Kill Zone

11

Rob Harris tried to maintain a calm, professional demeanor as he followed his exec from the storage vaults, but the urgency was plain on Drexler’s face. The young man was not one to cry wolf, and he would never have interrupted the high-level tour unless something truly unexpected had happened. Moving at a brisk pace, Harris imagined dozens of dire scenarios on the site, but both men remained silent as they hurried to the ops center.

As site manager, Harris was used to dealing with unexpected circumstances, but the timing was unfortunate with so much at stake here today. His entire plan relied on the review team members being able to see the looming problem with their own eyes, and draw the right conclusion. He knew they would put the pieces together.

Harris wished he’d had time to speak with Undersecretary Doyle alone, now that she’d finally been read into Valiant Locksmith. Because of her own Special Access Program, Doyle was the only person on the team besides Senator Pulaski with the proper access to understand the real dangers of having so much high-level waste inside Hydra Mountain — especially down in the lower cavern.

The Undersecretary needed to see for herself what van Dyckman had done, but until just a few minutes ago she hadn’t even known that his covert program existed. Once Doyle got to the lower level, though, she would fully understand.

Then all hell would break loose.

Thanks to draconian SAP security constraints, Harris was restricted from telling anyone else not cognizant of both programs about the problem. Period. Each person had to see their own part, and Harris had to hope they would put the clues together. It was like the parable of blind men trying to describe an elephant, each touching only one part of the animal and not grasping the whole thing. If they could only use their eyes!

No one but himself knew about all the Special Access Programs in Hydra Mountain; Doyle’s and van Dyckman’s were only two of several. Due to the very nature of a SAP, rigid classification firewalls prevented each program manager from knowing anything but their own work. With their various SAPs, the agencies using the Mountain — Department of Energy, Department of Defense, Department of State — were like foreign countries with walled borders. As site manager, Rob Harris had a legal right to see the whole picture, but he was the only one.

And that was the problem.

Even though he knew the very real hazards of continuing present operations, Federal law forbade him from pointing anything out to the people who needed to know. Harris would go to jail for the rest of his life if he told the left hand what the right hand was doing. He knew the regulations well.

Going by the book, Rob had reported to the DOE’s Inspector General that he had a classified concern, but even the IG didn’t have access to Victoria Doyle’s unacknowledged State Department SAP, and thus the IG couldn’t grasp the reason for Rob’s urgency. And when he had brought it up through the State Department’s Inspector General, they likewise didn’t have access to the DOE Valiant Locksmith SAP… and so the State Department had the same lackluster reaction. Neither was allowed to see the problem, prohibited by Federal law.

But when Senator Pulaski suddenly needed a perfunctory, rubber-stamp review committee, and Stanley van Dyckman had simply asked for a list of names, Harris seized the opportunity. He couldn’t break the law, but he could move the chess pieces.

Victoria Doyle had the access now. She had the knowledge, she had the eyes, and most importantly she had the smarts to see the big picture. If he couldn’t get her alone to discuss the urgent matter, then she could see for herself what he had been forbidden from explicitly telling her.

She would understand the danger. She had to! And if Dr. Garibaldi also pieced together what was going on, then Adonia Rojas could back him up; Rob knew her to be a clear thinker, not motivated by politics.

Then Harris could finally sleep easy again at night.

But right now he had some other emergency that threatened Hydra Mountain. Drexler was clearly sweating, his face drawn.

As soon as they passed out of earshot down the main corridor, the younger man started briefing Harris in a quiet but urgent voice. “Sir, there’s been an incident inside the facility perimeter. We’ve contacted HQ, and they’re setting up an immediate call with the Secretary of Energy. The threat level is still being assessed, since both safety and security sensors have been triggered.”

“Security and safety detectors?”

“Yes, sir. That’s why we pulled you out. Protective Services are rushing to the crash site right now.”

Harris stopped. “Crash? What type of vehicle? How bad?”

“It’s… it’s a Class A.”

