Craig Kreident #2 Fallout (30 page)

Paige’s lips trembled as the memories flooded past her.
 
“A different man did those things.
 
Not you.
 
You’re not the Uncle Mike I knew and loved.
 
He’s as dead as my Aunt Genny.”

Mike drove farther on, looking as if she had just stabbed him.
 

Predawn light began to seep into the eastern sky, turning the stormclouds a watery greenish gray.
 
Paige could make out twinkling lights, some sort of security complex at the base of rugged mountains.
 
The pale expanse of a dry lakebed extended for miles, etched with long runways.
 
Mike drove toward the most remote set of buildings, following the bottom of a wide gully, keeping them low and unseen.

She could discern a thick perimeter fence, double chain-link topped with razor wire, probably electrified.
 
RESTRICTED AREA and NO TRESPASSING signs alternated with GUARDS ARE AUTHORIZED TO USE DEADLY FORCE BY ORDER OF THE COMMANDER.

“Welcome to Area 51,” he whispered.
 
“A sight not many citizens get to see.”

Picking his way along in the scant light, Mike approached from the rear of the facility.
 
The gully narrowed and deepened as it ran behind the nearest massive building.
 
Finally he pulled the camouflaged land rover to a stop as close as he could get to the fence, still more than a hundred yards away from the restricted complex.
 
Their vehicle was hidden from sight deep in the gully.

The main structure covered acres and acres, like a gigantic warehouse, larger even than the DAF.
 
Paige saw no windows, only air vents on the rooftop, big roll-up metal doors sealed shut.
 

Even skeptical, she recognized that this building was no simple hangar, no bunker or supply warehouse, no WalMart in the middle of the desert.
 
The featureless contours looked sinister to her — she could almost believe the paranoid fears Mike had voiced.
 

This place was not
right
.
 
It housed something terrible and deadly.

Mike glanced over his shoulder at the stolen nuclear device filling the back of the land rover, then he stared forward again as dawn began to break over the desert.
 
The giant structure fascinated as well as horrified him.
 
One word came from his mouth in a quiet whisper.

“Dreamland,” he said.

CHAPTER 36

Friday, October 24

4:17 A.M.

Residence of Mike Waterloo

North Las Vegas

Feeling as if he hadn’t slept in a month, Craig kept moving.
 
His head pounded, his body ached from the ordeal at the Laughlin railroad bridge, from the frantic chaos of the fruitless NEST search.
 

He wondered when, or if, Major Braden would decide to announce an all-out evacuation of the city.
 
But he also knew the final decision would be made in Washington — and there was no telling what they might decide.

Craig thought of Paige, hoping she was getting a good night’s rest at the Rio.
 
For now, he thought it was best if she didn’t know he wanted to question her Uncle Mike.
 
While Jackson and Goldfarb checked out Dennison’s repair shop, Craig thought Waterloo was his last, best hope.

Though it was just a little after four in the morning, Craig rapped again on the front door of the DAF Manager’s house.
 
The doorbell didn’t seem to work, so he pounded loudly enough to wake anyone in the bedroom, as well as several neighbors.

Finally giving up, he crunched across the nugget-size lava rock spread throughout Waterloo’s front yard.
 
Cholla, prickly pear, and bristly yucca had been meticulously arranged in a landscape with larger rocks and scrub oak, but much of it had gone to weeds, untended for some time.
 
He wondered if Waterloo’s wife Genny had been the gardener in the family.
 
He wondered why Waterloo hadn’t at least bothered to pick up the newspapers tossed in his driveway.

Letting himself through the fence gate, he walked around back to where he could peer through the bedroom windows.
 
Pressing his face against the glass, he discerned shadowy details by the light of a glowing clock radio.
 

With a chill down his spine, he thought of Carl Jorgenson lying dead inside his bathroom, poisoned by the Eagle’s Claw.
 
He hoped the same thing hadn’t happened to Waterloo.

Instead, he found the bed empty, neatly made.
 
Apparently, the DAF Manager had never even come home the night before.
 
He glanced at his watch again to confirm the time.
 
Something was wrong.

Craig didn’t have much time.
 
He took a deep breath, pacing back and forth in front of the bedroom window, wondering what to do, impatient to make a decision.
 
He had wanted to use a little more finesse instead of breaking the door down — but he remembered again what had happened at Jorgenson’s trailer, at the Hoover Dam, at the Laughlin railroad crossing, at the home of Bryce Connors.
 

And he thought again of the missing nuclear weapon.

Waterloo had run, just as Craig had expected PK Dirks to do — perhaps he had fingered the wrong man.

He found a sliding glass door at the patio; the cheap lock popped open easily when Craig pushed against it.
 
He called out again, identifying himself, but heard no sound from inside.
 

Waterloo either wasn’t home — or he was lurking in the shadows with a loaded rifle.
 
Once again, Craig wished he had brought his backup with him — but even now Goldfarb and Jackson would be mounting their investigation of the slot-machine repair shop. . . .

In a hurry but also cautious, Craig began to look around, switching on only one or two small lights at a time.

It took him no more than ten minutes to find an appalling collection spread across the dining room table, as if Waterloo just didn’t care any more: a dozen Eagle’s Claw leaflets, maps of southern Nevada, the Test Site, the Nellis Air Force Range, and a hand-drawn sketch of Groom Lake with topographical lines penciled in.
 
Waterloo had scattered the papers on tables, next to notepads, as if frantically making plans, double-checking his destination, throwing supplies together.
 

Getting ready.

In a cardboard box by the coffee table, Craig found booklets with alarming titles:
Unarmed Combat to Kill, The Political Sellout of America,
and
The ANFO Solution — Ammonia Nitrate Fuel Explosives
.
 
