Authors: Jon Land
Day of the Delphi (14 page)
“What the fuck, man?”
“We’re going to talk about Traggeo,” Johnny told him.
Wareagle gave the bronco just enough slack to lash out at Coombs again. Its hooves whistled by his face and grazed his shoulder.
Coombs waved his hands frantically. “Okay, okay! I’ll talk! Just let me outta here!”
“Talk first,” Johnny said and reined the bronco back in.
“Sickest fuck I ever met on the inside or the out, and let me tell ya, I met my share. I don’t know why they put us in together while he was here. It wasn’t like he was a bro or anything.” Coombs gave Wareagle a long look. “Least not of mine.”
“Mine, either. What made him sick?”
“Way he talked about people he had offed. Said it gave him a charge. Said he lived for it.”
Wareagle swallowed hard. His grasp tightened on the bronco’s reins.
“I remember him telling me he’d figured things all out. That’s when he shaved his head.”
“What had he figured out?”
“Didn’t make much sense to me. Something about absorbing people’s strength after he offed them.” Coombs looked at him shuddering. “Said he was gonna start wearing the scalps of his victims.”
It took all of Johnny’s resolve not to show any response. He thought of Will Shortfeather’s straw-colored hair atop Traggeo’s shaven head.
“Then one morning ’bout, I don’t know, maybe six months back, they called him to the warden’s office and he was history. Sprung from here just like that.” Coombs was trying to swallow. “He musta had some major pull. That’s all I know.”
“Who came for him?”
“I dunno. Shit, that’s the truth. Why don’t you ask the goddamn warden?”
“He doesn’t know, either. Tell me what you think.”
“I don’t think nothin’ … but I heard stuff. ’Bout the cars that came and took him away.”
“Go on.”
“They had government license plates.”
The private jet landed in Denver five hours after taking off from Dulles Airport. Kristen Kurcell and Senator Samantha Jordan were the only occupants of the cabin. At the senator’s insistence, their presence and plans had been made known to no one else. A rental car would take the two of them to Miravo Air Force Base.
For Kristen, the turnaround seemed impossibly quick. The truth of her brother’s death had not even settled in, numbing shock still blurring the reality of it. And yet, not even twenty-four hours after identifying his body, she was returning to the place where he had witnessed something that had led to his murder.
“It’s just up ahead,” Kristen told Senator Jordan, who had enjoyed the rare experience of driving so much that she insisted upon doing all of it herself.
The ride had stretched into early evening Sunday, only the two hours gained in the time difference allowing them to arrive before sunset. The base appeared after the next bend in Old Canyon Road. Kristen braced herself to reexperience the same emotions she had felt when she and Farlowe had approached it little more than twenty-four hours ago.
But all she felt when Miravo came into view was shock.
Miravo Air Force Base bustled with activity. Trucks moved about and were parked where none had been present just yesterday. And troops loomed everywhere, starting with those manning a pair of Humvee vehicles that straddled the main gate as a first line of defense.
“I’m going to have to see your pass, ma’am,” one of the armed soldiers said to Senator Jordan.
“Will this do?” she asked, flashing her senate ID.
The guard looked twice to make sure the picture matched her face. He stiffened briefly, saluted, and then said he would summon the base commander.
“I’m Colonel Riddick,” another man greeted the two women not five minutes later. Riddick was a stocky, big-boned man with a belly that hung over his waist. “What can I do for you, Senator, er … ?”
She had stepped out of the car to greet him. “Jordan, Colonel.”
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Senator.”
“That’s quite all right.”
“I’m afraid your presence here caught me by surprise.”
“As it was supposed to, Colonel.”
Kristen had joined Senator Jordan outside the car now, hanging back on the passenger side.
“That’s the problem, ma’am,” Riddick explained. “My understanding was that Miravo and other bases like it were financed off open appropriations. You shouldn’t know this place exists. No one on your committee should. That’s the way everyone from the President on down wanted it.”
“I’ll bet the towns in the area don’t even know, right, Colonel? Your civilian neighbors find out what’s going on here, they’re gonna come to Washington screaming.” Senator Jordan hesitated to let her point sink in. “Look, you can forget all about open appropriations. Before I authorize a billion dollars in spending, you can be damn sure I’m gonna get briefed on where the money’s going. In this case I happen to believe in what you’re doing. Others won’t once the truth gets out, as it always does. When the outcry starts, I want to have an argument ready. That’s why I’m here, Colonel.”
