MJ-12: Inception

16

The sun had yet to rise over the placid waters of the Pacific, but Roscoe Hillenkoetter was already up and at ’em, a steaming cup of shipboard coffee in hand as he looked toward the purple-pink eastern sky. It was his favorite time of day at sea, when both water and crew were calmest, and there was more promise in the air than fatigue.

Hillenkoetter took another sip of coffee, which tasted just as horrible as he remembered. Sailors were a dumb, overly romantic bunch — himself included.

His reverie was interrupted by Dr. Schreiber, who had taken over one of the larger holds aboard USS Mount McKinley, the amphibious assault ship leading this particular mission. Admiral William Blandy — “Spike” to his friends, including Hillenkoetter — commanded a large flotilla of ships all aiming a stunning array of scientific equipment at a tiny island out in the middle of nowhere.

Even if he weren’t the CIA director, he probably could’ve hitched a ride. His rank and position merely meant he could bring along Schreiber and a couple of his pencilnecks, along with a whole lot of equipment.

“Yes, Doctor,” Hillenkoetter said, a touch of morning fatigue in his voice.

“The equipment is ready. The electromagnets are in place. If there is to be an anomaly, we shall capture it,” Schreiber said.

“And how certain are you of that?”

Schreiber gave one of his usual shrugs. “I cannot say. This is very different from the last time. The materials are not the same, the location not the same. At worst, I hope that our readings will tell us something more.”

Hillenkoetter nodded and checked his watch. “Four minutes. Get in there and get it going. Make sure the cameras and reel-to-reel are working. I’ll stay out of your way.”

The German — the goddamn Nazi that Jim Forrestal approved for PAPERCLIP, dammit — went back inside without a word, leaving Hillenkoetter on deck by himself once more, looking north. Here, in the middle of the very definition of nowhere, new fronts of new wars were being waged. Impossible weapons, both mechanical and human, would reshape history.

And it was Hillenkoetter’s job to ensure both those weapons stayed on the leash men created. If they didn’t…

“Two minutes,” came the voice from the shipboard loudspeaker. “Two minutes.”

Hillenkoetter thought about heading inside, up to the bridge, where Spike would be managing the ballet of ships. But that wasn’t his place anymore. For now, at least, his place was away from the front line, in the shadows. Watching.

“Thirty seconds.”

Hillenkoetter steeled himself, a sudden wave of fear washing over him. It was damned silly, of course, and he chided himself for it. They were ten miles off and upwind. They’d be fine.

“Ten seconds.”

It didn’t matter. It was terrifying, knowing what would come next.

“Ignition.”

A blinding white light erupted off the starboard side of McKinley. It quickly reddened and grew — an atomic fireball soon surrounded by the massive condensation cloud that gave it the now-classic mushroom shape.

“Jesus,” Hillenkoetter breathed. Then a wave of heat hit him, easily a hundred and twenty degrees, if not more, and his coffee cup went over the side of the ship as he squinted and grabbed a railing, eyes still on the growing mushroom cloud that now dominated the sky.

A few seconds later, the rumble of explosion grew, rolling across the water and, ultimately, erupting into Hillenkoetter’s ears — a wrenching, furious cacophony that sounded as though God had reached down and torn a hole in the very Earth.

But it wasn’t God.

“Detonation successful,” came the voice over the loudspeakers.

No shit. The new levitated core was impressive. That much destruction… it was beautiful and horrible all at once, and the only thing that made him feel better was knowing that a man like Truman had the key to it. Well… and that Hillenkoetter himself doled out the information that would determine whether Truman turned the key or not.

And Hillenkoetter was damned sure that, no matter what, such a weapon would never be used again on real people, so long as he could do anything at all about it.

The heat washed past him, the rumbling subsiding and the light cast by nuclear fission gone mad dimming just in time for the sun to begin peeking over the horizon. Hillenkoetter wished he hadn’t dropped his coffee into the goddamn Pacific. But… he had better check in first.

The CIA director went inside the ship, took a left, then a right, then went down the ladder toward the hold where the MAJESTIC-12 scientists had set up. He opened the hatch and found Schreiber and his two assistants poring over their machines and clipboards.

There was no bright light in the room, trapped between the two electromagnets. There was nothing out of the ordinary at all.

“Didn’t work, I take it?” Hillenkoetter asked.

Schreiber looked up and smiled; Hillenkoetter found that seeing an actual grin on the man’s face was unsettling in the extreme. “It did not work, Admiral, but I think we have made progress, yes?” The other two scientists — both American, thank God — nodded vigorously. “Yes, we have made progress. The readings have been most useful.”

“Useful for what?”

Schreiber turned fully toward the CIA director. “We have determined how the radiation signatures of an actual nuclear explosion compare to that of the anomaly we have previously studied. Many of those signatures are the same, but there are differences — and it is in those differences we may find answers.”

“And your initial impressions?” Hillenkoetter asked. He’d have to brief the President, after all.

Schreiber paused a moment, as if gauging his words. “It is too soon to say, but I will ask this: What is the difference between this test and the explosion at Hiroshima, at the most basic level?”

Hillenkoetter hated riddles this early, but one answer immediately sprang to mind. “Nobody died here.”

Schreiber’s creepy smile grew a little wider. “Exactly, Admiral! Nobody died here. And taking into account all of the technical differences between the two bombs, I wonder if we shall find that to be the only notable difference.”

Hillenkoetter took a moment to process all that, then simply nodded and left.

Screw another cup of coffee. He was going to pull rank and raid Spike’s liquor cabinet.