Kill Zone

17

Rob Harris’s stomach roiled, and he wiped his forehead with his sleeve. Being out of contact with the team members trapped inside the Mountain was making him frantic. His ops center screens showed an increasing cascade of alarms inside, but he didn’t know what they were doing in there. Hydra Mountain’s safety and security systems were working at cross-purposes, triggered by that unauthorized cell phone transmission immediately following the Class A incident.

He’d been forced to reboot the facility’s entire system — the only way to unfreeze the lockdown now — but that entailed a six-hour process that involved bringing up thousands of obsolete analog devices as well as newer digital equipment, all interconnected. They ranged from truly antique water-cooled processors and decades-old PDP and VAX computers hardwired by the military to van Dyckman’s newest DOE networked clusters.

As site manager, he had pored through all of his manuals, searching for something he had missed, some workaround or shortcut. None of the procedures covered circumstances like this. He desperately needed outside input. He had to know what else he could do, how far he could push the facility.

Sitting in his Eagle’s Nest office and looking through the wide windows at the urgent activity below, he once again waited for the DOE Secretary’s call. A software failure in the security lockdown had blown most of the old analog intercoms in the deep tunnels, and he couldn’t make contact with the stranded team. The inspection group had inadvertently triggered several unexpected crossovers in the installed countermeasures — and that wasn’t even the problem that Harris had wanted them to discover! No, not what he had intended at all.

Here, above the busy ops center floor, Harris should have felt like a king in a high tower. Below, his exec Drexler and fifteen staff members urgently worked on internal operations, paying little attention to the separate video feeds from outside the Mountain, which were splashed as overlapping windows on the giant wall screens. As his team worked with obsessive focus to override the automated defensive systems, Harris longed to be down there with them, getting his hands dirty and hoping to offer some helpful insight, but those people were good at their jobs — and much better versed in the complexities than he was. He would only get in the way if he went down among them. His job was here.

But why hadn’t the Secretary called back? The classified fiberoptic line to Washington was one of the only systems besides the countermeasures and monitors that were independent of the reboot, working on an isolated power supply.

Harris glanced at a digital clock, one of three in the office set to various time zones: Eastern Daylight Time for DOE Headquarters, Mountain Daylight Time for Albuquerque, and Greenwich Mean Time. Another minute ticked down. There was nothing he could do to accelerate the restart. Five hours and thirty-nine minutes remaining, and the team was stranded inside.

The functioning monitors showed the storage chamber tunnels deserted, as expected during a lockdown. Since he had sent the normal weekend crew and construction teams home during the committee’s review, Hydra Mountain was mostly empty anyway. Holding its breath.

The new digital fiber-optic link in the sealed storage chamber had let him talk to Mrs. Garcia, who was not happy, but at least she was safely tucked inside. Her only wish was that she had a book to read while she killed another five and a half hours, but her boredom wasn’t a crisis.

Rather than staying put, as he had instructed, Adonia Rojas and the rest of the review team had moved from the side tunnel, driven off by the active countermeasures. Obviously, that wasn’t supposed to happen. Now Harris could barely track where they had gone. Only a few sensors in the tunnels were active, and the conflicting logic instructions in the integrated new and legacy systems had made a mess of the automated defenses inside.

Judging from the last active countermeasures they had triggered, the multifrequency light and infrared bombardment, he knew the team was being driven down the inclined tunnel to the large interior cavern where warhead assembly had once taken place. That would have been part of the tour anyway, and he would have led them from breadcrumb to breadcrumb. Right now in their scramble for safety, though, he doubted if any of the team members were paying close attention to the details of the review.

Harris felt guilty for dumping that responsibility on Adonia’s shoulders; he had only meant to be gone for a few minutes when Drexler dragged him away. Now she had to try to keep her companions safe, even though she knew very little about Hydra Mountain.

He wished he could help and explain what was happening, but the intercoms had shut down. He had to rely on her intelligence and judgment. At least Colonel Whalen was at her side. Together, they would make the right decisions.

Right now they were in among the piled construction materials, rolls of fiberglass insulation that had been stripped out of the reconditioned chambers, sacks of concrete mix, metal bars from scaffolding, wooden boards, panels of thick plastic. As long as they kept moving and continued downhill for another few hundred feet, they would encounter no additional defenses. Once they reached the guard station that blocked access to the lower level, they could take refuge and just wait out the last few hours. The phone there might even work.

It was only a matter of time. Nail-biting, but straightforward.

Unless they triggered another detector and released more countermeasures.

