Kill Zone

7

As Adonia followed Undersecretary Doyle through the vault door and inside the mountain facility, she glanced again at Shawn, tossing silent questions at him. He gave her a quick smile as she passed, and mouthed Later, but maintained a professional demeanor. He had always considered it a matter of pride never to let anyone get a hint of their relationship, though he’d certainly been warm and loving in private. She still didn’t have any answers about Hydra Mountain, but she relaxed a little, reassured by Shawn’s involvement.

Stepping to one side, he gestured the Senator, Garibaldi, and van Dyckman through the doorway, then brought up the rear. Once the group had entered the cool dustiness of the tunnels, he closed the pedestrian vault door behind them and twirled the combination, locking them in.

“Buried under a mountain,” Adonia muttered to no one in particular.

As her eyes adjusted, she felt a growing sense of wonder, realizing the immensity of this place. The group stood at the left-hand side of an arched chamber fifty feet high and three times as deep, with an enormous tunnel feeding in from the left and right. The giant chamber carved into the granite was large enough to house a three-story building. Though its floor was level concrete, the walls were rough, raw rock, with some patches covered by metal mesh to hold back loose debris. The air smelled damp.

To the right down the wall was a massive vault door, similar to the one she had seen outside in front of the waiting eighteen-wheelers. Though she had little sense of direction after entering the Mountain, she realized that she was looking at the other side of the giant entry she had seen earlier.

Directly ahead of them, on the chamber’s far wall, was a sealed guard portal that prevented unauthorized entry deeper into the Mountain. The tunnel leading off the main chamber stretched so far to the left and right that the passage shrank to a point in the distance. Every twenty-five feet, bright LED lights hung from a ventilation duct that ran along the ceiling. Obviously, the modern lights and bright metal air ventilation system had been recently installed. Back in the old Cold War days, she was sure garish bulbs had shone in these tunnels.

Dr. Garibaldi tilted his head back to take in the enormity of the place. “Well, well, so much for this being a decommissioned facility.” His voice echoed off the rock walls.

“Recommissioned and repurposed,” van Dyckman said. “Hydra Mountain is the perfect answer to our needs.”

“What needs?” Garibaldi asked.

Shawn interrupted in an even voice, “Now that we’re in this internal SCIF, we can brief you in greater detail.”

“The suspense is killing me,” Adonia said jokingly, but she was deeply curious to know how this project could be relevant to the members of this impromptu inspection team.

She knew that during the Cold War, the warren of tunnels deep inside Hydra Mountain had been filled with nuclear warheads, even though the storage facility was so close to the city of Albuquerque, just southeast of the airport. The public had no clue what was going on right under their noses. But the Mountain had been shut down for decades. What was van Dyckman using this place for now? And what did it have to do with her?

Shawn casually found a way to step close to Adonia, although he paid her no special attention as he addressed the entire group. “Ladies and gentlemen, I had exactly the same reaction the first time I visited Hydra Mountain, just after I started working at the White House. I haven’t been through all the levels here myself, but with today’s review, we’ll be seeing the entire facility.”

“My intent is to show you the whole complex, for completeness in your review,” Rob Harris said. “As required.”

Undersecretary Doyle frowned, suddenly wary. “Does that include the lower level?”

“Of course, everything,” van Dyckman said, brushing aside the comment. Adonia wondered how the Undersecretary knew anything about other levels. “Otherwise Dr. Garibaldi would accuse us of hiding UFOs.”

“And what, exactly, will we be seeing?” Garibaldi crossed his arms over his chest. “If not Martians?”

Van Dyckman looked at each one of them, his eyes sparkling. “You have been granted access to Valiant Locksmith, an unacknowledged, waived DOE Special Access Program — a SAP — established over twelve months ago by the President himself.”

Valiant Locksmith? Where do they get these names? Adonia wondered, without surprise.

Garibaldi kept looking around. “I may be out of the government now, but I still have my SCI clearances, and Sanergy monitors all DOE projects. If this is a DOE program, why haven’t I heard about it?”

