The Elephant's Foot

CHAPTER 1

LANDON FINN

I watched in horror, riveted in disbelief, as a crack propagated along the bulkhead, like ice on a frozen lake, starting at the rear of the plane, moving its jagged tear with frightening speed toward the seat in which I was sitting.  A muffled explosion somewhere from the rear of the Ilyushin II-86 plane resulted in the aircraft vibrating and wrenching so violently that I couldn’t keep my hands on the armrests.  I went from feeling flush and alert to dizzy and cold as the cabin depressurized, the dew point dropped, and residual humidity immediately turned to a fine mist, filling the interior with a heavy fog.  The decompression was so rapid my lungs couldn’t expel their air fast enough, leaving me with a building pressure in my chest.  Terror welled up inside me as I watched the gash in the plane’s bulkhead grow exponentially.  Involuntary panic replaced any semblance of logic or reason I had left, and I threw up all over the seatback in front of me.

Suddenly, the plane lurched sideways. The front lavatory door exploded open, blue water from the toilet spewing out into the face of a startled, well-coifed woman with mascara running down tear stained cheeks.  She squeezed her eyes closed and shrieked, her fear spreading through the plane like a contagion, echoing in the screams and prayers uttered by all but a few.  There was no place to go, no refuge, no safe haven.  Every sight, sound, and vibration was immediately magnified and intensified, overloading my already heightened senses.  Fear rolled over me—the fear of the terrible unknown, the things that lurk in the dark that defy explanation.  I struggled to comprehend what was happening and what I should do next—believing there might actually be a next—though I was rapidly becoming disoriented from the lack of oxygen getting to my brain.  A few oxygen masks deployed; mine wasn’t one of them. 

What have I gotten myself into? shot through my brain like a bullet.  I’d reluctantly boarded the plane from Ankara to Kiev at the last minute, intending to get to the ghost town of Pripyat to find my mother—someone I hadn’t even seen in twenty-seven years, let alone known she was alive until sixty hours ago, and whose life was now somehow in danger.  Her presence in Ukraine in the shadow of a derelict nuclear power plant, where no one was supposed to be living, was linked to a highly radioactive mass under the ruined core called the Elephant’s Foot, from which came small nodules reputed to have never-before-heard-of medical qualities.  I had a PhD in nuclear medicine and even I didn’t know what that meant.  It was only recently I’d discovered she was alive and had left a trail of breadcrumbs for me, and me alone, to follow.  This wasn’t a family reunion and I didn’t know what her motives were for finally reaching out and summoning me after all this time.  I’d been raised by my grandpa—my mother having abandoned me when I was a baby and my father presumably dead.  As I had no memories of my parents, I felt little about them one way or the other, or so I told my therapist.  But she was my mother—had been in another life anyway—and despite my protestations to the contrary, that simple fact was adding a familial component to my motives for agreeing to go.  I needed to get to her before they did, and before the sarcophagus enclosing the still lethal, ruined nuclear core collapsed and buried the Elephant’s Foot forever—something that was apparently in imminent danger of happening. 

Another shudder went through the plane and I realized all too late that whoever was trying to kill her might now be trying to prevent me from helping her.  I started to hyperventilate and didn’t know whether to shit or go blind.  Everything and everybody smacked of death.  I couldn’t fight and I couldn’t flee—options I’d have availed myself of if only I could.  I was a prisoner of my surroundings.  As I sat there, a feeling of extreme helplessness washed over me—something I was most assuredly not familiar with. 

As the plane continued to convulse, the laceration worked open and closed like a giant jaw trying to eat whatever got in its way.  I needed to do something—anything!  In a fit of irrationality, I reached down and unbuckled my seatbelt, hoping to get away from the angry wound that was waiting to consume me.

