around 1,100 millisieverts for the last twenty minutes.

  They had decided to go on foot from here because of their proximity to the reactor and its garrison of Ukrainian soldiers. Besides, according to the GPS, they were within six hundred meters of the lab. But that put them only about three hundred meters from the ghost town of Pripyat, whose derelict high-rise apartment complexes were visible through the trees.

  John and Sweeney finished their work quickly, communicating only with looks and hand gestures. Mary was amazed at how they did that. Amazed, and a little jealous. It was like a secret handshake that they shared with each other and not with her. She also felt silly for getting so upset at Sweeney before. John had been very diplomatic about pointing out that the Task Force Valor team had been attached to the CIA specifically for their tactical skills, and it would be counterproductive to hobble them now that they were in a tactical environment. She could see the logic in that.

  But why does it bother you so much then?

  She didn’t have a problem conceding that these men had more tactical training, even though she herself had been through the CIA’s special operators’ course, which included weapons training and even parachuting. But what didn’t sit well was the insinuation that she couldn’t hack anything just because she was a girl. She’d spent her whole life disproving that notion, and it irked her to think she would never be rid of it.

  A horn sounded in the distance. They all stopped what they were doing and looked up. Rip tapped his wristwatch and mouthed the words “Shift change.” John nodded and motioned for them to move out.

  Sweeney took point at a fast walk, carrying the GPS unit, and Rip brought up the rear carrying the sniper rifle. John motioned for Mary to fall in behind Sweeney. As she passed John, he whispered, “Keep an eye on the Geiger counter, okay?”

  Mary nodded and jogged a few steps to catch up with Sweeney. Their path had once been a road, but now there were trees the size of her wrist growing up in places through the cracks in the asphalt. From the looks of the pushed-over and crushed underbrush, it was apparent that someone had driven through here recently.

  The Geiger counter was pushing 1,300. Not good. The amount of time they could stay in an area this hot was measured in minutes, not hours.

  They passed through what remained of a high chain-link fence, now rusted and almost invisible underfoot, barely hanging from what few metal fence posts remained standing on either side of the path. Mary was sweating, but was it more from exertion or worry?

  Sweeney froze and raised a fist to signal a stop. He pointed to his eyes and then off to his left front in a gesture that said, Look at that.

  Mary stepped forward and saw the concrete doorway built into the side of a mound of earth. The entrance to the lab? A shiver worked its way up her spine when she realized that the door looked almost the same as the bunker in Panama where she had almost died.

  John was beside her. “You and Bobby go take a look inside,” he whispered. “Rip and I will stand guard.” He tapped the Geiger counter. “Don’t stay long.”

  Gee, thanks. She certainly wouldn’t have minded if he’d sent someone else, not that she would ever admit it. She hustled up to Sweeney, and together they approached the doorway.

  Sweeney raised his weapon and hit the switch on the SureFire tactical light affixed to its side. “You got the camera?” he growled.

  “Yep,” she said, patting a pocket on her tactical vest, then turning on her own tac-light. “Let’s hurry.”

  Sweeney stepped through the door, looking over the top of his weapon as he swept what had once been a guard room. Other than some unrecognizable metal debris and a length of thick rope, the room was empty. On one wall were the remnants of some sort of electrical mechanism, judging from the fray
ed wire ends protruding from the wall. Opposite that was a large, open double door.

  Sweeney stepped deftly around the rubble, then whistled in surprise. “Long way down.”

  Mary went to his side and saw that it was an empty elevator shaft, descending into blackness. She couldn’t gauge the depth of the hole.

  “Over here,” Sweeney said, motioning to a second door, which opened to a stairway leading down. He disappeared into it and she followed.

  A cool draft of air hit her. It stank of mildew with a slight chemical tinge that made her nauseous and brought back a flood of unwelcome and very recent memories. She could again feel the cold, hard concrete of her cell in Panama and the rough hands of her kidnapper. She shivered at the thought of the handcuffs that he had used to chain her to a pipe. For a moment, she could even remember the smell of smoke and his cheap cologne.

