“Nah. If the snow gets too bad I’ll get a dorm room on campus.”

So Jake climbed into the heavy van and Rogers put it in gear and headed for the highway.

“Does Tim know we’re coming?” he asked.

Rogers nodded without taking his eyes off the road. “You bet. I wouldn’t pop in on him unannounced. He doesn’t like that.”

“He’s an ornery so-and-so.”

With a laugh, Rogers agreed. “There’s an old bit from history I think about whenever Tim gets really stiff. World War Two, just after Pearl Harbor. Most of the U.S. Navy is sunk at Pearl Harbor. President Roosevelt needs somebody to run the Navy, build it up again, win the war.”

Jake wondered how this related to Tim Younger.

Rogers went on, “Roosevelt picks Admiral Ernest King. Everybody’s stunned. King was a drunk and a womanizer who had made a lot of enemies for himself. But he was tough, and smart.”

“We did win the war,” Jake said.

“Damned right. But when King heard that he’d been picked to run the Navy, which was mostly at the bottom of Pearl Harbor, you know what he said?”

Jake shook his head.

“He said, ‘When they get into trouble they call for the sons of bitches.’”

Rogers laughed. It took Jake a moment to understand what the story meant. When you have a really tough job to do you need a tough man to do it.

Jake grinned a little. Tim Younger is a tough man. I’m not, he realized. I’m a cream puff.

*   *   *

Clouds were piling up over the mountains, dark and ominous, as they drove through the town of Lignite. They could hear the generator’s roar while they were almost a mile away from the big rig’s facility, even with the Land Rover’s windows rolled up.

“Still running,” Roger said, smiling. “That’s a good sign.”

By the time he parked the van the noise was like the thunder of a formation of fighter jets. Rogers leaned across and fished a pair of earphones out of the glove compartment. With a grin he handed them to Jake.

“What about you?” Jake shouted.

“I’ll find a pair inside.”

Once inside, even with the muffling cups pressing against his ears Jake could hear the generator’s roar, feel the vibration in the air; a thin mist of dust was jittering across the quivering concrete floor of the test cell. Younger and the technicians were in the control booth, behind the glass partition, all of them wearing earphones.

Jake saw Younger mouth hello as he and Rogers squeezed into the already crowded booth. Tim wasn’t smiling. Just a curt nod and the one word, to Rogers actually. I’m an interloper here, Jake told himself. A tourist.

Rogers pulled on a set of earphones. Tapping Jake’s shoulder, he pointed to the gauges on the control panel.