3:00 p.m.
30 minutes until kickoff
“What is this I hear about you meeting up with Richard Basque?” Director Wellington asked me sharply.
“Later, Margaret. There’s something a lot bigger going down right now.”
I was still on hold on the cell phone, waiting for the Knoxville Southeast Railway dispatch office’s supervisor to reroute M343.
As quickly as possible, I brought Margaret up to speed.
“But you don’t know yet what’s on that train?”
“It’s carrying hazardous materials. That’s all I have at this point. I’m trying to see if they can redirect or stop it.”
She thought for a moment. “And how close is this to the textile mill where Ingersoll and his team are?”
“A quarter mile away or so.”
“I’ll have them inspect the tracks for explosives, any sensors, any detonation materials. In the meantime, we have how many people in harm’s way?”
“There’s an open-air stadium nearby. They say twenty thousand people are there.”
“Alright, I’m going to make a call, see if we should evacuate that stadium.”
I didn’t always agree with Margaret, but we were on the same page right now.
The tracks crossed under I-277 at the Carson Boulevard exit ramp. The mine extended out under that area. I told her about it. “Everything converges at that point.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
+ + + +
Margaret Wellington hung up with Patrick Bowers and called the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
She’d worked with FEMA before and, from what she could tell, Director Adler was a sharp guy and he wasn’t afraid to stick his neck out if he needed to.
After she’d told him what was going on, he said, “Our number-one priority is getting potential victims to safety in a cautious and defensive manner. In this case our response will depend on the chemical released, the humidity, wind conditions, the size of the spill.”
“Think worst-case scenario.”
“Start by evacuating everyone within a sixteen-hundred-meter radius.”
She hung up and phoned the mayor of Charlotte to have him evacuate that stadium and Uptown Charlotte.
And to shut down I-277.
+ + + +
Kurt Mason was in his newly acquired Lexus SUV, the body of the previous owner stowed in the backseat.
As he found his way out of the city, he used his cell to monitor the train’s progress.
It was in signal territory and was running at about fifty miles per hour. He knew that a train that size, going that fast, on a level track would take nearly a mile to stop.
That is, if the air brakes were working properly.
Without the normal braking capability, it would take at least twice that far.
A local radio station was carrying a live feed of the pregame festivities. He tuned in to monitor things as they progressed.
+ + + +
I heard back from the woman in charge of the Knoxville Southeast Railway dispatch office.
“Hello?” She did not sound excited to be on the phone with me. “Who am I speaking with?”
“Patrick Bowers, FBI. Who is this?”
“Deanna Lambert.”
“Ms. Lambert, listen to me, there is a very real possibility that your train that’s heading for Charlotte—M343—is the target of a potential terrorist attack. We need that train rerouted or stopped.”
“Under whose authorization?”
I decided to go straight to the top. “The Director of the FBI.”
“I’ll need to speak with him.”
“Her.” I rattled off Margaret’s cell number. “In the meantime, e-mail me the manifest. And who can I talk to about the chemicals?”
“That would be Benson.”
“Put him on.”
I gave her my e-mail address, then used one of the computers on the desk beside me to go online and pull up my account so I could read the file.
Seconds later, the e-mail from Ms. Lambert arrived.
Benson came on the line as I was scanning the document. I didn’t recognize most of the chemicals or different hazmat designations. “Talk me though this.”
“Well, it lists the contents and location of all the cars on the train. You can tell which ones are hazardous because there’s a boxed-in set of asterisks on the left of the manifest for that car. There’s always a five-car buffer between any loaded hazmat cars and an engine.”
I held the phone against my ear with one hand, used the mouse with the other. I scrolled through the pages. There were dozens of boxed-in sheets. This was not helping.
“Think like a terrorist,” I said. “You want to blow this train knowing there are lots of people close by. What chemical would you be hoping to release?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t— You really think someone is going to try and blow this train?”
“It’s possible. Look at the list. What jumps out at you?”
I checked the time.
3:07 p.m.
“Well, there are a couple boxcars of dynamite. It’s also shipping hydrazine, which I’m not too excited about.”
