Chapter 40

In desperation, Graham took what remained of his knife and tried to force the inch or so of the remaining blade in between the cover grate and the edge of the air shaft.  It did not slide in easily, but Graham worked it into position.  With a firm pull, the screw popped out.  A second corner was free. 

He pushed against the grate again, and this time, it popped quietly open.  He pulled himself through the hole and into the Brain Room.  He squatted down behind the room’s massive bank of blade server racks, put his knife back in his pocket, and breathed. 

The racks stood floor to ceiling about two feet away from the wall.  Each blade server held all of the vital information for a designated group of water production boiler units.  The space where Graham squatted was a type of maintenance corridor – a narrow, dim dead-end where computer engineers would sometimes disappear for days to troubleshoot problems with the Brain Room’s hardware.  The air shaft had been put in behind the server racks to provide ventilation, preventing the servers from overheating.  It was nonetheless very warm back there.  Dark and warm.  Graham felt well concealed. 

The servers hummed as usual.  He peered through the cages to see what he could see; all of the indicator lights on the backs of the servers remained illuminated.  He wasn’t too late. 

Ian was yelling instructions to Peggy Lee.  Graham could not make out her responses, but their exchange assured him that they had not detected his entry.

Graham crawled over to the end of the maintenance corridor and peeked around the corner.  In front of the main console, the two rookie soldiers sat, strapped to their chairs, gagged, and hooded. Two other chairs lay on their side in the middle of the room, and reams of paper had been knocked to the floor.  There had definitely been a struggle, but Ian and Peggy Lee had gotten the best of the soldiers, that much was obvious. 

Peggy Lee was standing over the console with her back to Graham.  Her head was bowed, and Graham could just see the edge of her cheekbone.  She appeared to be readying a device of some sort.  He could only see a few multicolored wires between her delicate fingers, but he knew that it had to be another bomb. 

He recalled that less than half an hour ago she was running those same fingers through his hair as they tumbled into her room in that deceptive embrace – the proverbial spider and fly.  She had hoodwinked and betrayed him, and he had fallen for it completely.  If all had gone according to his plan, the two of them would have been, at that exact moment, sitting outside on the boat, sipping wine and watching shooting stars – maybe talking about life or revealing secrets to each other.  What a fool he had been.  He imagined running at her and pulling her down to the ground by her hair.  He realized, however, that he did not know what he would do after that.  Part of him wanted to scream in her face – loud and angry so she would fully register the depth of his injury.  Another part of him just wanted to finish the kiss – to see if it had in fact been a complete lie.

He could not see Ian from his vantage point, but he could hear him breathing – just barely – over the humming servers.  It sounded like he was just around the corner, which would make sense.  Along with the central console, blowing up the main server racks would inflict the most damage and cause the longest outage.  These two had definitely done their homework, from waiting to detonate the Battery Station explosives until after they had breached the Brain Room, to attacking the Brain Room when there were only two soldiers on duty.    

Graham backed away from the corner and returned to the dark, warm safety of the maintenance corridor.  He looked inside the air duct to see if Charley was on his way.  No such luck.  Graham could just make out Charley’s large shoulders still laboring away, trying to get around the corner in the shaft.  He wanted to wait for Charley, but he knew that there was no time to waste.  Ian and Peggy Lee could be finished at any second.  It was up to him and him alone.  He wondered what Burt Reynolds would have done in the same situation and wished he could call him on a celestial CB to get some advice.  He did not feel like the right man for this job, but he was the only person standing between Peggy Lee and Ian’s destructive plot to destroy the Brain Room and the resulting sudden and massive die-off in Southern California.  He knew he had to do something.

The air vent’s cover still hung loosely by one twisted screw.  If he could yank the weighty cover free, he could use it as a weapon against Ian.  Maybe he would land a lucky blow and put Ian on his back before Peggy Lee could get involved.  It was worth a shot. 

Graham took hold of the cover and pulled.  The stubborn screw would not give.  He put his foot against the wall for better leverage and pulled again.  He could feel the cover giving way, and then suddenly it popped free.  Graham fell backward into one of the server racks with a thud.  He sat silently, holding the cover in his hands and listening.  He thought he heard Ian whispering, but he could not be sure.  He was afraid that he had just forfeited the element of surprise.  He quietly shifted onto his hands and knees and crawled back over to the corner.  Peggy Lee had disappeared.  But Graham still was not sure whether they knew he was in the room with them or not.  Perhaps she had just finished up her work on that explosive device and was helping Ian.

He stayed stock still for a moment, listening.  Then, he peered around the corner of the line of server racks.  Did they know he was there?  He could not tell.  He could not hear anything – just the low hum of the servers.

Graham took a silent, deep breath, gathered his courage, and counted to three in his head.  On three, he rose up, stepped quickly around the end of the server rack, and with all his might swung the metal cover like a baseball bat at a height that he hoped would connect directly with the base of Ian’s skull.

Chapter 39

The three soldiers ran back through the corridor to the stairs at the end of the hall.  Graham and Charley quickly climbed the stairs in the Battery Station until they reached the fifth floor.  The smoke was starting to clear, but it was still thick at the top.  They exited the station through a narrow door and then ran down a long hallway, past maintenance access hatches to a large grey door. 

“What’s in here?” Charley queried, “I never even knew this door existed.”

“It’s not a great place for a storage room.  We don’t use it much anymore.  But I think that it’s near the back wall of the Brain Room.  Come on, open her up so we can see.”

Charley passed his key card through the reader, and the door opened.  The emergency lights in the room revealed a dusty, neglected mess.  High metal shelving units lined the room’s walls and were covered with years of the Platform’s detritus.  Overflowing cardboard boxes sat among old aprons, rusted cooking pots, stacks of paper, and tee-shirts from the facilities’ 20^th anniversary party. 

“There’s an air duct in here somewhere, I’m sure of it,” Graham said.   “Help me pull these shelves away from the walls so we can figure out where it is.  We’ve got to hurry.  If they blow the Brain Room, the whole West Coast water production operation will be out of commission.”

They crossed the room, picking their way through the piles of long-forgotten junk.  They started pulling the shelves out from the wall one by one and groping along the walls.  After a few minutes of work, they located the air vent.  Graham knelt down next to it, got out the pocket knife his father had given him so many years ago, and began to remove the screws that held the vent cover in place.  He made quick work of it and pulled the cover off. 

“No flashlight, huh?” Graham asked.

“Nope.  I could run back.”

“No time.  We’ll just have to do our best in there,” Graham sighed.  After spending what seemed like hours bound and gagged in the tiny wardrobe back in the guest quarters, he was not looking forward to climbing into a dark hole barely wide enough for his shoulders. 

“Sir, I think that you should go first.  That vent looks mighty small.  I am going to give it a shot, but I would hate to get stuck in there and then be in your way.”

“I agree, but give me a little room in there.  I don’t want to feel you nipping at my heels.  If you need to communicate with me, just whisper.  I’m sure that I will be able to hear you.  I don’t think that the Brain Room is far.  At least I hope not.”

Graham then stuck his head into the air vent.  He could feel the thick dust on his hands as he pulled the rest of his body into the shaft.  The vent was not tall enough for him to crawl on all fours.  His ribs hurt like hell.  He had to shimmy ahead, pulling himself forward with his elbows.  After he had progressed a few feet, he heard Charley climbing into the shaft behind him.  No turning back now, he thought.

Graham pulled himself through the pitch darkness a few feet more until he came to a sharp corner in the shaft.  He tried to get through on his stomach, but he could not squeeze through.  One of his hips was now caught on the corner.  His hands began to sweat and his breathing accelerated.  “Come on, Graham,” he whispered to himself, “hold it together just this one time.”   He then backed up out of the corner, turned on his side, and pulled his torso and then his legs through.  “I don’t think that you’re going to make it through this corner,” he said softly to Charley.

“I’ll do my best, Colonel.  You push ahead.  I’ll catch up, don’t worry.”

Graham could now see a dim light shining into the shaft through the slats of a vent cover at the far end.  He crawled forward as quickly as he could.  If his calculations were correct, the air shaft ended in a quiet corner of the Brain Room, out of sight from the central console.  He did not know what he was going to do when he got into the room; he figured he would devise a plan once he actually got in there. 

When he reached the vent cover, he glanced out.  He could not see much through the slats, but he could tell that he was looking into the Brain Room.  He heard Ian’s voice giving orders to Peggy Lee.  Other, muffled sounds were coming from the room – Graham assumed that the soldiers had been gagged.  He pushed on the grate, but could not force it free.  He punched it a couple of times with his palm, trying not to make too much noise, but it would not give.  He did not want to alert Peggy Lee and Ian to his presence.  Then, he remembered his pocket knife.  He felt its weight in his trouser pocket.  He shifted onto his side again and reached down into his pocket.  He got out the thick blade and turned back onto his stomach. 

