The lifeguard swimmer towing the ponytailed guy reached shore and tried to drag the ponytailed guy onto the sand but the guy looked like dead weight, and then somehow I was there beside them, getting my sandals wet, looking for a clear patch of arm to grab hold of, watching out for bits and pieces of jellyfish, and Tolliver was there too, and the three of us dragged the ponytailed guy up onto dry sand but our rescue was too little too late because the guy was staring dead-eyed at the sky and his red welted chest was rigid as stone.
Tolliver started chest compressions.
The lifeguard swimmer collapsed. His back twitched. Spasms in his back. He yelled ouch ouch ouch oh my god oh my god oh my god. And then he stopped yelling and started gasping and his breathing became shallow and his skin, which had started to dry in the warmth of the sun, turned slick with sweat.
I heard the wail of sirens.
I shot a glance at Walter. He was sitting back on his heels. Slumping. The woman in the black swimsuit was still, gone.
Tolliver sat back on his heels, giving up on the ponytailed guy.
Four dead.
Seven unconscious, being tended by three EMT teams.
Five welted and stung but upright, being tended by another two EMT teams.
The onlookers sat huddled on their beach blankets.
Sand castles had been kicked into oblivion.
In the water, the bloom had thinned to stragglers riding the current out through the mouth of the harbor.
I tried to make sense of it. I couldn't.
Tolliver was working his cell phone, voice like a blade, cutting through whatever confusion was on the other end of the line, demanding information, and then he was on the horn with the Coast Guard talking ocean currents and local tides, and then his sweat-streaked face went gray and he hissed, “Diablo?”
Walter said, “Diablo?”
Tolliver put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Diablo Canyon, the nuclear power plant down the coast a few miles. They ran into some trouble.”
I went cold. Last summer Walter and I had encountered troublesome nuclear material. Again, now? I couldn't understand why a bloom of jellyfish riding the currents — even this extraordinarily toxic bloom — posed a threat to a nuclear power plant.
But, diablo.
Now there was a word that raised an alarm.
I had a little Spanish and I knew that word, the Spanish word for devil.
When Tolliver got off the phone I explained the translation.
He said, grimly, “Let's go have a look.”
CHAPTER 31
We took the Breaker.
It seemed that every official vehicle in Morro Bay was on the move. Coast Guard vessels and helicopters and the lone Morro Bay Police Department chopper all headed southward, following the currents, tracking the bloom, heading for the beaches to the south.
Tolliver had also dispatched one PD boat up the channel to search the back bay, on the lookout for more moon jellies.
We could have taken Tolliver’s car to the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant but the route by road was slower than by sea.
And so we drove to the dock and piled aboard the police boat.
Tolliver took the helm and Walter and I stood gripping the rails and the Breaker charged out of the harbor and headed south.
We skimmed the coastline and passed a gray sand beach that was uninhabited save for a couple of horseback riders. No swimmers in sight. Indeed, the entire stretch of coastline was wild and uninhabited, just bluffs and rocky coves and crashing waves.
Along the way Tolliver explained everything he’d learned.
Trouble, in spades.
Ten minutes later we saw two white reactor containment domes hulking up above a long low-slung building on a bluff at the ocean’s edge, and then Tolliver skewed his boat into a sharp turn and charged into the little cove where the nuke plant sat.
The Breaker idled just offshore of the waterfall of heated water tumbling into the sea.
Tolliver was on his phone again, consulting with plant officials, getting the latest details.
He updated us.
The Diablo Canyon plant cooled its hot fuel rods by sucking in seawater and circulating it through pipes to absorb the heat from the active rods and to cool the spent fuel pools, and then discharged the now-warmed water back into the sea — that pretty waterfall spilling out of a concrete mouth.
Today, the intake system had sucked in moon jellyfish.
As soon as the jellyfish hit the cooling-water intake racks, alarms sounded and operators took one reactor offline and reduced power to the other.
They knew the drill.
It had happened before, gelatinous sea creatures coming in on the tide, plastering themselves against the debris screen, clogging the crucial intake system.
The cleanup had been costly and messy.
Divers had to go down to scrape off the intruders.
The Diablo people knew the drill.
This time — while we were rushing to the Morro Rock beach — divers at the Diablo plant were being sent down to scrape and clean the debris screen.
The two divers had joked about making sushi.
One diver got moon jelly tentacles across the face. The other diver did not, and survived, but he was not making jokes.
I listened to Tolliver relate the story of Diablo Canyon, and I thought about the beach at Morro Rock. In effect, there were two concurrent events involving deadly moon jellyfish. Where the hell were they coming from?
Tolliver was instructed to move to the next cove southward.
The plant facilities sprawled along a sloping terrace, spanning several coves cut into the rugged coastline. The Breaker motored around the corner to the next cove, which was embraced by two brawny breakwater arms.
This was the intake cove, where pipes sucked in cooling seawater.
And jellyfish.
There was nothing to see now, save for another long low-slung building perched on the bluff with a concrete curtain that dropped down into the sea. Some sort of debris shield, I assumed, which could not be expected to screen out slippery gelatinous debris.
Tolliver nosed his boat over to a small dock, cut the engine, tied off the mooring rope.
We disembarked and headed up the dock.
Our way was blocked by a plant official, a guy in a hard hat with a harried expression who pointedly asked how he could be of assistance to the Morro Bay PD.
Tolliver said, “We're following up a lead on a case.”
“Here?” the official said.
I looked around. The water was placid in this sweet little cove. The ambulance and the coroner's van had come and gone for the stung divers. The jellyfish still clogged the intake screens but they were under the water and well out of sight. I wasn't sure where to begin. All I had was Lanny Keasling’s devils, which may or may not have referred to moon jellyfish, which may or may not have referred specifically to moon jellyfish at Diablo Canyon. And if Lanny had been referring to this morning’s event, how could he have predicted that last night?
But diablo meant devil in Spanish.
Tolliver said, “To start with, we're trying to find out where the jellyfish came from.”
The plant official said, “Then you'd better talk to the jellyfish lady.”
We all three came alert.
“From Cal Poly, just down the coast. She consulted last time jellies clogged our pipes. Manager called her this time and she came right away. You wait here. I'll go get her.”
Violet Russell swept down the walkway to the dock.