War Lord

Fourteen

The staff sergeant appeared by my window and handed back all our details. On her head was a black beret bearing the unit patch of the 99th Security Forces Squadron, a black scorpion beneath crossed rifles with bayonets fixed. I don’t like scorpions.

‘Can you tell us where the squadron building is?’ I asked.

‘I’ll do better than that, Agent Cooper,’ she said. ‘You’ll be accompanied. It’s the rules.’

Two senior airmen in ABUs and packing side arms came out of a door and approached my window. One of them, a fit-looking guy by the name of Gertrude with a bullet-shaped head, said, ‘Please step out of the car, sir, ma’am.’

His buddy, a skinny, long-necked guy named Fryer, wanded us down and discovered that I had metal in my belt. It was made in China, so that was definitely a surprise. Petinski was clean. They then went over our vehicle, inspecting it inside and out.

‘Find anything?’

Gertrude held up a quarter.

‘Don’t spend it all at once,’ I told him.

He pressed it into my hand. ‘Ready when you are, sir.’

Petinski and I got back in the car, the airmen taking the rear seats.

‘Where are you going, sir?’ asked Fryer.

‘The commander’s office,’ Petinski answered.

‘Well, keep on this road till you see three buildings arranged in a semicircle around a garden,’ he said.

I motored slowly away, bringing the window up to keep the sauna out.

The garden turned out to be a clump of cacti with a few rocks, the buildings a little less inspiring than the landscaping. I parked us in the lot, an eighty-yard hike to the front door. As Petinski and I approached it with our armed escort, sweat beading at my hairline, the door to the building snapped open letting out a blast of cold air. It was held open by a senior master sergeant, ‘Burton’ on his nametag.

‘Have a nice day, sir, ma’am,’ said Gertrude as he handed us off to the sergeant.

‘Senior Master Sergeant Burton, Squadron Superintendent,’ said Sergeant Burton. ‘Welcome to Area Two.’

The guy was sharply dressed in an airman battle uniform, the pixel pattern catching a sheen that suggested it had been heavily steam-ironed every day of its life. We walked through a foyer past framed photos of various aircraft, airborne and on the ground, armed with air-launched cruise missiles on pods under their wings. Among them was an illustrated unit patch of the 896th MUNS, a red-tipped missile hanging over the globe, beneath it the squadron’s motto, ‘Nothing less than perfection.’ The red tip indicated that the missile carried a live nuke.

The sergeant led the way up two flights of stairs to the command section on the second floor populated by administrative personnel. The hallway ended in a set of glass double doors. Gold lettering on one of them read: 896TH MUNITIONS SQUADRON, and below that, LT. COL. DADE CHALLIS, COMMANDER. One of the doors was ajar, the colonel sitting behind his desk, tapping on a keyboard. He glanced up when he heard the knock, took the glasses off his nose and stood. He was a little over forty, six five and under a hundred and ninety pounds, with a lean face speckled with strawberry freckles which also dotted his thin lips. He looked the nervous type, deep lines across his high forehead. The guy’s coloring was, in fact, Red Buttons, but any similarity with the comic appeared to end there.

‘Thanks, Dan,’ he said to Sergeant Burton, who was standing beside us in parade rest mode. ‘Please,’ he said, waving us in. ‘Good to meet you, Investigator Petinski?’ He glanced at me, then my partner, not sure who was who.

‘Petinski, sir,’ my colleague said, putting him straight, holding out her child-sized hand.

The colonel shook it and moved on to mine. ‘The briefing room set up?’ he asked the sergeant waiting at the door.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Excellent.’ All business, to Petinski and me he said, ‘Care to follow me, please?’ Picking up his hat and walking out, there was no question that we wouldn’t.

The briefing room was a large office down the hallway. A young captain at the foot of a rectangular brown Laminex table snapped to attention when the colonel entered the room, and moved to a podium beside a screen built into the wall. The screen announced: 896th Munitions Squadron — Mission Briefing, and in the lower right corner, Capt. Reece Jones, 896 MUNS/CCE.

The colonel assumed his seat at the head of the table. Petinski and I sat either side. Challis introduced the briefer without fanfare. ‘My exec, Captain Jones. Let’s get started, Reece.’

