Ground Zero Read online

  He tossed the black ash aside and went back to work.

  Suddenly the overhead fluorescent lights flickered. There was an intense humming sound, as if a swarm of bees were trapped in the thin glass tubes. He heard the snapping shriek of an electrical discharge, and the lights popped and died.

  The radio on his desk gave out a brief squelch of static, right in the middle of “Hang on, Sloopy.” Then it fell silent.

  Dr. Gregory’s failing muscles sent stabs of pain through his body as he whirled in despair to see his computer workstations also winking out. The computers were crashing.

  “Awww, no!” he groaned. The systems should have had infallible backup power supplies to protect them during normal electrical outages. He had just lost literally billions of supercomputer iterations.

  He pounded his gnarled fist on the desk, then levered himself to his feet and staggered over to the window, moving more quickly than his unsteady balance and common sense allowed.

  Reaching the glass, he glanced outside at the other buildings in the complex. All the interior lights were still shining in the adjacent wing of the research building. Very odd.

  It looked as if his office had been specifically targeted for a power disruption.

  With a sinking feeling, Dr. Gregory began to wonder about sabotage from the protesters. Could Miriel have gone so far overboard? She would know how to cause such damage. Though her security clearance had been taken away after she quit her job and formed Stop Nuclear Madness!, perhaps she had managed to bluff her way inside, to interfere with the simulations only she could have known her old mentor would be running.

  He didn’t want to think her capable of such action…but he knew she would consider it, without qualms.

  Dr. Gregory swatted at the insistent hissing, buzzing noise that hovered about his ears, finally noticing it for the first time. With all the power suddenly smothered and machine sounds damped to nothingness, silence should have descended upon his office.

  But the whispers came instead.

  With a growing sense of uneasiness that he forced himself to ignore, Dr. Gregory went to the door, intending to shout down the hall for Bear Dooley or any of the other physicists. For some reason, the company of others seemed highly desirable right now.

  But he found the doorknob unbearably hot. Unnaturally hot.

  With a hiss, he yanked his hand away. He backed off, staring down in shock more than pain at the bright blisters forming in the center of his palm.

  Smoke began to curl around the solid security-locked doorknob, oozing out of the keyslot.

  “Hey, what is this? Hello!” He flapped his burned hand to cool it. “Patty? Are you still out there?”

  Contained within the concrete walls of his office, the wind picked up, crackling with electrical static. Papers blew, curled up by a foul breath of heat. The glassine envelope of black powder spilled open, spraying dark ash into the air.

  Untucking his shirt and using the tail to protect his hand against the heat, he hurried back to the door again and reached for the knob. By now, though, it glowed red-hot, a throbbing scarlet that hurt his eyes.

  “Patty, I need your help. Bear! Somebody!” His voice cracked, growing high-pitched with fear.

  Like an elapsed-time simulation of sunrise, the light in the room grew brighter and brighter, seeming to emanate from the walls, a searing harsh glare.

  Dr. Gregory backed toward the concrete blocks, holding up his hands to shield his face from yet another aspect of physics he did not understand. The whispering voices increased in volume, rising to a crescendo of screams and accusations climbing through the air itself.

  Reaching a critical point.

  An avalanche of heat and fire struck him, so intense that it knocked him into the wall. A billion, billion X rays brought every cell in his body to a boil. Then came a burst of absolute light, like the core of an atomic explosion.

  And Dr. Gregory found himself standing alone at Ground Zero.

  TWO

  Teller Nuclear Research Facility

  Tuesday, 10:13 A.M.

  The security guard stepped out of a small prefab shack just outside the chain-link perimeter of the large research facility. He glanced at Fox Mulder’s papers and FBI identification, then motioned for him to drive his rental car over to the Badge Office just outside the gate.

  In the passenger seat Dana Scully sat up straighter. She willed the cells of her body to supply more energy and bring her to full alertness. She hated catching red-eye flights, especially from the East Coast. Already today she had spent hours on the plane and now another hour in the car with her partner driving from the San Francisco Airport. She had rested fitfully on the large plane, managing only a brief nap instead of genuine sleep.

