Critical Mass

by Steve Martini

  “It may have been easy to find,” said the president, “but they sure as hell haven’t made it easy to get into it.”

  “No. Perhaps that’s by design,” said Hirshberg. “To keep us looking in the wrong place just long enough.”

  The president thought about what he was saying. “You think I should cancel the speech?”

  “I do.”

  “What do I tell Congress?”

  “Tell them you’ll deliver it next week.”

  “Then what do I do, leave town?”

  “That would be advisable. Perhaps Camp David,” said Hirshberg. “Or some other secure military base.”

  “You haven’t told the Secret Service about your concerns?”

  “No.”

  “Thank God. They’d be hauling me away with a rope.” The president held the pencil between two fingers and drummed the papers in front of him. It was a no-win situation. If he left the Capitol and didn’t tell Congress why and word later got out, they would cut his political legs out from under him, even members of his own party. He would become known as the president who left the entire government sitting under the Capitol dome to face nuclear holocaust while he trekked off to Camp David to save his own ass.

  “Jesus, Sy, if you thought this was a possibility, it would have been nice if you’d mentioned it a little earlier.”

  “Mr. President, until yesterday we thought that the device, if there was a device, was on that island. Now it appears that it was never on the island, and we don’t know how long it’s been on the loose. They could have had time to transport it.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t exist,” said the president. “Have you ever thought of that? After all, no one has actually seen it, have they?”

  “No.”

  “Not the woman. Not her friend, what’s his name? The Dutchman.”

  “Van Ry,” said Hirshberg.

  “Why don’t you talk to them again? See if maybe we’ve missed anything.”

  Hirshberg could tell he was being sent on a mission of distraction, something to get him out of the president’s hair so that he could avoid a decision.

  “There is another possible way out. You could become ill at the last minute,” said Hirshberg.

  “NO!” He exploded, dropped the pencil on his desk, and stood. “That’s all I need. Speculation that I’ve had a stroke or a heart attack. Hell, if I was the president of Russia I could just tell them I was drunk or better yet let the press figure it out.”

  “It doesn’t have to be a stroke,” said Hirshberg.

  “You don’t cancel the State of the Union for a cold. No. It’s too late to cancel,” said the president.

  “But… ”

  “No. Now I’ve made a decision and it’s final.” He looked at his watch. “Is there anything else?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then if you don’t mind,” said the president.

  Hirshberg turned and left the office.

  The president’s gaze returned to the papers on his desk, but his thoughts did not.

  NEAR SILVER HILL, MD

  He had been in the air, on and off, for more than fourteen hours. The vintage DC-3 was slow and flew at a low altitude, but it was nothing if not reliable.

  Thorn taxied up the runway in front of several small hangars. No one paid particular attention to the old plane, even in mint condition. Vintage planes were more common here than perhaps anywhere else except the annual Oshkosh Air Show.

  The airport was only a few miles from Silver Hill, the home of the Paul E. Garber Restoration, Preservation and Storage Facility. It was the repair center and principal storage area for the Air and Space Museum.

  Sitting on twenty-one acres and comprising more than forty thousand aviation artifacts, the Garber facility had a full-time paid staff and an army of volunteer aviation buffs, people who encompassed every aspect of construction and repair from the space shuttle to planes dating back to Kitty Hawk.

  Thorn was counting on this volunteer spirit and the loose arrangement that existed between the museum and people who donated their time, some of whom worked at the Garber facility.

  Before the plane’s wheels even stopped rolling, a truck pulled out from behind one of the hangars. It was thirty feet long with a cargo box on the back, the kind of truck that furniture movers use. It pulled alongside the cargo door of the DC-3.

  Thorn cut the plane’s engines. Oscar Chaney jumped down from behind the wheel of the truck and threw two wooden chocks in front of the plane’s wheels. He arrived at the rear cargo door just as Thorn opened it.

  Chaney looked at his watch. “Right on time.”

  “Let’s move,” said Thorn. “We’ve got a lot to do.”

  Thorn had performed the “dirty work” at the small airport in Arlington, in Washington State, before he took to the air. He had donned the C-suit and breathing gear from the tank truck and, with great care, had inserted the small tubes of highly radioactive material into their holders surrounding the plutonium core of the device. It would not transform the guts of the two-kiloton artillery shell into a thermonuclear bomb, but would provide a nasty surprise to anyone trying to clean up the mess afterward. The contents of these tubes, when vaporized by the explosion, would transform everything for more than a mile around ground zero into a radioactive wasteland that would last for more than thirty years. Records and computers, files and documents, the vital essence of America’s bureaucratic nerve center would become untouchable.

  Chaney backed the truck around until its rear end lined up perfectly with the cargo door of the plane. He lowered the hydraulic Tommy-lift on the back of the truck so that it was out of the way, sliding easily under the fuselage of the plane. He climbed up into the DC-3 and, together with Thorn, fitted a heavy wooden ramp that had been predesigned to level and bridge the brief span between the slanting body of the plane and the bed of the truck.

  In less than five minutes, using gravity and leverage, they rolled the cargo on its rectangular dolly and metal wheels over the ramp and into the truck.

