Ground Zero

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Nancy giggled, knowing he had picked the turn of phrase intentionally. She found it very erotic.

  “—we both need a little release from our tension.” The tone beeped, and the tape rewound.

  In her bedroom, she shed her clothes and, smiling to herself, she yanked down the satin sheets on her bed before changing into her bathing suit, black and smooth and slick.

  She admired herself in the mirror. At forty-five she knew she wasn’t as gorgeous or sexy as she might have been at twenty-five, but she had a body that stood out above most other women her age. She kept in shape. She dressed well. She exercised, and she had retained her appetite in sexual pleasures. Her hair was short and neatly trimmed. Luckily, blondes didn’t become gray—instead they turned “ash.”

  Nancy grabbed one of the plush beach towels from the closet and went through the kitchen, pausing to pour herself a gin and tonic. She swished the alcohol and mixer around with the ice, making it good and cold. No sense not getting the buzz started before Matthew got here. He would fix his own drink when he arrived.

  With the towel slung over her shoulder, Nancy took the mail and her drink out the back patio door to sit by the pool. She pulled a chaise lounge up to her small patio table, then went to turn on the bug lights. The mosquitoes and gnats never relented, especially not near sunset. Finally, she picked up the pool skimmer and swept the net around the surface of the water, removing the drowned bugs and the leaves that had fallen from the neighbors’ trees. When the blue water sparkled clean and inviting, she returned to her shaded chair.

  Nancy settled back to relax, sipping the strong drink, tasting the tonic and the Tanqueray that burned along the back of her throat and into her sinuses. She imagined the taste of the rich steaks Matthew would soon be cooking. She could imagine the salty sweet flavor of his kisses as their breath mingled.

  She squirmed in anticipation on the lounge chair, then ran her hands over the swimsuit.

  It was so good to have a man whose security clearance was as high as her own, someone who worked on the same classified project, who knew about the money skimmed off the operating budgets of other programs, leaving no paper trail of funding. No accounting could ever be made for highly sensitive projects such as Bright Anvil.

  She didn’t have to worry about pillow talk when she needed conversation, since Brigadier General Matthew Bradoukis handled the Department of Defense’s operations of the new warhead concept, while she took care of the DOE side. No worries there. He was her perfect match…for now.

  Nancy slicked baby oil on her bare legs and arms and shoulders, massaging it into her neck…imagining Matthew’s strong fingers working it there. She had to stop herself from thinking like that, or she wouldn’t be able to stand waiting until he arrived.

  She tried to distract herself by opening the mail, sifting through the form letters, advertising circulars, and junk mail without interest—until she came upon an express-delivery package with a postmark from Honolulu but no return address.

  “Maybe I won a free trip for two,” she said, and tore open the envelope. To her disappointment, she discovered only a small glass vial of fine black ash and a scrap of paper. The message was written in neatly printed, razor-edged letters, carefully formed capitals, in a hand that showed elaborate patience.

  “FOR YOUR PART IN THE FUTURE.”

  She frowned at the note. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Out of curiosity, she shook the vial of black ash, holding it up to catch the light. “Am I supposed to convince people to stop smoking cigarettes?”

  Nancy stood up, disgusted at somebody’s lame idea of a joke. Whoever was trying to threaten her, or pull her leg, couldn’t succeed unless she understood what the point was. “Next time try adding a few more details,” she said, tossing the note on the patio table.

  Nancy decided not to worry about it. The sun was dropping lower, though the humidity would hold the heat in the air for a long time to come. She was wasting good swimming time.

  By the edge of the pool, the bug light crackled and snapped. She watched it give off blue sparks as it fed upon whatever gnats or mosquitoes had been lured to their doom in its voltage differential.

  “Take that,” she said with a grin. “Hah!”

  Then the other bug lamps began to spark, frying loudly, buzzing, popping. The lights flickered violently. The sparks returned like miniature lightning storms.

