Critical Reaction (42 page)

Hank pushed open one side of the double doors and passed inside. King followed, then Dr. Trân, with Ryan a step behind—and Emily and the judge further back.

The entryway space was wide but not long, with only eight to ten feet separating the two sets of doors. Hank, the Covington lawyer, and Dr. Trân were crowded inside the space, leaving Ryan still partially in the corridor, holding open the spring-loaded door with one hand so that it wouldn’t strike Emily and the judge just behind. Emily crowded close to her father’s shoulder, curious to look inside the production room as soon as the interior door was opened.

Hank pushed open the production room door, revealing a black space. “Let me get the light,” he said, turning to his right and disappearing into the dark room.

King followed, stepping partway into the dark room behind the guide. Ryan and Dr. Trân began to follow.

Through the doorway, at the furthest visible end of the room,
Emily saw a tiny bluish glow appear, growing in intensity and breadth. Like a light bulb about to flame out, she thought.

In that instant, from somewhere inside the darkened space, Emily heard Hank’s voice cry out in a high-pitched yell,
“Back out!”

Emily’s stomach tightened and the acrid taste of bile came into her throat. She half turned as the judge stumbled backwards into the hall. Her father grabbed her from behind, picking Emily up and carrying her bodily through the exterior doors as Hank repeated his cry more loudly,
“GET
OUT!”

Then her father stumbled, carrying Emily down with him. She hit the hallway floor, her breath forced from her, as her father struck the floor beside her. She was dimly aware of Dr. Trân and the others stepping over them, hurriedly exiting the exterior doors into the hallway.

The heavy door panels slammed shut behind the last of the group. Instantly, a tremendous boom shuddered the walls, shaking the floor and driving Trân and King off their feet to the ground beside Emily. Only Hank remained standing, his hands balanced against the wall. Emily saw him lean down to lift Judge Johnston to her feet as another blast shook the corridor.

“Back to the front side!”
Hank was shouting now, pointing up the hall in the direction from which they’d come. Emily struggled to check her fear as she rose with her father’s help, then began a clumsy retreat up the corridor, her hands against the wall to counter the repeated blasts shaking the concrete around them. She reached the staircase and began to ascend, hearing the clatter of the others’ footsteps just behind. Then she raced up the steadier first-floor corridor, reaching the entryway, passing through the doors and out of the dark side.

The shuddering explosions had stopped by the time they had all gathered by the supply desk once more, breathless and shaken. Emily watched Red Whalen turn and lift the receiver of a wall phone. Judge Johnston was trying to remain stoic, though
Emily could see that she was near tears. Her father seemed mostly concerned about Emily, forcing her to keep reassuring him that she was fine—while King checked his own arms, legs, and sides repeatedly, as though searching for wounds. Hank stood slightly apart, silently counting their number until, satisfied, he directed them to put on their HEPA masks. Emily did so, slipping the device over her nose and mouth.

What had just passed seemed impossible, Emily thought, like she was tapping into a specter of someone else’s memory. They’d just missed incineration in a criticality explosion. And miraculously, they’d all survived it. At least they all looked unharmed. She could see others were processing it, too, the relief beginning to replace fear on each of the faces of her companions.

Then her eyes caught Dr. Trân.

Amidst them all, only Dr. Trân now appeared fully calm. He stood in a corner a little away from the rest. His clothes were dirtied from the fall, his thick dark hair disheveled. But otherwise he appeared unshaken by the nearly disastrous event they’d just survived.

Emily didn’t know Trân well. Other than her trial prep, she’d spent little time with the scientist. But she could swear that, in contrast to the rest of them, the only emotion Trân displayed was barely restrained anger.

And his gaze was fixed on the back of their guide, Hank, standing just a few yards away.

CHAPTER 47

“Explain once more,” her father said.

From his seat on the couch, Dr. Trân nodded. “Of course. First, it is virtually impossible that our mere entry into that production room would trigger a critical reaction. Second, the bluish glow just before the explosion
is
consistent with reports of criticality events—but the explosive reaction should have followed the appearance of the glow
instantaneously
, not after we all had the opportunity to get out of the room.”

“Then you’re saying . . . what,” Emily said, “that it was staged?”

Dr. Trân shrugged.

“If that was true,” Ryan said, “then that would mean our guide Hank would have had to help create the appearance of a criticality event in the dark before we could enter—then herd us away from the room. And also set in motion the explosions we all felt.”

“That is more plausible than the explosion Covington asserts occurred,” Dr. Trân answered.

It seemed too paranoid, Emily thought. Like a conspiracy on a conspiracy. But then she reminded herself, her father had been equally skeptical of Dr. Trân early on—and he’d been right.

“Even if that’s true,” she asked, “how would we prove it? How could we convince the judge? I saw her in the front side
of LB5 afterwards: she was terrified—and probably sure she’d made a mistake letting us in there.”

Dr. Trân shook his head. “I don’t know. Since Covington’s people were the first responders on the scene, by now they will have ensured that the room will be consistent with a series of spontaneous criticality events triggered by our entry.”

Ryan was beginning to look numb with fatigue, so Emily continued in the lead. “Won’t the very
unlikelihood
of the event get some scrutiny from DOE?” she asked. “Or other nuclear scientists?”

“Of course,” Dr. Trân said. “Many will question how it could have happened. But it doesn’t matter: skepticism isn’t proof. The only
data
on record will fully support Covington’s conclusions.”

