Ground Zero

by Kevin J. Anderson

  When he returned to Scully, she reached inside her purse and handed him a few sticks of chewing gum. “What, is my breath bad?” he asked.

  “No, but you’ll need it for the flight. I’ve flown on these Navy planes before with my father. They’re not pressurized. Chewing the gum helps equalize the pressure in your ears—trust me, it’s my professional medical advice.”

  Mulder took the sticks skeptically and slipped them into his shirt pocket. “I knew we were getting a bargain ticket, but I at least expected some oxygen.”

  “Blame it on military budget cuts,” Scully said.

  Mulder and Scully searched for a comfortable seat, but all the chairs were hard and stiff-backed. They both buckled in. Finally, the cargo doors closed, and muffled shouts from inside announced the plane’s readiness for departure. One of the sailors pulled the thick passenger compartment doors shut as the engines began to power up with a loud vibrating hum.

  “I guess they don’t have a first-class section,” Mulder said.

  He turned around in his seat and recognized some of the civilians already buckled into their seats, scientists and technicians he had seen at the Teller Nuclear Research Facility. Mulder smiled and waved as a bespectacled redhead blushed and tried to look small. “Hello, Victor! Victor Ogilvy—fancy meeting you here.”

  Victor stammered, “Uh, hello Mr. Agent…I didn’t know the FBI was scheduled to watch the test preparations.”

  “Well, Victor, I told you I was going to make some phone calls,” he said feeling like a bully, and somewhat embarrassed at it.

  Scully leaned closer to Mulder. “We’ve got a long flight ahead of us, so let’s be friends. We’re all here with our country’s best interests at heart, right Victor?”

  The young redheaded technician nodded vigorously.

  “Right, Mulder?” She elbowed him in the ribs.

  “Of course, Scully.”

  The hulking transport plane began to lurch along, lumbering into motion like a behemoth, as aerodynamic as a bumblebee, but orders of magnitude louder. The C-5 accelerated down the runway and gracefully lifted off, hauling its enormous bulk into the air with a roar of jet engines. Before long, the aircraft had gained altitude, circled over the hills east of Oakland, and then headed straight out to sea.

  Mulder turned back to look at Victor Ogilvy. “So, Victor, why don’t we make this into a regular tropical vacation with sun and surf and sparkling beaches?”

  Victor looked surprised. “No such luck, Agent Mulder. Did you both bring along your rain slickers?”

  “What for?” Scully asked.

  Victor blinked again behind his round eyeglasses. “And I thought you two had done your homework. Maybe you didn’t get as many details as you thought.

  “The Bright Anvil test—we’re heading directly into a hurricane.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Airborne over the Western Pacific

  Friday, 8:07 A.M.

  Leaving Pearl Harbor behind on a perfect picture-postcard morning, Scully, Mulder, and the entire crew took off in a smaller plane headed out over the monotonously blue, sun-dappled Pacific. While dawn chased them over the horizon, Scully looked out the window, her mind drifting far away.

  “So,” Mulder said, slouched next to her in a cramped seat, getting comfortable, “did you enjoy our all-expense-paid government trip to Hawaii? A fine day of boredom and waiting, but you can’t beat the hospitality.”

  Scully squirmed in her seat, then pulled down the window shade; she couldn’t find a comfortable position as easily as Mulder seemed to. “It was everything I’ve come to expect from a government-paid vacation.”

  The plane rattled and hummed as it roared over the ocean. Clouds began to gather in the western skies, and Scully had no doubt that as they proceeded the weather would get worse. Mulder didn’t seem the least bit concerned for the safety or integrity of the plane—but then traveling never seemed to bother her partner.

  Curious to see how the rest of the passengers were holding up, Scully turned around to look at the small cliques scattered throughout the plane. Victor Ogilvy and some of the other Teller Nuclear Research Facility technicians had gathered in the back and were poring over their notebooks and technical papers.

