The guard shack was a little more formidable than the one waving people through at the base’s main gate. I counted five men and three women, all dressed in airman battle uniforms. Two tech sergeants outside the glass-sided building carried M16s and wore M9 Beretta side arms. Two sergeants and a senior airman walked out of a side door, also armed, and trotted to a blue Explorer parked nearby.
I lowered the window and felt a blast of hot air on the side of my face. I handed the female staff sergeant my CAC card and OSI ID. Petinski handed me her credentials as well as a sheaf of paperwork to pass across for inspection. The top two letters I caught a glimpse of bore different logos – one from the Department of Energy, and the other from Air Force Materiel Command. The sergeant flicked through the paperwork, excused herself politely, asking us to wait, and took the bundle inside. I saw her pick up the phone and dial, then lift a couple of Petinski’s referral letters and give them further inspection. She nodded a couple of times, put the phone down, and started making photocopies in triplicate.
From what Petinski had told me, I gathered that only a mushroom cloud was going to get more attention from the 896th than a letter of authority from the Air Force Materiel Command.
T
he staff sergeant appeared by my window and handed back all our details. On her head was a black beret bearing the unit patch of the 99th Security Forces Squadron, a black scorpion beneath crossed rifles with bayonets fixed. I don’t like scorpions.
‘Can you tell us where the squadron building is?’ I asked.
‘I’ll do better than that, Agent Cooper,’ she said. ‘You’ll be accompanied. It’s the rules.’
Two senior airmen in ABUs and packing side arms came out of a door and approached my window. One of them, a fit-looking guy by the name of Gertrude with a bullet-shaped head, said, ‘Please step out of the car, sir, ma’am.’
His buddy, a skinny, long-necked guy named Fryer, wanded us down and discovered that I had metal in my belt. It was made in China, so that was definitely a surprise. Petinski was clean. They then went over our vehicle, inspecting it inside and out.
‘Find anything?’
Gertrude held up a quarter.
‘Don’t spend it all at once,’ I told him.
He pressed it into my hand. ‘Ready when you are, sir.’
Petinski and I got back in the car, the airmen taking the rear seats.
‘Where are you going, sir?’ asked Fryer.
‘The commander’s office,’ Petinski answered.
‘Well, keep on this road till you see three buildings arranged in a semicircle around a garden,’ he said.
I motored slowly away, bringing the window up to keep the sauna out.
The garden turned out to be a clump of cacti with a few rocks, the buildings a little less inspiring than the landscaping. I parked us in the lot, an eighty-yard hike to the front door. As Petinski and I approached it with our armed escort, sweat beading at my hairline, the door to the building snapped open letting out a blast of cold air. It was held open by a senior master sergeant, ‘Burton’ on his nametag.
‘Have a nice day, sir, ma’am,’ said Gertrude as he handed us off to the sergeant.
‘Senior Master Sergeant Burton, Squadron Superintendent,’ said Sergeant Burton. ‘Welcome to Area Two.’
The guy was sharply dressed in an airman battle uniform, the pixel pattern catching a sheen that suggested it had been heavily steam-ironed every day of its life. We walked through a foyer past framed photos of various aircraft, airborne and on the ground, armed with air-launched cruise missiles on pods under their wings. Among them was an illustrated unit patch of the 896th MUNS, a red-tipped missile hanging over the globe, beneath it the squadron’s motto, ‘Nothing less than perfection.’ The red tip indicated that the missile carried a live nuke.
The sergeant led the way up two flights of stairs to the command section on the second floor populated by administrative personnel. The hallway ended in a set of glass double doors. Gold lettering on one of them read:
896TH MUNITIONS SQUADRON
, and below that,
LT. COL. DADE CHALLIS, COMMANDER
. One of the doors was ajar, the colonel sitting behind his desk, tapping on a keyboard. He glanced up when he heard the knock, took the glasses off his nose and stood. He was a little over forty, six five and under a hundred and ninety pounds, with a lean face speckled with strawberry freckles which also dotted his thin lips. He looked the nervous type, deep lines across his high forehead. The guy’s coloring was, in fact, Red Buttons, but any similarity with the comic appeared to end there.
‘Thanks, Dan,’ he said to Sergeant Burton, who was standing beside us in parade rest mode. ‘Please,’ he said, waving us in. ‘Good to meet you, Investigator Petinski?’ He glanced at me, then my partner, not sure who was who.
‘Petinski, sir,’ my colleague said, putting him straight, holding out her child-sized hand.
The colonel shook it and moved on to mine. ‘The briefing room set up?’ he asked the sergeant waiting at the door.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Excellent.’ All business, to Petinski and me he said, ‘Care to follow me, please?’ Picking up his hat and walking out, there was no question that we wouldn’t.
