by Karen Piper
“I’m sorry, baby.” I patted his head. “I know it’s not your fault. You can stay as long as you want.”
He nodded his head up and down and gulped in the musty air.
Chapter Twenty
The Soviet Union in California
After the first year in Eugene, I was nearly as broke as Sam and had to go home to earn some cash. Though I would have been mocked in Eugene if I’d called myself a “hippie,” I was certainly no longer a Republican by the summer of 1989. I started to feel as though I were living a double life in a place I could never explain to my parents. Or admit that I liked. It was hard to go home that summer.
Yet something happened that immediately changed my mind once there. At first, I was shocked when I saw that glimpse of yellow in my manila envelope—a “Secret” clearance!—after picking up my badge at work. I was still only a Clerk Typist II, which I assumed warranted the usual blue for “Classified.” “Secret” would allow me to get past gates and open files. My red Plymouth Duster with a white racing stripe like the one in Starsky & Hutch could tear up the desert all over the base. I could even open the “burn” drawer at the bottom of every file cabinet and finally see what was inside.
Maybe the answers would be in there.
To get to my assignment at Echo Range, I passed the wild horse and burro facility, where these animals were dumped once a year after being rounded up by the navy. The navy used to hire professional marksmen and just shoot them but had to stop when the story broke in The New York Times: “381 Burros Are Slain by Marksmen to Clear Naval Center on Coast.” After that, the navy started to hire professional “cowpokes” to round them up. At the wild horse and burro facility, they were held until adopted, though not that many people wanted a burro. Horses were more popular.
I was tempted to stop and pet a baby burro, but I was running late. It was a thirty-mile drive into the southern Argus Range and the entrance to Echo Range. I pushed the speedometer past seventy, tapping the horn to say “hello” as I sped by my lonely long-eared friends. Work started at six thirty rather than seven thirty a.m. at Echo Range so we could have Fridays off and not go stir-crazy out there.
The road to Echo Range separates two giant chunks of the base—the North and South Ranges. The South Range was initially acquired by the navy just to keep brothels and saloons from lining the road for navy men. Straight ahead was Trona, a chemical-company town where they mined the surface of a dry lake and turned it into fertilizer, grocery carts, rayon, sugar, Pepsi bottles, and even Pepsi. My sister worked there for a while, but since the whole town stinks like rotten eggs, she didn’t last long.
I turned right, avoiding the sulfur bubble, into the South Range. Crossing over a small pass, I saw a familiar-looking man with a gun standing beside a white coffin-sized box. He was guarding “the gate,” perhaps an odd term since there was no real gate there—just a man, a box, and a gun in the middle of the road. You could find that sort of thing all over China Lake.
He waved me through when he saw my “Secret” badge, which was when it first occurred to me that maybe the whole place was “Secret.” Maybe that’s why I got the badge. Ahead, I saw three double-sized mobile homes plopped down at odd angles in the desert next to a parking lot. One brick building stood in the distance. After identifying my new trailer home from the crude map I was given, I walked in to find a hallway with green indoor-outdoor carpeting, looking like a putting green at an abandoned miniature golf course. Strangely, there seemed to be no one around, though I caught a whiff of something—coffee?—from a slightly cracked door. I knocked quietly, pushing a little.
“Excuse me, uh, I’m the new summer hire?”
A man about forty with patchy blond hair jumped up from his computer so fast that I thought he might knock it over. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, taken aback. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“No, that’s okay.” He held out his hand. “I’m Russ, the division head.” He wore a pastel plaid shirt and Dockers, and his face was empty and kind like a Methodist preacher’s. I noticed a paisley fabric–covered button with a diagonal red slash pinned to his shirt, which people wore years ago in support of our technical director, Burrell Hays. In 1986, Hays had been fired by Assistant Secretary of the Navy Melvyn Paisley. I assumed my boss must be a Hays devotee, not realizing the battle was ongoing. Though he was no longer the head of China Lake, Paisley was still free.
