BOOKER REACHED THE UNIVERSITY EARLY IN THE afternoon. He’d come with a companion, a small gray monkey that had started following him soon after he’d landed in Overton Park. Booker knew the Memphis Zoo was located there and figured the animal must have escaped from its cage during the earthquake. The monkey was shivering in the cold and Booker had given him one of the apples he’d brought with him. From that moment, the monkey stayed about ten feet behind Booker at all times and had trailed him to the university.
It took him a while to locate the earthquake center. The campus was a mess. The damage was worse than anything he’d seen at Oak Ridge, which was bad enough. The front of the new library had fallen off. Buildings were down wherever he looked, and even though it was cool, he smelled the sickly sweet odor of bodies that hadn’t been pulled from the wreckage and were starting to decay. If they didn’t take care of that soon, he knew they were going to have an epidemic on their hands.
When Booker finally found the earthquake center, he was told Walt Jacobs was in the field running tests and wouldn’t be back until later that evening. An armed guard also told him all the other seismologists were too busy to talk to him and denied him entrance to the building.
Booker showed the guard his ID from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. “I jumped out of a goddamned airplane to get here,” he said angrily. “You’ve got to let me in there to talk to someone.”
The Army corporal shook his head. “Sorry, sir. I can’t do that.”
One of the seismologists stepped outside to smoke a cigarette. In an instant, the monkey shot from behind Booker and scurried through the open door. Feeling the annex’s warm air, it was trying to get out of the cold.
“Dammit,” the guard said, turning to give chase.
Booker entered the building right on the soldier’s heels. He was still wearing his bright-red jumpsuit and boots. He carried a small backpack. A pair of goggles were suspended from his neck. He made quite an impression.
As it ran about the library annex, the monkey kept up a frantic ear-splitting screech.
Steve Draper, the president’s science adviser, stepped into the hallway to see what was the matter. He’d stayed behind to monitor the situation after the president left.
“I want to talk to someone about the aftershocks,” Booker said, walking right up to him. He didn’t recognize Draper and assumed he was one of the seismologists. “Promise me, you’ll just hear me out.” He quickly explained who he was and why he was there.
“I’ve brought some notes,” he said, rushing along with his description. “I’m fairly sure the best depth would be at a minimum of two thousand feet. The deeper the better. I did a little research before I left. I’ve been playing with a graph that plots the magnitude of an earthquake with energy released in ergs. The energy released by a magnitude 5.5 quake has an energy equivalent of about 10 ergs to the twentieth power. A nuclear bomb, a small one, say 2 or 3 kilotons, would release about the same amount of energy. The trick here will be to release enough energy along the fault so you get a modest earthquake. But not enough to set off a big one. I can make that happen. The geologists need to tell me how big a bomb is required to do the job and where to place it. That should be pretty straightforward number crunching. I’d do it myself, but I’m getting a little rusty.”
Draper stared at him. He didn’t say a word.