Riddick stood there taking it in. He nodded slowly in apparent satisfaction.
“Then allow me to give you the tour myself. We have on-site
control teams, a half-dozen checks on each stage of the dismantling process. All our systems have redundant backups. You can rest assured we play things safe.”
control teams, a half-dozen checks on each stage of the dismantling process. All our systems have redundant backups. You can rest assured we play things safe.”
“You said dismantling,” Jordan noted. “What about destruction?”
“That’s not our role, Senator. Miravo was retasked to act as a clearinghouse for ordnance stockpiled stateside. The weapons brought here were never shipped overseas, never became battalion specific.”
“Battalion specific?”
“Specific codes that can be authorized only by the President are required to unlock the firing mechanism of the warhead, and each overseas battalion is issued its own, specific to its ordnance.”
“You’re not saying the warheads are brought here
unlocked.”
unlocked.”
“Not at all, ma’am. They come locked, and requisite personnel are furnished with the proper code to unlock them just prior to removal of the warhead itself from the shell casing. We disassemble each unit into its component parts and then ship those component parts to bases specifically tasked to deal with them.” Riddick paused. “This will all become clear once you’ve seen the inside of the base, Senator.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
Riddick led the way, with Kristen and Samantha Jordan walking beside him. He returned the gate guards’ salutes and led them into Miravo.
“How long have you been operating here?” the senator asked just inside the gate.
“Six months now,” Riddick replied, confirming Colonel Haynes’s assertion back at the Pentagon.
“Straight?”
“Well, we do have occasional layovers between incoming shipments.”
“Just how long do these layovers last?”
“The longest was just under a week.”
“Do any personnel remain on the base?”
“Just a skeletal staff.”
Ask about earlier in the week, Kristen pleaded with her eyes. Ask if anyone was here Thursday night when David was killed.
But the senator ignored her.
“Guards?” she asked instead.
“Round the clock, of course. You’re about to witness our security precautions first-hand.” Riddick started walking again. “How much do you know about the nuclear disposal process, Senator?”
“Only that we have undertaken a serious commitment to accomplish it.”
“What about procedure, priority?”
“Extraordinarily little.”
“Then let me give you a little background, ma’am. First a question: what do you think the first nukes off line to be brought to places like this are?”
“The big ones?”
“Strategics?”
“Yes.”
“No, Senator,” Riddick corrected. “The big high-yield long-range missiles that could take out Rhode Island in a heartbeat don’t pose the biggest threat to the new order or world peace. It’s the smaller tactical units we’re responsible for dismantling here, because they’re virtually maintenance free and are easily transportable.”
“How are they brought here?” Kristen chimed in suddenly.
Riddick looked her way, his tone conveying a hint of annoyance. “Mostly they’re flown in.”
“Mostly,” she echoed. “What about trucks? Are shipments ever delivered by truck?” she asked, thinking about the tracks Sheriff Duncan Farlowe had discovered leading onto the base off Old Canyon Road.
“Occasionally, ma’am.”
“Under tight security?”
“Of course.”
“Usually at night, right?”
Riddick had started an abrupt response when Samantha Jordan cut him off, her eyes signaling Kristen to back off.
“I think what Miss Kurcell is trying to do is get an idea of how the process works.”
Riddick seemed to accept the explanation. “That’s what I’m about to show both of you.”
They approached an airplane hangar that from the outside looked relatively mundane, except for the armed guards that surrounded it, each stationed every ten feet. Kristen also noticed, as she peripherally had yesterday, that all the windows had been covered over by shiny steel sheeting.
Drawing closer to the entrance, she was surprised to find only a single ordinary door with guards poised on either side of it. Riddick exchanged salutes with them and then extracted an ordinary key from his pocket. He opened the door and beckoned the senator and Kristen to follow him inside.
They stepped into a cramped vestibule with off-white walls. A steel door lay directly before them. Again armed guards stood on either side of it. At waist level behind them, a pair of matching slots protruded slightly from the wall. In this case another pair of guards toting automatic weapons stood ominously by in the corners of the room.