It was then that I looked again at the man ahead of me and across the aisle.  I remembered that when he got on the plane he'd shot me a look I couldn’t account for, reminiscent of disgust or loathing.  It struck me that there was something familiar about him, however ridiculous that seemed given where we were.  Right now he didn’t look worried, which seemed odd, and yet didn’t on some level too, causing my anxiety level to increase even more—if that was possible.  What did he know that I didn’t?  Or maybe he’d done something so hideous he simply wasn’t concerned about dying, as if that might be the lesser of two evils considering the condition of life in Soviet prisons where he was no doubt headed.  I assumed the serious-looking man alongside him was some kind of law enforcement because I could see a pistol in a holster under his arm as his coat flapped about.  I watched as he hurriedly removed the man’s handcuffs, perhaps thinking it was the humane thing to do under the conditions.  Then a shiver went up my spine as the prisoner turned and looked at me with a malevolent grin. 

The redheaded flight attendant took up the chorus Brace, brace, brace! over the PA, signifying—at least to me—that a crash was imminent.  I wondered briefly why we hadn’t heard anything from the pilot.  Was the pilot unconscious, scared, or—more likely—consumed with trying to fly the mortally wounded airplane?  What was he doing to save us?  I needed to be reassured, even lied to. Denial set in as I thought this couldn’t really be happening.  I had questions, but there were no answers. 

I looked several rows behind me at where she was supposed to be sitting, wondering where she was, why she hadn’t gotten on the plane, worried about her, but thankful now that she wasn’t on the plane.  I wanted to tell her things—the things you don’t say to one another until there’s no time left. 

The lower ambient pressure outside the plane sought to suck me out even as I struggled with what was left of my diminishing strength to stay inside.  The plane inverted and I felt like I was moving in slow motion as the g-forces were pushing me back in my seat.

Suddenly, the plane lurched again as it strained unsuccessfully to hold itself together.  When gravity released me, a particularly violent jolt hurled me toward the widening gap in the bulkhead—just wide enough now to fit a person between.  With no seat belt restraining me anymore, there was nothing to prevent the giant serrated jaw from swallowing me whole, as if to assuage a great appetite—which it did— spitting me out of the airplane . . .

CHAPTER 2

I found myself, unbelievably, outside the plane, flailing madly, my hands grasping nothing but frigid, empty air as I tried unsuccessfully to arrest my fall.  Bitterly cold hurricane-force winds tore at my clothing as I fell, punishing my eyes and mouth and making the very act of breathing all but impossible.  I looked back in abject horror as the plane sped away from me out of view, leaving me utterly alone and hurtling downward.

This couldn’t be happening!  This sort of thing just didn’t happen!

It didn’t take me long to realize with chilling, and absolute certainty that I was going to die—and die horribly—in less than two minutes.  Within twelve seconds, I’d reach terminal velocity of 120 miles per hour.  A minute and a half after that, I’d hit the earth and probably bounce on impact.

Frustration and a powerful anger surfaced as I became furious at the circumstance I was in, and subsequently outraged that I had control over nothing.  I descended into a dark place within my mind—inside my soul—despair taking hold, demons confronting me, knowing I was not able to stop my fall or change my failings . . . and then wondered what it was going to be like to die.  I resigned myself to a fate I couldn’t change.  I could see the curve of the earth in the distance, reminding me that it—like my existence—was finite.  In the recesses of my mind, I began negotiating the terms of my burial.

Maybe I was lucky because I knew the hour of my death. With what little time I had left, I could contemplate my life—something I’d never done before.  It was like being able to say goodbye.  How many people have that opportunity?  I could have remembered the good things in my life and sought comfort and refuge there, but instead it was regret and guilt that filled my mind, my heart, and my soul.  I felt regrets about my past and things I’d done that now seemed so petty, so unnecessary.  My heart ached for a future unrealized.  I understood I desperately wanted to live, to rectify old wrongs and commit myself to being a better person.  But my time here was flowing inexorably on, like a river, unchangeable and unstoppable.  I recognized that all the choices I’d made throughout my short life had brought me here; had turned me into the man I was, good or bad.  This was it.  There’d be no second act.  No do-over.  On a planet that was billions of years old, where ancient mountains stood for millions of years against the elements, and prehistoric glaciers crept along from the last ice age—where even oak trees were hundreds of years old—my life would last but a paltry thirty years.  It was going to be over before it had really begun.  I suddenly felt meaningless and insignificant.

