Critical Reaction

by Todd M Johnson

  Still, keeping this secret from his family any longer wasn’t fair to anyone. It was clear that his silence was already affecting them: Suzy and Megan were openly worried and it was obvious Michael had suggested this hike today out of worry about his old man.

  Besides, didn’t they deserve to know how Hanford was changing?

  He took a deep breath and started telling Michael the story. It was all new to his son. He’d heard about the softball game and his dad’s role in it, of course: it had been all around the union the next day. But Michael had chalked up his dad’s intervention as a simple act of kindness. Now, hearing the context, Michael’s eyes grew glassy with anger.

  As Poppy’d predicted, Michael pressed him hard to go to the union. He let him make his case, then shook his head.

  “Son, I can’t do that. Covington will challenge my story and yank my clearance. I don’t know if I can win that fight.”

  “Then I’ll go to the union.”

  Poppy shook his head more vehemently. “This is my battle. Covington might already be keeping an eye on you as my son. The last thing I want is to get you and your family dragged into this—especially if I refuse to change my statement.”

  He’d couched his decision as still unmade. Poppy looked into his boy’s eyes and knew that there was nothing left to decide. Now that he’d told Michael the truth, there was no way he could face his boy if he backed down from Covington and altered the statement.

  “Mike,” Poppy said, “you’ve got to promise no matter what happens the next few months—no matter how much you want to help out—you’ll stay out of this.”

  “I can’t do that, Dad.”

  “Then you make this harder, not easier.”

  The whole hike back to the truck and drive to Sherman, Poppy worked to exact the promise he needed. He received it as he dropped Michael off at his house.

  Poppy pulled away and drove a few blocks more before pulling over. There he closed his eyes and whispered a simple prayer.

  He opened his eyes again, hoping for confirmation about his decision to act. Nothing came to him. No flash or prophetic whisper. All he felt was twisted and spun around—and a little scared. Like he had for weeks.

  But then it’d never worked that way, Poppy told himself. He knew what he had to do.

  On the road again, Poppy drove directly to the Covington Nuclear building, just a block from the federal and state courthouses. Poppy parked on the street and made his way to the front entrance.

  It was near closing time, but the guard directed him to the Human Resources Department on the second floor. Poppy walked the crowded halls, asking for more directions until he found the right door.

  The HR Department was about what he expected: a large open room with offices surrounding it, stuffed with cubicles. A pretty young woman passing by stopped and asked if she could help. Poppy held out the report in his hand.

  “Could you give this to Adam Worth, please?”

  “Of course,” she said with a smile.

  Poppy wondered, as he joined the flow of Covington employees working their way to the building exit, what Worth would do when he saw the unchanged copy of his original statement with The Truth written across the bottom.

  He ran some errands after that, moving from store to store half aware before heading to the retirement home. As he walked the aisles, Poppy had a feeling of discomfort that he couldn’t place, something different than the fear of retaliation or the worry about what he’d been exposed to at LB5.

  It was nearing dark when he finally pulled the truck into the retirement home parking lot. As he turned the key and the engine grew quiet, he finally realized the source of his discomfort.

  For the first time since he’d begun his career at Hanford decades ago, here in the heart of his hometown of Sherman, he felt utterly alone.

  Chapter 22

  “Explain that to me again,” Adam Worth said, standing in the empty lobby of the Sherman Retirement Home, where he’d stopped when his phone buzzed.

  Eric King’s sigh came over the cell phone. “All right. Kieran Mullaney’s attorneys don’t have to get us their final expert reports for a few more weeks. But under the rules, they do have to update us on the identity of any new experts they intend to use. This afternoon we received the names of two new experts that Emily Hart and her father are substituting for Dr. Nadine, their Princeton expert.”

  “Give me the names.”

  “Dr. Virgil Strong out of USC and a Dr. Minh Trân. Looks like Trân’s a consultant type, unaffiliated with any university.”

  “So they’re using two experts now, to replace their Princeton man?”

