Fallout

CHAPTER 18

After a cafeteria lunch, Craig was anxious to return to the DAF to begin going over the mounds of paperwork Nevsky had left behind. Time was wasting, and he had gathered about as much background as he considered useful. But he had to accompany the Russian inspectors as they were shown the NTS down-hole testing activities.

The van trundled along a dirt road on Yucca Flat where hundreds of nuclear tests had taken place underground. Craig could see the dimpled ground, weirdly symmetric circular depressions laid out like a bizarre gardening plot.

“Moon craters,” said Nikolai Bisovka, an amateur astronomer and stargazer back in Russia. He fumbled with his pack of Marlboros, sucking on an unlit cigarette, since Paige wouldn’t allow him to smoke in the van.

“Subsidence craters,” Ursov corrected. “Is that how you say in English?”

“Yes, General.” Paige said as the van jounced toward a white tower standing like a sentinel surrounded by trailers and construction cranes. “The explosion forms a subterranean cavity, but the roof collapses, resulting in a subsidence crater at the surface.” She swerved around a pothole. “But all the radioactivity is contained underground, not released to the atmosphere.”

Craig adjusted his sunglasses and stared, shifting about to keep comfortable on the van’s seat. He felt impatient, eager to be up and making some headway. He glanced at his watch.

“We’re going to meet one of our old-timers,” Paige said. “Jerome Kostas has worked on underground tests since the 1960s. He even participated in some of the Pacific Island detonations as a young sailor — the Sawtooth Test on Enika Atoll and Castle Bravo on Bikini.” She parked the van near the pickup trucks and trailers surrounding the white tower. “I’ll bet old Jerome remembers watching most of these craters being made.”

Craig climbed out of the van, still watching the Russians and still studying how the Test Site functioned, how various groups worked together. He could see why some conservative hardliners might have a problem with foreign disarmament inspectors snooping around. For decades, these workers had prepared nuclear warheads for use against the “evil Soviet empire.” Now, though, their former enemies were being given a show-and-tell, no more secrets, no more testing, no more reason for a cherished way of life.

Would anyone have been frustrated enough to murder the head of the Russian team?

The inspectors themselves all had alibis, but Craig wondered if there could have been a conspiracy of some kind, two or more of them involved in killing Nevsky so it would look as if one of the Americans had done it. It seemed a good way to rekindle international rivalries, to raise tensions.…

A large man sauntered out of the white tower, dressed in painter’s pants and wearing a hardhat plastered with faded stickers, team designs for nuclear test shots. He was heavyset, his skin dark brown and leathery, his eyes bright.

“This your team, Miss Mitchell?” Jerome Kostas said. She shook his hand, and Kostas went down the line, methodically gripping each of the inspectors’ hands. “We’re doing an updated series of benchmark chemical explosions here — no nukes — but the setup is similar. We’re gonna have a thunderstorm here tomorrow, Friday at the latest, and we’re scrambling to get the prep-work done.”

Kostas cocked an eyebrow at Craig, studying his out-of-place jacket and tie, before turning to Paige. “Say, Mike Waterloo says you’re Gordy Mitchell’s daughter — is that true? I must’ve done a dozen shots with Gordy.”

“My father worked with just about everybody here at one time or another.” Paige smiled, glad to know her father was still remembered.

“He retired a while back, didn’t he?” Kostas asked.

“Yes, and he died three years ago. Cancer.” Her voice became more formal, her words more clipped. Craig felt sorry for her.

“Sad to hear that. Gordy probably never should have retired.” Kostas rubbed his leathery hands together, settled his hardhat tighter on his head, then turned to his visitors. “All you get is the canned speech. I’ve done this too many times to put in any new twists.”

Several of the Russians had difficulty with the colloquialisms. Ursov stood listening intently, letting no emotion show on his face.

Kostas said, “A typical underground nuclear test would span a year from conception to the actual shot, involving hundreds of engineers, scientists, technicians, and craftspeople.” He gestured to the spools of heavy cable, the tall cranes. Contract workers passed in and out of the trailers, glancing at the group.

