Zero Day_ A Novel - Mark Russinovich [13]
“Aren’t the hospitals cooperating?” he asked, squaring his shoulders to look more forceful.
“Sure,” Daryl confirmed. “But I don’t know what they’re holding back, thinking it’s not important. The virus or viruses will have left tracks. I can’t trust others to find them. That’s not what they do. They just want to get their systems functioning. We need to educate ourselves quickly. The protections at one of these infected hospitals were much better than those of, say, nuclear power plants.” She met his eye to see if she was making her point. “We need to know, George. We can’t sit on this.”
For a moment Carlton wondered what she knew, and if that was meant to be a veiled threat. “Well, of course you should go. Thanks for keeping me in the loop. Keep me posted.”
He watched her retreating figure with more than a little regret and sighed. These computer types were always getting worked up over nothing. The few attractive women among them were the worst.
6
KELLOGG, IOWA
SKUNK RIVER NUCLEAR GENERATING STATION
MONDAY, AUGUST 14
11:43 A.M.
Barnett Favor scanned the computer screens with a practiced eye, then leaned back in his chair. He’d begun his shift at six that morning and had just finished lunch. On most days he “assumed the position,” as he jokingly called it—closed his eyes and took a catnap. Either of the other two men on the shift, or the computers themselves, would alert him if he was needed. Favor crossed his hands comfortably on his stomach and closed his eyes.
The Skunk River Nuclear Generating Station was a General Electric boiling-water reactor, located on the Skunk River some forty miles east of Des Moines. It provided nearly half of the electricity of the city, while the rest of its output was distributed throughout the eastern rural stretch of the state and into western Illinois. One of the last nuclear power plants completed in the United States, it had undergone an extensive overhaul in 2005 and was now entirely modern.
In the years since the disaster at Three Mile Island, when multiple human errors had caused a partial core meltdown, enhanced reliance had been placed on computers to handle the complex decision-making necessary if something went wrong. As a result, Favor and his team had almost nothing to do with the plant operation.
Since the overhaul the station had run without incident, not that there had been many in the previous two decades of its operation. Favor had been with the company since high school and was just two years from retirement. He’d cut his teeth on an old coal-fired generating plant, discontinued when the Skunk River Nuclear Generating Plant had come on line. In the early days the operation of the two hadn’t been all that different. Water was still heated and turned into steam, which ran turbines, which produced electricity. The only real difference was how that water was heated.
After several minutes Favor shifted in his seat, then accepted that he wasn’t going to nod off. Instead, he decided to get himself a Coke. If he couldn’t take a nap, he’d take in a bit of caffeine.
The control room of the plant looked like something out of Star Trek. A long, curved wall contained a wide range of gauges and dials. At waist level was a shelf the workers used for a desk. Immediately in front of them was a bank of computer screens that told the story. The men used three chairs on wheels to scoot across the floor and along the wall as they monitored the conditions of the plant. In reality, they had little to do.
Just as Favor stepped from the soft-drink machine, every computer screen in the room blinked, twice. “What was that?” he said.
Orin Whistle, who’d worked there nearly as long, looked up from the paperback he’d been reading, a blank expression