Something I didn’t know until just then was that dying is one thing, but dying alone is frightening.  All I wanted was to be with her.  Out here, I was completely alone—alone with my thoughts, my despair, and my regrets.  It was too late to pray or to find forgiveness.  Being alone was simply inconsolable.  I screamed long and loud, starting out in fear, but ending in an all-consuming rage, as if challenging the specter of my mortality.

It either wore me out or released endorphins, and oddly enough, triggered a kind of acceptance that washed over me.  Finally, after running the gamut of emotions while hurtling through time and space, I let go and gave myself over to the inevitable.  At that exact point in time, I went from memories and guilt, to lucidity and questions.  Not surprisingly, why me, was chief among them.  Not far behind was what the hell just happened?

Then in one brief, surreal moment, I felt a calm—almost euphoria—as I continued my inexorable plunge downward, adrift in the wind, feeling weightless in a near blissful state, and then, thankfully, lost consciousness.

CHAPTER 3

Transaero Airline authorities held an impromptu news conference in a Marriott Hotel in downtown Ankara and acknowledged flight TA-677 crashed, but said they were unable to determine why and exactly where the plane had come down.  Air Traffic controllers said TA-677 veered off course without permission and disappeared from radar over Ukraine, sending no distress signal.  Speculation included sudden wind shear or the inevitable terrorist activities, though no group stepped forward to take credit for it.  There were also unsubstantiated reports of mechanical difficulties with the Russian aircraft, which had been substituted at the last minute for the more sophisticated Boeing 737 that normally flies that route.  Explanations as to what those difficulties were seemed almost intentionally vague.

Airline officials said it would take time to work through normal channels to obtain permission to enter the remote vicinity where they suspected the plane came down and mount a search and rescue effort.  There were no rescue vehicles anywhere near the suspected crash site and no roads to access it, which would clearly hamper their efforts.  Because there were international passengers on board—including at least one American—the story garnered press in many countries, putting pressure on Turkey to expedite a rescue.  Other countries offered support, but the airline quickly rejected the additional help.  They said they were working as fast as they could and had already received—and accepted—an offer of help from Moscow, as it was a Russian-made aircraft.  To make matters worse, the part of Ukraine where the plane was believed to have gone down was now in Russian hands, making international rescue efforts all the more complicated.

CHAPTER 4

While all the delays and political posturing played out over the next several hours in full view of the international media, a Kamov Ka-60 Russian military helicopter secretly circled the crash site—which Russian satellites identified almost immediately—but had to abort a landing attempt.  The heavily wooded terrain, together with weather and approaching nightfall, made locating a landing site all but impossible.  The helicopter had to fly on to scout out a suitable place to put down, which it finally did, and then unloaded its two passengers.  They’d have to hike in to the downed plane from some distance away—a feat that presented no problem to either man as they were used to working in hostile environments, but one that would take far more time than their supervisors in Moscow had counted on.

CHAPTER 5

It was early morning the day after the crash when Vasily and Ekim finally made it to the crash site.  Vasily held his sleeve against his nose, hoping to prevent having to smell the putrid rot of decay from fifty feet away but it wasn’t necessary, probably due to the cold and snow.  The plane wasn’t burning, though its skin was charred as if it once had been, confirming his suspicions that whatever happened, happened in the air and not on the ground.  He looked over at Ekim and nodded in the direction of the back of the plane.  Little conversation was necessary between the two of them.  They knew what they were there to look for and functioned well as a team, having worked together before in the Spetsnaz.

