Shelter

by C A Bird

  He turned on his computer and immediately picked up the phone, “Hi Jenn. Could you please tell Miles I’m in? Thanks.”

  While waiting for Miles to appear he went to the bar where his secretary had prepared coffee. Carrying the steaming mug to his desk he checked his E-mail. One of these days, he promised himself for the hundredth time, he would get Jennifer Groves to screen his E-mail for him. There were over sixty messages and he’d only been gone one day. Miles arrived, rumpled clothing and eyelids drooping at half-mast attesting to the long hours he’d put in the day before. Mark poured him a cup of coffee. “You look like you can use this. How’s the search going? Find what we need?” Mark had left at around 7:10 p.m. the previous evening, leaving Miles still sitting in front of his computer.

  “I assigned Moore the task of pulling all the old paperwork, but quite frankly Chief, I think the stuff’s just too old to use.” He tossed a sheaf of papers on Mark’s desk. “I took the liberty of having the new engineer, Ray Twohey, start working up some preliminary designs for a totally new concept. The kid has some fantastic ideas. Take a look at these.”

  Mark took a few minutes to look over the work in the folder. He was impressed. It reminded him of some of the imaginative ideas Will Hargraves came up with as a young engineer. Many of the patents Will owned, especially those on avionic equipment, had significantly advanced the safety of flight.

  They called Ray in for a meeting and spent the rest of the morning going over the new concepts. Although it would take longer to develop totally new ideas it would be well worth it. The old projects were outdated and Mark laughed at what they considered advanced technology only eight years ago. To defeat today’s modern weapons new technology would definitely be required.

  “I need to go over some of these specifications with Mr. Hargraves. I’ll get back to you this afternoon. Have the design department start getting some of this stuff into the computer. I’ll want to see prelims tomorrow afternoon.”

  Ray threw a worried look at Miles, but Miles answered without hesitation, “Sure Mark, we’ll have something for you.” He knew you didn’t tell Mark Teller something couldn’t be accomplished.

  August 20, 10:00 a.m.

  Sangre de Cristo Mountains, New Mexico

  The trail wove in and out through Ponderosa pines, following the natural contours of the mountain. First trending north, it eventually swung around to the west and passed over a saddle before descending again on the far side of the ridge. It alternately passed through shaded glens, and open areas bathed in sunlight and then gradually gained altitude, generally using gentle switchbacks, and occasionally steeper ones, but overall the increase in altitude was within Sandi’s ability. After one and a half hours of hiking they stopped for a break alongside a gigantic ravine that dropped away precipitously to the right, and gratefully shedding their packs, sat propped against them on the ground while Pete carefully checked his topographic map and sipped from his plastic water bottle.

  “There’s a great little river in the bottom of this canyon but the trail down is rocky and could be dangerous. It’s quite a long way from here. There’s another stream with good fishing a few miles farther along this trail but at a higher elevation. What’s your preference?”

  “Well, let’s see, if we go down into that canyon we have to come back up, right? That’s pretty much of a no-brainer. I much prefer a gentle uphill now rather than having to climb out of that monster later.”

  “That’s what I figured. I think we can reach the campsite in another hour or so. Ready?”

  “Slave driver.” She climbed to her feet, again needing his help to get the pack on. “I don’t think I’ll ever get the knack of slinging that thing around like you do.”

  Pete balanced the pack on his knee, held it by the straps and swung it around his shoulder, slipping his arm through the strap as it settled neatly onto his back, all in one efficient motion. “Sure you will, nothing to it.”

  In another half hour they came to a “y” in the trail, the right fork continuing along the edge of the abyss, the huge chasm curving away to the northwest. The left fork headed in a southward direction up a hill. They bore left and, using switchbacks, climbed to the top of a plateau. As they came over the edge of the plateau they saw an incredible range of mountains that rose toward the sky in the west.

  Pete paused to allow Sandi to catch up, and pointed westward. “Aren’t they beautiful? We’re on the backside of the range that holds the Taos Ski Basin, and also Mt. Wheeler, the highest peak in New Mexico. It’s something like 13,200 feet.”

  She nodded, breathing heavily, sweat dripping from her hair, “I’m glad I’m not hauling this pack up that monster!”

  “No, don’t worry. We’re almost to the creek where we’ll camp for the night. Those mountains are quite a distance from here.”

  The plateau, being much flatter than the forest they had passed through, was also more open, and a multitude of downed trees and large boulders littered the landscape. The day had become progressively warmer. They hiked through a wide meadow dotted with Pinyon pines and Juniper, and boasting a riot of color from purple lupine, blue columbine and yellow brittlebush. Pete breathed in the mountain air, enjoying the sweet smell of the yellow-flowered bushes. The trail wound through some large boulders and began a gentle descent that eventually brought them to a fast moving stream flowing out of the high country on their right and spilling into a small lake approximately a half-mile in the distance. Pete could see that the trail descended to the shoreline of the lake and continued along it until it disappeared in thickening vegetation along its banks.

