Nuclear Spring

by Td Barnes

  “Which agency,”

  “No agency. Let us just say that I was Special Projects at Groom Lake. We worked for various customers.” He laughed. “Often our customers never knew that we used to work for them or what we did.” He stood up and refilled each of their coffee cups.

  “So how many of you special project types are inside the mountain?”

  “You are looking for a group or organization where there is none. We are not some secret agency or organization working for some power-hungry politician or group of generals seeking to save the world. We are a product of the original EG&G Special Projects Team who used to work for the CIA during the development of the Mach 3 A-12 surveillance plane under Project OXCART. When OXCART ended, and the team split up, Air Force FTD, Foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson and Navy managed to get their hands on a MiG-21 Fishbed that they brought to Groom Lake to exploit. Some members of the old special projects team participated in that program, tracking, radar cross-section, and such. At about the same time, Lockheed Skunk Works brought its Have Blue stealth plane prototypes for RCS evaluations. This developed into the F-117 Nighthawk. Some of the special projects team the expertise to develop stealth technology. They brought in additional MiGs for exploitation, Soviet radar systems followed, and then more proof of concept projects. Everyone worked for a customer. Everything there was compartmentalized, and access based upon need-to-know., the members of the team, knew of one another’s expertise, but not the details of what they did or for whom. We accomplished funding through black appropriations sponsored by our customers at the time. Of course, Navy and no telling what all agencies covertly or overtly slipped some of their people into the special projects team as cadre for the Groom Lake facility. This was possible because even the special projects team was compartmentalized and operated on a need-to-know basis. You, sir, are our customer now.”

  “I am the customer?”

  “Yes, sir, you are. Think about it. Where all, have you already been this morning and where do you plan on going next? At each stop, you have or will ask for a specialized service from a member of the team. We all know what you need from us. I am not inferring that we are all aware of one another or that we know what you are asking for. Common sense tells me that you have your daughter and Ray working on their secret weapon, of which I know nothing. You are seeking weather information from me that is vital to our existence, and with Doctor Hains, you are seeking something in the cyber world. I feel confident there are some things that I do not know about, nor should I. As I said, we are compartmentalized. No one knows what I do for you, nor do I know what they do for you.”

  Bradley took a sip of his coffee. He thought about the two antigovernment geeks on his nerd squad and pondered their selection for shelter inside the mountain. “This has been an eye-opener. So, in theory, it is the special projects team that we are sheltering inside the mountain?”

  “No, not. As I said, we are not an organized group. We are a group with different specialties who have floated from one project and customer after another at Area 51. You have the potential mountain candidates for special projects. There must be a client and a valid need before there is a unique project. Consider all of us as tools that you keep on the shelf until you need us. You have the tools to rebuild humanity. You are the customer, and it is up to you whether you use the tools. Sir, I’m not trying to blow smoke up your ass when I say that I know of no one else who could have done what you are doing for all of us. You are a book where most commanders are a chapter.”

  “Smells like smoke to me, Captain,” Bradley said with a familiar smirk. Having served in the Intel field, Bradley could accept what Mitchell said. What Mitchell described was them being a band of high-tech mercenaries—people like him that he could trust. “I get the picture.” Turning serious, he confided. “Charlie, I am having doubts about the alliances of some of our people sheltered here in the mountain.”

  “Just tell me who and I’ll tell you what we know about them. I won’t reveal his identity, but a concerned member of the Homeland Security Team personnel inside the mountain has vetted everyone to the extent feasible.”

  “It’s two members that we just dropped out of my nerd squad.”

  Mitchell laughed. “Those geeks. We know about them. Do not give it a second thought, Colonel. We are watching them. Remember, they are tools at your disposal. If you do not need to use them, place them in a toolbox until you do. It is evident that we are compartmentalizing vital operations of the mountain. That is all you need to do. Treat them like mushrooms. Feed them bullshit and keep them in the dark and they will produce for you.”

  “Good advice, but I don’t want to have anything to do with them. Now back to you. I have heard enough this morning to know that you have not been sitting around waiting for me to ask for your services. What do you have?”

  “The question you need to ask first is what I do since you now know that I am more than a mere weatherman.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite. What do you do?”

  “Funny that you should ask,” Mitchell said with a grin. He enjoyed the moment, not so much that he wanted to show what he did, but more his can bring the colonel into the loop. He excused himself to retrieve a file storage box from a fireproof safe-filing cabinet combination that he brought with his equipment. He plopped the heavy box onto the conference table. “They say a photo is worth a million words,” he said while opening the flaps of the box.

  “Ah,” he said as he located the first photo and placed it in front of Bradley.

  Bradley examined the photo, which appeared to be a gigantic crowd in a city. Signs on the buildings suggested the photo taken in Canada. He saw nothing but a sea of faces.

