Kill Zone Page 8

  “Thank you, I relinquish my responsibility.” Without waiting for their reply, he hurried after Drexler down the tunnel, leaving the committee to wonder about the emergency.

  10

  After Harris rushed off, Mrs. Garcia continued explaining the systems in the vault, but as she droned on, her words went right through Garibaldi’s head, unprocessed, though no one could tell he wasn’t fully engaged.

  He’d perfected the look years ago, as a simple psychological defense after being locked in that … place in Oakridge, a look he used when he needed to retreat. It didn’t matter what topic was being discussed, or who else was in the room. If the dark memory clawed back, he knew how to put his mind in neutral, adopt a knowing expression, and nod once in a while.

  And then he’d wall away that horrible past and find himself in a much better place. His thoughts often returned to the highlight of his time after he’d been enlightened about the hidden dangers of the entire nuclear industry. And, yes, he had achieved some enormous successes.

  Shutting down Yucca Mountain was like stopping a giant oil tanker, a huge and bloated project moving under the momentum of decades of time and billions of dollars. But Simon Garibaldi had done it, he and his powerful lobbying and public awareness group. Sanergy had taken advantage of a groundswell of public opinion, people who didn’t like the idea of filling Yucca Mountain with countless tons of radioactive waste, spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants, and who knew what other kind of nuclear poison.

  If the nation had thought ahead rather than ignoring the problem, the waste never would have been generated in the first place. The very idea of relying on nuclear power forever was a dangerous dead end. Had no one paid attention to Chernobyl? Or Three Mile Island? Or Fukushima? It was like a five-year-old still sucking his thumb because no one made him grow up.…

  Glory days. He and fifty Sanergy volunteers had gathered at the southern tip of Nevada just outside the well-patrolled boundary of Nellis Air Force Base. The gates were heavily guarded by MPs. The protesters would have been arrested if they forced their way inside, and Garibaldi’s followers would have done that if he’d demanded it, but such a sacrifice would have served no purpose. They could make their point outside, where the TV crews could watch them wave their signs decrying nuclear power, demanding that this storage facility never be opened.

  Inside the sprawling military base, distant Yucca Mountain was visible on the wrinkled landscape, a long line of rock that towered above the surrounding desert. So pristine.

  Garibaldi had given many impassioned speeches and written numerous op-ed pieces in major publications. He was a perfect spokesman, not a wild-eyed radical but a former DOE employee, well educated and well spoken. He had played for the other team for so many years, he knew how to play the game … but after his own personal ordeal in that vault in Oakridge, he had seen the error of his ways. Now, Dr. Simon Garibaldi gave voice to the concerns of a large part of the population.

  Out under the baking Nevada sun, he stood in a light tan dress shirt, khaki pants, and comfortable shoes. His fifty protesters wore all sorts of clothes, T-shirts and cutoffs, even two in Grim Reaper costumes. Their signs were imaginative, their angry chants loud even in the great emptiness.

  The news cameras had captured it all, particularly the Las Vegas TV stations. “This doesn’t just affect Nevada. It affects the entire nation,” Garibaldi shouted as he stood on the gravel in front of the fenced entry gate to the base, and his people cheered.

  From behind the base gates, the MPs stood wary and ready to act. The base had tripled security, aware of the protest. Several jeeps as well as armored vehicles had pulled up near the fence and the entry portal in a threatening posture. Now, the MPs stood with their rifles shouldered but obvious, making sure Garibaldi’s volunteers didn’t try to charge the base. The intimidation didn’t work.

  “The state of Nevada has no nuclear power plants of its own. Why should you be forced to store someone else’s dangerous waste?” Garibaldi continued. “Is your state just a dumping ground?”

  “It’s not fair!” shouted someone. “Nevada was screwed.”

  “We’re all being screwed if we keep nuclear power,” Garibaldi said. “It’s an addiction, and it’s time we go cold turkey. We will suffer from withdrawal, but in the end we’ll be strong and we’ll be healed.”

