Craig Kreident #2 Fallout (11 page)
Read Craig Kreident #2 Fallout Online
Authors: Doug Beason Kevin J Anderson
Two years ago she had packed up and left him and the Bay Area, accepting a six-figure salary at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins to study radiation effects on humans.
As a medical student she had been fascinated with the victims of Chernobyl and had begun to specialize in treating exposures . . . though the demand for such specialists was relatively nil.
So far.
His old flame was a continent away and had her own life.
But a letter he’d received from her three days ago weighed heavily on his mind.
We can still be friends
.
Yeah, right.
But did she miss him . . . did she have second thoughts? And why now?
Petite, with dark hair, deep brown eyes, and delicate glasses, Trish looked quite different from Paige.
She kept herself healthy through a carefully watched diet rather than physical activity.
Pretty and bookish, Trish preferred quiet days at home, listening to music, doing crossword puzzles, when she wasn’t obsessively studying.
Paige Mitchell seemed just as dedicated to her job, just as intelligent — but she still found time to drink in life to the fullest.
Bright-eyed, with a dry sense of humor, Paige was a joy to be around.
Standing between a row of slot machines that extended out on either side, Craig smiled wistfully.
“Let me guess.
You’ve got a woman on your mind . . . a brunette — no, a blond!”
Craig spun about, startled, and bumped a woman’s elbow.
A scrawny lady in her mid-fifties wavered in front of him, dressed in fishnet stockings, a deep-cut scarlet corset, dyed red hair under a three-pointed Court Jester’s cap.
She wore as much makeup as Paige would put on in a year.
She carried an empty glass in one hand and a smoldering cigarette in another.
She looked him up and down, then batted her eyes.
“I can sense these things, you know.”
Her voice was rough from too many drinks and too many cigarettes.
“I’m psychic, Sweetie.”
Craig noticed that her drink had spilled on the floor.
“I’m sorry if I bumped you, ma’am.
I apologize.”
He reached out to steady her, and the woman slipped her arm through his.
“The name’s Maggie, not ma’am.”
She grinned hugely at him.
“Maggie the Mind Reader.
Not one of those telephone psychic clowns — I’m a real performer.
So was I right, a woman on your mind — blond or brunette?”
Craig laughed as he steered her to a corner table.
“Both, I guess.”
“Oooh, dangerous.
And her name is?”
“Trish,” he blurted before he could stop himself.
“Hey, you were supposed to read that from my mind —”
“
Trish
, that’s what I was going to say.”
Maggie batted her eyes again.
She brought her glass up to take a drink, but found it empty.
Without pause, she snagged a passing cocktail waitress in a scanty medieval-style costume.
“This young man’s buying me a drink.
Make it a double scotch, single malt, neat.”
Embarrassed, Craig smiled politely to the waitress.
“All right.
Let me pay for it now — I’ve got to be going.”
He removed five dollars from his wallet, suddenly wanting to go back to his room after all.
Maggie patted the empty seat next to her at one of the slots.
“Not so fast, Sweetie.
Part of the deal is you have to join me.”
Craig started to protest, but gave up.
He needed something after today’s turn of events.
He looked to the waitress.
“I’ll have a beer, please.”
Then he thought of Paige.
“Uh, what are your premium brands?
Any microbrews?”
“Heineken or Corona, if you want premium.”
“Heineken, then.”
Maggie took a draw on her cigarette and blew smoke away from the slot machine.
“You haven’t caught my show, have you?
It’s one of the little floor acts, but they pay me extra to wander the casino and amaze the customers with my mind-reading abilities.”
She stopped as if Craig should automatically know who she was, but he just shook his head.
“I pegged you right, didn’t I?
Thinking about a girl?”
Craig raised his eyebrows.
“That would be a good guess for any single man, alone in Las Vegas, surrounded by these cocktail waitresses.”
“Yes, but you’re not just any single man in Vegas.
You’re here on business.
You’re not here to have fun.”
“Another score.”
The cocktail waitress reappeared at his side and set the drinks on a small shelf between the two slot machines.
Craig tipped his beer and turned back to Maggie.
“No, I’m not here to have fun.
You could tell that by my jacket and tie.”
“But you’re not an east coast executive — suit’s not a designer.
I’d guess you’re from California, probably work for the government.
Serious type.
Wears a suit like a uniform, not a fashion statement.”
Craig smiled, impressed at her detective abilities, just like a Quantico-trained investigator.
“Sounds like you’ve managed to become a pretty good psychic.”
Maggie took another drink.
“Damn straight, Sweetie!”
She lowered her voice.
“You hear plenty of things, dropped conversations, people assuming no one else is listening in the bustle of the crowd.
I file it away for future reference, and then if I see them again I amaze them with my talent!”
Craig took a long swallow and pushed his unfinished beer away from him.
It was late, and Paige would be picking him up at dawn to escort him out to the Test Site.
He couldn’t waste any time — June Atwood, Paige, the State Department, even the president were all counting on him to solve the Russian’s murder in three days, and he hadn’t even been to the scene of the crime yet.
“Okay, I’ll try to catch your act before I leave, Maggie.”
“Friday night’s the big finale.
Be sure to bring your girlfriend.”
Maggie finished her drink with a huge swallow.
“The blond one.
She’s got you walking around in a daze.”
Craig nodded.
Prescient or not, Maggie had hit that nail on the head.