Jones followed orders. ‘Ma’am, gentlemen,’ he began, ‘the following briefing is unclassified.’

A new slide flicked into place, a shot of the administration building that we were in. I already knew what it looked like and the photo didn’t do it any favors.

‘The mission of the 896th Munitions Squadron is to administer and manage one of the largest Air Force weapons stockpiles in the free world,’ the captain continued. ‘The area consists of seven hundred and sixty-five acres, seventy-five specialized munitions storage igloos, fifteen maintenance and support facilities, twenty-six miles of roadways and forty-four vehicles of various types. The unit stores, maintains, modifies and ships Priority A weapons and associated components.’

When the captain was still going thirty minutes later, I decided PowerPoint had reached WMD status.

Jones eventually finished up with, ‘That concludes my briefing. Anyone have questions?’

I was prepared to shoot anyone who did.

Challis glanced at us. ‘Thanks, Reece,’ he said when he drew a blank, and stood. Petinski and I did likewise. ‘Before we go and have a look around, there are some more details to take care off.’ Sergeant Burton materialized out of thin air beside him. ‘Dan, take our visitors next door to Security, get them legal for our purposes.’ He handed the sergeant our documents. ‘I’ll be in my office when you’re ready.’

Half an hour later, red ‘Escort Required’ badges dangling from our necks, Petinski and I were returned to the commander’s office. Challis picked up his cap without preamble and headed for the door. ‘We have a standard tour,’ he said. ‘But anything in particular you’d like to know?’

I was about to say something extremely clever related to missing nukes, like how difficult would it be to steal one, but decided against it. We both fell in behind the colonel as he fitted his cap onto his head, his bandy legs flapping around inside his ABUs as he strode down the corridor. ‘In Area Two,’ he began, ‘we currently have eight hundred and fifteen gravity bombs of varying yields, mostly B61 warheads from our former bases in Europe, the ones we no longer occupy. We also supervise five hundred and eighty-four W80 warheads removed from deactivated air-launched cruise missiles. We maintain all these warheads so that they continue to remain as good as new. If the president needs a nuke or two, we’ve got ’em here, ready to spread the Stars and Stripes in ground or air-burst mode at a moment’s notice.’ The colonel pushed through the doors and strode into the bright Nevada blast furnace. ‘Let’s pick up our escort and get this show on the road.’

‘Where are the igloos, sir?’ I asked.

‘Back behind the building, dug into the flint. Area Two is in fact the largest above-ground nuclear weapons storage facility in the world. Mind if we take my vehicle?’ he asked, walking up to a white Lexus SUV. ‘We could walk. Ain’t far, but it’s a mite warm.’

‘No problem,’ said Petinski. I didn’t have one either.

The vehicle unlocked with a flash of its lights and Petinski opened the rear passenger door. I took the front and buckled up.

‘So you’re giving up police work for AFMC?’ Challis asked me. ‘We’re a unit of theirs, y’know.’

‘I didn’t know, sir. At least, not before the briefing,’ I said.

The colonel took a pair of reflective sunglasses hooked into the vehicle’s sun visor and put them on. ‘Mister, I’m sure that, like I do, you’ll find it’s a privilege to be working with our country’s nuclear stockpile, keeping Uncle Sam’s cojones primed and ready for action.’ The colonel was looking forward over the top of the steering wheel, deadly serious, Petinski-like.

‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘What about the maintenance on those cojones? Where does that happen?’

‘Rest easy, Mr Cooper. The full tour is coming your way.’

The colonel turned into the driveway of a building with the words SECURITY FORCES painted in white lettering on a corner of the facility facing the road. We’d driven maybe a hundred and twenty yards from command HQ.

‘This is us,’ the commander said, killing the motor and removing his shades. He got out of the car, strode to the solid brown-painted door, and held it open for us. I followed Petinski inside. The immediate area was a small foyer with more framed photos — these ones showing multiple nuclear re-entry vehicles leaving trails of smoke as they burned through the atmosphere, heading for targets. A little scary. Beyond the foyer was a large open-plan office populated by men and women wearing ABUs, Berettas slung low on their thighs. A staff sergeant came to meet us, a black man the size of a plains buffalo, ‘Sailor’ on his nametag.