Vasily took care to look around as he went, trying not to disturb things.  The swirling November winds moved snow around quickly and had already partially concealed some objects, making it harder for him to do his job.  He worked his way around to the front of the plane and peered into the cockpit.  A quick look through where the windshield of the plane used to be revealed what was left of the pilot still strapped into his seat, though his head was missing.  Vasily was a hard man and had seen his share of people maimed and wounded in the mountains outside of Kabul, but even he was not impervious to the sights laid out in front of him.  He couldn’t imagine what took the man’s head off.  A piece of glass might have severed it cleanly enough, but the jagged remains of the neck bone, bits of muscle, and ends of arteries sticking out like straws made him think some powerful force had wrenched it off.  He reached behind the captain’s seat and his fingers closed on the handles of the pilot’s briefcase, which he pulled free, moving quickly away, not wanting to tempt fate and come across the man’s severed head.  He put the case down in the snow, and opened it.  Inside, he found a copy of the flight plan, some weather bulletins, and some personal papers belonging to the captain—just what you’d expect in a pilot’s briefcase.

He moved around to the outside of the main cabin and came upon the body of a woman.  Judging by what was left of the clothes she was wearing, she was most likely the young stewardess on the flight.  Her face was covered with charred skin, the lips completely gone, eyelids melted away leaving eyes staring out at Vasily as if screaming at him, her auburn hair still tied up in a bun.  She looked like a figure in a horror movie.  She couldn’t have been more than in her late twenties.  One of her shoes was missing.

Nearby was the body of a man with sideboards on the shoulders of his shirt, indicating he was a member of the crew—most likely the co-pilot.  Past that, it was difficult to make out any distinguishing features.  If not for the clothes, Vasily doubted he would have been able to ascertain whether the remains he saw were male or female.

Many burned and disfigured bodies were still in their seats, held in place by their seat belts, though some of the seats were no longer attached to the plane.  As he walked through and around the rubble, he pictured in his mind who was supposed to be on the plane, and in which seat, so he could reconcile who he was looking at.  Mangled bodies, detached legs and arms, and a foot in a boot were strewn around like so much debris that it made identification difficult . . . but not impossible for a man with his skills.

Vasily took note of everything.  One wing had been sheared off and was laying some distance away.  The fuselage was torn in two just behind the cockpit.  The tail had sheared off and was some fifty yards behind the rest of the plane.  Parts of the plane’s insides—seats, magazines, overhead bins, wiring—littered the landscape, blowing easily in the cold breeze and making the macabre scene all the more ghoulish.  He could see the skin of the plane at one point, ripped and bent outward as if from an explosion.  Other parts of the plane were crushed, like an aluminum beer can, indicating to him a steep angle of descent.  He saw what looked like fluid on the ground that he characterized as hydraulic fluid and saw that it trailed off in the distance behind the plane.  It was clear to him that the plane was not fully intact when it hit.  Something had blown a hole in the rear of the plane, no doubt causing massive instability. That instability, and the resulting shear forces, would have easily caused the plane to lose control and crash.  This was not a mechanical failure, though he was not an aviation expert or working for the airline.  He was here on a specific mission and it had nothing to do with determining the cause of the crash, though he most certainly already knew.

Near a large gash in the left side of the fuselage, he found the seat he was looking for—6A—still bolted to the floor, though empty.  The seat belt hung loosely from the sides of the seat cushion, unlatched—not ripped, torn, or broken—but intentionally released, whether before the crash or after, he didn’t know.

After some time, Ekim found Vasily standing still, looking at the carnage around him.  It is not here, Vasily said.  Regrettably, he is not here either.

Ekim said, It is possible he was thrown free on impact, though we didn’t see anything from the air within a reasonable distance.

"Yes, I suppose.  I find it odd, though, that both he and his luggage are missing," Vasily said quietly, almost as if to himself.

There’s something else.  If I had to guess, I would say there are people missing.  There should be more bodies than what I can account for.

Vasily had been focused on finding one person, so he didn’t notice others might be missing.  How many would you say?

Hard to tell.  It appears that two people are missing from their seats . . . and I didn’t see them anywhere else.  That includes the American, of course.

Perhaps they were both thrown from the plane some distance away.

