One of them still had a key to the explosives locker at the mine where he used to work. The padlocks on the locker were supposed to be changed periodically, but who knew when the mine foreman would get around to it. The key still worked, and for that they were grateful. The locker was a grounded steel building as far away from structures and dwellings as was practical. Sunday night they used that key, opened the locker, and helped themselves to three cases of dynamite, blasting caps, a roll of wire, and three detonators that passed their battery checks. The roll contained about a thousand feet of wire. They really needed three rolls, so they could plant three charges, but they decided to make do with one.
Harlan Greathouse led in his pickup, and his friends in two more pickups followed him to the interstate. They stopped at a convenience store on a freeway exit, gassed up, and bought more 3.2 percent beer, the so-called non-alcoholic beer, then got back onto the highway. As they finished each can of beer, they crushed it and with a practiced flip of the wrist, tossed it into the beds of their pickups. They drove into the great valley of Virginia and across the Blue Ridge to the rolling countryside cut by old rivers that ran into the Chesapeake.
On a two-lane asphalt road that ran through bucolic countryside they found a pumping station on one of the natural-gas trunk lines that ran from Louisiana northeastward all the way to Boston. Anyone could see it was a pipeline right-of-way because the tree-less terrain covered in low weeds ran from one horizon to another and was about a hundred feet wide. This line serviced a myriad of smaller feeder lines that supplied natural gas to factories, cities, towns, and gas-fed power plants.
None of the miners had the slightest idea how big the explosion would be when they blew the pumping station. Big, they figured, big enough to perhaps ignite this stand of dry pines that stood on either side of the right-of-way. They saw in the moonlight — it was four in the morning — that each stand consisted of about five acres of trees. A quick reconnaissance revealed that these two stands were surrounded by pastures and meadows as far as the eye could see, with here and there a modest house and its associated barn. Cattle grazed in the pastures. The nearest house was perhaps five hundred yards beyond the edge of the trees, so they figured no one there would be injured by the blast.
Harlan thought this a good place. They could set one case of dynamite, unroll perhaps four hundred feet of wire off the roll, cut it, and rig it to a detonator. The loss of line pressure after the explosion would cause emergency shutoff valves farther up and down the line to secure the flow of gas. Those power plants to the northeast that depended on this line would be down until gas from other, interconnecting lines, could be routed to them. The explosion would no doubt obliterate this pumping station, and it would eventually need to be rebuilt.
“They should have stayed with coal,” one of the miners said, chuckling, just loud enough to be heard.
The pumping station, about a half-acre in size, was surrounded by a ten-foot-high chain-link fence topped with three strands of barbed wire and was lit by floodlights on poles. There was a gate, of course, and it was padlocked.
The gate wasn’t a problem. The miners hooked a tow chain around one of the fence posts, hooked the other end to a tow-hitch, and pulled it down.
They all knew how to handle dynamite. In less than five minutes they had divided a case of dynamite into three charges, one of which was set on the main inlet line — about three feet in diameter — another on the line out, and one on the main pump itself. Between the pump and the charges on the lines were the safety cutoff valves, which were going to be destroyed too. One car went by without slowing while they worked. They inserted the blasting caps, wired up a harness that they mated to the caps, then unrolled an estimated four hundred feet of wire, cut it, and turned the pickups around.
Harlan Greathouse thought he should be the one to trigger the blast. The other two pickups went on west a half mile or so to the crest of a low hill as he wired up the detonator. He took cover behind his pickup and lifted the safety lever. Took a deep breath and pushed the button.
The resulting explosion wasn’t really that bad. But it was followed by a hurricane of noise as natural gas under pressure hissed from the ruptured line. That lasted just long enough to register on Harlan’s ears, then the gas was ignited by molten hotspots in the steel. A giant explosion resulted. Trees were flattened to the east and west. The stupendous fireball from the blast rose in a monstrous flaming mushroom cloud.
The pickup truck absorbed the peak pressure of the shockwave from the concussion of the gas explosion, thereby saving Harlan from being crushed. However, even with the dubious shelter of his shattered truck, he perished within a second or so as the pulse of superheated air scorched and fried him to blackened gristle. The heat pulse also set the ten acres of now-flattened pines instantly aflame.
Within a minute the gas flowing from the ruptured lines slowed as pressure bled off. Air rushing back into the blast area and escaping gas fed a blowtorch flame that rose at least three hundred feet in the air. The initial fireball, now expanding into a mushroom cloud and turning from yellow to red and orange, rose and rose into the sky, lighting the countryside as bright as day.
Harlan Greathouse’s friends came driving madly back, but one look in the light of the burning gas told the story. They turned their pickups around in the road and roared away to the west toward the distant mountains.
As dawn was breaking Tuesday in Galveston, Snyder, Aranado, and three men, all of whom Jugs knew from her naval reserve weekends, were aboard Texas checking her out. Speedy Gonzales was a nuclear engineer, Mouse Moore was a first-class petty officer with twelve years in attack subs, and Junior Smith was a third-class who had served aboard Polaris boats. All Texans, all foursquare for independence, they had volunteered immediately.
Using flashlights, they inspected everything they could see, opened panels and examined wiring and fittings, checked the galley for provisions, and all came to the same conclusion. Texas was ready for sea. The former crew’s personal effects were still aboard, uniforms, underwear, hygiene items, letters from wives and girlfriends. The batteries had a good charge on them. It was as if the crew had mustered on the pier and marched off, leaving everything. Although Snyder and his crew didn’t know it, that was pretty much what had happened.
All five gathered in the control room and discussed their inspections. “She’s ready to go, I believe,” Speedy said. “A full load of Tomahawks and torpedoes, plenty of food and water, more than ample for five people. The batteries seem okay, the checklists are in place and apparently complete.” He spoke like a judge, weighing every word before he uttered it because it would appear on the court reporter’s transcript.
“Mouse?” Loren asked.
“She’s ready to go, Mr. Snyder.” Snyder was an officer, and under no conceivable circumstances would Mouse Moore address him familiarly. He had spent too many years in uniform. In his bunkroom he might tell his shipmates his opinion of Loren or Jugs, but he would never address either of them that way to their faces. It was a mark in his favor: Mouse was a good sailor who would always obey orders.
Junior Smith was cut from a slightly different pattern. He had been doused in naval tradition and most of it had washed off. He was a civilian at heart, and so he said, “Loren, I’m willing to go to sea in her.”
“Just precisely what do you plan, Mr. Snyder?” Jugs asked, preferring to address Loren formally.
“I want to get the reactor cooking again, check that every system is working properly, run some drills to ensure we don’t entomb ourselves, and if we’re all cool, cast off and get the hell out of Dodge before the SEALs show up. They can’t get at us if we’re submerged.”