by Jack Du Brul
“They laid themselves out on the runway in nothing but their birthday suits. They used their bodies to spell out ‘Up yours, Mao.’ ”
Mercer laughed. “Would the Chinese be able to see it?”
“Shit, they’ve stolen enough of our technology to be able to tell which ones were circumcised.”
At the head of the stairs, Sykes opened a paneled door into a conference room, then told Mercer that Ira would escort him back to his room. The two men shook hands at their parting.
Heavy drapes were drawn over the room’s picture window, and banker’s lamps reflected puddles of cherry light off the burnished table. Along one wall were photographs of the U-2 spy plane. Ira sat at the head of the table, his jacket draped over his chair. He’d had the foresight to bring a bottle of his favorite Scotch and a bucket of ice.
Mercer accepted a glass gratefully. Though not a Scotch drinker, this had shaped up to be one of those days. Dr. Marie, on Ira’s left, drank from a bottle of water.
Sitting opposite the physicist, Mercer saluted them both with his drink, knocked it back in two quick swallows then shredded their veil of secrecy with his accurate hypothesis. “You’re building a subterranean repository for undocumented nuclear waste, like what the Department of Energy is constructing at Yucca Mountain.”
The silence had the weight of lead.
Dr. Marie finally managed to stammer, “How did you…,” before her voice failed her.
Ira merely laughed.
For half a century America’s nuclear power plants had been splitting untold tons of radioactive material to extract its energy. The result was a vastly more concentrated product than what went into the reactors, a deadly waste that wouldn’t lose its lethality for millennia. The short-term solution had been to store this waste in cooling pools at the plants. The only viable long-term disposal method was to find a suitable place to bury it and hope to God that they could put a heavy enough cork on it to keep the nuclear genie in its bottle.
Work was currently under way to construct a pair of fourteen-mile tunnels a thousand feet below Yucca Mountain. The waste would be stored in rooms excavated off these tunnels. Even with the water table lying a further thousand feet below the repository, extraordinary measures were to be taken to prevent seepage from coming into contact with the impenetrable casks that would contain the radioactive materials.
The forty thousand tons of nuclear waste currently stockpiled would be moved to the facility over the next two decades. When the repository reached its seventy-seven-thousand-ton capacity, there would be a century of additional monitoring before the complex was completely sealed in 2116.
Mercer gave Dr. Marie an ironic smile. “To answer your almost asked question, it’s the only thing that makes sense. We’re maybe forty miles from Yucca Mountain, you’re a nuclear engineer and my principal job is digging tunnels. That adds up to only one thing. Throwing Ira’s presence into the mix just gives this situation the right touch of subterfuge.”
“I resent that defamation of my character,” Ira grumbled without malice. “And your assessment is a bit off. The waste we plan to store here is documented. What we want to do is bring in most of the really nasty stuff before anyone knows it’s on the move.”
“By nasty you mean the waste left over from our weapons program and by anyone you mean terrorists?”
“Exactly.” Ira recharged Mercer’s glass. “We want to do the same thing they did when they transported the Hope Diamond.”
Mercer knew that story well. The last time the fabled diamond was moved from its home at the Smithsonian to New York City for a thorough examination and cleaning the security had been unprecedented — armored cars, police escorts and a large contingent of guards. Yet when they arrived at Harry Winston’s Jewelers in Manhattan, the box containing the fabulous gem was empty. What no one knew, not the guards, not the media or the public, was that the security entourage had been a ruse to throw off potential thieves. The stone had actually been sent in a nondescript package through the regular mail.
Dr. Marie leaned forward in her chair. “We’ll use standard shipping casks and all the regular safety devices, but we want to avoid the media attention that would tip off terrorists or anyone else who wants to derail the operation. By shipping material in secret, we eliminate the temptation.”
“How long do you plan to keep the waste here?” Mercer asked.
“It’ll be moved into the permanent repository over time. Because of the heat generated by the material we’ll be storing here, it has to be spread out all through the Yucca Mountain facility.”
