Outlaws

by Tim Green

  The United States Department of Energy had created one hundred three metric tons of plutonium during the course of the cold war. Ninety of those tons were weapons-grade material, developed for thermonuclear devices. Much of the plutonium and weaponry had been made at Pantex, and much of it was steadily finding its way back there now. Even the plutonium that had been produced at one of the country's other two nuclear weapons facilities, Rocky Flats in Colorado and Savannah River in Georgia, was wending its way to Pantex. From subs and silos and airfields across the globe, bombs and missiles were being turned in like the badges of a disassembled posse. Rocky Flats and Savannah River were no longer producing weapons-grade plutonium. So it was Pantex or bust for the man-made element Pu 239. Of the thousands of warheads that had been so painstakingly constructed over the years, six thousand had already been retired. Fourteen thousand more were scheduled for retirement, and at least six thousand of those would also be stored at Pantex. The government was still undecided about where to place the remaining eight thousand.

  When a weapon was retired, it was essentially disassembled. At the end of the process there remained the heart of every thermonuclear device--the pit of pure plutonium. There was no real way to dispose of the pit. To convert it to usable fuel would cost more than the electric energy it could produce. Instead the pits were buried about a quarter mile beneath the earths surface in a series of vaults at Pantex. Security was extraordinary. The general not only oversaw the continuing security for the entire Pantex facility, he oversaw the design and construction of the storage system for the now useless pits of plutonium. From the series of three barbed-wire fences, the dogs, the sound and sight sensors, to the camera systems, the codes, the clearance checkpoints, the SWAT team, the security forces, and the sophisticated sensors in the plutonium vaults, the general was ultimately responsible for it all.

  Sometimes, he would lie awake in the middle of the night, digging at his hemorrhoids through striped cotton pajamas, wondering at the simplicity of the whole thing. For all the systems and the training and the checks and balances, it was he, an underpaid, overworked, and frustrated military commander, who was the ultimate chink in the armor that protected the material that made the United States the most powerful nation on the face of the earth. He would gnaw on this thought, searching over and over in his mind for his oversight. Somehow there had to be a check for him. But there wasn't. That was so very clear now. Already he had delivered one of the precious pits to the man he knew as Striker, a ruthless pirate. Nothing had happened. The money was in a locker at the Amarillo bus terminal, and there was a lot of it. Half a million dollars. There was much more to come. Striker would see to that.

  As he walked down the concrete path, the general gazed up at the pocked, cheese-white moon and thought about Striker. At first he was certain that Striker was a trap, a test to see if he could be bought. That would make sense. The only safeguard against him was a yearly evaluation by Military Intelligence. With so much at stake, he had been certain Striker was not for real. He had known of Striker for years. During his time with Ml he had come in contact with Striker from time to time. No one he ever knew could say what the man's real name actually was. The general did know, however, that Striker's past service had included time with the army's Special Forces. Striker had served in Vietnam and was a trained killer who had actually practiced his craft.

  Like the general himself, Striker had served in intelligence. Whatever work Striker had done for Ml, something the general didn't know. Af, it necessitated the creation of a new identity. The general did know that Striker eventually left the service and became an active contract agent for the CIA, and that he ran a front corporation dealing in international arms. Rumor had it that Striker was not only a janitor for the CIA, cleaning up their various messes around the globe, but that he turned a healthy profit for the agency and himself in the arms market. Striker had a reputation in the intelligence community as being a fast-moving, freewheeling operator who was out for number one, but who also always got the job done. That was something people in the community never took lightly.

  That Striker, a CIA agent, would be personally involved in a sting direo. Ed against a military officer of the United States Army seemed unlikely, but the general was naturally suspicious. Finally, Striker had convinced the genera! that it was worth the risk, explaining that this would be the general's last opportunity to take care of himself. The military had capitulated to politicians. The strength was being sucked out of the country. The plutonium that made the country strong was being packed away. The demise of the Soviet Union and the disassembling of the nuclear arsenal meant that it would only be a matter of time before the very same material being so cautiously guarded at Pantex became freely available on the international arms market. The time to get the big payoff was now, before the commodity became readily available and far less expensive. Already there were rumors of people securing plutonium from the Ukraine. Striker was offering him a once-in-a- lifetime opportunity.

  More importantly, Striker pointed out that the general's life work had been meaningless. The general was a proud man but also realistic, and he knew this to be true. Like a fireman who was trained to put out a fire but never got the chance to do it, the general was a soldier who had never really soldiered. Caught between the Korean War and the war in Vietnam, the general had never served a tour of combat. It had stifled his career in the army, even in Ml. Combat veterans were a special fraternity whose members always seemed to get ahead faster.

  Nevertheless, throughout his career the general had put his shoulder to the wheel and pushed ahead, certain that his chance to do something of real importance would come. When he finally got the star he had slaved for and got the post as head of security at the country's most coveted military asset, it was payback time for all his years of loyal service. Then, even before the last pieces of furniture had arrived for his new office, a man he considered to be nothing more than a whining deserter became the commander in chief of the United States Armed Forces. The humiliation of the military began. The forces were cut, and more horrifying yet, the arsenal that separated the United States from the rest of humanity was marked for destruction. Plutonium production lurched to a halt. Nuclear weapons were retired, the Pantex facility became a glorified junk yard, and the general became nothing more than a glorified Fred Sanford with a uniform.

  For his lifetime of service, the general had a house in the suburbs, an overweight wife who drank too much, and a military command that quite suddenly amounted to nothing more than cleanup and storage. So, Striker had reasoned, what difference did it really make? The general could take the money and run, literally. The general had the knowledge and the means to rig the system so that no one would know the pits were missing until some time in the future when someone decided that it was a good idea to reassemble all the weapons they were now so expensively disassembling. By the time the production cycle ever came around to the point where the pits were going to actually be used again, the general felt certain he would be dead. He would certainly be long gone from Texas.

  His plan was to finish the business with Striker, put in for immediate retirement, move to Miami with his wife, and then disappear on his fishing boat one day when the weather got heavy. His wife would be left with his pension, and he would enjoy the rest of his life traveling from place to place, living off of what all told would be three million tax-free dollars. The interest the sum could eam in a Swiss bank would do him very nicely. It was a good plan, and as Striker had so accurately put it, it was his payoff. With half a million already in the bus locker, and one pit already delivered, the general knew that if Striker was setting a trap, it would have sprung. The thing that bothered the general now more than getting caught taking the pits was Striker. The general didn't trust him.

  The general approached a relatively small building on the edge of the complex. It looked like nothing more than a large guard post. This was the entry point for the underground facility. Everyone working below
the earth's surface passed through this central location. Parking lots were outside the ring of barracks. Materials, raw and finished, were transported via truck, tractor, and aircraft directly to storage points in the desert. Each underground facility had what amounted to its own aboveground shipping and receiving depot, but the people who designed Pantex thought it would be wise to direct all the workers through one checkpoint. It was easier to monitor the influx of people this way, and with the underground distribution, none of the people who worked at Pantex would ever be sure where the materials were stored. With a sharp salute, the general passed through a checkpoint of armed soldiers and proceeded to the building.

  Once inside, the general shivered slightly and breathed into his hands to warm them. There was a breeze kicking up from the west, and even though it was June and the days were warm, the temperature still dipped into the low forties at night. The dark desert night was strangely silent. This was his doing Once a week the entire one-hundred-thousand-acre facility was dusted with an insecticide that eradicated the cricket population. This was to ensure the accuracy of the sound sensor equipment that was an integral part of security. Crickets created white noise, a nuisance to any sound surveillance device. The general could think of a dozen environmental groups that would raise holy hell if they ever knew about the spraying. Of course they never would know. That was one beautiful thing about Pantex. There were no rules that couldn't be overcome in the name of national security.

  In the center of the small structure, a bank of elevators plunged down into the earth. There were ten different levels below ground. On each of the different levels, a web of tram-cluttered tunnels stretched out beneath the desert floor to numerous production sites. But only one level could access the tunnel that wound its way to all the plutonium vaults. That level was unmarked and accessed only with a special key.

  When the general stepped out of the elevator, he was met by two security guards armed with MAC- 10s, short machine pistols designed for cutting down a dozen people in a small space with one burst of fire. The general's pass was checked, and his palm was scanned. He complimented his men on the fine job they were doing. He made this safety inspection once every four months. It was supposed to be a surprise, but because he did it every four months like clockwork, everyone knew it was coming. They didn't know the exact day, but they knew that about midmonth of every June, October, and February, they'd better be on their toes.

  After the appropriate stone-faced salutes, the guards opened a door that led into a tunnel containing a single open tram car. The general sat down in the car. He pushed a green button on the dash in front of him, and the tram began to wind through a tunnel that would twist and turn its way to the plutonium vault. The vault was buried deep within the earth, but a nuclear explosion whose vortex was directly above the vault could theoretically set off a reaction within the vault itself and create an apocalyptic explosion. The whole thing-- the security system, the facility, the operations--sounded wonderfully complex and secretive, which was exactly what the lawmakers on the hill seemed to like. The expense had never seemed to matter.

  Of course the general was one of the few men who knew the exact coordinates of the vault. After the initial construction of the underground steel and concrete framework by workers who themselves never knew exactly what they were constructing, one tunnel was modified by special facilities workers and became the only access to the vault. There was one long, winding tunnel, and at the end was a chamber where the tram came to a stop. Only a single officer sat outside the chamber, at a raised control panel that included video monitors of the chamber and various other camera views of the tunnel track. There were various buttons and levers, one of which could seal the chamber off from the tram, as well as a computer that was hooked up into the pit room.

  "Good evening, sir," were the only words the officer had for the general as he passed the console and punched the keypad that let him into the vault.

  The pit room door opened and the general stepped inside, closing the vault behind him. He knew the officer at the console could hear and see everything he did. The room looked very much like a large safe-deposit box vault. Each pit was stored in its own lead-lined box that had a separate digitally coded combination. There was one small shelf jutting out of a wall of safes, and the general set his case down there. He extracted from it a laptop computer and plugged it into an interface jack in the wall just above the shelf. The general flicked on his computer and began to stab at the keys.

  He punched in a series of commands and looked up at the camera that was in the comer of the vault.

  "Can you see me?" the general asked, knowing full well he had disengaged the video camera above him.

  "No, sir," came the officer's slightly nervous voice over an intercom speaker.

  "Good, now pay close attention," commanded the general.

  The general accessed the coding for box #3379, a random selection. There was a low beeping tone and the door to the small safe for the #3379 pit slid smoothly open. The lead-lined drawer was eye level with the general and only two feet to his left. He reached up and extracted the pit from its resting place, setting it gently down into his open case. The low tone was replaced by a piercing high-pitched beep-beep-beep. The general punched some numbers into his computer and the beeping stopped. Before reengaging the video camera, he placed the shiny metallic pit in a small concealed compartment in the case.

  The general would have loved to have taken the three pits he needed at one time, but that wasn't in the manual. It said that each check would be conducted on one random vault during every inspection. It was probably better for other reasons as well. The shiny metal exterior was nothing more than a protective alloy shell, and because of that shell, the pit itself gave otf no harmful radiation whatsoever. But the general knew enough about pluto iicn. Eventually the bombardment of alpha particles inside the shell would deteriorate the alloy lining and the radiation would seep out. Although a liule external exposure to Pu 239 wouldn't harm a flea, unlike the deadlier Pu 240 version, the general was still a little nervous. Three kilograms of the Pu 240 plutonium emitted enough radiation to kill a person almost immediately. Even though a single pit of Pu 239 wasn't deadly, or even dangerous, two or more pits close together risked a nuclear reaction. Two plutonium pits leaking radiation in close proximity wouldn't explode like a bomb, but the meltdown would kill everything in the immediate area. So the risk, along with the need to conduct his inspections according to the manual, led the general to wisely insist to Striker that he deliver the pits one at a time.

  'Tell me what just happened, soldier," the general barked out to the dead air that surrounded him.

  "Sir, in accordance with the Nuclear Weapons Safety Manual Rule 6.27-B, you just extracted pit #3379 and then replaced it, sir," came the voice through the intercom.

  A small smiled teased the comers of the general's mouth. He reached up and shut the opened vault door. Until the unforseeable day came when someone was ordered to extract pit #3379, no one would know that it wasn't right there were it should be.

  Madison watched the green LED numbers on the clock turn from six-twenty- nine to six-thirty. She'd been watching since five-seventeen, and before that she'd watched it until around three. Dinner last night with Marty had gone well enough. He seemed to handle pretty well her insistence that they no longer pursue anything more than a friendship. The hardest part about the whole thing had been convincing Marty that her decision not to get involved had nothing to do with the sudden appearance of her ex-husband. But the strain she'd put on her friendship with Marty wasn't why she couldn't sleep. When she'd arrived home last night, Jo-Jo was still awake. He was excited. Any young boy would have been. He'd gotten an unexpected visit from his father.

  Lucia, Madison's housekeeper, had been a nervous wreck, but not Jo-Jo. His eyes shone with pure delight. It was the first time he had seen his father in almost two years. Instead of growing to resent his absence, Jo-Jo still worshipped him. Understandable. Th
e name Joe Thurwood was known to all Jo-Jo's classmates. He was the former NFL superstar fullback. It was a source of pride for Jo-Jo that his father was Big Joe, but also a hidden source of shame that he never saw his famous father. Madison knew that Jo-Jo somehow blamed himself for his father's absence and didn't know what to do about it.

  When Madison finally got Jo-Jo settled down and in bed, she tore into Lucia like a lawnmower for letting her ex-husband into the house. By court order, he was denied access not only to her home but to their son, unless he first obtained her consent. She told Lucia before the divorce even went through to never let Joe in the house, and she had warned her repeatedly since the day she first heard Joe was back in Austin. She was afraid of something like this, afraid of the effect it would have on her son, and if pushed, she would admit that she was afraid of what Joe might do to her. Through her tears Lucia insisted that she hadn't let Joe in, and when Madison told her she must have left the lock undone, Lucia assured her again that she had checked as she was supposed to do, and that every access into the house had been locked.

  So except for a few fitful hours, Madison had lain awake thinking. She felt certain that what Joe had done was planned more to distress her than to reestablish his relationship with his son. Tomorrow they were having a summary judgment hearing, and the judge had expressed her desire to see both parties with their attorneys in order to determine whether or not to dismiss Joe's suit as a matter of law without even bothering to adjudicate the facts. Joe knew Madison well enough to know how this would effect her, and after consideration, she became more and more certain he'd done it on purpose, tempting her to explode in front of the judge tomorrow. Joe wanted the judge to see firsthand what a temperamental bitch she could be. But Madison would not be beaten. She would maintain her calm and get through this so she could get back to her normal life.