  “Sometimes I wish that more of our cases would happen closer to home,” she said, not really meaning it.

  Mulder looked over at her, flashed a brief commiserating smile. “Look on the bright side, Scully—I know plenty of deskbound agents who envy us our exciting jet-setting lifestyle. We get to see the world. They get to see their offices.”

  “I suppose the grass is always greener…” Scully said. “Still, if I ever do take a vacation, I think I’ll just stay home on the sofa and read a book.”

  Scully had grown up as a Navy brat. She and her two brothers and her sister had been forced to pull up their roots every few years while they were young, whenever the Navy assigned her father to a different base or a different ship. She’d never complained, always respecting her father’s duty enough to do her part. But she had never dreamed that when it came to her own career, she would end up choosing something that required her to travel around so often.

  Mulder guided the car to the front of a small white office isolated from the large cluster of buildings inside the fence. The Badge Office appeared relatively new, with the type of clean yet flimsy architecture that reminded Scully of a child’s step-by-step model kit.

  Mulder parked the car and reached behind him to pull out his lightweight briefcase. Scully flicked down the mirror on the passenger side sun visor. She gave a quick glance at the lipstick on her full lips, checked the makeup on her large blue eyes, smoothed her light auburn hair. Despite her tiredness, everything seemed in place, professional.

  Mulder stepped out of the car and straightened his suit jacket, adjusted his maroon tie.

  FBI agents, after all, had to appear suitable for the part.

  “I need another cup of coffee,” Scully said, following him out of the car. “I want to be absolutely certain I can devote my full attention to the details of any case unusual enough to drag us three thousand miles across the country.”

  Mulder held open the glass door for her to enter the Badge Office. “You mean that ‘gourmet’ brew on the airplane wasn’t up to your exacting standards?”

  She favored him with raised eyebrows. “Let’s put it this way, Mulder—I haven’t heard of many flight attendants retiring to start their own espresso franchises.”

  Mulder ran a hand quickly through his fluffy dark hair, ensuring that at least most of the strands fell into place. Then he trailed after her into the heavily air-conditioned building. The interior consisted primarily of a large, open area, a long counter that served as a barricade to a few back offices, and some small carrels that held televisions and videotape players.

  A row of blue padded chairs sat in front of a wall of windows that had been tinted to filter out the bright California sun, though patches of the modern brown-and-rust tweed carpet already looked faded. Several construction workers clad in overalls stood in line at the counter with hardhats tucked under their arms and folded pink forms in their hands. One at a time the workers handed their papers to the counter personnel, who checked IDs and exchanged the pink forms for temporary work permits.

  A sign on the wall clearly listed all of the items that were not permitted inside the Teller Nuclear Research Facility: cameras, firearms, drugs, alcohol, personal recording devices, telescopes. Scully s
canned the list. The items were familiar from her own experience at FBI Headquarters.

  “I’ll check us in,” she said and flipped open a small notebook from the pocket of her forest-green suit. She took a place in line behind several large men in paint-spattered overalls. She felt extremely over-dressed. Another clerk opened a station at the end of the speckled counter and gestured Scully over.

  “I suppose I must look out of place here,” Scully said and displayed her badge. “I’m Special Agent Dana Scully. My partner is Fox Mulder. We’re here to meet with—” she glanced down at her notebook, “a Department of Energy representative, a Ms. Rosabeth Carrera. She’s expecting us.”

  The clerk straightened her gold-rimmed glasses and shuffled through some papers. She punched in Scully’s name on her computer terminal. “Yes, here you are, ‘Special Clearance Expedited.’ You’ll still need to be escorted everywhere until official approval comes through, but we can issue you badges to allow you access to certain areas in the meantime.”

