The Burning Wire

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Authors: Jeffery Deaver

Tags: #General, #Suspense, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Mystery Fiction, #Crime, #New York (State), #Police Procedural, #Police, #N.Y.), #Serial Murderers, #New York, #Rhyme, #Police - New York (State) - New York, #Lincoln (Fictitious character), #Manhattan (New York

BOOK: The Burning Wire
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B
Y THE
S
AME
A
UTHOR

Best American Mystery Stories 2009
(Editor)

The Watch List
(
The Copper Bracelet
and
The Chopin Manuscript
)
(Contributor)

Roadside Crosses**

The Bodies Left Behind

The Broken Window*

The Sleeping Doll**

More Twisted: Collected Stories, Volume Two

The Cold Moon*/**

The Twelfth Card*

Garden of Beasts

Twisted: Collected Stories

The Vanished Man*

The Stone Monkey*

The Blue Nowhere

The Empty Chair*

Speaking in Tongues

The Devil's Teardrop

The Coffin Dancer*

The Bone Collector*

A Maiden's Grave

Praying for Sleep

The Lesson of Her Death

Mistress of Justice

Hard News

Death of a Blue Movie Star

Manhattan Is My Beat

Hell's Kitchen

Bloody River Blues

Shallow Graves

A Century of Great Suspense Stories
(Editor)

A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime
(Editor)

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
(Introduction)

*Featuring Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs

**Featuring Kathryn Dance

THE
BURNING
WIRE

A LINCOLN RHYME NOVEL

JEFFERY DEAVER

Simon Schuster
NEW YORK * LONDON * TORONTO * SYDNEY

Simon Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright (c) 2010 by Jeffery Deaver

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Simon Schuster hardcover edition June 2010

SIMON SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or [email protected].

The Simon Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

Manufactured in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Deaver, Jeffery.
The burning wire : a Lincoln Rhyme novel / Jeffery Deaver.
p. cm.
1. Rhyme, Lincoln (Fictitious character)--Fiction. 2. Police--New York (State)--New York--Fiction. 3. Manhattan (New York, N.Y.)--Fiction. 4. Serial murderers--Fiction. I. Title.
PS3554.E1755B87 2010
813'.54--dc22
2009049993
ISBN 978-1-4391-5633-9
ISBN 978-1-4391-5896-8 (ebook)

For editor extraordinaire, Marysue Rucci

"Hell, there are no rules here. We're trying to accomplish something."

--T
HOMAS
A
LVA
E
DISON, ON CREATING
THE FIRST ELECTRIC GRID

Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

I THE TROUBLEMAN

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

II THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

III JUICE

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

IV THE LAST CASE

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Thirty-seven hours until Earth Day

I
THE TROUBLEMAN

"From his neck down a man is worth a couple of dollars a day, from his neck up he is worth anything that his brain can produce."

--
THOMAS ALVA EDISON

Chapter 1

SITTING IN THE
control center of Algonquin Consolidated Power and Light's sprawling complex on the East River in Queens, New York, the morning supervisor frowned at the pulsing red words on his computer screen.

Critical failure.

Below them was frozen the exact time: 11:20:20:003 a.m.

He lowered his cardboard coffee cup, blue and white with stiff depictions of Greek athletes on it, and sat up in his creaky swivel chair.

The power company control center employees sat in front of individual workstations, like air traffic controllers. The large room was brightly lit and dominated by a massive flat-screen monitor, reporting on the flow of electricity throughout the power grid known as the Northeastern Interconnection, which provided electrical service in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Connecticut. The architecture and decor of the control center were quite modern--if the year were 1960.

The supervisor squinted up at the board, which showed the juice arriving from generating plants around the country: steam turbines, reactors and the hydroelectric dam at Niagara Falls. In one tiny portion of the spaghetti depicting these electrical lines, something was wrong. A red circle was flashing.

Critical failure . . .

"What's up?" the supervisor asked. A gray-haired man with a taut belly under his short-sleeved white shirt and thirty years' experience in the electricity business, he was mostly curious. While critical-incident indicator lights came on from time to time, actual critical incidents were very rare.

A young technician replied, "Says we have total breaker separation. MH-Twelve."

Dark, unmanned and grimy, Algonquin Consolidated Substation 12, located in Harlem--the "MH" for Manhattan--was a major area substation. It received 138,000 volts and fed the juice through transformers, which stepped it down to 10 percent of that level, divided it up and sent it on its way.

