Craig Kreident #2 Fallout (36 page)

But even with its doors yawning wide, Dreamland gave up none of its secrets.
 
The cavernous interior of the building remained dark, like a dragon’s lair.
 
The desert seemed to hold its breath, waiting.

Suddenly, banks of interior lights gleamed on, stabbing through the shadows like yellow eyes hidden in the shadows.
 
External spotlights blasted down from automated guard portals around the razor-wire fence, glaring on the sand; the outstretched runway glistened against the white lakebed, blurred by the falling rain.

“Check,” LtCol Terrell said into his headset microphone.

In the rear passenger seat of the military helicopter, General Ursov stared with amazement but without comprehension.

Beside him, Craig couldn’t grasp the dizzying size of the secret facility either.
 
At the moment, though, his curiosity took a back seat to his concern for Paige Mitchell, who might or might not be held hostage down there behind the massive buildings — and for the stolen nuclear warhead he knew must be in one of the two land rovers below.
 
He wished they would communicate with him, break their silence, negotiate a surrender.

As the helicopter hovered over the two camouflaged vehicles, Terrell handed the microphone to Craig.
 
“Somebody’s on the radio for you, Agent Kreident.
 
Hasn’t identified herself, but I think it’s our friendly terrorist down there — and it’s not Mr. Waterloo.
 
She warns that if any aircraft come out of that facility, she’ll shoot her hostage.
 
A woman named Paige Mitchell, a DOE protocol officer, if I understand her correctly.”

Craig’s heart lurched — Paige was a hostage after all, as he had feared.
 
But then the rest of the comment sank in.
 
“
She
?
 
The militia creep is a woman?
 
What happened to Mike Waterloo?”

“Listen for yourself, sir.”

Ursov lowered his voice, muttering, as if commiserating with Craig.
 
“We have been giving Miss Mitchell too many difficulties this week.”

Craig swallowed hard, squeezing his hand into a fist, wanting to punch someone.
 
He took the microphone and clicked it.
 
“This is Agent Kreident of the FBI, and we demand that you release your hostage immediately.
 
We have full security coverage of the entire area, and you can’t get away.
 
Why not just surrender and put an end to this?”

Instead of answering him, one of the two land rovers lurched into gear, spraying sand and gravel as it picked up speed across the desert.
 
It accelerated down the widening gully into the alluvial fan, away from the second vehicle, which remained parked and motionless.

“Where the hell does she think she’s going?” Terrell said.
 
“We’ve got backup zeroing in from all directions!”

Ursov gave a short, loud laugh.
 
“You expect a terrorist just to give up and apologize?”

Then a woman’s voice came over the helicopter’s radio, iron-hard and suggesting absolutely no compromise.
 
“You need to keep your priorities straight, Agent Kreident.”
 
A familiar voice.
 
“You’ve got some choices to make, here and now.”

He sat bolt upright in the passenger seat.
 
Sally?
 
Sally Montry?
 
Craig breathed deeply.
 
Mike Waterloo’s secretary — a member of the militia?
 
Events clicked in place — PK Dirks’s convenient excuse of being absent at Nevsky’s death, hadn’t been his setup, but
hers
.
 
The administrative paperwork for clearing out nuclear weapons, all the dead-end leads . . . Sally would have been in the perfect position to coordinate everything, and to cover their tracks.

And now she had Paige.
 
But where was the warhead
?

“My priorities are clear enough, Sally,” he said.
 
“To stop the Eagle’s Claw, to prevent you from further bloodshed.”

Sally’s short laugh sounded more like a cough.
 
“You listen to me, Agent Kreident.
 
Inside the other land rover you’ll find two things.
 
One is Mike Waterloo, a martyr to the cause — make sure he’s remembered as a hero, if you all survive yourselves.”
 

Craig gripped the microphone to retort, but Sally continued.
 
“There’s also a nuclear device in the back compartment, already armed and counting down.
 
You’ve got fifteen minutes before the secret United Nations command center is obliterated.
 
Make your choice — waste time chasing me and pretty little Paige,” she gave a sarcastic snort, “or try to save the world.”

Sally clicked off her transmission.
 
The land rover accelerated across the wasteland.

Taking Paige with her.

Craig and Terrell and Ursov looked at each other in confusion.
 
The military police in the helicopter wore greenish expressions, as if they wanted the pilot to spin about and head straight away from the warhead with all possible speed, as if they had any chance of outrunning a megaton explosion.

Agonized, Craig knew they would have to make the decision Sally wanted.
 
He watched the land rover bounce away with no pretense at caution.
 
Sally Montry knew she had won this round.
 
“How far out is the NEST team?” he asked, desperately hoping.
 
“And your own disarmament teams?”

“Another twenty minutes, minimum.”
 
Terrell’s face went slack.
 
“We’re the only ones available even to try.”

“Well, then I’m going down there,” Craig shouted over to the pilot.
 
“Come on, let’s go — drop this bird!”

As the helicopter descended toward the ground, its rotors roaring, Craig unbuckled and knelt at the edge of the open doorway, holding the support ropes.
 
Before he could convince himself otherwise, he dropped the remaining few feet to the desert, splashing in the rain-wet sand and running toward the motionless land rover.
 

Every second might count.
 
Fifteen minutes!
 
They’d be caught in the blast of a nuclear explosion, if he couldn’t somehow disarm the weapon.
 
And he had no idea where to begin.
 

The military pilot left the rotors turning, just in case they had to flee . . . though it was an open question whether even the high-speed helicopter could actually get far enough away in time.

“I am coming, Agent Kreident,” Ursov bellowed climbing out the back of the helicopter.
 