  The Navy troops all sat by themselves, talking loudly, completely relaxed as the plane rattled along. Scully knew from her own background that sailors traveled often on a moment’s notice. Thrust together with new groups of seamen, either with plenty in common or few shared interests, they found ways to amuse themselves without difficulty.

  Mulder had fixed his attention on two young black men diligently playing a game of Stratego with a travel-sized board that used small magnetic pieces. He watched them for a few moments, then looked away with a troubled expression on his face.

  Another group of sailors surrounded a broad-shouldered seaman with close-cropped dark hair and a Hispanic cast to his features; he sat intently reading the latest enormous technothriller by Tom Clancy. The three spectators loudly discussed the merits of Clancy’s work and the excitement of being a CIA agent like Jack Ryan. Scully wondered if they had the same view of the exciting life FBI field agents led.

  Then the three began discussing the classified information woven through Clancy’s work. “Man, if you or I wrote something like that, we’d be thrown in the brig so fast we wouldn’t have time to cash our royalty checks!” said one.

  “Yeah, but you and I have security clearances—key point. We’ve signed papers that hold us accountable. Clancy doesn’t have any access to that sort of stuff, so who’s gonna believe him?”

  “Are you telling me he’s making it up? He’s got a damn fine imagination, if that’s the case. Look at all those details.”

  The critic shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. He’s just an insurance agent, man. He has no ‘implied credibility’ like we do, because we work directly with the material.”

  “I still think somebody should break Clancy’s knuckles for letting out classified secrets like that.”

  “No way,” said the third. “He wouldn’t be able to write no more books if he had broken knuckles.”

  “Well, break his kneecaps then.”

  Paying absolutely no attention to the three spectators hovering over his shoulders and speaking around his ears, the reader casually flipped a page and continued with the chapter.

  The aircraft struck heavy turbulence, jouncing the passengers from side to side in their seats. Scully gripped the arms of her chair. Mulder nonchalantly chose that moment to lean forward against the bucking carnival ride and pull out his briefcase. He snapped it open on his lap, ransacking it for papers.

  “Let’s go over a few things while we have time,” he said.

  The jostling became so rough that the two sailors playing Stratego finally gave up, brushed their magnetic pieces into the carrying case, and clicked their board shut.

  With her teeth rattling together, Scully couldn’t imagine how her partner could think clearly—but then she thought Mulder might be doing this to keep her mind off the turbulence. She silently thanked him for it.

  “Just what do you expect is going to happen out there on the island, Mulder?” she asked.

  “General Bradoukis seems to think that whoever or whatever has been killing people around the country is going to try once more to stop the Bright Anvil test. This is its last chance.”

  “You keep saying ‘it,’ Mulder,” she pointed out.

  He shrugged. “Fill in your own pronoun of choice.” He hauled out a map of the Pacific Ocean with the island chains highlighted. He unfolded it on top of the other papers in his briefcase. “If you’re still worried about that hurricane, I’ve got some good news for you.”

  Scully, still holding tightly to the arms of her seat, looked questioningly at him. The plane continued to rattle. “Right now I’m worried about this plane staying aloft—but if the best you’ve got is good news about the hurricane, I’d be happy to hear it.”

  With a mischievous
gleam in his eye, Mulder said, “The good part is that we aren’t flying into a hurricane after all.”

  The brief wash of relief surprised Scully, but she knew him better than that. “What do you mean? Have the weather conditions changed? Has it been downgraded to a tropical storm?”

  “Not at all,” he said, pointing to the map. “Look here, we’re heading out to the Western Pacific. Meteorologically speaking, storm systems in this region aren’t called hurricanes. They are technically designated typhoons. No other real difference, though. Same damage potential.”

  “What a relief,” Scully said. “Aren’t semantics wonderful?”

  Mulder studied the tiny flyspeck dots out in the vast blue areas of the map. He circled the specks with his finger. “I wonder why they’re going way out here. The Marshall Islands are a U.S. protectorate, so I’m sure that has something to do with it. Could it be just to intercept the storm?”

