He also kept his own council. He didn't join in with the gossip and backbiting common to this type of work. "If there's ever a disaster, we're going to be in a bind, Andy," Lowry had told him at last week's staff meeting. "The disaster plans are written as though we're fully staffed. When was the last time you worked with a full crew? We need a plan that's for us, not the politicians in Springfield." Greg came up alongside him and whispered, "We might have gotten lucky. There's a wall integrity breach; it's small and it's outside the confinement area. But we have to find out if we have others-there could be breaches inside the cells." Andy nodded. He turned the volume down on his radio-loud enough for him to hear the reports coming in fast and furious, but low enough that if something private came through, it would remain so. "You're right, Greg." With both the afternoon and night crews present, they were still a dozen guards short for what needed to be done. He rubbed his head, trying to think clearly. The dull ache he'd acquired earlier was now a full-blown headache, pounding behind his eyes, across the top of his head, and through every sinus cavity he owned. "What was that?" Rod Hulbert was on his feet, looking around, trying to get his bearings.

"At first I thought it was an earthquake. I figured the New Madrid fault line had let go. Now, I don't know." The last time the New Madrid fault line had a major slip was back in the early 1800s. But everyone who lived in the area knew that the one hundred fifty mile long fault line was overdue. They also knew that when it went, it would be a national disaster that would make the New Orleans hurricane fiasco look like child's play. Over seventy-five percent of the buildings in the quake zone were older buildings made of unreinforced masonry. Buildings like that wouldn't survive an earthquake measuring a 6.3. on the Richter scale-and the last time that fault line slipped, it was a lot stronger than that.