  “This is a photo that I took in 2011 during game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals in Vancouver. It is made up of 216 photos, 12 across by 18 down, stitched together, taken over a 15-minute span, and is not supposed to represent a single moment in time. The final hi-res file is 2,110 megapixels. Now, let me blow your socks off.” He opened the cover on his MacBook Air computer, inserted a thumb drive, and opened the same photo on the computer. “My file system protected the thumb drive from the EMP,” he commented. “Now watch this.” He placed the cursor over a random portion of the image showing a multitude of people. He double clicked the computer’s Trackpad, and the selected spot zoomed. He clicked it again, and it zoomed even more. He continued clicking on the spot until out of the thousands of faces; one could identify any individual face enough to show their freckles or blemishes. He closed out the photo and selected another to open.

  “You will like this one.” He opened it and then double clicked it to enlarge it enough to identify the faces.

  “I’ll be damned,” Bradley said in his West Texas drawl seeing a photo of him standing outside a building in Israel with an Israeli Air Force Tat aluf, brigadier general and an entourage of military and Mossad personnel. The high photo resolution identified some wearing Heil HaModi’in, Intelligence Corps insignia identified by the Fleur-de-lis with half a star. Others wore the Heil HaAvir sword, olive branch, Star of David, and wings coat of arms of the Israeli Air Force.

  “This is not what it seems. Your boss was my customer and the Israeli-Iran situation the target. General Hanson asked me to look in on Charlie and his angels.”

  Bradley’s face tightened at the mention of his all-female staff that accompanied him on that mission.

  “I’m sorry, Tom. It is insensitive of me to dredge up on memories.”

  Bradley waved it off. “You take photos of people,” he said as a matter-of-fact. “I can see that being invaluable with the face recognition program, we going.”

  “The quality of these photos is astonishing—much better than those I received at DIA.”

  Mitchell’s expression of pride bordered on boasting. “These are a spin-off project from the Atomic Vapor Laser project at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. We use a laser program that provides16 different spectral bands, including two visible
channels, four near-infrared channels, and ten infrared channels. The laser causes the SALT 60 miles up in the atmosphere to fluoresce. That light comes back through the atmosphere just like the light from the stars flickering from perturbations in the atmosphere. Taking the flicker from the laser and subtracting it from the starlight we have a sharp photo just as though we encountered no atmospheric interference. The quality of the picture is that of a telescope orbiting in space above the atmosphere. Enough of this show and tell. I know you must be dying to know what I came up with from what the nerds found.”

  Bradley leaned his head back in this chair and looked up at the rock ceiling. He sighed in anticipation and dread of hearing what came next before looking at Mitchell to indicate his being ready.

  Mitchell picked up an envelope and slid out a handful of computer printout images. “You know what they always say about weather changes. Well, there is truth to it. I’ll show you what I filtered out of the satellite link that your nerd squad came up with., that helped. The satellite is not one of ours, but it combined with the data from my satellite correlates one another’s data. This will take a while, so before we start, I think it will benefit us for you to see what we picked up after Beijing vaporized itself.”

  Mitchell laid three photos side-by-side showing the Pacific Rim area of the world.

  “You see in these pictures the spread of radioactive fallout from the first nuclear explosion in China. We took each of these images 24-hours apart. Note how the fallout cloud spread once it entered the jet stream.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  “If you think that is something, peek at these. The next four photos show what this did to the atmospheric wind currents. The smoke from the firestorms attributed to this. You recognize that this all occurred from only the one nuke. Multiply this by the number that dropped in the Middle East and later around the world, and you will appreciate what I show you about our current situation four years later.”

  Bradley studied each of the images for a moment while trying to decipher what all the arrows indicated. Mitchell handed him a global isotope graph that even further confused him. He presented the next display in solid colors that grabbed Bradley’s attention.

  “Multiple jet streams,” Mitchell explained. “See the light blue streak extending across the United States? That is us. The dark blue is upper atmosphere airflow, and it is one hot mother. See how straight the streaks are. They do not zigzag and dip as we are accustomed to seeing the jet stream on weather charts. That means the jet stream is being lazy. It is not doing much, which means any survivors in those dark areas are experiencing a very mean nuclear winter parked over them.

  Bradley cocked his head to encourage Mitchell to continue.

  Colonel, we cannot predict what this will do. All we know is that as the season's change, they generate atmospheric highs and lows that will wake up the jet stream. All I can do is monitor it and give the alarm when it decides to move. Most likely, I’ll be able to provide you with a week to maybe a two-week head up to hunker down for the return of winter.”

  “Charley, if I know what to expect, I can deal with it. We can deal with it.”

  What he just learned cemented in Bradley’s mind a course of action. It validated his premonition that induced him to bring everything that he wanted at Area 51 back to the security of the mountain. He looked again at the image of the parked streaks of winter. “I think we would be safe to say that whoever is overflying us has to be situated in this light blue belt.”

  “True. That, however, does not mean they live in the light blue belt. You have mentioned our Navy, and Air Force has ships, planes, and personnel all over the world, and in some cases, being in places that escaped the EMP. Those people and assets are now in the hands of the country in which they took refuge. That does not mean they are still there. The countries who escaped the EMP did not survive the nuclear winter. Remember that the areas that we now see in light blue have already suffered the EMP, the nuclear winter, or both. The EMP or nuclear winter may have wiped them out early on. Those attempting to escape the fallout may now occupy other areas. It could be anyone. They could be anywhere in the safe band.”