“Somehow I forgot you were coming today,” Russ said apologetically.
“Well, here I am.” I had worked on the base enough summers to know it required a lot of standing around while people figured out what to do with you. I was the foster kid in a new family every year.
Russ grabbed my sack lunch to put in the trailer’s shared fridge, then showed me to an office that looked like my dad’s: standard government gray with a giant school clock. At least I had a door that closed. The “burn” drawer at the bottom of the file cabinet caught my eye. Of course, I could handle only yellow files, not red for “Top Secret,” but it was a start. “Top Secret” people still got yellow badges, since it was supposed to be secret that they were “Top Secret.” But they walked around carrying red files, which kind of blew their cover.
After showing me my office, Russ took me on a tour outside, stretching out his arms as though he owned the place. “So this is Echo Range. . . .” He waved across the horizon.
“Okay,” I said. “But what’s it for?” Every area on the base has its own specialty, like the Atom Bomb Area (Salt Wells), the Rocket Sled Area (Supersonic Naval Ordnance Research Track, or SNORT), and the “Experimental Air Center” (Area E). He looked down at my badge, thinking.
“Yes, it’s Secret.” I nodded proudly.
“We simulate Russian radar here,” he said simply. “Our planes fly over, and we check to see how well Russian radar can track them.”
“I see,” I said. “So that’s all you do out here?” He nodded, looking slightly disappointed.
“But why are the buildings scattered around like that?” I asked.
“Ah, you noticed!” He brightened up. “That’s the trick out here. The buildings are supposed to look like ships at sea from the air.”
I laughed out loud and said, “Shouldn’t we be swimming now?”
“I suppose so.” Russ chuckled. “You have to imagine that we are in Russian waters. You work on the Russian patrol ship.” He pointed toward my office. “That is a Russian torpedo ship, over there.” Then he turned again. “And there you have our aircraft carrier.”
“So if I see a periscope pop up from the desert floor, should I let you know?” I asked.
“Definitely,” he replied seriously, then leaned over slightly and made a faint sneezelike sound.
Laughter?
Straightening up, he lost his smile and said, “The buildings are called Sea Site One, Two, and Three. We’re in One. We’re Sea Site One.”
“Will the Americans that fly over actually shoot at us?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Haven’t so far.”
We walked by the Rattlesnake Control Office, the only brick building, and he warned me to watch for rattlers inside our trailer and report them to the people in that office. “We had an incident with a Mojave green recently,” he explained, “which was blocking the door to the office.” I shuddered, knowing that this kind could kill you in a few hours, unlike most, which took a day or two. “People had to wait outside until Rattlesnake Control came and got it.” I wondered where they put that snake. Was it in that brick building, waiting to be adopted?
“So they wait for snakes, and we wait for planes,” I said. “It sounds like we do a lot of waiting around out here.” He shrugged.
“Have you had any more trouble with rattlers?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing major. No bites,” he replied nonchalantly. “Scorpions are a bigger problem. The woman you’re replacing was bit by one when she
was on the toilet. It was in a newspaper on the floor, and she picked it up. We had to medevac her out.” I was surprised a scorpion bite would make her sick all summer. They could kill children but usually only made adults sick for a few days, at most. If we had a scorpion in our house, my dad would put a drinking glass over it and take it outside.
“How’s she doing?” I asked.
“Oh, that was nothing,” Russ replied. “She has cancer.”
I was relieved that, here in the faux USSR, I would not have to type in Russian or wear Russian uniforms the way they did at Fort Irwin. There, at that army base adjacent to ours, soldiers were flown in from all over the United States for two-week intensive war games against the “Soviets,” who were actually American soldiers, in heavy green uniforms with red stars. There was even a Russian town with a bakery and other shops that was used to train soldiers, not to shoot civilians in a firefight. It was strange to think that a soldier’s two-year stint could be spent working as a baker in the Evil Empire.