“What we’re looking to build,” Ira interrupted, “is a temporary holding area away from media attention and out of reach of terrorists. Nothing will remain here by the time the main site is sealed.”
Leaning back, Mercer digested what he’d learned. He grasped the need for what Ira wanted to do. He knew that a great deal of nuclear policy was based on emotion rather than science, although he didn’t discount the horror if there ever was a major catastrophe, or even a minor one. By moving the worst of the waste before anyone knew it was happening, Dr. Marie felt she could cut the nation’s anxiety levels as well as better protect the shipments. It made sense because one way or the other the material would be transported.
He understood the need for secrecy. What they hadn’t explained is the urgency, and he was willing to wait for hours before asking that question. While it was Ira’s nature not to divulge any more than necessary, Mercer wouldn’t agree to help until he knew the whole truth. He didn’t take it personally. It was the price he paid for his friendship with a professional spy.
Neither Ira nor Mercer showed the least discomfort sitting next to each other in silence. Dr. Marie, however, felt the urge to fill the lull. “We had an accident two days ago. A cave-in. We’ve been running twenty-four hours a day in three shifts, ten men per shift. The collapse occurred during a shift change. Fifteen men, including two shift supervisors, were killed.”
“The other five?” Mercer asked.
“Escaped unharmed,” she replied. “For security reasons, we don’t want to bring in any more miners. However, we all felt that we needed a second engineer. When our request reached Admiral Lasko, he said he had the right person. You’re a mine engineer who already has a high enough security clearance to work here.”
Again, Mercer noticed, nothing was said about the urgency.
“Listen, Mercer.” Ira’s voice deepened. “We’re already two months behind schedule. The tunnels should already be done and contractors brought in to handle water seepage problems. The first load of waste will be arriving in one hundred twenty-one days.”
“Why so precise?”
“Because a storage pool at Oak Ridge won’t be able to take any more spent fuel rods and they’re scheduled to replace the current fuel assemblies in an experimental fast-breeder reactor in a hundred twenty-one days. We want to bring what’s in the pool here rather than shuffle it to another facility.”
Satisfied with the answer, Mercer asked the next question that was bothering him. “I was told I’d be here for a week. Obviously that’s bull. I’m in the middle of a contract with De Beers. How long do I have to put them off? Am I here for the two months you said you’re behind?”
Marie shook her head. “Our remaining shift boss says we’re no more than two weeks from breaking into the subterranean chamber we’re planning on using. It’s a natural pocket in the rock. Our original geologic survey said it’s a hollow space left behind after an intrusive magma dike subsided.”
That’s where the seepage Ira mentioned came into play, Mercer thought. Though not common, such a dike — basically a tongue of molten rock injected into the surrounding strata — can drain back into the central magma chamber that spawned it. In this situation, it leaves an empty cavity in the earth that often fills with water. Once they got the hydrology handled, it made sense to use this natural chamber for their short-term repository.
“Who did the original survey?” he as
ked, doubting they’d found a drained dike. It was more likely a sill or laccolith, which ran with the grain of sedimentary layering rather than against it.
“Gregor Hood.”
Mercer nodded. “I know him. He takes a while, but he’s good. What about the other shift supervisor? Who have you got?”
“Donald Randall, he’s a professional miner from Kentucky.”
It took a moment for the name to sink in. “Donny Randall?”
“He prefers Donald,” Dr. Marie said primly, as if maintaining such niceties could somehow lessen the feeling of loathing Randall created.
Mercer’s eyes bored into Ira’s. His voice went flint-hard and accusatory. “You hired Randall the Handle? Do you know what an effing psychopath he is?”
Ira looked away. “We’ve had some complaints about him, but it’s too late. He’s already here and we can’t bring in anyone else.”
Donny Randall, Randall the Handle, got his nickname in South Africa before the end of apartheid. He’d gone there because his reputation for quick violence had gotten him booted from the United Mine Workers and blackballed from every mine in the States. South Africa became a perfect place for him. It wasn’t so much that he was racist, he was simply sadistic. Back then the black miners had no way to redress labor issues so he could be as brutal as he wanted without fear of retribution.