Charley whispered from behind, “Sir, I am not sure if I am going to be able to get through here.  You might be on your own.”

“Ten-four, Charley,” Graham whispered back, as he began to pry the grate away from the wall.  After a few seconds, he had freed one corner.  When he attempted to pry open the next corner, however, the thick blade snapped in two.  Graham had yanked too hard.  About an inch and a half of the blade, including the tip, fell to the ground outside of the ventilation shaft.  Graham was left holding the handle, with just about of a third of the blade intact.  His heart sank – he knew that his father would have been disappointed to see the knife break in half at the exact moment Graham needed it the most.  But that had been a big part of the last years of his father’s life – that disappointment.

His anxiety began to balloon.  If he could not get the grate off in front of him, how was he going to get out?  Charley was blocking the other end.  What if Peggy Lee and Ian detonated the bombs with him trapped in the ventilation shaft.  Flames would consume him, and he would not be able to move.  He would squirm and wriggle and fight to get away, but he would die in the fiery confines of that tiny metal shaft.  The air began to feel very hot, and his hands shook uncontrollably.  Bile formed in his throat, and his stomach felt like it was turning inside out.  He could taste his dinner – acid and sweetness in his mouth. 

Chapter 38

As Graham reached the third floor, the smoke grew so thick he could scarcely see anything.  Angry flames licked the blackened Battery Station walls, and the heat from the fire was almost unbearable.  He covered his mouth with his shirt, ducked down low, and kept going.  When he got as close as he could to the fire, he squeezed the handle of the fire extinguisher.  A powerful stream of white powder shot onto the flames and eventually killed the majority of the fire. 

Once some of the smoke had cleared, he dug through a pile of frayed, broken, and blackened wires, smoldering memory boards, and melted silicon plates.  All that was really left of the central console was a black, gaping hole.  Charred pieces of plastic, some still aflame, lay strewn about his feet.  A thick power cord snaked by his feet, spewing sparks and dancing wildly a few feet away.  The spilled electricity had already started to melt the metal grating under the cord.  The sparks rained down through the smoky air all the way to the ground floor.  There was nothing salvageable here.  The battery system for the region had been completely disabled. 

And then he noticed an odd component in the rubble.  It was too hot to hold.  He used his shirt sleeve to protect his fingers and picked it up. 

The alarm continued to whine overhead as he turned to leave.  When he stepped toward the stairs, he saw that the heat from the electrical cord had already melted a hole in the metal floor.  The cord fell through the hole and began to swing lazily from side to side.  Hundreds of kilowatts spilled out of the wire, dissipating into thin air.  It will take months – maybe years – to fix this, Graham despaired. 

He jumped over the hole and ran down the stairs.  As he descended, he noticed three other soldiers talking with Charley on the ground floor.

“Sir,” Charley shouted as he saw Graham approaching.  “All soldiers have taken up their attack-ready positions.  We think that the terrorists are probably heading for the Brain Room.”

“I think it’s safe to guess that they’re already there.  Look, I found this in the debris upstairs.”  Graham showed the soldiers the burn component in his hand. 

“What is it?” Charley asked.

“It’s part of a remote detonator.  They probably waited until they were already in the Brain Room before detonating this explosion by remote control.  That way, they tripped the alarms only after they had gained entrance to the Brain Room.  We’re in a lot of trouble, boys.”

“What do you mean?” one of the soldiers asked.

“With the central alarm activated, the Brain Room doors will be jammed shut,” Graham explained.  “We set it up that way years ago so that no attackers could access the Brain Room once the central alarm was tripped.  The doors are on a timer and will only open after three hours.  We figured that would be enough time for us to regain control of the Platform through reinforcements from headquarters.  There is no override code because we were afraid that terrorists might try to torture it out of us.  We never counted on the attackers gaining access to the Brain Room before tripping the alarm.  Now we are locked out, and they are safe and sound inside, behind those thick, titanium reinforced, security doors, with three hours to rig their bombs and blow the place to smithereens. 

“Soldier,” Graham continued, “who do we have on duty in the Brain Room?”

“The Brain Room is manned by a couple of rookies tonight,” a baby-faced soldier responded.  “Private Adams and Private Peterson.  I don’t think that they’ve been trained in any attack scenarios.  They are both techies and were planning to fix some of the bugs that have crept into the system over the past few months.  We scheduled them to have their shifts at the same time so that they could help each other out.  Neither of them is much of a fighter – as far as I know anyway.”