  Some of the volunteer protesters were members of the Western Shoshone tribe in full traditional costume. The Shoshone tribe had objected strenuously to Yucca Mountain being turned into a waste storage facility, claiming that the site was on sacred lands that held great cultural importance.

  The Walker River Paiute tribe had also added their voices to the dispute, because their reservation lands were directly on the transport route for any nuclear waste to be delivered to Yucca Mountain. By a large margin, the people of Nevada were opposed to the facility, although the seven counties immediately surrounding the designated land were in favor of it. They just weren’t seeing the big picture.

  Because his scheduled protest had drawn so much publicity, he wasn’t surprised that a group of counterprotesters came to cause trouble. Local ranchers and miners, construction workers and government employees. Like an opposing team, they stood in a group, angry and shouting, waving handmade signs in sharp contrast with the professionally designed placards Sanergy had produced. Yucca Mountain now! said one of the signs. Save Our Jobs and Store It Here!

  “It’s perfectly safe,” yelled one gruff, broad-shouldered man in a plaid shirt. “I’ve read the reports.”

  “Reports can be doctored,” Garibaldi said. “No one can be certain there won’t be a quake or a fracture or a leak. They can’t guarantee the waste won’t be disturbed for a hundred thousand years.”

  The man shouted back, “That’s bullshit. Scientists can’t predict anything for a tenth that long.” The two groups remained separated, but the TV cameras approached, closing the gap.

  One of the other locals stood beside the first man. “Opening that facility will create hundreds of jobs. If it isn’t here, they’ll put the stuff somewhere else, in Texas or New Mexico.”

  “If the government tries that, we’ll protest it there, too,” Garibaldi said. “It’s a fundamental problem, and we have to stop it.”

  A young woman on the opposing side sounded shrill and frustrated. “But it exists. The nuclear waste exists. You can’t ignore it. We have to do something about it.”

  “And the nuclear power plants will keep producing more and more,” Garibaldi said. “If we find a simple and easy solution to store the waste, then what’s their incentive to shut down the plants? We need to get off this addiction! The only way for us to wean ourselves from nuclear power is to force the development of alternative energy.”

  “What are we going to do in the meantime?”

  “We may have some tough years, I won’t lie.” Garibaldi was prepared for that. He’d used the same argument when he advocated for dramatically increasing gasoline prices, even though it would hurt consumers in the short run, because then people would demand greater fuel efficiency and get themselves off dependence on gas and oil. People would not voluntarily change when they thought the system was working. They were like a frog sitting complacently in the pot of water as the temperature increased one degree at a time until the water boiled.…

  Someone threw a rock. Garibaldi didn’t see where it had come from, but it struck the sign held by a protester next to him. Suddenly, a howl of outrage erupted from his own followers, mirrored by a chorus of mocking jeers from the locals.

  “You aren’t even from around here!” said the man in the plaid shirt.

  Garibaldi knew that many of his volunteers did come from Las Vegas, but the difference between the city of Las Vegas and rural Nevada couldn’t be more dramatic.

  The MPs at the gate edged forward, sensing violence—as did the TV cameras.

  “This is America,” said one of the local supporters waving a Store It Now sign.

  G
aribaldi seized on that. “Yes, this is America, and Americans can achieve great things. America created the Manhattan Project. America created the Apollo program. We can solve this, not sweep it under the rug. But we all have to work together.”

  “Yucca Mountain does solve the problem, you idiot—but you hate nuclear power so much you just can’t see it!”

  One of his own volunteers picked up a rock and hurled it at the man, and that was just the start. Like a chain reaction gone critical, the two sides began shouting, hurling rocks, and then they rushed together in a brawl. The Air Force MPs hesitated just a few seconds, then they emerged from the gate, charging into the fray to break up the violence, but not before both sides of the debate suffered cracked skulls, multiple bruises, and lacerations.

  The TV news had covered it all, and Garibaldi became even more of a celebrity. Thanks to the publicity from the Yucca Mountain incident, he had booked dozens more talk-show appearances, and he had also learned how to make his point. He would be calm and reasonable as he presented his case, not just fearmongering but genuinely looking at the big picture. Simon Garibaldi could be very convincing.