I don’t think so.  Ekim nodded his head off in one direction.  There appears to be a trail of some kind heading off to the east.  There is a depression in the snow that could be footprints, and what looks like some kind of activity in and around the plane, possibly funneling into what could be a trail.  The blowing snow is making it hard to be certain.

Activity?  What kind of activity?

It looks like someone has been here walking around and rummaging through the luggage.  I found a suitcase open and its contents nearby on the ground.  That is inconsistent with a crash site having only fatalities.

Hmmm.  That aside, I cannot see any evidence that someone got here before us, Vasily offered.

I would agree with that.

So you are saying a survivor made the prints? Vasily asked.

Ekim just looked at him and shrugged.  Based on what I am seeing here, I would have to say yes, regardless of how improbable it is.  It is unlikely anyone could have survived this crash and walked away, but we have seen such things before, eh Vasily? Ekim said, referring to a helicopter crash in the mountains of Afghanistan both he and Vasily had walked away from.

Yes, but these people are civilians—soft and fat no doubt.

True.  All I know is that there appears to be a trail.  We follow that and we will have our answer.  Either way, there is little more we can do here.

Vasily knew that Ekim was legendary in his abilities to track people.  He was one of the best Vasily had ever worked with.  Ekim had honed his skills in the Empty Quarter, the largest sand desert in the world, where he had been tasked with tracking down terrorists in and around nearby Yemen.  Ekim not only had impeccable tracking skills, he knew how to kill quickly and efficiently.  He had been so prolific in finding his quarry and eliminating them that Al Qaida had put a bounty on his head.  Many tried to collect, but all had failed.  So if he had a hunch or intuition or even suspected there might be a trail leading away, Vasily would put considerable stock in what he had to say.

Vasily looked in the direction Ekim had pointed.  Do you realize what is over in that direction?

Ekim oriented himself and thought about it a moment. Chernobyl.

Yes, Vasily said grim faced.  Chernobyl.

He reached into his knapsack, pulled out an iridium satellite phone, and made a call to his superiors at The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation—what used to be called the KGB—to inform them of what they found, or more importantly what they didn’t find, and their intention to follow the trail.  Moscow was worried for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that they also had someone on the plane.  Perhaps more worrisome was that, as unlikely as it seemed, that person was missing too.

* * * * *

Several days later, the official joint Ukrainian and Russian team was dispatched for rescue and recovery, completing their work in short order.  Reports confirmed that everyone on board died, most of them horribly. 

There was no mention of the people unaccounted for—including the American.

CHAPTER 6

TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS EARLLIER

IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT

No one ever intends to fail.  Certainly Leonid, the unit shift chief in the Number 4 control room of the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station, didn’t.  Located eighty miles outside of Kiev, in the northern part of Ukraine, it was better known as the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

At midnight on a crisp April night, almost ninety minutes before the event, Leonid and the graveyard shift came on watch with the intent of working until 8 a.m.  Leonid was a smart young man, though inexperienced at only twenty-six years old—still just a boy, really, with a mustache, a round face, and plump cheeks.  Among his gifts, though, was that of consensus builder, which is why he was promoted to shift chief.  He got along with people and did what he was told to do.

This was good for Nikolai Koval, the chief engineer, who had asked him to perform a test designed to see if they could generate electricity from the coast-down of the main turbine generator, after taking the nuclear reactor off-line.  The intent was to power the vital reactor core cooling water pumps, which, if lost, could lead to a nuclear meltdown—the most serious of events at a nuclear plant.  The first impression of the chief engineer was that he was a vague and listless fellow with wire-rim glasses that made his eyes look larger than they were and unkempt graying hair that needed tending to.  But to those who knew him, he was phlegmatic, meticulous, persistent, and hard working—the epitome of a nuclear engineer.  So Leonid did as he was instructed, not knowing that the experiment had been proposed to many other nuclear power plants, or that because of the inherent riskiness, all but one had refused.  The management of the Chernobyl plant had agreed.

