Ground Zero (The X-Files) (10 page)
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GROUND ZERO
Someone dropped a quarter in the jukebox, which began blasting a classic Bob Seeger single that seemed too rowdy for the lunch hour.
Scully quickly finished her meal and picked up the protest brochures before stepping outside to head back to the parking ramp. Mulder would be interested in the details, the new developments. She stopped on the sidewalk at a wire trash can as a big city bus heaved by, belching oily blue-gray exhaust. A skateboarder rattled past, dodging pedestrians with reckless ease.
Scully stood tapping the homegrown pamphlets against her palm, on the verge of tossing them into the wastebasket. Then she reconsidered. “STOP NUCLEAR MADNESS” the title proclaimed.
Giving herself the excuse that she could consider them evidence, Scully pocketed them instead. 81
Coronado Naval Base, San Diego, California Thursday, 10:15 A.M.
From the Coronado shipyards the ocean sprawled westward, stretching toward the curve of the earth, deep blue and dazzling with reflected morning sunlight. The downtown skyscrapers rose high and white across the narrow San Diego Bay. Cruise ships waited like colorful behemoths at the public docks; a maze of piers bristled with the masts of sailboats. The weather struck Bear Dooley as incredibly mild, sunny but cooled by fresh breezes, so that even his flannel shirt and denim jacket were tolerable. While riding in the taxi from the airport, he drank in the colorful and clean city, surprisingly pleasant for such a large urban area. But here, on the thin peninsula, the naval base looked like a naval base, and the ships at the restricted docks demonstrated quite clearly why the color had been named battleship gray. 82
GROUND ZERO
A young officer in white dress uniform met Bear Dooley at the docks. Dooley didn’t know the regulations of when sailors were supposed to wear certain uniforms, but he got the impression that this blond-haired, clean-cut Navy man might be someone of more-than-average importance. The sailor—Dooley corrected himself: they probably wanted to be called “seamen”—gave him a smart salute, though Dooley didn’t believe he warranted one, according to military protocol. He clumsily returned the salute without knowing whether that was correct either.
“Mr. Dooley, sir,” the man said, “I’m Commander Lee Klantze, executive officer of the USS
Dallas
, here to escort you on board our ship. If you’ll follow me, sir, Captain Ives is ready to see you. We’ve recalled the entire crew and kept them busy provisioning the ship and preparing to shove off. We’ll be ready to get under way as soon as you’re situated.”
Dooley’s jeans and flannel shirt were a marked contrast to the razor-folded and bleached-white uniform of the Navy destroyer’s exec officer. But Dooley wore his own personality like a shield. He never let his attire bother him. He had been hired for his abilities, not for his appearance. Dooley had trimmed his beard and shaved his cheeks and neck that morning before rushing off to the San Francisco Airport for a quick shuttle flight down the coast. He had spent the last two hours in the air and then being taxied through the sparkling city of San Diego over to the spit of land that held the Coronado Naval Base. He had then wasted another half hour bulldozing his way through paperwork and clearances and approvals, even though everything had already supposedly been taken care of. Dooley hated to think of
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what hassles he would have encountered if everything
hadn’t
been in order. The military did have its way of doing things, and little short of an all-out war could get them to streamline their operations.
“How was your trip?” Klantze asked. “No complications other than the military inefficiency getting on the base?”
“Yeah, the flight was fine, but nobody will give me a straight answer,” Dooley said. “Did the SST arrive okay, all equipment safe and on board?”
“I believe so, sir,” Klantze answered. “Sometime late last night. Sorry for all the added security.” He pushed his wirerimmed glasses up on his nose. Their Photogray lenses had turned dark, so Dooley could not see the man’s eyes directly. The disguised and armored semi truck, the Safe Secure Transport, had left at sunset the previous day and driven south through the night on the California freeways to reach San Diego. The drivers were escorted front and back by armed, nondescript vans, whose drivers and passengers had orders to shoot to kill, no questions asked, should anything threaten the nuclear device. No part of the caravan was allowed to stop for so much as a bathroom break. Dooley was glad he didn’t have to bother with those difficulties. He would have preferred to have the entire expedition depart from the Alameda Naval Air Station, a short hop away from the Teller Nuclear Research Facility. But the Navy destroyer assigned to take them out to the Marshall Islands was docked in San Diego. It was easier—and less conspicuous—to move the Bright Anvil device and all its equipment than it was to move an entire destroyer. Klantze turned about, ready to march off, then glanced over his shoulder in sudden embarrassment. “Oh, excuse me, sir—may I take your duffel, or your case?”
