Fallout

CHAPTER 14

Craig dusted a comb through his chestnut hair as Paige pulled into the DAF parking lot beside other white government pickups. He straightened his tie, glanced at his watch. Time to look professional, he thought.

The prisonlike building was as long as a football field. Massive doors provided access in the front, and security personnel patrolled the surrounding area. Hot sunshine and dry heat reflected from the pavement.

Craig shrugged on his jacket and followed Paige through the security checkpoint. Once inside the building, a lanky man strode out to meet them. Dressed in a plaid shirt and wearing a narrow rawhide bolo tie, he looked like a scarecrow with thin arms sticking from his short sleeves. “Morning, Paige,” he said, giving her a quick hug. “Let’s hope it’s a better day than yesterday.”

Paige held the older man’s arm. “Craig, this is Mike Waterloo, the DAF manager.”

Craig stuck out a hand, shaking the other man’s firmly, intent on keeping the true nature of his investigation secret. “Hello, sir. I’m Special Agent Kreident, Federal Bureau of Investigation.” He brushed a hand down his jacket, anxious to get moving. “I’m required to observe the entire site after such a high-profile accident, check for security breaches. I hope we can get this straightened out quickly, with a minimum of hassles.”

Waterloo heaved a sigh of relief. “Just wrap it up by Friday, Agent Kreident. That’s all the time we’ve got.”

They entered through a set of double doors. The first closed behind them before the second set opened. “Craig and I worked together on a case at Lawrence Livermore,” Paige said.

Craig nodded. “This place seems more… rigorous in its security.”

Waterloo chuckled as the second door swung open. “Well, you’ve got to be careful when you have live nukes lying around.”

“And you let a team of Russians in to look at everything?” Craig asked.

“Our reciprocal treaty requires it, and it’s even more visible because of this weekend’s summit.” Waterloo gave a dismissive wave. “Changing times. Not much to bother hiding anymore.”

They passed through claustrophobic inner hallways, beyond a series of high-bays, construction offices, and storage area boundaries painted clearly on the concrete floor in red, yellow, and blue stripes.

“Regarding Mr. Nevsky’s accident, sir,” Craig said, pretending he believed the death to be a simple mishap, “could you speculate on why the ambassador was here alone so long after normal working hours?”

The building opened up before them, the far walls a hundred feet on either side of them. Waterloo wound his way around concrete blocks set up as temporary barricades. “He wasn’t supposed to be alone, exactly. Paige shuttled the rest of the inspection team back to Las Vegas, but Ambassador Nevsky insisted on returning to the DAF to check something.”

“So you drove the ambassador here yourself?”

Waterloo nodded. “From the cafeteria. I signed him over to PK Dirks, a technician on duty, so I could catch up on some work. But PK, uh, didn’t keep very close tabs on him. His negligence is appalling, to say the least.”

“What is his excuse for leaving Nevsky alone?” Craig asked.

Waterloo shrugged. “He says the ambassador had to go to the bathroom.” He stopped before another set of security doors under a red alarm bell. Waterloo ran his badge through a card reader, punched in a series of numbers, and the door swung open.

Yellow police tape partitioned off a section of the tall storage bays. The remnants of a smashed crate lay spread over the floor, inside the police tape. “PK didn’t figure the ambassador would leave the Pit Assembly Area, but instead Nevsky wandered off into the industrial section. What he was looking for, we’ll never know.”

Craig nodded, but remained dubious about why Nevsky had been left alone. Of course, being inside so many layers of security, with so many alarms and interlocks, workers tended to take certain procedures for granted.

“Carl Jorgenson was in the next corridor, using a forklift to rearrange the top crates,” Waterloo said. “We don’t have much free space in the DAF, so we stack everything high. We’re working three shifts during the disarmament inspection to keep up with the treaty timetable.

“The forklift makes a lot of noise, and the storage area isn’t well lit. Jorgenson wasn’t careful how he stacked the crates. One of them fell — and Nevsky happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Waterloo pointed to a red emergency button set head-high into a pillar. “I heard the alarm from my office, and I ran down here to find Carl kneeling, trying to see if Nevsky was still alive. I called an ambulance right after that.”

“And where was Mr. Dirks?” Craig continued asking his questions. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Paige watching him.

“He showed up right after I did,” said Waterloo.

“After you?” Craig frowned and looked down the narrow passageway. “I thought he was just across the hall in the Pit Assembly Area, and you were up in your office.”

Waterloo fumbled nervously with his bolo tie. “PK had to secure the bomb pits. Unless we have a criticality alarm, you can’t just run out with plutonium cores unsecured. Number one priority — and PK did just that. He’s sort of a loose cannon, bends the rules a little, but he’s well liked. He just got sloppy, and so did Jorgenson. It’s sad.”

Craig pursed his lips, pacing back and forth just to keep moving. He ducked under the police tape and stood where brownish stains of dried blood lay inside a chalk outline of the body’s position. One arm was up, as if Nevsky had raised his hand to fend off the falling crate.

Or as if it had been strategically placed there.