The analog clock on the control room wall read 1:09 a.m.—17 minutes and 40 seconds before the first explosion. 

Leonid was paying close attention to the test and what it was doing to his reactor, when he read a computer printout that said there were too many control rods withdrawn to be able to shut down the reactor if there was an unanticipated power excursion.  His concern at the moment was that he and his operators believed the reactor was not responding as it was supposed to, making it very difficult to control.  All the operators understood this at once.  Leonid had a rule of thumb, which was that if his reactor operator was worried he would worry.  His reactor operator was sitting bolt upright, eyes glancing nervously at key indicators on his panels, not joking, not eating, and not drinking.  Tension in the control room was palpable.

However, when Leonid voiced his concern to Antoliy Zaleski, the deputy chief engineer, Zaleski went on a rant, and in so doing, created a hostile environment in the control room; one where no one felt comfortable bringing up their concerns lest they become the target of one of Zaleski’s tirades.  While Koval was a hard working and technically adept engineer, Zaleski was a reckless man, incapable of making a correct assessment of the situation at the moment of it’s becoming an accident.  He lacked the caution and sense of danger so necessary to a supervisor of nuclear operators.  On the other hand, he had more than enough disrespect for the operators and for operating rules.  The science of nuclear power is complex and therefore intimidating.  So it is not unusual for those who have been trained to be in charge of this difficult technology to be arrogant.  It was precisely these qualities that Zaleski would display to their full extent when the accident occurred.

The usually dilatory Zaleski ran from one control panel to the other, his quiet, hoarse voice taking on an angry, metallic timber.  He did not want to stop the ill-fated test, and rushed about the control room, railing at whomever he was near at the time.  In so doing, he wasted valuable minutes. 

Dumbells!  You don’t know how to do it!  Incompetent failures!  You are spoiling the experiment, you idiots! he shouted.

Leonid was deep in thought, believing it was not safe to proceed, but knowing he would be criticized if he advocated stopping the test.  His training and intellect said stop! so, shaking and unsteady, he finally said, I will not take the power back up . . .

What are you yapping about you oaf? Zaleski hollered.  If you do not take it back up, I will get someone who will!

This was clearly a psychological assault.  Leonid had 17 minutes and 40 seconds to think about it, and that’s a long time . . . almost an eternity.  In 17 minutes and 40 seconds, it is possible to recall one’s entire life, or the entire history of humanity.  It was also enough time to avert the disaster that awaited him, but he hesitated to do what he felt was right.  Leonid had been against this test from the beginning, to the point of nausea and weakness in his legs, but he had not been able to oppose the deputy chief engineer.  After all, there had been cases in the past when the computers were wrong—at least that’s what he told himself in an effort to justify doing what the deputy chief engineer wanted him to do.

Zaleski calculated correctly.  Leonid, intimidated by the shouting and threat, relented and grudgingly began to take the power back up, signing a death warrant for him, his comrades, and countless others. 

CHAPTER 7

17 minutes and 20 seconds later, Reactor Number 4 experienced a power fluctuation and Leonid had had enough. 

 I am ordering an emergency safety shutdown! he said loud enough for his operators to hear.

No! bellowed Zaleski.

But Leonid would not be stopped this time and simply didn’t care what Zaleski said anymore.  Let him find someone else to run the plant if he could!  He ordered the main control room operators to insert the control rods, which were designed to shut down the nuclear chain reaction. Leonid only hoped he was acting in time, grasping all too late that hope was not a good strategy.

Leonid stood behind the reactor operator as he started to drive the rods in, then watched in horror as they stopped, locked in place before they were inserted, rendering them useless and, in fact, allowing power to surge, triggering an exponentially larger spike in power output that almost instantly vaporized most of the water that was used to cool the reactor.  It would later be determined that as the relatively cold rods were inserted into the abnormally hot core, the rods themselves cracked and fractured.  Core temperature went up as power jumped immediately to ten times the full power rating of the core, setting off a series of explosions of unimaginable power and destruction.  