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“Sure.” Dooley handed over the soft-sided satchel that contained a week’s worth of clothes crammed into its various pockets. “I’ll carry the briefcase though,” he said—not that it was handcuffed to his wrist as in a spy thriller, but it contained classified documents crucial to the Bright Anvil Project. It was securely locked, and Dooley planned to hold on to it.
“As you wish, sir.”
The two of them strode along the dock, past several other chain-link fences and gates guarded by armed military police. Dark, creosote-covered planks formed the edge of the dock, while a narrow paved road ran along the center. Klantze walked down the middle of the road, keeping an eye out for government vehicles and puttering Cushman carts that traveled up and down the dock on military business. Finally, Dooley saw the large Navy destroyer that had been assigned to his project. The enormous, sleek ship looked like a skyscraper in the water, with weapons mounts and control towers, radar antennas, satellite uplink dishes, meteorologic instruments, and various superstructures Dooley could not identify. Navy stuff, he figured. Along the deck ran barricades of rope mesh, painted to look remarkably like a chain-link fence. Everything was the same shade of gray—the rails and pipes and rigging and steps and ladders. Even the long cannons. Only the bright orange life preservers mounted every fifty feet along the hull provided a few spots of color. The U.S. flag and Navy flags flew from all four corners of the ship. Dooley stopped and looked along the length of the gigantic cruiser. Despite his usual gruff demeanor, he was impressed with the vessel.
“There she is, Mr. Dooley,” Klantze said. He snapped to attention and began to rattle off the
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ship’s statistics. They seemed to be a matter of pride with him, rather than a memorized speech.
“The
Dallas
, Spruance Class, built in 1971. Five hundred sixty-three feet overall length, powered by four sets of GE
gas turbines. She’s got a small captain’s gig for quick trips ashore, plus an entire surface-to-air missile battery, antisubmarine weapons, and torpedo tubes. This class of destroyer was designed primarily for antisubmarine warfare, but she’s lightly armed and carries a minimal crew. The
Dallas
is the finest vessel in her class, if you ask me, sir. She’ll get us out to the islands, no matter what the weather.”
Dooley looked sharply at the exec. “You already know the details of our mission, then?” He had thought that very few of the crew members would have been briefed on the assignment out to Enika Atoll.
“Captain Ives has explained it to me, sir,” Klantze said, then smiled faintly. “I am the executive officer, if you’ll recall. If my information is correct, and if your device is successful, nobody on board is going to be unaware of the test.”
Dooley agreed. “I suppose it’s tough to keep a secret on board a ship.”
“It’s also difficult not to notice a giant mushroom cloud, Mr. Dooley.”
The exec led him up a wide gangplank the size of a freeway entrance ramp and marched him across the deck and up several flights of hard metal steps to the bridge tower, where he introduced Dooley to the captain of the
Dallas
.
“Captain Ives, sir, this is Mr. Dooley,” Klantze said after he had exchanged salutes with the captain. The executive officer nodded to Dooley. “I’ll take your duffel to your stateroom, sir. I’m sure Captain Ives wishes to speak with you privately in greater detail.”
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“Yes I do,” the captain answered. Klantze spun about sharply, like a mechanical marionette on a glockenspiel, and marched off.
“Pleased to meet you, Captain Ives. Thanks for your help.”
Dooley extended his hand, and the captain took it with a firm shake. The captain’s arms, contained within his captain’s uniform, had muscles like steel wires. Dooley got the impression that he could crack walnuts in his fist. Ives was a lean man in his late fifties, as tall as Dooley but less burly. His stomach remained washboard flat. He moved with a spare grace, as if every exertion counted for something important. His chin was narrow, his eyes slate gray under heavy salt-and-pepper eyebrows. A bristling mustache rode his upper lip, and steel-gray hair lay neatly beneath his white captain’s cap. He showed no sign of sweating in the heat. Perhaps he didn’t allow it.
