Fallout

CHAPTER 35

Sitting helplessly in the passenger seat of the camouflaged land rover, Paige pressed her lips together to trap her despair and anger inside. She didn’t want to grant Mike Waterloo the benefit of conversation, and her coldness disturbed him greatly.

They’d headed overland in his car from the DAF, driving north across the darkened flats, using abandoned dirt roads that had been carved for test shots completed in years past. Pulling up to an old ammo bunker that had been abandoned in place, Mike had held the gun on her as they switched to a hidden land rover. They left his car inside the old bunker and drove the rover out of the musty-smelling storage place, off to their grim destination.

He kept the land rover’s headlights switched off as he crept across the broken land. Overhead, the soup of storm clouds made the desert a murky wasteland. The rugged vehicle bounced and rattled. Paige felt her internal organs jostling, her teeth chattering — but she stared ahead, not wanting to look at Mike and his grim expression, not wanting to look in the back of the rover.

The missing nuclear device lay in the rear cargo bed.

Mike risked the paved roads again as he drove up into the mesas, where only two days earlier he had taken the Russian team on a casual tour of the tunnel tests. He had been such a hypocrite, informative and chatty, when all the while he had been arranging a wave of violence and nuclear destruction. How long had the warhead been hidden in the old bunker, waiting for the Eagle’s Claw to decide how best to use it?

Mike wound up into the higher lands that separated the Nevada Test Site from the vast spaces of the Nellis Air Force Range. Once he descended out of the mountains and down to the open basin of Gold Flat, Mike veered away from the roads and struck out overland again. The land rover didn’t mind the lack of pavement, but once the storm broke and desert rain sheeted down, the ground would become a quagmire.

Upon crossing into Nellis, he reached over to a squarish box he had installed next to the four-wheel-drive shift lever. He flicked on the gadget, some kind of transmitter, and lights winked green on its panel. Though Paige heard nothing, noticed no difference, Mike visibly relaxed.

“I don’t suppose you just came to your senses and surrendered to the authorities,” Paige said coldly.

Desperate to engage her in conversation, Mike looked at the blinking lights on the box. “That’s an IFF transmitter — Identify Friend or Foe. We’ve just passed into Nellis’s security net, but now their sensors will ignore us. Every motion detector, sonic transducer, and microwave relay they have won’t matter any more. The computers will log our entry but won’t raise any alarms. We can thank another friend of the Eagle’s Claw, a Staff Sergeant Marlo, for this marvel of technology. Our members can be found all over the area — in NTS, in Las Vegas, even in some parts of Nellis.”

“You sure know how to be sneaky in the name of mass destruction,” Paige said bitterly. “I always admired you for being so smart, but this whole militia thing is so preposterous.”

Mike frowned, taken aback. “The evidence is there for anyone to see, Paige — but they all refuse. I have seen reality, and I’ve got to do what’s necessary. My conscience demands it.”

Paige rolled her eyes, making it clear she did not believe him.

He drove across Gold Flat, picking up speed. Paige hoped he would strike a sharp rock and damage the vehicle, leaving them stranded with no hope of reaching his target, whatever it was. Lost in the desert with a flat tire and a stolen nuclear warhead in back!

They drove for hours and hours through the darkest part of the night, after the moon set. Paige had no idea where they were, but she would not give Mike any satisfaction by asking him. She had not seen so much as a dirt road in some time. She recalled how the band of hippie protesters had wandered into NTS on Tuesday, aimlessly hiking around the desert looking for the warehouses that hid UFOs. Now Uncle Mike was chasing his own elusive phantom.

“We’re almost there, Paige, and then you’ll see what I mean. I love my country. Your dad loved it, and my wife loved it as well.” Uncle Mike checked his notes, a Magellan GPS indicator, a map, then a sheaf of aerial photographs in a three-ring folder.

“Genny and I planned to join those caravans of senior citizen retirees with large RVs driving around to see the country for once in their lives. We wanted to spend our golden years being gypsies, visiting the mountains, the plains, all the things American anthems are about.” His hands tensed on the steering wheel, gripping it tightly. “But she died first, and I don’t want to see America all alone. So instead I’ll help to preserve it for future generations.”

“By spreading a cloud of radioactive fallout across four or five states,” she said with an angry snort.

Mike’s face wore a grim but passionate expression. “My heart is good, Paige. You know that.” He reached over to touch her arm, but she drew away. “Remember the bicycle? Remember the coloring book I gave you when you were sick getting your tonsils out in the hospital?” His voice carried an edge of desperation. “Remember how I helped you with your math because you wanted to go to college and make something of your life?”

Paige’s lips trembled as the memories flooded past her. “A different man did those things. Not you. You’re not the Uncle Mike I knew and loved. He’s as dead as my Aunt Genny.”

Mike drove farther on, looking as if she had just stabbed him.

Predawn light began to seep into the eastern sky, turning the stormclouds a watery greenish gray. Paige could make out twinkling lights, some sort of security complex at the base of rugged mountains. The pale expanse of a dry lakebed extended for miles, etched with long runways. Mike drove toward the most remote set of buildings, following the bottom of a wide gully, keeping them low and unseen.

She could discern a thick perimeter fence, double chain-link topped with razor wire, probably electrified. RESTRICTED AREA and NO TRESPASSING signs alternated with GUARDS ARE AUTHORIZED TO USE DEADLY FORCE BY ORDER OF THE COMMANDER.

“Welcome to Area 51,” he whispered. “A sight not many citizens get to see.”

Picking his way along in the scant light, Mike approached from the rear of the facility. The gully narrowed and deepened as it ran behind the nearest massive building. Finally he pulled the camouflaged land rover to a stop as close as he could get to the fence, still more than a hundred yards away from the restricted complex. Their vehicle was hidden from sight deep in the gully.

The main structure covered acres and acres, like a gigantic warehouse, larger even than the DAF. Paige saw no windows, only air vents on the rooftop, big roll-up metal doors sealed shut.

Even skeptical, she recognized that this building was no simple hangar, no bunker or supply warehouse, no WalMart in the middle of the desert. The featureless contours looked sinister to her — she could almost believe the paranoid fears Mike had voiced.

This place was not right. It housed something terrible and deadly.

Mike glanced over his shoulder at the stolen nuclear device filling the back of the land rover, then he stared forward again as dawn began to break over the desert. The giant structure fascinated as well as horrified him. One word came from his mouth in a quiet whisper.

“Dreamland,” he said.