  Thorn donned a pair of blue overalls and a baseball cap with a logo above the bill that read I’D RATHER BE FLYING. He dropped down onto the concrete apron, then closed and latched the plane’s cargo door from the outside.

  Seconds later, he was in the passenger seat of the truck as it headed out toward the road that ran in front of the airport. They stopped at the front gate. Thorn got out and ran across the street to a pay phone at a gas station. He was inside the phone booth less than a minute. When he came back, Chaney had the radio on, tuned to NPR’s “All Things Considered.”

  In less than three hours the president will address Congress and the nation. Among the items to be covered will be a major push toward national standards for education …

  Thorn and Chaney looked straight ahead through the murky film on the windshield as the sun moved low in the sky. They followed the signs toward the interstate, onto the on-ramp heading northwest under the green highway sign that said “WASHINGTON, D.C.”

  Chaney put his arm out the window, signaling to the merging traffic, then allowed it to dangle, his fingers just inches above the magnetic metal placard on the door:

  PAUL E. GARBER FACILITY

  SILVER HILL, MD.

  The director wanted the smoldering display of “Little Boy” off the museum grounds before guests began assembling for the party that night. They were the overflow crowd, the people who couldn’t get seats in the gallery above the House of Representatives. Nonetheless, they were VIPs. Many of them were large contributors to the Smithsonian. Some of them were on the A-list in Washington, movers and shakers, but simply not quite high enough this year to get one of the coveted seats under the dome tonight.

  They would watch the speech projected on a large sectional television screen in Space Hall, then drink cocktails and eat hors d’oeuvres. Afterward, the president’s chief of staff and several other notables would visit, though the president himself had other plans.

  “I w
ant that thing out of the parking lot now. I don’t care what you have to do with it. Call the Army and have it hauled away.” The museum director was up to his ass in alligators, and someone was letting more water into the swamp. He had a thousand guests to worry about and less than three hours to get ready. He was standing just inside the barrier looking at the rustred stains on the concrete floor.

  “Will those come out?”

  “We don’t know.” It was one of his maintenance supervisors.

  “Well, don’t make them any worse. Try to get something to cover it, just for tonight. And get that thing out of the parking lot.”

  “What are we supposed to do with it?”

  “I don’t care. Just move it. I don’t want people who park there looking at it.”

  “We can’t roll it into the shop. It’s putting out some pretty heavy fumes.”

  “Is it toxic?” said the director.

  One of the workmen looked at the other and wrinkled his eyebrows in a questioning way. “Not if you don’t touch it.”

  “Is there any damage to the fuselage?” asked the director.

  “No. Just the stains on the floor.”

  “Cover them and get the ropes back in place. People are going to want to tour the museum after the speech. They’re going to want to see Enola.”

  The director turned and headed back toward his office. He had a million things to do to get ready. Now they were having problems with the wiring on the big screen.

  “What are we supposed to cover it with?” said one of the workmen.

  “Search me. Keep working, and I’ll see what I can find.” The supervisor disappeared in the direction of the shop.

  The men continued to run wet mops over the floor, but the rustred color wouldn’t come out. It didn’t look as bad as the blood-red dye on the casing of “Little Boy” itself, but still it was noticeable.

  “What do you think that guy was on?”

  “Who? The director?”

  “No. The nut who did this.”

  “I don’t know. But he’s lucky he didn’t splash some of that shit on himself.”

  “Yeah. Phantom of the fuckin’ opera,” said the other guy with the mop.

  “Hey. Hey, you guys.”

  They turned and leaned on their mops to see the super coming back from the direction of the shop.

  “What’s up?”

  “We’re in luck. Somebody got hold of the facility out at Garber. Guess what? Seems they’ve got another one out there.”

  “What, some fucking nut?”

  “No. Another mock-up of ‘Little Boy.’”

  The two guys on the mops looked at each other. “What are they doing with two of them?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t care. All I know is it’s on a truck and it’s headed this way. According to Robbie, who took the phone call, the restoration people out there got the shade of green paint a little off on the first ‘Little Boy’ they did. I can see why, not havin’ the real thing and all. Anyway they threw the fabricated casing in a warehouse out there.”

  “Maybe it’s pea green,” said one of the guys.

  “Hey, right now I don’t care if it looks like puke. It’ll cover that stain on the floor.”

  “Shouldn’t we tell the director?” said one of the workmen.

  “Why? He told us to cover the floor with something. That’s what we’re gonna do. Besides he’s up to his ass. We can tell him later. Right now we gotta push that thing in the parking lot outta the way, make room for the truck comin’ in. If we’re real lucky we can get ‘em to haul that smoldering pile of crap outside back to Garber before OSHA declares this place a toxic waste dump.”

  THE TRUCK PULLED up to the back door of the Air and Space Museum ten feet from a pile of something that seemed to be smoking under a black plastic tarp. There were two smiling workers standing beside it.

  Thorn looked over at Chaney behind the wheel.

  “Looks like Taggart did a real fine job,” said Chaney. “Wonder where he is now?”

