Nuclear Spring

by Td Barnes

  “Sergeant Major, leave four soldiers to guard the perimeter and lock down the mountain.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  ####

  The massive portal door clanged shut. It took a moment for it to soak into the civilians that the military locked them out of the mountain. Most stood in shock, others trying to calm their tired children while some looked for the strongest of them that spoke up for his or her department. That is when the community looked at the heckler.

  Stunned, the people exited the picnic area and drifted to the portal door where they waited for it to open. Others stood in front of the exterior cams waving and crying to draw the attention of those inside the mountain. The children continued to become more irritable and the wives angrier with the men for not speaking up to support their colonel. Near sundown, it soaked in that they would spend the night on the mountain. One by one, the families returned to the barbecue grill, hoping to find some food remaining. They found enough water remaining, but little food other than scraps discarded in a trash barrel set up for the event. For their toilet needs, they started seeking out places in the desert to go potty.

  Inside the Command Center, Bradley, Barlow, the Sergeant Major, and some senior staff officers watched on the external camera monitors while the people accepted their fate and sought places to settle their families in for the night.

  “Is this what they taught you in your military training?” Bradley asked with a tone of admiration.

  Barlow laughed. “We learned this in Afghanistan during OJT, on-job training. It worked. The indigenous people learned to love us. I thought this might provide our people a frisson of reality as to policing the actions of their contemporaries.”

  “I believe that this is a wake-up call for all of us. Some of the people we protect do not have a job or any responsibility. I learned from Dr. Hains while at Groom that Homeland Security recruited two of my nerd squad only because they hacked into our government computers. Both are damn proud of it and would do it again. They are as anti-military, anti-government as one can get, yet we have been caring for them all this time. That is why I decided on locking down access to our communications and imposing security measures that instill the old need-to-know that we have all known.” He looked at Barlow and then all the others.

  For Barlow, this explained the mysterious message sent to her on the thumb drive.

  “What do we do with people like this or some lazy bastard that refuses to contribute to society? What do we do when someone thinks that they are worth more than the others are and expects attention? We must cultivate the desire to improve and rebuild. There will be leaders, and there will be followers. There will be some remaining dependent upon subsidies from the labor of others. Are they entitled to the same compensation or standing in our society? That is the bear that I have brought into the mountain. Now, it is up to all of you to determine how we skin and cook it.”

  “Tom, I’m curious. Your mannerism out there was commendably calm and controlled. How did you want to handle the heckler?”

  “To be honest, I wanted to shove a.30-cal up his ass, put it on automatic, and pull the trigger.”

  Barlow laughed. “I thought so. That is the difference between you and me. You are a T&A warrior trained to fight the evil. You are a regimented leader who believes his officers eat after feeding the enlisted. Your type is always the first in battle and the last to leave. I, on the other hand, deal with civilians, contractors, and all the political scumbags. I am one of the military noncontroversial consensus decision-makers and risk avoiders that are Washington today. We like buzzwords, feel-good phrases such as political correctness, and zero tolerance that makes real leaders like you vulnerable. This leads me to another point. I see us as having two societies and multiple cultures here. One society is the one under martial law. To survive, it must maintain a regimented and military culture. You give them an order, and they say yes sir. You have been very successful in cultivating that culture the past four years.”

  Bradley’s forehead squeezed into a frown. “I don’t think I like where you plan to head with this.”

  “Please hear me out. I believe the mountain should remain under your command. You are the quintessential warrior: smart, aggressive, innovative that watches out for his troops and is willing to think way, way outside the box when the tactical situation demands it. That said, I’ll collaborate with you to concentrate on controlling the masses with their enmities on the outside the mountain. That way, you won’t dirty up your.30 cal.”

  “Say that I agree with this concept. How do you propose we structure this arrangement?”

  “You have always compared living inside the mountain to living aboard a spaceship. I suggest we treat the interior of the mountain as such a vessel with you the captain. Outside the mountain, you will still command our special projects as well. If you need military control outside the mountain, we make them TDY to special projects, and they are all yours. Dealing with the civilians is different. If you or I give them an order, they feel at liberty to ask why. I am trained to deal with a microcosm of society in collapse, which is what we inherited—you are not so trained, nor do you have the temperament to deal with the frivolous.”

  The next morning-0600 hours

  Barlow marched out of the Command Center and faced the soldiers assembled outside the alcove entrance. “Troops, I want to emphasize what we did was not punishment, but more of an educational measure to remind those whom we are here to protect that they must want to be protected. When we open the doors, you will go about your business as though nothing happened. You will show our people professional courtesy as before. That said, from here on you must remain vigilant for anomalies in behavior that indicate possible harm to our society and its codes. We are dealing with humans, and in our case, brilliant people, but remember that they are human with opinions and beliefs that may be harmful to the security of the mountain.”

  Turning to the security personnel, she said, “You will process in each against the resident list. This includes children. I want these people to realize that living in this mountain under our protection, is a privilege and not a right. If anyone gives you any crap, move them to the back of the line.”

