Kill Zone

13

Tense and overwhelmed, still waiting for clear instructions over the phone, Rob Harris used his shoulder to press the red handset against his ear as he riffled through his old personal security paperwork. He’d signed the original documents over twelve months ago before he stepped into the site manager job, before even knowing what he had agreed to.

The secure telephone on his desk was doubly encrypted, which was deemed adequate for discussing normal SAP material, but the Undersecretary’s program was a State Department SAP, not DOE. The bureaucratic convolutions, restrictions, and interagency legalities were maddening, but the law was clear, and rules were rules. Harris hadn’t been dragged out of retirement to start cutting corners and breaking Federal law now.

After a long moment, a digitally reconstructed voice broke the silence on the secure line. “The Secretary will be with you momentarily, Mr. Harris. Sorry for the delay.”

As he waited, Harris continued to scan the documents, which legally granted him access to the most important secrets in the DOE and the Department of State. Those papers acknowledged his trustworthiness, while threatening horrific consequences if he broke the law.

He understood and accepted the dire constraints; that was part of the package when he agreed to become site manager. By supervising the Special Access Programs inside the Mountain—all of them — Harris held the keys to the kingdom. Only the President himself and Senator Pulaski, as chair of the oversight committee, could say the same. The Secretary of Energy and Secretary of State were not even cognizant of each other’s SAP. Here inside the giant mountain facility, the DOE, DoD, and State Department were like the three hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil monkeys.

And that caused problems.

Van Dyckman’s Valiant Locksmith was a vital program, yes, but Victoria Doyle’s Velvet Hammer was incredibly important, one of the last options the U.S. possessed if faced with an existential, nation-ending threat.

Ah, there it was. He scanned the paragraph. He’d been right: Velvet Hammer operated under State Department rules, not Energy. As such, Harris couldn’t even hint about its existence, or its potentially dangerous interactions with other SAPs in the Mountain, not even with the Energy Secretary herself.

So here he was — in a crisis, with a gag tied over his mouth.

The red headset clicked. “Rob, this is Caroline Nitta. How’s the review committee going? Is Dr. Garibaldi behaving himself?” Her youthful voice sounded pleasant, cheery. She had to know this was no social call!

He dropped the documents on his desk, devoting his full attention to the call. Perhaps she didn’t know why he’d called the emergency lockdown; after all, her high-profile experience as a public defender had secured her political appointment, and not her knowledge of DOE’s inner workings. “Yes, Madam Secretary. He keeps us all on our toes.” He paused, cleared his throat. “But right now our facility is under a precautionary lockdown due to a Class A mishap. I thought you needed to know.”

Secretary Nitta rustled papers over the encrypted phone, which sounded like a staccato pattern of raindrops hitting the line. “You mean the small aircraft in restricted space? I have the first-look assessment in front of me. Seems like it’s just an accident.” She paused, and he assumed she was scanning the material. “The intel folks don’t hear any chatter related to Hydra Mountain or the nuclear waste shipments. No one should have known about the review committee ahead of time, so this couldn’t have been planned in advance as an outright attack, like at Granite Bay. The downed aircraft seems more a case of inept flying in high winds, rather than a nefarious plot. Could be innocuous.”

Harris wasn’t ready to relax so quickly. “You may be correct, ma’am, but agency regulations call for a lockdown during any Class A incident. I’ll lift it as soon as I have confirmation that the crash was indeed accidental. Our teams are converging on the downed plane now. We have to be certain.” She shouldn’t be challenging her own rules.

“And you did exactly what you were supposed to, Rob.” She sounded a little patronizing. “Even if this was truly an accident, I’ve asked my Chief of Staff to set up a face-to-face with the Air Force Secretary to tighten the security envelope around Kirtland airspace in the future. Hydra Mountain’s too damned close to the Albuquerque airport. I want to make sure this never happens again.”

“Yes, ma’am, I agree. And, uh, thank you for letting Undersecretary Doyle participate on the review committee at the last minute,” he said. “I’m sure her knowledge will provide valuable insights as we complete the review — once the lockdown is lifted.”