Senator Pulaski spoke to the older scientist as he would to a child. “Just because you have a clearance, Doctor, doesn’t mean you have the right to know about every secret program in the government. Valiant Locksmith is one of the most highly classified SAPs in existence—”

Shawn interrupted smoothly, “Again, this is an unacknowledged and waived program, Dr. Garibaldi. A SAP is unacknowledged if its very existence is kept secret, and waived if it is immune to statutory reporting requirements. No one at Sanergy would have been informed.” He nodded to the Senator. “As Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Senator Pulaski is one of the few members of Congress who even knows about Valiant Locksmith. He both funds and oversees the work here, but the program undergoes a yearly review by the select Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committee, which is coming up in a few days. That’s why all of you are present today. I’m here as the President’s personal representative.”

Garibaldi did not look pleased. “Unless this is a matter of national defense, the public has a right to be informed and to provide input in all such programs. I was led to believe this had something to do with the nuclear energy infrastructure?”

Pulaski interrupted with an impatient sigh. “The government has conducted waived, unacknowledged SAPs for decades, Doctor. The National Reconnaissance Office running our nation’s spy satellite program was a SAP for over thirty-one years. All that time no one knew the Air Force Assistant Secretary was really the Director of the NRO.”

“Very few government programs qualify for that classification,” Shawn said. “Valiant Locksmith is one of them. You’ll see why very soon.”

“That still doesn’t explain anything,” Adonia said. “Just come out and tell us why we’re here, Shawn. What is Valiant Locksmith?”

He turned to van Dyckman. “I think the Assistant Secretary would like to explain.”

Of course he would, Adonia thought.

Wearing a pleased smile as if he had just stepped out on a Broadway stage, van Dyckman began to lecture. “This is a rather ingenious solution to a perennial national problem, and we’re very proud of—”

Before he could finish his sentence, a pulsating horn blared through the tunnels. Amber cautionary lights embedded in the rock flashed as the large vault door slowly began to rotate open, spilling sunlight into the cavernous stone-walled chamber.

Rob Harris raised his voice over the alarm as he ushered them to the opposite side of the chamber. “Good timing. This will answer some of your questions. Though it’s Sunday, the Mountain is about to receive a delivery. Please stay within the painted safety lines on the floor.”

As the others moved forward, Shawn maneuvered himself next to Adonia. “I told you we were going to keep crossing paths with our careers.”

Frowning, she nodded to Garibaldi. “What about him? One of his Sanergy nuts nearly destroyed my site.”

“I’ve read the classified report, and Garibaldi’s telling the truth. The pilot wasn’t one of theirs, just inspired by the rhetoric. Garibaldi’s clearance would have been pulled if we found any hint of a connection. And for some reason the approval for his appointment to this committee came straight from the DOE Secretary’s office. Somebody wanted him here, and badly. We’ll need his support, and I think we’ll get it.”

The others stopped against the far rock wall and watched as the vault door swung all the way open. He gave her a warm smile, and she found herself missing him again. “You haven’t begun to see the real surprises we’ve got in store for you. Just wait — I think you’ll approve.”

Adonia was intrigued. “I’ll take your word for it.” If van Dyckman had said the same things, she would have been skeptical. But Shawn wouldn’t lie to her.

She looked around at the others, trying to gauge their reaction. Rob Harris was cool and businesslike, preoccupied, not that he had ever been Mr. Charisma. Garibaldi looked curious, as though trying to solve a puzzle, and Undersecretary Doyle was keenly focused, maybe a little worried. Stanley, though, was practically giddy.

When the giant metal door fully opened, Adonia heard the guttural growl of truck engines as the two flatbed eighteen-wheelers crawled inside. The sound of alarms and diesel engines filled the chamber, along with exhaust fumes. Several minutes later, after the flatbeds had completely entered the chamber, the mammoth vault door slowly swung shut behind them and seated itself into place with a reverberating bang. The truck drivers throttled off the rumbling engines, and exhaust air rushed through vents along the tunnel ceiling, pulling the diesel fumes away.

