T
he Strip drew closer, its skyline rippling in the shimmering dry heat against the brown desert hills beyond.
‘What exactly are we going to do at Nellis?’ I asked Petinski.
‘Your service record says that you have no experience with—’
‘You been snooping around in my records?’
‘Cooper, people so high up they carry their oxygen around in tanks have picked over every detail of your life to clear you for this. I just got the summary.’
‘Who are you again?’
‘As I was about to say, we’re going to Area Two, Nellis, because you have no experience whatsoever with nuclear weapons handling procedures, and you need to see how that’s done to know what we’re up against. We have a rendezvous with the commanding officer of the 896th Munitions Squadron, Lieutenant Colonel Dade Challis. He’s going to walk us through the weapons storage area.’
‘That’s nice of him.’
‘No, it’s procedure. The only place harder to get into than a nuclear WSA is the bunker where they keep our UFOs embedded in ice.’
‘They embed UFOs in ice? Why do they do that?’
Petinski ignored me.
I shrugged and tapped the Air Force base into the Garmin and the voice told me to continue on ahead for another two hundred yards, and then turn right – drive time: twenty-seven minutes. I turned the voice off. Two females in the car telling me where to go was at least one too many.
‘What’s the present situation at Area Two?’ I asked.
‘DoD has eighteen personnel working undercover there at the moment. The surveillance op is fully compartmentalized. Each agent is working on his or her own, their presence and true identity unknown to the others. They’ve been secreted in place in both the conventional weapons storage and nuclear weapons storage facilities over the course of normal change of stations for the past three months. As people have moved on, ours have taken their place. We’ve got two majors, two captains, a lieutenant and assorted enlisted personnel holding down positions in everything from security to weapons maintenance.’
‘Three months? You told me the authorities have only known about the missing nuke for six weeks.’
‘Suspicions that something was seriously wrong have been around longer.’
‘What can you tell me about the theft of conventional weapons?’ I asked.
‘Probably started the way these things always start – small. A handgun first, followed by a rifle, then a case of rifles, and so on. And then when no one was caught people got organized and the money rolled in and everyone turned greedy. From what we can ascertain, this has been going on for years at a number of installations.’
‘How’s it being pulled off?’
‘The simplistic explanation, ’cause I barely understand it myself – everything in supply has a number and a barcode so it can be tracked through the system. But the system itself has somehow been manipulated and the inventory program tampered with. The way it’s supposed to work is that, on the almost unheard-of occasion when a duplicate barcode or number is picked up, a simple notification is made and a new barcode and number are issued and registered on the system. It seems, though, that the duplication notifications have been switched off. A shipping container of rifles, for example, can be removed undetected because they carry numbers and barcodes identical to others in inventory. When the system can’t pick up the duplication, the total volume of rifles appears to remain the same even though the case is no longer on the floor. The numbers and barcodes of the missing weapons were simply double-counted without any alert.’
‘Two rifles were counted as one,’ I said to make sure I followed her, ‘so that when the duplicated rifle was taken, as far as the system was aware the total numbers in inventory hadn’t changed.’
‘Exactly. In reality, only a small fraction of what’s in inventory has been stolen. And we have so much scattered around the world that the pilfered items are rarely missed.’
‘If their serial numbers are removed, when they do surface their point of origin can’t be traced.’
‘You got it.’
It was a clever scheme. I took the boulevard that wound around the back of the Strip and headed north-east, out to Nellis, driving on autopilot, listening to my own thoughts. Only a fraction of the items might have been stolen, but I’d seen what even small numbers of them could do in a place like the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the picture was far from pretty.
‘DoD is quietly running a check on stores of all US military equipment, everything from M1 Abrams tanks to uniforms,’ Petinski continued. ‘As you can understand, it’s a massive job. From what I’ve been briefed, it looks like whoever is tampering with the system has been working up to nukes, testing their own systems, going for bigger and bigger items.’
‘I was at Incirlik last year,’ I said. ‘They lost ten F-16 engines. I remember a captain in supply going nuts about ’em simply vanishing from the system. They found ’em a day later.’
‘Sounds exactly like the kind of trial run I’m talking about.’
