Zero Day (42 page)

P
ULLER DROVE
to Cole’s house and waited. Then a call came in two hours later. Then after that came the call that Puller had been waiting for. When the military wanted to get something done, it could move with amazing speed. It didn’t hurt that the Secretary of Defense had thrown his weight behind them.

Cole sat across from him in her living room anxiously watching.

Puller answered the call.

On the other end was a retired colonel in his late eighties named David Larrimore, who lived in Sarasota, Florida. The man was Puller’s last best hope because he actually had been an engineer and the military-side production supervisor at the Drake facility back in the 1960s. In fact, according to DoD records, he was the only person left alive who had worked there.

Larrimore’s voice was weak but steady. He appeared to have all of his faculties as Puller began talking to him. Puller hoped the man’s memory was faultless. He would need every scintilla of information he could get.

Larrimore said, “I guess you’re never really retired when you wear the uniform.”

“Guess not.”

“You related to Fighting John by any chance?”

“He’s my father.”

“Never had the pleasure of serving under him, but he did the Army and his country proud, Agent Puller.”

“Thanks, I’ll let him know.”

“Got a call from a two-star. I’ve been out of uniform nearly
thirty years and it still scared the crap out of me. He said I was to tell you everything. Didn’t say why.”

“It’s complicated. But we really need your help.”

“Drake? That’s what you want to know about?”

“Everything you can tell me.”

“It’s a sore spot, son, at least in my memory.”

“Tell me why?”

Puller looked over at Cole, who was staring at him with such intensity that he thought she might stroke. He pressed the speaker button on his phone and set it down on the table between them.

Larrimore’s voice floated into the room. “I was assigned to Drake because it was the latest facility the government had in its nuclear weapons development program. I had my degree in nuclear engineering and had been stationed at Los Alamos and also did some work on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Now this was the 1960s, so we were way past the A-bombs that we dropped on the Japs in ’45, but there was still a lot we didn’t know about thermonuclear weapons. The Hiroshima A-bomb used the gun method. Compared to what they do today, that’s kindergarten stuff. We were measuring A-bombs that topped out at a .7-megaton yield. The Soviets dropped an H-bomb in the Antarctic called the Tsar. It was a 50-megaton blast, the biggest ever. You could wipe out a country with something like that.”

Puller watched as Cole collapsed back in her chair and put a hand to her chest.

“There’s a classified file I saw that said the facility was used to make bomb components. There might have been some radioactivity left behind, but that was it.”

Larrimore said, “That’s not correct. But I’m not surprised there’s an official record out there like that. Military likes to cover its tracks. And back then the rules of the game were a lot more liberal.”

Puller said, “So you were building nuclear fuel for warheads. To be used in the implosion method?”

“You a nuke head?”

“What?”

“That’s what we used to call each other back then. Nuke heads.”

“No. But I have friends who are.”

“We were working with a defense contractor. Name would mean nothing to you. It’s long since been snapped up. And the company that bought it has been sold, and sold, and sold.”

Puller could sense Larrimore taking a walk down memory lane and he didn’t have time for that.

“You said it was a sore spot for you. Why?”

“Way we went into that area, built that monstrosity, didn’t tell anybody what it was. We shipped in everybody from outside the area. We didn’t encourage mingling with the locals. And when they did go into the little town there, we had them followed. Just the way it was back then. Everybody was paranoid.”

“I don’t think things have changed all that much,” commented Puller. “Was that the only reason you were sore?”

“No, I was also upset how we left things.”

“You mean the concrete dome? Three feet thick?”

“The hell you say!”

“You didn’t know that?”

“No. The facility was supposed to be dismantled and shipped away, every molecule of it. It had to be that way because of what we had there.”

“It’s all still there. At least I guess it is. Under a huge dome of concrete. I don’t know how many acres, but it’s a lot.”

“What the hell were they thinking?”

“How come you didn’t know about that?” asked Puller.

“I did my job as part of the phase-out. Then I was shipped out to another facility way down south. I was a supervisor on the military side, sure, but the private-sector guys really ran it and the generals signed off on whatever they wanted.”

“Well, apparently what they wanted was to cover it with concrete rather than dismantle it. Why would that be the case?”

Larrimore said nothing.