  “Yes, or they could be identifying both but only planning on using one. Hedging their bets until they see their reports.”

  Only one of these new names was familiar to Adam. The prospect of being in the dark about a potential expert in the case disturbed him.

  “Keep me apprised if you hear anything more,” Adam said, and turned off the call.

  This news from King came on the heels of Patrick Martin’s melodramatic delivery that afternoon of his unaltered original statement. Sixty-three years old, with no chance of finding other employment approaching Hanford’s pay scale, and Martin was risking his job over this. It was a gesture Adam hadn’t expected. But if this security guard thought he was bluffing, he’d know better soon.

  He wondered if his father would claim to admire such a man.

  Adam pulled up his iPhone contact list and punched the name.

  “This is Dr. Janniston,” he heard the line answered.

  “Doctor, this is Adam Worth. Do you recall me alerting you that we might need an exhaustive psych exam of one of the victims of the October sixteenth explosion?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, we’ll need to move forward on it. As soon as possible.”

  “That will be difficult. Such an exam could take days—weeks, possibly.”

  “This is imperative, Doctor. And I’d like a face-to-face with you about this man before you meet with him.”

  There was a grunt of shock. “I’d have to move things around. I might be able to get up there in a week and a half—though there would be a significant cost. . . .”

  “That’s not an issue, Dr. Janniston. We need a very complete evaluation, and quickly. Very thorough. Frankly, we’re concerned about the man’s mental stability in view of paranoid statements he’s been making.”

  “Alright. What is the man’s name?”

  “Patrick Martin.”

  “I’ll email you my travel arrangements.”

  Adam ended the call. Good. That was now in the works.

  He pocketed his phone and continued on his way to the elevator. At the end of the fourth-floor hallway, the security guard at Dr. Schutten’s suite acknowledged him as Adam approached.

  “They’re all inside,” the man said.

  Adam nodded and entered, closing the door behind him.

  He had never been in a closed room so soon after someone had died. The sense of death was palpable here—more than just the somber mien of the treating doctor and his nurse as they packed their equipment and monitors, greater than the silence of the three other guards in the room awaiting Adam’s arrival. There was a personality to death, Adam mused. This had substance.

  Schutten’s body was already enclosed in a lead-lined body bag. Adam took the treating physician into a corner and spoke quietly with him for a few moments. The doctor reacted with awe—just as Adam had hoped—when he handed him a check for twice the doctor’s charges. Good, Adam thought. He knew now he’d have no debate about retaining the medical records or the importance of the confidentiality agreement the doctor and nurse had already signed.

  With a final nod, Adam signaled the security crew. The three men quickly converged on the bag and heaved it from the bed onto a gurney. Adam followed as they pushed the gurney from the room.

  It was fully dark outside when they left the retirement home entrance and pushed t
he gurney up to the two Land Rovers parked at the entrance curb. Adam glanced quickly around while the men transferred the bag into the back of the nearest vehicle. He hated the risk of being seen here. If the treating doctor hadn’t insisted on delivery of his check before leaving for the airport, Adam wouldn’t have come. But now that he was here, he might as well accompany the body to the disposal site; he’d wanted to inspect the place again for some time now.

  It was very quiet at this late hour. The only sound, beyond the guard’s grunts and the creaking shocks of the Land Rover as the body landed on the floor, was the hurried footsteps of someone approaching from the parking lot. It was a man, moving rapidly through the splash of light from the overhead lamps at the door before entering the home.

  “Ready, sir,” one of the guards called out, pushing shut the rear hatch.

  Adam nodded and walked toward the Land Rover that held Dr. Schutten’s remains.

  Adam gripped the strap above the passenger door of the black Land Rover as it followed the rutted path running along the eastern base of Rattlesnake Ridge. They were far enough inside the reservation and sufficiently sheltered from the nearest highway by the ridge to permit headlights if they wished. He told the driver so, and the lights came on.