  Her heart was beating way too fast. She willed herself not to hyperventilate.

  Sweeney stopped descending the stairs and turned around to look at her. “You okay?” he whispered.

  That was all it took to snap her out of it. “I’m fine. Go!”

  Sweeney descended the metal stairway. It spiraled down a vertical shaft like the inside of a lighthouse. There was no use in being quiet, as their footfalls echoed off the metal stairs, so they descended into the gloom as quickly as possible. This left Mary a little dizzy by the time they again stepped onto concrete.

  Their tac-lights stabbed garish holes in the darkness, revealing a subterranean hallway made of block walls that had once been white, giving it the appearance of a hospital in a horror movie. She could see several doors set into the walls leading off in each direction, and a large open room directly to their front that looked like it might have been the main laboratory by the long tables that were still there.

  Mary shivered. The reading on the Geiger counter had dropped to around 250. “Look,” she said to Sweeney.

  He glanced at it and shook his head. “I never thought I’d say this, but I can’t wait to get back to where the radiation is.”

  Mary pulled a digital camera from her pocket and dropped the radiation meter into the pocket where it had been. “Me too. This place is creepy. Let’s split up. You take that side and I’ll go this way. Yell if you find any large metal canisters.”

  They moved in opposite directions down the hallway. Mary peered into each room she passed, finding most of them empty. Some had clearly been used for storage, but now, except for moldering wooden shelves, they were completely bare. Graffiti littered the walls in a few places.

  Not much to take pictures of.

  “Over here,” Sweeney called from the other end of the hallway. “I’ve got something.”

  She hustled to where he was standing. He pointed to a solid metal door with a large shiny lock affixed to the outside.

  She furrowed her brow. “This might be what we’re looking for.” She snapped a photo of the door and the lock.

  “How are we going to get in?” Sweeney asked. “We can’t shoot it, in case there are explosives left inside.”

  She thought for a moment. “Actually, we can. Remember, the chemical is diluted in its original state to make it nonexplosive. The lab in Panama was distilling it to its pure form, remember?”

  Sweeney’s eyes shot up. “Good point. In that case…stand back.”

  Mary took two steps back.

  Sweeney pointed to the corner. “You probably want to go over there. This thing’s liable to ricochet.”

  This time, she didn’t argue. She crouched in the corner while Sweeney’s assault rifle spat flame three times, the 7.62-millimeter rounds shattering the lock with a thunderous roar that echoed up and down the hallway long after the firing stopped. Sweeney kicked the door with his boot. Nothing happened. He fumbled with the latch for a moment, then pulled, grunting as the door scraped outward.

  As soon as he got it open, Mary was past him, shining her light inside. It was a small storeroom the size of a walk-in closet. Concrete all around. But no bottles.

  Empty.

  “I guess the scientist sold it all,” she said.

  “Hope so. Let’s git.”

  “All the way down here for nothing,” Mary said, checking the corners of the room again.

  “Come on,” Sweeney said, already halfway down the hall. She followed.

  When they reached the bottom of the stairwell and took their first steps up, she tried raising John on the radio. “Valor One, this is Phoenix, over.”

  The team sergeant came back immediately. “Phoenix, this is One. We heard shooting. What’ve you got? Over.”

  “It’s empty. We’re coming out.”

  “Roger that. Wait…” The transmission cut out.

  Three seconds later, John’s voice returned, more urgent than before. “Move! We’re taking fire!”

  Before she could blink, Sweeney sprinted past her up the stairs.

  Chicago, Illinois

  Clad in black from head to toe, Samael Berg’s face was invisible in the moonless night as he paddled a small inflatable kayak along the smelly Calumet River. There was no time to waste. The news was already buzzing with stories of possible terror attacks taking place on the West Coast.

  So the Panamanian is doing his job. Excellent.

  But now it was time to fan the flames—to spread them across the country so that no American could feel safe.