Standing six feet six, with a build to match, Randall delighted in fighting any man who challenged him, though he preferred to use the handle of a pickax rather than his fists, thus his moniker. Mercer had heard that he’d killed at least six men in the mines around Johannesburg and had beaten dozens more. It was also in South Africa that Randall had found another application for his two-inch-diameter piece of hardened hickory. He’d use it to sodomize workers too young or too small to defend themselves. Because of the permissive attitude of the courts, he hadn’t been tried for any of his acts. He’d left the country when Nelson Mandela assumed the presidency. Some said he was asked to go, but Mercer believed the story that he’d fled from a mob of black miners who’d wanted to give him a Soweto necklace — a burning tire around his neck.
His name had come up from time to time in the years since, but Mercer hadn’t known Randall had returned to the States. The last he’d heard, Donny was in a Russian prison following an attempt to steal diamonds from the Mir mine in northern Siberia.
Mercer finally stopped staring at the top of Ira’s bald head and allowed his eyes to sweep across Dr. Marie. If she thought all mine engineers were like Randall, no wonder she’d been chilly toward him. “I’ll help with your project,” he said, and Ira looked up, “on the condition that I can square things with De Beers-”
“We’ll take care of that.”
“-and that you make sure Randall knows I’m in charge. You’ve got enough men for two shifts working eight- to ten-hour days. Once we’re settled I don’t even want to see that son of a bitch.”
Ira and Briana Marie realized the emotion in Mercer’s voice wasn’t fear of Don Randall. It was fear he’d kill him.
“Thank you, Dr. Mercer,” Briana said. “You don’t know what this means to us.”
“I knew I could count on you,” Ira added, a couple of the tension lines in his forehead subsiding. This time he filled three tumblers with Scotch and they toasted each other.
The following morning, Mercer and Ira boarded a Chevy Suburban identical to the one that had taken him to Andrews Air Force Base. He idly hoped the government received a volume discount on the massive SUVs.
There was one difference, he quickly discovered. This vehicle had heavy curtains drawn over the windows and an opaque screen dividing them from the driver. Despite what he’d seen the evening before, it was obvious he wasn’t cleared to view other parts of Area 51. Then he thought that maybe Ira wasn’t cleared either. An interesting notion.
When he asked about Dr. Marie, Ira explained that she now worked out of Washington and had only come to Nevada for the briefing the night before. She wouldn’t be needed at the secret repository until well after the tunnel had been excavated. As the darkened truck rolled away from the base the two men passed the time drinking a thermos of coffee and reminiscing about their first meeting in Greenland almost a year ago.
Once the van reached an area beyond the immediate perimeter of Groom Lake, the unseen driver lowered the partition so they could see out the windshield and Ira drew back the curtains.
The mountains held a distant chill even if last night hadn’t been cold enough for frost. The few plants, cactus, yucca, and sage mostly, were stunted by their harsh environment as though life in the barren stretches was an experiment that was slowly failing. This was a land of rock in a thousand shades that changed and shifted as the sun rose higher. The dome of sky hinted that it stretched far beyond the horizon but seemed contained by the jagged hills.
Their destination was two hours from the main base, tucked at the end of a box canyon. Mercer recognized that the mounds of tailings, the material excavated from a mine shaft, had been spread evenly along the canyon floor to disguise that any work was taking place. The camp was nothing more than several battered mobile homes situated close to the towering canyon walls. An overhang of rock at the canyon’s lip kept the facility in perpetual shadow and hid it from aerial observation.
The camp was as forlorn as a West Texas trailer park, Mercer thought, although he’d worked in much, much worse. A tumbleweed skittered from between two trailers, whirled in a crosscurrent of wind, then dashed past the SUV like a frightened animal.