Harris felt frustrated and helpless. Why didn’t Secretary Nitta call? He could do nothing to help those trapped people, couldn’t even reassure them. At least Drexler had been able to reboot some of the infrared sensors in the tunnels, connected by the new fiber-optic lines. From the readouts, Harris was reassured that the team members were still together, and hopefully unharmed.

Every tech in the operations center knew this was no drill, that they had to do everything possible to get the team members out of there. Hydra Mountain had already suffered a severe black eye, thanks to the screwups today and the bumbling small plane intrusion. Valiant Locksmith would not get the glowing report and clean bill of health that Senator Pulaski needed for his oversight meeting. It might even be a fatal blow to the program.

And he was the site manager. After this, Rob Harris might find himself back in retirement — not a bad thing, after all — and Valiant Locksmith might be shut down until these problems were fixed. Although that would solve his immediate concern about the interaction with Victoria Doyle’s SAP, he did not want this to become another Yucca Mountain fiasco, which would leave the nuclear waste problem unaddressed — again.

But if the solution was almost as bad as the problem at hand…

Even though the system reboot would prevent them from entering the interior for six hours, his staff searched for any kind of workaround. On the floor below, technicians shouted on secure phones with various contractors, subcontractors, and consultants, anxious to thwart a system that had been designed not to be tampered with. Hydra Mountain had been built to protect nuclear weapons from both outside and inside threats; the systems would not allow for a simple bypass just because a review team was inconvenienced.

The best solution would be to wait out the remaining time and do his best to unruffle feathers afterward. Harris just hoped he could convince them to continue the review, though after being held hostage for six hours and subjected to some of Hydra Mountain’s countermeasures, Adonia and her companions would not be in the best, objective mood. Now that Undersecretary Doyle had been read into Valiant Locksmith, however — a huge victory for Harris — he could privately discuss his concerns with her. One way or another, that problem would be addressed.

At last, the red STE phone on his desk rang; the digital ID on the fiber-optic link read SECDOE. He snatched it up. “Harris here.”

“Mr. Harris, we’re going to program level. Stand by.” He waited a moment until the phone hissed the unique sound of double encryption, and the male voice came back on, sounding tinny. “I have you at… Valiant Locksmith.”

Harris read from the desktop’s digital display. “I concur.”

“Here’s the Secretary of Energy.”

The phone line was silent for a moment, then, “Rob, Caroline Nitta again. I’ve just been briefed that your countermeasures are herding the committee to the Mountain’s lower level rather than to the exit. Is that by design? It seems counterintuitive, according to the specs I have been shown.”

“It took a while to figure out, ma’am, but apparently the safety and security systems interacted in a nonlinear fashion when they were simultaneously triggered. There are unforeseen incompatibilities between the legacy DoD systems and the newly upgraded DOE hardware.”

“English, Rob. You’re speaking to a public defender, not an engineer.”

“Sorry.” Harris stood at his desk, pulling the STE phone cord tight so he could keep watching the ops center through the windows. “That small plane intrusion simultaneously triggered both security and safety sensors. Though the crash itself was a minor mishap and the passengers suffered only superficial injuries, all hell broke loose with both the old legacy systems and the new systems responding at the same time, at cross-purposes. Remember, Hydra Mountain was made to protect nuclear warheads, and the defenses were not meant to be… subtle.” He drew a breath.

“The real tipping point, though, was when one of the team members attempted to make an unauthorized cell phone call in the middle of a volatile situation. That transmission triggered a cascade of increasingly severe responses.”

The Secretary made a disgusted sound. “How the hell did anyone get a cell phone inside the Mountain? I was read the riot act about wearing even my digital watch when I was out there.” The encryption distorted her long sigh. “I swear, I’m going to have you conduct full body cavity searches from now on.”

Harris continued his report in as objective a voice as he could manage. “No voice or data were transmitted, but whenever a phone is powered up, it automatically emits a radiofrequency ping. Our detectors are so sensitive that they’re triggered by any electromagnetic emission — intentionally so, in order to detect intruders and prevent espionage.”

“What idiot would do such a thing?” the Secretary demanded. “Was it Stanley? I wouldn’t put it past the man.”

“We shot DOE intelligence a copy of the waveform picked up by our sensors, and at the classified level, NSA was able to confirm the cell phone owner.” He swallowed awkwardly. “It was Senator Pulaski, ma’am. Though he was asked to relinquish all electronics at the entry gate and again inside the tunnels, he apparently failed to do so.”

There was a long pause, and he imagined her strangling the Senator in effigy. She heaved a deep breath and asked, “And the inspection team — where are they now?”

