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For Gav: better read than dead
Contents
PROLOGUE: EMPTY QUIVER
HEIR APPARENT
RECEPTION COMMITTEE
WET WORK
COVERED WAGON
THE EXECUTION PROTOCOL
REALIGNMENTS
OATH OF FEALTY
HIGH ESTATE
CORONATION
DECEPTIVE PRACTICES
PARTY TO CONSPIRACY
COUP
NORTHWOODS
EVACUATION
7/16
DAMAGE CONTROL
LEAKING EVERYWHERE
BED REST
WAR TRAIN ROLLING
THE VIEW FROM FORTY THOUSAND FEET
NEVER COMING BACK
THE FINAL COUNTDOWN
REFUGEES
8/18
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE: EMPTY QUIVER
The inspectors arrived before dawn.
A convoy of six gray government cars pulling up at the east gate to the complex was the first warning anyone on site was permitted – and the two security police officers in the gate booth took it. ‘Call Ops,’ the older cop grunted, narrowing his eyes as the cars dimmed their headlights and queued up between the concrete barriers for inspection. ‘Tell them we’ve got visitors.’
‘Protesters?’ The younger officer straightened up as he reached for the secure handset that tied the booth to the Operations Center. They’d had a problem with the peacenik protesters earlier in the year, some new folks from outside who’d tried to block traffic outside the perimeter: mostly the protesters stuck to the Peace Farm round the far side of the site.
‘Not likely.’ He opened the door and stepped out into the twilight. After dark it cooled off – the open-oven-door temperatures of summer in Carson County had subsided to an arid stillness. Five hundred hours was dead time; the other eight officers who worked the entrance during the morning rush would still be signing in and getting their kit. His hand went to his two-way radio. ‘Sergeant Brady on east gate two, requesting backup. Over.’ He walked towards the first car. A silver-gray Town Car with a minivan behind it. As he approached, the driver’s door opened. Some instinct tipped him off. He straightened his back: ‘Let me see your badge, sir!’
The driver stepped out and held up a badge. Blue, for Q-level access, Brady saw. ‘I need to touch that, sir.’
‘Of course.’
The driver was in his early thirties, with a certain look to him that gave Brady unpleasant flashbacks. The passenger seats were occupied, too. ‘Everyone out.’ Brady peered at the badge, and at the other federal ID the driver was holding. His handheld scanner said the badge was the real deal, so . . . ‘There y’are, Agent Cruz.’ He handed the badge back. Let someone in Ops deal with this. ‘I need to check everyone in person.’
That meant checking three cars and three minivans, and by the end of it Brady was in a cold sweat – not because of the work, but because of what it implied. Six FBI agents and four federal agents from the NNSA’s Office of Secure Transportation was one thing, but there were another five close-faced men and women who didn’t have any ID for him other than their Q-level site badges, and they seemed to be running this circus. Not my job to ask, Brady reminded himself dubiously, but someone’s about to get a nasty shock. ‘Welcome to Pantex, sir,’ he said, walking back to Agent Cruz’s car. ‘Do you know who your assigned escort is? You’re not on my roster.’
Cruz didn’t smile. ‘I think it’ll be whoever that is, over there.’ Brady glanced round. A car was coming from the direction of Ops, clearly in a hurry. ‘Meanwhile, our business is in Area Twelve and we will be requiring security to secure a particular building. You and Officer Nelson are due to be relieved in half an hour – sooner, now.’
Brady’s two-way crackled: ‘Brady to secure line, over.’
‘So you’re coming with us.’
Rich Wall hung as far back as he could behind the NNSA muscle and the local Agency staffers, doing his best to people-watch without attracting the attention of the local officers, who were clearly unhappy about their shift being extended without warning. Fascinating, he decided. They’re all acting out. Nothing surprising there, of course – everyone from the NNSA agents to the site security commander would be on tenterhooks and trying to look as professional as possible – but if the colonel’s tip-off panned out, it would make his job somewhat harder. He fingered his Q-level badge again, and waited for the RWI staffer to work her way along the line outside Access Control, pinning dosimeters to the visitors’ jackets.
‘Y’all been cleared for this visit already,’ the staffer announced, her voice flat. ‘Ah’m therefore assuming y’all have read and signed the radiological training test books. Ah just want to remind y’all to keep your hands to yourselves. Ah mean that. The things we store in this building are not toys. Sergeant.’ She nodded at the older, grumpier security cop – who in his forage cap and desert camo looked a lot more like a soldier than a police officer. Wall noted the M16 on his shoulder. Definitely a soldier.
Maybe the colonel’s wrong. Maybe it’s just a bookkeeping error.
Having been thus admonished, it came as a minor anticlimax to be told to climb back in the car. ‘Where now?’ Rich asked as Lisa Chavez pulled on her seat belt.
‘Now we play follow the leader.’ She stared at the people mover full of serious-minded FBI agents from Utah. ‘Hope someone in this clusterfuck knows what they’re doing. Hope somebody’s wrong.’
‘Why isn’t Rand on this case?’
Chavez stared at him. ‘You ask too many questions.’
