The place had originally been designed to store nuclear waste, with the plan that it would accept the growing stockpiles of spent radioactive fuel from all across the nation. But the environmentalists had attacked and overwhelmed the process almost from day one. Years of litigation, impact studies, and changing political winds had left Yucca Mountain empty. As a result the vast majority of the country’s radioactive materials remained right where they were: at 107 different reactor sites, most of which were only lightly guarded and just miles from the nation’s largest population centers. Apparently, to those who fought against the project, that was a safer alternative.
Such efforts had left Yucca Mountain sitting empty and thus usable for the NRI. And so Moore’s team had removed the Brazil stone from its vault beneath the Virginia Industrial Complex and loaded it onto a military C-17. After a four-hour flight they touched down in Nevada and then continued overland toward Yucca Mountain.
The journey had been planned with meticulous precision, designed to bring the stone out of hiding during the lowest phase of its power surge, when it was all but dormant, and get it back into hiding before the wave began to grow once again. So far, the transit had gone off without a hitch. As things looked, they would be deep in the mountain bunker at least seven hours before the next burst.
Riding in the cab of the semitruck, Arnold Moore listened as one of the Black Hawks thundered overhead, moving forward to take point in the formation. He found himself amused at the overkill of their protection force.
The convoy was firmly in the heart of military controlled property, traveling an unnamed road that cut through the center of the Nellis Bombing Range. To attack them, someone would have to cross a hundred miles of open desert and then breach the most heavily guarded military base in the continental United States. Missile-armed helicopters and F-22 Raptors patrolled the skies. Cameras and infrared sensors monitored every square inch of the perimeter and, even before Moore and his cargo had arrived, the military guards had standing authority to shoot any intruders on sight. The reason was simple: This section of desert was also home to Groom Lake, a top-secret test flight center where the Stealth bomber and other exotic aircraft had been developed. And if that wasn’t enough, the land surrounding them was the infamous Area 51.
Moore glanced through the window. He saw a barren landscape, pockmarked with bomb craters, test sites, and ugly mountains of piled-up dirt. A thousand different types of explosive had been tested here, from cluster bombs to “daisy cutters.” Even nuclear warheads had been exploded here.
The scars remained on the dry desert surface without even a hint of life to soften them. Not a blade of grass, nor a cactus, nor the smallest desert scrub could be seen. It looked like the moon or another planet. Perhaps that was why the UFO junkies were so certain that aliens had been brought here; they just might have felt at home.
The door to the trailer opened and one of the research scientists poked his head through.
“We have a problem, sir.”
Moore’s heart froze. “What’s wrong?”
“We’ve got an unexpected rise in the energy wave,” the scientist told him. “And it’s growing rapidly.”
Out on the Gulf of Mexico, Danielle studied the two boats charging toward them.
“They’re trying to corral us,” McCarter said.
“I told you we should have brought some missiles,” Hawker said.
“Next time I will,” she promised, only half joking.
Danielle watched as the gap between the two pursuing vessels widened and she thought she saw an opportunity. She nudged McCarter from the driver’s seat and reduced the throttles slightly and a moment later reduced them further. The other vessels rapidly closed the range.
A moment later, she chopped the throttles once again, whipped the boat through a quick ninety-degree turn, and then gunned the engines.
With the throttle to the firewall they charged for the gap.
As they raced across the water, Danielle held the boat’s throttles to full, ducking down as the air and spray whipped across the deck. She was gunning for the space between the two boats that had come out after them, something the drivers of those boats must have realized as they now raced to pinch it shut.
Her eyes flicked back and forth between the two boats. It would be close.
Behind her Hawker spoke to McCarter. “Might want to get down,” he said, as he gently forced Yuri to the deck. McCarter followed suit and Danielle hunkered down as far as she could while still being able to see and drive.
The boats were racing toward one another at a combined speed of seventy to eighty knots.
Seconds apart, Danielle dropped down, still holding the wheel.
She cut between them. As the pursuing boats crossed behind her, a spread of bullets whistled overhead, not aimed at her but at the squared-off shape of the outboard engines.
It was an impossible shot, taken from a pitching deck with only an instant to aim. A thousand to one, Danielle thought. She listened to the sound of the engines, felt the vibration, and glanced back at them. The odds had held. They’d come through unharmed.
She glanced behind them. One boat had been forced out to the north and the other craft had altered course and was now turning to follow.
From here it would be a race to the shore, one she wasn’t entirely sure they could win.
Out in the desert wastes of Nevada, Arnold Moore stared into the panic-filled eyes of the scientist. “What the hell are you talking about?” he asked.
“A major energy spike,” his man said.
Moore tried to stand and found himself held back by the seat belt.
“That’s not possible,” he said, releasing the belt and realizing that he had no idea what was or was not possible in regard to the stone.
He pushed into the back of the truck. There, in a makeshift version of the Virginia lab, two of his staffers were monitoring the glowing stone. Moore looked at the readout on the computer screen. The energy output had clearly spiked, quadruple its normal passive state and growing.
“When did this start?”
“Five minutes ago,” the scientist told him. “First we noticed a change in the energy distribution pattern: more high-energy and less background readings. And then the countdown signal changed, becoming rapidly more complex and increasingly random.”
“Meaning what?” Moore asked, sensing that the man was hiding some conclusion he’d already reached.
“I don’t know,” his staffer said. “Something has changed and the signal is in a jumbled state now. As if it’s gone haywire and is trying to restore its order.”
Moore ran a hand through his gray hair. He glanced at the power curve. It was spiking up in an accelerating fashion, the way it normally did just prior to a discharge, but the benchmark levels were almost off the chart.
The computer attached to it began flashing a warning and chirping loudly as threshold levels continued to grow. The screen itself began to blur and bend as if it were being degaussed. The radios around them and in the truck’s cab began to squeal with feedback and static.
Moore shouted to the driver. “Are there any bunkers around here?”
The air force sergeant driving the truck seemed confused. “Mr. Moore?”
“Anywhere to hide this thing?”
“No,” the driver said. “It’s all open road.”
Hawker held Yuri tight, covering him and lying almost flat on the deck. Danielle continued to pilot the flying craft, whipping the boat to the right and then curving back to the left, doing all she could to present a hard target to the people chasing them.
As far as Hawker could tell, the boats were evenly matched in terms of speed, but every twist and turn cut into the distance between them. The pursuing boats were only fifty yards behind now, fanning out and taking potshots at them.