  Scully raised her eyebrows, keeping her best professional Meet-the-Public composure. “Is that really necessary? Agent Mulder and I already have full clearances with the FBI. You can—”

  “Your FBI clearances don’t mean anything here, Ms. Scully,” the woman said. “This is a Department of Energy facility. We don’t even recognize Department of Defense clearances. Everybody’s got their own investigative procedures, and none of us talks to the other.”

  “Government efficiency?” Scully said.

  “Your tax dollars at work. Just be glad you don’t work for the Postal Service,” the woman said. “Who knows what sort of background check they’d do.”

  Mulder came up beside Scully. He handed her a Styrofoam cup full of oily, bitter-smelling coffee he had taken from a pot on an end table piled high with flashy Teller Nuclear Research Facility technical reports and brochures about all the wonderful work the R&D lab was doing for humanity.

  “I paid ten cents for this,” he said, indicating the contributions cup, “and I’ll bet it’s worth every penny. Creamer, no sugar.”

  Scully took a sip. “Tastes like it’s been on that warmer since the Manhattan Project,” she said, but grudgingly took another sip to show Mulder that she appreciated his gesture.

  “Think of it as fine wine, Scully: perfectly aged.”

  The clerk returned to the counter and handed Mulder and Scully each a laminated visitor’s badge. “Wear these at all times. Make sure they’re visible and above the waist,” she said. “And these.” She passed them each a blue plastic rectangle containing what looked like a strip of film and a computer chip. “Your radiation dosimeters. Clip them to your badges. Always keep them on your person.”

  “Radiation dosimeters?” Scully asked, maintaining a calm tone, devoid of any obvious worry. “Is there some cause for concern here?”

  “Just a precaution, Agent Scully. We are a nuclear research facility, you understand. Our orientation videotape should answer all your questions. Follow me, please.”

  She set Scully and Mulder at one of the small carrels in front of a miniature television. She inserted the videotape and pushed PLAY, then went back to the counter to call Rosabeth Carrera. Mulder leaned over, watching the static on the leader before the tape began. “What do you think they’ll have, a cartoon or previews?” he said.

  “Do you believe a cartoon designed by the government would be funny?” she asked.

  Mulder shrugged. “Some people think Jerry Lewis is funny.”

  The videotape ran for only four minutes. It was a sanitized description of the Teller Nuclear Research Facility, with a perky narrator explaining briefly what radiation is and what it can do for you, as well as to you. The program emphasized the medical uses and research applications of exotic isotopes, gave constant reassurances about the safeguards used by the facility, and made comparisons to background levels of radiation that one might receive taking a single cross-country flight or living a year in a high-altitude city such as Denver. After a final, brightly colored graph, the cheery voice told them both to have a nice, safe visit at the Teller Nuclear Research Facility.

  Mulder rewound the tape. “My heart’s just going all pitter-pat,” he said.

  Together they made their way back to the badge counter. Most of the construction workers had already gone inside the chain-link fence to their work site.

  Mulder and Scully didn’t have long to wait before a petite Hispanic woman bustled in through the glass doors. She spotted the two FBI agents half a second later and came over, looking full of energy, eager to meet them. Scully immediately sized her up as she had been trained to do at Quantico, visually gathering facts to form an estimation of a person upon first glance. The woman held out her hand and quickly shook with the two FBI agents.

  “I’m Rosabeth Carrera,” she said, “one of the DOE representatives here. I’m very pleased you could come out on such short notice. It is something of an emergency.”

  Carrera wore a knee-length skirt and scarlet silk blouse that set off her dusky skin. Her lips were generous, embellished with a conservative lipstick. Her full head of rich brown hair, the color of dark chocolate, was pulled back on her head, held by several gold barrettes, and cascaded down her back in a glorious tumble of locks. She was built like a gymnast, filled with enthusiasm, not at all the type of dry bureaucrat Scully had expected.

  Scully caught the look on Mulder’s face as he stared into the woman’s very dark eyes. Carrera laughed. “I could spot you two right away. This is California, you know. East Coasters and a few high management types are the only ones around here who wear monkey suits.”