Additional words now popped onto the big screen, glowing red beneath the time and the stark report of the critical failure.

MH-12 offline.

The supervisor typed on his computer, recalling the days when this work was done with radio and telephone and insulated switches, amid a smell of oil and brass and hot Bakelite. He read the dense, complicated scroll of text. He spoke softly, as if to himself, "The breakers opened? Why? The load's normal."

Another message appeared.

MH-12 offline. RR to affected service
area from MH-17, MH-10, MH-13, NJ-18.

"We've got load rerouting," somebody called unnecessarily.

In the suburbs and countryside the grid is clearly visible--those bare overhead high-tension wires and power poles and service lines running into your house. When a line goes down, there's little difficulty finding and fixing the problem. In many cities, though, like New York, the electricity flows underground, in insulated cables. Because the insulation degrades after time and suffers groundwater damage, resulting in shorts and loss of service, power companies rely on double or even triple redundancy in the grid. When substation MH-12 went down, the computer automatically began filling customer demand by rerouting the juice from other locations.

"No dropouts, no brownouts," another tech called.

Electricity in the grid is like water coming into a house from a single main pipe and flowing out through many open faucets. When one is closed, the pressure in the others increases. Electricity's the same, though it moves a lot more quickly than water--nearly 700 million miles an hour. And because New York City demanded a lot of power, the voltages--the electrical equivalent of water pressure--in the substations doing the extra work were running high.

But the system was built to handle this and the voltage indicators were still in the green.

What was troubling the supervisor, though, was why the circuit breakers in MH-12 had separated in the first place. The most common reason for a substation's breakers to pop is either a short circuit or unusually high demand at peak times--early morning, both rush hours and early evening, or when the temperature soars and greedy air conditioners demand their juice.

None of those was the case at 11:20:20:003 a.m. on this comfortable April day.

"Get a troubleman over to MH-Twelve. Could be a bum cable. Or a short in the--"

Just then a second red light began to flash.

Critical failure.
NJ-18 offline.

Another area substation, located near Paramus, New Jersey, had gone down. It was one of those taking up the slack in Manhattan-12's absence.

The supervisor made a sound, half laugh, half cough. A perplexed frown screwed into his face. "What the hell's going on? The load's within tolerances."

"Sensors and indicators all functioning," one technician called.

"SCADA problem?" the supervisor called. Algonquin's power empire was overseen by a sophisticated Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition program, running on huge Unix computers. The legendary 2003 Northeast Blackout, the largest ever in North America, was caused in part by a series of computer software errors. Today's systems wouldn't let that disaster happen again but that wasn't to say a different computer screwup couldn't occur.

"I don't know," one of his assistants said slowly. "But I'd think it'd have to be. Diagnostics say there's no physical problem with the lines or switchgear."

The supervisor stared at the screen, waited for the next logical step: letting them know which new substation--or stations--would kick in to fill the gap created by the loss of NJ-18.

But no such message appeared.

The three Manhattan substations, 17, 10 and 13, continued alone in providing juice to two service areas of the city that would otherwise be dark. The SCADA program wasn't doing what it should have: bringing in power from other stations to help. Now the amount of electricity flowing into and out of each of those three stations was growing dramatically.

The supervisor rubbed his beard and, after waiting, futilely, for another substation to come online, ordered his senior assistant, "Manually move supply from Q-Fourteen into the eastern service area of MH-Twelve."

"Yessir."

After a moment the supervisor snapped, "No, now."

"Hm. I'm trying."

"Trying. What do you mean,
trying
?" The task involved simple keyboard strokes.

"The switchgear's not responding."

"Impossible!" The supervisor walked down several short steps to the technician's computer. He typed commands he knew in his sleep.

Nothing.

The voltage indicators were at the end of the green. Yellow loomed.

"This isn't good," somebody muttered. "This's a problem."

The supervisor ran back to his desk and dropped into his chair. His granola bar and Greek athlete cup fell to the floor.

And then another domino fell. A third red dot, like a bull's-eye on a target, began to throb, and in its aloof manner the SCADA computer reported:

Critical failure.
MH-17 offline.

"No, not another one!" somebody whispered.

And, as before, no other substation stepped up to help satisfy the voracious demands of New Yorkers for energy. Two substations were doing the work of five. The temperature of the electric wires into and out of those stations was growing, and the voltage level bars on the big screen were well into the yellow.

