The Department of State used that subtle distinction to hold an ace in the hole. Since the end of the Cold War, the highest government officials insisted on maintaining this card up their sleeve in case of an international catastrophe.
Thanks to the impenetrable secrecy, the State Department wasn’t required to inform the Department of Energy of their classified SAPs. Up until now, however, Stanley van Dyckman’s own unacknowledged Valiant Locksmith had created a potential doomsday condition that Rob Harris could not reveal to anyone. His hands were tied, and neither the DOE Inspector General nor his counterpart in the Department of State had the authority to know about the other’s highly classified program.
When the facility transitioned to the DOE, the Velvet Hammer vault override codes must not have been changed. Yet another unintended consequence contributing to this mindless cascade of disasters.…
The only other place where all that knowledge came together was with the President and the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committee. But a formerly retired site manager had no direct access to the President, and Senator Pulaski—the man responsible for funding Hydra Mountain—had dismissed Harris’s concerns, unable to appreciate the technical details of the risk.
Now, Harris dropped into his seat. He had dreaded exactly this scenario. If he had revealed the existence of Undersecretary Doyle’s program to anyone involved with Valiant Locksmith, Harris would go to jail for the rest of his life. That was why he had pulled strings to get the right people here, to see the hazard with their own eyes. This review had been his only chance to make someone realize the potential disaster of housing these two SAPs together.
Well, they were all fully aware of the danger now.
Now that the stored warheads were exposed to stray neutrons—the levels of which were significantly increased because of all the fuel rods in the pools—the risk of an accidental detonation was no longer vanishingly small. And if the temporary cooling pool ever leaked and the warheads were submerged in water, then the probability of disaster would increase exponentially.
If a single device went critical, sympathetic detonations might trigger them all. Then it would be good-bye, New Mexico. And more.
By sending the review team in there, he may have set his own nightmare scenario in motion.
33
Sickened as the avalanche of sticky foam hardened and crackled inside the vault, spilling out in a massive amorphous blockade, Shawn pounded on the rigid mass. His blows peeled off a few chunks, but not enough to make a difference. The substance was like a petrified cloud jammed in the vault, blocking the heavy door open. He kicked at the shell-like substance, then threw his shoulder against the vault door, uselessly pushing.
Adonia helped, but there was nothing either of them could do. “They’re buried alive in there.” Her voice sounded hoarse and angry. “They probably suffocated.”
Garibaldi stood by the control panel, ashen. “How do we close the vault door? We need to seal off the warheads from the stray radiation here in the grotto. Every minute the door remains open and the cores are exposed is like a game of Russian roulette.”
Adonia knew the older scientist was right. “Hopefully the ambient radiation isn’t significantly higher than normal background levels, especially with all those fuel rods. I’m really worried now.”
Shawn looked in vain at the huge vault door and shook his head. “An emergency response team can clear the sticky foam with solvent sprays and break it up with sharp tools, and then they can close the vault. Until then we’ll have to gamble.”
Garibaldi did not look convinced. “The sticky foam doesn’t have any moderating effect, and it’s way too porous to absorb neutrons. Our only hope right now is that the background level doesn’t increase any more than it has.”
Adonia coughed and felt light-headed. She swayed as she stood, sweating in her damp clothes, and she looked down to see the nebulous soup of halothane curling across the lower floor. Some of the wisps had already reached her ankles. Taking shallow breaths, she worked on the control panel, trying the vault’s emergency closure routines one more time, without success. The hydraulics only hummed and groaned against the hardened sticky foam. “No use.”
Shawn said, “Right now we’ve got bigger problems than closing the vault door. Unless we get to higher ground, we won’t be conscious much longer, and then we can’t warn anybody of the danger. We’ve got to climb as high as we can until the lockdown is lifted.”
“Somebody’s got to survive,” Garibaldi said, sounding more grim than ever before. “Nuclear waste and nuclear weapons don’t play well together. Someone needs to get the word out … and we’ve already lost half our team.”
