Fallout

by James W. Huston

  “You’ve got to be shitting me!” Thud cried. “You have got to be friggin’ shitting me!”

  “Nope. He just told me.”

  “About what?” asked Lieutenant Commander Brian Hayes, the Intelligence Officer. He was close to both of them and felt perfectly comfortable injecting himself into any of their conversations. He flipped open the pink doughnut box. His face showed immediate disappointment at finding it empty. “Who took all the doughnuts?”

  “Some thief,” Thud lamented. “Believe that?”

  “I didn’t even get breakfast,” Hayes said.

  “Stick’s getting boarded for that midair,” Thud announced.

  “You’re kidding me, right?” Hayes asked as he walked across the room. His right knee and foot insisted on turning in just slightly. It was barely noticeable; Luke and Thud could tell that Hayes was doing everything he could to hide it. Hayes had been recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

  “Nope,” Luke said, still stinging from the announcement. He tried to be his usual optimistic self, but he was so embarrassed by the fact that he was getting boarded, he found himself reddening every time he mentioned it. It was eating him alive.

  “That’s bullshit,” Hayes said. “We ought to board the Skipper,” Hayes said, quickly glancing over his shoulder to make sure Gun wasn’t around. “Probably just a formality.”

  “Yeah. That’s it,” Luke said. “Just a formality. That’s why I’m grounded until they get it done.” He stood and filled his coffee cup.

  Thud was speechless. “Don’t worry about it. It’ll pass. No problem.”

  Luke looked at him as he drank. He knew Thud was just blowing smoke. And he knew Thud knew.

  * * *

  Colonel Yuri Stoyanovich sat behind his desk in the dimly lit, dilapidated building that was the headquarters of his regiment, the 773rd IAP—Istrebeitelnyi Aviatsionnaya Polk, Fighter Aviation Regiment—and ignored the loud knock on the door. Command of one of Russia’s premier fighter regiments was an honor. But it was a pain in the ass, too. The airplanes were easy. Well, perhaps not easy, but easy compared to the pilots and the difficult times Russia had been cursed with for almost fifteen years now. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Yes, well he did, and now the Berlin Wall and the rest of the Soviet Union were mostly rubble. And he was in charge of one of the piles of rock.

  Stoyanovich missed the simplicity of climbing into the cockpit of a jet fighter and escaping the problems below. Even now that Russians claimed to be free, they weren’t free of difficulties, or of poverty. There was no gas. There were no cars anyone could buy. They weren’t even free to get paid what they had earned from the government as pilots. Their pay was always late, if it came at all. The fighter pilots of Russia, the elite of the military, lived in barracks not fit for dogs.

  Stoyanovich leaned back and scratched his scalp through his thinning, oily hair. His men, the pilots and the others, took out their frustrations in ways that were often self-destructive. He dealt with a new problem every day. Today the pattern had held true, only it wasn’t just another personnel problem. The one knocking on the door was his favorite pilot, a longtime friend and ally, someone he had mentored for more than ten years. He had become a brilliant success—until now. “Come in!” Stoyanovich yelled finally.

  A pilot marched smartly into the office. The concrete floor echoed his hard-soled boots. He faced the Colonel and saluted. “Major Vladimir Petkov, sir. Reporting.”

  Stoyanovich studied Petkov as he tried to decide what to do with him. “Major, you know why I have called you.”

  Petkov feigned ignorance. “No, Colonel Stoyanovich. I got the message that you wanted to see me, and I came.”

  “You have no idea?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you not think it might be because of your ill-advised journey into town last night?”

  Petkov frowned. “I did not do anything noteworthy in town last night, sir.”

  “No. What you have said is correct,” the Colonel admitted. “You did not do anything in the town. I was wrong. It is no wonder that you did not know what I was talking about. Please forgive me.” His sarcasm was not lost on Petkov. “Perhaps, then, you would like to talk about coming back to the air base, Major Vladimir Petkov. Perhaps you would like to tell me how the automobile you were driving ended up in a ditch, in a pile of horseshit and mud, upside down, with the windows broken and the wheels spinning up into the sky like a fractured turtle—”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You do remember that, Major Petkov? This has now come back into your mind?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Ah. Then, would you please tell me how this happened? What forces acted on you that threw you off the road so suddenly as to cause such a disaster?”