  “What is this, a June bug invasion?” Nancy said, looking around. Only the large beetles would cause the lights to sizzle so much. She wished Matthew would hurry up and get here—she wanted him to see this craziness.

  Finally, one by one, each bug light erupted like a small bomb, with a geyser of blue electrical sparks like a Roman candle into the air. Nancy groaned in disgust. Now they would have to waste valuable weekend time replacing the fixtures.

  “What’s going on here, dammit?” Stilling holding the weird vial, Nancy slammed her drink down, somehow managing not to shatter the glass and dump ice cubes across the concrete patio. She felt unprotected and defenseless out here wearing nothing but her black bathing suit. Maybe if she could get to a phone…

  Voices came at her from all sides, speaking in some strange and primal tongue, swirling invisibly around her ears—but she could see nothing.

  The air itself sparkled and discharged, as if every object on her patio had become a lightning rod. Blue-white arcs shot from her lounge chair to the patio table. “Help!” she cried.

  Nancy turned to run, but slipped and reached out instinctively for support. When she touched the chair, skittering electricity shot up her arms in a burning discharge.

  She opened her mouth to scream, and sparks danced from the fillings in her teeth. Her ash-blond hair rose up into the air like serpents, waving from side to side, spreading into a nimbus around her head.

  Nancy staggered toward the edge of the pool, desperately seeking sanctuary there. Her skin crawled and burned, alive with static electricity. She dropped the vial of ashes into the water.

  A gathering storm of harsh light surrounded her. The screaming voices grew louder.

  Critical mass.

  A sudden rush of thunder engulfed her.

  The intense firestorm crisped her eyes. The force of the blast of heat and radiation slammed her backward into the pool with a surge of light. A cloud of vaporized water swept upward like a fog bank into the sky.

  The final afterimage on Nancy Scheck’s optic nerve was of an impossible, spectral mushroom cloud.

  NINETEEN

  Scheck Residence

  Tuesday, 1:06 P.M.

  The body looked the same as the others, Mulder thought—severely charred, crackling with residual radiation, twisted in a flash-burned, insectlike pose that reminded him of that famous lithograph by Edvard Munch, “The Scream.”

  Somehow, though, finding a radiation-blasted corpse in the backyard of an expensive suburban home seemed far more eerie. The mundane surroundings—swimming pool, lounge chairs, and patio furniture—gave the death scene a more frightening aspect than even the blasted bowl of glassy sand out in the New Mexico desert.

  A local policeman blocked them from entering the pool area, but Mulder flashed his badge and ID. “Federal agents,” he said. “I’m Special Agent Mulder, this is Agent Scully. We’ve been flown in to look at the site and examine the body.”

  A homicide detective was studying clues and taking notes around the pool and patio. He looked baffled. He overheard Mulder’s introduction, and looked up. “FBI? Now that’s calling in the big guns. Why were you brought here?”

  “We might have a certain background on this case,” Scully answered. “This death may be related to another investigation we’re working on. There have been two similar deaths in the past week.”

  The detective raised his eyebrows, then gave a weary shrug. “Anything you guys can do to help. Takes work off my shoulders. This is a weird one, all right. Never seen anything like it.”

  “No question: this one goes in your
special file cabinet,” Scully said quietly to Mulder.

  Scully began a perimeter inspection of the crime scene, working around the bustling evidence technicians and detectives. She took out a small knife to probe a large charred patch on the redwood fence that bounded the Scheck property.

  “The burn doesn’t go very deep,” she said, flaking away an external film of charcoal. “As if the heat was intense, but very brief.”

  Mulder inspected the mark she had made with her knife. Then he noticed the shattered bug lights around the pool. “Look, they’re all destroyed,” he said. “Like some sort of power surge blew them up, every one. Doesn’t happen every day.”

  “We can check electrical company records to see if there were local power fluctuations at the estimated time of death,” Scully suggested.

