Dead or Alive

by Grant Blackwood

  “Think of it as an underground nuclear test. Detonate a nuke under five thousand feet of rock and the shock wave goes straight down. The engineers there have already dug storage tunnels down to a thousand feet. The water table is five hundred feet below that. It’s a geological sieve,” Jack explained. “All the radiation from a nuke goes straight down into the aquifers, then to the rest of the southwest. Maybe all the way to the West Coast. We’re talking about thousands of square miles poisoned for the next ten thousand years.”

  There was silence on The Campus end. Then Granger said, “Where the hell did they get this?”

  Clark answered. “It’s homemade-probably a simple gun-barrel setup: shoot one chunk of uranium called a ‘slug’ into a second, larger chunk called a ‘pit’ and you’ve got critical mass.”

  “And the material? Where’d they get that?”

  “Not sure. The bodyguard said one of the Emir’s captains was in Russia up until a couple weeks ago.”

  Hendley said, “You’re the man on the ground, John. What do you wanna do?”

  “We’re handicapped, Gerry. Anybody we call isn’t going to just send in the cavalry. There’ll be a hundred questions before anybody moves: Who are we, where’d we get the info, what’s our proof… You know how it’ll go.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’re about two minutes away from an airstrip. We’re gonna see if we can borrow a helo. Depending on what we get, we could be over Yucca in thirty minutes. If we get there first, we’ll hold the fort until you can get somebody to listen.”

  “And if you get there second?”

  “Not even gonna think about it. I’ll call you when we’re airborne.”

  Ninety miles north of Las Vegas, on Death Valley’s Highway 95, the Emir slowed his car and crossed over the median onto the shoulder. The dirt tract was barely perceptible through a berm of cactus scrub, but he picked his way down into a shallow spot and soon found himself in a pair of tire ruts. Through his windshield, a half-mile away, the Skeleton Hills rose from the barren terrain like mountains of the moon.

  The tract kept descending, then swung north and began running parallel to a shallow canyon. A quarter-mile away, he saw a car parked. As he drew nearer, he saw it was a Subaru. Musa was standing beside the driver’s door. The Emir slowed beside him, and he climbed in. They embraced. “Good to see you, brother,” Musa said.

  “And you, old friend. Are they here?”

  “Yes, just up ahead.”

  “And the device?”

  “Already loaded aboard.”

  The Emir followed Musa’s directions another half-mile down the tract to where it curved around a low hill. Frank Weaver’s flatbed was parked, nose facing the road. The GA-4 cask glinted in the sun. Three men were standing around near the driver’s door.

  The Emir and Musa got out and walked over. “My team from Russia,” Musa said. “Numair, Fawwaz, and Idris.”

  The Emir nodded to each man in turn. “You’ve all done well. Allah will smile on you all.” The Emir checked his watch. “We leave in fifteen minutes.”

  The fit was tight, but they all managed to squeeze into the truck cab. Fawwaz, who bore the closest resemblance to Frank Weaver, drove. Five minutes later, they were back on the highway and heading north.

  A sign on the shoulder said, HIGHWAY 373-6 MILES.

  Chavez pulled into the parking lot of Paragon Air. Through the fence they could see two helicopters-both Eurocopter EC-130s-sitting on the tarmac. Chavez pulled up to the office, and Clark climbed out with Jack. “Ding, circle around to the maintenance gate. We’ll let you in.”

  Clark and Jack walked into the office. A mid-sixties woman with a red beehive hairdo was sitting behind the counter. To the right through a half-glass door was the maintenance area.

  “Morning,” Clark said.

  “Morning yourself. How can I help you?”

  “Wondering if you’ve got a pilot around I could talk to.”

  “Maybe something I can help you with. Are you interested in a tour?”

  “No, actually, I’ve got a technical question about the EC-130’s rotational bearing manifold. My son here is studying avionics, and it’d be a big help if he could see one up close.”

  “Just a second, I’ll see if Marty’s got a minute.”

  She picked up the phone, spoke for minute, then said, “He’ll be right up.”