When the alarm horn stopped pulsating, a startling silence filled the tunnel. Five workers in blue facility overalls came forward to pull the tarps from the flatbeds, unveiling the cargo. Each flatbed held two large upright concrete cylinders, fifteen feet high and six feet wide, adorned with the bright yellow-and-black labels of the universal radiation symbol.

Garibaldi’s eyes widened. “Those are high-level nuclear waste containers! You’re transporting radioactive casks across country under a… tarp?”

“Nothing to worry about,” van Dyckman said. “These casks weigh one hundred thirty-seven tons apiece, so nobody is going to steal them.”

“Also,” Shawn pointed out, “they have unmarked, armed security escorts along the entire route.”

As she looked at the tunnels, the transport trucks, and the excessive security, Adonia began to put the pieces together. She muttered, “Waste casks delivered to a mothballed nuclear weapons storage depot, on a secure military base…”

“That’s right,” van Dyckman said, still grinning. “On Federal property, not public, a place with a full suite of safety and security systems already in place.”

Garibaldi’s expression changed. “You’re storing high-level waste! Hydra Mountain was designed to secure nuclear weapons, and now you’re using the facility for spent fuel rods and other radioactive waste without public oversight.”

“It has to go somewhere,” van Dyckman said.

Rob Harris looked relieved that he was finally able to reveal the answer. “This is Valiant Locksmith, and Dr. van Dyckman is my supervisor and the program’s manager. His job position is an unacknowledged, waived fact.”

Adonia tried to wrap her mind around the idea. Her ex-boss was a political appointee, an assistant secretary, and he was also secretly the national program manager of an unacknowledged SAP? How was that possible?

Grinning from ear to ear, van Dyckman spoke quickly. “Valiant Locksmith is a covert Special Access Program established by the President himself to solve a crucial problem facing our nation. And Hydra Mountain is the perfect place, a ready-made, turnkey facility exactly suited to the requirements of the mission. It was empty, just waiting to be used.”

Adonia couldn’t cover her surprise. The lack of any approved place to store the power industry’s backlog of hazardous waste created an ongoing crisis that no one wanted to talk about. For years, politicians had ignored the issue, as if the problem would just go away on its own. The only permanent solution, the giant Yucca Mountain complex deep in the Nevada wasteland, had been stymied at every turn by legal challenges and politics, until even its staunchest proponents were forced to surrender. The problem of waste storage remained unsolved. For decades.

Now Stanley was storing deadly waste in this mothballed nuclear weapons facility? No wonder the Nuclear Regulatory Commission kept deferring to him. Even Adonia couldn’t deny the appropriateness of the solution.

Victoria Doyle seemed both annoyed and confused by this revelation, and Garibaldi was clearly alarmed. He said, “You can’t possibly be authorized to turn this into a permanent storage facility. We’re practically within the Albuquerque city limits! Yucca Mountain took decades to build, with countless levels of oversight and review, and it was finally shut down because studies clearly showed—”

“It was shut down because of politics, not science,” van Dyckman interrupted. “Even outside experts confirmed it could safely store high-level waste for over a million years.”

“Plus or minus a few hundred thousand years!” Garibaldi snorted. “Have you seen the error bars?”

Shawn said, “The President is fully aware that Valiant Locksmith is only a temporary program, but he has embraced Hydra Mountain as an immediate stopgap solution to a problem that was growing more and more out of control every day. Reopening the Mountain allows us to store the nation’s high-level waste in one safe and secure location until a permanent storage facility is approved, built, and opened.”

“Or until Hell freezes over,” Senator Pulaski muttered.

Adonia knew what he meant, doubting that a permanent nuclear waste storage facility would ever be opened. Despite the obvious and vital need, any public storage site would be strangled by politics before it got off the ground. Every facility ever proposed had been embroiled in decades of lawsuits, political grandstanding, and environmental protests.

But the plane crash at Granite Bay had only demonstrated how vulnerable the numerous inadequate holding areas were. This place certainly couldn’t be any worse.

At Granite Bay, Adonia was forced to deal with the escalating problem every day. Such a staggering amount of nuclear waste at nearly a hundred different sites was a disaster waiting to happen, even without extremists flying small planes.

