Cold War - Jerome Preisler [119]
Waylon kept looking at him.
“What are we supposed to do?”
Nimec hesitated a moment.
“Call off our troops and put out the fire,” he said, then juiced his engine and went racing off toward the dome.
The fire-suppression agents carried into the water-treatment dome by CC’s Sword ops shared the capacity to arrest intense flames without leaving a damaging residue on sensitive computer and telecommunications equipment—an almost certain collateral effect of foam or water. Both nonconductive formulations were certified environmentally green, and as such had gained approval for use on the Antarctic continent.
These important similarities apart, each possessed separate and unique properties.
FE-13 was the commercial name for trifluromethane, a cryogenic substitute for Halon, which had been banned from global production in 1989 for its ozone-depleting qualities. Stored as a liquid in an airtight steel container, FE-13’s minus-115° Fahrenheit boiling point meant it discharged as a colorless, odorless gas that would lower the temperature of exposed areas to levels that were too cold to sustain a burn.
Inergen was a blend of argon, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide gas that quite literally strangled flames in an enclosed space by depriving them of the oxygen they fed upon, while leaving sufficient O2 for humans to breathe. Though it had been proven effective in fixed systems where a facility’s normal air ventilation could be closed off as Inergen was dispensed—the very sort installed in Cold Corners One—the base’s scientists and support personnel had been evaluating its value as a firefighting accessory that could be used on the move, both in conjunction with FE-13 and as a possible backup. The key had been to develop special ultra-high-pressure canisters that held and released the mixture in sufficient concentration to dampen a blaze where airflow couldn’t be easily inhibited.
Until now their redundant firefighting technique had been successful only in controlled trial conditions.
It performed as well as anyone could have hoped to put out the dome blaze.
The fire-out team converged on the desalinization plant even as their white-clad opposition swept off into the storm, leaving them with unimpeded access to its entrance. Flameproof Nomex cowls pulled over their balaclavas, breathing masks covering their noses and mouths, oxygen tanks on their backs, they rushed into the smoke-filled space in practiced fashion, holding their extinguishant cylinders in front of them, nozzles hissing out their gaseous contents.
There were several things going in their favor as they waded across the dome’s flooded interior to the central platform. Its power generators had kicked into automatic shutdown, eliminating the threat of electric shock. And the sickly yellow-gray fumes that filled the dome had started brimming out into the cold as soon as its door was raised, sucked away in churning, convection-induced funnels. The enclosure cleared of smoke fast, allowing them to work their way over to the water-treatment unit in bare seconds.
The fire they encountered was intense but contained, and already doused in numerous spots by the water that had poured in torrents from the seared, ruptured flow lines. It took just over three minutes to get it under control, another one or two to smother the last of its hot orange blooms.
Unfortunately, it was obvious to every man present that the critical harm had been done long before they arrived.
Nimec and Waylon climbed down off their bikes and then stood in the entry to the dome, staring at the mangled desalinization equipment within as reeking dregs of smoke flitted toward them and were skimmed raggedly away into the wind.
“It’s a mess,” Waylon said. “A goddamned mess.”
Nimec looked at him.
“Where does this leave us?” Nimec said.
Waylon was silent a perceptible while.