Chapter 2
Wednesday, 1 June, 0830 local
Wendover AFB, Nevada
White noise washed over the area. Vikki Osborrn scrutinized the craft as it taxied off the end of the runway to the east of them. Although the plane was half a mile away, the sound from the jet’s engines made it impossible to speak. A truck with an oversized sign exclaiming follow me led the shrieking jet across an access road and past ten armored vehicles. Dozens of men clutching M-16’s stood vigil along the plane’s route.
Engines running, the camouflaged aircraft slowly pivoted on the concrete apron. Sand, kicked up from the exhaust, swirled overhead in crazy patterns.
A uniformed airman decked out in tan battle-dress uniform and wearing earphones held two bright orange flashlights. He kept his left arm parallel to the ground and urged the plane to keep turning with his right. Through the jet’s multifaceted window, the pilot kept his eyes glued on the airman until the airman crossed both arms over his head. The engines cut back and started winding down.
When the plane’s engines grew quiet, Dr. Anthony Harding spoke.
“Have you found it?”
Vikki flipped through Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft, a large book filled with pictures of aircraft from every nation. “Not yet. I’ve found something like it—a C-5—but it looks too wide.”
Harding glanced over at the book she held, then squinted back at the jet. “Keep looking. It’s got to be in there.”
Vikki pushed her hair back. Bleached from the sun, long blond hair adorned her tan face. She’d cause a man’s head to turn, but only once. The appearance of glamor was striking, but up close the seriousness in her eyes overwhelmed the rest of her face. Upon inspection, the initial mid-twenties guess for her age melted to a figure closer to thirty-five.
Premature wrinkles tattooed the area around her eyes, and her skin had started to show the effect of too much sun. In a few years her skin would take on the leathery look that cursed those who worked in the field. Her tank top fit nicely, revealing small, rounded breasts. She crossed her legs and nervously bounced her sandals against the van’s interior.
Harding turned back to the plane. Along with the rest of the tourists gawking at the convoy, Harding and Vikki were inconspicuous in the long line of cars that were stopped by the runway.
Harding studied the plane. “There are ten armored vehicles, two flatbeds, and about seventy-five men, all with automatic weapons. Not counting the fuel trucks, I’d guess the armored vehicles each have bazookas and various other nasty weapons on them.” He lifted his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
Vikki stopped flipping through the pages. She squinted at one of the photographs, comparing it to the plane off to their right. “I’ve found it.”
Harding moved the binoculars back to his eyes. “Well?”
“C-17 Globemaster III, cargo aircraft of the U.S. Air Force,” she recited. “Twenty-five hundred nautical mile range carrying a max payload of 170,900 pounds, and a top airspeed of 0.77 mach.” She looked up. “So what does that tell us?”
“Not much,” answered Harding, “except if we can believe the intelligence NUFA gave us, the next time a C-17 lands at Wendover, chances are it will either be loading or unloading nuclear weapons. And if we’re going to steal one of them, this is the time to do it.”
Vikki stared. “Steal a nuke? Are you crazy? Look at the mouseketeers out there. They’ve got this place locked up tighter than supermax. I don’t want to die doing something stupid.”
Harding was silent for a moment.
Vikki narrowed her eyes at him. She studied his dark, squat features. His once solid body had given way to a slight paunch. The wire-framed glasses added to the studious look. Gray peppered his hair, and a large bald spot adorned his head. He was on the wrong side of forty, and looked more like Vikki’s father than her lover.
She scanned the concrete apron where activity began to pick up. Armored trucks encircled the C-17, reminding her of covered wagons closing in to keep attacking Indians away. A hundred and fifty years and they’re still using the same tactics, she thought.
Men scurried around the plane and took their positions on the ground, prone, with their weapons pointed outward. In the distance four helicopters hovered, not moving from their posts. Sun reflected off a deserted hangar behind the apron.
Harding spoke to himself. “They certainly seem to be covering all the bases.”
“What?”
Harding pointed to the helicopters Vikki had just noticed. “They’re guarding the C-17 from the air as well as the ground. They don’t want to chance anything going wrong.”
Military police stood at a roadblock, blocking traffic to allow operations to continue. A police car sat off to the side of the road.
The C-17 sat on a pad, north of Vikki and Harding; the runway was east of them, and Alpha Base to the west. Vikki could barely make out the town of Wendover fifteen miles north of the C-17.
She leaned her head out the window. No breeze blew in the dry desert air. Heat rippled up from the road.