“Mr. Larrimore.”

“I’m here.”

“I need you to answer that question.”

“Agent Puller, I’ve been out of the service a long time. Shocked
the hell out of me when I got the call today. I got a good pension that I earned and a few years left to bask in the sunshine down here. I don’t want to lose that.”

“You won’t lose anything. But if you don’t help me a lot of Americans might lose their lives.”

When Larrimore next spoke his voice was stronger. “Might have to do with why we shut down in the first place. That’s what I meant when I said I didn’t like the way we left things.”

“Which was why?”

“We screwed up.”

“How? Did something go wrong in the diffusion process?”

“We weren’t doing gaseous diffusion.”

“I thought that’s what we were talking about. Like they do in Paducah.”

“You ever been to the Paducah plant, son?”

“No.”

“It’s huge. Has to be for gaseous diffusion. Far bigger than what we had in Drake.”

Puller looked at Cole in confusion. “Then what were you doing in Drake?”

“Experimenting.”

“With what?”

“Basically trying to make a super nuclear fuel that we could spike our warheads with. Our goal, I suppose, was to obliterate the Soviet Union before they obliterated us.”

S
UPER NUCLEAR FUEL?

Puller stared at Cole. This time she wouldn’t meet his eye. Instead she looked distractedly at the floor.

Puller said, “Mr. Larrimore, I found a piece of paper at a firehouse near the Drake facility.”

“I know the firehouse well. We had a couple of incidents where those fellers were needed.”

“The paper had the numbers 92 and 94 written on it.”

“Atomic numbers for uranium and plutonium.”

“Right. But the gaseous diffusion method is only used to enrich uranium,” said Puller. “You can’t use gaseous diffusion on plutonium. You get that from breeder reactors.”

“That’s right. Capturing a neutron. Getting to P-239.”

“But if that document had both atomic numbers that means—”

“We used both uranium
and
plutonium at Drake.”

“Why?”

“Like I said, to try and build a super nuclear fuel for weapons. We had no idea if it would work or not. The goal was to use uranium and plutonium in a new bomb design. We were juggling combinations and concentrations of each to see what configuration would yield the biggest boom. In layman’s terms, sort of a hybrid between the gun and the implosion method, if you understand me.”

“I was told that the gun method was very inefficient and plutonium couldn’t be used in that design.”

“Those were the obstacles we were trying to overcome. We were
trying to beat the communists at their own game. And the name of that game was explosive yield.”

“But you said you screwed up?”

“Well, let’s just say the science and the design logic were flawed. Bottom line was it didn’t work. That was why the facility closed.”

“But if they closed the plant surely they would have taken the nuclear material with them?”

“The fact that they covered it with three feet of cement tells me they didn’t.”

“But why the hell would they leave something that deadly behind?”

Larrimore didn’t answer for a few seconds. “This would be a guess on my part.”

“I’ll take it.”

“They were probably afraid it would blow up in their faces and radiate a good part of the country. I can’t say I was totally surprised when you said they’d cemented over it. Back then they covered up a lot of stuff, quite frankly. Let it stay where it was. Probably thought it was safer than trying to transport it. You’re probably way too young to remember this, but around that time a few incidents happened that scared the crap out of the country. A B-52 that was carrying a hydrogen bomb on one of its wings crashed somewhere in Kansas. The bomb didn’t detonate during the crash, of course, because atomic weapons don’t work that way. And then we had the plutonium train.”

“Plutonium train?”

“Yeah, the military wanted to move some of its plutonium stockpile from point A to point B. Right across the country. Train moved through major population centers. Nothing happened, but the news folks got wind of both the plane and the train. It was not a good time for the military. There were hearings on Capitol Hill and some guys lost their stars. Can you imagine if that happened today? With our twenty-four-hour news cycle? Anyway, that was fresh in everyone’s minds back then, especially the military brass. So I guess they said, ‘Screw it. It stays right where it is.’ ”

“And the place they left it was a rural county with not many people.”

“It wasn’t my call. If it had been I would’ve done it differently.”

“You’d think someone would have revisited the issue.”

“Not necessarily. You go out there now and start messing around, the news folks will get wind of it. Then the government has to start explaining. And maybe they were afraid that if they did open the sucker up they wouldn’t like what they found.”

“It’s been five decades,” Puller said. “Do you think that stuff, if it is there, is still dangerous?”

“Plutonium-239 has a half-life of twenty-four thousand years. So I’d say you aren’t out of the woods yet.”

Puller drew a long breath and looked at Cole. “How much of it is in there?”

“I can’t tell you for sure. But let me put it this way. If they kept the usual supply on hand that we maintained, and it got out somehow, it could make what we did to the Japs look puny by comparison. I tell you what, whoever made the call to leave it there should go to prison. But they’re probably all dead by now.”

“Lucky them,” commented Puller.

Larrimore said, “So what are you folks going to do?”

“We need to get inside the dome. Any ideas?”

Cole tapped him on the arm and mouthed, “Mineshaft.”

He shook his head and looked back at the phone. “Any ideas?” he said again.

“Three feet of concrete, son. You got a jackhammer?”

“We have to do it surreptitiously.”

Puller could hear Larrimore take several long breaths.

“You think somebody’s going to…?” His voice trailed off.

“We can’t afford not to think that, can we? You probably knew that place as well as anyone. Anything you can think of would be more than what I’ve got right now.”

“Can you dig along the perimeter?”

“Iron footings that go out more feet than I can deal with.”

Several more long breaths. Puller looked at Cole and she stared
back at him. The room wasn’t hot, but he saw several beads of sweat on her forehead. One slid down to her cheek. She made no move to wipe it away. Puller could feel the perspiration sheen on his face.

Larrimore said, “Ventilation shafts.”

Puller sat up straighter. “Okay.”

“Inside of the facility was not a place where you could let dust and other things collect, and we also had stuff in the air that we had to get out. We had about as powerful a ventilation and filtering system as you could get back then. We had ventilation shafts on the east and west sides. The filtering system was massive. It wasn’t housed in the facility for a number of reasons. The air would be directed there, filtered, and recirculated inside the facility. Place didn’t have any windows for obvious reasons. All self-contained. It could get hot in there, especially around this time of year.”

“I’ll need to know exactly where those shafts are. And where was the filtering system housed?”

“I can tell you roughly where the shafts were located. It’s been over forty years since I’ve been there, son. Memory’s not perfect. But I know exactly where the filtering system was located. And both the shafts bleed directly into it. And those shafts are big. Large enough for a tall man to stand up in.”

“Where is the filtering system?” Puller said eagerly.

“Right underneath the firehouse.”

Puller and Cole exchanged glances.

Larrimore said, “Figured that was the best place to put it. Always a fire hazard with filtering systems. Anything goes wrong, folks are right there to take care of it. The fire station was manned around the clock. The filtering system was alarmed so they’d know if there was a problem.”

“How do you get to the filtering system from the fire station?”

“You been there?”

“Yes.”

“You seen the wooden lockers? I’m talking the ones on the right side, main level.”

“Yes.”

“There’s a catch behind a panel on the inside of the locker farthest
to the left. You can’t tell it’s there if you don’t know where to look. There’s a pressure plate in the inside of that locker. It’s located on the left side, top corner. You push right on that corner and the panel will swing out on hinges. Behind the panel is a lever. You pull that lever and the whole row of lockers slides out to the right. Stairway going down is revealed. Nifty piece of engineering. Those stairs take you to the filtering system. And from there you can get to the shafts.”

He said, “I appreciate this, Mr. Larrimore.”

“Agent Puller. If you’re really going in that place, keep a few things in mind. Wear a hazmat suit with the most powerful filter you can find. Bring a flashlight because you’ll have no light. The plutonium and uranium cakes are in lead-lined barrels. The plutonium cakes are marked in red with the skull-and-crossbones insignia. The uranium cakes are blue with the same skull and crossbones. We were working in a brand-new field and used our own marking system.”

“So they’re
cakes
?”

“Right. The ‘fuel’ term is sort of misleading. The uranium and plutonium look like round cakes. They’re both radioactive at the highly enriched level. But plutonium is super-radioactive. The plant workers handled the stuff using robotic arms behind protective shields. Even your hazmat suit probably won’t protect you completely against direct exposure. And one more thing, Agent Puller.”

“Yeah?”

“I wish you luck, son. You’re sure as hell going to need it.”