Fallout

CHAPTER 48

One of the Air Force helicopters came low to the ground, kicking up sprays of water and sand; a cloud of dust swirled around the heavily armed behemoth as it bumped to a landing, settling onto the soft ground.

Two armed security policemen jumped down from the passenger compartment and spread out, fanning the area with their automatic weapons — but they didn’t leave the immediate vicinity of the craft.

Dressed in white protective gear with hoods, three members of the NEST response scrambled out. One carried a radiation detector and held up a gloved hand, sweeping it from side to side, focusing on the site of the explosion, while the others drew up short. They stood warily back from the remains of the blasted land rover and the ruined warhead.

A hundred yards away, Craig pulled himself up on the slick outcropping of rock and watched the team. A day late and a dollar short, he thought. Good thing Ursov had accomplished whatever it was he had done, somehow damaging the stolen warhead enough to prevent it from going critical.

One of the security men spotted the Russian general from his shallow hiding place. Ursov limped toward them, wiping at an ash-like gray substance that clung to his shirt. The stocky man looked dazed, but held himself upright as he painfully made his way across the desert.

The NEST person with the radiation detector motioned toward the main helicopter, while medical teams and decontamination units rushed toward Ursov. Two women hauled out a long hose and started unreeling it, stopping just in front of the Russian. They unfolded a plastic container like a child’s swimming pool and instructed the general to step into it. They used their gloved hands to tear off his shirt and pants, stuffing them into plastic contamination bags.

Ursov held up his hands, cooperative, while the NEST volunteers sprayed him with some sort of decon foam. They scrubbed his skin raw with coarse brushes. He winced, but endured all of it.

Craig looked up as another pair of helicopters approached, flying low under the diminishing rain. One was identical to the NEST helicopter; the other looked like LtCol Terrell’s escort chopper. The second NEST helicopter landed near the first. Ben Goldfarb jumped out and trotted toward the group, shading his eyes and searching for Craig. Dressed in a dark suit, the curly-haired man spoke into a walkie-talkie, coordinating with the rest of the FBI team. The NEST workers waved him away from the Russian general and possible contamination.

Craig pressed a hand against his throbbing and bleeding knee, then staggered toward the others. Blood oozed from the wound, but he knew it wasn’t serious. Yellow sunlight poked through a gap in the clouds, making him squint. He had lost his scratched sunglasses somewhere back at the land rover. Wearily he checked his watch. Not even nine o’clock in the morning, and already the day had been too long.

He saw someone signaling him from inside Terrell’s chopper as it bore down, returning from the horizon, the direction in which Sally Montry’s land rover had fled. He spotted a flash of blond hair beside the lieutenant colonel in the back. Paige. She waved at him.

Two men in white protective gear ran toward Craig, jogging in their full-body suits. One held out a radiation detector and motioned to the other. “He’s clean. No radioactive debris made it this far.”

“Get him out of here then. The Russian guy needs to go to the hospital, ASAP. We’ve got to mitigate this exposure.”

Wincing, Craig limped toward the rescue helicopters.

His knee wrapped in a field bandage and his leg elevated on a chair in front of him, Craig sipped a cup of stale office coffee as he eased himself back on the Naugahyde-covered couch. Despite its highly classified location, the Groom Lake auxiliary base headquarters looked like any average military office building.

Air Force memorabilia filled LtCol Terrell’s office: photos of Atlas, Delta, and Titan rocket launches; a painting of a mountain range with a plane in the background; two plaques bearing different Air Force seals; a photo of Terrell with two general officers. A portable stereo, complete with CDs and speakers sat on a black metal credenza.

Through the miniblinds over the window beside Terrell’s desk, Craig could see a bustle of activity at the Groom Lake flightline: helicopters took off and trucks criss-crossed the black asphalt surface, bringing in teams, evacuating NEST workers, wrapping up the aftermath of the morning’s excitement.

