The Blood of Patriots

Chapter 15: Starlight

"Damn it," Oz says. "They're early."

The electric lights flicker and dim, then come back on full.

"That will be the generators kicking on," Walker says from somewhere in the club. "Everything's good."

No one moves, but it's a little disconcerting. The TV screen slowly illuminates, returning solid blue. Kip jogs into the room from behind the stage. He sees Oz and runs over to us.

"Zee," he says, "that wasn't storm-related. That was the Army."

"That means we have boots on the ground," she says and scoots around the bench. "The redistribution of power should trip our mines and trigger a cascading failure of the grid."

What the fuck? I'm glad now that the electric company turned me away. This will be a nightmare for them.

Oz heads for the back curtain with Kip in tow. I help Hannah stand and grab her hoody. I pick up her boots and socks and she and I follow Marty through the curtain beside the stage. I help the unsteady Hannah up a wrought iron spiral staircase to the next floor up.

At the top is a large brick-lined room about half the size of the club below. It looks like it could be the natural basement for the building. The floor is concrete and along the brick walls on three sides are long folding tables. Dozens of laptops are manned by dozens of people, including Joe and Kip.

"This is Oz's command center," Hannah says. "She and her guys have cots set up in the other room. They've been here for days."

"Except when they're at my house."

"Yeah, I guess."

I find her a chair and park her in it.

"Put your boots back on," I tell her.

Oz and Marty are leaning over Joe's chair staring at his laptop. I walk over to get a look.

"Right here," Joe says. "Wait for it."

"What are we looking at?" I ask.

"A bomb," Oz says. "The Army cut the power to downtown. That's sending a back surge along these feeder lines. When that happens the lines actually sag. When this one sags enough ...."

A bright white light flashes and consumes Joe's screen followed by large blue sparks and yellow flames.

"Boom!" Joe says.

"Another one over here," Kip says. "Southwest. There it goes."

"Is that enough?" Marty asks.

"One more," Oz says.

"Got it, here," Maggie yells from another terminal.

"That should do it. Joe, give us the big grid."

Joe opens another window, a schematic of the electric grid for eastern Missouri and western Illinois.

I'm familiar with this.

I say, "The big green dots are the power plants. The red lines are where the power's failed."

As we watch the whole area shuts down, feeding outward from St. Louis city in huge blocks. Then the entire southern region of the state goes, followed quickly by blocks feeding up the line in Illinois to the northeast.

"Zoom out," Oz asks just as Joe is doing that.

"Damn it," Joe says. "I should have warned my mother. There goes Chicago."

"Did we just take out the power in Chicago?" I ask. "There are nuclear plants up that way."

"We didn't," Oz says. I expect her to smile, but she doesn't. "The Army did that. We just helped it along. The nuclear plants will shut down automatically. When that happens, Chicago goes brown. Without support from the St. Louis region, it goes black."