  Scully perked up, glad to have a subject on which she could discourse. She forced herself to ignore the rocking turbulence as she added her knowledge to the discussion. “It probably has more to do with the track record of nuclear testing out here. The Marshall Islands chain is where most of the U.S. bomb blasts took place between 1946 and 1963—hydrogen bombs and cobalt bombs, thermonuclear devices, everything too big to be detonated in Nevada. In fact, between 1947 and 1959, forty-two nuclear devices were set off on these islands alone.

  Scully was amazed at how these facts came back to her, as if she were reading from a textbook, or a political diatribe, in her mind. “The entire atoll of Eniwetok was like a hopscotch ground. Test detonations stepped from one clump of islets to another, vaporizing one lump of coral, then the next. The inhabitants were evacuated, promised adequate compensation, but Uncle Sam never really came through for them. In all fairness, nobody knew exactly what they were doing at the time, not even the weapons scientists. They made mistakes—some bombs fizzled, others produced a much higher yield than expected. It still amazes me how they just…played with all that destructive potential.”

  Mulder raised his eyebrows. “You’re sounding pretty passionate there. Is this a particular interest of yours?”

  She looked at him, feeling her walls go up. “Used to be.”

  “So what happened?” he asked. “With the testing, I mean.”

  “All atmospheric testing of atomic explosives ceased in 1963 with the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. But by that time over five hundred nuclear weapons had already been detonated by the United States and various other countries.”

  “Five hundred!” Mulder said. “Aboveground? You’re kidding, right?”

  “Have you ever known me to exaggerate, Mulder?”

  “Not you, Scully,” he said. “Not you.”

  The plane suddenly lost altitude for a terrifying two seconds, then caught itself. The sailors in back whooped and cheered, applauding the pilot. Scully hoped the pilot wasn’t about to leave the controls to come back and take a bow.

  She sucked in a deep breath. Mulder waited for her to continue. “There’s even been an off-and-on moratorium of underground testing.” she said. “The French and Chinese and others have continued their work, although they deny it. The French recently resumed testing out on some other islands near Tahiti—and sparked a firestorm of public opinion against them. With seismic surveillance and high-resolution spy satellites, however, it’s awfully difficult to mask the signature of a nuclear explosion.”

  “Ten to one this approaching storm isn’t just a coincidence then.”

  “I think that’s a safe bet, Mulder.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Enika Atoll, Marshall Islands

  Friday, 2:11 P.M.

  The weather grew even rougher, tossing and batting the small plane about as they neared the isolated atoll. Scully found herself wishing for the stability of the immense C-5 transport plane they had flown from Alameda to Pearl Harbor.

  The plane circled around to attempt a second approach to the small island’s crude landing strip. “They haven’t told us to assume crash positions yet. That’s a good sign,” Mulder said.

  Wind shear knocked the aircraft sideways, and even the seasoned sailors embarrassed themselves with nervous gasps.

  “Mulder, I didn’t realize you were such an optimist,” Scully said, but he had distracted her just long enough for the plane to make its final run. Through the rain-splattered window, Scully could make out a distressingly short landing strip that had been bulldozed along a flat stretch of beach.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. When the plane finally bounced and rattled to a rough halt, the passengers burst into a round of spontaneous applause.

  Sailors already on the island rushed forward, heads bent, to put chock blocks behind the plane’s wheels. The side door swung downward on reinforced cables, converting into creaking stairs. The cargo section was pried open from below, and a group of Navy men swarmed out of storm shelters, where they had hidden from the freshening wind and the approaching typhoon. In a well-choreographed routine, they began unloading the remaining crates.

  Scully walked on rubbery legs to the airplane stairs, but declined Mulder’s help getting down. She stepped onto the hard-packed coral gravel of the “runway,” holding the side of the staircase for support, and stared around at the flat, foliage-covered island, the reef outcroppings of coral, and the clean sand.