Adonia felt a pang of sadness as the three of them hurried back up the incline to the main floor. Even though Senator Pulaski’s blundering had caused most of their problems, he hadn’t deserved to die, and neither did Undersecretary Doyle, who had just been trying to protect her SAP and prevent this very thing from happening.
Adonia felt a deeper heaviness at the loss of Stanley van Dyckman, whom she had known for years, even though she often found him maddening. He came across as arrogant and opportunistic, and yet he’d created the Valiant Locksmith program to address an urgent problem, even if it was poorly implemented. Now, what should have been her former boss’s great triumph had morphed into a total disaster.
No, it was not a good day for Hydra Mountain.
“We should get moving before we collapse,” Shawn said, pointing across the cavern. “Climbing the crane is our only good option—unless you have a better suggestion.”
“Better is the enemy of ‘good enough,’” Garibaldi said. “So if it works, don’t try anything better. Let’s do it.”
Adonia realized she would probably succumb first, since she was physically the smallest. As they jogged back toward the center of the grotto, closer to the halothane that curled over the ledge from the high bay above, some of the gas already swirled up to their knees, stirred up as they moved.
“I hope you don’t make me carry you too far if you collapse,” Shawn said to her with a quick, reassuring smile. “Come on, we’ve got some climbing to do.”
She tried to put on a burst of speed, running on bare feet but unable to see debris on the floor. She hurt her sole, but kept running, hoping it wasn’t a bad cut. She swayed, and the dizziness increased. Shawn caught her arm. “Steady—the gas is already affecting you. When we reach the crane, you’re the first one up.”
“As long as you’re both right behind me,” she said, trying to control her heavy breathing. She just hoped she could keep her balance while climbing the open boom. Vertigo at the wrong moment would result in a big splat on the floor below. She shook her head and pushed on toward the giant industrial machine.
They dodged construction material, steel support columns that rose to the ceiling, the trenches, walls, and pouring forms for half-finished concrete pools. The yellow gas stirred as they jogged, causing loops of vapor to rise higher. Coughing and dizzy, Adonia staggered along.
Finally, they reached the huge industrial crane that crouched like some mythical monster: a massive foundation and enormous treads, a high control cab, and the lattice boom that stretched up to the cavern ceiling. Disoriented, barely able to keep her balance, Adonia stared up at the towering structure she would have to climb.
34
When the sirens and warnings started blaring in the Velvet Hammer vault, Stanley van Dyckman was already well inside the chamber. He panicked, reacting instead of thinking.
He lurched deeper into the dimly lit vault, scrambling to get away. Just as he neared the far end, the ominous countdown stopped. He heard an explosion behind him, and gouts of fast-hardening polymer gel dumped all around him, engulfing the open space in less than a second, like a car airbag slamming into his back.
He instantly responded, throwing himself to the side. Back in the guard portal when Senator Pulaski had set off a lesser sticky foam defense, the man had nearly been smothere
d, and this was a thousand times worse! Van Dyckman dove sideways, sprawling headfirst. By sheer luck, he rolled into the last cubbyhole. He clambered on his knees to a sturdy pedestal that held a round-topped cylinder.
Sirens and alarms hammered the vault, becoming muffled by the explosively expanding foam. Screaming, he scrambled on top of the storage pedestal to get away before the sticky foam enveloped him.
His outstretched hands grabbed at the metal cylinder that was almost as tall as he was. His arms could barely wrap around it. He hauled himself higher, like a man trying to climb above a raging flood as swelling foam expanded to fill the vault. Wrapping his arms around the warm cylinder, he hung on and watched as the mountain of foam froze into place as a hard, pocked meringue. Sealing him in.
He waited, holding his breath. The foam creaked and cracked as it stiffened, plugging the chamber and the vault opening, but it did not advance further. The lights in the chamber glowed weirdly through the translucent obstruction. He was trapped, but he was still alive. He took two quick breaths to reassure himself.
Somewhere near the front of the vault, the bitch Victoria was completely buried under an avalanche of hardened sticky foam, like a concrete straitjacket.
