The Big One

by Harrison Arnston

  Graves stuck out his chin and said, “Mr. President, I cannot … will not … be treated in this manner. I demand that I be treated with the proper respect. I have …”

  The fuse had been lit earlier. Now, the full force of the explosion was evident on the face of Byron Walsh. “Listen to me, you pompous piece of crap! You’ll do as you’re told. You’ll do it! Because if you don’t, I’ll have you arrested. For years, you’ve managed to subjugate those people charged with the responsibility of making decisions. You’ve made the decisions for them. You’ve been running a little empire all by yourself. I’m sure, if we look deep enough, we’ll find that you’ve broken enough laws to keep you behind bars for the rest of your natural life. There will be no resignations, mister. You’ll be fired, plain and simple. You’ll go to trial, like a common criminal. And when you’re found guilty, which I guarantee will be the case, you’ll be hauled off to some rotting, stinking hell-hole and shoved in a cell with the rest of the scum. If you want to test my will, feel free. But I warn you, you’ll live to regret it.”

  The color drained from Graves’s face. “Mr. President, this is a disgrace. You can’t talk to me like that! I’m a civil servant. I have rights. I have …”

  President Walsh’s eyes seemed to explode from their sockets.

  “No more arguments!” he screamed. “Do you understand! I want that report in twenty-four hours. And you order the bombs to be produced. Understand?”

  Robert Graves’s eyes were as wide as saucers. He gasped and said, “You’re mad! You’re utterly mad!”

  Walsh stuck his face inches away from that of Graves again and said, in a voice that was now low and soft, “No, Mr. Graves, I’m not mad. Angry, yes. Upset, maybe. But not mad. And you, my dear fellow, don’t ever want to see me mad. Now … I want you out of this office.”

  The president stood up and turned his back on the astonished Graves, his arms crossed, his foot tapping impatiently on the thick carpet. “Tomorrow,” he said. “Same place, same time. Got it?”

  A very shaken Robert Graves struggled to his feet, his eyes almost spinning in his head, his jaw slack, the expression on his face one of total bewilderment.

  Again, the president repeated, “Do you understand?”

  Numbly, Robert Graves nodded and shuffled out of the room.

  Walsh turned to Coones and said, “Better get someone to keep an eye on that idiot. Get in touch with FBI Director Fisher. I want him here within the hour. Also, I want a reprise of the day’s hearings in Sacramento. And tell Marie to cancel everything else on my schedule for the next two days at least.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Better schedule a meeting of the cabinet for the morning. Say eight. We’ll do it over breakfast. If Graves doesn’t come through, we better have a plan of our own.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The president fixed his stare on his long-time friend and said, “I sense a note of disapproval.”

  Coones grimaced and said, “You want it straight?”

  “You know better than to ask that kind of question,” Walsh snapped. “Shoot!”

  “Well,” Coones said, nervously scratching his nose, “it may be that Mr. Graves is one hundred percent right. He’s had a lot of experience in this area. He’s had access to the experts. When you consider what’s at stake here, I think you might take it a step slower.”

  “Slower! We’ve only got about three weeks!”

  Coones hung his head. “That isn’t what I mean,” he said.

  “Then what!”

  “You aren’t in the mood to hear this.”

  Byron Walsh moved to his chair and sat in it heavily. “You’re not suggesting that we follow these recommendations.”

  “If you don’t,” Willard Coones said, “you may be placing yourself … this office … in terrible jeopardy.”

  “You think he’s right! Is that it?”

  Coones sighed, looked at his friend and said, “I think you have to consider that possibility.”

  Walsh slapped his hand on the desk and cursed. “Never!” he said. “It’s unacceptable. Totally unacceptable!”

  Coones walked over to the desk and placed a hand on the shoulder of his friend. “Then get ready,” he said. “The worst may be yet to come. Before you speak with the cabinet, I suggest you acquaint yourself with all of the facts contained in Graves’s report. I think it’s very important. There are some conclusions in there that … unfortunately … make a lot of sense. You need to have an open mind on this, no matter what your personal feelings may be. Sometimes …” He let the rest of his thought go unspoken.