At the time, Anna and I were investigating a number of apparent serial killings that began with the US Air Attaché to Turkey. That had been her last case. I could picture her the day we walked into the warehouse at Incirlik, hunting for leads, the folks there searching high and low for their missing engines. On that day, Anna was alive, challenging, difficult. And a week later she was dead in my arms with a hole blown in her chest.
‘Something wrong?’ Petinski asked, looking at me.
I shut down the memory – I was getting better at doing that. ‘Nothing. You mentioned Barksdale. That episode related to this one at all?’ Barksdale was one of the bases involved in a mysterious incident back in ’07 when six armed W80 nuclear warheads mounted on AGM-129 Tomahawk advanced cruise missiles were discovered on a B-52 headed for the Middle East. The missiles were spotted on the aircraft’s wing pylons while it was sitting out in the open, unattended by its flight crew. Aside from the fact that the plane was carrying hot nukes, it had also carried them halfway across the United States over densely populated areas, a flight that was totally illegal.
‘That’s part of what we’re here to find out,’ said Petinski.
‘Were you involved in that case?’ I asked her.
‘No, I was still in the NTSB at the time.’
‘But you’re aware of the details?’
‘Of course.’
‘What can you tell me about the subsequent investigation?’
‘The easy questions were answered. The processes and procedures that allowed the Tomahawks to leave their igloos and get mounted onto the aircraft were found to be compromised.’
‘You don’t buy the conspiracy theories that the White House either secretly ordered their deployment, or some highly placed general ran amok?’
‘No, and neither should you. So, do you know
anything
about nuclear weapons handling, Cooper?’
‘I know that dropping them’s probably not a good idea.’ A road sign for Nellis flashed by. Two miles to the turnoff, confirmed by the Garmin.
She sighed. ‘Jesus . . . Okay, then, from the beginning. If a nuclear warhead is to be installed on a missile or other delivery system, the procedures to be followed are designated “C2”.’ She delivered this little speech in the tone of a mother potty-training a three year old. ‘Even if the weapon has to be moved, it’s signed out of its bunker under a set of security measures called “Use Control”, which are designed to prevent unlawful and unauthorized access. In other words, no matter what your intentions are, there’s a strict nuclear weapons handling procedure that’s rigorous and inflexible. On top of which are the Nuclear Management Information Systems that track the location of every nuclear warhead – and even individual bomb components – every second of its life from cradle to grave.’
‘So our nuke’s vanishing act can’t be explained.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Any theories?’
‘One. We believe that the weapon’s barcode and number code could have been exchanged for something else less accountable – something there’s plenty of, like a Humvee. It’s impossible to even conceive of this happening, but it looks like the weapon has simply been walked out on a trolley under everyone’s noses. The damn thing’s small enough.’
‘Who could have done the walking?’
‘The specific personnel who’ve had access and the training have all been scrutinized and cleared.’
‘How’re they screened to get the job in the first place?’
‘A battery of psych, loyalty and background checks conducted by us – the Defense Criminal Investigative Services. Every fiber of their being is verified red, white and blue before they’re allowed anywhere near a nuke. And even then, no one is permitted to be alone with a warhead. Everyone – and I mean
everyone
– works in pairs.’
I signaled and turned behind a low brown-brick wall with the sign
WELCOME TO NELLIS AFB
, and motored slowly to the guardhouse. I lowered the window, showed my common access card. Petinski leaned across and did the same. The DoD security guy in a dark blue shirt with black sweat stains under his arms spent around 0.6 diligent seconds examining our right to enter, then waved us through.
‘Where to from here?’ I asked.
‘Area Two is a left turn on Ellsworth. Just follow it around behind the end of the runways.’
‘What are their ideal personality type indicators – our nuclear bomb handlers?’ I asked.
‘I’m sorry?’ Petinski asked, puzzled.
‘Are they INTJs, ENFPs . . . ?’
‘Still not with you, Cooper.’
‘One of the questions in the Myers-Briggs test was, “You often think of mankind and its destiny.” Would the ideal nuclear bomb babysitter answer yes or no to a question like that?’
‘I don’t know why you care either way, Cooper. You answered “A” to everything, remember?’