  Clark and Jack wandered closer to the door. A man in gray coveralls walked up and opened the door. Clark stuck out his hand. “Hey Marty! Steve Barnes. This is my son, Jimmy…” As Clark spoke, he stepped through the door, backing Marty along. “Gotta question about the EC-130.”

  Only two other people were visible in the hangar, both at the far end, near a Cessna.

  “Sure,” Marty replied. “But we should probably step back inside…”

  Clark lifted his shirttail and showed Marty the butt of his Glock.

  “… Oh, shit, hey…”

  “Relax,” Clark said. “We just want to borrow a helicopter.”

  “Huh?”

  “And we want you to fly it.”

  “Is this a joke?”

  “Nope. You’re gonna help us or I’m going to shoot you in the leg and take your helicopter anyway. Go along, take us where we need to go, and you’ll be back here in an hour. Say yes.”

  “Yes.”

  “Which bird is prepped?”

  “Well, none-”

  “Don’t lie to me, Marty. It’s a weekend. Prime time for tours and lessons.”

  “Okay. That one.” Marty pointed.

  “Go tell your receptionist you’re going for a quick spin. Get hinky and I’ll shoot you in the ass.”

  Marty opened the door, poked his head through, and did as he was asked.

  Jack whispered to Clark, “What’s a rotational bearing manifold?”

  “No idea.”

  Marty turned back from the door and Jack asked, “Where’re the controls for the side gate?”

  “On the outside wall, opposite end of the hangar.”

  Jack started walking that way. Clark smiled at Marty. “Let’s go.”

  “What’s this all about?” Marty asked as they headed for the EC-130. “What’re we doing?”

  “You’re saving the day, Marty.”

  As they neared the helo, Jack, Chavez, and Dominic came around the corner of the hangar and walked up. They got in the back while Clark took the front passenger seat. Marty climbed in, buckled up, and began preflighting.

  “Where’re we going?” he asked.

  Jack said, “Northwest. When you reach Highway Ninety-five and Three seventy-three, head northeast.” He gave Marty the latitude and longitude.

  “That’s restricted airspace, man,” Marty said. “That’s Nellis Range and the Nevada Test Site. We can’t-”

  “Sure we can.”

  They were airborne eight minutes later. Clark called Hendley and said, “We’re up.”

  “Rick Bell’s on the line, too. More shoes are dropping. CNN, MSNBC, Fox are all over it. An explosion of some kind at a church in Waterloo, Iowa; they’re talking about fifty or sixty dead, maybe twice that many wounded. Something in Springfield, Missouri, too. A local news station was there, covering a statue unveiling; it looked like goddamned Omaha Beach. Some town in Nebraska… Brady… Someone walked into a high school swim meet and rolled grenades beneath the bleachers. Christ almighty.”

  “They’re doing what they do,” Clark said. “Terror. The Losan, the Paulinia fire, these attacks. The URC is sending a message: Nobody’s safe anywhere.”

  “Well, there’re gonna be a lot of believers after this.”

  “It’s worse than that,” Bell said. “Remember the dive the economy took after Nine-Eleven. Multiply that by a thousand, and that’s what we’re looking at. The Emir and the URC’s trying to finish the job: to get our economy to devour the country from the inside out. They hit our new oil import source, they tried to hit a major port, they killed God knows how many in the h
eartland, and now they’re trying to go nuke. People are the economy. Paralyze one, you paralyze the other. Add to that Kealty, who was already screwing the pooch, and we’ve got a big goddamned problem.”

  “It makes sense,” Clark replied. “Nothing this guy does is one-dimensional.”

  Hendley asked, “What’s your ETA?”

  Clark asked Marty, “How long?”

  “Twenty-two minutes.”

  88

  FIFTEEN MILES from the 373 junction, Highway 95 appeared below the EC-130, a straight gray line cutting through the brown desert. “How close is the Nellis Range?” Clark asked Marty.

  “Reach out your window and you’re almost touching it. That’s what I’m telling you: As soon as we cut northwest, we’re gonna light up radar screens. These folks don’t fuck around.”

  “We need to get to Yucca.”

  “Shit. Please tell me you’re not terrorists.”

  “We’re the good guys.”