  For a moment, President Walsh simply stared at his long-time friend. Then, very slowly, he picked up the report on his desk and began to read.

  Twenty-six

  * * *

  Las Vegas, Nevada. Garish, glitzy, wild. Mile after mile of dazzling casinos filled with people looking for action or simply enthralled by the atmosphere itself. A city where fantasy rules supreme. A city of assembly-line marriages and quickie divorces. Where the vagaries of climate can bring the air to a boil, even on an evening in May.

  Like this particular Monday. Hot, dry, without a whisper of wind. The temperature at six in the evening hovered at just under one hundred degrees.

  No matter. The city was teeming with tourists and conventioneers. The huge recreational vehicle parking area located adjacent to the Circus Circus Hotel-Motel complex was jam-packed with vehicles from all over the North American continent.

  The old motor home belonging to Dr. Glenda Wickshire was parked at the far end of the lot, about a quarter-mile from the entrance to the RV area. Inside the vehicle, Ted, Terry, and Dr. Wickshire waited patiently, pondering a gamble of a far different kind. They were waiting for two visitors to show up; visitors who had been contacted by mobile phone earlier. Frank Leach and an associate had checked into the Hilton earlier under assumed names. Frank had taken a count of the others who were gathering in the same hotel, awaiting further instructions. The meeting room had been arranged and the conference had been set for eight o’clock. There was only one problem.

  Photographs of Ted Kowalczyk and Theresa Wilson had been displayed prominently on television newscasts from coast to coast. They were listed as fugitives. Not just ordinary run-of-the-mill fugitives either. In the statement issued by the FBI, they were identified as being possibly armed and dangerous fugitives. That made them special.

  All afternoon, as the trio inside the motor home watched the hearings progress, they had been witness to a carefully and exquisitely conceived plan being put into action. Now Sacramento was as much a fantasyland as Las Vegas, or Disneyland, or any of a hundred other places. But this fantasy was being presented as fact. That almost all of what was being said was a pack of lies mattered little. The effect was what counted. And the effect was telling.

  Somehow, the people at NADAT had made it appear as though two old friends had gotten together to commit murder. Several motives were discussed at the hearings in Sacramento, all of them patently ludicrous. But again, it was the effect that counted. In the minds of most of the public, Ted and Terry had already been tried and convicted. A blanket of disinformation had been unleashed by the clever minds at NADAT. A false scenario that would serve to blunt whatever the twosome had to say about anything, should they ever see fit to surface. And if they did surface, there was a very good chance that they would be shot dead where they stood. They were, after all, considered armed and dangerous fugitives!

  Even before they’d been heard, their credibility had been destroyed. They were murderers; therefore, they were not to be believed. People in trouble would say anything to save their skins. Lie, cheat, steal, murder … It was Machiavellian and ingenious.

  And very effective.

  It made the prospects of rescuing Tommy Wilson dimmer. It made them consider the possibility that he’d already been killed, his body buried in the vastness of the desert. If that was so, it would make what was to come totally redundant. Ano
ther exercise in futility.

  The atmosphere inside the motor home was one of deep depression. Even the dog seemed to sense the mood, his bulging eyes turning from person to person as though trying to understand their pain. Three people … spending their time watching television with growing unease, waiting and looking at each other with nothing to say.

  In the midst of this gloom, there was a knock at the door. Ted lifted one of the slats in the Venetian blind and peeked through the small opening. He saw two men standing by the door. For a moment, the bleakness of spirit receded and he almost burst out laughing. Frank Leach and a companion were both wearing false mustaches, dark glasses, and hairpieces. They were dressed in outlandishly bold short-sleeved shirts and white shorts. The disguise, if one could call it that, made them look like partners in some old-time vaudeville act. Or two middle-aged men on the tail-end of a wild weekend in Las Vegas. What made it even sillier was the fact that both men were carrying attaché cases.