‘They said there were no wrong answers, so what I put down didn’t matter.’
‘They told me that too, so I answered “B” to everything.’
‘Really.’
‘Of course. It was a nonsense test.’
Well, well . . . Petinski thumbing her nose at stupidity
and
we had something in common. That was right up there with the most surprising thing I’d heard all day, namely that someone had wandered off with a thermonuclear device tucked under their jacket.
‘Something I keep asking myself about you, Petinski,’ I said, looking at her with fresh eyes.
‘And what’s that?’
‘Can you do the splits?’
‘Cooper, this stream-of-consciousness thing you do. If we’re going to work together, you’ll have to turn it off.’
‘And you’ll have to find a sense of humor.’
‘What do you mean? I’ve got a
great
sense of humor,’ she said, sliding her ID wallet into a front pocket of her jeans.
‘Shall we give it a test?’
‘I’m game.’
‘Okay, so why did God create the female orgasm?’
Petinski pursed her lips.
‘So that women can moan even while they’re enjoying themselves.’
More pursing.
‘I rest my case,’ I said.
‘What’s there to laugh at? That joke’s not funny. None of your jokes are funny. You want me to fake it?’
‘Now you’re messing with me, right?’
Petinski was focused on a point somewhere ahead. I gave an internal shrug and concentrated on the driving; not that I had to. The landscape outside was a tan-colored lifeless desert cut by shallow dry gullies, the road through it smooth, hard and straight. Speaking of the outside temperature, the display on the rental’s mirror indicated that it was a hundred and seventeen degrees, and an accompanying graphic of little flames licked the bases of the numbers in case I didn’t know that a hundred and seventeen degrees was hot.
A couple of miles ahead, a shape appeared like a mirage out of the shimmering heat – a guardhouse. I figured the standard luscious pool of cool water surrounded by date palms was probably somewhere behind it.
‘Who are we seeing again?’ I asked Petinski.
‘Lieutenant Colonel Dade Challis. He’s the MUNS commander.’
‘How long has he had his hand on the stick?’
‘Sixteen months. Standard rotation is two years.’
Which meant that he’d be moving on to a staff job somewhere in eight months time if the brass considered that he’d discharged his duties well at the 896th. Given that there was a nuke gone missing on his watch, this colonel would be lucky not to find himself cleaning out gasoline storage tanks on Diego Garcia with his tongue.
‘And what’s our reason for being here?’ If this whole situation was on the QT, we were going to need a cover.
‘We’re both about to be transferred to Air Force Materiel Command, the agency that conducts nuclear surety inspections. As Nellis has a perfect NSI record, we’re here to see the best of the best in action. An indoctrination tour, basically.’
The road took us around the northern ends of the side-by-side runways. A single gray B-52 sat on the ramp, its wings drooping as though exhausted by the heat.
‘What’s Challis like?’
‘The serious type, I believe.’
I’d met plenty of light colonels in my line of work and few of them I would describe as comedic. But did I want Red Buttons sitting on a stockpile of nuclear weapons?
‘Does the colonel know he’s down a warhead?’ I asked.
‘As I told you already, for the time being this is completely compartmentalized. I don’t know what he does and doesn’t know, but we have to assume the worst.’
‘That he could be in on it?’
‘It’s possible – given that he’s been here as long as he has, he’s not undercover, not one of us. And Cooper, use of deadly force has been authorized around these weapons and components, so be on your best behavior.’
‘So no bomb jokes?’
‘Cooper,
all
your jokes bomb.’
If I wasn’t mistaken, my radar had just picked up some low-flying sarcasm. I glanced over at Petinski; sure enough, the corner of her mouth suggested the hint of a smirk. Maybe there was hope for the woman after all. Looking past her, out her window, a high double fence had come out to meet us and was now running parallel to the road. It was topped with razor wire and signs hung on it every fifty yards or so warned that more of that deadly force had been authorized against unlawful entrants. We were getting close to the mother of all WMDs. I had no doubt that there would be all manner of additional security systems attached to those fences: motion and vibration sensors, laser tracking sensors, multi-spectrum cameras and so forth.