  The bowl of sky surrounding them was a muddy gray-green from the approaching hurricane. The air itself held an ominous crackle of ozone mixed with the salty iodine smell of the sea. The wind gusted in short sharp breezes from random directions.

  Scully’s light auburn hair blew around her face. Mulder stood beside her, his maroon striped tie flapping up and off to the side of his suit jacket. “See, what did I tell you? Two tickets to paradise.”

  Scully glanced sidelong at him. “You must have gotten the bargain tickets.”

  In a sheltered bay farther down the rough shoreline, Scully spotted a small enclosed boat, the captain’s gig, used to shuttle crew and materials from the Navy destroyer anchored in view farther out beyond the treacherous reef line. Scully recognized the type of ship, a Spruance-class destroyer, a powerful vessel primarily designed for rapid response and antisubmarine warfare.

  “The Navy must be taking this test seriously,” she said. “That kind of destroyer isn’t something to mess with.”

  A trim young officer came directly toward them. He had short-cropped sandy hair and eyeglasses with Photogray lenses that had managed to turn dark even in the gloomy light of the rising storm. “You must be the FBI agents,” he said and stood rigidly in front of them. “I’m Commander Lee Klantze, the Dallas’s XO. I’ll take you to meet Captain Ives. He’s here to supervise the last-minute preparations, though I believe he intends to observe the test from the Dallas.”

  Klantze turned about and then set out along the beach, taking long strides. “We received word from Brigadier General Bradoukis in Washington that you’d be VIP guests, though we’re all a bit mystified as to your purpose here. This isn’t an FBI matter, as far as I can see.”

  “It dovetails with a pending investigation,” Scully said.

  “Oh,” Klantze answered.

  You could always tell a career military officer, Scully thought with a smile. They knew when to stop asking questions.

  “We’ll take you to the Bright Anvil control blockhouse and let you get on with whatever you need to do. Just try to stay out of the way of the test preparations. Plenty of delicate instruments. Careless hands can cause more damage than the hurricane will…and Mr. Dooley tends to over-react in his protectiveness.”

  “Thank you,” Scully said. She and Mulder followed the executive officer as he struck out toward where coral outcroppings formed the edge of a sheltered lagoon. A high-rising bluff shielded a small cluster of buildings from the opposite side of the island, the direction from which the storm approached.

  Mulder turned back and pointed to the cargo being unloaded from the plane. “Our
suitcases and bags are over there,” he said.

  Klantze didn’t seem worried. “They’ll be taken back to the Dallas. We’ve got staterooms for you to sleep in, although everybody is pretty much going to be working round the clock until the blast goes off. The test is set for oh five-fifteen tomorrow.”

  “That soon?” Mulder said.

  “No choice,” Klantze answered as he continued briskly along the beach. Sand whipped around them, stinging their faces. “That’s when the storm is due to make landfall.”

  Scully wanted to ask why they were so concerned about making their test coincide with the hurricane, but she decided to save those questions for Bear Dooley or someone else in charge.

  The executive officer led them to an unusual, igloo-shaped control bunker, to which all sorts of generators, air-conditioning units, and satellite dishes had been linked.

  “Look, it’s the Enika Holiday Inn,” Mulder said.

  Scully could see many figures moving in and out of the blockhouse, checking generators and electrical connections. A man in a white captain’s uniform saw them and waved Klantze over.

  Upon approaching the captain, Scully automatically took out her ID, and Mulder did the same. The captain dutifully accepted the FBI badges and studied them, genuinely paying attention before handing them back. “Thank you, Agents Scully and Mulder. I’m Captain Robert Ives,” he said, “of the USS Dallas.”

  Scully reached out to shake his hand, surprising herself with a sudden rush of memory. “Yes, Captain. I believe I met you once, when I was much younger, at a Naval reception in Norfolk, Virginia. My father was Captain Bill Scully.”

  “Bill Scully!” Ives looked astonished. “Why, yes, I knew him. He was a good man. How is he these days?”