‘Sir, ma’am, Airman Nagel and I will be your close escorts today,’ Sailor informed us. He turned to the colonel. ‘Will you vouch for the visitors, sir?’

‘I will,’ the colonel intoned officially.

The sergeant then asked for our IDs, which we gave him. He went back inside the office, made multiple Xerox copies of our details, then returned to his desk and made a phone call while examining our credentials. He seemed to be having a friendly chat with someone on the other end.

‘How long will this take, sir?’ I asked the colonel. It was well after three in the afternoon and we were still shuffling paper.

‘As long as it takes. Security is the first and last thing we do here, Mr Cooper. Visitors are rare and never casual. All visits follow a strict routine. That’s the way we roll here and the sergeant’s just doing his job.’

A short, round, blonde female senior airman by the name of Nagel came toward us, a box the size and shape of a portable credit terminal in her hand. ‘Can I have your forefinger, sir?’ she asked me. ‘Place it inside the opening, here.’ She held the box toward me. There was indeed a hole in the front with the instruction Place finger here on a decal. I did as I was told and the senior airman nodded when the screen on top of the box lit up green with a tick and the word Confirmed.

The senior airman went through the same procedure with Petinski, thanked us, and went back to the open-plan section, plugged the unit into her desktop and settled down behind her screen.

‘DNA check,’ Challis explained. ‘That’s a scanner that reads the DNA in your perspiration and matches it against the DNA profile in your records. Fingerprints, even retinal scans, can be altered, but not your DNA codes.’

Sergeant Sailor returned with our red ‘Escort Required’ cards dangling from lanyards. ‘Congratulations, sir, ma’am,’ he told us. ‘You are who you say you are. You must wear your badges clearly displayed here at all times. Without it, you will be detained, forcibly if necessary. Do not fail to comply with any order or instruction from your escort or security forces personnel or you will be detained, forcibly if necessary.’

I was starting to get the general idea, and put the lanyard back over my head. My card was identical to Petinski’s, except for barcode numbers printed on a sticky label affixed to it.

‘You have to swipe that everywhere you go here, Mr Cooper,’ said Challis, ‘so we can track your journey for future reference. Shall we do this, Sergeant?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Sailor. Nagel came out to join us, planting a patrol cap on her head.

‘What are you most interested in seeing?’ asked the colonel.

‘The storage igloos, sir,’ Petinski said.

‘You’re in luck. That’s our first stop.’

A couple of minutes later we were back in the SUV, the colonel reaching for his gun bull shades. An Explorer bobbed into the wing mirror, Sailor and Nagel on hand to apply some deadly force if we stepped out of line, or maybe told a bad joke. Half a mile later we stopped at another guard shack and had our passes checked — the colonel included — by more armed security personnel. Either side of the shack was a triple razor-wire fence, the space between each fence being a minefield, according to another sign, death guaranteed if a foot was put wrong. Driving deeper into this silent, ultra-secure area it was as if even sound was forbidden.

We motored slowly past a concrete bunker dug into the desert, a heavy brown steel door facing the access road, ‘A 1001-12-2-24’ painted on the door in large white lettering.

‘A-structures are storage igloos,’ the colonel said, before Petinski or I could ask. ‘This is igloo number one. It has twelve vaults, two warheads per vault for a total of twenty-four. In this case the weapons are B61 3/4/10 gravity thermonuclear devices, each being 141.6 inches long, 13.3 inches in diameter and weighing approximately seven hundred and fifty pounds. Every weapon has a unique number that is tracked individually by our people in Munitions Control twenty-four-seven.’

‘How many igloos?’ I asked having forgotten the number he’d given us earlier.

‘We had seventy-five, recently increased to ninety-two. Some of the larger ones have more than twenty vaults.’

‘Can we inspect one?’

‘There’s nothing to see. Plus, those igloos maintain negative air pressure to keep out the dust, which is a problem, so we don’t open them up unless we have to. But there are three W80s in for maintenance. You’ll see that procedure presently. It’s in the tour.’

‘Who takes responsibility for weapons surety when a physics package is being maintained?’ I asked.

‘The buck stops with me, Mr Cooper,’ said Challis. ‘But daily briefings are held so that everyone is aware of the weapons coming and going. It’s the munitions control room’s responsibility to know where each weapon is every second of every minute of every day. No excuses.’