MH-12 offline. NJ-18 offline. MH-17 offline. RR
to affected service areas from MH-10, MH-13.

The supervisor snapped, "Get more supply into those areas. I don't care how you do it. Anywhere."

A woman at a nearby control booth sat up fast. "I've got forty K I'm running through feeder lines down from the Bronx."

Forty thousand volts wasn't much and it would be tricky to move it through feeder lines, which were meant for about a third that much voltage.

Somebody else was able to bring some juice down from Connecticut.

The voltage indicator bars continued to rise but more slowly now.

Maybe they had this under control. "More!"

But then the woman stealing power from the Bronx said in a choking voice, "Wait, the transmission's reduced itself to twenty thousand. I don't know why."

This was happening throughout the region. As soon as a tech was able to bring in a bit more current to relieve the pressure, the supply from another location dried up.

And all of this drama was unfolding at breathtaking speeds.

700 million miles an hour . . .

And then yet another red circle, another bullet wound.

Critical failure.
MH-13 offline.

A whisper: "This can't be happening."

MH-12 offline. NJ-18 offline. MH-17 offline. MH-13
offline. RR to affected service areas from MH-10.

This was the equivalent of a huge reservoir of water trying to shoot through a single tiny spigot, like the kind that squirts cold water out of a refrigerator door. The voltage surging into MH-10, located in an old building on West Fifty-seventh Street in the Clinton neighborhood of Manhattan, was four or five times normal load and growing. The circuit breakers would pop at any moment, averting an explosion and a fire, but returning a good portion of Midtown to colonial times.

"North seems to be working better. Try the north, get some juice from the north. Try Massachusetts."

"I've got some: fifty, sixty K. From Putnam."

"Good."

And then: "Oh, Jesus, Lord!" somebody cried.

The supervisor didn't know who it was; everybody was staring at their screens, heads down, transfixed. "What?" he raged. "I don't want to keep hearing that kind of thing. Tell me!"

"The breaker settings in Manhattan-Ten! Look! The breakers!"

Oh, no. No. . . .

The circuit breakers in MH-10 had been reset. They would now allow through their portal ten times the safe load.

If the Algonquin control center couldn't reduce the pressure of the voltage assaulting the substation soon, the lines and switchgear inside the place would allow through a lethally high flood of electricity. The substation would explode. But before that happened the juice would race through the distribution feeder lines into belowground transformer boxes throughout the blocks south of Lincoln Center and into the spot networks in office buildings and big high-rises. Some breakers would cut the circuit but some older transformers and service panels would just melt into a lump of conductive metal and let the current continue on its way, setting fires and exploding in arc flashes that could burn to death anybody near an appliance or wall outlet.

For the first time the supervisor thought: Terrorists. It's a terror attack. He shouted, "Call Homeland Security and the NYPD. And reset them, goddamn it. Reset the breakers."

"They're not responding. I'm locked out of MH-Ten."

"How can you be fucking locked out?"

"I don't--"

"Is anybody inside? Jesus, if they are, get them out now!" Substations were unmanned, but workers occasionally went inside for routine maintenance and repairs.

"Sure, okay."

The indicator bars were now into the red.

"Sir, should we shed load?"

Grinding his teeth, the supervisor was considering this. Also known as a rolling blackout, shedding load was an extreme measure in the power business. "Load" was the amount of juice that customers were using. Shedding was a manual, controlled shutdown of certain parts of the grid to prevent a larger crash of the system.

It was a power company's last resort in the battle to keep the grid up and would have disastrous consequences in the densely populated portion of Manhattan that was at risk. The damage to computers alone would be in the tens of millions, and it was possible that people would be injured or even lose their lives. Nine-one-one calls wouldn't get through. Ambulances and police cars would be stuck in traffic, with stoplights out. Elevators would be frozen. There'd be panic. Muggings and looting and rapes invariably rose during a blackout, even in daylight.

Electricity keeps people honest.

"Sir?" the technician asked desperately.

The supervisor stared at the moving voltage indicator bars. He grabbed his own phone and called
his
superior, a senior vice president at Algonquin. "Herb, we have a situation." He briefed the man.

"How'd this happen?"

"We don't know. I'm thinking terrorists."

"God. You called Homeland Security?"

"Yeah, just now. Mostly we're trying to get more power into the affected areas. We're not having much luck."

He watched the indicator bars continue to rise through the red.

The vice president asked, "Okay. Recommendations?"

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