The briefing room was a large office down the hallway. A young captain at the foot of a rectangular brown Laminex table snapped to attention when the colonel entered the room, and moved to a podium beside a screen built into the wall. The screen announced:
896th Munitions Squadron – Mission Briefing
, and in the lower right corner,
Capt. Reece Jones, 896 MUNS/CCE
.
The colonel assumed his seat at the head of the table. Petinski and I sat either side. Challis introduced the briefer without fanfare. ‘My exec, Captain Jones. Let’s get started, Reece.’
Jones followed orders. ‘Ma’am, gentlemen,’ he began, ‘the following briefing is unclassified.’
A new slide flicked into place, a shot of the administration building that we were in. I already knew what it looked like and the photo didn’t do it any favors.
‘The mission of the 896th Munitions Squadron is to administer and manage one of the largest Air Force weapons stockpiles in the free world,’ the captain continued. ‘The area consists of seven hundred and sixty-five acres, seventy-five specialized munitions storage igloos, fifteen maintenance and support facilities, twenty-six miles of roadways and forty-four vehicles of various types. The unit stores, maintains, modifies and ships Priority A weapons and associated components.’
When the captain was still going thirty minutes later, I decided PowerPoint had reached WMD status.
Jones eventually finished up with, ‘That concludes my briefing. Anyone have questions?’
I was prepared to shoot anyone who did.
Challis glanced at us. ‘Thanks, Reece,’ he said when he drew a blank, and stood. Petinski and I did likewise. ‘Before we go and have a look around, there are some more details to take care off.’ Sergeant Burton materialized out of thin air beside him. ‘Dan, take our visitors next door to Security, get them legal for our purposes.’ He handed the sergeant our documents. ‘I’ll be in my office when you’re ready.’
Half an hour later, red ‘Escort Required’ badges dangling from our necks, Petinski and I were returned to the commander’s office. Challis picked up his cap without preamble and headed for the door. ‘We have a standard tour,’ he said. ‘But anything in particular you’d like to know?’
I was about to say something extremely clever related to missing nukes, like how difficult would it be to steal one, but decided against it. We both fell in behind the colonel as he fitted his cap onto his head, his bandy legs flapping around inside his ABUs as he strode down the corridor. ‘In Area Two,’ he began, ‘we currently have eight hundred and fifteen gravity bombs of varying yields, mostly B61 warheads from our former bases in Europe, the ones we no longer occupy. We also supervise five hundred and eighty-four W80 warheads removed from deactivated air-launched cruise missiles. We maintain all these warheads so that they continue to remain as good as new. If the president needs a nuke or two, we’ve got ’em here, ready to spread the Stars and Stripes in ground or air-burst mode at a moment’s notice.’ The colonel pushed through the doors and strode into the bright Nevada blast furnace. ‘Let’s pick up our escort and get this show on the road.’
‘Where are the igloos, sir?’ I asked.
‘Back behind the building, dug into the flint. Area Two is in fact the largest above-ground nuclear weapons storage facility in the world. Mind if we take my vehicle?’ he asked, walking up to a white Lexus SUV. ‘We could walk. Ain’t far, but it’s a mite warm.’
‘No problem,’ said Petinski. I didn’t have one either.
The vehicle unlocked with a flash of its lights and Petinski opened the rear passenger door. I took the front and buckled up.
‘So you’re giving up police work for AFMC?’ Challis asked me. ‘We’re a unit of theirs, y’know.’
‘I didn’t know, sir. At least, not before the briefing,’ I said.
The colonel took a pair of reflective sunglasses hooked into the vehicle’s sun visor and put them on. ‘Mister, I’m sure that, like
I
do, you’ll find it’s a privilege to be working with our country’s nuclear stockpile, keeping Uncle Sam’s
cojones
primed and ready for action.’ The colonel was looking forward over the top of the steering wheel, deadly serious, Petinski-like.
‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘What about the maintenance on those
cojones
? Where does that happen?’
‘Rest easy, Mr Cooper. The full tour is coming your way.’
The colonel turned into the driveway of a building with the words
SECURITY FORCES
painted in white lettering on a corner of the facility facing the road. We’d driven maybe a hundred and twenty yards from command HQ.
‘This is us,’ the commander said, killing the motor and removing his shades. He got out of the car, strode to the solid brown-painted door, and held it open for us. I followed Petinski inside. The immediate area was a small foyer with more framed photos – these ones showing multiple nuclear re-entry vehicles leaving trails of smoke as they burned through the atmosphere, heading for targets. A little scary. Beyond the foyer was a large open-plan office populated by men and women wearing ABUs, Berettas slung low on their thighs. A staff sergeant came to meet us, a black man the size of a plains buffalo, ‘Sailor’ on his nametag.
‘Sir, ma’am, Airman Nagel and I will be your close escorts today,’ Sailor informed us. He turned to the colonel. ‘Will you vouch for the visitors, sir?’
‘I will,’ the colonel intoned officially.
The sergeant then asked for our IDs, which we gave him. He went back inside the office, made multiple Xerox copies of our details, then returned to his desk and made a phone call while examining our credentials. He seemed to be having a friendly chat with someone on the other end.
‘How long will this take, sir?’ I asked the colonel. It was well after three in the afternoon and we were still shuffling paper.
‘As long as it takes. Security is the first and last thing we do here, Mr Cooper. Visitors are rare and never casual.
All
visits follow a strict routine. That’s the way we roll here and the sergeant’s just doing his job.’
A short, round, blonde female senior airman by the name of Nagel came toward us, a box the size and shape of a portable credit terminal in her hand. ‘Can I have your forefinger, sir?’ she asked me. ‘Place it inside the opening, here.’ She held the box toward me. There was indeed a hole in the front with the instruction
Place finger here
on a decal. I did as I was told and the senior airman nodded when the screen on top of the box lit up green with a tick and the word
Confirmed
.
The senior airman went through the same procedure with Petinski, thanked us, and went back to the open-plan section, plugged the unit into her desktop and settled down behind her screen.
‘DNA check,’ Challis explained. ‘That’s a scanner that reads the DNA in your perspiration and matches it against the DNA profile in your records. Fingerprints, even retinal scans, can be altered, but not your DNA codes.’
Sergeant Sailor returned with our red ‘Escort Required’ cards dangling from lanyards. ‘Congratulations, sir, ma’am,’ he told us. ‘You are who you say you are. You must wear your badges clearly displayed here at all times. Without it, you will be detained, forcibly if necessary. Do not fail to comply with any order or instruction from your escort or security forces personnel or you will be detained, forcibly if necessary.’
I was starting to get the general idea, and put the lanyard back over my head. My card was identical to Petinski’s, except for barcode numbers printed on a sticky label affixed to it.
‘You have to swipe that everywhere you go here, Mr Cooper,’ said Challis, ‘so we can track your journey for future reference. Shall we do this, Sergeant?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Sailor. Nagel came out to join us, planting a patrol cap on her head.
‘What are you most interested in seeing?’ asked the colonel.
‘The storage igloos, sir,’ Petinski said.
‘You’re in luck. That’s our first stop.’
A couple of minutes later we were back in the SUV, the colonel reaching for his gun bull shades. An Explorer bobbed into the wing mirror, Sailor and Nagel on hand to apply some deadly force if we stepped out of line, or maybe told a bad joke. Half a mile later we stopped at another guard shack and had our passes checked – the colonel included – by more armed security personnel. Either side of the shack was a triple razor-wire fence, the space between each fence being a minefield, according to another sign, death guaranteed if a foot was put wrong. Driving deeper into this silent, ultra-secure area it was as if even sound was forbidden.
We motored slowly past a concrete bunker dug into the desert, a heavy brown steel door facing the access road, ‘A 1001-12-2-24’ painted on the door in large white lettering.
‘A-structures are storage igloos,’ the colonel said, before Petinski or I could ask. ‘This is igloo number one. It has twelve vaults, two warheads per vault for a total of twenty-four. In this case the weapons are B61 3/4/10 gravity thermonuclear devices, each being 141.6 inches long, 13.3 inches in diameter and weighing approximately seven hundred and fifty pounds. Every weapon has a unique number that is tracked individually by our people in Munitions Control twenty-four-seven.’
‘How many igloos?’ I asked having forgotten the number he’d given us earlier.
‘We had seventy-five, recently increased to ninety-two. Some of the larger ones have more than twenty vaults.’
‘Can we inspect one?’
‘There’s nothing to see. Plus, those igloos maintain negative air pressure to keep out the dust, which is a problem, so we don’t open them up unless we have to. But there are three W80s in for maintenance. You’ll see that procedure presently. It’s in the tour.’
‘Who takes responsibility for weapons surety when a physics package is being maintained?’ I asked.
‘The buck stops with me, Mr Cooper,’ said Challis. ‘But daily briefings are held so that everyone is aware of the weapons coming and going. It’s the munitions control room’s responsibility to know where each weapon is every second of every minute of every day. No excuses.’
The colonel continued driving down the access road for another half a mile, past three more igloos, a couple of which were set back from the road and much bigger than igloo #A 1001. He then turned left and left again shortly after, so that we were headed back roughly in the direction of the HQ. The igloos on this return road were smaller and there were far more of them.