Fallout

CHAPTER 31

After Goldfarb and Jackson telephoned him about the arrests at Jorgenson’s trailer, Craig tried to get his mind into the dizzying paperwork Nevsky had left behind — but now the problem had been magnified immensely.

Although Bryce Connors had been involved in the Hoover Dam threat and had burned down his own home to destroy evidence, the Eagle’s Claw kept its members isolated in individual cells. Neither Connors nor Mahon seemed to know many details about the “main event” set for the following day.

And that made Craig even more nervous — the threat must be something spectacularly destructive indeed. If June Atwood wasn’t pushing so hard for the President to keep his schedule, he’d recommend calling it off.

And why had Ambassador Nevsky been murdered in the first place, even before the Hoover Dam incident? What did the militia have to gain by the Russian’s death? What had he found?

Perhaps Nevsky had stumbled onto something related to their plans for the UN anniversary. Jorgenson had needed to silence the Russian before he could sound the alarm, and now someone had silenced Jorgenson as well. Had the forklift driver and PK Dirks killed the ambassador together, then staged the accident? That still left Dirks…

It was late afternoon already, Craig had lost most of a day down at the railroad bridge. He had to gamble that the bearded technician was involved, because that gave him a chance to put the pieces together… if he could just figure out what Nevsky might have seen.

And that answer lay buried somewhere in these papers.

For the past hour he had studied logbook after logbook, looking for some connection. Sally Montry kept track of his work, answering questions, making photocopies, bringing him a cold soda when he asked for it.

Paige sat beside him, her eyes red from too little sleep and too much migraine-causing concentration on the complex accountability forms. “I never thought I’d prefer spending time with General Ursov to anything, but I’m beginning to wonder.”

As he sat staring at the mess of forms, logbooks, and accountability sheets, Paige handed him a new report. “You might find this interesting.”

Craig studied the paper, saw the stamped words CLOSE HOLD. He scanned the sheet. “An old background dossier on PK Dirks? I thought you already checked him out.”

“This time I dug all the way back in his files, not just from his last security reinvestigation. These background checks go pretty deep, especially for anyone with hands-on responsibility for nuclear weapons. Still clean as a whistle, though. You’d think something about the militia would show up.”

Around them the DAF high bay hummed and echoed with intercom announcements and growling forklift engines. Two technicians lounged by the side of a two-story concrete wall; a worker pushed a metal cart into one of the small vaults. Craig lowered his voice. “Unless the people they interviewed are also mixed up in the militia.”

Paige raised her eyebrows. “You’re starting to sound paranoid.”

Craig shook his head. “It’s not paranoia if you have good reason to suspect something. We’ve already got the deaths of an FBI undercover man, a Russian ambassador, a DAF forklift driver, and the suicide of another NTS contractor — not to mention the arrests of a Hoover Dam worker and a deputy sheriff.” He glanced at his watch. “With the President showing up in less than twenty-four hours, I’d say I’m entitled to a little paranoia.”

Attempting some method of organization, Paige started stacking Nevsky’s papers into piles. She drew a long, deep breath, then scanned the top sheet of one pile before moving to the next.

Craig picked up a stack of sheets bearing a series of arrows and serial numbers, seemingly a timeline for warhead dismantling. It showed delivery dates for various components, manufacturing sites, cross-correlated code numbers, reliability figures, and shipping destinations. “Remember that old saying — if you can’t give them the facts, baffle them with paperwork?” he said with a laugh. “I’m certainly baffled.”

He stepped over to the wall where a poster showed the schematic of a generic nuclear weapon. The drawing had been declassified for the disarmament team, the words SECRET Critical Nuclear Weapons Design Information scratched out on the red borders. Using the poster as a roadmap, Craig started checking the entries on the dismantlement timeline. He followed each component beginning with its removal from the actual warhead to its final delivery site for storage. He traced each part, taking care to ensure full accountability.

One page after another, Craig tracked the destruction of obsolete stockpile weapons. Some parts were shipped to the Pantex plant in Texas, back east to Oak Ridge in Tennessee, to Hanford up in Washington state, or to Savannah River in Georgia.

As far as Craig could tell, the inventory was correctly logged out, each verified by three different levels of authority, approved by the three signatures Waterloo had promised. But the corresponding pieces rarely went to the same places — and never more than one piece per warhead.

Rubbing his eyes, he picked up a paper that held his notes. “Why can’t DOE follow normal accounting procedures? Is it just meant to be confusing?”

Paige set aside a stack of accountability forms. “The dismantling procedures are clearly defined — we’ve been doing it this way for years. Everything’s detailed by treaty as well.”