Paige plopped onto the overstuffed couch beside Craig and scooted herself nearer to him. A thick white gauze bandage covered her broken nose, but her smile still showed through when she looked at him. “We make quite a pair,” she said. “Like we had a knock-down, drag-out brawl.”

“Sometimes I like it when the sparks fly,” Craig said with a smile. He had washed off most of the mud-splatters and dirt, but he still needed a long, hot shower.

Terrell stuck his head into the doorway on his way past. “One more report to Washington. Be right back.” He closed the door on them.

Craig smiled. “Your nose is okay?”

“It’ll heal — just don’t ask me to sing anytime soon.” Paige brushed her hair over her shoulder. “How’s your knee?”

“Better than it looks,” said Craig. “Just don’t ask me to dance for a while.”

“I didn’t think you knew how to dance.”

Craig looked at her with mock seriousness. “FBI agents have to undergo rigorous and diverse training, ma’am.”

She laughed, then became silent. She folded her hands together, as if in deep thought.

Craig took a sip of the bitter coffee and watched her. Now, after the past four frantic days, it felt good to know the pressure was finally off, both the threat of the militia and Nevsky’s murder investigation.

But Paige had been caught in the middle of this, unexpectedly hit by Waterloo’s involvement. So much had happened, but Craig could still feel for her. He said, “I’m sorry about your Uncle Mike.”

She kept her blue eyes down and nodded. “I don’t know what to think. He was so much a part of my life for so long. It’s hard to grow up thinking you really know someone, and then they turn out to be a completely different person. Like Jekyll and Hyde. About two years ago Uncle Mike stopped coming to Livermore, quit calling me. I thought he just wanted to start over, that the memories were too much for him.”

“He did start over,” said Craig. “He just hooked up with the wrong crowd, directed his anger in the wrong direction. Sally Montry played up on that.”

Paige grimaced. “God only knows how much power that woman had over him, but an aggressive person can really dominate someone whose defenses are down. Because she worked with him so closely, Sally knew Uncle Mike’s weak spots, knew the buttons to push — after Aunt Genny died, and then my father, he was an easy target — lost at sea. She manipulated PK Dirks, too, though she never got him to do anything illegal. He was the perfect scapegoat. Just like Uncle Mike.” Paige shook her head. “But that doesn’t excuse what he did.”

Terrell returned, brisk and businesslike. “Good news about your Russian general. He was exposed to over a Rad — serious, but not deadly. He’ll live. He was lucky he didn’t get more debris blown on him when the casing cracked, and that the decon team arrived within minutes to scrub him down.”

“Have they cleaned up the rest of the radioactivity that was released out at your hangar facility?” Paige asked.

“Everything except some tritium and trace gases that escaped,” Terrell answered. “We’re all lucky only one of the high explosive lenses detonated, otherwise the dispersal would have been disastrous. The fail-safes worked.

“We all owe our lives to General Ursov… much as it amazes me to say that. He destroyed the weapon’s symmetry — everything needs to fit perfectly in these warheads in order to cause a nuclear explosion. Once he damaged the explosives with the screwdriver and cracked the casing, Ursov knew the warhead wouldn’t go critical. These things don’t detonate accidentally.”

“But when General Ursov cracked the casing, he got dusted with radioactive material,” Craig said. “He couldn’t get the PAL to engage, so he tried to bypass it and damage the warhead directly. He knew he might receive an exposure, but he took that chance.”

“Good thing you ran, then,” Paige said, pursing her lips as she looked at his injured leg. “Otherwise you might be undergoing the same decontamination procedures. I hear it’s about as pleasant as a root canal.”

Ironically, Craig thought of his former girlfriend Trish, who continued to study the treatment of radiation exposures at Johns Hopkins. Maybe they would call her in to consult on Ursov’s case.

Paige leaned back on the couch and studied LtCol Terrell, narrowing her blue eyes. “There’s still something that bothers me, Colonel, and I do hope you’ll be forthcoming with an explanation.”

“What’s that?” Terrell sat up stiffly, guarded.