  Adam adjusted the HEPA mask strapped across his nose and mouth. He never traveled through the back country of the Hanford Reservation without one. The chief of security for the project behind the wheel didn’t wear one, nor did the two other security staffers in the first Land Rover, just ahead. In fact, he’d caught the Chief’s sideways glance of humor when Adam donned his own mask.

  He didn’t care. They could risk inhaling stray radiation particles out here on the reservation—where the DOE and its contractors had misplaced over a ton and a half of plutonium over the years. Adam was twenty-eight and planned for a long and prosperous life.

  The lead security vehicle ahead of them rounded a rugged outcropping in the base of the ridge and slowed. Then it turned off the narrow path, making room for Adam’s, which pulled alongside.

  He stepped out of the SUV and looked around the dark and silent landscape beyond the play of the headlights. In two years at Hanford, Adam had not once felt appreciation for the arid lands of the Hanford Reservation. He’d seen it often in daylight, when blue camas, black-eyed susan, and prickly pear sprinkled the brown and gray desert with color. But it wasn’t enough compensation for miles upon miles of hot, dusty flats—with only gullies and round-topped ridges to break up the monotony of the place. This was the perfect locale to dump radioactive waste, he thought: this place and radiation were made for each other.

  But then he was in a foul mood. Though he’d elected to come here tonight, he never liked driving out onto the reservation to the “pit.”

  The Chief had parked so that the car lamps lit up the terrain for fifty feet at the base of the gradual slope they faced. The other SUV’s lights were on high, broadening the illumination another ninety feet up the slope of the hill.

  Even after decades and in the near darkness at his feet, Adam could make out the faint dips in the ground where the temporary rail ties had once lead up to the illuminated hillside. Behind them, Adam knew, the marks grew fainter the further east one walked, as the ground grew harder—until their traces disappeared completely half a mile from this spot.

  The Chief and other security man were already donning Demron hazmat suits. He joined them, pulling on the dark, lightweight radiation gear and crowning it with the mask that covered his head with its own filtration system extending from the faceplate like a boar’s snout.

  Adam was still adjusting his mask when he was startled to see, in the dim starlight to the west, the movement of large creatures across the horizon. Through his feet, Adam felt the ground vibrate faintly from their passing.

  “It’s wild horses, sir,” the Chief said calmly. “Mustangs. We must’ve startled them. They come through this draw on their way west. They get through the fence lines occasionally and muck up the motion sensors. They’ll stop west of here where there’s grass and water, and they get rounded up in the daylight.”

  Relieved, Adam finished settling his suit around him. The Chief checked to see that all of them were fully sealed in their protective suits. Then, from a canvas bag inside the Rover, he produced flashlights, which he passed to each of them. Adam took his and then reached back into the vehicle for an electronic pad the shape of a small notebook.

  “Let’s get the good doctor underground,” Adam said, his voice magnified through the filter.

  The Chief led the way. He reached into the open SUV and grasped a handle on the end of the lead bag, pulling it out with a grunt. A second man grabbed the far end just before it slid from the vehicle onto the ground. Together they trudged up the face of the slope.

  Nearly thirty yards up the hill, they stopped, dropping the bag onto the ground. The Chief pulled out his flashlight and searched for a moment before bending down and feeling along the sloping soil at his feet with both hands. After a moment his fingers stopped, then tightened around something under the ground’s surface. He stood with a grunt at the effort, lifting a heavy camouflage fascia from the slope, then pulling it back and away. Inches of accumulated dirt and rocks scattered from its surface.

  The Chief moved aside, allowing the car lights to illuminate an eight-foot square of dark gray iron underneath, its shape smooth except for a raised plate along one edge. Adam stooped and pressed the flat pad in his hand against the mating metal plate on the slab, then used his free hand to type a code into the keypad that topped the instrument. It required some effort through the Demron gloves, but after three tries he heard a clang of sliding metal from beneath the plate.

  As Adam stepped to one side, the Chief and his men grasped inset handles and pulled the slab up and over, resting the hinged iron door atop the fascia. Then, flashlights in hand, the Chief and one man hoisted the bag and stepped into the opening revealed in the face of the slope.