With ice in his stomach, he flipped through the documents.

Craig felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him.
 
All this time he had been working with Waterloo, feeding him information on Nevsky’s “accident” investigation.
 
“We have found the enemy, and he is us,” he muttered.

Feeling sick to his stomach, he found a telephone in the kitchen, looked up the Rio in the phone book, and dialed the number with leaden fingers.
 
He had to tell Paige.

But she didn’t answer.
 
The phone in her room rang a dozen times.

“I’m sorry, sir.
 
Your party isn’t available.”
 
The Rio operator seemed too perky for so early in the morning.
 
“May I leave a message?”

“No, uh, no thanks.”

“Thank you, and have a wonderful day.”

Where could Paige be at 4:30 in the morning?
 
Why didn’t she pick up the phone?
 
He had convinced himself that Waterloo might have switched off his pager and disconnected his home phone — but Paige would never do that, not in her hotel room.
 

He swallowed hard, knowing her devotion to “Uncle Mike” and her concern for him.
 

What if she had stumbled upon his militia activities?
 
Waterloo had disappeared, and now Paige seemed to have vanished as well.
 
What had she gotten herself into?

He ran for the door and his car, roaring off into the pre-dawn stillness toward the Rio.

CHAPTER 37

Friday, October 24

4:47 A.M.

Dennisons Machine Repair

Las Vegas

With tension clenching his abdomen, Goldfarb stood beside his rental car under the streetlights, looking across at the warehouses.
 
He hated putting himself in situations like this, and here he had done it several times this week alone.
 
Julene would lose sleep for a month once she found out about it.

Dennisons slot-machine repair shop was located in an industrial area not far from the Strip — close enough, he supposed, for a nuclear device to devastate the entire area, but far enough for the Eagle’s Claw to operate freely outside the crowds of tourists and gamblers.

Major Braden had rushed his nuclear surveillance vans over to the machine repair warehouse, driving by with gamma counters in search of an incriminating background trace that would be evidence of the smuggled nuclear device.
 
But the initial sweeps had turned up nothing, not even a blip.

Having no other leads, Goldfarb and Jackson decided to go in, regardless.
 
It was better than returning helplessly to the command center, where they would twiddle their thumbs and wait for something else to turn up.

Unless they found something, and soon, NEST would be forced to call for an evacuation of the entire city.

Goldfarb sipped his sour, cold coffee, holding the Styrofoam cup clumsily in his bandaged hand.
 
He had reversed his shoulder holster to put the Beretta within reach of his left hand, but he didn’t know if he’d be able to shoot straight.
 
He hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

They had no real reason to believe this would turn out to be anything other than one more wild-goose chase — but Craig himself had suggested the agents prepare for an armed response.

As he waited by the car for the rest of the backup to arrive, a few splatters of rain drifted down.
 
The wind picked up, carrying a metallic smell of ozone as the precursor to the storm.
 
Goldfarb wondered where Craig had gone, what he had learned at Mike Waterloo’s house.
 
He just hoped their own search here would uncover
something
.
 

Jackson and two other Las Vegas agents — Rheinski and Holden — took up positions on the other side of the street, bracketing the darkened storefront with DENNISONS MACHINE REPAIR stenciled in a half circle on the glass.
 
The agents wore black windbreakers with the letters FBI stenciled boldly in white on their backs; if the situation turned hot, the distinctive garb would help them tell the good guys from the bad guys.
 

Old pickup trucks lined the backstreet, each one displaying a prominent gunrack.
 
Two converted Oldsmobile “low-rider” cars sat on bald tires in the parking lot of the pawn shop next to them.

A white van rolled down the street from the opposite direction, its engine idling, and parked a block away.
 
Goldfarb knew the white van contained SWAT backup forces, just in case the FBI men should need help.
 
Major Braden was taking no chances.
 

Goldfarb took the last swallow of his coffee and tossed the empty cup inside the car.
 
His own bullet-proof vest pinched him, and he adjusted it, feeling like one of the Excalibur’s knights in armor.
 

“Does the SWAT team have ears on the building yet?” he said into the small microphone at his collar.

A thin voice came through his earphone from the communications officer inside the white covert van.
 
“They’re using both the sonic horn and a laser Doppler on the window, sir.
 
Getting ragged background sounds, like snoring, possibly from two people, but I get no movement from inside.
 
Uh, one moment, Agent Goldfarb, Major Braden wishes to say something.”

The redheaded NEST commander said, “Agent Goldfarb — since we’re not picking up any special nuclear material inside, I’ll let the FBI run the entry.
 
We’ll move back to an assist mode.”

Goldfarb felt a surge of adrenaline and second thoughts.
 
In many ways he had secretly hoped the NEST team would take the lead in the raid — with the enormous consequences of surprising someone holding a nuclear weapon, the assault team would be empowered to shoot first and ask questions later.

But with the responsibility now relinquished to the FBI, Goldfarb had to follow conventional “rules of engagement” for a legal raid.
 
He would have to give fair warning, identify himself before charging in — he hoped the militia wouldn’t start shooting the minute he rapped on the door.

“Just keep the SWAT team handy, Major,” he cautioned.
 
“We don’t know exactly what we’re expecting in here.”
 
Raising his hand, he signaled Jackson and the two other agents.
 
All four moved together, converging toward the door.
 

“No sound from inside,” Jackson said.
 

“It’s still pretty early in the morning,” Goldfarb said.

“Not too early for a warehouse shift.”
 
The tall black agent tugged on his Kevlar vest beneath his windbreaker.
 
“Maybe the militia already pulled out.”