  Bradley finished for him. “the point is—they escaped the EMP, which means they were either friend of China or a banana belt country of no significance to China at the time. China zapped all its enemies, so only those escaping the EMP could be on the move and looking for a new home,”

  False Data Introduced by Carlos

  Fallout pattern from China’s bomb that returned to Beijing

  24 Hours after Detonation

  48 Hours after Detonation

  Low atmosphere jet streams fallout pattern 48 hours after detonation

  Fallout pattern 24 hours after start of the nuclear war in the Middle East

  Fallout pattern 52 hours after start of the nuclear war in the Middle East

  Fallout pattern 72 hours after start of the nuclear war in the Middle East

  Fallout pattern 98 hours after start of the nuclear war in the Middle East

  ####

  Thirty days later

  For the second week, armed soldiers blocked access to the immediate area just inside the tunnel at each portal, allowing only those having authorized access to entering. The closed portal doors locked down the mountain at a time the residents could go outside. Rumors ran rabid through the mountain about what was happening and why it was such a big secret.

  “You don’t think a bomb blast can take out the parabolic reflector?”

  “It would have to destroy the bunker to do so. That is also about the only way anyone can gain unauthorized access, which would defeat their purpose unless it was to kill us.” Bronson and Bradley both stood about five feet off the tunnel floor on the back side of the sniper bunkers ordered built by Bradley after they first entered the tunnel.

  To house the electronics for the device, Barlow provided two soldiers with experience in cement work to construct a rock container larger than the chassis, which is where Bronson and Bradley now stood while Sammie and Colonel Barlow stood on the tunnel floor waiting on the two to complete their inspection.

  “Until Colonel Bradley clears it, I can’t tell you what the Grizzly is or what it does, but I can assure you that no one will waltz in here to do us harm.”

  “That is all I need to know, Lieutenant.”

  The installation of a Grizzly in the north portal and now the south entrance concluded the four-year odyssey of the two weapons first from Groom Lake to the mountain after the EMP where it remained hidden from all except Bradley, Sammie, and Ray Bronson until a few weeks, ago.

  Some other prototypes best described as top-secret proof of concept weapon systems brought from Area 51 now occupied the previous secret location of the Grizzlies inside the mountain.

  Again, only Bradley and the Bronson’s knew the hidden areas, and only Ray and Sammie Bronson, the two soldiers who participated in the tests of the weapons at Groom Lake, Major Callahan, and Colonel Bradley knew what they did.

  Bradley dismounted from the base of the weapon and turned to Barlow. “That should do it, XO. You may have your mountain back.”

  ####

  The next morning

  A month passed, and thus far, no one mentioned the night the military locked the civilian sector out of the mountain. After processing back into the mountain, the mothers rushed to their family alcove to freshen up and care for the children. The men appeared torn between following their families and reporting in to fill the volunteer slots identified by Bradley during his talk. Acting as though nothing occurred, the sergeant major and other of his top NCOs accepted the volunteers but delayed the time for them to report to the workstation until after they’d fed and ensured their families being settled in from the overnight ordeal.

  Also during the past month, the grain and hay-hauling project proven very successful with enough hay and grain to feed the existing livestock for three years and expand the chicken farm to a flock of 5,000. The
hay crews stacked the hay close enough to the side of the south portal door that they could access without leaving the protection of tarps spread over the stacks. While collecting the hay and grain, the crews also collected items of farm equipment that they might someday use to cultivate the land.

  SFC Stratton made two more runs to Las Vegas to shop for supplies that included the tarps and lumber required for the walkways to the greenhouse trailers. The colony also increased the hog-breeding program enough to expect 43 hogs for butcher during the next 14 months.

  These days, Stacey often wore her western clothes while horseback riding. This prompted other of the civilians to dig out their civilian garments worn when they first entered the mountain. Barlow and Bradley approved this, seeing it as being a transition back to a healthy lifestyle. Civilian clothes become the current fad, replacing a similar military ACU combat uniform fashion from when they first entered the mountain. The residents welcomed any change to break up their routine lives inside the mountain.

  Having Colonel Barlow now assisting with commanding the colony affords Bradley free time that he and Stacey take advantage of by going for an early morning horseback ride outside the south portal. Stacey is also teaching riding lessons to the children to prepare them for life on the outside of the mountain. In this regard, the motor pool at the south portal is conducting maintenance, and the military vehicle is giving driving lessons for the youth. All combined, the past month’s changes indicate the return of spring, triggering a desire inside the mountain to move towards life as known before the bombs.

  Stacey and Tom ride into the portal from their morning ride just in time to see the two former members of the nerd squad reporting for duty at Dr. Sander’s photosynthetic gardens. Each is wearing a facemask over their nose to reduce the putrid odor now overwhelming the ventilation system in the south end of the tunnel. The smell is coming from the enlargement of the gardens and rearranging the animal kingdom.