The colonel continued driving down the access road for another half a mile, past three more igloos, a couple of which were set back from the road and much bigger than igloo #A 1001. He then turned left and left again shortly after, so that we were headed back roughly in the direction of the HQ. The igloos on this return road were smaller and there were far more of them.

‘The W80s are stored here,’ said Challis. ‘They’re more compact than B61s; about the size and shape of one of those bulk milk cans folks in the country sometimes use as mailboxes. A few of these milk cans strategically placed and set to a variable yield of a hundred and fifty kilotons and you could probably blow California into the Pacific.’

The colonel looked at me, unsmiling. My nose was very big in those reflective sunglasses lenses. I didn’t like it, almost as much as I didn’t like that I couldn’t tell what he was thinking behind them. We turned right and cruised by a parking area full of weapons trolleys, and then past another partially vacant lot where containers were stacked in neat rows. I glanced behind us. The Explorer with the extra security was bringing up the rear.

Shortly after another right-hand turn, which brought us back onto the road we drove in on, the colonel pulled into an area dominated by three low concrete bunkers and parked beside a collection of Air Force vehicles.

‘This is a C-structure,’ said Challis. ‘Maintenance. Like the igloos, these structures are hardened. Their walls are twelve feet thick, and reinforced with reactive armor plating. They’re secure against all comers, except perhaps a direct hit from a bunker buster with a megaton yield.’

‘How about from someone with a front-door key, sir?’ I said.

‘Unlikely, Mr Cooper.’

We got out of the Lexus, Sailor and Nagel joining us. Challis led the way to the door, which was a solid heavy steel number with no handles, windows, visible hinges or even keyholes. The colonel punched a code into a keypad recessed into the concrete, swiped a card, then stood back to be examined by an array of surveillance cameras. A green light appeared over one of the cameras and the colonel punched in another code.

‘Entry to this facility is managed not by the people inside it but by Munitions Control, which is in another part of the facility entirely. Swipe your cards, please.’

Petinski and I stepped forward and swiped, followed by Sailor and Nagel.

A red light above the door illuminated and began to revolve. A pneumatic hiss followed and the massively thick door, which resembled something from a bank vault, opened. The colonel motioned at Petinski and me to go inside. I followed the investigator into a chamber occupied by two armed senior airmen from 99th Security Forces Squadron, their hands resting on their side arms, which were slightly bigger pistols than the standard issue Beretta M9. Hard to see for sure, but they looked like old-school Colt .45s — my preferred handgun — and still in inventory for when you shot folks you wanted to stay shot.

‘Good afternoon,’ said the colonel.

‘Afternoon, sir,’ both airmen replied.

One of them stepped forward, tall and black, name of Arthurs according to his tag. ‘Please remove the contents of all your pockets,’ he said to Petinski and me. ‘Remove any belts, jewelry, watches and so forth and place all of it in the trays provided. Also, remove your shoes and keep hold of them.’

The colonel didn’t need to be told this and was already turning out his pockets and taking off his wristwatch. Sailor and Nagel withdrew a little to the wall behind us and rested their hands on their weapons — overwatch, in case I stepped out of line and maybe told the one about the chicken that crossed the road.

Arthurs’s senior airman buddy, a young white guy with pallid sunken cheeks, wanded Petinski and got no reaction from the device. He gestured her to one side and gave me the treatment. No reaction. The colonel was up next and the wand picked up a paperclip in his breast pocket.

‘Apologies,’ he said, dropping it in a tray.

‘Happens to the best of us, sir,’ said Arthurs, straight-faced.

More code entering, card swiping and red flashing lights and another heavy door opened into a large garage-style area occupied by various machinery I couldn’t identify on benchtops, a bomb trolley, and several large black Kevlar containers side by side on the concrete floor. Overhead was a medium-weight gantry crane. This could have been a machine shop for a high-end engineering firm.

The colonel led the way to a steel wall in which there was a line of slots at head height. ‘Take a look,’ he told us.