  She looked towards two groups of soldiers standing to the side. “Are you the work details?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Report to the Sergeant Major inside the Command Center.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The four soldiers in the one detail entered ahead of two female soldiers belonging to another detail.

  Seeing Colonel Bradley sitting beside the Sergeant Major at the conference table in the Command Center, the ranking soldier marched in and started the salute and reporting protocol to him. He aborted the protocol when Bradley indicated with his hand that the detail needed to report to the Sergeant Major.

  SMG Marshall addressed the detail of four. “Are you the moving detail?”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  The Sergeant Major pulled over a hand-drawn outline of the doublewide mobile homes outside the mountain that once served as offices during the construction of the tunnel. “We are converting these into greenhouses. I want you to strip everything out of the trailers, remove their mounting blocks and any connecting wiring. We are moving these to the south portal.”

  The detail moved out, and the two female soldiers approached. “Sarge.”

  “Ladies. Which one of you is from supply?” He addressed the second soldier. “I understand you know computers and have some construction experience.” He produced another drawing and placed it where the soldier to stoop over to see it. “These are the locations where we will position the trailers. We have construction supply templates in the archive.” He pointed to an area of the drawing. “See this walkway between each trailer and the portal door? I want to know every inch of wood, nail, screw, etc. that it will require for construction of this.”

  He addressed the soldier from the supply alcove. “You will run her list of supplies against our
quartermaster inventory to determine what we have on hand and what we will need to acquire. Any questions?”

  “No, sergeant.”

  Marshall dismissed the details and turned to Bradley, who listened to the exchange.

  “That should do it, sergeant. We need to talk to Doctor Sanders to see what we need to expand the photosynthetic gardens. I assume you have the hay scrounging detail lined up for Amargosa Valley today.”

  “I do, sir. The trucks should be roaring out of the south portal in another ten minutes. Shall we observe the opening of the doors? We can watch from our portal.”

  “On schedule, the doors of the south and north portals opened to allow the detail of soldiers out the north entrance and the hay-haul trucks out of the south portal. The doors remained open while the soldiers went about their routines as though nothing happened out of the ordinary. A squad of armed soldiers marched out to assume security positions on the perimeter.

  At first, the residents gathered at the north portal approached the desks of the security guards, many with scared and hungry children clinging to their mother’s uniform and needing a diaper change. The parents stood aside while the humbled fathers handled the processing of each member of the family as though representing them on their first arrival four years earlier. The processing took over an hour to process them all for admission back into the mountain.

  ####

  Individual routines returned to normal inside the mountain except for an underlying sense of embarrassment. It was like a family fight—everyone wanted to make up without mentioning why.

  The morning passed fast with the civilians recovering from their night in the desert and returning to their duties. Bradley his candle lit in so many places he never gave the incident another thought. His projects all classified on a need-to-know basis prevented him from delegating their implementation. Everything carried the same high priority, so he first tackled the simplest one—ordering Sammie and Ray to install a ray gun inside the north portal at one of the sniper stations and encase it for internal security. He ordered them to grant access only to those cleared for Project Grizzly. The second one, he ordered installed at the south portal but left it up to them to determine how and where. Thirty minutes later, the first ray gun lay in the tunnel with armed guards protecting it from unauthorized viewing while Sammie and Ray went about its installation with the assistance of two soldiers.

  Sammie stooped a few inches to view the elevation setting of the reflector. “Ray, I think we should lower the limits all the way to just above the security desk, just enough to clear the heads of anyone sitting there. We need a stop on each side. We don’t want to fry any friendlies.”

  Ray lowered the aim and waited while one of the two soldiers assigned to the project entered the elevation and azimuth into a keyboard connecting to the internal computer circuit that provided safety limits.

  “Done,” announced Ray. “We’ve covered the entire perimeter. I just wish we a living target on which to test our settings.

  “I still think it is more effective to hurt our enemy rather than go the lethal route. Seeing your compadre screaming and tearing off his clothes is more effective in my opinion. It is human nature to help someone in pain, but once they are dead, you step over them and continue with your aggression.”

  “Point taken,” Ray replied in agreement while scooting the device back to allow placement of the security cover. He aimed the reflector over the desk and lowered its target elevation to ensure the computer stopped it high enough to protect anyone sitting at the table. “Zap,” he announced when the computer stopped the lowering of the reflector at the programmed elevation.

  “Good shot, sir,” the soldier dryly joked. “You hit a guinea hen.”

  “Ma’am, has this weapon ever been used in combat?”

  “Sammie looked at Ray before answering. It still bothered her to talk about something that was so secret when she first became involved.

  “We, the CIA experimented with it a bit in Iraq and Afghanistan and found it impractical because of the enemy mixing with the civilians. The downside of this baby is it does not discriminate.” She patted the console while she spoke. “The Walter Reed Army Institute of Research investigated the adverse health effects of exposure to microwave radiation and killed the program codenamed Project Pandora.” She glanced towards Ray in a way to implicate him and said. “CIA continued the program at Groom Lake, which is where I became involved.”

