Kill Zone

38

After his ordeal so far, van Dyckman was surprised to be so flustered by something as trivial as a second sneeze, but the noise echoed inside the cramped metal duct, and it was damned annoying. As he crawled along on his bloody hands and knees, he stirred the dust buildup, and as the air flowed past him, it blew more grit and dust into his face. He sneezed again.

Crawling through the cramped, dusty duct was better than climbing up those endless metal rungs, but the rectangular galvanized steel vent seemed to go on forever. At least he was still alive, unlike Victoria and the rest of the team. He was good at finding silver linings.

He kept his head down, rehearsing what he would do once he found an exit, what he would say when he reached the operations center. Right now his entire universe consisted of a three-foot-wide and two-foot-high metal box that was infinitely long. He kept slithering ahead.

Every twenty feet he passed a grid on the side of the duct that vented air into the tunnel, but he could see only concrete floor and granite walls covered with steel mesh. At last, he came to a larger vent grid, and when he peered through the slats, he found himself above one of the dry-storage side tunnels. Squinting, he could see a huge vault door, just like the one that had trapped them inside the Mountain when the shit first hit the fan. Through the vent he saw individual chambers — was Mrs. Garcia still trapped in one of them?

He tried to orient himself. With all the administrative paperwork he had completed for Valiant Locksmith, he had seen maps of Hydra Mountain, the tunnels and lockdown vault doors, but he had never paid close attention to the details. During the first part of the inspection tour, he recalled seeing the metal air ducts along the tunnel ceiling. That must be where he was now, which meant he was crawling toward the interior corridor — not far from the operations center.

No one could have predicted that a civilian plane would make an emergency landing inside the fence and trigger a cascade of chaos. Van Dyckman couldn’t be blamed for that, but the fool Pulaski had made the situation a thousand times worse by using his damned cell phone. The Senator had been Valiant Locksmith’s staunchest ally, but he was also an idiot.

The State Department would probably play the national security trump card with Victoria’s covertly stored nukes. They’d argue to the President that Velvet Hammer was much more important than storing nuclear waste. Van Dyckman would find his own head on the chopping block, and Valiant Locksmith would be shut down, once again leaving all the nation’s nuclear power plants vulnerable.

Pressed to show real progress as soon as possible, van Dyckman had cut a few corners by shipping highly enriched fuel rods into Hydra Mountain, and he’d done it much faster than he could build the pools to cool them. Senator Pulaski had facilitated that by circumventing the interagency review process, which probably would have stopped the rods from being shipped. And for sure, the pools from being built.

So what if skipping that one small review just happened to be illegal? His program had already reduced the amount of waste inadequately stored across the country by over 15 percent!

Now, without powerful Senator Pulaski flying high cover for him, he knew that his ass would be fried — by the President, the DOE Secretary, the Secretary of State, the SECDEF, the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committee, the Justice Department, the FBI… hell, maybe even the American Humane Society.

His career would be over, just like that.

An influential senator was also dead, drowned in a cooling pool for radioactive waste — the tabloids would love that! And Valiant Locksmith was on the doorstep of another outrageous program of stockpiling undocumented nuclear devices. Oh, and by the way, a DOE Undersecretary was also dead.

Only yesterday, he had been so confident that he would quickly and efficiently wrap up this high-level review. Senator Pulaski should have obtained the go-ahead to continue Valiant Locksmith. And when the program was complete and all the nation’s nuclear waste safely stored inside the Mountain, he himself would have been a shoo-in for the next Secretary of Energy.

Now, he faced the real possibility of being indicted and serving time in Federal prison. His spirits sank as he crawled along. What could he do? How quickly would the hammer come down? Would he even have time to fly back to Washington, D.C., so he could start damage control, spin the narrative? There were a lot of bodies to explain away.

He couldn’t do anything about it until he got out of here. As soon as he reached the ops center, he would demand that Harris send the Nuclear Emergency Support Team in to close up Victoria’s vault and shield the warheads from the increased background radiation in the grotto. Second priority would be to send divers in protective suits to rearrange the toppled fuel rods and restore the array.