The first explosion was powerful enough to send the four-million-pound lid of the nuclear reactor assembly through the roof of the building, coming back down to rest at a precarious angle over the vessel, leaving the top of the reactor vessel open to the atmosphere.  A second, even more massive explosion followed minutes after the first, rupturing the eight inch thick-walled cylindrical steel reactor vessel itself.  With its searing red heart no longer shielded by tons of steel and concrete or covered with thousands of gallons of water, the seething nuclear core ignited and started to burn uncontrollably.

Leonid went numb, as if an avalanche came crashing down on his chest.  He felt a cold wave of involuntary fear at having been caught unaware and not knowing what to do when the pointers of the recorders and indicating instruments flew in different directions.  His eyes tried to follow them all at once, even though the cause and pattern of the emergency was unclear.  Deep down at his third level of consciousness, he thought about responsibility and the consequences of what had happened.  But in the very next instant there came an unusual clarity of mind and cool headedness born from endless repetition and training.  He knew he was no longer in control of the event, but vowed to himself to do what he could to abrogate the events as they unfolded.  The act of taking action was satiating, if ineffective.   He knew all-too-well the test had gone disastrously wrong, and his actions now were undoubtedly pointless.

As temperatures inside the crippled reactor core reached half the temperature of the surface of the sun, a self-sustaining reaction between the zirconium tubes that contained the uranium fuel and what was left of the water/steam mixture in the vessel achieved temperatures hot enough to melt the fuel and everything around it, from metal pipes, to structural steel. As they would find out later, it was even hot enough to melt concrete walls.

The force of the explosions and the resulting water hammer caused a double-ended guillotine shear of one of the thirty-two inch main coolant pipes in a steam corridor beneath the now failed reactor, allowing the melted mixture to drip out of the pipe into the basement, initially forming little pebble-like nodules as they cooled, hitting the floor like so much welding slag, bouncing and rolling away before the rest of it flowed out like lava. 

Two of the fourteen plant operators were boiled alive in those first few minutes.  Leonid knew them, trained with them, and drank vodka with them.  When their remains were found, they were blackened, dried up mummies and had become as light in weight as children.  Perhaps they were the lucky ones, as they didn’t have to suffer the painful agony of severe radiation poisoning, which would take the lives of so many others over the coming days and weeks—including Leonid’s.  Throughout the crippled plant, radiation levels were in the extreme range and strong enough to ensure that anyone on plant site would be dead in a matter of days.

CHAPTER 8

Marco sat up suddenly in his bed with a feeling of dread, opened his eyes, and looked at the clock on his nightstand.  The red LED display read 1:26 a.m.  His heart was pounding as if something woke him, though he had no sensory perception of any noise or disturbance.  It may have been a bad dream, but he had no lingering memory of one; just a feeling of anxiety that left him uneasy.  He looked over at his wife of six years as she stirred in the warm bed and noticed a bare shoulder, the curve of a breast peeking out from under the blankets, and her long, curly strawberry-blond hair—unusual for a Russian woman.  But then Maggie was American, not Russian.  Marco met her at a conference in Kiev on How to Deal With Emergencies in The Midst of Chaos, where she was the keynote speaker and he, a young fire captain recently assigned to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station.  Marco looked at her now and felt a stirring of excitement, but it was not to be.  Off in the distance came the sound of an ominous monotone alarm designed to get people’s attention and hold it—a plaintive wail that started low and wound up to a nerve shattering sound for those who were close by.  Marco cocked his head to one side to see if he was really hearing that egregious sound, which even though far off would have caused his heart to pound and adrenaline to kick in—if Maggie hadn’t already done that for him.  It spoke of something seriously wrong at the nuclear power plant just up the road. 

He hoped that whatever had just happened would be a mundane emergency—if there were such a thing at a nuclear power plant.  He reached for his pager expecting to find a message or a code requesting him to report to the station, but found no such message.  He reluctantly rolled out of Maggie’s warm embrace, got out of bed, and pulled on his dark blue