  Petkov stared at the floor. “There weren’t any—”

  “No, there weren’t any forces, were there?” the Colonel said, standing, his girth straining against his coarse wool uniform. “The only force acting on you was the one that makes you stupid every now and then, the force that seems to overtake you just often enough to remind your superiors that you cannot be trusted.”

  “I can be trusted—”

  “No, you cannot, Major! You drink too much vodka and then do stupid things! Your superior officers have looked the other way for years! Many have come and gone,” he said. “I, too, have let it go before, but no more. You have not learned!” the Colonel roared.

  “I am sorry to have acted as—”

  “Sorry? Do you really think sorry will do anything for you?”

  Petkov didn’t know what to say. He had failed himself miserably. He’d tried to stop, but the base was so remote. Other than flying, he didn’t care much for the life he had fallen into. The flying almost made it tolerable.

  “You are the best natural pilot on the base . . .” the Colonel said, his voice trailing off in regret. “The best I have ever seen. You earned the wings of a Sniper Pilot earlier than anyone else in the regiment. And well deserved. But your judgment fails you. You fall into self-pity, or depression, and make more bad decisions.”

  “It won’t happen again—”

  The Colonel wagged his finger at Petkov. “You are right about that, Major. Very right. Because from now on, you are not flying. You are grounded.”

  Petkov’s face went white. “Colonel,” he gasped. “Flying is my life. It is all—”

  “I know that, Major. Believe me, I know that. You have instructed many pilots here, you have taught them tactics, you have shown them what this fighter of ours can do. But I can no longer allow a drunk to show his bad judgment to the other pilots.”

  Petkov was stung by the word. He couldn’t face the fact himself, and to hear it from someone else, someone he respected, somehow hurt more. “I can go to the rehabilitation—”

  “You have already been, Major. That is what you talked my predecessor into. That is the game you have played before. It is even rumored that you gained access to your records then and changed them, to hide the fact last time that you had been to the special rehabilitation clinic before. So you bought yourself another chance then. But not this time, Major. You have come to the end.”

  Petkov knew the Colonel was right. He fought back the sadness he felt. “What will you do with me, Colonel? You have always been a friend to me. You made me what I am.”

  Stoyanovich paused. It killed him to look into Petkov’s face. But he was willing to do what he had to do. “You are being reassigned to security.”

  Petkov couldn’t believe it. He thought the Colonel was just trying to frighten him, to get his attention. “For how long, Colonel?”

  “Indefinitely, but probably for the rest of your career. I’m sorry.”

  Petkov felt the life drain out of him. His boots against the floor sounded like they belonged to someone else as he saluted and did a smart about-face and marched out of the room as if nothing had happened. But something had happened. The one thing he loved had just been ta
ken away from him forever.

  4

  Bill Morrissey didn’t like the report at all. As the head of the South Asia section of the CIA, Directorate of Intelligence, he generally hated the volatility that permeated the whole region. The report he held in his hands was another in the disturbing trend that was making it an even more dangerous place.

  Morrissey carried the report into the office of Cindy Frohm, one of his senior analysts, and tossed it onto her desk. He trusted her judgment. “Read this,” he said, sitting in the chair across from her.

  She glanced at the title of the report. “The Pakistan crossing incident?”

  “Twelve hundred mils an hour. When they took the scrap metal off the truck, they found ten boxes just shitting radioactivity. Two of them weren’t sealed well, and two more had been breached by gunfire and the explosion. Ten boxes!”

  “Weapons-grade,” she said.

  “Plutonium,” he said ominously.

  “I’d heard,” she said. “Who was bringing it in?”

  “Well, if it was Pakistan, you’d think they wouldn’t do it on a scrap-metal truck, and you’d think they’d tell their own border guards to let it through.”