Rich leaned back as she started the car’s engine. ‘Asking questions is my job.’
The convoy moved off slowly, hugging the shoulder of the narrow road in the thin dawn light. They drove for some minutes before stopping for another checkpoint in a chain-link fence. Sixteen thousand acres, thought Rich. More cops dressed as soldiers, armed like soldiers, checking badges and waving vehicles through, one at a time. Looks like Fort Meade, without the office blocks.
A big barn of a building loomed up on one side. Chavez followed the convoy into a wide doorway, then into an enclosed ramp – a corridor about five meters wide, lined with pipes and branch routes leading off to other buildings. Walls rolled past at walking pace. Air monitoring units at head height glowed steady green, like traffic lights: no tritium release, no alpha radiation. The Pantex plant sprawled across the Texas landscape north of Amarillo, almost the size of a city in its own right. But the inhabitants weren’t anything you’d want for a neighbor.
&nbs
p; After a half-hour-long eternity they rolled back out onto a strip of blacktop road, past a clump of low earth berms, and halted again outside another chain-link fence. This, too, was guarded: ‘Everyone out,’ crackled the radio on the dash.
‘You heard the man.’ Chavez opened her door. ‘Come on.’
They queued up at a gate in the fence to be individually checked by officers with metal detectors backed by more heavily-armed guards. For a moment, Rich’s spirits rose. Real security? But no. The colonel’s right. They’d be totally unprepared.
There was a brief argument over some of the monitoring equipment, but in the end the NNSA specialists said something – Rich was too far away to hear – and one of the guards headed for a windowless hut at the double, and when he came back they were allowed to proceed after opening the heavy cases for inspection. It’s not as if we’re taking anything out of here, after all.
‘Welcome to Area Twelve,’ said one of the NNRT staffers. He gestured at the low earth berms around them. ‘Doesn’t look like much, does it?’
‘Cut it out,’ said Cruz. ‘Which is Building Sixteen?’
‘You’re standing on its roof.’ Cruz looked down as the staffer gestured at a windowless bunker. ‘This way.’
Rich glanced back beyond the fence. ‘Are we expecting visitors?’ he murmured to Chavez.
‘I don’t think so.’ She followed his gaze. ‘Huh. Someone in Operations has finally woken up.’
Rich shook his head. ‘Let’s catch the floor show. This should be good.’
The secure storage vault was a concrete-lined tomb with two rows of six coffin-sized trapdoors in the floor separated by aisles a meter wide. A small forklift truck waited patiently under the ceiling, ready to lift the lids and raise their contents. Yellow guidelines painted on the concrete promised dire consequences for anyone who crossed them without due caution; more air filters and warning lamps hung from the walls, quiet sentinels keeping a graveyard watch.
With this many people this close to their charges, the guards were clearly edgy. ‘If you all could stay behind that red line, this will go much easier,’ the sergeant from the gatehouse announced. ‘Three at a time. Who’s first on the list?’
‘Agent Moran, Major Alvarez, and Captain Hu,’ said one of the NNSA staffers, reading from the checklist. ‘Step forward and present your credentials.’ Everything, Rich noted, was scripted as closely as the protocol surrounding an execution. With the gate cops and the regular guards and now a group of officials from Control who included the site administrator – looking distinctly unhappy about having his usual morning routine upset like this – the vault was getting crowded. ‘Sergeant, your turn.’ The to-ing and fro-ing over identity verification went on for almost half an hour as checklists were exchanged and a bulky procedures manual – one of the NNSA agents had brought along a rolling flight case crammed with files – was thumbed through.
Finally: ‘Open storage cell number one, please.’ Someone in the back row coughed; Rich nearly jumped out of his skin. The duty technician drove his truck into position, skillfully threading its forks through the rings in the top of the lid before lifting the heavy trapdoor off the storage cell. Rich leaned forward to get a view of the narrow crypt below, taking care to stay behind the red line on the floor: the signs warned that lethal force would be used if anyone crossed it without authorization, and the guards were clearly twitchy.
The contents of the crypt didn’t look like much: a pair of olive-drab containers, one briefcase-sized and the other more like a dwarfish oil drum, swathed in canvas straps, with a pair of grab-handles on top. ‘Major Alvarez, Captain Hu, please step forward and identify the items.’
The two army officers placed their equipment case on the floor, knelt by the side of the crypt, and peered at the objects within. ‘Storage cell one appears to contain an H-912 transport container and a D-902 detonation sequencer,’ Alvarez reported. ‘Released for active inventory under special executive privilege as per Executive Order 13223, secret codicil A.’
‘I concur,’ agreed Hu.
Hang on, Rich thought, ‘Released for active inventory’? What the hell . . . ?
‘Please determine whether the H-912 is active.’
‘We’ll need to enter the storage cell.’ Alvarez’s tone was matter-of-fact, almost bored.
‘You may enter when ready,’ said the lead NNSA inspector.
One of the guards tensed.
‘You may enter,’ repeated the inspector; the chief administrator cleared his throat.
‘Sergeant Jackson? If these inspectors’ authorization isn’t good enough for you, then put it on my tab.’
‘Sir, I – ’ The guard subsided, clearly unhappy.
‘Thank you, Mr. Ellis.’ The NNSA inspector raised an eyebrow at the chief administrator.
‘We’ve all got our jobs to do,’ Ellis grunted. ‘And unauthorized access is an issue here.’ He fell silent as Alvarez and Hu climbed down into the crypt and bent over the cylinder, their heads nearly touching.
As with all nuclear weapons procedures, two commissioned officers were called for. There was a small inspection window on the top of the cylinder; if an actual core was installed, a colored reflector would be positioned right behind it. ‘I can confirm that the H-912 inspection window is showing code orange,’ said Alvarez. ‘Captain?’
Hu echoed him: ‘I concur with the major.’
The minder of the checklists ticked off another box.
‘Next, uh, if you could verify that your instrument is working using the test sample, we can proceed to step six – ’
More to-ing and fro-ing as Alvarez and Hu proceeded to calibrate their portable detector. ‘It’s working all right,’ Alvarez confirmed. ‘We’re going to check the H-912 now.’ More to-ing and fro-ing as he fastened a stubby cylinder to the top of the olive-drab container and pushed buttons. A minute passed. ‘I’m not getting anything.’
‘Agreed. Something isn’t right here . . .’
Someone swore. ‘Agent Moran, if you’d like to try your instrument now?’
Rich felt an unpleasant numbness creep over him, a resignation to the unfolding process of discovery and the horrors that it promised to reveal. Everything that had happened to bring them to this situation had taken place weeks, months, or even years ago; nor was he implicated in it. Other people would have to defend their actions, possibly in court – not Rich. But that didn’t make things better. Nothing made things better, not when they were the kind of things that were the bread and butter of his occupation. Agent Moran unpacked his detector as carefully as a forensic tech attending a particularly gruesome murder scene. ‘Nothing,’ he announced.
‘Right.’ The NNSA inspector sounded as unhappy as Rich felt. ‘Mr. Ellis, with your permission, I think we ought to proceed to open the H-912 and see what’s really in there.’
‘You’re sure those detectors’ – Ellis nudged forward – ‘let me see that. McDonnell, if you could check this reference sample – ’
More to-ing and fro-ing as Ellis and his staff confirmed (not to anyone’s relief) that the reference samples the inspectors were using were, indeed, the real deal – ‘All right, on my authority, Willis? Unseal this carrier for internal visual inspection.’
‘Sir.’ The senior guard made it sound like a cough. ‘Opening a device on inactive inventory is a security – ’
‘Sergeant, I am very much afraid that this is not, in fact, a device on inactive inventory. It’s something else. In which case, the regulation you’re about to quote at me doesn’t apply, does it?’
‘Right.’ The guard looked unhappy. ‘Will you put that in writing, sir? Because if not, I’ll have to . . .’
Ellis took a deep breath. ‘Yes, I will put it in writing for you. Witnessed by everybody here.’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Now, are we going to keep these people waiting?’
Rich felt an elbow in his ribs. ‘Have to what?’ whispered Chavez.
‘Shoot somebody,’ Rich gr
unted. ‘Probably us.’
‘Captain Hu . . .’
‘I’m on it.’
The audience in the storage room fell silent as Captain Hu set to work, unfastening catches and then going to work with a torque wrench under Alvarez’s gaze. He took barely five minutes, but to Rich it felt closer to five hours. Finally, the lid of the carrier came free.
‘Well?’ asked Ellis.
Hu held the carrier open as Alvarez reached down and pulled. ‘We’ve got an empty quiver,’ he said laconically, and held up his catch: an object which, from the way he held it, had to be unusually heavy. ‘Unless we’ve taken to storing lead bricks in nuclear weapon carriers . . .’
*
The transportation of cell phones – let alone camera phones – into the secure areas of Pantex was more than slightly discouraged. Rich stayed with the crowd scene for the next two hours, as the inspectors ripped through the other eleven storage cells in the facility with increasing desperation. Then, with the final tally – six H-912s filled with the sleeping FADM lightweight nukes, six H-912s empty but for lead bricks and a slip of red paper taped inside the inspection window – he slipped outside.
Chavez followed him. ‘The colonel will want to know,’ she said as the door closed behind them.
‘Yeah,’ he agreed. He nodded to the guard on duty outside, then presented his badge. ‘We have to make a call. Where can I find a phone?’
The cop looked at him with barely concealed suspicion. ‘You don’t get to go anywhere until I confirm you’re free to leave the area, sir.’
Chavez snorted. ‘You have no legal authority over us, soldier.’ She held up her warrant card. ‘C’mon, Rich, we’re – ’
The guard tensed. ‘You’re not leaving!’ he repeated, louder.
Rich spread his hands. ‘Whoa! We don’t need an argument and we don’t need to leave the area, we just need to make a phone call. Is there a voice terminal we can use nearby? Preferably secure?’
The Revolution Trade (Merchant Princes Omnibus 3) Page 1
