Fallout

CHAPTER 34

The squad cars pulled up, three of them, their lights flashing. Las Vegas police jumped out of the vehicles. Craig emerged from his own car, drawing the 9-mm Beretta from his shoulder holster. With his other hand he clutched the folded search warrant and arrest warrant.

Two officers pounded on the door, while Craig stepped back in full view, holding out the warrants as if they were weapons, passing them from hand to hand, shuffling his feet as he waited impatiently. He glanced at his watch.

The officers pounded again, and Craig was just ready to tell them to break the door down, when the lock clicked and the door popped open.

PK Dirks stood in a T-shirt and baggy Bermuda shorts, scratching his beard and blinking. His eyes looked bleary, and from the smell of his breath, Craig suspected Dirks had recently put away most of a six-pack of beer.

“Yo, Agent Kreident,” Dirks said, then finally focused on the squad cars, the flashing lights, the policemen. “Something happen? Where’s the Russians?”

Craig extended the folded papers. “Mr. Dirks, I have a warrant here for your arrest and authorization to search your premises for suspected involvement in the Eagle’s Claw and for the murder of Ambassador Kosimo Nevsky.”

Craig had insufficient evidence to arrest PK Dirks under normal circumstances, but the laid-back technician was one of the only men who could have been involved in both the diversion of a nuclear weapon as well as the Russian’s death. After receiving special phone calls from June Atwood as well as personnel from State, DoD, the Secret Service, the Defense Nuclear Agency, and FEMA, the judge had given Craig greater leeway in questioning potential suspects. They didn’t have much time left.

“The Eagle’s Claw?” Dirks spluttered. “Those fuckheads! Why would I have anything to do with them? And Nevsky — I already explained that.” Then the rest of the news finally sank in. “You’re arresting me?” It took him a moment to gather his wits. Finally, he growled, “Shoot, let me change my shirt.” He staggered back inside while the policemen swarmed into the building to begin their search.

Hour after hour, past midnight and into the darkness of early morning, PK Dirks raggedly insisted on his innocence and protested that if they found anything at all that connected him to the militia group, then they’d better show him first.

Judging from the pile of aluminum cans stacked in a wobbly pyramid beside his lounge chair, Dirks had been drinking one Coors after another while watching Lost in Space reruns on the Sci-Fi Channel. The man had been settling in for a long night of doing nothing… which concerned Craig.

Those were not the actions of someone who knew a nuclear device was soon set to go off somewhere in the city.

At the same time, in a different interrogation chamber, Bryce Connors and Deputy Mahon pleaded ignorance as well.

After the other agents took Dirks away for questioning, Craig had stayed behind to help ransack the place, desperately hoping to find some clue. But the man’s cluttered apartment showed no evidence of anything except perhaps criminal lack of housekeeping.…

Craig had been working non-stop since their arrival — but by three o’clock in the morning they had found nothing. And it was already Friday, October 24th. Deadline day. Time was running out.

Back in the warehouse command center, he rubbed his temples, knuckled his burning and bloodshot eyes, and hung his head with a sigh. If only he had gone to the DAF early the morning before, spent hours going through the paperwork as he had intended to, he might have made the connection about the nuclear weapon then, which would have given NEST another entire day to find the stolen device.

At least he had accomplished something during the diversion yesterday. He had saved the passengers on the Amtrak train — he could not ignore that.

He thought about calling Paige — he had not seen her since that afternoon, when he had initiated the nuclear search. If it hadn’t been for her help, he would never have gotten this far on the case. Glancing at his watch, though, he saw what time it was. She must already be back in her room at the Rio, sound asleep.

Alone, he paced the bustling NEST command post, past the maps and tables, telephones that did not ring nearly often enough. Search teams continued to comb the streets, but so far they had found nothing. Nothing. His head ached, his temples pounded, spinning wheels in his brain.

What if he was wrong about PK Dirks? What if the technician was not a member of the militia cell after all? Then who else could divulge the location of the warhead?

His mind ran through all the possibilities. Who else had access to the weapons and knew the authorizing procedures cold? Who else could have been in the signature loop? Craig had seen the list of personnel, and only a few people were in critical positions at the Test Site, critical enough to know how to go about diverting a nuclear weapon.

He kept coming up with another possible connection, and he didn’t like the answer — DAF manager Mike Waterloo. It was the only idea he had left.

Grabbing one of the command center phones, Craig attempted to call Waterloo — but the DAF manager wasn’t at home, nor did he answer his pager. Of course, at 3:30 A.M. any sensible person would have his pager shut off, and maybe even the ringer on the phone disengaged.

Or perhaps he wasn’t there. Perhaps he had run… fleeing an impending nuclear detonation. Craig couldn’t afford to pass up any possibility. Not now.

No possibility at all.

Suddenly remembering, he turned to Goldfarb, who sat red-eyed, gulping what must have been his thirtieth cup of coffee for the day. “Hey Ben, did you and Jackson follow up on that lead I gave you yesterday morning — Dennisons Machine Repair?”

The short, curly-haired agent snapped up in surprise. “Oh, cripes. No, we never got there, Craig. With the Laughlin bridge explosion and getting shot at in Jorgenson’s trailer and now this NEST exercise, it got shuffled to the bottom of the stack.” He jumped to his feet, angry at himself for letting the task go undone. “Should we head over there now?”

Craig pulled his own jacket back on. “Have Major Braden drive one of their detector vans by the repair shop to check if the weapon is there. You and Jackson get a warrant and be prepared to make an armed entry.”

“An armed entry?” Goldfarb said skeptically. “Are you sure about this?”

“Am I sure? Hardly!” Craig didn’t want to bring up the fact that so far they had not managed to confirm that a warhead was even missing, much less set for imminent detonation. The NEST team and the FBI response had swung into action, the President’s stopover had been placed on hold, all on Craig’s call because he had made a convincing case. He had been right about the Amtrak bridge explosion — just barely — and he hoped this whole incident wasn’t another example of crying wolf. “But we don’t have time to do things cautiously anymore. Today is the day!”

“Okay, you’ve got the intuition — I’m not going to argue with it. We’re grasping at straws, so we may as well grab with all we’ve got.” Goldfarb slid his arms into his jacket, gingerly keeping his bandaged little finger from bumping against anything. “What are you going to do in the meantime?”

“Mike Waterloo doesn’t answer his home phone, so I’m going to go over there and wake him up. Besides telling him we’ve arrested PK Dirks, I want to poke around. Something’s just a little fishy.”

Goldfarb went looking for Jackson, but tossed a glance over his shoulder. “You keep having these hunches, Craig, sooner or later you’re going to be right.”