Emily was nearly as overwhelmed as her father this morning—though more with frustration than fatigue. They’d finally gotten the “inspection” they’d been fighting for and all it did was confirm Covington’s safety objections, while destroying any trace of potential evidence relating to the October explosions. Plus, the
Sherman Courier
had published a write-up on the accident yesterday, which meant the jury had likely been exposed to news supporting Covington’s contention about an empty LB5 lower level.

“We’re dead,” Kieran said, sitting at her side. “That’s it. Unless the jury buys the proof we’ve given them so far, we’re going to lose.”

Emily looked at Kieran sympathetically. Her anger at Kieran had eased since Ted Pollock’s assurances that he was coerced into keeping quiet. Still, she didn’t have the energy to console him just now.

She glanced next at Poppy, sitting silently at the kitchen table and staring across the room toward the front yard. Was he thinking about his former partner, she wondered. Or thinking that he’d put his family at risk taking sides in a lawsuit that was looking like a losing bet.

So now where did they go?

“I’m headed out for a run,” her father finally muttered. Emily shared his desire to escape. She smiled her understanding and permission as he headed upstairs to change.

Ryan pushed up the familiar hill again, passing only the slowest of runners today. A cooling breeze washed over him, but it was the only positive about this morning’s run. His legs felt like barrels full of sand.

On top of that, the exercise wasn’t working. This run was doing little to lift his suffocating malaise.

But there might be no cure for that. Though he hated the sound of it, he agreed with Kieran’s assessment. Their case was now officially dead in the water.

Mercifully, the top of the hill arrived, moments before he gave in and slowed to a walk. Here on the crest were other park visitors. A group of teens were playing with a Frisbee. Two couples picnicked on blankets spread on the open lawn. Ryan slowly approached the bench.

Standing to one side of the seat today was Larry Mann, in his usual running gear, facing the southern view. He wasn’t sweating, Ryan noticed; he must have been up here awhile. Mann turned toward Ryan and smiled.

“How’s the trial going?” Mann asked as soon as Ryan drew near.

It seemed like the insurance agent’s favorite topic of conversation. Ryan shook his head. “Not so well.”

Mann nodded. “I’ll confess, I read about the critical explosion in the paper. Very sorry to hear about it.”

Maybe he was sorry, but Larry seemed especially charged up today, a serious contrast from the last time they’d seen one another. “You take the good with the bad,” Ryan responded.

“It must be tough. Is it hard to get a fair jury here?”

Ryan shrugged. “Don’t know. Haven’t gotten a verdict yet.”

Mann smiled. “Of course. You married, Ryan?”

The sudden change of subject was disconcerting, especially in Ryan’s mood. “No. My wife passed away a few years ago.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Larry responded immediately—so quickly that Ryan had a brief impression his status as a widower wasn’t news to the man. “Are you close to your daughter? The one who’s trying the case with you? I saw it in the paper.”

Ryan watched an airplane passing distantly overhead, the only break on the aqua blue of the sky. “Yes. I think we are.”

“That’s good,” Mann said. “Fathers are supposed to be close to their daughters, aren’t they? Sons to mothers, fathers to daughters, right?”

“I suppose.”

“My father was a stockbroker,” he offered.

“Has he passed away?” Ryan asked.

“
Is
a stockbroker,” Mann corrected.

Ryan wanted to get away from this unexpected conversation with the supercharged insurance agent. Standing there answering rapid-paced questions was the last thing Ryan wanted right then. “I’d better get going,” he said. “Got lots left to do.”

“Me too,” Larry said, though he showed no signs of leaving just yet. “See you next time.”

Ryan took the downward slope thinking about the strange, almost manic talk with the insurance salesman. It had left Ryan uneasy. Still, by the time he’d reached the flats, his mind had returned to the case.

Kieran was right: they were dead with the evidence as it stood. Their only hope now was to bust open that underground chamber out on the reservation, and hope it contained evidence of the nuclear trigger and LB5. And their only hope to do that now lay in using that recovered shard—which Ted Pollock wouldn’t permit them to do.

It occurred to him to try to subpoena the object. But even
if he wanted to cross swords with the Yakama rancher, Ryan was confident that Pollock would rebury the piece before he’d acknowledge its existence and produce it in court.

In his despair, Ryan wondered if there was a hole in the ground with the secret remains of this trigger project, what else might be buried out there on the reservation grounds. How many charted and forgotten pits might there be with hoards of objects poisonous and benign? Buried secrets of Hanford’s past—like an underground museum charting man’s hubris in creating a factory to manufacture a substance as terrifying as plutonium.

Where in that museum would they display the body that the HR guy took onto the reservation, Ryan wondered. How would that display card read. And who
was
that person who had become one of the lost artifacts under the surface of the Hanford desert? Could it really be Vandervork?

Ryan’s mind stopped wandering at the thought of Poppy’s partner. Lewis Vandervork. Patrick Martin. The HR rep.

What were the chances that the same HR guy dealing with Poppy Martin and the LB5 explosion evidence would be tasked with running a body out onto the Hanford grounds? What kind of a rotten job did he have to have to get both of these assignments?

Unless they were part of the same assignment. Unless the body really was linked to the explosion at LB5.

Unless the HR rep was deeply involved with
both
.

That thought devoured all the others. Ryan felt himself picking up the pace. If the body was related to the LB5 explosion, then its burial on the grounds wouldn’t be strange at all. It would be natural. And if the body was related to the LB5 explosion, there was one obvious place to put it. And if the HR rep was in charge, who better to take it there?

Ryan was nearly at a sprint by the time he reached the Annex.