“They’re being herded by a succession of countermeasures, but they should be approaching a guard station. They can shelter in place there. Right now we have our hands tied until the full system recycles.” He looked at the clocks. “Five hours and twenty-seven minutes more. There’s simply nothing I can do. It’s like being locked in a bank vault with a timer.”

“But are they safe?”

“They are if they shelter in place, and don’t trigger any more sensors.” Harris glanced out of the office at the operations center monitor. “I won’t deny that some of the countermeasures they faced are aggressive and unpleasant, but they’re all nonlethal.”

“Such as?” she asked.

“Initially, tear gas up in the storage tunnels. Next, they encountered sonic, optical, and infrared defenses, designed to disorient them. But now that they’re near the empty guard station above the lower level, they can just hunker down.” He hesitated. “They’ll be fine if they just stay there, but if they turn back at all, motion sensors will detect it, and the systems will respond. They’ll trigger other countermeasures.”

“Can’t you just shut down power and cut off the countermeasures? We know they’re not intruders.”

“My team is trying every possible option, ma’am. The emergency backup is buried in the Mountain’s interior from Cold War days, and it immediately kicks in when the system reboots — exactly as it was designed to do. The interior infrastructure is totally independent from outside influence.

“Plus, there are hundreds of old systems hardwired into the controls. We just didn’t have the budget to remove them. We even have antiquated 16-bit, PDP-11 computers programmed in assembly language that still control critical functions, and that all adds to the time it takes to recycle.” He realized he was probably talking over her head, and he didn’t want to explain how much it would cost to bring Hydra Mountain into the twenty-first century. Stanley van Dyckman had insisted on getting the facility up and running with all due speed, using every resource available while still controlling costs. Harris couldn’t blame headquarters for not wanting to spend exorbitant money on what was just a “temporary” storage facility.

Secretary Nitta remained silent for a long moment. “Once they reach the guard portal, is someone there to intercept them? Is it manned?”

“Normally, yes, but we have only a skeleton crew today. Hazardous operations were curtailed in order to make the lower level available for the inspection team, and I was expecting to guide them myself. No one else is down there.” He steeled himself, tried to sound confident. “But the guard station is meant to be a safe holding area. Adonia Rojas is in charge, provisionally. I’m sure she will keep them there. She knows what she’s doing.”

“That’s a relief. Have you been in direct contact with her?”

“Not recently. Our… intercoms are shut down.”

The young Energy Secretary let out an exaggerated groan. “What a cluster!”

The red phone sounded muffled as Secretary Nitta covered her end and spoke to someone. In the interim, Harris heard a knock at the office door. He saw his exec and buzzed him in. Drexler slid a sheet of paper across his desk before ducking out.

What else could go wrong? Harris scanned the note and caught his breath.

When the Secretary came back, she sounded as though she was trying to make the best of the situation. “At the very least, I suppose we’ll have to read Senator Pulaski out of all our DOE SAPs, whether or not he’s the oversight committee head. This breach is too serious to ignore. I’ll be putting out fires behind the scenes for the next month.” Then she sighed. “Thanks, Rob. I know your people are doing everything they can. At least it can’t get any worse. Let me know as soon as you have them back out, safe and sound.”

Harris’s throat seemed more dry than usual. “Actually, ma’am… it does get worse.” He glanced at the new sheet of paper on his desk. “If the team doesn’t shelter in place, they may face more severe countermeasures than the safety and security systems established for Valiant Locksmith.”

He had to choose his words carefully, because he wasn’t cleared to speak with the DOE Secretary about Doyle’s State Department SAP. “A final defensive system is still active in the guard portal from the Cold War era, a last-ditch protection mechanism against intrusion into the lower level. If the shelter in place experiences an unauthorized breach, the last level of countermeasures will activate in order to protect the other… activities in the lower level.”

The Secretary asked slowly, “Other activities…?”

He swallowed hard. “Things that were well under way before the DoD decommissioned Hydra Mountain and DOE took possession, ma’am.” He tried to shift her focus. “Lethal force will automatically be employed if both doors of the guard portal are simultaneously opened during a lockdown. If more than one door is open, the system’s logic will assume that intruders have defeated all our nonlethal defenses, and will therefore employ more severe countermeasures.”

“Oh… my God. Lethal force? And we won’t be able to reach the team members for more than five hours? You cannot allow them past that last security portal. Period!”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine, ma’am,” Rob said, but his tone of voice said the exact opposite. “Once they get to the guard station, all they have to do is wait it out.”

He imagined how impatient, angry, and frustrated the committee members were. Cut off from communication, they might not be willing to sit still.