  Not three hours earlier, he had taken possession of the product from an independent freight man he had hired from a Web site. He declined a receipt, and the cash payment ensured his anonymity.

  Then he’d gone to work.

  The cheap inflatable raft wasn’t durable, but it didn’t need to be. It had been bright orange out of the box, so Samael had spray-painted it flat black. He’d then loaded it in his rented box van and driven to his preplanned parking spot in an abandoned lot in a run-down neighborhood in south Chicago. From there, it had been an easy trek across Torrence Avenue, some railroad tracks, and a garbage-strewn patch of woods to the river’s edge.

  His objective rose up ahead of him: the enormous train yard at Irondale.

  As he passed beneath the bridge on 106th Street, he could see the vast coal storage yard, more than a hundred acres in size, piled with five-story-tall mountains of coal bound for iron smelters on the south shore of Lake Michigan.

  Even though it was well after dark, the yard was being prowled by huge bucket loaders filling their maws with coal from one of the piles and then rumbling off to the other end of the yard to load a line of dump trucks. Long conveyor belts jutted above several of the piles, dropping steady streams of coal brought in by barge or by train.

  Perfect. If he placed it correctly, it would take only one of the bottles of clear liquid he had stashed between his feet to set a blaze that would take weeks to put out.

  But he had brought three bottles, just to be sure.

  He paddled to shore and stashed the boat under some low-hanging trees. With great care, he extricated himself from the inflatable kayak. He wasn’t worried about staying dry but about dropping one of the precious bottles into the slimy black water.

  He secured the boat and hid in the shadows, watching as one of the bucket loaders approached, bouncing on its seven-foot balloon tires while its headlights stabbed erratic patterns in the dust kicked up from another machine’s passing. Giant klieg lights overhead illuminated pools of gray in a sea of black. Dressed as he was, Samael would be all but invisible.

  After watching their pattern for half an hour, he determined that he would have a little less than sixty seconds to do what he must. In that time, he would need to cross one hundred yards of open ground to the place where the machines were scooping coal from one of the piles, set his charges where they would be struck by one of the loaders, and get out of sight before another machine rounded the corner.

  He looked at his watch as a machine gouged several tons of coal from the pile, pivoted, and drove off in a cloud of diesel smoke.

  Now
!

  He ran at a low crouch, clutching the trio of bottles like a nuclear football. When he reached the pile, he put the bottles down and began digging with his hands to make a space for the bottle where the machines were digging. But the chunks of coal were larger than they’d looked, and every time he pulled one away, more cascaded down in its place.

  Sweat dripped down his forehead, washing the black makeup into his eyes. He was getting nowhere. It was like trying to dig a hole in a pile of loose sand. He stole a glance at his watch.

  Thirty seconds. He dug frantically at the pile, getting nowhere.

  Forget it! He placed two bottles at his feet and scooped coal down over them, silently cursing himself for not thinking of it sooner.

  There was no time to emplace the third bottle. Breathing heavily, he scooped it up and ran toward the wood line.

  That was when he tripped.

  Almost in slow motion, he pitched forward, involuntarily throwing his arms out and losing his grip on the third bottle. In that split second, his mind screamed, No! He wrapped his arms over his head as he plowed face first into the filthy, oil-soaked coal dust, knowing it would do nothing to shield him from the blast.

  But the fireball didn’t come. Samael lifted his head to see the bottle skittering away, unbroken. It is a miracle!

  He heard the end loader returning.

  He jumped to his feet and sprinted toward the tree line, not bothering to retrieve the third bottle.

  When he reached the shadows once again, he felt like it was liquid explosive, not blood, coursing through his veins, threatening to detonate any second. He gasped for breath as he sloshed into the ice-cold, knee-deep current, then slid back into the kayak. Seconds later, he was paddling with all his remaining strength toward the place where he had left his van.

  He felt for the folding knife in his pocket. It was still in place.

  Good. As soon as he reached the shore, the cheap inflatable boat would be heading straight to the bottom of the Calumet.