The realization that she was dead sent strange feelings through him. They’d had good times, and good sex, but there weren’t all that many instances to remember, and she had always been concerned with her own career, her own needs, instead of his. Just like now. This was all her fault. Her Velvet Hammer SAP had put them all at risk. Nuclear devices should never have been in his Mountain, and because of them Hydra Mountain’s worst countermeasures had tried to kill them all.
Sealed in the cocoon of hardened sticky foam, he listened to the oppressive silence. Were the others still alive outside the vault? Adonia, Colonel Whalen, and Dr. Garibaldi had been out of reach of the sticky foam. But, unable to take refuge in the protected vault, as planned, maybe they had already succumbed to the halothane in the open grotto.
The gas! With the door blocked open, the knockout gas could still penetrate here. Van Dyckman sniffed, afraid he’d fall unconscious in here and be suffocated even more slowly, but the volatile, starchy odors of the foam drowned out any trace of the halothane scent. Would he be safe? Maybe the blockage would cut off enough of it.
It would take hours before any rescue could possibly come, and he needed to wait it out someplace. Here in the Velvet Hammer vault, he had light, he had air. It wasn’t Club Med, but he even felt comfortable, almost hot compared to what he’d been in the chilly main grotto.…
He gasped as he realized why he felt so warm.
He frantically released his grip around the metal cylinder, the thermonuclear weapon.
The warhead was physically warm, and he was trapped right next to it, crowded into the alcove. He looked around the claustrophobic granite vault. A wall of hard red foam covered the rock floor and rose up nearly to the ceiling like a mountain of discolored snow left by an out-of-control plow.
He was buried alive inside the storage vault with dozens of nuclear bombs, and he knew that if they were generating heat, they were also generating radiation. His skin crawled as he imagined the invisible particles shooting all around him, being absorbed into his body. If an old-fashioned Geiger counter hung on the wall, it would have been clicking and crackling like crazy.
He tried to worm his way around the warhead, but the impenetrable foam blocked his way like a petrified cumulus cloud. He was trapped.
Again seeking someone to blame, he cursed Victoria. What had she been thinking to hide all these illicit nuclear devices here? Her program had to be illegal! At least he had been trying to solve a crucial problem and help the nation. Thanks to him and his close connection to the President, Hydra Mountain had been reopened and put to good use. This facility was ideal for storing enormous amounts of nuclear waste … but active warheads in a secret back room changed the equation entirely! Well, she had died for it.
He had to get out of here.
Moving carefully in the small amount of space available, van Dyckman squeezed down behind the platform and stepped onto the uneven mass of hardened foam piled around the cubbyhole. The substance held under his weight, although it felt uncertain, slippery.
He worked his way around the warhead in its protected alcove and tried to crawl up the wall of hard foam. It was like climbing a gritty, crusty old snowdrift. A piece of the material broke off in his fingers as he tried to get a handhold. The sticky foam had little substance, and if he had a jackhammer, a pickax—even a spoon!—he could chop away at the starchy barricade.
He pounded and clawed at the foam, and little by little he managed to smash away a few chunks. He needed some kind of tool to dig his way out. As he worked with greater desperation, he felt something hard in his pants pocket. Keys? Maybe he could use those—
He found the box cutter he had pocketed from the guard portal, after he’d freed Senator Pulaski from that sticky foam. Sharp and hard; it would work!
He extended the blade and stabbed the hardened foam like a serial killer. Another jagged block broke off, opening a gap, and his hopes soared. Breathing heavily, van Dyckman started chopping away, piece by piece.
35
Staggering, helping each other as they reeled from the effects of the spreading knockout gas, Adonia and her two companions reached the base of the enormous crane. Large letters, MLC165-1, were painted on the side of the red cab, which rode high on six-foot-tall crawler treads.
“All we have to do is climb above the gas.” Adonia felt dizzy as she broke into a fit of coughing. The deadly gas swirled higher and higher on the stone floor at their feet. “No problem.”