“Good afternoon, Colonel,” the guard on the right-hand side of the door greeted.
“Who has the watch, Sergeant?”
“I do, sir.” The man gazed at Kristen and Senator Jordan but didn’t question their presence.
“Let’s do it, then.”
“Today’s code first, sir.”
Riddick moved to a keypad behind the guard’s shoulder and pressed in the proper combination of numbers. A green light came on. At that point both he and the sergeant pulled thin chains from around their necks. Dangling from the ends
were matching flat rectangular metallic keys. Kristen watched as the sergeant moved to the slot on the door’s left, while the colonel started his key toward the one on the right. He inserted it slightly ahead of the sergeant.
were matching flat rectangular metallic keys. Kristen watched as the sergeant moved to the slot on the door’s left, while the colonel started his key toward the one on the right. He inserted it slightly ahead of the sergeant.
“On my mark,” Riddick ordered. “One, two,
three
.”
three
.”
They turned their keys to the right simultaneously. A chime followed and then the door slid slowly open. Kristen had started to walk through when Colonel Riddick reached out and grabbed her.
“Bad idea, ma’am.”
And she looked up to see a dozen automatic rifles poised at her from inside a much larger vestibule. Riddick turned to Senator Jordan.
“Standard three-zone security, Senator,” he explained. “At our bases in Europe it’s done with barbed wire. At Miravo we elected to make use of what the spacious hangars provided.”
“They shoot anyone who enters without access,” Jordan concluded. “Is that it?”
“It’s much more complicated than that, ma’am. The idea is to create a number of zones that must be penetrated before final access is achieved. The team inside here is charged with assessing the situation and then determining if self-destruct is mandated.”
“And if it is, Colonel?”
“Let me show you.”
Inside a chamber that occupied the remainder of the hangar were dozens of green fiberglass rectangular storage containers. The security detail inside, though, was surprisingly light when compared with that of the previous zone.
“Nine men,” Riddick explained, watching Kristen counting. “If penetration gets this far, the self-destruct order would have already been given. Three of the nine constantly on duty have the proper code to activate the procedure into a transistorized control. The duty rotates on a daily basis.
No one on the shift knows who has it. All they know are their own orders.”
No one on the shift knows who has it. All they know are their own orders.”
“I’m impressed, Colonel,” complimented Senator Jordan.
“This final fail-safe measure is actually superfluous, ma’am, because even if someone managed to get the tacticals contained in those green storage containers out, they’d still need the proper codes to activate the warheads.”
“Which even here continue to be changed on a daily basis as well, I assume.”
“Yes, ma’am. But there’s something else to consider: since these particular warheads were never shipped overseas, they lack the fuses needed to complete the arming process. So even
with
the right code, they couldn’t be made to fire.”
with
the right code, they couldn’t be made to fire.”
Kristen wrapped her arms about herself, suddenly feeling chilly.
“The temperature in this chamber is kept at a constant sixty-eight humidity-free degrees, ma’am,” Colonel Riddick explained. “To keep what’s inside each of these green boxes stable. You see, this building was specially reconstructed and retrofitted prior to work at Miravo commencing. Reinforced to be able to handle a tornado and outfitted with blast doors and shutters in the unlikely event of an attack on the base.”
“But there’s no chance that these warheads could be detonated, even if that transpired,” Senator Jordan mused.
“None at all, Senator.”
“How difficult would it be to make them active?” Kristen asked him.
Riddick looked perturbed, but answered her anyway. “Assuming you had the fuses, you’d need the unlocking code of each charge both to install them and to activate the warhead.”
“That’s all.”
“That’s quite a lot, ma’am. As I said before, the fuses aren’t even present on this base.”
“Just how powerful is one of these, Colonel?” the senator
wondered, her hand stopping just short of the nearest green container.
wondered, her hand stopping just short of the nearest green container.
“Each charge is two or three times as powerful yield-wise as the bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Senator. So far as damage rendered, that would depend on too many variables for me to give you an accurate analysis. For instance …”
Kristen continued listening as Riddick’s words grew increasingly technical. Everything he had said made perfect sense, except there was no way he could account for this base being utterly deserted only yesterday. And the only explanation for that was his involvement in what was going on.
Involvement in whatever was responsible for her brother’s death.
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