  Even with his successful actions, he couldn’t take full credit for shutting down the Yucca Mountain project, but the protests continued. The grassroots opposition persisted, and the next administration had made sure that Yucca Mountain would never open.…

  Now, Garibaldi blinked, bringing himself back to the present, and Mrs. Garcia and the dry waste storage chamber swam into focus. He drew in a breath, remembering where he was. Yes, it had been like stopping a giant oil tanker, but he, along with countless other like-minded people, had succeeded. So he knew it could be done.

  But now Hydra Mountain! An astonishing solution accomplished by fiat. No, he couldn’t support this. Not at all.

  11

  Rob Harris tried to maintain a calm, professional demeanor as he followed his exec from the storage vaults, but the urgency was plain on Drexler’s face. The young man was not one to cry wolf, and he would never have interrupted the high-level tour unless something truly unexpected had happened. Moving at a brisk pace, Harris imagined dozens of dire scenarios on the site, but both men remained silent as they hurried to the ops center.

  As site manager, Harris was used to dealing with unexpected circumstances, but the timing was unfortunate with so much at stake here today. His entire plan relied on the review team members being able to see the looming problem with their own eyes, and draw the right conclusion. He knew they would put the pieces together.

  Harris wished he’d had time to speak with Undersecretary Doyle alone, now that she’d finally been read into Valiant Locksmith. Because of her own Special Access Program, Doyle was the only person on the team besides Senator Pulaski with the proper access to understand the real dangers of having so much high-level waste inside Hydra Mountain—especially down in the lower cavern.

  The Undersecretary needed to see for herself what van Dyckman had done, but until just a few minutes ago she hadn’t even known that his covert program existed. Once Doyle got to the lower level, though, she would fully understand.

  Then all hell would break loose.

  Thanks to draconian SAP security constraints, Harris was restricted from telling anyone else not cognizant of both programs about the problem. Period. Each person had to see their own part, and Harris had to hope they would put the clues together. It was like the parable of blind men trying to describe an elephant, each touching only one part of the animal and not grasping the whole thing. If they could only use their eyes!

  No one but himself knew about all the Special Access Programs in Hydra Mountain; Doyle’s and van Dyckman’s were only two of several. Due to the very nature of a SAP, rigid classification firewalls prevented each program manager from knowing anything but their own work. With their various SAPs, the agencies using the Mountain—Department of Energy, Department of Defense, Department of State—were like foreign countries with walled borders. As site manager, Rob Harris had a legal right to see the whole picture, but he was the only one.

  And that was the problem.

  Even though he knew the very real hazards of continuing present operations, Federal law forbade him from pointing anything out to the people who needed to know. Harris would go to jail for the rest of his life if he told the left hand what the right hand was doing. He knew the regulations well.

  Going by the book, Rob had reported to the DOE’s Inspector General that he had a classified concern, but even the IG didn’t have access to Victoria Doyle’s unacknowledged State Department SAP, and thus the IG couldn’t grasp the reason for Rob’s urgency. And when he had brought it up through the State Department’s Inspector General, they likewise didn’t have access to the DOE Valiant Locksmith SAP … and so the State Department had the same lackluster reaction. Neither was allowed to see the problem, prohibited by Federal law.

  But when Senator Pulaski suddenly needed a perfunctory, rubber-stamp review committee, and Stanley van Dyckman had simply asked for a list of names, Harris seized the opportunity. He couldn’t break the law, but he could move the chess pieces.

  Victoria Doyle had the access now. She had the knowledge, she had the eyes, and most importantly she had the smarts to see the big picture. If he couldn’t get her alone to discuss the urgent matter, then she could see for herself what he had been forbidden from explicitly telling her.

  She would understand the danger. She had to! And if Dr. Garibaldi also pieced together what was going on, then Adonia Rojas could back him up; Rob knew her to be a clear thinker, not motivated by politics.

