“Excellent. Jake, what do you do in the event of an exposure?”
Jake rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on, Nick.”
Carolyn nudged him with her elbow. “ You come on, Jake,” she said harshly. “This is serious stuff.”
A rumbling “Ooo” passed through the crowd.
“You swell up and die,” Jake answered finally.
“ Bzz,” Nick said, mimicking a game show host. “Wrong. Thanks for playing, though. Carolyn?”
“Atropine, self-injected in the thigh.” Precaution being her middle name, she’d actually practiced the procedure, using sterile saline. It wasn’t nearly as difficult as she’d feared.
“Very good. Mustard gas. What happens when you’re exposed to that?” This one was for anyone to answer. Jake raised his hand. “Jake.”
“You swell up and die.”
“Yes! That one you got right.”
There was more laughter, but with a nervous edge to it; like everyone knew that show time had arrived. Nick turned serious again. “Please be careful, people.”
Magazine B-2740 rose out of the Arkansas forest like some ancient native shrine, its smooth, reinforced concrete face rising twenty feet over the crumbled access road. As he struggled into his suit, just at the line where the support zone met the decontamination zone, Jake couldn’t help but wonder what future archaeologists would think of this place a thousand years from now. What conclusions would they draw from the giant cave dwellers who called this neighborhood their home?
Dressing for a Level A entry like this required a group effort. The air packs came first, worn on top of two layers of clothing: the shorts and T-shirts they wore to work, under the obligatory royal-blue Enviro-Kleen uniform. Latex inner gloves came next. The final step was the entry suit itself, with its built-in five-ply gloves and booties. Leather work gloves finished off the ensemble, along with calf-high neoprene work boots, size huge, with splash deflectors to keep scary shit from getting inside and rotting either the suit or its occupant.
With his own air pack in place now, Jake fitted the holster for his portable radio around his waist and cinched it tight, threading the hands-free microphone through the straps of his air pack and into his right ear. After he clipped the customized transmit button to the right-hand shoulder strap, he mashed the mushroom-shaped button with his gloved palm. He looked like a Roman legionnaire saluting his emperor.
“Entry One to Ops. You there?”
“I got you, Entry One.”
Jake shot his hand down to the volume control, cringing as Drew Price’s voice pierced his brain.
“A bit loud there, honey?” Carolyn laughed on the air.
Jake stuck his tongue out at her. “Hey, Ops, give me a short test count, will you?”
He could hear the smile in Drew’s voice as he replied, “Test for Jake. One, two, three, four, five. Five, four, three, two, one. That okay?”
Jake touched his chest again. “Peachy. Thanks.”
While the rest of the teams went through their radio check protocols, Jake and Carolyn fitted their masks to their faces and tightened the straps.
“You look like an anteater,” Carolyn’s voice said in his earpiece.
“Well, we can’t all be as beautiful as you, sweetheart,” he replied.
“Can it, guys.” Foley was on the air now. Mr. Personality. “From this point on, it’s all business, understand?”
“Got it,” Carolyn said sheepishly.
Jake flipped him off-well out of sight, of course.
The Donovans and their fellow moon-suiters moved to the final dressing stage, where secondary decon personnel stood waiting to seal them into their “protective ensembles.” They called themselves the Silverados, thanks to the aluminized fire-resistant outer layers of their suits, which had been specially manufactured for this job. According to theory, the outer layer would buy the owner of the suit an extra ten to fifteen seconds in the event of a fire. Jake thought it was hysterical. They were dealing with explosives, for God’s sake. If it burns, you die. Any questions?
The Silverados stood with their arms extended out to their sides, and their feet stuffed into their booties, as the decon toads helped them wriggle into their heavy armor, guiding their arms and hands into their corresponding holes.
Jake felt a quick rush of panic as the big hood was lifted over his head and the vaporproof zipper was pulled closed. It had happened to him before, and just like last time, he was able to swallow the feeling before it became a problem.
A body bag with a window.
His brain launched a shiver. Once zipped inside, there was no escape from that suit without help; the zipper was simply not accessible. Always a borderline claustrophobic, he’d had nightmares about being stranded inside as he sucked his air pack empty, then slowly suffocated. The thought was absurd, but he nonetheless kept a six-inch Buck knife in the pocket of his coveralls.
Literally sealed off from the outside world now, Jake could hear nothing but the sound of his own breathing: an eerie hiss that sounded remarkably like Darth Vader. He turned to survey the status of the rest of his team and caught a glimpse of his own reflection on the suit’s visor. Just his eyes, actually, and they looked huge. Last came the syringes of atropine-the only known antidote for what they might find. These were duct-taped to the outside of their suits, on the opposite shoulder from each Silverado’s dominant hand.
Jake pressed the transmit button through his suit. “Entry One to Entry Team. Let’s do one more radio check.”
“Entry Three’s good to go.” As the only female on the team, Carolyn really didn’t need the numerical identifier, but protocol was protocol.
“Entry two.”
“Four.”
“Five.”
“Six.”
Jake watched in turn as each person acknowledged him, making sure that all of them knew their own number.
“You copy them all, Ops?” This was the last step before moving ahead down the road.
“I got six,” Drew Price replied.
“And six is the magic number,” Jake acknowledged. “Okay, people, let’s get to it.”
The plan called for Jake’s three-man team, Entry Alpha, to enter the magazine and move to the right, while Entry Bravo, the other three-man team, worked around to the left. Ideally, they’d meet in the middle, then work up the center aisle to the front. Jake shared a quick glance with Carolyn, and they touched gloves as their team’s industrial hygienist-none other than smart-mouth Glenn Parker-fumbled with the lock. Designed to Department of Defense specifications, the assembly was huge. Resembling a standard padlock, only five times bigger, it dangled out of sight, hidden up inside a steel cowl. According to the locksmith who was called in to fabricate a key, the tumbler design was an oldie but a goodie-for all practical purposes, unpickable. Under normal circumstances, opening the lock would be a cumbersome task. Triple-gloved, with no sense of touch, it was a major undertaking.
Like every other operation, this one had been rehearsed a dozen times on identical magazines, and Parker had gotten as proficient as anyone. The radios were silent and tensions were high as he reached his hands under the cowl. Instantly, a swarm of wasps appeared, scrambling from their invaded nest, and all six Silverados screamed like little girls, instinctively dashing for cover.
The panic lasted for only a second or two-until they realized that even a bionic bee would bust a stinger on these outfits-but it was long enough to ignite a panic from the ops center.
“Entry teams! What’s wrong?” Drew yelled into his mike.
The fear gone, but his adrenaline through the roof, Jake laughed. “Um, sorry, Ops. We had a bit of an insect problem down here. Everybody’s okay. We’re fine.”
“You people are on vox, goddammit,” Foley spat. Jake could just imagine him pushing poor Drew out of the way to get to the microphone. “Who’s on vox?”
