To not think about all those missing bolts at the key leverage points.
When his breathing slowed, he willed himself to conjure an image to replace Tim’s face. He thought of Sabrina on the video, Sabrina with the cuff on her wrist. That was why he had to climb. It would be better to die here than not to climb.
Once you get in motion, stay in motion, he instructed himself. If you’re moving, you can’t lock up. The longer you stay still, the harder it becomes to get going again. He reached up, grasped the next bar of steel with his right hand, and took a step. His whole body shook, and he wondered if Pate could tell how he was struggling, if he understood yet that he’d picked the wrong man for the job.
Keep climbing.
Sixty feet, seventy, eighty, sure the whole time that he was going to faint and fall. Even continuing the climb offered little reassurance-the real danger waited not below but above, the corona effect crackling like laughter as the lines watched him climb.
Tim had no eyes, no face. Just those curled black ribbons of flesh, like charcoal shavings…
He climbed on. Inside the suit he was soaked with a thin cold sweat. Above him the lines hissed and spit with their distinct, menacing sound, the air alive with current that would sweep through his suit. The sensation was like a thousand ants crawling over his skin, a swarm of strange tingling. He gritted his teeth. The Faraday suit kept you alive in the current, but it didn’t make you comfortable. All that voltage crawled over your skin, a feeling that was both unpleasant and exhausting.
At the top of the arm, the insulators hung pointed toward the earth. They were made of a series of porcelain disks, each disk designed to support a designated voltage, the sum of the parts great enough to handle the massive voltage load of the transmission lines. He stopped fifteen feet below them, thought, I made it, and then made the mistake of looking up and out, following the path of the lines into the distance. The lines spread out over the landscape like fine black threads, every bit as intricate and delicate as a spiderweb, except that these threads were actually the veins of a nation.
And you’re about to pull them down.
This time he nearly did faint. The immovable mountains seemed to slide closer to him and then fall away, and he was aware of how radiantly blue the sky was as it spun over him and then swam into a gray haze as his muscles went liquid and he shut his eyes and regripped the steel, no longer believing it would hold him up.
Then the radio came to life.
“Is that high enough for our task, Jay?”
Jay opened his eyes, taking care to look only at his hands and not the open expanse around him. He held tight to the tower with his right hand while he removed the radio from his pocket with his left. The simple performance of a minor physical task made the dizziness dissipate.
“Any higher and you risk turning this cable into an energized conductor,” Jay said. “That would be worse for you than me.”
It would, in fact, kill Pate instantly. As appealing as that idea was, one of Jay’s priorities had to be keeping Pate alive. Whoever else was listening on this radio, waiting on his command, knew where Sabrina was and knew the arrangement-if the power died, she lived. To kill Pate would be to kill Sabrina.
“I appreciate your concern, but that would be very bad for your bride as well,” Pate said, confirming Jay’s thoughts. “I think our leverage point is fine. Secure the cable and come down for the next. You’ll need to start climbing faster.”
Jay pocketed the radio, swung the hot stick from over his shoulder, and wrapped the cable three times around the steel arm. He kept his focus tight on his hands, tried not to think about the sky or the mountains or the broad sweep of the lines across the land. Looking at the horizon was a mistake he couldn’t make again, and looking up at the crackling lines might be even worse.
The hot stick, which could telescope up to ten feet but was collapsed to five, was outfitted with a crimping head, one of the dozens of tools you could attach to it. Once the cable was looped around the steel, Jay twisted the free end around the line that led back down to the fir trees and used the crimper to bind them tight. The result was a taut, secured cable between the top of the tower on the north side of the tracks and the trees on the south side. It crossed the railroad tracks at chest-level. Even if the engineer saw the cables in the darkness, he wouldn’t be able to stop before he made contact with them. With that much power dragging them forward, the cables wouldn’t need to hold long either. They’d just need to tug. Mass and momentum would handle the rest.
“One line set,” Pate said. “Five to go.”
Five more climbs.
Jay closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and started back down.
Pate’s voice came over the radio again, but this time he wasn’t speaking to Jay. It was a message for the unknown parties who waited out in the mountains, chain saws in hand.
“Stand at the ready,” he said. “We are under way at ground zero.”
He’d never sounded happier.
61
Janell had the GPS coordinates programmed, and the Yukon that smelled of wet dog fur was purring down the highway, the cruise control locked in at three miles over the limit. Excruciatingly slow, but necessary. She couldn’t afford any more delays; the sequencing of time and miles was already too tight, but if she managed to keep it at this pace, she would beat the sunset.
That would be enough. To be there when the world went dark would be enough. Her head ached and the road swam in front of her eyes until she blinked hard and shook herself awake. She couldn’t remember when she’d last slept. It felt like the endless road had been all she’d known for weeks now. Cassadaga seemed as far away as Rotterdam.
It was such a large country, and nothing connected it on a drive this long but the ribbons of highway and the power lines. The land blended subtly, and you were well into new terrain when you realized just how astonishingly different it was from the place you’d last been. She’d started among orange trees and humid breezes, and now there was snow on mountains that looked so far removed from that place that it seemed to be another country entirely.
Once it had been.
Maybe it should have stayed that way.
She considered turning on the radio and listening to the news reports, curious about any theories that had surfaced regarding the sad fate of Deputy Terrell and whether they’d identified Doug’s corpse yet, but decided she didn’t want the distraction. Not now, when she was so close.
The GPS told her she was only thirty-three minutes out. The sun was harsh and slanted in the driver’s window, as if it didn’t want to give up the day without a fight, but it would soon be down, and when she reached Eli, she doubted there would be more than a pale pink glow left.
That seemed perfect.
There was a handheld radio resting on the console, turned on, waiting for his voice. When it came, the joy she felt made her move her foot to the brake pedal, as if she might not be able to drive and handle the euphoria simultaneously. She wanted to pick up the radio and speak back, to rejoice with him, but he was clearly giving instructions to someone. The returning voice was unknown to her, but it seemed he was the climber, and he was at work.
The radio fell silent for a few seconds, and then Eli’s voice came again.
“Stand at the ready. We are under way at ground zero.”
Alone in a dead man’s car, Janell began to laugh.
62
You changed the rules, little bitch. You’re going to wish you hadn’t.”
The voice was the first thing Sabrina was aware of. A man’s voice, but high and lilting, positively giddy. A stream of repetitive chatter.