Maybe if he played his cards right, he could shift all the blame onto Victoria for her malicious carelessness. If given the chance, he would demand the immediate shutdown of Velvet Hammer. If that failed, Senator Pulaski would also make an excellent scapegoat. The Senator had indeed been the cause of this debacle, and everyone in the industry knew that despite his position, the man knew absolutely nothing about the programs he oversaw.

Van Dyckman crawled past another storage tunnel intersection, where the overhead vent took a right turn. This ventilation duct wouldn’t connect with the main interior corridor — too much of a security risk. Even the DOE Health and Safety people wouldn’t be permitted to run a vent from the interior Special Access Program area out to the receiving space.

But he had to get out of here somehow.

Squirming forward, using his elbows and knees, he realized that the duct did end directly next to the operations center, which was still within the security envelope. Though his bloody hands ached and his elbows and knees were raw, he crawled forward with greater speed. He could see the light at the end of the tunnel — literally!

He pressed his face against a metal screen that overlooked the operations center, far below. People stood together in clumps, pointing at their monitors, speaking animatedly, clearly on an emergency footing.

At this height above the bustling floor, he couldn’t hear them, but maybe he could bang on the ventilation screen, dislodge it. The drop was much too far for him to fall, but a screen crashing down among the techs would certainly get their attention. Somebody would see him, rescue him.

And then a second catapult of shit would hit the fan. What other choice did he have?

Farther along the duct, though, he glimpsed a second mesh screen, another opening. He needed to look at his options before he did anything. Breathing hard and fast, he choked on a spray of disturbed dust. He scooted down the duct and peered through the second screen. This vent opened into Harris’s private Eagle’s Nest overlooking the ops center! The site manager was alone inside the office, deep in concentration as he pondered a screen, moving his finger to trace a detailed map of the tunnel complex.

Van Dyckman was about to hammer on the duct and shout for help, but he caught himself, suddenly having reservations. How was he going to explain this to Harris? What story would he tell?

A lie would be exposed quickly enough, and the site manager would certainly know, so it was best for van Dyckman to tell as much of the truth as possible. But the truth could be viewed through many different filters and alternative facts. He had to figure out what to say, how to perform damage control… whom to blame.

With the exception of Rob Harris, they were the only ones who even knew about the potential deadly interaction of the two SAPs. Every other member of the review team was dead or unconscious. If van Dyckman could find a way to secure Victoria’s vault and protect the illicit devices, then he could order the warheads moved to an appropriate DoD location, quickly and without a fuss. From what he could tell, the State Department also had the incentive to take care of the problem cleanly, keep this as quiet as possible. Maybe van Dyckman could fix the mess and keep Valiant Locksmith alive.

Because of the highly classified nature of both SAPs, these problems were designed to be kept in the dark, away from public scrutiny. So long as everyone cooperated.

Rob Harris, “Regulation Rob,” was the only complicating piece left. The Hydra Mountain site manager knew about both SAPs, but had chosen not to reveal the hazard to anyone who could do something about it. The moron had tied himself up in so much red tape that he refused to tell the right hand what the left hand was doing. He had almost caused this terrible disaster!

Harris had hand-picked the members of the inspection team to observe and to ask questions. Several of the people had seemed odd choices, so maybe Harris had set them up on purpose, hoping one of them would blow the whistle on a problem that he didn’t have the balls to reveal himself.

The pieces began to fall into place for van Dyckman. Yes, Harris must have assembled this team so he could keep his hands clean and follow the damned rules. The site manager was playing a clumsy game of political checkers in a world of complex chess.

Van Dyckman knew that he had to form the narrative. Harris didn’t have the political savvy to wiggle out of this. Van Dyckman counted on that. He needed to make the man keep his mouth shut.

He realized how he could blame the disaster on Harris. The site manager’s poor, unqualified choices for the review team were at the root of the problem. And then Harris had conveniently separated himself from the others just before the alarms went off.

No, that would not look good for Regulation Rob at all.

Van Dyckman just needed to get through the next few hours. It was his best-case scenario. If Adonia, Whalen, and Garibaldi were indeed dead, along with Victoria and the Senator, then he could easily concoct a cover story that used Harris as a scapegoat, and the man would be prevented from talking for security reasons. Rob Harris would never again see the light of day after being buried deep in a Federal prison.