  “What kind of good guys?”

  “Hard to explain. Can you get us there before they chase us down?”

  “Which entrance, north or south?”

  “South.”

  “If I’m balls to the wall I can get a hundred ninety miles an hour out of her, and if I put it on the deck… Figure four minutes after we turn off the highway. Do me a favor, huh?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Threaten me again. When they slap the cuffs on me, I want some kind of defense.”

  Five minutes later, they saw through the windshield another gray line intersect 95 from the south. “Three seventy-three,” Marty announced. As they swept over the junction, he banked to the northwest and began descending until they were thirty feet off the desert.

  A ridge up before them. “Busted Butte,” Marty announced, pulling up, then leveling out. “Three miles. Sixty seconds.” He banked again, first left, then right, and dropped into a shallow valley.

  A two-acre-square gravel lot appeared through the windshield. On the lot’s far left side a keyhole shape had been cut into the hillside; at its center, an enormous tunnel entrance.

  “Company,” Jack called.

  On the north side of the lot, a road extended into the desert. A flatbed truck carrying what looked like a giant stainless-steel dumbbell was pulling into the lot.

  “What the hell is that?” Dominic shouted.

  “GA-4 cask,” Jack replied. “For transporting spent fuel rods.”

  “Thought this place wasn’t open.”

  “It isn’t.” Jack scanned the binoculars north up the road to the white phone booth-sized guard shack. He could see two figures lying on the pavement. “Men down at the checkpoint,” he called.

  Clark asked Marty, “Can you put down in-”

  “Not with that truck in there. I’ll clip a rotor. Down the road about fifty yards I can.”

  “Do it.”

  “Coming around.”

  Marty banked sharply, spiraling back the way they’d come before stopping in a hover over the road. In the lot, the truck had stopped. Men were piling out of the cab.

  “I count five,” Dominic called.

  As they watched, two of them sprinted down the length of the flatbed toward the EC-130. Still running, the men raised AK-47s and started firing.

  “Shit!” Marty shouted. “What the fuck is going on?”

  “Those are the bad guys,” Clark told him.

  Marty slid the helo to the right, away from the road and behind the hill.

  “This’ll do,” Clark said.

  Marty brought the EC-130 down in a one-bump landing. Clark and the others climbed out. Clark leaned back through the door and shouted, “Find cover and set down. Stay off the radio, and be here when we get back.”

  “Ah, come on-”

  Clark pointed his gun in Marty’s general direction. “That help?”

  “Yeah!”

  Clark slammed the door, then sprinted to where the others had clustered thirty feet away. Sand peppered them as Marty lifted off, then banked left and headed down the road, where he turned again behind a low hill. After twenty seconds, the chop of the rotors faded.

  “Listen,” Jack said.

  Over the hill, the flatbed truck was moving.

  With Chavez in the lead, they charged up the slope. They were ten feet from the ridgeline when they heard the chatter of automatic weapons. Controlled three-round bursts. Voices shouted, echoing off the canyon walls. Chavez dropped to his belly and crawled forward. After a moment, he signaled the others forward. Below, the flatbed was pulling into the notch in the hillside. As they watched, a man in a yellow hard hat sprinted across the lot, heading for the road. There were three overlapping pops, and the man pitched forward and went still.

  “I count four others,” Dominic said. “Don’t see any of them moving. You guys?”

  No one answered.

  They sprinted down the slope to the concrete lip at the edge of the lot, then followed it up the opposite slope toward the edge of the entrance notch. They crept up to the edge, peeked over, and were met by the sounds of wrenching steel. The cab of the truck was disappearing into the mouth of the tunnel. The cask slipped into the entrance, scraping along the upper rim. The truck ground to a stop, lurched forward a few feet, then stopped again. The engine died.

  A man appeared around the rear of the flatbed, his AK at his shoulder. Bullets thunked into the dirt at their feet. They backpedaled and dropped down. Chavez wiggled forward, peeked up, then rose to one knee, snapped off three shots, and dropped down again. “One down,” he said.

  “Do we know how big this thing is?” Jack asked.

  “No bigger than a footlocker, I’d imagine,” Clark replied. “Two men could carry it. Come on, let’s move.” They picked their way back along the concrete rim, then rolled over the edge one by one and dropped to the ground. Ahead, along the concrete wall, were stacks of crates, coils of wire, rolling tool chests, acetylene cutting rigs, and arc welding units. Beyond them, the corner leading to the notch.

  They moved toward it in pairs, leapfrogging one another until Clark could see around the corner. He turned back, pointed to Jack, gestured him forward, then Dominic, then Chavez. At the entrance, nothing was moving. The flatbed was wedged tightly, both sides pressing against the walls and the cask against the roof.

  From the tunnel came the humming of an engine. It faded.

  “Sounds like a golf cart,” Dominic said.

  “Cushman utility vehicle. Sorta the same thing, but faster.”

  “What do you know about the layout?” Clark asked.

  “Seen a few sketches on the Internet, but since it’s not even done yet, I don’t know-”

  “Best guess.”

  “This main tunnel probably runs all the way to the north entrance. At intervals down the tunnel, there’ll be ramps that angle downward.”

  “Straight shot or curved?”

  “Straight.”

  “How deep?”

  “Almost a thousand feet. At the bottom, the ramp will level out into a landing-how big I don’t know. Branching off the landing will be storage tunnels for the casks. The good news is they’re gonna want to plant that thing as deep as possible, which means a ramp. From the main tunnel to the bottom, it’ll probably take them ten minutes.”

  At Clark’s signal, Jack and Chavez sprinted to the rear of the flatbed, climbed up, and began moving forward past the cask. When they were almost to the cab, he and Dominic came around the corner, split around the truck, and sprinted to the walls on either side of the entrance. Clark slid along the wall, knelt down, and peeked under the truck chassis. He straightened up and signaled to Jack: Two men inside. Jack nodded and relayed it to Ding, who passed it on to Dominic on the other side.

  Slowly, carefully, Jack slid open the cab’s rear window, then accepted a boost from Chavez and squirmed through into the sleeper compartment. He slid down on the floorboard, crawled ahead to the dashboard. Out the side windows, the rock walls came to within a f
oot of the cab.

  He poked his head up over the dash until he could see through the windshield. The tunnel was more massive than he’d originally imagined. Like the skeleton of a submarine, the walls and ceiling were braced by massive hoop girders. Halogen lights affixed to the ceiling stretched into the distance.

  Over the hood, Jack saw the top of a man’s head move from right to left and disappear from view. Twenty feet down the tunnel, he saw another man crouching beside a yellow Cushman. Careful to keep his head out of sight, Jack wriggled into the driver’s seat. From the sleeper compartment, he heard a single tap. One… Another tap. Two…

  On three, Jack pressed his palm against the horn.

  Gunfire erupted on either side of the cab. The man beside the Cushman stood up and fired a burst from his AK. There was a single pop, then another. The man stumbled backward, bounced off the Cushman, and slid to the ground.

  “Come on out, Jack,” Clark called.

  In pairs, they wriggled beneath the truck and into the tunnel. The first man Jack had seen lay still a few feet away. Dominic trotted down to the Cushman and checked the other man. He turned back, drew his thumb across his throat.

  They collected the two AKs and then, with Chavez at the wheel, climbed into the Cushman and started down the tunnel. “How stable is this thing they’ve got?” Jack asked Clark.

  “Pretty stable. The slug has to be rammed into the pit with a lot of force. Takes a good-sized charge, and it has to be set. Why?”

  “Working on an idea.”

  Fifty feet ahead, the string of halogen ceiling lights converged into a circle. “First ramp,” Jack said.

  “Easy, Dom,” Clark ordered.

  They pulled to within twenty feet, then stopped, got up, and walked up to the ramp’s entrance. Lit from above by yet more halogen lights, the ramp angled down at twenty-five degrees.

  “Should be able to hear their Cushman,” Jack whispered.

  They went silent and listened. Nothing.

  They climbed back into the Cushman and kept going. The tunnel curved to the right. Dominic stopped short, and Jack got out and peeked around the bend. He came back. “Clear.”