  Their feet clanged on the metal staircase within as they disappeared. Adam waited. He heard the muffled footsteps halt, then the echoes of a faint thud of the heavy bag striking a metal surface. Scraping sounds followed, like something was being moved. Then the flashlights reappeared, ascending out of the hole as the team reemerged into the cool air.

  The chief was about to close the metal door when Adam stopped him. He pulled his own flashlight from his pocket, flicked it on, and stepped into the opening.

  With slow, careful steps, Adam descended into the darkness, splaying the light from side to side. At the bottom of the metal stairs, he turned the flashlight’s glare from the ground to the structures directly ahead of him.

  He’d only been there once before in the night, in the hours when there was no sunlight from the open door overhead and the only illumination was the spot of a flashlight. That solitary circle of light played now against the white surface of the two metal boxcars, reflecting a ghostly hue around the entirety of the small cavern.

  The rear boxcar was closed, its door locked shut. Behind that door, Adam knew, lay debris and scrap from the Project—material from the LB5 accident that preceded the big one last October.

  He shone the flashlight on the other boxcar directly ahead. Its cargo door was fully open.

  Dr. Schutten’s body bag lay on the floor of this boxcar. It rested next to dozens of neat piles of debris retrieved and carted here from the October LB5 explosion. Adam knew what each pile represented: he’d catalogued them himself.

  On the furthest side of the boxcar, beyond the debris, the flashlight caught the bulky form of the other three bags placed there nine months before. The families of the other three researchers had long since said their good-byes to sealed caskets, empty except for ballast. Given the cover story that they’d died in a fiery car crash, no one had questioned the need for closed caskets. They couldn’t possibly have returned the first three bodies to the families, not with the radiation levels they’d absorbed in the explosion.

&nb
sp; It’d been easier dealing with Dr. Schutten. He had no close friends or relatives. No one awaited his final remains. And placing Dr. Schutten’s body here until they’d decided the final disposal site for all of them was as logical as it was convenient.

  Adam directed the flashlight further to his right, illuminating the locomotive coupled to the boxcars. Only the rear half of the engine had been excavated for Project Wolffia. Half in and half out of the surrounding soil, it looked as though it had been driven headlong into the wall of the cavern. He took a step closer.

  The rear access door to the locomotive still bore the heavy chain and padlock that Adam had placed there himself. Good.

  Satisfied, Adam took the steps back up the metal staircase. As soon as he emerged, the Chief and his men closed the iron door, covering it with the heavily weighted fascia. The Chief’s crew used a spade he’d retrieved from his Land Rover and scattered shovelfuls of dirt evenly across its surface. Then they all retreated to the SUVs, where one of the guards produced a canister and sprayed the surfaces of their suits for decontamination.

  Ten minutes later, Adam was feeling the jolts and bumps of the dirt path leading back to the highway.

  He’d be pleased when they reclosed the pit for good. His predecessor on the project had overseen the disinterment of the “white train” as a storage site for the waste and byproducts of Project Wolffia. But it was his problem now. His unease was less about radiation exposure than the stark consequences if the contents of the train were ever discovered. There was enough illegal about the Project itself without the DOE or someone else discovering the human remains interred here in the buried white train.

  He looked out at the passing shadows of terrain. Foote never expressed concern about accidental discovery of the pit. The vice-president had always been more concerned about an intentional betrayal by Project workers, like these security guards. Adam wasn’t troubled by that prospect. Those in the know had been selected with great care: their psychological profiles examined by Dr. Janniston, subjected to repeated interviews—even their financial status and stability vetted. The chief of security was from Los Alamos, a third-generation nuclear defense worker himself. Most of the remaining Project security team was from Hanford—but the one commonality they shared was an unshakable belief in America’s need for nuclear protection as deep as Cameron Foote’s. It was a belief that diminished concern about the precise nature of Project Wolffia—so long as they were assured it served the mission.