Harris’s heart skipped a beat. “A plane crash?” His mind immediately raced to the suicide bomber who had tried to take out Granite Bay nearly eighteen months before. Oh crap, not again. Was this an attempt to do the same to Valiant Locksmith’s high-level waste by yet another misguided Sanergy protester? Had Garibaldi set it up? Impossible! He couldn’t have known beforehand. And with the heavy security cloaking Hydra Mountain, how would Sanergy even know the program existed… unless there’d been a leak? What if someone had discovered why Dr. Garibaldi and the SAP review team were really here?

Doubling his pace, he rushed toward the ops center. “How big of a crash? Was the Mountain breached, and was anyone hurt?” He pictured a fireball from a fully loaded plane diving into the rugged mountainside. What would they hope to accomplish?

“It appears to be minor, sir, and no one was injured. On first glance, it seems to be a genuine mishap, a piloting accident. There are a lot of thermals in the area because of the unusually hot weather, and the winds are high today. A small six-passenger plane strayed into Hydra Mountain airspace after taking off from Albuquerque International. The pilot radioed that he was having engine trouble. The aircraft lost altitude and made a hard landing just inside the perimeter fence on the slope.”

After Granite Bay, Harris wasn’t convinced anything was an innocent crash. And it was too much of a coincidence, especially on the day of the VIP tour, and especially with Simon Garibaldi’s presence. “That sounds exactly like one of our preparedness scenarios. I don’t care what it looks like, we can’t let our guard down.”

Drexler struggled to keep pace, breathing hard. “Unclear at this moment, sir, but it doesn’t appear to be a terrorist strike. The plane knocked down a few power lines as it came in for a landing, and some scrub brush caught on fire. The pilot may have been trying to reach the perimeter road, not the interior, but with all the wind…” He shrugged.

“It might have been a textbook precautionary landing. Maybe.” Harris relaxed a little, but wasn’t that exactly what a secret strike might look like? Hydra Mountain had originally been designed to withstand the impact of a fully fueled 707, the largest jet of the day, so a small plane shouldn’t cause too much damage, even if it was filled with fuel or explosives. Since Kirtland AFB shared the runway with the civilian airport, the military would help DOE with the investigation. But still, could it really be that innocent? “No facility breach?”

Drexler shook his head. “No, sir. That’s why the operations center commander didn’t initiate an immediate facility lockdown, but we sent for you instead. Security personnel have joined the emergency response team, and we’re awaiting confirmation that it was just an accident and not an attack. Kirtland’s military police and fire crews are on their way to provide backup.”

They reached the main floor of the operations center, and he headed for the Eagle’s Nest, ready for the call from HQ. At the door, he paused and turned to the young exec. He spoke in a firm voice, deciding to be cautious rather than naïve. “It may be nothing, Ken, but the timing is just too suspicious. Our operations are quiet on a Sunday, and we have a group of VIPs inside the Mountain. We follow the rules here, and DOE procedures dictate that any violation of restricted Hydra airspace must be considered a threat until proven otherwise. Besides, we don’t know what type of cargo that small plane was carrying.” Everyone knew what had happened at Granite Bay, and this reminded him too much of that second plane hitting the World Trade Center, which had immediately proved the first impact wasn’t an accident.…

He made his decision and nodded to himself, knowing he was right. “Have the ops commander order an immediate security lockdown as a precaution. Better to be safe. I’ll take the call from the Secretary of Energy and assess the situation from my office.”

Drexler looked back toward the dry-storage tunnels outside the ops center. “What about the review committee, sir? Once you initiate a lockdown, the alarms will go off and those people will be rattled.”

Harris knew they wouldn’t like it at all, especially not Senator Pulaski, and van Dyckman would be furious. But Harris would not cut corners. “They’ll be safe enough if they just sit tight. It’s happened before. I’ll lift the lockdown as soon as I’m certain what happened outside. I left Ms. Rojas in charge, and I know she’s perfectly competent.” He jogged up the stairs to his office. “That’s my decision. Execute a security lockdown, Mr. Drexler. Now.”