WITH ITS CROWN RIMMED BY hundreds of lights, the northern cooling tower loomed ahead like some vast pyramid the ancients built to celebrate the invincibility of their deities. Plumes of steam rose from its stack and were caught and shredded by the ocean breeze.
Thorn couldn’t see Pauly anymore. Lost in the shadows of adjacent buildings. Thorn hobbled to the base of the tower, up onto the concrete walkway circling it. Powerful fans were roaring inside the structure, and he could feel the suck of air drawn through the intake openings at the base of the tower. Crosshatched steel trusses framed the bottom, raising the tower one story off the ground and allowing for the huge rush of incoming air.
Halfway around its base, he found Pauly on the bay side with one of the suitcases open on the walkway beside him. He was positioning a device the size of a tackle box inside the intake gap.
When he sensed Thorn standing close, his hand flicked out, snatched the pistol from the cement wall. He swung around, saw it was Thorn and held his aim a few uncomfortable seconds, then lowered the pistol and set it aside.
Pauly went back to work, wedging the container into a triangular joint between two of the steel columns and the cement retaining wall. “She send you to supervise?”
“I’m here to help.”
“Don’t need any help.”
Though Thorn had no experience with demolition, it seemed clear that even a minor blast at that structural point would splinter the concrete shell of the tower. How bad the damage would be he couldn’t guess, but he imagined it would be sufficient to put a lot of engineers and construction workers on overtime for weeks.
He stood silently in the glow of the overhead spotlights while Pauly finished setting the charge.
When he was finished, Pauly rose, picked up the second case, and came over to Thorn. “It blows in three minutes. Let’s move. This will be ugly.”
Pauly headed at a trot in the direction of the southern tower. Thorn tried to keep up, shuffling double-time, flashlight in one hand, hauling along his lame leg with the other. From their current position on the eastern edge of the property, the bay was only a half mile off. The loading docks were visible, a small cargo ship moored alongside a couple of patrol boats, and to the north across the shimmering expanse of Biscayne Bay, the ruddy false dawn that hovered over Miami seemed brighter than before, as if the entire city were smoldering.
When he turned back, Pauly was out of sight. Thorn looked up at the sliver of moon, heavy clouds building in the east, closing his eyes, trying to recall the layout Leslie had used to coach them. Thorn believed the maintenance shed that was Pauly’s next target was off to the northeast about two or three hundred feet. Not more than a minute or two away.
As he was heading off, Pauly’s device at the base of the north cooling tower exploded, and the concussion jolted Thorn sideways into the wall of the building he was passing, flattened him there for several seconds, face pressed to a steel security door. An earthquake rumbling underfoot, shock waves radiating from the blast, blowing out windows, knocking over benches and storage bins and sending them flying. The gusts, full of debris, threw open the heavy lid of a Dumpster and sent it rolling across a grassy, open courtyard.
Thorn hugged the wall and edged around the corner, watching as the sixty-story cement hourglass disintegrated in a tornado of dust and bits of flaming rubble. Not like any explosion he’d ever seen. So shattering, and earsplitting, Thorn’s vision was dancing and he struggled to breathe as chips and pebbles of the demolished structure rained down.
Sirens sounded across the grounds, men’s voices barking orders. Dark figures sprinted across the roadway and people stepped outside various offices and prefab structures, stumbling into the dusty air, dazed, wiping away blood, the injured with their arms slung over the shoulders of their comrades.
Thorn struggled on toward the maintenance shed. Reeling out of a doorway, a woman with blood streaming from her right ear grabbed his arm.
“Oh, my God, you’re FBI,” she said. “Are these terrorists?”
“Yes,” Thorn said. “Yes, they are.”
“Is it over?”
“Not yet. Take cover.”
The door of the maintenance shed was locked, but the windows facing the destroyed cooling tower were shattered. Thorn shined the flashlight inside and saw only a row of sit-down mowers and light power tools.
A thickset man in suit and tie carrying a heavy briefcase came around the corner of the maintenance shed breathing hard, saw Thorn, and stopped.
“Are they around here?” the man whispered. “Somewhere nearby?”
“No. I need to know where the spent fuel rods are.”