Hydra Mountain had been designed to securely store nuclear weapons, which were far more dangerous than spent fuel rods. Though she was inclined to make a quietly sarcastic comment, Adonia realized she was impressed that Stanley van Dyckman — of all people! — had somehow pulled the strings to make it all happen. The more she pondered the idea, the more she decided that this did make sense, at least in the interim. “You may be onto something here.”

While an overhead crane swung down over the flatbeds, jumpsuited workers drove two low-slung tractor-crawlers up to the containers. Wearing gloves, the workers secured the crane’s hook assembly to a large concrete cask, carefully moving one giant cylinder at a time from the flatbed to the crawlers. Like ants struggling with a gigantic crumb, they prepared to haul their treasure off to a hoard somewhere in the tunnel.

Harris spoke to the group. “The President had no choice but to establish Valiant Locksmith, because Congress wouldn’t act, and the environmentalists wouldn’t let them. Over the years, several nuclear accidents were hushed up around the country, each one increasingly more severe.” He nodded to Adonia. “Ms. Rojas knows from personal experience how we dodged a bullet and avoided a real catastrophe at Granite Bay. If just one minor detail hadn’t gone right that day, we might have been looking at an incident worse than Three Mile Island or Japan’s Fukushima.”

Adonia shot a quick glance to van Dyckman, thinking of how he had meddled during the response, as well as his earlier botched calculations for the density of the fuel rod storage array. A lot of other bullets, she thought, barely dodged.

Stanley studiously ignored her.

Harris continued, “There were many other incidents before Granite Bay, such as the incident at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. Fortunately, only low-level waste is stored in WIPP, but several workers were accidentally exposed to a slight amount of radiation. There was no real danger to the public, and the incident itself should have been inconsequential, but the slipup was indicative of the much larger high-level nuclear waste problem. Even because of that minor lapse, the contractor lost its $2.5 billion yearly contract to run the Los Alamos National Laboratory.”

Garibaldi looked queasy. “There’s no such thing as an inconsequential radiation incident.”

Shawn stepped in. “You’re right. That incident at WIPP was only the second time since the Manhattan Project that the government really shook up its nuclear infrastructure. Granite Bay pushed the President over the edge.”

Senator Pulaski pulled himself up. “We take this very seriously, and that’s why Hydra Mountain is so desperately needed.” He lifted his chin, as though lecturing his staff. “All nuclear waste is dangerous. That’s why it belongs in here instead of out there.”

Adonia was surprised Pulaski would make such a broad and ill-informed comment, considering he was the one man who funded the country’s nuclear infrastructure. “Actually, it’s a matter of degree, Senator. WIPP stores only the lowest-level waste, such as contaminated gloves and paper, objects that may have briefly come in contact with radioactive material. It’s mostly secondary material and poses no immediate danger—”

“Immediate danger is a relative term, Ms. Rojas.” Garibaldi fixed his eyes on the last of the concrete cylinders as workers removed it from the second flatbed. “I’ll admit that a pair of lightly contaminated gloves is a lesser concern than radioactive spent fuel rods, but what level is truly safe? Unshielded rods emit enough radiation to kill a person after only a few seconds of exposure. The WIPP incident may have been minor, but if the same mishap occurred at your Granite Bay site, we’d be having an entirely different conversation.”

“At least there would be a conversation,” van Dyckman said. “And that’s the point. Nobody wants to talk about storing nuclear waste. Protest groups throw up roadblock after roadblock against any proposed solution, Congress doesn’t act — it’s as if everyone thinks the problem will just go away if we ignore it long enough.”

The tractor-crawler drove away carrying the large concrete cask, but the members of the group were caught up in their own conversation. Garibaldi rocked back on his heels near the rough wall. “Sanergy is aware of the magnitude of the present problem, but the only permanent solution is to stop producing more waste in the first place. If we expand safe, clean energy alternatives, then there will be no more high-level nuclear waste.”

Undersecretary Doyle was impatient with the debate. “That still doesn’t explain why we’re here. Why am I part of this group? Just to add another perspective before the Senator’s congressional oversight meeting? Sounds like half-assed planning to me.”

