“That won’t work,” he said firmly. “I don’t know how you expect this woman to fry the control computer system for the reactor, but even if she did, the loss of power would drop all the control rods. That’s how they work. A loss of power releases the rods without need for any safety action. It would shut down the reactor completely.”
It was Brielle’s turn to frown. “I heard Yegor say something about bringing in electromagnets. I don’t know what he’s going to do with them, but they’re big and expensive, and he has a lot of them.”
The doctor stiffened. “How many does he have? More importantly, how big are they?”
That earned him another shrug from Brielle. “I don’t know for sure—twenty-five, thirty, maybe. The one I saw was the size of a petrol drum.”
Harley definitely didn’t like the expression on Dr. Jones’s face after that. “What are control rods? Would the magnets do what Yegor needs?”
“Control rods do exactly what their name implies,” he said. “They’re inserted into the core of a nuclear reactor and move up and down to control the rate of the nuclear chain reaction. If they’re all the way in, there’s no reaction. If they’re all the way out, there’s too much reaction. Modern reactors use electromagnets to pull the rods and hold them in place. If power is lost, the magnets don’t work and the rods drop automatically. But if Yegor has his own magnets, he might be able to use them to pull the rods regardless of what the main electromagnets are doing. Frying the computer at that point will ensure that none of the other safety features, like cooling spray, boron dumps, and water circulation will work.”
“He might be able to use them?” McKay pressed.
It was the doctor’s turn to shrug. “He’d have to know exactly where to put them and when to turn them on.”
“Yegor has a dozen physicists on his payroll,” Brielle said softly. “Including some from the French Nuclear Safety Authority.”
Dr. Jones paled at that, unmistakable terror evident on his face.
“We don’t honestly think Adriana would do what Yegor wants, right?” Jes asked. “She has to know what’s at risk.”
“If Yegor puts a gun to Kristoff’s head, she’ll do it,” Harley said. “She’d do anything for her boyfriend. She’s head over heels for him.”
“Is there any chance Kristoff and Yegor know that and are playing her?” Tessa asked. “I mean, I hate to think that, but it sounds like something Yegor would do. And someone gave up the details of the hospital we were using in Athens.”
Crap. Harley hadn’t even thought about where Yegor had gotten his information on the hospital. She hoped Tessa was wrong. “I’m going to go with my instincts on this and pray that, for Adriana’s sake, Kristoff isn’t involved. Which means when we go into that nuke plant, we’re going to need to rescue him along with her.”
“Speaking of which,” Tessa interjected. “Why don’t we call in the French army and have them put a couple thousand troops around each of these sites? That’s got to be less risky than waiting for them to attack and then hoping we get there in time.”
“There are fifty-eight nuclear plants in France alone,” Jones said with a tired sigh. “And fifteen more in the UK. If we scare Yegor off from his original plan, what’s to say he can’t just as easily hit one of those? At least now we have some idea where the threat is coming from.”
Beside Harley, Caleb leaned forward to rest his forearms on the table. “There’s a good chance he might not hit either Gravelines or Penry. Yegor must have assumed Brielle would rat him out, right?”
But Brielle shook her head. “Yegor will assume I’m too terrified to talk. Especially after he had Batu try to kill Julian and me. He has a low opinion of people like you and me, even the ones who work for him. His opinion of women is even lower.”
The Q&A session continued for another fifteen minutes, but in the end, all they could do was wait. They had support team personnel running surveillance on both Gravelines and Penry, praying Brielle hadn’t steered them wrong. Hopefully they’d know the second anything started to happen. Then Harley and everyone else would go in, with McKay and Weatherford staying back to coordinate for local support, and Dr. Jones on the line to provide technical help.
“You coming in with us, Brielle?” Caleb asked as they all got to their feet. “After the way you fought Batu in Greece, we could use the extra firepower.”
Brielle gave him a smile that seemed genuinely rueful. “That was a one-time thing, I’m afraid. But I’ll be back here with the support team, in case you have any questions.”
Harley was surprised to see Caleb look disappointed.
“When you go into whatever nuke plant Yegor attacks, stay on your toes,” McKay said. “We can’t afford to make a mistake. If Yegor pulls this off, radiation will spread across half of Europe.”
And on that cheery note, Jake told everyone to try to get some rest. “We have no idea when this is going to kick off, and we’ve all been going nonstop for days.”
As everyone slowly filtered out of the room, Erin and Elliot wandered over to where Harley stood with Sawyer.
“Sorry we walked out on you the other day,” Erin said. “Finding out that you’re a werewolf threw us for loop.”
Sawyer nodded. “Where were you the whole time? When we realized you didn’t go back to London, Rory and I were worried Yegor had killed you, and we just hadn’t found the bodies yet.”
“We never left Athens,” Elliott admitted sheepishly. “We got rooms at a hotel, then found a bar and drank for pretty much two straight days while we tried to figure out what we were going to do. It wasn’t until we got a text from Rory telling us about the attack on the hospital and explaining you were heading to Calais that we realized we’d been gone long enough.”
Sawyer’s mouth edged up. “Well, I can’t tell you how glad I am that you came back. The team needs you. But more importantly, I need you. When you two walked away like that, I… Well…it was hard.”
Harley felt tears come to her eyes at the heartfelt words. She’d known getting rejected by his teammates had been difficult and seeing how happy Sawyer was because they’d come back made her inordinately happy, too.
Erin gave Sawyer a sisterly hug. “You might be different than the Sawyer we thought we knew, but you’re still the same teammate we’ve always had. It simply took us a while to remember that. There was no way we could let you face Yegor alone.”
Harley was pretty sure Erin was close to tearing up, too, but Sawyer was smart enough to make their exit at that point, saying he and Harley needed to talk about some stuff before trying to catch some sleep.