Then he spotted a natural cave at the end of the canyon. It was at least seventy feet wide and nearly half as tall. It appeared to stretch a hundred feet or more into the mountain. Powerful arc lights mounted on scaffolds lit the interior and highlighted the machinery at the top of a twenty-foot-square hole driven into the living rock. The two-story hoist allowed overburden to be dumped directly into trucks that spread it on the desert floor. Nearby were massive ventilator ducts to keep fresh air circulating underground and several box trailers for storage. Near the mouth of the cave were two large generators for power and the massive outlet of a down-hole water pump to handle drainage.
Mercer was impressed with the security as well as the efficiency of what Ira had created here. “Put in a golf course and some condos and you’d have a nice spot for a retirement community.”
“Hell Hollow Home for the Aged?”
Mercer laughed, grateful that the Ira he knew was coming back. “I was thinking Desolate Digs for the Near-Dead. Harry could be your spokesman.”
The Suburban braked at the first of the trailers. Ira stepped to the dusty ground as the trailer door swung open. The man standing at the threshold in jeans, cowboy boots, and a white T-shirt seemed as apropos as the tumbleweed that had crossed their path. As dried and tough as a piece of beef jerky, he squinted at Mercer and then nodded when he recognized Ira. “Howdy, Mr. Lasko. This our new boss?”
“Hey, Red.” What little showed of Red’s hair from under his hat was brown. “This is Mercer.”
“I heard of ya.” Red’s voice twanged like an untuned guitar. “You’re that fella what found a new diamond mine in Africa a couple years back.”
They shook hands while Ira continued the introductions. “Red Harding was the number-two man on the shift that lost half the crew during the cave-in.”
“You didn’t want to take over?” Mercer asked, needing to know now if this guy resented him for taking a job he felt he might have deserved.
“Hell, son” — Red was perhaps fifteen years older than Mercer, although it wouldn’t come as a surprise if he had fathered some children in his mid-teens — “comes a time in a man’s life where he don’t wanta give the orders no more. It’s a piece easier just takin’ ’em.”
“Tell me what happened?” Mercer invited.
Red paused, giving the question thought despite the days he’d already had to consider the cause of the cave-in. “A chunk of hanging wall that had no reason to cr
ack loose cracked loose. Came down in a flat piece about eight feet thick that spanned the entire drive. Crushed everyone under it. Fifteen men.”
Mercer got the sense that Red wasn’t comfortable with this vague description of the accident. Not that he was holding anything back. It was just that there was something about it he didn’t understand. “You hadn’t bolted the hanging wall?” Hanging wall was mining parlance for the roof of a tunnel. Bolting was what it sounded like, screwing long bolts into the ceiling to help stabilize the rock.
“No need. We’re boring through some serious hard-rock. No water seepage, no fissures, nothing.”
“They’re bolting it now,” Ira offered.
Mercer expected no less.
After being shown his room in one of the trailers, Mercer changed into his miner’s coveralls while Ira was loaned a spare set by Red Harding. With no place to hide his pistol in the utilitarian room, Mercer decided he’d keep it with him. He tucked it against the small of his back under the coveralls and planted his helmet on his head.
Ira had to keep his baseball cap on to prevent the helmet Red had given him from slipping across his hairless scalp. He suffered the ignominy in silence.
The cavern was markedly cooler than the canyon, even with the excess heat generated by the diesel-powered equipment.
As they waited for the personnel lift to trundle up from underground, Mercer examined a fist-sized chunk of rock that had spilled from the ore shoot. He always marveled at the fact that in the millions, or even billions, of years since this innocuous lump of stone had solidified in the earth’s crust, not one human had ever seen it. He was the first to give it any thought at all. It made him feel like a Golden Age explorer peering at a newly discovered continent. He’d worked in mines since his teenage years in the granite quarries of Vermont, and that thrill had never left him.
The cage hoist arrived with a clang of bells and the three men stepped into the roomy car. The small scope of the project meant that one mine shaft could be used for hauling material from the depths as well as transporting the men to and from work and provide forced air ventilation through enormous ducts secured to the side of the hole.