Shawn trudged around to the opposite side of the crane, looking for a way to climb the high treads to reach the cab. “This way! I can boost you up, Adonia.”
When she looked up from below, the towering boom looked much larger than it had seemed from across the cavern. Although the crawler footprint was only twenty-five square feet or so, the crane’s swollen main body allowed a clearance of less than five feet from the ground. Even Adonia had to duck as they circled the crane.
Shawn pointed her to the end of the crawler. “You first. I can hoist you onto the tread, but you’ll have to get up onto the cab yourself and start climbing the boom to get high enough.” He glanced at her bare feet. “Are you up to it?”
Out of breath, woozy from the gas, Adonia nodded. “I can climb. I’ll just have to live with sore feet.” From here, the crane looked enormous, but she couldn’t let it bother her. “As long as I’m alive, I can deal with it.”
“We’re not going for a speed record,” Shawn said. “Take your time.”
She saw how high the operator’s cab stood above the cavern floor. “Maybe the cab will be high enough. We’ll be safe.”
“No, get as high as you can,” Garibaldi coughed. “We don’t know how much halothane is in that reservoir, and air currents will stir the gas higher.”
Shawn put his hands around her waist in a firm grip. “Here you go, get to the top!” He boosted her up, and she grabbed with her hands and pulled herself onto the giant tread, scrambling for footing. When she caught her balance, she called down, “You’ll look less graceful when you hoist Dr. Garibaldi.”
Taller than Shawn, the older scientist responded with a skeptical look. “Frankly, I don’t care how graceful he looks. Boost me up, Colonel.”
On her hands and knees, Adonia crawled across the giant treads, once again wishing she had worn jeans instead of a stylish business dress. Not her only miscalculation of the day. When she reached up to grab the side of the crane’s cab, she pulled herself up, balanced on tiptoes so she could glance inside the compartment. In addition to the controls and a seat for the operator, the cab held several manuals in plastic binders, a metal toolbox, and a long yellow rope curled in a loop. She couldn’t carry the heavy toolbox with her as she climbed, but she thought the rope might come in handy for securing themselves to the latti
ce.
Grasping the cab’s flimsy metal door, she stretched her other arm up and tried to pull herself into the compartment, but she slipped, barely caught herself on the edge of the door before falling off the tread. The halothane fumes were making her dizzy, even this high above the floor. “Now who’s being graceful?” she muttered.
“Adonia, what are you doing?” Shawn called up. “You have to gain more height. Start climbing the boom!”
“I was trying to fetch a rope in the operator’s compartment. We can use it for a safety line.” She thought it sounded like a good idea.
“I’ll get it when I come up,” he called. “You just keep moving, so I don’t have to worry about you. We’re right behind you.” He and Garibaldi were both coughing. He helped the older scientist up onto the big tread, who then reached down to give him a hand up.
Adonia held on to the edge of the cab for balance, then worked her way around the base. She reached the metal lattice of the boom and put her bare foot on the lowest horizontal strut. Each lattice element consisted of an open box, the edges made of thick horizontal and vertical steel rods, or struts. Diagonal rods alternated direction on each face of the box; the lattice of struts continued up the length of the boom.
Fortunately, the struts were thick enough that their rounded surfaces didn’t cut her skin, though she knew she’d be hobbling around for a week on bruised feet. That was a problem she could live with. Reaching up, she grabbed the next horizontal strut and pulled herself up. She looked down at the other two as they climbed to the cab.
She slowly scaled the trestle one horizontal strut after another, methodically moving higher each time, as the boom extended up at a steep angle. “Just like an inclined ladder,” she muttered to herself. “Not a problem.” She made sure her foot was well positioned and her hands had a solid grip on the cold metal before she boosted herself to the next lattice element.
If the lockdown lasted another three hours, plus even more time for the emergency crews to break through to the lower cavern, she wanted more than enough margin of safety above the gas. Falling unconscious and plummeting to the concrete floor far below would probably be fatal.
Kill Zone Page 23