“So we can’t count on them for much,” Graham said.  “So here’s the plan.  I want you three to go and see if you can break through the main entry portal to the Brain Room.  Gather everyone.  All hands on deck for this one.  Those doors are heavy duty, so it will take some time to get through.  Get the blow torch, blast the door open, do whatever it takes.  Just don’t hurt our guys inside or the Brain Room computers in the process. 

“In the meantime, Charley and I are going to try to get in through the air ducts.  I remember that there was a vent behind the main server racks, and I think I know how we can get to it.  If we are lucky, we can surprise the attackers and gain the upper hand.  Does everyone understand?”

“Yes, sir,” the three soldiers replied in unison.

“Yeah, Graham, let’s do it,” Charley answered.

Chapter 37

“What the hell is all of this?” Charley asked as he undid the gag and cut the strap binding Graham’s hands. 

Instead of answering, Graham lay down flat on his back, his body still pulsing with pain, and stretched his arms out wide.  He took a long, deep breath and then sat up.  He wiped the mucus and saliva off his face with the outside of the hood.  He rolled his head back and side-to-side and then glanced out into the hallway, past the broken door.  Two bottles of red wine sat on the floor across the hall.  Charley had been true to his word; he had sought out the wine for Graham’s rendezvous with Peggy Lee.

“I was waiting for you down by the boat,” Charley said.  “When you didn’t show up, I came here to see if everything was okay.  I tried to open the door with my pass card, but the lock was jammed.  I even tried the override code, but it still wouldn’t open.  Lucky this is one of the older doors, so I was able to bust it down.  So what’s going on?  Where’s Peggy Lee?  Is this some kind of weird sex game gone out of control?”

Graham shook his head.  “No, no, Charley, we have a real problem on our hands.  We’ve got to find Peggy Lee and that son of a bitch, Ian.  I think they’re eco-terrorists.  I think they’re planning on destroying the Platform.”

“Are you kiddin’ me?” 

“I’m afraid not,” Graham said.

Charley helped Graham up off of the ground.  Graham moaned and almost toppled over, catching his balance by grabbing the side of the wardrobe.  “Are you okay?” Charley asked.

“Yeah, no, I don’t know,” Graham answered, “maybe a broken rib or something.  But that doesn’t matter.  Come on, let’s sound the central alarm, and then we’ll track them down.  The nearest trigger is in the dining hall.” 

They hurried out of the room and started running down the corridor.  Just as they were about to round the corner towards the dining hall, a loud boom shook the hallway.  The lights dimmed and then flickered completely off.  Seconds later, the emergency power system kicked in, and the lights came back on at half strength.  The blast had come from behind them.  A local alarm from down the hallway began to blare, and then the central one kicked in.

“Shit,” Graham said.  “Sounds like they started in the Battery Station.  Let’s get down there before they can do any more damage.”

They turned around and sprinted past the broken door and the bottles of red wine.  Then they jumped down the two flights of stairs that led to the Battery Station.  Graham stumbled but caught himself on the railing and kept running.  Hot, thick smoke filled the approach to the station, but they did not slow down.  They ran straight through the smoke and onto the main floor. 

A small fire burned on the first floor right above them, but most of the smoke was coming from the third floor, where sparks spewed from the central command computer.  The giant overhead fans had been disabled by the blast.  The alarm blared in their ears.  The dimness of the emergency lights combined with the bitter, black smoke made it hard to see anything clearly.  Graham choked and coughed as he assessed the situation.  “It looks like Peggy Lee and Ian aren’t here anymore,” he yelled.  “You take the fire on the first floor, and I’ll work on the upper one.”  He grabbed two fire extinguishers, handed one to Charley, and then started running up the metal stairs.

As he climbed, he recalled the conversation he had had with Peggy Lee earlier that afternoon.  He had been surprised that she had even noticed the central computer way up on the third floor, barely in sight.  But now he understood; she had used him to double-check her specs.      

Now the water production system had been significantly compromised, and it was totally his fault.  He should have never allowed them to come out to the facilities in the first place.  He should have seen it coming.  He should have known that something was amiss.  He should have realized that there was no way in hell such a beautiful woman would ever be attracted to him.  The burning computer, the acrid smoke, the shrieking alarm, they were all proof of desperate gullibility and his sad, shameful naiveté.