  “You know, it’s funny,” Pete said. “It’s been a long time since I camped in this area but I don’t remember this lake being here. I doubt if they stock it, although there’s a fish hatchery not too far from here at Red River, but there’s always been plenty of fish in this river.

  “Are we stopping then?” Sandi was sweating even more, her cheeks flushed from almost three hours of arduous exercise.

  “Yeah, we’ll camp here but we need to stay back from the lake about a hundred feet.” They selected a level campsite under a grove of pines and Sandi gratefully dropped the pack with a sigh of relief and collapsed on the ground. She watched Pete pitch the two-man backpacking tent. He explained that he preferred to sleep in the open, but at this high elevation the weather could turn cold at night, even in the summer. “We can always sleep outside if it’s comfortable,” he told her.

  They would use Pete’s white gas stove to cook dinner that evening, providing he caught some fish, but decided on a cold lunch. They ate sandwiches and Fig Newtons and laid down on their sleeping bags to take a well-deserved nap.

  August 20, 1:00 p.m.

  Los Alamos, New Mexico

  The breathtaking view framed by the oversized picture window went unappreciated by the despondent man gazing out at the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. His reddened eyes, wet with tears, intellectually perceived their beauty, but he was emotionally numb, unable to savor it.

  The view from his house also encompassed the town of Los Alamos, a view that in the past had always excited him and filled him with wonder. Los Alamos, the national laboratory where the first atomic bombs were developed during World War II, and that today boasts what is arguably the world’s greatest concentration of computing power.

  He was born several years after Los Alamos was established in 1943, and by the time he was 12 years old he had fallen in love with anything having to do with nuclear technology. As a teenager, with the cold war heating up, he studied and learned everything he could about physics, chemistry and astronomy. He decided in high school to become a nuclear physicist. While other boys’ heroes were baseball and football stars, he idolized J. Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller and Enrico Fermi, physicists who had envisioned and constructed this scientific enclave out of a wilderness - to experiment and develop, against tremendous odds, weapons of unimaginable power… the power to end a war. At Los Alamos, owned by the depart
ment of Energy and managed by the University of California, they branched out from that original nuclear research to studies of the solar system, innovative biological research, and modeling of global climate.

  The man had attended the University of California at Berkeley and actually took a course taught by Edward Teller, the “Father of the H-bomb.” After the development of thermonuclear weapons, Edward Teller had left Los Alamos and became a professor of physics at U.C. Berkeley. The man remembered the course fondly. Along with his marriage to Marie, and the birth of their daughter Lori, it was one of the highlights of his life. He realized the culmination of his lifelong dream when, after obtaining his doctorate in nuclear physics, he went to work at Los Alamos, where regardless of the other technological research going on there, he still found atomic nuclei to be the most fascinating of all things God created.

  The black box he’d received from a gentleman named Karl yesterday morning should have represented hope for the future but he was filled with the deepest despair. He’d buried his Marie just over a week ago and was now lost in a world without meaning. He was one of the most brilliant men of our time, an eminent nuclear scientist, but without Marie, life to him was not worth living.

  His daughter had returned home to Denver following the funeral, after he’d assured her he was all right. He loved her and his grandchildren very much, but saw them infrequently and he knew his life would now be defined by a complete and abject loneliness. This morning he had packaged the box for shipping, affixed a label with his daughter’s address and sent it Express Mail, next day delivery.

  Working at the laboratory at Los Alamos he knew there was a substantial risk of nuclear war. The news media didn’t know or report the entire story but the scientists at Los Alamos realized the significance of the Chinese hydrogen tests; the beginning of a new era of cold war tension, and a very real possibility it could escalate to a nuclear holocaust. He sincerely hoped the box wasn’t a hoax and that his daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren would be spared.

  He turned from the window, walked in a daze to the couch and sat down. From the coffee table, he picked up the custom Colt revolver, a beautiful handgun with engraved scrollwork and scrimshaw handgrips that he had loaded with .45 caliber ammunition. He lay down on the couch, put the revolver in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  August 20, 1:30 p.m.

  Laguna Beach, California

  Warm breezes blew off the ocean, rustling the bougainvillea and honeysuckle draped from the second floor terrace of Hargrave’s Laguna Beach estate. The ten thousand square foot, pure white mansion stood at the ocean’s edge, close enough to catch the sea’s salty fragrance, floating on the on-shore zephyr. Huge, west-facing windows furnished incredible views of the rolling ocean swells, crashing breakers and the deep blue Pacific.

  Two men and a woman relaxed around a table, sheltered by a red tiled patio cover shading the large veranda that overlooked both the ocean to the west and, on the south side of the house, a magnificent black bottom pool in the yard below. Caterers bustled about preparing the terrace and the adjoining rooms for tonight’s party.