  “Not to worry,” said Thorn. “The man was a true believer.” He got out of the truck and smiled at the men by the plastic tarp.

  “How ya doin’? I guess we got what you’re lookin’ for.” Thorn nodded toward the box of the truck and pretended like he was chewing on gum.

  “How do you wanna get it inside?” he asked them.

  “You can back up to the dock there,” said one of the men.

  The other one went around to open the large overhead door. Chaney backed the truck up to the dock.

  “Any chance of getting you guys to take this one away when you go? Take it back out to Garber?” said the supervisor.

  Thorn and Chaney looked at each other. Thorn smiled. “Sure. Why not.”

  It took the four of them to roll the display out of the truck, groaning and grunting every inch of the way, even with the Tommy-lift to make a smooth ramp down onto the loading dock.

  “Jeez. This one weighs a ton,” said the super. “Why’s it so heavy?”

  “Musta used a heavier gauge metal,” said Thorn.

  “Yeah. And put concrete inside,” said Chaney. The four of them laughed.

  Once it hit the concrete floor, the metal wheels of the dolly began to roll with ease.

  “Tell you what,” said Thorn. He looked at the supervisor. “Why don’t you help my friend George here?” He looked at Oscar. “He’ll move the truck and the two of you can use the Tommy-lift to load the other one in the back of the truck. That way we can get outta here.”

  The supervisor was happy to oblige. In the meantime, Thorn and the other man rolled the mock-up of “Little Boy” out of the shop area and across the floor of the museum. By now, the Air and Space Museum was closing, people milling toward the exits. Some of them watched as the bomb rolled down the concourse toward the gleaming B-29.

  “Damn shame,” said Thorn. “You spend a lotta money doing all this, and some idiot with a loose wire comes in and tries to ruin it. Takes all kinds.”

  “You bet,” said the other guy. “Shoulda seen our director. Mad as hell. If he got his hands on the guy, I think he’d kill him.”

  “Hmm.” Thorn just looked straight ahead and smiled as they pushed the dolly toward the gleaming belly of the Enola Gay.

  He could see the two-story windows looking out on the Mall, the only thing standing between ground zero and the Capitol Building.

  The fireball would race down the Mall at the speed of light. It would vaporize every living thing within two hundred yards, and melt the bronze statute on the dome of the Capitol. An instant later, the blast would rip the copper sheathing off the roof and ignite every flammable surface inside. Temperatures would reach two thousand degrees within seconds.

  The White House would be blown off its foundations. Even the underground bunkers would be heated to temperatures approaching incineration.

  Thorn wondered whether Scott Taggart would feel any of it or whether Taggart had discovered the other item that Thorn had dropped into his briefcase along with the key; the small glass vial with a single capsule of cyanide inside.

  THIRTY-THREE

  HAY-ADAMS HOTEL, WASHINGTON, DC

  Gideon and Joselyn spent the afternoon shopping for some clothes, the bare essentials to get themselves home. They caught a movie in the late afternoon and unwound in the cool, dark theater, some place where they didn’t have to answer questions or look over their shoulders to see if they were being followed by the FBI.

  Joselyn wondered if the government would pay for her airfare back to Seattle. It seemed the fair thing, considering the fact that she hadn’t asked to come here in the first place.

  By the time they got back to the hotel, it was almost eight o’clock. She dropped her shopping bags on the bed in her room and kicked off the new pair of shoes she had purchased. They were killing her feet.

  Gideon rapped on the adjoining door. She walked over and opened it.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” he told her. “You w
ant to get some dinner when I get out?”

  “I’m exhausted. I’d rather eat in the room. Just relax tonight, get to sleep early.”

  “Why don’t you order room service. Get something for me. A steak, medium rare, and small dinner salad.”

  “Where do you want to set up, my room or yours?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he told her, then disappeared to take his shower.

  She studied the room service menu and called down for dinner. Gideon left the door to the adjoining room open, in case she had the waiter deliver it to his room. She could hear when he knocked on the outside door.

  Joselyn wondered if she might be able to get a plane back to Seattle in the morning. She had talked about it with Gideon. One of the agents had told him that the FAA was screening flights into Sea-Tac, diverting some into other airports, until they were able to defuse the device in downtown Seattle. They were using the cover story that maintenance on one of the runways was causing a problem.

  She could hear the water running in the shower and Gideon singing. He had a pretty good voice, though his tune at the higher register was a little off.

  She smiled to herself and dropped onto the bed, grabbed the remote off the nightstand, and turned on the tube. She checked out the pay-per-view movies. It was a wasteland. She surfed the channels, CNN, and the weather. She found the local news, neighborhood shootings in the district and the plight of city government on the financial edge.

  They were trying to buy off the mayor, to keep him from running for another term, with a six-figure appointment as professor emeritus at one of the universities. Joselyn was glad that she lived on an island.

  She was about to turn off the set when they switched stories:

  And there was a great deal of excitement at the Air and Space Museum today. For that story we go to Charlene Williams.

  An attractive woman with a microphone in one hand and a notepad in the other appeared on the screen. She was standing on steps in front of a wall with large metal block letters:

  NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM