Craig Kreident #2 Fallout (16 page)

They followed a blacktop road around the nearest foothill, passing two storage bunkers before finally stopping at 1820.
 
A red light in a metal cage gleamed from the top of each bunker; three-pronged yellow and magenta radiation signs prominently marked the front.

The size of the convoy security impressed Waterloo.
 
Two more guards stood in front of the bunker with M-16s at their hips.
 
Behind them nine white drums had been lashed to a flatbed truck while workers hoisted a tenth on top.
 
To the right sat a Bronco bristling with communication antennas.
 
Two Armored Personnel Carriers stood waiting to escort the flatbed.

Terrell open his door.
 
“Ready, Mr. Waterloo?”
 
Hot, dry air rolled in from the desert.

Grabbing his black satchel, Waterloo followed Terrell to the flatbed.
 
The guard acknowledged them, but did not salute, keeping a wary eye on the two newcomers, as if he did not trust his own commanding officer.
 

Waterloo glanced into the fortified storage bunker.
 
Yellow lines painted on the concrete floor led deep inside the facility, displaying a transport path to the individual weapons vaults.
 
Follow the yellow brick road
, he thought.
 
Maybe it leads to Dreamland. . . .

A tech sergeant wearing a sidearm jogged up to them.
 
He saluted.
 
“Howdy, Colonel.
 
Everything’s on schedule, sir.”
 

Terrell flipped through a sheaf of papers on a clipboard.
 
“You’ve cleared the devices to transfer to DOE?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let’s do it, then.”

The sergeant pulled over a small footstool.
 
“Watch your step climbing up.”
 
He helped them onto the hot metal top of the flatbed.

Waterloo fumbled in his black satchel, removing the barcode reader, which he plugged into the hand-held computer crammed with inventory information.
 
He ran the barcode reader over the top of the first white drum on the truck.
 
Checking the readout, he saw three lines of information appear, listing the previous storage facility, the date assembled, and a short history of maintenance checks performed.

“Ah, a Livermore weapon,” he mused.
 
“I probably worked with several of the people who designed this warhead.”

Terrell glanced at his watch.
 
“Your plane should be arriving soon, sir — the convoy does have a schedule to keep.”

“Right.”
 
Waterloo turned to the computer display.
 
“I’ll read off the inventory data, and you check it off before you sign each device over to me.”

Terrell smoothed his paper on the clipboard as if that were the most obvious fact in the world.
 
“You may ride in the cab on the way to the plane, if you wish to maintain uninterrupted visual surveillance.”

“No need,” he said.
 
“With all these signatures and all this paperwork, how could anyone accidentally lose track of a warhead?”
 
But deep inside, Waterloo wondered if they truly believed in the infallibility of their security.

It took half an hour for the toiling convoy to make the drive back to the isolated runway and the newly arrived C-17 transport plane.
 
On the way back, Waterloo radioed ahead to the DAF to have Sally Montry finalize the escort vehicles waiting at the receiving air strip in NTS.

As they approached, the sedan skirted the group of mysterious hangars by a wide margin.
 
Waterloo realized he’d been placed behind the driver’s seat, which kept Terrell between him and a good view of the hangars.
 
Intentionally?

Waterloo leaned toward Terrell, still unable to get a good view.
 
“We saw one of your stealth bombers flying over the NTS a few hours ago.
 
Cruising quite low — everyone was impressed, including the Russian inspectors.”

“We’re still doing a lot of testing,” Terrell said curtly.

“Out here at Groom Lake?
 
I’ve heard rumors about your Dreamland facility, Colonel.
 
Any chance of getting a tour?”

Terrell flashed a sharp glance over at him.
 
“That request is out of line, sir.
 
Your security clearance does not transfer to our other work here at Groom Lake.
 
Our responsibility for storing nuclear devices is temporary and definitely
not
 
our primary mission.
 
Beyond that, I am not familiar with the facility you mentioned.”

Waterloo didn’t pursue the matter further.
 
But the brush-off made him all the more uneasy.

CHAPTER 18

Wednesday, October 22

2:45 P.M.

Yucca Flat

Nevada Test Site

After a cafeteria lunch, Craig was anxious to return to the DAF to begin going over the mounds of paperwork Nevsky had left behind.
 
Time was wasting, and he had gathered about as much background as he considered useful.
 
But he had to accompany the Russian inspectors as they were shown the NTS down-hole testing activities.
 

The van trundled along a dirt road on Yucca Flat where hundreds of nuclear tests had taken place underground.
 
Craig could see the dimpled ground, weirdly symmetric circular depressions laid out like a bizarre gardening plot.

“Moon craters,” said Nikolai Bisovka, an amateur astronomer and stargazer back in Russia.
 
He fumbled with his pack of Marlboros, sucking on an unlit cigarette, since Paige wouldn’t allow him to smoke in the van.

“Subsidence craters,” Ursov corrected.
 
“Is that how you say in English?”

“Yes, General.”
 
Paige said as the van jounced toward a white tower standing like a sentinel surrounded by trailers and construction cranes.
 
“The explosion forms a subterranean cavity, but the roof collapses, resulting in a subsidence crater at the surface.”
 
She swerved around a pothole.
 
“But all the radioactivity is contained underground, not released to the atmosphere.”

Craig adjusted his sunglasses and stared, shifting about to keep comfortable on the van’s seat.
 
He felt impatient, eager to be up and making some headway.
 
He glanced at his watch.

“We’re going to meet one of our old-timers,” Paige said.
 
“Jerome Kostas has worked on underground tests since the 1960s.
 
He even participated in some of the Pacific Island detonations as a young sailor — the Sawtooth Test on Enika Atoll and Castle Bravo on Bikini.”
 