  Comparing the two men, one would never guess they were father and son. The handsome young man, a single diamond stud in his left ear and a small gold ring piercing his right eyebrow, had a brooding appearance; his goatee framed a mouth with pouting lips. Short cropped, brown hair was fashionably gelled to stick straight up and he was darkly tanned. His well-muscled, athletic body was the result of working out each day in the well-equipped spa in the home he shared with his father. He slouched in a patio chair dressed in baggy khakis and a black tank top.

  The only things he and his father had in common were the unusual gray eyes and his father’s money. He had an arrogant demeanor, a result of being rich without having worked a day in his life to earn it. Clay’s father was William Hargraves.

  Will was ignoring the conversation between his two grown children, his thoughts returning to the meeting with the President again and again. He had returned home from Washington the previous evening and had called Karl Dohner to check on his progress in delivering the signaling devices. He’d almost been embarrassed a few days ago when he instructed Karl to begin the distribution, but the situation with China indicated the time had come.

  And he’d promised Katherine.

  He stood and walked to the terrace’s low perimeter wall, staring over the ocean. The sky was cloudless and the burning afternoon sun, glinting off the water, caused him to squint. As thoughts of his wife drifted through his memory, his face softened. He recalled her fear after they’d lost their daughter Laura many years ago, killed by a hit and run driver. All his money and power had been unable to discover, and bring to justice, whoever was responsible.

  Laura was only ten years old when she died.

  Five years later, when Katherine lay dying of ovarian cancer, she made Will promise that no matter what it took, whatever his money had to buy, he would ensure that nothing ever happened to Chris or Clay.

  After her death, when newspaper headlines screamed of international problems and the United States became embroiled in small regional conflicts, he first considered building the shelter. But the Berlin wall had come down and the Soviet Union had collapsed and as the pain of Katherines’ death had lessened he felt like a fool, and called a halt to the architectural planning. Much of the preliminary groundwork had already been completed at that time. The land had been purchased and excavation was already underway.

  But the more things change, the more they stay the same, and the nuclear weapons once controlled by the old Soviet States began to show up in other countries, countries not limited by treaties or reason. And then, there was always China, lurking, a behemoth bulging with people and needing room to grow. September 11, 2001 started a new round of problems with the “War on Terrorism”, 2 or 3 wars and the rise of radical Islam. He reconsidered his earlier decision to discontinue the project, resumed the environmental work and began actual construction of the facility.

  He was asked by the government to join a civilian advisory group to keep the administration appraised of advances in aerospace technology and learned as part of this group that international tensions were always high and peace was never certain. On June 11, 1998, after India and Pakistan began their nuclear competition, the doomsday clock, an indicator of how close the world is to war, was moved ahead five minutes. On that date it stood at 11:51 p.m. Gazing out over the Pacific he wondered if the world would ever be safe, and what time the doomsday clock now read after China’s unbelievable missile test. The closest it had ever been to midnight was two minutes before twelve, when Truman first authorized testing of the hydrogen bomb.

  Hargraves continued building the shelter, but over time he put in less and less time there, eventually losing interest. It had consumed a large part of his energies for a long time, reminding him of Katherine and making him feel as if he were doing something to keep her memory alive. He hadn’t been there as frequently in the last couple of years, and finally began to renew his interest in aviation and to concentrate more on his business.

  He’d left the shelter in good hands, however. Glen Mitchell, a rather eccentric engineer and closet survivalist, had made it his passion. He worked for Hargraves Aerospace for years as an aeronautical engineer, but when he heard about the project he requested that Will let him participate in its planning and construction. It was now Glen’s baby and even Hargraves had begun to think of it as “Will’s Folly” as it was called by some of his peers in business and government.

  Chris and Clay had been older than Laura. She was the baby of the family and her death had affected them differently. Chris felt a great loss, having always been protective of her baby sister, six years younger than she. Clay was closer in age, thirteen when Laura died, and seemed almost unaffected by her death. He and Laura had fought continually during their entire childhood. Will never understood Clay’s attitude, not at the time, or since. When Katherine died five years later, th
ough, it had been a different story, her death deeply affecting both his children. Chris was away at college when her mother died and flew home to be with her father, comforting him more than he comforted her, and it brought them closer together. Clay lost the one person in the world he felt loved him, his mother. He became even more withdrawn and distanced himself emotionally from his father and his sister.

  Will’s attention was brought back to the conversation behind him when he realized it was becoming another heated sibling argument. Clay raised his voice sarcastically, “You’re wasting your time. Look at the general population. They’re all overfed, as it is. Half the people out there are fat slobs! Where do you see all this hunger?”

  Chris, usually adept at not being baited by her brother, felt compelled to defend her work. “Many poor people are overweight because they can’t afford nutritious foods, not because they eat too much. If we can design inexpensive, nutritious foods we can ensure everyone has a healthy diet.”