Petinski and I took a slot each. Through thick green-tinged glass I could see four people dressed in heavy coveralls working on what reminded me of that bulk milk can the colonel mentioned. It was secured on its side on a rig. The access hatch of the can had been removed, and one of the figures in coveralls reached inside the opening and extracted a sealed black box assembly attached to a wiring harness. The walls and ceiling of the room held more security cameras than the gaming pit at Caesars.

‘What are they doing, sir?’ asked Petinski.

‘These W80s are part of a block which have already been refurbished. The technicians are checking that the weapons meet mandated standards upon receipt from the depot. From memory, the components to be verified on this particular warhead will be its signal generator and gas transfer system.’

‘Right,’ I said knowingly, only in truth I now had some sympathy for the woman I’d heard had been told by a motor mechanic that the halogen fluid in her headlights needed topping up. I went back to the nuke porn going on in my peep slot. The W80 really was small, maybe thirty inches in length with a diameter of around twelve inches. Yeah, a country mailbox-sized bulk milk can.

‘How much does it weigh?’ I asked the colonel.

‘Two hundred and ninety pounds. It’s a two-stage radiation implosion thermonuclear weapon. The bomb you see there was once loaded into a BGM-109 Tomahawk air-launched cruise missile. It would’ve been carried by a Buff.’

A Buff — short for big ugly fat fucker — was the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress bomber, the backbone of our nuclear detterence since its introduction to service in 1955 and still on the frontlines of freedom. The aircraft had all the beauty of a bull shark in a plastic wading pool.

‘The Buff on the ramp got anything to do with Area Two?’ I asked.

‘No, there are Red Flag exercises starting here in a couple of days time. I’d say it has something to do with that,’ said Challis.

‘Presumably, sir, B-52s have crashed while carrying nuclear weapons over the years?’ my partner asked.

‘There have been plenty of B-52 incidents, but none involving the W80.’

‘What about accidental detonation?’ I asked.

‘It’s never happened. The W80 is as stable as they come. Loaded onto Tomahawks, unless you have the launch and release codes — that’s four sets of codes changed on a daily basis, entered simultaneously by two different people into the launch console, which is only attached moments before launch — nothing will happen.’

‘What about the high explosives that crush the plutonium core and detonate the bomb? Couldn’t a fire set them off? Could one of those bombs be loaded, say, into an aircraft and used 9/11-style?’

‘Hmm, imaginative, Mr Cooper,’ said Challis. ‘But the scenario you suggest wouldn’t — couldn’t — work. Let me give you a bit of background… The W80 is a Teller — Ulam design, named for Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam, who developed it for the United States back in ’51. They created an infallible, elegant design where high-explosive lenses merely initiate the chain reaction in a first stage, which is itself really just the primer for the secondary stage. More specifically, the high-explosive lenses detonate and compress a core comprised of uranium-238, tritium gas and a hollow sphere of plutonium and uranium-235, so that a fission reaction results. It’s this fission reaction that triggers the fusion reaction in the second stage — basically a plutonium sparkplug encased in lithium-6 deuteride and uranium-238 — by a process called radiation implosion.’

There was that word — trigger. I wondered whether I should be taking notes and whether I could ask him to start again at ‘Hmm, imaginative…’

‘In other words, the W80 is probably the safest bomb in our arsenal,’ he continued. ‘Getting back to those lenses around the first-stage core. They utilize IHE, or insensitive high explosives, which are highly resistant to cooking off in a fire, or detonation due to mechanical shock. They’ll melt or burn before they explode. Only one person on earth can cause launch and detonation of that weapon, and that’s the President of the United States.’

Ten minutes later, we were back in the colonel’s SUV being tailed by Sailor and Nagel. And not long after that, after more code entering, card swiping and wanding, we were standing in another hardened bunker, Munitions Control — the ‘nerve center’, according to Challis — looking at enlisted folk at consoles quietly watching technicians maintaining weapons, or viewing the interiors of empty igloos where, as the colonel had correctly said, there was nothing to see. The order of the day seemed to be everyone watching everyone else, even though both the watchers and the watched had been especially verified loyal to the core.

After the quiet vigilance of Munitions Control, Colonel Challis drove Petinski and me back to the HQ building, wished us the best of luck in our new roles at Air Force Materiel Command, and turned us over to Jones for out-processing. After signing documents swearing never to reveal anything to anyone, anywhere, under any circumstances, unless we wanted to be sat on by the full weight of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, our red badges were collected and Jones turned us over to Sergeant Burton, who escorted us in silence to our rental with Sailor and Nagel in tow.