  Ted motioned to Dr. Wickshire and she opened the door, allowing them entry.

  Frank came in, all smiles, and grabbed Ted in a bear-hug. “Jesus Christ, babe! It’s good to see you!”

  Introductions were made all around. The other man was Henry Fraser, the executive director of AAIS. Ted, a weak smile on his lips, said, “You certainly know how to develop a disguise, Frank. You two guys are simply beautiful.”

  Frank shrugged it off. “You laugh all you want, babe, but it was the best I could do. And it’s working. Nobody’s stopped me yet. I brought something for you, too. You’ll never make it inside the Hilton the way you look right now.”

  The smile left Ted’s lips. “Nobody’s looking for the two of you.”

  “Oh yeah? Don’t be so sure. The way this thing is going, anything’s possible.”

  “OK,” Ted said. “Bring me up to date. Where are we?”

  Frank looked at Dr. Wickshire and asked, “You got anything to drink, babe?”

  If Dr. Wickshire was offended by being called “babe,” she didn’t show it. She pulled out a bottle of scotch from the cabinet above the small sink and placed it on the table. In a moment, there were glasses and ice and some water.

  “OK,” Frank said, after downing half of his drink. The long walk in the dry heat had given him a strong thirst. “We’ve got over 130 guys parked at the Hilton and the room is all set up. We’ve got some of our own investigators sweepin’ the place now and security’ll be no problem once you get in there. If you get in there. As for the other stuff you wanted, I’ve got truckloads. Enough to make it look like World War Three. The trucks, the uniforms, weapons … you name it. Everything is sitting in L.A. and all we have to do is send our people to pick it up. Your boy went for the story you suggested and I promised him a big bonus if he kept his trap shut. I think he will.”

  “Did you mention my name?”

  “Yes. Had to. But it’s OK. He’s been watching the hearings and reading the papers and he knows somebody’s trying to fry your ass. He can’t figure out why but he figures this whole deal has something to do with it, so he’s eager to help. You’ve managed to make some friends, babe.”

  “I hope so,” Ted said. “I’ll need them all.”

  Frank grunted something and said, “I’ve got three people working with the college kids. Right now, things are being set up. We got a break there, babe. There was a group at UCLA already planning on just such a protest. We managed to wire in to their deal so it’s perfect. They’ve been planning this for months so it looks real natural. So … so far, we’re on track, but this stuff going on in Sacramento is so weird, I don’t know if it’s gonna do any good.”

  “I don’t know either,” Ted said. “But we don’t have a choice. Tommy Wilson is the key to this thing. If we can produce him, we may have a chance.” He took a deep breath and asked, “The most important item of all. Did you get me a map of the site?”

  Fraser beamed, reached inside his attaché case and extracted a folded piece of paper, which he opened and laid flat on the table. “One of our board members is a retired Atomic Energy Commission executive named Terrence Garfield. He’s quite familiar with the layout of the entire site. As it turns out, Garfield quit two years ago over some policy differences, so he’s got a bit of an axe to grind. After watching what was happening to us in Sacramento, he decided to give me this. He was quite interested in helping us. He even suggested the building they might be using. The others, he says, are so busy all of the time, it’s unlikely they would use them.”

  Fraser pointed to an outline on the map. The building was about six miles from one of the several entrances to the site. Then he looked up at Ted and said, “A stroke of luck, I’d say.”

  Ted grunted. “It’s about time something went our way.” Then he turned to Frank and asked, “The guys you lined up … are they still with us?”

  Frank grinned. “You bet, babe. I told the vets that one of their own was in serious trouble and needed their help. That was enough. I didn’t mention any names. Didn’t need to. As for the insurance guys, they’re all freelance and pissed as hell. They know the hearings are a crock. They can see what’s going on and they want to set it right. Besides, we’re layin’ out big bucks. These guys respond to big bucks, babe.”