“Look at all the craters,” the old engineer said. “Before drilling, we take into account the predicted yield of the device, the local geological medium, and separation from other test sites. A lot of factors, and a lot of paperwork.” He blew air through his lips. “After grading the surface, we bring in support structures, bogey-towers, diagnostic trailers, construction cranes — and offices, so we can fill out the damned paperwork.”

The Russians commiserated with him. Craig looked over at Paige, but she seemed lost in thought, perhaps reminded of her father. Out in the open air, Nikolai Bisovka lit up his Marlboro.

“We put two canisters down-hole,” Kostas said, “the nuke itself, plus an instrumentation canister seven feet in diameter, fifty feet long, four hundred thousand pounds once you add all the radiation shielding to protect the delicate diagnostics.” Kostas wiped a hand across his brow.

“See, we field very precise instruments in a hostile desert environment. They get left downhole for a month or so while we pour dirt and concrete on top of them. Usually these instruments are one-of-a-kind designs concocted by some engineer with too much computer time and not enough common sense. I have to guarantee they’ll work. The sensors are vaporized in a few thousandths of a second, but the signals travel faster than that, and we get the data we need.”

Kostas crunched toward the tall tower in his heavy work boots. One of the construction cranes rotated away, dangling cables like bullwhips from its peak. “The instrumentation canister and the device canister get hooked together, then hung from the bogey tower for final assembly and checkout. That’s where we christen it, usually with a little message written on the side. Another Superior Product of the MFWBB.” Kostas laughed at a private joke.

Craig grew suddenly interested, thinking of the words on the bomb he’d found at the Hoover Dam. “You write messages on the sides of the device canister?” he said. “What is MFWBB? One of your engineering groups?”

Kostas looked abashed. “Well, you see, the last three letters stand for, uh, ‘What Builds Bombs.’ I’ll let you guess what the ‘MF’ means. Just a little Test Site humor… although once some general found out, we had to cease and desist immediately.” He frowned at Ursov in his general’s uniform, as if the Russian had been responsible. “Some people just can’t take a joke.”

Standing inside the white tower, Kostas pointed to a weathered steel disk like a ten-foot-wide manhole cover over a deep shaft. “Those cranes lower the canister to the desired depth, and then we stem the hole with sand and gravel, layered in such a way to ensure proper density and compaction. Some epoxy, then plugs of sanded gypsum to block the flow of radioactive gas up the column.”

He removed his hardhat. “When everything checks out, we set off the test — then we get ready for the next shot.” Kostas put his hands on his hips and looked up into the tower, squinting until the crows-feet scrunched together in a network of wrinkles. “At least that’s what we used to do. Now we pretty much sit around and bullshit about our golden age.”

“Excuse me,” said Victor Golitsyn, the geologist, who had expertise in using sensitive seismic instruments to detect surreptitious underground nuclear tests. “Drilling these holes a thousand feet deep… do you experience any particular difficulties —?”

Kostas kicked the toe of his workboot against the steel lid covering the shaft. “We’re cutting eight- to ten-foot diameter holes. The whole job takes weeks to months, depending on the size of the hole. We keep those lids on them to make sure nobody else falls down inside.” The engineer grimaced.

“Nobody else?” Craig said.

“Only happened once, far as I know. Two guys lifting the steel plate, stepped forward when they should have stepped sideways. Zip, there one kid went, straight down to hell. We lowered cameras, grappling hooks, cables, but never did manage to recover the body.”

Kostas placed his hands on his hips and rocked backward in his boots. “Had to drill a new damn hole for the test, cause they sealed that one right up. It was reported as an ‘industrial accident,’ and the news media never made a big deal out of it. Never even caught on, far as I know.”

Craig frowned, not sure whether to believe the old engineer’s tall tale. Yet another death called an “industrial accident.”

“I am not impressed with your safety records.” Ursov’s voice dripped scorn as he looked at the hole cover. “But at least it is a better death than having a crate dropped on your head.”