  Then Harris could finally sleep easy again at night.

  But right now he had some other emergency that threatened Hydra Mountain. Drexler was clearly sweating, his face drawn.

  As soon as they passed out of earshot down the main corridor, the younger man started briefing Harris in a quiet but urgent voice. “Sir, there’s been an incident inside the facility perimeter. We’ve contacted HQ, and they’re setting up an immediate call with the Secretary of Energy. The threat level is still being assessed, since both safety and security sensors have been triggered.”

  “Security and safety detectors?”

  “Yes, sir. That’s why we pulled you out. Protective Services are rushing to the crash site right now.”

  Harris stopped. “Crash? What type of vehicle? How bad?”

  “It’s … it’s a Class A.”

  Harris’s heart skipped a beat. “A plane crash?” His mind immediately raced to the suicide bomber who had tried to take out Granite Bay nearly eighteen months before. Oh crap, not again. Was this an attempt to do the same to Valiant Locksmith’s high-level waste by yet another misguided Sanergy protester? Had Garibaldi set it up? Impossible! He couldn’t have known beforehand. And with the heavy security cloaking Hydra Mountain, how would Sanergy even know the program existed … unless there’d been a leak? What if someone had discovered why Dr. Garibaldi and the SAP review team were really here?

  Doubling his pace, he rushed toward the ops center. “How big of a crash? Was the Mountain breached, and was anyone hurt?” He pictured a fireball from a fully loaded plane diving into the rugged mountainside. What would they hope to accomplish?

  “It appears to be minor, sir, and no one was injured. On first glance, it seems to be a genuine mishap, a piloting accident. There are a lot of thermals in the area because of the unusually hot weather, and the winds are high today. A small six-passenger plane strayed into Hydra Mountain airspace after taking off from Albuquerque International. The pilot radioed that he was having engine trouble. The aircraft lost altitude and made a hard landing just inside the perimeter fence on the slope.”

  After Granite Bay, Harris wasn’t convinced anything was an innocent crash. And it was too much of a coincidence, especially on the day of the VIP tour, and especially with Simon Garibaldi’s presence. “That sounds exactly like one of our preparedness scenarios. I don’t care what it looks like, we can’t let our
guard down.”

  Drexler struggled to keep pace, breathing hard. “Unclear at this moment, sir, but it doesn’t appear to be a terrorist strike. The plane knocked down a few power lines as it came in for a landing, and some scrub brush caught on fire. The pilot may have been trying to reach the perimeter road, not the interior, but with all the wind…” He shrugged.

  “It might have been a textbook precautionary landing. Maybe.” Harris relaxed a little, but wasn’t that exactly what a secret strike might look like? Hydra Mountain had originally been designed to withstand the impact of a fully fueled 707, the largest jet of the day, so a small plane shouldn’t cause too much damage, even if it was filled with fuel or explosives. Since Kirtland AFB shared the runway with the civilian airport, the military would help DOE with the investigation. But still, could it really be that innocent? “No facility breach?”

  Drexler shook his head. “No, sir. That’s why the operations center commander didn’t initiate an immediate facility lockdown, but we sent for you instead. Security personnel have joined the emergency response team, and we’re awaiting confirmation that it was just an accident and not an attack. Kirtland’s military police and fire crews are on their way to provide backup.”

  They reached the main floor of the operations center, and he headed for the Eagle’s Nest, ready for the call from HQ. At the door, he paused and turned to the young exec. He spoke in a firm voice, deciding to be cautious rather than naïve. “It may be nothing, Ken, but the timing is just too suspicious. Our operations are quiet on a Sunday, and we have a group of VIPs inside the Mountain. We follow the rules here, and DOE procedures dictate that any violation of restricted Hydra airspace must be considered a threat until proven otherwise. Besides, we don’t know what type of cargo that small plane was carrying.” Everyone knew what had happened at Granite Bay, and this reminded him too much of that second plane hitting the World Trade Center, which had immediately proved the first impact wasn’t an accident.…