Craig Kreident #2 Fallout (12 page)

Craig followed her, feeling totally out of place in his formal business suit, too warm, feeling a tingle of sweat, but not yet so uncomfortable that he might need to loosen his maroon tie.
 
He glanced at his watch.

The cleared area gave an unobstructed view of what seemed to be the entire state of Nevada.
 
Two startlingly out-of-place rows of splintered wooden bleachers sat abandoned and alone.
 
The wood had turned gray from decades of exposure to the desert.

Craig blinked in disbelief.
 
“What are these doing out here?”

“These were the press bleachers, official observation stands.”
 
Paige gestured toward the dry brown lakebed.
 
“Back in the late fifties, above-ground tests took place out there on Frenchmen Flat.
 
The press corps and other VIP guests would sit here and watch the mushroom cloud, clicking pictures, looking through darkened glasses.
 
Also, somewhere out there, soldier volunteers crouched in foxholes, unwittingly exposed to massive amounts of radiation.”

“You’re kidding,” he said.
 
“How could they be so — “ he searched for the right word.

“Naive?” she suggested.
 
“They honestly didn’t know what they were doing, didn’t understand the real nature of the dragon they were tempting.
 
Reporters would sit here with their big cameras, notepads on their knees, applauding the fireball, the mushroom cloud.
 
It was exciting.”

“And they did it willingly?” Craig asked.

“They fought each other for the chance.”
 
She crossed her arms, tossing her blond hair away from her face.
 
“Remember, back then technology was supposed to solve all the world’s problems.
 
Scientists were revered celebrities.”
 
She brushed her hands on her jeans.
 
“The above-ground tests took place before 1963.
 
After that, nuclear shots were conducted underground to prevent environmental contamination — if we did a ground burst of one of our modern multi-megaton bombs, instead of the little ones they used in the Fifties, radioactive fallout would cover half the state.”

Craig shaded his eyes.
 
Even with the sunglasses, the bright glare across the desert made him squint.
 
He shuffled his feet, kicking at small stones.
 
“But nothing leaks when you explode them underground?”

Paige’s forehead furrowed.
 
“The last time we had an appreciable radioactive release was in 1970, the Baneberry Test.
 
My dad worked on that one.”
 
She smiled wistfully.
 
“It was a major turning point for containment technology.
 
Of course now, with the total testing moratorium. . .”

Standing beside the rickety press benches, Craig put his hands on his hips and continued to stare.
 
The vast, open spaces made everything hushed and silent.
 
Far off he could hear the thunder of jet aircraft roaring across the sky, and then a double shotgun crack of a sonic boom.

“This place has a lot of history behind it,” Paige said, leading him back toward the truck.
 
“The people who still work here are what you might call Good Old Boys.
 
They used to run everything by the seat of their pants and the backs of envelopes — but over the past few years the rug has been pulled out from under their feet.
 

“I’ll introduce you to my Uncle Mike, who’s in charge of the DAF.
 
He’s had to open his doors for this Russian disarmament team, showing them all the secrets he’d been told to hide for decades.
 
The Soviets were the reason NTS was formed in the first place, and Uncle Mike — along with a lot of other workers around here — is having a difficult time rolling with the changes.”

Back at the truck, Craig walked around to the driver’s side and opened the door for her.
 
He heaved himself into the other side of the pickup, then looked sharply at her.
 
“Are you suggesting that one of the old workers might be responsible for the murder of Ambassador Nevsky?
 
Someone who thinks the Cold War is still going on?”

Paige pulled the pickup back onto the long highway and accelerated down the road.
 
“You’re the detective, Craig,” she said.
 
“I’m just giving you the background you need.
 
None of this stuff happens in a vacuum.”

“Nothing ever does,” Craig said.

CHAPTER 13

Wednesday, October 22

8:05 A.M.

Home of Bryce Connors

Henderson, Nevada

With Craig Kreident pulled away from the militia case, Agents Goldfarb and Jackson approached the small home of Bryce Connors, the Hoover Dam worker who had disappeared sometime the previous day.
 

They had their search warrants and their suspicions, but nothing tangible to connect Connors with the Eagle’s Claw — at least not yet.
 
But if the October 24th deadline could be believed, they could waste no time dismissing possible leads.

Connors’s house was a low one-story suburban home built in the late sixties, painted a burnt-orange color that reminded Goldfarb of baby diarrhea.
 
It did not stand out from the others on the street, an average home in an average residential district.

The area around Henderson had once been a quiet suburb south of Las Vegas, populated by blue-collar families, many of whom worked at the casinos or the Air Force bases or the dam itself.
 
Now, though, strip malls had moved in, streets turned into highways — and what had once been a residential neighborhood was now bisected by a busy thoroughfare complete with traffic signals on virtually every corner.

Jackson parked their rental car in front of the house against the curb.
 
Across the street, Goldfarb saw a video rental store, a small coffee and donut shop, a beauty parlor, and a Circle K convenience store.
 
Early morning customers wandered in the stores, but here on the residential side of the street the homes seemed quiet.
 
Everyone had already gone to work, kids already at school.

Goldfarb stepped onto the sidewalk, brushing a palm over his curly dark hair.
 
Paying attention to every detail, he checked the handgun in its shoulder holster, gripped the search warrant and his badge wallet in hand.
 
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a hot clue,” he said, squinting at the unremarkable house.

Behind the steering wheel, Jackson glanced up into the rear-view mirror, watching carefully for traffic before he climbed out the driver’s side.
 
“Sure,” he answered.
 
“Maybe Mr. Connors will just confess, and we’ll find a nice little manifesto describing everything the Eagle’s Claw intends to do.”

Goldfarb smiled and shrugged.
 
“Or maybe it’ll just be a dead end.
 
But we’ve got to start somewhere.”

They knocked on the front door and waited, but the home greeted them with only silence.
 
“Not surprising,” Jackson said.
 
“Mr. Garcia was unable to reach him either.”

“My guess is he’s skipped town,” Goldfarb said.
 
He winked at Jackson.
 
“Hopefully, we can find some trace evidence, at least some residual explosive materials, something to link this guy with the bombs we found at the dam.”

After knocking repeatedly, they walked around the house, loudly identifying themselves and following standard procedure.
 
Finally, reaching the side garage door, Jackson removed a pack of locksmith’s tools from his inner jacket pocket.
 
“Time to proceed to Plan B,” he said.

As Jackson fiddled with the side door, Goldfarb looked around, waiting for the neighbors to come squawking or pointing shotguns at them.
 
He patted the search warrant in his breast pocket, but it didn’t console him.
 
No telling who around here might sympathize with Connors.
 
“Can’t you hurry it up, Randall?” he said.

“I’m not exactly an expert lockpick,” Jackson grunted.

A snap and a
ping
signified either the tumblers finally giving way, or one of the locksmith tools snapping in half.
 
Jackson smiled broadly at his companion, then turned the door knob, pushing his way into the garage.
 
“Anybody home?” he called.

“FBI,” Goldfarb said in a thin voice that carried a distressing squeak.
 
He cleared his throat.
 
That was no way for a Federal agent to sound.

Inside, the garage was dim and smelled of gasoline.
 
Oil stains splattered the floor like old dried blood.
 
Jackson flicked on a light, a bank of crudely wired fluorescents dangling from the wooden rafters.
 

Goldfarb could see a workbench strewn with tools, an auto-parts calendar tacked onto a two-by-four support beam.
 
With a chilling realization he saw that
Friday, October 24
was circled in red.

“Bingo,” Goldfarb said, cautiously withdrawing his Beretta from its shoulder holster.
 
“Time to be prepared, just like the Boy Scout motto says.
 
He might have left us some surprises.”

Three gray 55-gallon oil drums sat in a corner.
 
Jackson bent over to sniff.
 
“Fuel oil,” he said.
 
“This guy must be gearing up for the next fuel shortage.”

Goldfarb gestured to bags of fertilizer stacked against the opposite wall.
 
“Or maybe he’s just trying out some chemistry experiments,” he said.
 
“He’s making ANFO.
 
There must be enough for a hundred pounds of TNT equivalent.”
 
He paused.
 
“I think we should be very, very careful Jackson.”

The dark-skinned agent nodded silently, then stood against the entrance into the house.
 
For some odd reason he pressed his ear against the door, heard nothing, then turned the knob, surprised to find it unlocked.
 
He stepped over the threshold, glancing warily from side to side.
 

Goldfarb followed, his handgun drawn.
 
“FBI,” he called out again.

They entered the kitchen.
 
Dishes piled in the sink were caked with dried food.
 
“Not much of a housekeeper,” Jackson said.

Goldfarb wrinkled his nose at the old food.
 
“Not much of a cook either.”

“I guess blowing up the free world takes precedence over good housekeeping.”

They moved deeper into the house, staying close to each other but separating to cover ground as quickly as possible.
 
The place had a deserted feel to it, but oppressive — as if glinting yellow eyes were watching them from shadowy corners.

“He’s long gone,” Goldfarb said.
 
“Listen to how quiet it is.”

“Yes, but how much of a hurry was he in when he fled, and what did he leave behind?” Jackson answered.

Goldfarb sniffed the air.
 
“This guy must have been nuts to live in here with this chemical stink.
 
Smells like he used rocket fuel for an air freshener.”

“Quite the chemist, our Mr. Connors,” Jackson said.
 
“But I don’t think he’ll be making any more bombs in here.
 
Maybe he didn’t get time to concoct a surprise for this Friday.”

Goldfarb moved down the hallway past a single bathroom.
 
The toilet seat was up, the bathtub stained and cracked, the shower curtains rimmed with mildew.
 
The small single bed in the main bedroom was unmade.
 
Goldfarb frowned, muttering to himself.
 
“I guess the maid hasn’t come yet this morning.”
 
He continued to snoop around.

Stepping cautiously into the living room, Jackson found an overstuffed reclining chair, its plaid fabric worn, discolored stuffing poking out like thistledown.
 
Beside it, a metal TV tray held a three-week-old program listing, the kind that came free in the newspaper.
 
The television itself was an old Zenith with vacuum tubes that probably took several minutes to warm up.
 
He saw no cable box, no remote control.

Jackson continued his cursory inspection and went to the front door, where they would have entered had anyone answered the knock.
 
He glanced down at the floor and the hinges — and froze in horror.

Small blocks of the bluish-gray plastic explosive had been mounted along the jamb, rigged to contact points connected to the door, strung to all the front windows.
 
If he and Goldfarb had broken inside, the bombs would have detonated — enough to blow out the front of the house and all the windows.
 
Both agents would have been killed instantly.

Suddenly the house seemed much more sinister around him.
 
Swallowing in his dry throat, Jackson bent over to scrutinize the wires.

At the other end of the house, Goldfarb turned from the bedroom to the opposite side of the hall, some kind of den with a door half closed.
 
He glanced inside, his hand on the doorknob.
 
He saw stacks of books, drawings, maps, leaflets, piled up on and around an old card table.
 
Brown boxes filled with debris, wadded newspapers sat beside the table.
 
“Whoa, jackpot.”