She parked the van near the pickup trucks and trailers surrounding the white tower.
 
“I’ll bet old Jerome remembers watching most of these craters being made.”

Craig climbed out of the van, still watching the Russians and still studying how the Test Site functioned, how various groups worked together.
 
He could see why some conservative hardliners might have a problem with foreign disarmament inspectors snooping around.
 
For decades, these workers had prepared nuclear warheads for use against the “evil Soviet empire.”
 
Now, though, their former enemies were being given a show-and-tell, no more secrets, no more testing, no more reason for a cherished way of life.
 

Would anyone have been frustrated enough to murder the head of the Russian team?

The inspectors themselves all had alibis, but Craig wondered if there could have been a conspiracy of some kind, two or more of them involved in killing Nevsky so it would look as if one of the Americans had done it.
 
It seemed a good way to rekindle international rivalries, to raise tensions. . . .

A large man sauntered out of the white tower, dressed in painter’s pants and wearing a hardhat plastered with faded stickers, team designs for nuclear test shots.
 
He was heavyset, his skin dark brown and leathery, his eyes bright.

“This your team, Miss Mitchell?” Jerome Kostas said.
 
She shook his hand, and Kostas went down the line, methodically gripping each of the inspectors’ hands.
 
“We’re doing an updated series of benchmark chemical explosions here — no nukes — but the setup is similar.
 
We’re gonna have a thunderstorm here tomorrow, Friday at the latest, and we’re scrambling to get the prep-work done.”

Kostas cocked an eyebrow at Craig, studying his out-of-place jacket and tie, before turning to Paige.
 
“Say, Mike Waterloo says you’re Gordy Mitchell’s daughter — is that true?
 
I must’ve done a dozen shots with Gordy.”

“My father worked with just about everybody here at one time or another.”
 
Paige smiled, glad to know her father was still remembered.

“He retired a while back, didn’t he?” Kostas asked.

“Yes, and he died three years ago.
 
Cancer.”
 
Her voice became more formal, her words more clipped.
 
Craig felt sorry for her.

“Sad to hear that.
 
Gordy probably never should have retired.”
 
Kostas rubbed his leathery hands together, settled his hardhat tighter on his head, then turned to his visitors.
 
“All you get is the canned speech.
 
I’ve done this too many times to put in any new twists.”

Several of the Russians had difficulty with the colloquialisms.
 
Ursov stood listening intently, letting no emotion show on his face.

Kostas said, “A typical underground nuclear test would span a year from conception to the actual shot, involving hundreds of engineers, scientists, technicians, and craftspeople.”
 
He gestured to the spools of heavy cable, the tall cranes.
 
Contract workers passed in and out of the trailers, glancing at the group.

“Look at all the craters,” the old engineer said.
 
“Before drilling, we take into account the predicted yield of the device, the local geological medium, and separation from other test sites.
 
A lot of factors, and a lot of paperwork.”
 
He blew air through his lips.
 
“After grading the surface, we bring in support structures, bogey-towers, diagnostic trailers, construction cranes — and offices, so we can fill out the damned paperwork.”

The Russians commiserated with him.
 
Craig looked over at Paige, but she seemed lost in thought, perhaps reminded of her father.
 
Out in the open air, Nikolai Bisovka lit up his Marlboro.

“We put two canisters down-hole,” Kostas said, “the nuke itself, plus an instrumentation canister seven feet in diameter, fifty feet long, four hundred thousand pounds once you add all the radiation shielding to protect the delicate diagnostics.”
 
Kostas wiped a hand across his brow.

“See, we field very precise instruments in a hostile desert environment.
 
They get left downhole for a month or so while we pour dirt and concrete on top of them.
 
Usually these instruments are one-of-a-kind designs concocted by some engineer with too much computer time and not enough common sense.
 
I
have to guarantee they’ll work.
 
The sensors are vaporized in a few thousandths of a second, but the signals travel faster than that, and we get the data we need.”

Kostas crunched toward the tall tower in his heavy work boots.
 
One of the construction cranes rotated away, dangling cables like bullwhips from its peak.
 
“The instrumentation canister and the device canister get hooked together, then hung from the bogey tower for final assembly and checkout.
 
That’s where we christen it, usually with a little message written on the side.
 
Another Superior Product of the MFWBB.”
 
Kostas laughed at a private joke.

Craig grew suddenly interested, thinking of the words on the bomb he’d found at the Hoover Dam.
 
“You write messages on the sides of the device canister?” he said.
 
“What is MFWBB?
 
One of your engineering groups?”

Kostas looked abashed.
 
“Well, you see, the last three letters stand for, uh, ‘What Builds Bombs.’
 
I’ll let you guess what the ‘MF’ means.
 
Just a little Test Site humor . . . although once some general found out, we had to cease and desist immediately.”
 
He frowned at Ursov in his general’s uniform, as if the Russian had been responsible.
 
“Some people just can’t take a joke.”

Standing inside the white tower, Kostas pointed to a weathered steel disk like a ten-foot-wide manhole cover over a deep shaft.
 
“Those cranes lower the canister to the desired depth, and then we stem the hole with sand and gravel, layered in such a way to ensure proper density and compaction.
 
Some epoxy, then plugs of sanded gypsum to block the flow of radioactive gas up the column.”

He removed his hardhat.
 
“When everything checks out, we set off the test — then we get ready for the next shot.”
 
Kostas put his hands on his hips and looked up into the tower, squinting until the crows-feet scrunched together in a network of wrinkles.
 
“At least that’s what we used to do.
 
Now we pretty much sit around and bullshit about our golden age.”