Burton motioned Sailor into the back of our vehicle, and bid us good day. He then nodded at Nagel, and she tailed us back to the guard shack. After another search of our persons and the vehicle, which had been sitting outside the MUNS building all this time, we were free to leave, and a technical sergeant armed with an M4 carbine waved us through the shack and out into the main base area.

Leaving Area Two, I felt like I’d just come from a high-security prison where the world’s most dangerous criminals had been doped to the eyeballs but could at any moment break through their torpor and erupt into unspeakable and unstoppable violence.

I shivered involuntarily even though the AC had yet to bring the car’s interior temperature much below broil. ‘Too early for a drink?’ I asked Petinski.

‘That was probably the creepiest experience of my life,’ she said. ‘The hair is still up on the back of my neck.’

‘At least we know who our prime suspect is,’ I said.

‘Challis?’ she asked.

‘No, the President of the United States.’

‘There’s this little bar I know,’ I said after driving a few moments in silence.

‘If you mean Olds Bar, I don’t think it’s a good idea.’ Petinski massaged the back of her neck. ‘We need somewhere we can talk.’

The bar at Nellis was named for Robin Olds, a triple ace with sixteen kills collected during World War II and the Vietnam War. If the Air Force fighter jocks had a Mecca, Olds Bar was probably it. The place also had two other things going for it: they poured single malt there, and it was closer than any other bar. But maybe she was right — privacy was paramount. ‘I know another place.’

‘Is it a place we can talk?’

‘As long as it doesn’t get in the way.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of drinking.’

‘You’re in the driver’s seat, Cooper.’ Petinski rolled her head from side to side and repositioned the AC vent on her face.

This Area Two tour was all about making me realize fast that we were dealing with a conspiracy. The theft couldn’t have been the work of a lone nutbag. It was a long-term operation that must have involved — among others — bomb handlers, maintenance personnel, munitions controllers, base security, squadron HQ, and people who could recode military grade software. We’d been cored from the inside out, not unlike the way termites work their way through a house. They leave it looking sturdy enough until you walk in one day, carrying a couple of cases of beer, and suddenly you’re through the floorboards.

‘Our problem is,’ Petinski continued, ‘given all the checks, procedures and security, what’s happened is impossible.’

‘Maybe believing it’s impossible is what made it possible,’ I said, thinking on the run.

‘You care to explain that?’

I was afraid she’d say that. ‘Well, it has to start with the loyalty tests. Those will definitely have right and wrong answers.’ Actually, the more I thought about this, the more I thought I might have stumbled onto something.

‘So?’

‘You don’t think candidates could be schooled to score high?’

‘It’s not just the tests. What about their family, next of kin, former employers? The background checks run deep.’

‘When there are millions of dollars at stake, arrangements can’t be made? Nothing’s impossible, especially if the stakes are worth it.’

Petinski let the cool air continue to work on her face and neck. Eventually she said, ‘If you’re right and people have been schooled, it’s possible that consistencies in test answers might flag potential conspirators… I’ll pass it on.’

Did I just get a pat on the head?

Security at the main gate ignored us, checking only what came in. I turned onto East Craig Road and picked up the signs to the Las Vegas freeway.

‘Oh, I forgot to mention we’re on a red-eye at ten o’clock tonight,’ Petinski said.

‘Where are we going?’ By the calculations of my superiors, we’ve got nine days left. Now that I had some idea of what was to be delivered and triggered, nine days didn’t seem like a whole lot of time.

‘Rio. Benicio von Weiss is under a watch order.’

‘Who’s doing the watching?’

‘Local authorities, CIA and MI6.’

‘The Brits? He steal a nuke from them, too?’

‘No, they want him for passport violations.’

I snorted. ‘The guy forget to collect a stamp?’

Petinski shrugged. ‘Al Capone went down for tax evasion.’

‘Hitting von Weiss with passport violations is like putting Jeffrey Dahmer away for unpaid parking fines. Here’s a suggestion, why don’t we just send in the Marines if we know where he is?’

