The Enemy Within

The long, twin 500-kv lines fell with it, whirring downward through the air, smashing through trees, and splashing into the white-capped Potomac. On the way down, they made contact and shorted out. Streamers of hellish blue light arced back and forth between the swishing wires like bolts of lightning trapped in a narrow space. Abruptly, everything went black.

Halovic blinked away the dazzling afterimages and turned toward his staring, openmouthed companion. “Come, Yassine. We have much more to do before we are done.”

The Palestinian nodded and followed him down the embankment to their waiting vehicle.

PennMarVa Intertie Emergency Control Centers

As planned, the terrorist attack came at the worst possible time the hour just after sunset when the demand for electricity peaked. Streets were now brightly lit against the gathering darkness. Office lights, computers, and copiers were still on. And millions of people coming home from work or school were flipping on lamps, televisions, ovens, and microwaves.

So when the PennMarVa Intertie’s 500-kv line went down, it created havoc in seconds. Current was still flowing south with nowhere to go. Emergency circuit breakers tripped automatically, desperately shunting the electrical load to secondary 230-kv lines. But the cascading load was too much for them to handle. Line temperatures rose rapidly, climbing toward the danger zone. More circuit breakers blew out across the entire system.

As alarms blared through several utility control canters, their computers swung into action, fighting for precedence among themselves as they tried to bring transmission lines back up. Power outages hopscotched across a vast area south from Gettysburg all the way to Williamsburg, Virginia. More and more substations and secondary lines went black as they were knocked off-line. The edge of each outage was easy to see. On one side of a street the houses and streetlights were bright and warm. On the other side there was nothing but cold darkness.

By the time the situation stabilised, more than 300,000 homes and businesses were left without power.

VEPCO trouble crew, off Route 7, near the Potomac

Rain pounded the red and grey VEPCO truck lumbering up the rutted access road. Water crashed down across the windshield in waves that drowned vision for seconds at a time. Branches scraped across metal as the fierce winds whipped the trees on either side of the narrow road into frenzied motion. For an instant, the truck skidded sideways as its tires lost traction in the mud.

Almost anybody with any choice was either at home or heading there as fast as the weather allowed.

Ray Atwater and his partner, Dennis Greenwood, didn’t have a choice. Both men had seen the weather coming and had said goodbye to their wives, not expecting to see them again until the storm stopped, whenever that was. While everyone else hunkered down, Virginia Electric Power crews worked to keep the lines up and everyone warm.

Right now Greenwood drove while Atwater pored over maps and diagrams of the power grid. Raised in Michigan’s stormy winters, Greenwood fought the rain-slick roads like a pro. Atwater was a rarity, a native of the area, and he was more than willing to let the other man have the wheel.

Their first job was to find the line break and see how bad things really were. In a sense, they were scouts for the construction crews assembling at utility yards throughout northern Virginia.

Atwater shook his head as he used a penlight to scan the intertie map. The first sensor reports showed that they’d lost the 500-kv line at one or both of the river transmission towers. He hoped the sensors were wrong. Even in good weather, trying to string new line across the Potomac would be a delicate, ticklish job. Under the current conditions, it would be all but impossible.

The troubleshooter put his charts away as the truck nosed out of the woods onto the long, mostly open slope leading to the intertie Potomac crossing point. He stared through the streaked windshield, straight into the center of total darkness. It was no good. He couldn’t see anything up ahead no steel latticework and no red warning light. Nothing but rainflecked blackness in the headlights.

Atwater glanced at his partner in surprise. “Where the hell’s the tower?”

He rolled down the window on his side, letting in the cold and wet, but also improving his view. Still nothing. “Shit.”

He thumbed the transmit switch on his radio mike. “Dispatch, this is One-Five ”

Rippling flashes lit up a small grove of trees only yards away. The windshield blew inward.

Both Atwater and Greenwood were killed instantly by a stuttering fusillade of automatic-weapons fire that ripped them apart. The utility trouble truck rolled on for a short distance and finally came to rest against the access road embankment. One lone headlight still gleamed, shining across the twisted wreckage of the 500-kv transmission tower.

HRT ready-response section