“Mr. Dooley, I’m sure your first concern is for your delicate equipment. Let me reassure you that everything arrived safely and intact, as far as we can tell.”
“Good,” Dooley said, his voice curt. He wanted to make certain at the outset that the captain understood that
Dooley
was in charge and that his instructions were not to be questioned. “If that equipment is damaged, we might as well not even bother to go. When do we set sail?”
“The
Dallas
can leave port at about four o’clock this afternoon.” Captain Ives said. “But you may have noticed that this vessel has no sails.”
Dooley blinked at him, then understood. “Oh, just a turn of phrase,” he said, annoyed. “Do you have any weather charts or updates for me?”
“We received an encrypted signal,” the captain said, “a report from a fast flyby of an aircraft out of our Kwajalein tracking station. Enika Atoll checks
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out. We’ll be heading out for the Marshall Islands at full throttle, but it’ll still take us five days.”
“Five days?” Dooley said. “I was afraid of that.”
Ives met his look with a steely gaze. “This isn’t an aircraft, Mr. Dooley. It takes a long time to get a ship this size across that much water.”
“All right, all right,” Dooley said. “I suppose I knew that. Do we have weather satellites? Is the storm system still doing what we expected?”
Ives led him over to a chart table where weather maps and satellite photos lay spread out. With one long finger the captain indicated the swirl of clouds out over the deep, featureless water. “The tropical depression is worsening, as expected. Within a few days it should be at full hurricane strength. According to our projections it is heading straight toward the atoll.”
“Good, good.” Dooley leaned over, rubbing his hands together. Though he was a physicist and an engineer, he had learned a great deal about meteorology during the preparations for this test. Captain Ives leaned closer and lowered his voice so that the other crewmen would not hear him from their communications or navigation stations. “Let me be blunt, Mr. Dooley. I have already notified my superiors of my extreme objections to the entire purpose of this mission. I have grave doubts about the wisdom of resuming aboveground nuclear tests, no matter where they occur.”
Dooley stiffened, pausing just a moment to scratch his beard and allow his blood pressure to drop slightly. “Then maybe you just don’t understand the necessity, Captain.”
“I understand all right—more than you know,” Ives replied.
“I’ve been present at several hydrogen bomb tests already, one of which I doubt even
you
know about, since all results were highly classified.”
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Dooley raised his eyebrows. “When?”
“Back in the fifties,” Ives said. “I was just a seaman recruit then, but I was there, out in the islands, Eniwetok, Bikini, even Johnston Atoll near Hawaii. I worked with plenty of eggheads who were completely amazed by their own calculations, absolutely confident in what they had invented. But I can tell you this, Mr. Dooley: every single time, those weapons developers, like yourself—people who were so smug about their own abilities—were literally turned to jelly with awe when they watched their devices go off.”
“I look forward to it then,” Dooley said crisply. “You have your orders. Let me take care of the test details.”
Captain Ives stood straight, backing away from the chart table. He adjusted his white cap. “Yes, I have my orders,” he said, “and I will follow them, despite my objections—not the least of which is that it goes against all of my years of seamanship to head deliberately into a brewing hurricane.”
Dooley walked around the bridge, puffed up with his own importance, glancing offhandedly at the outdated computer monitors, the various tactical stations. He turned to look back at the reluctant captain.
“The hurricane is the only way we can pull this test off. Let me do my work, Captain Ives. You just keep the ship from sinking.”
89
Jornada del Muerto Desert, Southern New Mexico Thursday, 3:13 P.M.
As if playing a scene from an old John Wayne movie, Oscar McCarron slid out of the saddle and tied his horse, a spry two-year-old palomino mare, to the fence post outside the General Store. He made sure to stomp his worn, pointy-toed cowboy boots on the boardwalk porch. The spurs gave a satisfying jingle as he
ambled
—the English language had no other word for it—to the store entrance. McCarron’s face was as seamed and leathery as his old boots, and his pale blue eyes wore a perpetual squint from a lifetime spent in the pounding desert sun. He eschewed sunglasses—they were only for sissies.