‘Brazil’s not our country.’

‘It’s not?’

‘O Magnifico is a cool customer. We’ll get nothing—’

‘O Magnifico?’

‘That’s what von Weiss’s people call him.’

‘Sounds like a circus trapeze artist.’

‘As I was saying, Cooper, we’ll get nothing from von Weiss. He’s been in the weapons business a long time and he knows all the tricks. I want to concentrate on locating Randy. Find him and we’ll get some solid clues about where the weapon is, and perhaps its intended use. Once we get a sniff of the W80 we can decide what to do with von Weiss.’

‘We don’t have a lot of time left. Why waste it hunting for someone who might be dead?’

‘Randy’s alive.’

‘Despite what I said to Alabama, we don’t know that — not for certain.’

‘The profile on von Weiss tells us that if he killed someone he believed was a US government agent, he’d find a way to brag about it. In short, we think we’d know by now if Randy was dead.’

I wasn’t so sure about Petinski’s plan. Calling in the 82nd Airborne to secure the suspect so that we could ask him about the warhead with an M4’s flash suppressor occupying one of his nostrils seemed the option more likely to yield positive results quickly.

I drove us back to the Strip and told Petinski about Shadow Bar. She wanted to pack and said she’d meet me there in forty minutes.

Petinski walked in twenty minutes late, by which time I was on my third Maker’s Mark with rocks. It was early, barely seven. The evening crowd was still at least thirty minutes away. The dancing shadows, dressed in small tank tops and pleated ultra minis, were doing their best to mesmerize and by the second Maker’s they were succeeding with me.

‘Why am I not surprised?’ said Petinski, appearing suddenly with a glass of Coke in her hand, looking around, checking the place out.

‘I know another bar called the Green Room if you’d rather,’ I told her.

‘We don’t have time.’

‘Which reminds me, you’re late.’

‘I got a call from my boss.’ She took the seat opposite while I crunched an ice cube. ‘Stu Forrest was just an alias.’

‘Forrest.’ My brain was splashing around in a bath of bourbon. The name was familiar but I was having trouble recalling who he was.

‘He did the fuel planning on Randy’s flight. The guy who took off for Mexico just before we turned up at NAB…’

Oh, yeah.

‘His real name was Ed Dyson — that’s Lieutenant Ed Dyson. He was a Navy meteorologist with a masters in high-altitude wind modeling. He left the service a little over a year ago, discharged on medical grounds, and went straight to work with Morrow at NAB.’

‘So he’s a weatherman?’ I smirked, picturing a chubby guy on daytime TV moving cardboard clouds around a map.

‘Do you know anything about wind, Cooper?’

‘I get plenty eating onions.’

‘I’m serious.’

‘It’s no laughing matter, trust me.’

‘Cooper…’

I sighed. ‘Okay, you got me. Tell me what you think I should know.’ Being serious, all I knew about wind was that it often blew onshore near the coast — something to do with the land heating up faster than the water. But I had a feeling my beachside experience was about as relevant to Petinski as my relationship with onions.

‘It’s important to know that when a physics package detonates, it generates clouds of lethal radioactive dust that get spread high and wide. Weather prediction — especially the movement of high-altitude winds — is probably the single most important planning aspect that goes into a nuclear strike.’

I put my drink down on the table. ‘Why’s it taken Defense Intelligence this long to ascertain the guy’s identity?’

‘Too many threats, too many budget cuts, too few assets. Don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about.’ Petinski had me there. ‘Dyson also used a false social security card and passport,’ she continued. ‘And he was operating on the edges of our surveillance. If anyone was going to catch him out it would’ve been Randy, but perhaps he wasn’t on the ground long enough to identify him.’

‘Or maybe Randy got too close to Dyson, asked too many questions. Dyson contacted von Weiss, who was suspicious anyway, and Randy’s next long-distance flight runs out of gas.’

That gave Petinski something to think about.

‘And DCIS thinks Dyson flew south to link up with this Benicio von Weiss,’ I said.

‘That’s the conclusion.’

Rio. I’d never been there, though a buddy of mine, after seeing the city’s famous Carnival, said the place was like a twelve-mile erogenous zone. Maybe there was a silver lining to this nuclear cloud yet.