the truck halted with a chuff of air brakes, five feet short of the open door to the small warehouse unit. The tailgate rattled up to reveal a scene right out of
She glanced around. “Witnesses out.” The SWAT team was already rolling up the highway a quarter of a mile away. They were far enough away that if things went really badly they might even survive.
“Okay, we’re coming in.” That was Dr. Lucius Rand, tall and thin, graying at the temples, seconded to the Family Trade Organization from his parent organization. Just like Judith, like Mike Fleming, like everyone else in FTO—only in his case, the parent organization was Pantex. He was in his late fifties. Rumor had it he’d studied at Ted Taylor’s knee; Edward Teller had supervised his Ph.D. The tailgate lift ground into operation, space-suited figures descending to planet Earth.
“We haven’t checked for booby traps yet,” she warned.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Rand sounded impatient.
Judith nodded to Rich as she pulled on a pair of disposable plastic shoe protectors: “Let’s go inside.”
The hole in the wall was about two feet wide and three feet high, a jagged gash. She switched on her torch —a tiny pocket LED lantern, more powerful than a big cop-style Maglite—and swept the floor. There were no wires.
The room was maybe twenty feet long and eight feet wide, with a ten-foot ceiling. Naked unpainted cinder block walls, a galvanized tin ceiling, and a concrete floor completed the scene. There was a big rolling door at one end and dust everywhere. But what caught her attention was the sheer size of the cylinder that, standing on concrete blocks, dominated the room. “Sweet baby Jesus,” she whispered. It was at least ten feet long, and had to be a good four feet in diameter. There was barely room to walk around the behemoth. She shone her torch along the cylinder, expecting to see—“what the hell?”
“Herz, report! What have you seen?”
“It’s a cylinder,” she said slowly. “About ten, twelve feet long, four, five feet in diameter. Supported on concrete blocks. One end is rounded; there’s some kind of collar about three feet from the other end and four vanes sticking out, sort of like the fins on a bomb…” She trailed off.
“Acknowledged. Judith, I want you and Rich to go back into the van and wait while I do a preliminary site survey. Don’t touch anything on your way out. I want you to know, you’ve done good.” She realized she was shaking.
The back of the NIRT truck was crowded with consoles and flashing panels of blinkenlights, battered laptops plastered with security inventory stickers, and coat rails for the bulky orange suits. This was a NIRT survey wagon, not the defuse-and-disarm trailer—those guys would be along in a while, as soon as Dr. Rand confirmed he needed them. Too many NIRT vehicles in one parking lot might attract the wrong kind of attention, especially in these days of Total Information Awareness and paranoia about security, not to mention closed-circuit cameras everywhere and journalists with web access spreading rumors. And rumors that NIRT were breaking into a lockup in Boston would be just the icing on a fifty-ton cake of shit if Homeland Security had to take the fall for a botched Family Trade operation. Rumors of any kind about NIRT would likely trigger a public panic, a run on the Dow, and a plague of boils inside the Beltway.
“Coffee?” asked Rich, picking up a vacuum flask.
“Yes, please.” Judith yawned, suddenly becoming aware that she felt tired. “I don’t believe what I just saw. I just hope it turns out to be some kind of sick prank.” Low-level lab samples of something radioactive stashed in an aluminum cylinder knocked together in an auto body shop, that would do it.
“Like hell. That thing had fins like a fifty-six Caddy. I swear I was expecting to see Slim Pickens riding it down…” Don poured a dose of evil-looking coffee into a cup and passed it to her. “Think it’ll go off?”
“Not now,” Judith said with a confidence she didn’t feel. “Dr. Strangelove and his merry men are going over it with their stethoscopes.” There was a chair in front of one of the panels of blinkenlights and she sat down on it. “But something about this whole setup feels wrong.”
Her earphone bleeped, breaking her out of the introspective haze. “Yes?” she asked, keying the throat pickup.
“Judith, I think you’d better come back in. Don’t bother suiting up, it’s safe for now, but there’s bad news along with the good.”
“On my way.” She put her coffee down. “Wait here,” she told Rich, who nodded gratefully and took her place in the swivel chair.
When she straightened up inside the warehouse she found it bright and claustrophobic, the air heavy with masonry dirt and the dust of years of neglect. It reminded her of a raid on a house in Queens she’d been in on, years ago: one the mob had been using to store counterfeit memory chips. Someone here had found the long-dead light fitting and replaced the bulb. Seen in proper light, the finned cylinder looked more like a badly made movie prop than a bomb. Two figures in orange inflatable suits hunched over the open tail of the gadget, while another was busy taking a screwdriver to the fascia of the instrument cart that was wired into it. Dr. Rand stepped around the rounded front of the cylinder: “Ah, Agent Herz. As I said, I’ve got good news and bad news.” There was an unhealthy note of relish in his voice.
Judith gestured towards the far end of the lockup from the NIRT team operatives working on the ass-end of the bomb. “Tell me everything I need to know.”
Rand followed her then surprised Judith by unzipping his hood and throwing it back across his shoulders. He reached down to his waist and turned off the hissing air supply. His face was flushed and what there was of his hair hung in damp locks alongside his face. “Hate these things,” he said conversationally. “It’s not going to go off,” he added.
“Well, that’s a relief.” She raised an eyebrow. “So, is this the one?”
“That would be the bad news.” Rand frowned. “Let me give it to you from the top.”
“Be my guest.” Sarcasm was inappropriate, she realized, but the relief—
“I’ve met this puppy before,” said Rand. “It’s a B53-Y2. We built a bunch of them in the sixties. It’s a free-fall bomb, designed to be hauled around by strategic bomber, and it’s not small—the physics package weighs about six thousand pounds. It’s an oralloy core, high-purity weapons-grade uranium rather than plutonium, uses lithium deuteride to supply the big bang. We originally made a few hundred, but all but twenty-five were dismantled decades ago. It’s basically the same as the warhead on the old Titan-II, designed to level Leningrad in one go. The good news is, it won’t go off. The tritium booster looks to be well past its sell-by date and the RDX is thoroughly poisoned by neutron bombardment, so the best you’d get would be a fizzle.” He looked pensive. “Of course, what I mean by a fizzle is relative. A B53 that’s been properly maintained is good for about nine megatons—this one would probably top off at no more than a quarter megaton or so, maybe half a megaton.”
“Half a—” Her knees went weak. She stumbled, caught herself leaning against the nose of the hydrogen bomb, and recoiled violently.