“Wait for me — I can assist.”
 
The MPs shouted after him, but didn’t seem too eager to run closer to the ticking warhead.

Craig didn’t pause for a minute.
 
Ursov had vowed not to let Craig out of his sight, but neither of them had time for political games.
 
He couldn’t waste a second to get rid of Ursov, so he just ignored the squat, muscular man.

Reaching the rover, Craig spotted the scarlet stains splashed on the driver’s side door.
 
Before he could blink, he noticed the crumpled, bloody form inside.
 
He stopped short as he recognized the face of Mike Waterloo, his expression slack with death.
 

Everything Sally had said was true.
 
She had shot Waterloo, and she would not hesitate in carrying out her threat against her hostage.
 
Paige was doomed — and so were they all.
 
He longed to go rescue her, but first, he had to somehow stop the nuclear weapon from going off.
 
He glanced at his watch.
 
Piece of cake.
 
Right.

“How do you expect to disarm the warhead, Agent Kreident?” Ursov said, panting, his face flushed.
 
“Are you an expert in such matters?”

“Maybe it’s got an OFF switch,” he muttered, shaking his head.
 
He’d had trouble enough with the plastique at the Hoover Dam — and now this.
 
“I knew I should have learned how to do this stuff.”

His priorities had been clear, as Sally had known, but the procedure was not.
 
Craig had no idea what to do . . . but if he did nothing, the warhead would go off.
 
And if he did the
wrong
thing, the warhead would go off.
 
He just had to hope that somehow, by accident, he would be able to guess the correct method.
 

The wind picked up, hurling cold raindrops, and the thunder rumbled overhead.
 
Craig peered into the back of the land rover and spotted the nuclear device.
 
He had seen similar warheads in the DAF, and he knew this was not a mockup, not a prop — but a functional nuclear weapon.
 
He understood where it had come from, and he knew that the militia intended to use it.
  

The LED lights on the warhead’s access panel glowed.
 
Numbers on the timer continued to click down steadily one at a time.
 
The bomb was armed, ready to detonate.

Thirteen minutes.

Ursov moved up beside him, puffing, his face flushed with determination.
 
Perhaps he intended to chew up the warhead to dismantle it.
 
He stared through the land rover’s window, scowling.
 
“Come, Agent Kreident — we must begin.”

Craig grabbed the door handle, ready to jump into the back compartment and get to work . . . whatever it was.

But he found the door locked.
 
He couldn’t even get inside.

CHAPTER 46

Friday, October 24

7:53 A.M.

Restricted Area

Groom Lake Air Force Auxiliary Station

As Sally Montry drove at a reckless speed across the rugged and muddy terrain, fleeing the nuclear demons she herself had set in motion, Paige huddled in the passenger seat.
 
After all she had seen and learned, the death of her Uncle Mike, the insidious plan of the militia and their paranoid fears of a secret UN base deep inside Groom Lake, the ticking timer on the nuclear device, she sat quiet, seemingly cowed, subdued. . . .

Watching for her chance.

Wondering how much time remained on the warhead’s countdown clock, and how they would escape the deadly rain of fallout even if they somehow managed to survive the blast itself.

The murderous secretary jammed the land rover into four-wheel drive and tromped down on the accelerator, kicking up chips of alluvial gravel from the boulder-strewn hardpan, splashing brown water from a puddle.
 
The vehicle slewed from side to side, but the speedometer jiggled close to fifty miles an hour.
 
Twelve and a half miles, Paige thought.
 
That’s how far they’d make it in fifteen minutes.
 
She didn’t know if that distance would put them out of harm’s way — how far away were those weathered press bleachers from the detonation zones on Frenchman Flat?

A mile from the fenced-in Dreamland facility, cracks appeared in the ground, wide arroyos carved into the desert where forerunners of a flash flood coursed, eating away the soft dirt.
 
The driving became much rougher.

Slowing as little as she dared, Sally paralleled one of the gullies, frequently glancing into her rear-view mirror, searching for helicopter pursuit or her imagined United Nations security forces that were supposedly headquartered inside the hangar building.

The land rover roared recklessly across the desert, leaving a plain trail.
 
Sally must be counting on the nuclear firestorm to obliterate any tracks.
 
Stern-faced, her eyes flicking from side to side, Sally Montry cruised onward.
 
Paige held onto the vehicle’s door to steady herself.

Craig and the others had remained behind at the second land rover, struggling to deactivate the warhead — but she didn’t think Craig had any possible way of knowing how to shut down a warhead.
 
Mike Waterloo had asserted that no one could disarm the warhead in time.
 
And Sally had shot him dead.
 

The bomb would go off, and everyone around it was doomed.

The land rover’s left front tire struck a boulder.
 
Sally compensated by jerking the wheel, and the vehicle smashed into a depression, bouncing them savagely.

Paige picked that moment to lash out, reaching over to grab the steering wheel with both hands, jerking it to the right — hard.
 
The rover lurched toward the steep gully churning with runoff water from the rainstorm.
 
If they went over the edge, the tires would jam — the vehicle might even tip on its side, and they would be stranded, mired in the mud.
 
Sally would never get away in time.

She would probably shoot Paige in her helpless rage, but it would do her no good.
 
The murderous woman would still be trapped.

Sally howled and fought, wrestling for control.
 
“Stop it, you bitch!”
 
Freeing her right arm from the steering wheel, she jabbed brutally into Paige’s side with her elbow.
 
Paige gasped with a sudden explosion of pain and released her hold.

“If we get stuck, we’ll both be fried in the explosion!” Sally yelled, jerking the vehicle back under control as she dropped her speed, veering away from the steep arroyo.