“What’s that stuff over there?” Jake pointed to the wreckage of a building several hundred yards away from where the reactor had stood. Numerous drums were visible amid the concrete rubble, some of them split open. The contents looked dark, almost black.
“Plutonium. They probably had tons of the shit stored there.”
“The containers have ruptured.”
“Yeah, and the stuff is going to get blown away on the wind or washed into the creeks and rivers or soaked into the soil. Come on, Admiral, let’s get the hell outta here.”
Jake went forward to the cockpit and tapped Goober on the shoulder. The pilot eased the stick forward and the helicopter left the hover.
“Circle over that KGB troop facility.”
Groelke did so. One of the buildings had burned and several bodies were visible, but nothing moved. Nothing.
The helicopter flew in a gentle circle until it was pointed southeast toward Petrovsk. Goober Groelke climbed to several thousand feet to minimize their radioactivity exposure.
Now the noise of the engines became mesmerizing, Jack Yocke thought. One listened carefully, anxious not to hear any change, any burble or hiccup or unexplained sound. With your life depending on the continued smooth running of these two engines, the sound captures your attention and holds you spellbound. The ruins of the reactor had been horrifying, but the sound of these engines was the promise of continuing life, a drug more powerful than anything a doctor could prescribe.
Yocke tried to put his emotions into words, tried to string the words together as he sat with closed eyes and concentrated on that perfect humming.
On the floor of the passenger compartment Tom Collins fiddled with his equipment and made notes of radioactivity readings from which he could extrapolate estimates of the levels present on the surface. Jake Grafton watched him. At times Collins shook his head. Finally he folded up the notebook and sat hunched, staring at the needles on the dials in front of him.
The helicopter flew over a village, then a small town, then farther along another village. Cattle lay dead in the fields. Not a sign of life below, not even buzzards. They were dead too.
All those people went to bed one evening and at dawn, or just after, the radioactive fallout arrived, an invisible rain that fell without noise, without beauty, without warning, and brought quick, gentle death. Most of the victims probably died in their sleep.
Is that the fate of civilization? Is that the end that awaits our species? No bang, no warning, just death for every last man, woman and child as they lay sleeping on the dawn of the last day?
Jake Grafton felt his eyes tearing over and blinked repeatedly.
Collins had given up on the instruments and was standing beside Grafton looking aft, out the open door, when they saw the river, the Volga, broad and deep, the water reflecting the blue of the sky and the white of the clouds.
“Let’s go down and hover just above the surface.”
Goober turned the machine and went back. After twenty seconds of hovering, Collins signaled to fly on. Toad saw him and waved his hand at Groelke.
Jake bent down to where Collins was making notes. He was not writing down radiation levels, but a sentence: “The Volga is now a river of radiation carrying poison to the sea.”
They circled the Petrovsk Rocket Base while Collins took more readings. Jake looked out the window. The barracks and offices and hangars were all intact, but nothing moved. From this altitude the scene reminded Jake of a model railroad setup, complete with cars, trucks and several airplanes parked on the mat just off the runway, and a locomotive and flatcars near the biggest hangar.
But his attention was captured by the empty transporters parked on the mat. There were three of them, green tractors with green flat trailers hooked behind them, all empty.
Jocko West and the two European officers stood in the door looking at the transports, then Rheinhart began snapping pictures.
“I think we can land, Admiral,” Collins shouted.
“How long?”
“As little time on the ground as possible.”
“How hot is it?”
“Unprotected, you’d be fatally ill in a half hour. Maybe less.”
Groelke put the chopper near the main hangar and killed the engines to save fuel. Breathing pure oxygen, the people got out of the machine carefully, gingerly, conscious of anything that might rip or damage their antiradiation suit.
“Goober, stay with the machine. Toad, stay with him.”
Jake Grafton led the little party toward the open hangar door.
The giant missiles riding on their transporters were stark, functional sculptures with the red star prominent upon their flanks.
There was open space near the door, apparently enough for the three transporters that sat a quarter-mile away across the concrete. Impressive as the missiles were, the little group was soon standing gazing at medium-size wood crates arranged on pallets.
One of the boxes had been ripped open, revealing a cylindrical-shaped device about twelve inches in diameter. Wires and electronic devices covered it like spaghetti. Yet just visible between some of the wire bundles was a dull black substance arranged in the shape of a ball. This black stuff, Jake knew, was the conventional explosive trigger. Upon detonation it would squeeze the plutonium in the core— the center of the ball — into a supercritical mass. There in that tiny space the plutonium atoms would have their electrons stripped away, an instantaneous rape that would release stupendous amounts of energy. E = MC2.
Jake Grafton counted quickly. Four warheads on each pallet, how many pallets? Almost a hundred.
The visitors were wandering away from the warheads when they saw the bodies stacked in one corner. Jake went over for a look, then found that only Jack Yocke had followed him.
Blood everywhere. Blood? Jesus, these people were shot! Lined up and gunned down.
Now he saw the spent cartridges that lay scattered around. He picked one up. Soviet. Not that that meant anything. The Soviets sold military equipment all over the world, just like the Americans, Germans, French and British. Superpowers do that, right? To keep the factories humming and the diplomats employed.
How many people? Fifteen or so.
There was a telephone on the wall and he went toward it. He held the handset against his helmet and tried to hear a dial tone. Nothing. He played with the buttons. Finally he replaced the instrument on its hook.
He left the building and headed for the clean room.
More bodies, all with bullet wounds. Some had died quickly, others bled a lot. There were bullet holes in the protective shield that sealed the room from the raw plutonium on the other side of the window. Even the flies were dead on the floor. Jake Grafton looked, then turned to find Jack Yocke staring at him through his faceplate. Yocke had a camera but he wasn’t taking any pictures. Jake brushed past him and headed for the door.
He had seen all he wanted to see. The others were ahead of him, walking toward the helicopter. Yocke trailed behind. Jake counted. Everyone here.
He climbed through the door and found Goober and Toad in the cockpit. “Crank it up,” he shouted. “Let’s get outta here.”
Goober manipulated switches. Nothing happened. “Battery’s dead,” he announced.
It took all of them to manhandle the power cart out of the helicopter. After looking all the controls over carefully, Toad Tarkington set the choke, turned on the battery, and pushed the start button. Nothing happened.
“Fuck,” Toad said, loud enough for Grafton to hear. “Nothing in this fucking country works,” he announced, then turned back to Jake.
Grafton looked at his watch. They had been on the ground for fourteen minutes. “Those transporters probably have jumper cables and some hand tools. Maybe. Go see.”