Craig handed her items from the stack of forms. “Look. Most of these components were ‘administratively destroyed’ — that is, not physically taken apart, but spread to the four winds. And they’re always one number off the inventory schedule. Like these Permissive Action Links — they were transferred from Sandia Albuquerque to Rocky Flats and then to Oak Ridge. But for some reason, one PAL was transferred to Pantex instead. Only one.”

Craig shuffled to another sheet of paper. Paige pulled her blond hair back as she leaned over the paper to see. “And over here, the PAL is recorded in a different column. The total seems to work out right, but only if you add up all the other columns. Or here — a listing of the plutonium pits from a series of dismantled warheads. Every one is still here at the DAF — except for one, and that one was shipped off to Pantex in Texas.”

“Oak Ridge? They’re authorized to receive nuclear components, but why would NTS do that?” Frowning, Paige followed the entry across the page with a finger. “Oak Ridge isn’t actively assembling —” She studied the inventory pages again.

Craig tossed the sheets down on the desk. “They don’t even pull separate components off the same warhead.” A gnawing worry grew at the back of his mind. “Unless…” He tapped a finger on the desk, fidgeting more furiously than usual.

He looked at the declassified poster that showed a cutaway of a nuclear weapon. It listed all components the inspectors would have verified. He started checking off items: PAL, pit, explosives, timer, initiators.… Craig frowned. “Paige, grab that sheet and start reading off the oddball components I marked, the ones not shipped with the majority of pieces.”

Raising her eyebrows, but not questioning his reasons, Paige started reading. “Casing.”

“Got it. Next.” He made a checkmark on the poster.

“Initiator.”

“Okay, go ahead.”

“Explosive lenses…”

“Check.”

After thirty-four items, Craig stopped her. “Good God, look at this. Every item I’ve marked is different.” He sucked in a cold breath. “And it adds up to an entire weapon.”

Paige studied the poster, and her face turned pale. “This can’t happen.”

“Enough parts have been diverted to build a separate nuclear warhead!” A tune ran through Craig’s head, an old Johnny Cash song “One Piece at a Time,” where the singer had cobbled together an automobile from parts smuggled off the assembly line over many years, one piece at a time.

Given the knowledge and all the right pieces, could the Eagle’s Claw have assembled a functional thermonuclear weapon?

“Craig, building a warhead is more complex than slapping parts together in an Erector Set,” Paige said cautiously. Sweat sparkled on her forehead, though, and she breathed heavily. “It’s impossible to put these things together without a huge technical support cast and precision equipment to handle the radioactive parts. The tolerances are extreme.”

He pressed his lips together and studied the poster on the wall. There were hundreds of components still left to be marked, and yards of paperwork to wade through. “Okay then, let’s go back to square one. Ambassador Nevsky was an expert in the subject, not just bumbling investigators like us. Maybe he came to the same conclusion.”

“And Jorgenson killed him for it, since we know he was involved in the militia plot from what your partners found at his trailer,” Paige said slowly. She looked up from her accounting sheet.

Craig moved back to where Paige still sat perched on the desk. “What did your Uncle Mike say — that each time any component of a nuke is moved, it requires three signatures for verification? Then why go to all this trouble to divert various parts? If they could get the required signatures, why not just move the whole warhead itself? It would be a lot easier.”

Paige blinked in surprise and disbelief as Craig strode back to the poster. “How would they ever get the three signatures?”

“So pretend there’s a conspiracy. You’ve already told me I’m being paranoid — I may as well live up to the billing. As long as the inventory paperwork shows that the nuke was dismantled and all components are accounted for, although distributed across the country where nobody can readily check on them — who’s to know if they just kept the whole thing together in the first place? It only looks as if the weapon’s been dismantled, on paper. Tell me I’m crazy.”

Paige’s bright blue eyes widened. “You’re crazy — but that doesn’t mean you’re wrong.”

Craig wasted no time. “We’ll have to assume a nuclear warhead is actually missing — and the Eagle’s Claw has threatened to do something really spectacular… tomorrow! The Hoover Dam and the railroad bridge were just warmup acts.” He felt suddenly tired, the last four days catching up with him. But he had to keep going, keep his head clear.

Paige stood quickly from the desk. “Didn’t your partner find some papers involving Las Vegas before the suspect’s house burned down?”

Craig picked up the inventory sheets, as if hoping the part numbers had changed in the last few moments. “Yes, a map of the Strip showing all the casinos. And it makes sense — where else would the Eagle’s Claw want to blow up the bomb? Las Vegas has the people, the NTS history, and even the Russians. If they can make a splash while the President is here, then what else could they want? We can’t wait on this — if I’m right, we are already running down to the wire!”

“I’ll let DOE know right away,” Paige said. “The Secret Service is going to go ape.”

“It’s time to stop screwing around and call in the NEST experts. Nuclear Emergency Search Team. Not a minute to lose!”