  Fraser frowned. “Can you be a little more specific about this operation? As you can appreciate, AAIS is in serious difficulty. Serious difficulty. We’ve been attacked before, but never at this level of intensity. Our involvement in something like this could finish us.”

  “Really?” Ted said, failing to keep the sarcasm from his voice. “Then why are you here?”

  Fraser held up a hand. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m behind you one hundred percent. It’s just that … you seem to be preparing for a full-scale attack on a federal facility. That’s something that could land all of us in jail … for a very long time. Have you considered alternatives?”

  “Yes, I have,” Ted said. “And there aren’t any. You guys are being made the scapegoats for NADAT’s dirty little plan. They figured on keeping everything secret, but they never counted on people like Tommy having a conscience. If we don’t make our move, Los Angeles is likely to be destroyed. AAIS will be destroyed along with it. Which leads me to ask a question.”

  “Yes?”

  “You people knew what was going on. Why the hell didn’t you do something?”

  “We couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we weren’t supposed to know about it.”

  “Bullshit! You did know about it.”

  Fraser looked extremely uncomfortable. “We knew, yes. But we didn’t believe it. At first, we didn’t believe what we were hearing. We thought there had to be a mistake. And then, after we became convinced that Gifford’s data was accurate, we were sure that the government would do something. We never, at any time …”

  Ted held up a hand and glared at him. “Back up a bit. Start at the beginning.”

  Fraser took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Then he said, “It all started in 1971. That year, the Russians hosted an international symposium on earthquakes, at which time they presented some astonishing data on earthquake prediction techniques. That was the same year we had the San Fernando Valley earthquake. Some of our members paid off some very large claims that year, so the interest in anything that could predict earthquakes was quite high.

  “In any case, we decided to form a research company to explore the issue. We put the company in the hands of a man named Daniel Dalton, a geologist who’d attended the Moscow conference. At first, things moved quite slowly. Then, in 1978, a scientist named Scollard announced that he’d discovered a new fault line, quite by accident. He claimed that two small earthquakes near Glendale were actually caused by water being pumped into oil wells. At the same time, Vance Gifford had been conducting some experiments in Hollister. He’d managed to produce what he thought was a small earthquake himself, using exactly the same technique.

  “Naturally, when he heard about Scoll
ard’s claim, he went to see him. The two compared notes and Gifford was certain that the man was really on to something. He came up with the idea of using thousands of existing oil wells as probe sites. But how to get our hands on them was another problem. So … we went to the Interior Department.

  “After some discussion, a deal was made. The Interior Department would take back leases on about three thousand low-volume oil wells in the Los Angeles basin and turn them over to Dalton Research for research purposes. Dalton would insert probes into the wells and monitor every twitch. A considerable amount of money was involved, but we were told that if we came up with something solid, we would share the information with the feds and they would find a way to reimburse us for at least half of the cost. It was a very secret deal, and for us, a real gamble.

  “Anyway, as the work progressed, it started to look like we were going to be successful. We’d managed to predict a few small quakes in the areas that we were concentrating on and everyone was getting excited.

  “Then … we got pole-axed. NADAT came swooping down and slapped a classified label on everything. We were told that the national security was at stake here and that all of the information had to be kept secret. We were also told that if we didn’t cooperate, we’d never get reimbursed. Since none of this was on paper, we were in a box.

  “So … we just went about our business until … until Gifford told us he was sure about a big one in Los Angeles. At first, we thought he was crazy, but as time progressed, it looked more and more like he was right. Then he died. Next, Thomas Wilson redid Gifford’s research and the next thing we knew, he also was dead. At least, we thought he was until you told Frank that he was alive.

  “We were a little confused, to say the least. We had no idea that the feds were doing experiments in the desert on this nuclear thing. No idea at all. We got into this thing because we wanted to find out whether or not earthquakes could be predicted. Now we know they can. But it’s still too expensive.”