  Mulder nodded. He placed his hands on his hips and turned slowly around, hoping that an answer would jump out at him. But nothing did. “Okay, Scully,” he said. “This time we’re not at a nuclear research lab or a missile testing site—just somebody’s patio in Maryland. How are you going to explain this one scientifically?”

  Scully sighed. “Mulder, right now I’m not even sure how you’re going to try to explain it.”

  “Not necessarily by the book,” he said. “First off, I’m going to see if there was any connection between Nancy Scheck and Emil Gregory and Oscar McCarron. Or nuclear weapons testing. Or even the Manhattan Project. It could be anything.”

  “She wasn’t old enough to be involved with the Manhattan Project in World War II,” Scully pointed out. “But she did work for the Department of Energy, an important person, according to the dossier. But that’s a tenuous link at best. Tens of thousands of people work for the DOE.”

  “We’ll see,” Mulder said.

  The coroner had already wrapped up the charred body in a black plastic bag. Mulder went cautiously over to the coroner and motioned him to unzip the body bag so he could study again what remained of Nancy Scheck.

  “Weirdest thing I ever saw,” the coroner said. He sneezed, then sniffled loudly, and muttered something about his allergies. “Never seen a death like it. Isn’t just a burn victim. Can’t imagine offhand what could blaze that hot. I’m going to have to dig in my reference books.”

  “An atomic bomb could have done it,” Mulder said.

  The coroner gave a nervous chuckle, then sneezed again. “Yeah, good one. Everybody has an A-bomb go off in their backyard. Must have been some argument with the neighbors! Unfortunately, no witnesses reported seeing any mushroom cloud.”

  “I’d agree that it sounds preposterous—” Mulder said, “if this weren’t the third identical death we’ve seen in the last week or so. One in California, one in New Mexico, now here.”

  “You’ve encountered this before?” the coroner perked up, then rubbed his reddened eyes. “What on earth caused it?”

  Mulder shook his head and allowed the stocky man to zip the bag shut again. “Right now, sir, I’m as stumped as you are.”

  A man in a general’s uniform stood just outside the glass patio doors speaking with two policemen, who took copious notes in their small notebooks. The general was short, broad shouldered, with close-cropped black hair and a swarthy complexion. He appeared deeply distraught. The scene instantly captured Mulder’s curiosity.

  “I wonder who that is,” Mulder said.

  “I heard one of the policemen talking,” Scully said. “I think he’s the one who discovered the body last night.”

  Mulder hurried over, eager to pick up on what the general was saying and ask a few questions of his own.

  “The concrete was still hot when I got here,” the general said, “so it couldn’t have been long. The back fence was smoldering. The paint was bubbling, and the smell…” He shook his head. “The smell!” The general turned to look at Mulder, standing beside them, but didn’t seem to register his presence. “Listen to me—I’ve seen combat before, and I’ve witnessed some accidents, awful ones…even helped recover the bodies from a plane crash once, so I’ve gotten a glimpse of death and how hideous it can be. But…in her own backyard….”

  Mulder finally managed to read the general’s engraved plastic name tag. “Excuse me, General Bradoukis—did you work with Ms. Scheck?”

  The general seemed too much in shock to challenge Mulder’s right to ask questions here. “Yes…yes, I did.”

  “And why were you here last night?”

  The general stiffened, his eyebrows drawing together. “We were going to have dinner. Steaks on the grill.” His wide face flushed somewhat. “Our relationship was not a complete secret, though we were discreet.”

  Mulder nodded, understanding the general’s extra measure of distress. “One thing, General—I understand that Ms. Scheck was a fairly important person in the Department of Energy, but I’m not sure I know which program she ran. Can you tell me?”

  Bradoukis averted his black eyes. The two policemen fidgeted, as if uncertain whether they should chase away this new investigator, or let the FBI agent ask their questions for them.

  “Our…uh, Nancy’s work wasn’t much talked about.”

