I didn't hesitate. I swung the twelve-inch steel wrench with everything I had left in my shoulders, driving the flat head straight into the brass padlock holding the sluice wheel open.
The shackle sheared with a violent metallic crack.
I threw my weight onto the iron wheel, spinning it clockwise against the violent hydraulic torque of the rushing sludge. The heavy iron gate groaned inside its tracks, fighting the current, before dropping with a thunderous THUD that shook the concrete floor beneath my boots.
The rushing sound stopped instantly. The black liquid backed up behind the steel plate, rising like a dark wall against the sight glass.
Two seconds later, the automated high-level sensor tripped inside the control housing. High overhead, atop the sixty-foot lighting gantry, four heavy emergency strobes burst into life, pulsing brilliant amber beams across the rain-swept yard and painting the tanker, the catwalk, and my silhouette in stark, unforgiving light.
From fifty yards away, near the compressor shed, a shout cut through the wind: "He's at the tanker! He's got the sluice!"
Footsteps pounded across the gravel, sprinting straight toward the loading rack. I locked the sample canister into my rig, gripped the steel wrench, and stepped out onto the open platform into the glare of the lights.
CHAPTER 3: The Spill They Could Not Bury
The amber flood strobes sheared through the sheets of rain in five-hundred-watt pulses, slicing the darkness into violent flashes of yellow and pitch black. Below the platform, the twenty-ton slug of chlorinated sludge, blocked by the dropped municipal sluice gate, churned violently against the reinforced iron barrier. It had nowhere to go. Deprived of its straight drop into the creek culvert, the black, frothing solvent surged backward through the floor grating, pooling six inches deep across the lower containment deck and spitting acrid white vapor into the freezing mist.
Deputy Miller cleared the gantry stairs first, his hand clamped over the molded grip of his Glock 17, his yellow slicker whipping wild against his thighs. Behind him came Duane Harlan, his face twisted into an ugly, mottled mask of rage, dragging his bad hip as he swung a three-foot steel pipe wrench like a club. Ray brought up the rear, out of breath, his fingers digging into his broad belt, coughing as the heavy chemical vapor began rising from the grate beneath their soles.
"Step away from that rig, Vance!" Miller screamed. He had his service pistol unholstered, the muzzle pointed at the center of my canvas vest, but his footing was treacherous on the wet steel grating. The amber glare flickered across his wet face, catching the sudden dart of his eyes toward the boiling froth below. "Drop the wrench and get down on your stomach! Right now!"
I didn't drop the wrench. I shifted my weight back against the rigid steel stanchion of Vault Two, planting my heels on the dry diamond plating of the upper control tier. With my right hand, I kept the twelve-pound calibrator wedged tight against my ribs, its green diagnostic light pulsing steadily through the spray.
"Look down at your boots, Miller," I said, my voice cutting through the plastic speech diaphragm of my respirator with flat, hollow resonance. "You take two more steps and your rubber soles start melting into the steel. That isn't farm runoff. That is forty thousand pounds of industrial dichloromethane backing up out of Duane's tanker. One spark from a dropped flashlight, and this entire gallery flashes into phosgene gas."
Duane didn't stop. He lunged past Miller, raising the heavy pipe wrench with both hands, his mouth open in a soundless curse swallowed by the howling wind. "He tripped the dump, Ray! He shut the gate! The whole load is trapped on the pad!"
He swung the pipe wrench with all the clumsy fury of a cornered animal, aiming straight for my head.
I had spent twelve years working high-pressure manifolds; I knew how men moved when they were off balance on slick metal. I didn't try to parry the heavy steel. I ducked hard to my left, sliding under the arc of the swing. The iron wrench missed my shoulder by two inches and slammed directly into the bronze housing of Vault Two's auxiliary pressure sensor, shearing the brass gauge off in a shower of sparks and hissing nitrogen.
Duane’s momentum carried him forward into the handrail. Before he could recover his balance, I drove the flat heel of my steel-toed work boot straight into the back of his right knee—the bad joint that had ended his oilfield career.
The joint buckled with a dull, wet pop. Duane let out a strangled roar and dropped hard onto the grated walkway, his pipe wrench clattering through the open mesh and splashing heavily into the chemical soup six feet below. He clutched his knee, rolling on his side, his slicker soaking in the caustic condensate dripping from the overhead pipes.
"Duane!" Ray shouted, rushing the bottom of the ladder, but he stopped three rungs down, paralyzed by the sight of the rising sludge. The dark, oily liquid was already lapping at the lower step of the gantry, bubbling where it touched the galvanized coating.
Miller kept his gun leveled, but his hands were trembling visibly now. The harsh chemical vapor was burning through his bare eyes and nostrils, making his eyelids flutter and water profusely. "You assaulted an officer's civilian escort, Vance! That’s an armed felony! Drop the gear or I fire!"