Wrong building, Grandpa?” they laughed after taping a diaper to my desk and destroying the notebook my daughter gave me / Chapter 38 / 53

Chapter 38 - Fire in the Machinery

The flare struck the high-pressure mist with a blinding flash of phosphorus white and a deafening *WHUMP*.

A wall of heat and smoke erupted between us and the guards. The sudden flash-bang blinded the two operators, their automatic weapons discharging wild bursts of gunfire that ricocheted harmlessly off the reinforced concrete vaulting above.

"Move!" I roared, grabbing Lily by the arm and dragging her behind the massive steel housing of Turbine Number Three.

Bullets sparked against the iron housing, pinging like deadly hornets.

"Dad, the pressure gauges!" Lily shouted, coughing through the acrid white smoke as she pointed to the massive brass dials mounted on the bulkhead. The needles were vibrating violently in the red zone, bouncing against the stop-pins at fourteen thousand PSI.

Deep within the concrete mountain, a terrible, structural groan echoed—the sound of steel rebar stretching beyond its elastic limit.

"The remote detonator won't matter if the hydraulic rams blow on their own!" I yelled. "The digital bypass Sterling put in has locked the relief valves in the closed position! If we don't open the secondary spillway bypass manually within four minutes, the entire face will shear!"

"Where is the manual release?"

"Beneath the floor plates!" I pointed to a heavy, grease-covered inspection hatch right beneath the primary sluice pipe. "The mechanical counterweight valve! It requires four hundred foot-pounds of torque to turn the gear arbor!"

"Arthur!" Harlan's voice suddenly cut through the chaos above.

I looked up toward the overhead catwalk. Harlan and Miller had breached the upper ventilation gallery! Miller leaned over the railing, firing two precise shots from his service weapon. Sterling’s left guard dropped to the diamond plate with a yell, clutching his shoulder, while the second guard scrambled for cover behind the palladium containers.

Sterling backed away toward the emergency service elevator, his eyes wide with sudden panic. "You're all going to drown here!" he screamed, his polished composure completely shattered. He slammed his hand onto the elevator's call button. "Blow the charges! Blow them now!"

He jammed his thumb onto the detonator switch.

Nothing happened.

Lily stood up from behind the turbine housing, holding up a severed bundle of multi-core wiring she had sliced through with her wire-strippers during the smoke screen.

"Looking for your signal, Sterling?" she yelled, her eyes blazing with fierce triumph. "You might understand venture capital, but you don't know a damn thing about low-voltage wiring!"

Sterling shrieked in fury, diving into the open elevator cage as the doors slid shut. The lift began its rapid ascent toward the surface staging area.