The Old Man knew I was right, but he’d had to ask.
As I looked over at the Old Man, he looked remarkably good, especially for what he’d just gone through. I was taking a chance on him because of his age. Still, he appeared to be holding up well. I had to give him kudos for that. At the same time, I didn’t want to insult him by constantly asking him how he was doing. It didn’t matter anymore. We were equals on this mission, and we needed each other.
As we rested and ate M&M’s waiting for Marti to show up, I wondered how Pete was doing.
CHAPTER 45
The six men from Waxman Industries reported for mid-shift and went to their normal workstations. On their first break, they all went up to the warehouse and met outside the back door, as agreed. The warehouse distribution center main door was open 24/7 now, as workers were preparing for the upcoming refueling outage. Maintenance technicians were frequently going in and out of the warehouse to collect parts. But the six men weren’t there to withdraw parts and didn’t go through the main door. Jansen had provided them with a key to the side door and a location where the Waxman Industries crates had been stored since before Christmas.
Using the key, they opened the door and quietly entered the remote corner of the warehouse. Two of them stood lookout while the others went off in search of the crates. It wasn’t hard to locate them using the information they had. Using several small tools they’d smuggled in hidden in their lunch pails, two men worked to open the first crate. Inside, they found and pulled out security uniforms including the jackboots, black jumpsuits, black turtlenecks, and black hard hats normally worn by armed responders. It didn’t take them long to put them on.
The other two men opened another crate and pulled out M-16s and some Sig Sauer side arms, checked that the magazines were full, and pulled out the spares. These weren’t the weapons they would have preferred, but they were similar to the ones the real security force used, and they didn’t want to stand out. When the first two men finished dressing as security responders, each took a weapon and relieved the two lookouts so they could get dressed. Meanwhile, the others were unpacking the explosives from the crates. They didn’t need to blow doors or breach fences, so they didn’t need shaped charges or equipment necessary to penetrate a perimeter. Their job now was to set the charges around the plant that could be remotely detonated later.
After they removed the explosives and detonators from the crate, they carefully packed them in satchels that looked like the backpacks so many plant workers carried to hold their personal belongings. Their goal was to blend in as much as possible. They were prepared to fight if necessary, but that wasn’t their primary goal.
Inside one of the crates was a small bag containing six plant badges/key cards with their names and pictures already on them. Each man took his badge/key card and clipped it to a lanyard around his neck, like all plant employees’ wore. Different from the badges issued to them as contractors, these would allow them access to vital areas in the plant. Rob had these programmed in advance after the men had been hired on in December.
A separate bag that looked like it had just been put in there recently contained keys to locked high radiation areas inside the radiological controls area of the auxiliary building. These areas contained highly radioactive systems not accessible to the general plant staff. It took special monitoring and approvals to access these areas. This was the one set of keys Rob had no control over — they were under the control of the health physics supervisor at Access Control. Only Health Physics Department people — like Brenda Williams — had access to these keys.
Brenda Williams hadn’t been cooperative at first, but after they’d kidnapped her husband, she’d had no choice but to do what they’d demanded. Each of the keys had a duplicate and was seldom used. She’d had to steal the spares and could only do it a few days ago, to lessen the chance of their disappearance being noticed. The previous weekend, when it had been quiet, she’d managed to get into the lock box and steal the spares. But when she’d delivered the keys, she’d expected her husband to be released immediately. When he hadn’t, she’d started screaming and making a scene. This was when she’d had to be silenced. While not part of the original plan, Stone had grabbed her by the throat and squeezed down. Brenda struggled at first, but he’d been just too strong for her. With her eyes wide open in horror, she’d slipped into oblivion. Stone then had to find a way to hide the body. About the only way to dispose of a body on site had been over the side and into the ocean.
Rob hadn’t liked any of that. He didn’t think of himself as a murderer — which was what most people on death row said — but then, he hadn’t been the one to actually do the killing. It was one of Jansen’s men who’d done it. So Rob justified this killing in his mind as a necessary evil committed by someone else, not him.
By putting her over the side and into the ocean, at least Rob had been able to contain the situation for a while. But the whole timetable had to be moved up once that damned surfer had found her body on the beach. That wasn’t supposed to have happened. Sooner or later, someone would figure it all out and piece things together, but hopefully that would take time. And by then, they’d have everything in place and there wouldn’t be anything that could be done to stop them.
Having taken only a few minutes to dress and recover the weapons and explosives, the men reassembled the crates to look as if they hadn’t been touched, in case anyone came by this location. It was unlikely that anyone would actually look at these crates in the next few hours, but they did it nonetheless.
Each man shouldered one of the backpacks and took a weapon. They did this in near silence, grim men all. Exiting the side door of the warehouse through which they’d entered, they strode down the sidewalk toward the power plant.
CHAPTER 46
Marti was in her office trying to remain calm. It was after 2 a.m., and the adrenaline coursing through her veins because of the unfolding events did the trick to keep her awake. She didn’t know what lay ahead, but she knew she wanted to be able to contribute in some way.
She also wanted to spend a bit more time with this new person in her life, Nick. She was strangely attracted to him but didn’t know if it was his inexplicable and alluring charm or just the circumstances surrounding their meeting. This was typical for her — always overanalyzing. As she sat there thinking about what it would be like to be close to him, her phone rang and jolted her back to reality.
“Hello?” she said, hoping it was Nick.
“Ms. Callahan, this is Dave Street, shift manager. I need you to listen to me carefully. Do you know Nick Connor?”
She hesitated for a moment. She didn’t know how much to divulge. She knew who Dave was, but at this point she didn’t know whom she could trust. So she hedged her bet with a noncommittal, “Why do you ask?”
“Do you know where the package boiler room is?”
“The package boiler? No, I’m afraid not. What does that have to do with Nick?” she asked — puzzled.
“Nick asked me to have you meet him there ASAP.”
“Nick is here, on site?” she asked in a rush. “Did they let him in?”
“Not exactly. Nobody knows he’s here but me and you, and we need to keep it that way for the time being.”