  “Involved with the program,” Ray clarified. In a boasting tone, he said, “The lieutenant didn’t become involved with yours until I arrived at the mountain.”

  “Don’t listen to Mr. Macho CIA. It happened the other way around. He became involved with me, emphasis on the words, with me, when he came begging me to let him into the mountain after he learned the commander was my dad. Now he is stuck with the half-dozen rug rats that I have planned to repopulate the planet and me.” They all laughed.

  Turning serious, Sammie explained the history of Project Pandora. “Project Pandora was a directed electromagnetic energy weapons project that operates to omnidirectional electromagnetic pulse, EMP devices. It differed in that it induced a destructive voltage within its electric wiring to generate directional energy that focused on a specific target using a parabolic reflector. Do not confuse this with the EMP that hit us. This baby that we are calling the Grizzly, externally induces auditory input from pulsed microwaves. At low levels, it creates the effect of hearing mechanical or clicking noises whether the target is wearing ear protection.”

  “This baby, as the lieutenant calls it, can be used for crowd control or as in our case, to take out an enemy. Note that we use parabolic reflectors rather than speakers. This is because our audio is silent. It exploits the microwave auditory effect using microwave pulses to generate high noise levels in human skulls, bypassing the ears and eardrums. For crowd control, we focus on the nerve endings just below the skin. The Active Denial System is a millimeter wave source that heats the water in the target’s skin and thus causes incapacitating pain like scalding water if you are in the beam. In other words, we must have a line of sight.”

  “It is visible only with an infrared camera, which sees it as a flash of white-hot energy—sort of like an electromagnetic beam made up of very high-frequency radio waves,” Sammie added. “This idea started with Project Bizarre, a monkey microwave exposure investigation prompted by Soviet irradiation of the Microwave Anechoic Chamber in the American Embassy in Moscow. The Soviets farted around with using voice transmissions and analogous microwave exposures on our embassy personnel to simulate hallucination. The Soviets are, or I should say, big on physical, physiological, and nonlethal psychological warfare.”

  The two soldiers listened in muted fascination at what they heard. This paralleled all the science fictions about death rays and ray guns that fascinated their imaginations during their youth.

  “The beauty of this weapon is that it does not generate sound or light that can be detected by human senses. The weapon will not betray our position. The enemy just knows that suddenly it is in a big hurt,” Ray continued, his voice reflecting professional pride. “Sammie, uh, the lieutenant and I have taken the weapon to another level—a controlled directional EMP device to destroy electronic circuits even in incoming missiles. We do it with something much like an infrared laser pulse that creates expanding plasma at the target.”

  Sammie shook her head. “Ray is talking theory, not what this little device can do. We have taken the original nonlethal concept to the lethal application if needed. For nonlethal use, we program our sonic bullets to shoot a focused beam of sound or ultrasound. The resulting sound, shock and electromagnetic waves stun the target and cause pain and temporary paralysis.”

  She pointed to a mode selection board with multiple setting of various degrees of nonlethal and lethal power measured on a dB scale. A protective cover protecting the section of the board indicated the lethal selection to prevent unintentional selection. She flippe
d up the protective cover and held it open to point out the settings.

  Pride in her accomplishments with this weapon showed in the professionalism in which she explained her weapon. “These,” she said, “use various frequencies of sonar-like audio to cause cavitation. This affects gas nuclei in human tissue. The heat from the ultrasound damages tissue and organs. Depending upon the selected mode, it causes lung and intestinal damage. Heart rate patterns following vibroacoustic stimulation cause the target severe arterial flutter and bradycardia.”

  “Would that be like an oscillator in electronics,” one of the soldiers asked.

  “Same principal. It screws up the heartbeat rhythm, and if you zap them long enough, you can induce an encephalopathy to their brain tissue. In other words, you can either kill the enemy outright or send them home as blooming idiots.”

  “Awesome.”

  Sammie laughed. “Awesomely is right. We may be living in the dark ages, but I guarantee that we have changed the face of contemporary warfare. This grizzly bear can massage you like a Tens Unit, have your heart beating like Justin Bieber on the drums, or dance the jitterbug inside your head that will turn a brain to Jell-O.”

  She realized how some might conceive her jubilance being about the hurt they could render and not their technological accomplishment as intended. “I hope we never turn the grizzly loose,” she added.

  ####

  With the Grizzly project now underway, Bradley returned to the command post, now designated the War Room, where he waited for Dr. Hains.

  Bradley was very pleased, and it showed. He, like all the participants, considered the significant accomplishment of the Groom Lake boondoggle being the meteorological equipment brought from Groom Lake to the mountain.

  Upon their return, Colonel Bradley insisted that Mitchell set up in the Command Center to keep everything close to the radios and to utilize existing cabling for their dishes, antennas, and parabolic reflectors.