Someone knew Nevsky had been dead long before the crate had crushed him. PK Dirks could not have been innocently “securing the pits” for that long. And how did Jorgenson’s “accidentally” dropped crate miraculously manage to hit a motionless body?

Paige knelt beside Craig, but she kept her expression neutral. He knew how tempted she would have been to tell her Uncle Mike about the suspicious nature of the accident. “I’ll want to talk to Mr. Jorgenson, as part of wrapping up this investigation.”

Waterloo nodded. “He’s on administrative leave, but he lives in Pahrump, a town about thirty miles from here.”

Craig recalled when he himself had been put on admin leave after the botched arrest of a NanoWare CEO resulted in the man’s panicked suicide. He turned to study the accident scene again, then up to the metal rafters. “What about those security cameras? Did they catch anything?”

Waterloo shook his head. “System malfunction, but not unusual. We got a low-bid contract, but we’ve been meaning to upgrade. No tapes at all for that night.”

Convenient, Craig thought. Waterloo led them to the enclosed area down at the end of the crate alley, far from where Nevsky had been found. “The room on your left is the Pit Assembly Area, where Dirks should have been watching the ambassador.”

A voice came from behind them. “But I wasn’t, and now we’re in this mess.” A stocky man stood smoothing his beard. Barrel chested and solidly built, he carried a slight beerbelly paunch. A stern-looking, ash-blond woman stood beside him, her tanned face solidly serious. Dressed in peach slacks and a loose white blouse, she chewed gum and looked unwaveringly at Craig.

Waterloo blinked in surprise. “Sally? What are you doing here?”

“Just needed to give PK some moral support,” she said coolly.

His bearded cheeks flushing pink, Dirks looked at his work boots. “I think the two of us can, ah, clear things up.”

Paige quickly added, “Craig, this is PK Dirks, and Sally Montry, Uncle Mike’s administrative assistant.”

“Just plain ‘secretary’ is fine,” Sally said. “No need for fancy titles.”

As Waterloo put his hands on his hips, Sally avoided looking at him. “Okay, what’s the story?” He glanced from Sally to PK Dirks.

Dirks swallowed hard, but spoke to Craig, not the DAF Manager. “Uh, is there anyway to make sure this doesn’t get out?”

“This is an official investigation on federal property, Mr. Dirks,” Craig said formally. “I can’t promise anything.”

Dirks nodded stiffly in defeat. He opened and closed one hand, as if it were difficult for him to talk. “Like Mr. Waterloo said, Sally is his executive secretary. She spends a lot of time here, like everyone else. And she and her husband aren’t getting along too well, if you know what I mean.” He looked up at Waterloo, as if pleading for understanding. “The only place Sally and I could … meet was at work. So when Nevsky wanted to putz around in the Pit Assembly Area and asked to be left alone so he could ‘concentrate,’ it gave me an excuse to see her for a quick — well, you know.”

Waterloo turned livid, glaring at Sally and at Dirks. Paige, though, picked up on something else. “The ambassador wanted to be left alone?”

“How was I supposed to know he’d go snooping around where he wasn’t supposed to be?” Dirks said, clearly upset. “Was he a spy or something? I mean, what haven’t we shown these guys?”

Craig looked at Sally Montry, who seemed more indignant than embarrassed. “Can you verify that story, ma’am?”

Speaking in a steady voice, she looked straight at him. “I was working late, keying in the disarmament team’s report when PK called.” She didn’t even flick a glance at Waterloo. “We were… together when we heard the alarm. PK had to leave in a rush, and I hurried back to my station.” With a sniff, she spoke again, carrying a trace of defiance now. “Look, we didn’t have to tell anybody, but we wanted to set the record straight. And if this somehow held up the treaty work with the Russians, all hell would break loose. We’ve only got until Friday.”

“Don’t I know it,” Craig muttered, then turned to Waterloo. “Any idea what was so hot that Nevsky gave up a night on the town to double-check some numbers? I’d like to try and reconstruct his reasons.”

Dirks stepped forward, overly helpful now. “I can show you what he was doing, Agent Kreident.”

Waterloo turned to Sally, speaking in a cold voice. “Go back to the office. I’ll talk to you later.”

Craig followed Dirks deeper into the Pit Assembly Area to three gloveboxes, each containing material samples marked with the three-bladed radiation symbol. Nearby, a table sat piled high with notebooks, computer sheets, inventory tags, and ream after ream of checklist items. Craig’s heart sank when he saw the mound of documents.

Paige touched his shoulder. “I can help you go through this stuff later today, Craig. Uncle Mike and I have to take the Russian team up to our tunnel test area at the northern end of the site. It’s next on their schedule.”

On sudden inspiration, Craig said, “I think I’ll go with you. Give me a chance to meet the disarmament team personally, before I go over the paperwork. Mr. Waterloo, you’ll be coming along as well?”

Waterloo gave Craig a strange look. “For a while. Then I’ll be on my way up to Nellis at the north end of the Site. We’re bringing a new shipment of decommissioned warheads out of temporary storage this afternoon. As DAF Manager, I have to be there to fill out the paperwork.”

Craig glanced at the table piled high with technical documents. At the moment, he didn’t even want to think about paperwork.

Next step was to meet with the Russians.