By then, I was carrying around Karl Marx wherever I went, having read his work in my sociology class taught by Professor John Foster. Marx’s Jesus-style communism with everyone sharing sounded a bit too utopian for me. In Eugene, I had watched experimental “back-to-the-woods” utopias turn into ego-driven wars, leaving me thinking that when left to our own devices we were more Lord of the Flies than Walden Pond. That said, I liked other parts of Marx’s writing quite a bit, such as his ideas about “alienation” and “commodity fetishism.” Marx said “alienation” occurred because we had no connection to the products we made anymore. Instead, we elevated the things we could buy to the level of religious fetishes without knowing the conditions in which they were made—such as Chinese sweat shops. As someone opposed to the eternal gobbling up of the land to make ever cheaper shit, I concurred.
My dad was not so happy about me and Marx, however. “But there’s nothing even about Russia in it,” I said at Arby’s one night. The town had grown up with the Soviet Union but never grew out of it.
“Yes, but he is an atheist,” my dad replied. “See, it says here—” He flipped through a book he had bought on Marx, a Christian book, of course. I suddenly realized that I was the Mormon. “‘Religion is the opium of the people,’” my dad quoted Marx. “He thinks religion is only a drug.”
“Okay . . .” I paused, aiming my roast beef drippings away from his book. “But my teacher at Westmont said Marx believed opium was a good thing because it helped you forget your troubles. Like religion. So he’s for it.”
“What kind of college did you go to?” My dad tapped his foot wildly beneath the Formica tabletop.
“Ecumenical,” I replied.
Unlike my dad, Russ did not care what I read at work. On one of our desert walks, I even hinted that I might be a Communist. “I mean,” I corrected, “I think capitalism may not be all it’s cracked up to be.” The desert “pavement,” fine pebbles that stay in place when the sand is blown away, was easy to walk on but reflected back the sun like a satellite dish. It was hot, and the rocks sizzled. Everything was hiding.
“That’s interesting,” he said. “I don’t know that much about it.”
“But I thought we were Russians?” I asked. “Aren’t they Communist?”
“Technically,” he said. “But things are changing. Communism may be over.” He confirmed a suspicion I had since the prior year, when I first saw a magazine on base with a story about “looking for a new enemy.” There was also an edginess on base, a panic in the way people walked. Russ had it now.
My mom talked about a possible RIF (reduction in force), which was the only way you could get fired at China Lake. Technically, not “fired” but “reduced.” I knew then that the collapse of the Soviet Union could really be a disaster for us. Hadn’t Reagan promised to “spend them into oblivion” by building more weapons than they could keep up with? It sounded like the years of plentitude were ending.
Maybe Russ wanted the Communists back. Something had gone tipsy-turvy on base. It seemed only my dad was still mad at Communists. Then Russ added, looking over his shoulder, “Just remember to keep the door shut when you’re reading. Some important people are coming by today.”
As we turned around to head back, we both stopped short at the sight of all the black cars in the parking lot. No one from the desert would ever buy or even rent a black car. Only white.
“Who’s here?” I asked Russ, surprised.
“Oh, they’re early!” he said, and darted back. Looking down at my shorts and tank top, I knew why Russ wanted me to keep my office door shut. Washington had come.
Back in my office, staying out of sight, I fidgeted. I paced. Finally, I leaned my ear against the door, trying to interpret the sounds outside while hoping no one would notice the shadow my feet made. Nothing. Laughter. Then suddenly a burst of commotion exploded in the hallway. I cracked the door and saw a lot of Washington types milling around, sporting blue suits, ties, fancy watches, and shoes that looked as if you could fry an egg on them.
The door suddenly hit me in the face. It was Russ, pushing my door open. “Quick, come with me,” he said, looking a bit too pleased with himself as he led me to the radar room, crowded with these foreigners. It was dark, with a wall of television screens showing perfectly still blue desert sky. Underneath the TVs was a black radar screen like you see in the movies, the ones that go blip, blip, blip.