Garibaldi seemed troubled and curious. “And why did the President want me here as the… loyal opposition?” He seemed to be amused by the term. “I would think I’d be the last person he wanted to see this.”

“The President didn’t ask for anybody specifically,” Shawn said. “We took recommendations, and Rob Harris was very persuasive. You’re all here for a reason. Ms. Rojas, for example. Considering her hands-on familiarity with the problem, and as site manager of the nation’s largest nuclear power plant, she was a natural choice.”

Van Dyckman frowned. “Rob Harris also suggested Dr. Garibaldi, as well as Undersecretary Doyle, even though she doesn’t have as much background in nuclear energy.” His voice turned sour. “His approvals were rubber-stamped, and by the time I actually saw the names, it was too late to postpone.”

The site manager said curtly, “I wanted a well-balanced group with fresh eyes, people who could provide an unbiased perspective — a review team outside of your part of the DOE, Dr. van Dyckman, who wouldn’t have a personal stake in the program. Even though Ms. Doyle’s nuclear expertise is in Weapons rather than Energy, her engineering credentials are impeccable.”

Out of the corner of her eye Adonia saw Victoria Doyle give a curt nod to Harris. There was obviously something else going on between them.…

As the second flatbed was unloaded and the workers finished their paperwork, Harris guided them to the interior guard portal and a smaller vault door embedded in the granite wall. “Let’s go inside to the storage locations.”

“Then you’ll see the good stuff,” van Dyckman said. He gathered the group into a small semicircle next to the gate. “Keep in mind that DOE is already moving an incredible amount of high-level waste into Hydra Mountain, under the strictest security guidelines. Our intent is to rapidly reduce the amount of nuclear waste stored in inadequate holding areas at a hundred different sites across the nation. This will dramatically reduce the risk of an accident outside. Valiant Locksmith has been operational for a year since the President signed the classified Executive Order, but this is still a dangerous place — not an office building. However, Rob’s team is doing a great job.”

The Senator added, “And we’d like you to reach that same conclusion for your report to the Intelligence Oversight Committee.”

Van Dyckman kept smiling. “By law, once a year we’re required to conduct an outside and unbiased assessment of the entire program. The President is keenly interested, and as his military aide, Colonel Whalen is his eyes and ears. The rest of you constitute his blue-ribbon committee to review what we’ve accomplished, and, we hope, give Hydra Mountain a clean bill of health to present to the oversight committee.”

“If it’s warranted,” Garibaldi said.

“No pressure,” Adonia muttered.

“Of course it’s warranted,” van Dyckman said. “I’ve added DOE upgrades to the old military safeguards, supplementing the antiquated Cold War protective systems. With all the safety and security systems, this is the ideal place for our operations. Brand-new technology alongside tried-and-true legacy systems.”

Garibaldi turned to Shawn. “Ms. Rojas manages a nuclear power plant, so I understand what she brings to the table, but what is your actual expertise in these matters, Colonel Whalen?”

Shawn smiled. “I’ve had hands-on experience with nuclear material as a bomber pilot — I periodically carried nukes in my B-2. Because of the short notice and importance, the President asked me to expedite the review, but this is Mr. Harris’s facility, so he’ll lead us through. I’m just an observer, too.”

Harris said, “I’ll go over everything, step by step, corridor by corridor. You’ll see for yourselves, and reach your own conclusions.” He stepped up to the security door and swiped his card to open the vault. “The interior storage facility is isolated from this staging area by yet another layer of security. Once inside, we’ll head up to my office in the operations center, where you’ll see how we keep track of Valiant Locksmith ops nationwide, as well as the status of the waste stored inside the Mountain. That’ll give you some idea of how extensive the program is.”

The heavy door opened. Harris turned back to them, touching his lanyard. “Make sure your badge and dosimeter are visible at all times. And please, don’t touch anything.” He hesitated, then gave an uncharacteristic smile. “If you hear a high-pitched warbling siren, just run like hell to this exit. It’s the only way in or out of Hydra Mountain.”

The cool tone in his voice made Adonia uncertain whether or not he was joking. Something told her he wasn’t.