“What’s hydrazine?”
“It’s basically rocket fuel.”
Oh.
Perfect.
“What else?”
“Well, the one thing would be . . . But . . .”
“What are you thinking?”
“Anhydrous ammonia. There are twelve tankers of it.”
“Tell me about anhydrous ammonia.”
“It’s a liquefied compressed gas. ‘Anhydrous’ just means ‘without water.’ Its primary use is in fertilizer. Because of the nitrogen content it’s also used in power plants and, because it absorbs so much heat—it boils at minus-twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit—it’s also used in refrigeration and as a coolant.”
“Is it flammable? Will it explode?”
“It doesn’t have a flashpoint, but its upper explosive limit really depends on the vapor concentration in the air. It has a short window of flammability, but, especially in indoor situations where it’s being used as a coolant, it might get mixed with oil and that would widen the range. There’ll be a deflagration, not an explosion exactly. It’ll burn up very fast.”
“Alright. Well, that’s what we want.”
Good, good, good.
“But it does create a vapor cloud,” he continued. “It’s a very strong base, causes severe chemical burns on contact, and, since it’s moisture seeking, it’ll spread fast.”
“So, inhalation,” I anticipated where this was going, and it was not a good direction. “Your throat, your lungs—it’ll coat them.”
“Yes. And your eyes. Corneal burns and blindness. The vapor is lighter than air. Heat, low humidity, wind—they can take a plume up hundreds of feet into the air.”
“Let’s say the wind carries it toward an open-air stadium. Would it settle in there?”
“A stadium?”
“Yes.”
“Well, because of the eddy created as the vapor passes over the upper edge, sure, it would settle in. Is there really a stadium downwind?”
I recalled the breeze in the graveyard.
“There is.”
I could picture a vapor cloud curling over the lip of the stadium, then pooling down inside of it. Thousands of people gasping for breath, blinded, panicking, climbing over each other trying to escape.
“But,” Benson tried to reassure me, “those pressurized tank cars are reinforced by up to three-quarters of an inch of steel. Most of them have a thermal shield as well and another one-eighth-inch steel jacket covering that. These things do not just spring a leak.”
“But what about getting the ammonia in or out? It has to have valves of some kind.”
“All the valves and fittings are protected from rollover by a housing on the top of the car.”
“For now let’s just assume our guy knows what he’s doing. What would happen if these twelve cars ruptured and the vapor cloud entered that stadium?”
“Depending on the density of the plume, you could be talking about a life-safety situation.”
“Fatal levels of exposure.”
“Yes.”
To tens of thousands of people.
Benson was quiet. “But it won’t come to that. Those cars are designed to withstand a derailment.”
“Think. If it were possible to puncture the cars.”
“It’s not.”
“But if it were—and we’re not just talking about a few tank cars rolling onto their side, but a dozen of them blowing up or potentially dropping hundreds of feet into a network of collapsed mines. Would they rupture?”
“I mean . . .” There was a distinct change in his tone. “With heat impingement . . . Anhydrous ammonia has a direct pressure-to-temperature relationship so as heat goes up, so does the pressure . . . Each of those cars is carrying over thirty thousand gallons of . . . Oh, my God.”
I got an incoming call from Margaret and put Benson on hold. I started to tell her what I knew, but she leapt in. “Ingersoll’s men found some sort of pressure-release mechanism. It’s welded to the track in several places. The only way to dismantle it is by removing that section of track. And even then we’re not sure what might happen—it might be rigged to blow those shafts.”
I whipped through what I’d found out from Benson: “Anhydrous ammonia. This train, M343, has twelve tankers of it—over three hundred fifty thousand gallons. It creates a vapor cloud that can be lethal. We have to stop that train.”
“I have a call in to the head of the railroad. You’re there, Patrick. You know more about this situation than anyone. I want you up in the air, getting real-time eyes on this thing. Where are you?”
“The Charlotte Regional Medical Center.”
“Good. They should have a helicopter there. And they’ll have a pilot on call or on-site.”
I’d landed here yesterday after my confrontation with Mason in the mine. “They do have a landing pad, but—”