Until now, though, he’d thought it was
Trish
who had him walking around in a daze.
CHAPTER 12
Wednesday, October 22
6:50 A.M.
Mercury, Nevada
The straight desert roads made speed limits meaningless, but Craig kept his eyes nervously on the needle hovering at ninety miles per hour.
Paige drove with one hand on the steering wheel, as if her government pickup were a sporty MG convertible.
She filled him in on what she’d been doing since they had last worked together.
She described her previous week with the Russian disarmament team and tried to establish a foundation for him to begin his investigation.
Highway 95 stretched north to the horizon, and the desert opened up like a bottomless pit with huge skies above, huge horizons around them, and rugged mountains like distant guardians on all sides.
After nearly an hour of crossing barren wasteland, Paige gestured through the windshield.
“Here we are, Craig — paradise on Earth.”
He saw only a single green road sign marking a highway exit.
It declared forlornly,
Mercury — No Services.
Paige drove toward a cluster of low buildings several miles away.
Large white signs with stenciled black letters warned:
You are entering the Nevada Nuclear Test Site
property of the U.S. Department of Energy
No Trespassing
.
Electrical wires criss-crossed the road overhead, strung from creosote-covered utility poles.
Orange balls hung suspended in the middle of the wires, and prominent signs indicated the vertical clearance.
Other signs admonished
Caution — Desert Tortoises
.
Paige pulled next to a Badge Office blockhouse and hustled Craig inside.
Another sign warned that loaded weapons were not allowed on the site; a large sealed trashbin provided an opportunity for those carrying guns to unload their ammunition before entering the site.
At the counter Paige led him through the steps required to sign in.
“Not quite as daunting as Livermore,” she said.
“But just as much paperwork.”
He filled out a form, stating his Social Security number, his employer, and the reason for his visit.
Finally, the guard handed Craig a Visitor’s badge and a heavy plastic-encased dosimeter that felt like a license plate dangling from the collar of his gray suit jacket.
Back in the truck again, Paige stopped at a line of guard kiosks across the road like toll booths spanning a bridge.
Most of the kiosks remained empty, hinting at busier times during active nuclear testing.
Now, only weathered signs announced “All Traffic Stop For Special Convoys Displaying Flashing Blue Lights.”
Craig wondered when the last convoy had gone through.
Paige drove toward Mercury, the central village that housed the NTS administrative and employee offices.
Mercury looked like a dehydrated settlement, an industrial ghost town: government trailers, huts, and supply sheds, not to mention a bowling alley, cafeteria, and library.
He saw no other signs of civilization.
“People actually live out here?”
Paige shook her head.
“They used to, but most of the workers moved to Las Vegas, even though it’s an hour away.
Out in the desert, distances don’t mean much.”
Flat clearings had become heavy-equipment parking lots, transportainer storage areas, and waste dumps.
One lot on the northern edge of town was a graveyard of cable spools, round wooden holders for electrical wire, telephone cables, diagnostic fiber optics, coaxial cables.
Rows of white government cars and trucks were parked together outside the buildings.
“See why I keep this air freshener hanging here?” Paige said, touching the pine tree dangling from her rear-view mirror.
“It’s the only way I can tell my own truck from all those others.”
After passing through Mercury, Paige headed uphill over a ridge that opened into a valley so vast it seemed capable of swallowing up an entire Eastern state.
Ahead, the road went downhill for a dozen miles.
Barren mountains encircling the wide valley looked like mounds of gravel and sand, reminding him of folds on an iguana’s back.
As she drove down the long slope, Paige stared wistfully into the distance.
Fidgeting, Craig looked at her through his sunglasses, watching the expression on her face, seeing how the sunlight gave a golden cast to her skin.
“My dad used to come out here all the time,” she said.
“Flying back and forth from Livermore right to Mercury, the Desert Rock Airstrip.
The Livermore Lab had a dedicated airplane called AMI, a tan two-propeller F-27 that seated forty people.
AMI took off from the Livermore Municipal Airport every morning at six-thirty and came back every day at five.
When I was a little girl I could go outside late after school and watch it flying home over the Livermore Valley, carrying my dad.”
Craig looked across the flat, imagining the activity during the Cold War.
Random lines of roads had been scraped across the dry lakebed, for transport of equipment, trailers, and technicians out to individual test shots.
After each underground nuclear test was completed, the obsolete roads were left to slowly grow over again.
But the desert was not quick to reclaim its territory.
“We’ve got another fifteen miles until we reach the Device Assembly Facility,” Paige said, “where the murder happened.”
She continued to watch the side of the road, studying the mesquite shrubs and the occasional ferocious-looking Joshua tree.
Then she pulled abruptly off to the shoulder, the wide tires of the Ford pickup crunching gravel.
She flashed him a glance.
“I want to show you something.”
“We don’t have a lot of time to kill,” he said, anxious to get started on the case, feeling the deadline pressure before his first day had even begun.
He hoped Goldfarb and Jackson would make progress on the Eagle’s Claw case today as well.
They planned to head out early to the home of the missing Hoover Dam worker to see if they could pick up any clues.
“This spot will do more to give you a perspective of what NTS is about than any other place I can think of.”
Paige picked her way over the rocks, climbing a small rise ten yards from the road.
She looked comfortable in her jeans and short-sleeved cotton shirt.
“Before you start questioning people, you need to understand the test program.
It’s a whole different mindset.”
