Meltdown

When Eli Cohen arrived, he knew there was still a chance. But first they had to prevent a meltdown. Eli was no engineer. All he could do was sit and watch the dials. And wait. And pray.

And his prayers, if not answered, were at least being acknowledged. With the hostages free, there was still a chance to stop the nightmare. Anxiously the security chief paced behind the console as Stan Robbins tried desperately to reverse the damage and prevent a meltdown. It was too late to reinsert the control rods. The interior of the reactor was too far out of control. All he could do was try to cool it down.

Robbins told Eli that the fuel was already disintegrating. The reactor's internal alignment was so out of whack that there was no hope of a mechanical solution.

Both men paced and watched the dials. It seemed absurd that an array of colorful lamps could signify so much destruction. There had to be something useful they could do and didn't seem right to sit and do nothing. Finally Eli spoke. "Matt, we have to get outside."

"What's up?"

"There's a chopper coming. To pick up the Russian."

"No way. No way in hell that son of a bitch gets out of here."

"Let's go, then."

"Stan, you'll be all right here?" Stevens asked.

The engineer nodded without taking his eyes off the console.

"But you should start getting everybody else the hell out of here. There's not much more I can do. And if this doesn't work, I'll be in Boston before I stop ru

Stevens clapped him on the shoulder. "I'll tell somebody on the way out. I have some business to take care of."

Rachel joined them, handing Stevens an AK-47. "You'll need this," she said.

"Not if I get close enough to use my bare hands."

29

Andrey Glinkov was ru

The footsteps following him grew louder.

Ahead, like the mouth of hell, yawned a fifteen-foot circle in the floor. A steel ladder led down to the floor below. Parsons descended.

The Russian had underestimated the man called Bolan. It would cost him dearly. Just how dearly, he wouldn't know for some time. If he managed to escape with his life, there was still the question of his superiors. There was no way to obscure the KGB presence in this fiasco. No way but one. Peter Achison was supposed to meet him in a stolen attack helicopter. The original intention was to use the chopper only for his escape. But it was heavily armed. And there was still a chance. If he could hold the world at bay long enough, the reactor would do the rest of his job for him. He'd already set in motion the forces of the chain reaction that would ultimately destroy the reactor complex. He might not be able to lock the hostages into the containment building as he had pla

Especially Mack Bolan.

Right now, the odds did not favor that outcome. But it was still possible. Whoever was following him in the tu

Then he might still be able to hook up with Achison. It would be a simple matter to use the chopper's firepower to prevent escape from Thunder Mountain. As long as the reactor was unchecked, it would eventually achieve his purpose. Sweat began to bead his brow as he ran through the tu

The echo of his footsteps began to pound in his ears.

He had to catch his breath. He looked into the dark toward the man chasing him. Far behind, he could see a dim light descending to the floor of the tu

Another man had joined the chase. Was one Mack Bolan?

He pushed on. A sharp pain stabbed through his chest.

Each breath brought with it the edge of a razor blade.

The slicing of the air into his lungs hurt like hell.

His legs were begi

It began to get warmer. The air around him seemed to dampen and heat up. The first slosh of water underfoot went u

It wasn't until the fourth step that he began to wonder where it came from. The tu

He had to find out whether he was heading in the right direction. He needed someplace to use a light for a minute, a place to get his bearings. A place to look at his map. He had to know whether he was heading toward the reactor or away from it. The water under his feet would mean certain death if it were radioactive.

Shielding a small flashlight with his palm as he ran, he sprayed a small beam against the wall for a second or so at a time. He was looking for someplace to duck in out of the main tu

Every so often, he knew, there would be a ladder. They led from one level of tu

Long and thin, it had to be a ladder. He doused the light and began to clamber up the rungs, taking care not to let his feet on the metal give him away.

At the top of the ladder, there was the mouth of a second tu

He played the light along the wall, moving farther into the new tu

It identified the tu

He had no idea how deep the water might get, or how much of it he would encounter. At the moment, he could avoid it by keeping to one side of the tu

If he was lucky. But he hadn't had much luck so far. The footsteps of the approaching man started to boom through the high mouth of the tu