“Yes,” Nitta said in a dry tone. “And she’ll also give Stanley some adult supervision.”

Harris started to respond, but kept his thoughts to himself; he’d always suspected that the young DOE Secretary and van Dyckman didn’t get along. Stanley’s direct line to the President must be unsettling to the meticulous Caroline Nitta.

Thank goodness for Victoria Doyle’s presence. Even if he couldn’t meet with her alone, he knew that the Undersecretary would recognize the danger as soon as she saw what van Dyckman had done in the lower level. She would understand the whole picture, just as he did, the possible cascade of unintended consequences. And as a DOE Undersecretary, Doyle had enough clout to call a halt to all this madness. “When she reviews Valiant Locksmith and the activities inside the Mountain, the Undersecretary can help us accurately assess the project.”

While Senator Pulaski did have access to the State Department SAP, the man didn’t have the technical background to understand the implications. Adonia Rojas and Simon Garibaldi did, and possibly Colonel Whalen; van Dyckman might, if he paid attention, but none of them knew anything about Velvet Hammer.

He knew, though, that Victoria would figure it out. He had brought them all together for that very purpose.

Rob continued on the secure line, “The good news is that when I placed the Mountain in lockdown, the facility was completely isolated from the outside.”

“And what’s the bad news?”

“Well, ma’am, although we recently upgraded Hydra Mountain to DOE standards, were still depending on legacy military systems to help cut costs, and those old systems weren’t meant to function with newer standards. The interface between the old and new systems is not as clean as we’d thought.”

Secretary Nitta sounded concerned. “Meaning?”

He knew he was going into too much detail, but she had to know. “When our current lockdown was initiated, a sensor that should have initiated a feature to herd intruders to the nearest security portal actually triggered another security feature designed to protect personnel against an attack. The review committee has been accidentally — and temporarily — confined to the first storage tunnel. One of my techs is sealed in a dry-storage vault as well. They’re all stranded.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“No, ma’am, but Senator Pulaski is a little, uh, agitated, as is Mr. van Dyckman. He’s upset that the tour wasn’t a flawless demonstration of the Valiant Locksmith program. I’m sorry about that, Madam Secretary.”

“No one anticipated an unfortunate plane crash, Rob. Are they safe for the time being?”

“Of course. We should have them out the moment the lockdown is lifted. They just have to wait patiently in the meantime.”

“Patiently?” Harris heard a suppressed chuckle across the line. “Keep me in the loop, and give my regards to the Senator. It’s good for him to have some genuine in-the-field experience, and for Assistant Secretary van Dyckman as well. They both think the real world ends outside the Beltway.” She hesitated. “That was a good call on your part getting Undersecretary Doyle and Ms. Rojas on your committee. And a personal thanks for asking Dr. Garibaldi. We go back a long way.”

“Yes, ma’am. I remember.”

Still unsettled, Rob hung up the red phone and went to the window of his Eagle’s Nest, hoping to hear confirmation from his own people that the crash was as innocent as it seemed, that the pilot and his handful of passengers posed no national security threat. After that was confirmed, he could rejoin the review team and keep them moving along. He would insist that they inspect the rest of the Mountain, and he’d make sure the committee saw what he needed them to see.

Through the large window overlooking the operations center floor, he spotted a light blinking on an enlarged schematic of the Hydra Mountain tunnels. Another sudden flurry of activity on the floor sent a chill down his spine. What now?

He hurried back to his desk and scanned the monitor, unable to believe what he was seeing: a disruptive electronic signal had been detected in the first storage tunnel, a radiofrequency transmission! He caught his breath. Who was sending a signal? A transmission like that would trigger a series of countermeasures cascading through the sensitive safety and security systems!

He hit the intercom and his voice boomed out onto the ops center floor. “Who’s sending a signal? Who’s transmitting in there? That’ll cause—”

Before anyone had time to react, higher-level countermeasures automatically engaged to address the threat.

Simultaneously, the Mountain’s entire system crashed, freezing the lockdown.