  “Who else could it be?” she asked, confused.

  “Maybe Pakistan, but not the government of Pakistan.”

  “That’s pretty scary.” She considered some of the possibilities that flooded into her mind. “We should send someone from the NRC or the DOE over there to help.”

  “We offered. They were offended.”

  “They would be.”

  “I want you to figure out where it was going.”

  She saved the computer file she was working on and faced Morrissey. “What do you think?”

  “Iranian driver, documents showed Pakistan as the destination, but passing through a lot of other countries, too, including Iran.”

  “Could be anybody. Iranians sure would love to have nuclear capability.”

  “But he was coming into Pakistan. He had passed through Iran. If this was their game, they would have kept it.”

  She pondered some of the twisted possibilities. “Maybe Pakistan just wanted to be able to deny it if something went wrong. Plus, we don’t really know what happened at the border. Sounds to me like someone knew it was coming and tried to hijack it. What happened to the driver?”

  “Big gunfight, but the radioactivity got him.”

  “And the guards?”

  “Same. And if this truck was trying to make a run through the mountains with ten boxes, how many other boxes have gotten through?” he asked.

  “Any theories on how they got hold of it?”

  “Lots.” He sighed heavily from the weight of trying to track the flow of boxes of radioactive material throughout his area. “Most likely, though, is the Mafia.”

  “The Mafia? Russian Mafia? We’ve never confirmed they have access to any nuclear material. Plus, it was from Kazakhstan.”

  “Nothing to do with nationality.” He shifted in his chair. “The entire Russian nuclear system, like most of their systems, is a wreck. They have guys with Ph.D.s in nuclear physics driving cabs. These Mafia assholes have sniffed out how hungry for nukes some of these desperate regimes are. They’re renting them nuclear engineers.”

  “It’s all about money . . .”

  “Exactly. Read that,” he said pointing. “Then come see me.”

  * * *

  Luke Henry brought his beloved silver Corvette convertible to a quick stop in his garage that looked like a barn. It was the older model Corvette. He couldn’t afford a recent model Corvette on a Navy pilot’s salary. He climbed out and slammed the door of the car so hard he was momentarily afraid he would break the window that was rolled down inside the door. He walked across the dirt driveway toward his house. He’d given his entire life to the Navy. He had gone to sea, risked his life every day and every night for years flying off a carrier, and now they’d turned on him. Betrayed him for a stupid incident that was unavoidable.

  He noticed Katherine’s car was still there. She always left on the early-morning flight from Reno to San Jose every Monday to go to work. He frowned. “Katherine!” he called as the screen door closed behind him. “Katherine!” There was no response.

  He walked through the house and found nothing but empty rooms. He finally made it to the master bedroom; she wasn’t there either. He stopped to listen for sounds. He suddenly heard her in the bathroom making an odd coughing sound. He wasn’t sure whether to stand there and wait or do something else. He decided to go to the kitchen to get something to drink. He opened the refrigerator and took out a beer while he waited.

  When he had told her three days before that Gun had decided to board him, she assumed, as had everyone else, that it was just a formality. Nothing would come of it. He breathed deeply. Well, something had come of it. And all they had planned and counted on was out the window.

  Things had changed a lot since they met. She had been working for a large law firm in Palo Alto, doing corporate and securities work: high technology, cutting edge, dot-coms, IPOs, M&A, VCs, Paige Mill Road. She knew all the lingo. Very heady stuff. As someone two years out of law school, she made four times what he made flying fighters off carriers in the dark. Something out of balance about that, he had thought, but he tried not to dwell on the pay. After all, she worked killer hours and didn’t get to fly fast jets. So he figured it was a wash.

  He’d been stationed at an F/A-18 squadron that was based at LeMoore Naval Air Station in the central California valley when he wasn’t at sea.