Paige glanced at Craig, then stared down the black officer. “Something big overflew Sally’s land rover. I saw all our power systems go out. My watch still isn’t working. I know there are rumors about UFOs kept here in hangars up at Groom Lake —”

“That’s a familiar story,” Terrell said with a forced groan. “We’re always having kooks trying to sneak in looking for flying saucers… or the secret UN base. Or the Aurora project.” He steepled his fingers. “Anytime there’s classified work that demands high security, people will speculate about what’s behind closed doors.” He shrugged. “Can’t be helped.”

Paige cleared her throat. “Yes, sir, but I saw it. It wasn’t a NEST helicopter flying in low, and it wasn’t a Stealth bomber. It was something shimmering, almost invisible, and extremely fast.”

“Maybe you were too excited to know what was going on —”

“Colonel Terrell, don’t feed me any lines,” Paige said in a no-nonsense voice. “I’ve got the clearances, and it was nothing I’ve ever seen or heard before in my life. Now tell me — is there any truth to these UFO stories?”

“Of course not.”

“Then what happened out there?”

“I told you,” said Terrell. “It must —”

“Colonel Terrell,” Craig interrupted softly. He carefully put his coffee cup on the table in front of him and flexed his bandaged leg. “Sir, don’t you think you owe us something?”

He nodded to Paige, who drew her mouth tight and sat stiffly on the couch. She watched Terrell as if he might be a snake ready to strike. “Without us, your base would be sitting in the middle of a big crater right now. Come on, tell us what’s going on.”

Terrell pressed his lips together. “You know, most people don’t even know this base exists. Even fewer ever get to see inside. That should be enough for you.”

Craig raised an eyebrow. “Sorry, it’s not enough for me.”

Terrell scowled. He drummed his fingers on his wooden desk, then got up to stride across the room, carefully shutting the door to his office. “It doesn’t matter what clearances you have. No one has a Need To Know about our Special Access Required programs up here. For example, in the early eighties our Air Force HAVE BLUE project was an SAR program that built the F-117A Stealth fighter.”

“You’re avoiding the question,” Craig said simply.

Terrell stood against the closed door for a moment, then moved to the stereo boom box sitting on the credenza. Putting on a jazz CD, he turned the volume up and stepped over to the couch. Paige and Craig scrunched close to each other.

“You never heard this from me.” The lieutenant colonel spoke in a low tone that no one outside could hear over the music. “What you saw was the prototype of a ‘visible stealth’ aircraft, code-named HAVE NOT. One of our test pilots overflew you at close range, enough to rattle your vehicle. Then he used HAVE NOT’s high-power microwave weapons to knock out every one of your electronic systems.”

“Visible stealth?” Craig looked puzzled. “I’ve heard about microwave pulses to stop a car dead in its tracks — some police forces are starting to use that as a non-lethal countermeasure. But ‘visible stealth’ seems to be a contradiction in terms.”

Terrell folded his hands together. “Just as regular stealth is invisible to radar frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum, we are developing materials and coatings that are invisible at optical wavelengths. The visible light that human eyes can see. It’s the same principle.” He drew back. “But aliens and UFOs?” He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”

Paige’s blue eyes went wide. “An invisible fighter plane using microwave-pulse weapons to knock out electronic systems?” She winced as she bumped the bandage on her nose. “No wonder people think you have UFOs up here.”

The Jazz music continued to play. “None of that information is scheduled to be released for a few years,” Terrell said with a hard edge in his voice. “And since you’re both Federal employees, we will file felony charges if either of you allows this to leak to the public.” He walked briskly to the stereo, which he clicked off. “And I’ll deny everything.”

Paige grinned. “Of course you will.”

Craig looked innocent. “If what gets out, Colonel? That Ms. Mitchell helped stop the militia, single-handedly wrestling Sally Montry out of the land rover and holding her under arrest until help could arrive?”

Terrell shook Craig’s hand. “I’m glad we see eye to eye on this, Agent Kreident. Meanwhile, let’s get you out to the flightline — we aren’t cleared to keep visitors up at Groom Lake this long.”