“Afterward we knew just how many mistakes we’d made, how many things didn’t work the way they should have,” the physicist had said. “And we didn’t have to find anything — we could see the burning wreckage, and it still took us days to get everything under control.” He looked exasperated. “This time we don’t know where the damned thing is, and we don’t even know how much time is on the clock. It could go off at any moment.”
Back in the converted textile warehouse on the fringes of the city, FEMA experts had already marked urban-scale evacuation routes, checking on available medical facilities and emergency care — in the event they did not find the device in time. They got ready to help the tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, who would become victims.
Back in Washington the debate raged on, voices raised against causing an unwarranted panic versus those who took Craig’s assessment at face value.
NEST Health Physicists had sent up weather balloons linked to computer models from ARAC, the Atmosphere Release and Advisory Capability; they would use the data to project distribution patterns of radioactive fallout, should the bomb explode. With the weather brooding, the thunderstorm gathering, the winds stirring up, the warhead detonation would not only wipe out Las Vegas, but would spread a swath of contamination over the entire southwestern United States.
Jackson continued to pace up and down the airport corridors, continuing his relentless search. He squeezed the handle of the briefcase again to send a test signal to his earphone. Everything functioned properly.
The airport had seemed a likely target for planting the bomb, but as Jackson covered his search pattern for a third time, he still found no indication of the hidden doomsday weapon.
CHAPTER 33
When Craig and his team launched the frantic NEST response, searching for a nuclear weapon hidden somewhere in Las Vegas, Paige found herself left alone in her room at the Rio with too much time… too much time to think about everything that had happened. And too much time alone to ponder the craziness of it all.
Like Craig, she had looked at the numbers, at the part identification codes, at the complex forms. The forest of documents could have hidden any number of conspiracies. Plans within plans within plans.… If all the separate pieces of a missing warhead had indeed been covered up in a labyrinth of paperwork, buried under shifting signatures and complex serial numbers, any such plan would have required the active participation of someone very important, someone near the top of the chain.
PK Dirks must certainly be involved. And she could see how Carl Jorgenson had been enlisted to help. But still, there had to be someone else. Someone with knowledge of the overall workings of the Device Assembly Facility.…
She refused to think of the inevitable, and instead forced herself to race through the other options. Any other option.
Could it be a contractor like Warren P. Shelby, someone who had infiltrated the DAF? Or what about the Russian Nikolai Bisovka — he certainly knew a lot about the DAF, and his obvious feelings about “the good old days” implied he might want the disarmament process to fall apart. Sabotage from inside the disarmament team itself? Now that would be a weird alliance, a radical militia group and a Soviet sore-loser.
But none of those people had proper access to the security codes, and the timeframe was all wrong.
Paige kept coming up with the same answer, again and again. It had to be someone above reproach. Someone even the FBI wouldn’t suspect.
Someone like Mike Waterloo, Manager of the Device Assembly Facility.
She couldn’t believe it. Paige had known Uncle Mike her entire life. He and her father had worked together, taken vacations together. He was one of the most patriotic people she knew. Mike was a “regular guy,” not a violent terrorist, not an anarchistic, and certainly not a bloodthirsty militia commando.
Of course not.
She picked up her cellular phone and started to call Craig. It was crazy for her even to think Uncle Mike was involved, but she couldn’t shake it from her mind. Craig would give her a “sanity check” on the idea.
But then again, he was in the middle of the NEST investigation, which had the absolute highest priority. Was she allowing the pressure of the last week to cloud her judgment? Perhaps some of Craig’s paranoia had rubbed off on her. She had to know first.
Paige flipped shut her phone. She was a big girl. She could do this herself, straighten it all out.
Despite all her efforts to block such thoughts as she drove over to Uncle Mike’s home, she considered how he had changed over the past several years, as if a part of him had died along with Genny. Paige had to look him in the eye and ask him if he knew anything more. She owed that much to him at least. She would know if he was lying. Lying to her.
She accelerated through a yellow traffic light, paying little heed to the other cars. The evergreen air freshener hanging from her rear-view mirror smelled old and stale. She kept driving, blinking back disbelieving tears until she found the Waterloo residence.
Scrubby weeds had grown up in the yard of the modest ranch house, and most of the grass had died. Newspapers lay scattered on the driveway, though she knew he went home regularly. Uncle Mike just hadn’t bothered to pick them up.
No lights shone from the house windows, though it was long after dark. She looked at her watch and frowned. No one seemed to be home, but she rang the doorbell anyway.
Her stomach clenched with ice. What would she say to him if he answered? “Excuse me, Uncle Mike — are you by any chance a member of the Eagle’s Claw? Did you help plant the bomb at the Hoover Dam on Tuesday? Did you plan to blow up all those people on the Amtrak train this morning? Say, what are your plans for tomorrow?”
She rang the bell again and again, but the place remained silent, like a haunted house. She realized that if he wasn’t home, Uncle Mike was probably working late at the DAF. As usual.
Now that she had set herself in motion, Paige had to find him. Craig was distracted with his NEST response — but he would soon make the connection himself, and she needed to talk to Uncle Mike before the FBI arrested him.…
Distances in the desert seemed hypnotic. At night, with the thickening storm clouds smothering the stars, only the headlights of oncoming traffic kept her company. She had nothing to do but concentrate on the highway ahead of her.
She daydreamed about all the Christmases when Uncle Mike and Aunt Genny had come over, exchanging presents. Uncle Mike always gave Paige something special — a Hope bracelet, a gold Thai baut chain, even a St. Christopher’s medal for her sixteenth birthday.
Three years ago he had delivered a broken-voiced eulogy at her father’s funeral, talking about the times they had spent together, fishing trips they had taken, backpacking sojourns in the Sierra Nevadas.
She drove on, staring at the long ribbon of highway. Far off, toward the horizon, she saw glimmers of heat lightning trapped in the clouds.
Uncle Mike had given her colorful streamers for her first bike, and he had figured out that she no longer wanted to play with dolls well before her parents did. Paige had loved him so much for that.…
But now Mike Waterloo might be at the heart of a conspiracy to detonate a stolen nuclear weapon.
She swallowed hard and tried to keep her face expressionless as she passed through the Mercury guard gate into the Test Site. The long road across Frenchman Flat and Yucca Flat passed by in a blur to where the Device Assembly Facility stood like a prisoner-of-war camp bathed in harsh white spotlights and surrounded by tall guard towers.