“Brrr, it’s cold in here,” I whispered, rubbing my arms for warmth. Clearly, the air-conditioning had been turned up for these guys. “What are we waiting for?”
“The B-2 bomber is coming,” Russ whispered. “It’s the maiden flight.”
“Wow,” I said, suddenly realizing I was watching history. I had seen these planes, lauded as our new “wonder weapon,” in magazines, but no one had seen them in the sky. They cost $1 billion each, and the air force had already bought a hundred of them. “This is so exciting,” I said, now understanding his change in mood. Russ turned and smiled at me as though I were the son he’d never had, proud to show me our new gadget. Stealth bomber.
“July 17, 1989 . . .” I tried to remember the day and thought I’d better write it down. All eyes were glued to the TV screens, waiting for its debut. Finally it emerged in all its glory, looking to me like a Batmobile. It was silver on top, black on the bottom, and thin as a calculator.
“Wow,” I whispered, watching $1 billion fly by. I looked around, hoping to meet the excited eyes of a stranger and thus to share and make real this sacred moment. The Batmobile’s premier.
That was when I noticed no one else was smiling.
A man in front of me whispered, “Isn’t it supposed to be invisible?”
“Blip, blip, blip,” I heard, and looked down at the radar screen.
Blip, blip, blip . . . I saw.
It seemed we were all frozen then, as though time had stopped . . . until, in slow motion, the man in front of me turned around and pointed at me like someone straight out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. His eyes became the size of saucers as he screeched alarmingly, “What the hell is she doing here?” Everyone slowly turned to stare. I was afraid they all might jump on me and eat me.
That was when I learned a yellow badge was sometimes not enough.
Russ quickly ushered me outside, where he took me by the shoulders and looked at me like an interrogator. “You cannot tell anyone what you saw in there,” he said. “Please.” His face was so close to mine that I thought he might kiss me. “Okay? Don’t tell anyone that I brought you in there.”
Only then did I think of the questionnaire I’d had to fill out to work on the base, with strange questions like “Have you ever taken LSD?” and “Have you smoked marijuana?” I’d always checked “No” on those, although I suspected people did even if their answer was “Yes.” But then I remembered another question: “Will you protect the secrecy of China Lake?” I h
ad no particular sense of loyalty to China Lake, but I did to Russ. So I kept my secret.
Two years later, the same stealth technology entered the field on the F-117 during the Gulf War. Still I said nothing. I sometimes wonder what happened after I left that room. Maybe they took sides between those who wanted a cover-up and those who wanted to tell the truth and report what they saw. Maybe they duked it out until they all ended in a giant, exhausted pile on the floor with nothing resolved but with ties askew, blue suits ripped, and clumps of hair around them.
Years after leaving Echo Range, I read that a Tornado fighter plane crashed into my building, Sea Site One. The crash instantly killed two German pilots, whose plane had inexplicably nose-dived while they were testing their radar-jamming equipment. Six people in the building received injuries ranging from smoke inhalation to broken bones. I wondered what happened to the secretary I had replaced, who may or may not have survived cancer and a scorpion bite by then. I wondered what she thought when a plane crash-landed on her.
As for the Cold War ending, it turned out there was nothing to fear since weapons outlive wars and even states. Soon we would be fighting Soviet weapons in the hands of non-Soviets. We would be fighting American weapons in the hands of non-Americans. At Fort Irwin, the soldiers would simply take off their red stars and become jihadist terrorists instead.
Chapter Twenty-One
Countdown to Confrontation
And so I went back and forth between worlds, back and forth, until the whole world was twirling. Was the enemy in there or out here? The Saturday Evening Post once called China Lake “the Navy’s Land of Oz.” But sometimes Eugene felt like Oz too. Meanings collapsed around me like the Berlin Wall. I did not have the language to talk to my parents about what I was experiencing. I knew they worried, but assumed it was because I continued to study literature. No one was getting jobs in that. Frankly, I was worried too.