  Mulder felt a quick thrill of excitement, a new trail to follow. “You mean it was one of those black programs, an unofficially funded project?”

  The general cut him off. “The media call them ‘black programs.’ There’s no official designation for them. Sometimes it’s necessary to get certain things done by nontraditional means.”

  Mulder leaned forward like a hawk swooping in for the kill. Everything depended on the next question. “And was Ms. Scheck’s work connected with a project called Bright Anvil?”

  The general reared back like a startled cobra. “I’m not at liberty to discuss that project, especially not here in an un-secured area.”

  Mulder gave him an understanding smile. “That won’t be necessary, General.” Bradoukis’s reaction had been answer enough. The sound Mulder heard in his mind was the clicking of puzzle pieces falling together. Things were still not entirely in place, but at least they were arranged into some semblance of order. He decided his best tactic would be to leave the distraught man alone for now.

  “That’s all for me, General. Sorry to have bothered you during this time of great distress. I take it you have an office in the Pentagon? I may visit you in person if I have further questions.”

  Bradoukis nodded without enthusiasm, and Mulder stepped over to the pool, looking down at the blistered, blackened paint that had once been sky blue around the concrete rim. Half of the water had boiled away in the flash of intense heat, leaving the pool warm and murky with brownish scum collecting in the corners.

  The fireball must have been utterly intense—yet it had not set Nancy Scheck’s home on fire, nor had it spread to the neighbors’ yards. Almost as if it had been directed, intentionally focused in a specific area. Several people on the block claimed to have seen a brief, bright flash, but had not bothered to investigate. Neighbors kept to themselves in these upscale areas.

  Mulder’s usually sharp eye glimpsed an object floating near the bottom of the pool, a small glass bottle that drifted about as if only partially waterlogged. He searched until he found a skimmer net and yanked it off its hooks near the patio doors. The flash of heat had twisted the handle, but the net remained surprisingly serviceable.

  Mulder took it to the edge of the pool and dipped the skimmer deep, swirling it around until he succeeded in netting the dark object and fishing it out. Water trickled off the edges of the skimmer.

  “I found something here,” he called. He lifted free a small vial that contained a black substance. Some pool water had leaked into the vial, but just a few drops. The detective and Scully came over to look. Mulder held the vial between his thumb and forefinger, tilting it to the light. The object seemed very odd to him, and by its sheer oddness he decided it must be important to this case.

  He offered it to Scully, and she took it, shaking it to disturb the contents. “I can’t sa
y what it is,” she said. “Some sort of black powder or ash, but how did it get to the bottom of the pool? Do you think it has something to do with her death?”

  “Only one way to find out, Scully,” Mulder said. He turned to the homicide detective in charge. “We have exceptional analytical facilities at the FBI crime lab. I’d like to take this back with us to run a full analysis. We’ll copy you on all reports, of course.”

  “Sure,” the detective said. “One less thing for my people to do.” He shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like this case, and I think it might be beyond me. Do me a favor and figure this one out.” With one hand, the detective brushed his hair back. “Sheesh, give me a stabbing or a drive-by shooting any old day.”

  TWENTY

  FBI Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

  Tuesday, 3:10 P.M.

  After so much time on the road, Scully found it comforting to be working in her own lab for a change, even on as gruesome a subject as this.

  She basked in the solitude and familiar surroundings. She knew where all her equipment was located. She knew whom to call for help or a technical consultation. She knew specialists whose skills she respected in case she needed an unbiased person to verify what she found.

  The FBI crime lab was the most sophisticated facility of its type in the world. It was filled with an oddball assortment of experts in the forensic sciences whose unusual interests or skills had proven time and again to be the keys to solving bizarre and subtle cases: a woman genetically predisposed to detect the bitter-almond odor of cyanide that many people could not smell, a man whose interest in tropical fish had led him to identify a mysterious poison as a common aquarium algicide after all other methods of analysis had failed, another man who specialized in identifying the type of photo-copying machine that had made a particular copy.