  Scully blinked. “Monkey suits?”

  “Formal dress. The Teller Facility is pretty casual. Most of our researchers are Californians or transplants from Los Alamos, New Mexico. A suit and tie is a rarity here.”

  “I always knew I was somebody special,” Mulder said. “I should have thought to wear my surfing tie.”

  “If you’ll follow me,” Carrera said, “I’ll take you into the site and the scene of the…accident. We’ve left everything the way it was for the past eighteen hours. It’s so unusual, we wanted to give you a chance to look at it fresh. We’ll take my car.”

  Scully and Mulder followed her out to a pale blue Ford Fairmont with government plates. Mulder caught his partner’s eye and scratched the side of his head in a chimpanzee imitation. Monkey suits.

  “We keep the doors unlocked around here,” Carrera said, indicating the car doors as she slipped inside. “We figure nobody’d want to steal a government car.” Mulder climbed in back, while Scully took the seat next to the DOE representative.

  “Can you give us any more details about this case, Ms. Carrera?” Scully asked. “We were pulled out of bed early and sent here with virtually no background. The only information we’ve been given is that an important nuclear researcher here died in some sort of freak accident in his lab.”

  Carrera drove toward the guard gate. She flashed her badge and handed over the paperwork that would allow Scully and Mulder to enter the facility beyond the fence. Receiving the counter-signed papers, she drove on, biting her lip as if mulling over the details. “That’s the story we’ve released to the press, though it won’t hold up long. There are too many questions yet—but I didn’t want to prejudice you before you saw the scene yourself.”

  “You certainly know how to build suspense,” Mulder said from the back seat.

  Rosabeth Carrera kept her eyes on the road while they drove past office trailers, temporary buildings, a cluster of old dilapidated buildings with wooden siding that looked like something from an old military installation, and finally to the newer buildings that had been constructed during the large defense budgets of the Reagan administration.

  “We called the FBI as a matter of course,” Carrera continued. “This is possibly a crime—a death, maybe murder—on federal property, so the FBI has automatic jurisdiction.”

  “You could have worked thr
ough your local field office,” Scully pointed out.

  “We called them,” Carrera said. “One of the local agents, a Craig Kreident, came out for a first glance last night. Do you know him?”

  Mulder touched his lips, as he searched his excellent memory. “Agent Kreident,” he said. “I believe he specializes in high-tech crimes out here.”

  “That’s him,” Carrera said. “But Kreident took one look and said this one was out of his league. He said it looked more like an ‘X-File’…those were his words…and that it was probably a job for you, Agent Mulder. I don’t understand what an X-File is.”

  “Amazing what a reputation can do for you,” Mulder murmured.

  Scully answered the question. “‘X-Files’ is a catchall term for investigations involving strange and unexplained phenomena. The Bureau has numerous records of unsolved cases dating as far back as the early days of J. Edgar Hoover. The two of us have had numerous…experiences looking into those unusual cases.”

  Carrera parked in front of the large laboratory buildings and got out of the car. “Then I think you’ll find this one to be right up your alley.”

  Carrera led them at a brisk pace through the building, up to the second floor. The dim echoing halls, lit by banks of fluorescent lights, reminded Scully of a high school. One of the tubes overhead was gray and flickering. Scully wondered how long it had needed to be replaced.

  Cork bulletin boards lined the open spaces of cement-block walls, posted with colorful safety notices and signs for regular technical meetings. Handwritten index cards announced rental properties and time-share condos in Hawaii, cars for sale; one card offered “slightly used rock-climbing equipment.” The ubiquitous security awareness posters seemed to be left over from World War II, though Scully found none that said “Loose Lips Sink Ships.”

  Up ahead an entire corridor had been blocked off with yellow barrier tape. Since the Teller Nuclear Research Facility couldn’t be expected to have CRIME SCENE barricades, they had settled for CONSTRUCTION AREA tape. Two lab security guards stood posted on either side of the corridor, looking uncomfortable with their assignment.