  They’d met at a concert in San Francisco —Rage Against the Machine. They’d run into each other. Literally. She had stepped on his foot and turned to apologize. Her gaze had lingered just long enough for him to know it might pay to begin a conversation with her. They’d gone out for coffee after the concert, both deserting the friends they’d come with. She thought it was “incongruous” that a Navy pilot liked a band called Rage Against the Machine. That was the word she had used: “incongruous.” That’s when he knew he wasn’t dealing with just another good-looking woman. He wasn’t even sure what “incongruous” meant, but he was sure she knew, and he was certainly willing to learn. She told him it was odd, since the machine against which they were raging was undoubtedly, at least in part, the government, those who told others what to do, and he was part of that government. He smiled, then laughed. She frowned, then laughed.

  The first thing he’d been required to explain was why he was called Stick instead of Luke. He said that it was because he was tall and thin, but she had used that opportunity to tell him she thought the whole “call-sign” thing was silly, like some fraternity initiation rite. She had called him Luke, but smiled when she said it. He knew she thought that was a funny name, too. Once she found out that he’d grown up in Nevada and was actually wearing cowboy boots, the entire thing was even funnier to her. Funny in an inside-joke kind of way, where she was the only one who got to know what was so damned funny, and it was he who was funny, without intending it. His haircut was certainly something she didn’t encounter every day, very short on the sides and combed forward on the top.

  That first night as they drank coffee, Luke could see her evaluating everything about him. He realized that someone without a lot of self-confidence had no chance with her. But he didn’t care a bit what she or anyone else thought about his name, or his heritage, or his boots. If she didn’t care for any of those things, fine. Even if she was good-looking. So he just held steady and watched her. He thought her small eyeglasses, obviously chosen for their look, were quirky and impractical, and her short, midriff-exposing, spaghetti-strapped top and sexy capri pants were “incongruous”—he’d used the word once he found out what it meant—with her role as a corporate lawyer. And if anyone was part of the machine against which the band had been raging, it was probably the corporations that used Third World nonreading slaves to build things no one wanted but were persuaded to buy through the companies’ clever marketi
ng campaigns.

  She’d loved that and had thrown back her head in beautiful laughter that seemed to bounce off her perfect teeth like musical notes off crystal. He told her that her long, curly blond hair was also not the usual sign of a corporate lawyer, and he insisted on seeing her business card.

  They had dated on weekends, when Luke would drive his Corvette to the Bay Area from LeMoore. They would go to Marin County, or Sausalito, or just ride the ferry around the bay. He’d fallen for her more deeply than he’d ever imagined possible. It left him short of breath. The thought of living without her was inconceivable. He knew by the second month of dating her that he wanted to marry her, but it took him another six months to work up to hinting at the possibility to gauge her reaction. She’d laughed again, but it was her encouraging, “what a great idea” laugh, that life is good, and this idea will be part of the wonderful, enchanted life she seemed to be leading. Luke knew he was completely outclassed. She was from a higher plane in almost every way. But she loved him, and he knew it, and he wasn’t the kind to catalog all the ways she was better than him. No point. If it didn’t matter to her, he wasn’t going to let it matter to him.

  He had asked her to marry him right as his squadron tour was ending, just as he was rolling to his shore tour. They knew they would have a chance to be together every day. The timing was perfect. Then he got his dream assignment—he was asked if he wanted to be an instructor at TOPGUN. He was thrilled. So was she, until she learned TOPGUN wasn’t in San Diego anymore. Fallon, Nevada, he’d told her, and her enthusiasm had evaporated.

  She didn’t want to leave what she was doing, and after days of agonizing over how to solve the problem, they’d arrived at a compromise. She would keep her apartment in Palo Alto and come to Fallon every Friday afternoon through Monday morning. They had agreed that practicing law in Fallon, Nevada, simply wasn’t the same as practicing law in the heart of Silicon Valley, in Palo Alto, California.

  But she knew that he was going to stay in the Navy. He was determined to be a commanding officer of a Navy squadron and ultimately of a nuclear aircraft carrier. He loved flying in the Navy and wanted to make it a career. She’d breathed in deeply and said she didn’t know how, but she would make it work. They would make it work.