The flatbeds positioned themselves behind the C-17’s gaping rear door. White, oversized barrels were carefully taken from the aircraft and gingerly strapped onto the flatbed, anchored by a series of straps and cables, keeping them upright and secure against tilting. Each barrel took less than a minute to position. After ten minutes the first flatbed pulled away to allow the second one access.
Once the drums were securely fastened to the second flatbed, two armored personnel carriers drove away from the plane, followed by the two flatbeds. A Ford Bronco, resplendent with machine guns and an official-looking flag waving from the front, sped in front of the convoy.
The convoy inched west down the main road. Several armed men guarded the route. Scanning the area, they kept close watch for anything that might approach the convoy.
Once the convoy had passed, security policemen started waving the traffic on. Vikki started the van. “What now?”
Harding pointed to the road. “Just follow the convoy.”
Vikki put the Chevy van into gear and started slowly off, heading west.
“You had better begin thinking fast,” she said, nodding ahead of her. “They’re sending one of the guards to stop us.”
A security policeman stepped from the side of the road and stopped the cars following the convoy. He walked straight toward them.
The guard sauntered up to the van. He shouldered his rifle and grinned at Vikki, all but ignoring Harding. “Afternoon, ma’am.”
Harding leaned past Vikki. “Good afternoon, sir. What seems to be the problem?”
The security policeman looked surprised. “You don’t have to call me sir. I’m not an officer or anything.” He didn’t look at Harding when he spoke, but instead smiled at Vikki.
Vikki furrowed her eyebrows. “What’s the holdup? Are we doing anything wrong?”
“You’ll have to wait here until the convoy gets back on the road.” The security policeman pointed down a dry arroyo. “The bridge can’t take the convoy’s weight, so they have to drive down into the arroyo. Once they’re back on the main road, you can proceed.”
“Thanks,” Vikki said, smiling.
The man tried to make conversation. “Heading for the picnic area?”
Harding answered before Vikki could open her mouth. “Yes, sir.” He nodded to Vikki. “My sister and I are visiting the base and wanted to get some pictures of the crater before we left.”
The security policeman hitched the rifle a little higher on his shoulder when Harding referred to Vikki as his sister. “Well, Alpha Base is certainly the spot to take pictures. It’s the free world’s largest storage facility. The picnic grounds are right outside the main gate. Are you planning to stay long?”
“That depends,” said Harding.
The man looked behind him as the convoy reached the other side of the arroyo and started up on the paved road. “I have to get back, we’re moving out. If there’s anything I can do for you, let me know….” he trailed off, looking to Vikki hopefully.
Vikki shook her head and smiled. “Thanks, but we can manage.”
As he headed off, Harding slumped back in his seat, smiling. “Alpha Base: the free world’s largest storage facility! They’re almost begging us to ask them for information. They don’t go to this type of trouble for conventional explosives.”
He tapped his fingers together. “Alpha Base. I’ve read about it in Aviation Week and Space Technology, but it’s nice to get confirmation from a credible source.”
Vikki snorted. “Some source—a nineteen-year-old militarist.”
“He’s just like any other nineteen-year-old in the world: lonely, and horny as hell. Which means we’ll have to be careful, since he probably memorized your face. We don’t want to bring any more attention to ourselves than we have to.” Harding looked thoughtful. “That gives me an idea on how we can penetrate this base.”
“I thought you wanted to create a diversion and get the nukes when they were unloading them.”
Harding grinned and patted Vikki on the leg. Her thigh was firm, without an ounce of fat. “I’ve got another idea. I think we can get into this base without raising any suspicions. And if I’m right, they’ll be thanking you for coming on base.”
They followed a mile behind the convoy, slowly moving along the winding road. A line of cars followed them, no one anxious to risk passing the armed convoy along the way.
Vikki made careful notes of the terrain as they drove. After the arroyo, clumps of pinon pine and cactus pocked the desert landscape. A golf course lay off to the right, its green fairways contrasting with the barren desert. A trail paralleled the main road, furrowed with the marks of off-road vehicles.
And as they approached Alpha Base, her thoughts drifted back through the years to East Avenue, birthplace of the nukes….
Livermore, CA
The crowd surged along the avenue, pushing, laughing. They marched arm in arm, past vineyards that sweltered in the mid-August sun, holding up traffic and keeping the scientists from going to work. Sixty thousand people joined the carnival-like protest outside of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the first demonstration this size in years.
Rows of wire fences funneled the protestors down the street, toward the nuclear weapons laboratory’s main gate. A rock band on a flatbed, one hundred yards behind the crowd, belted out “Face the Fire,” Dan Fogelberg’s quintessential protest song.
Vikki Osborrn threw her long blond hair back and closed her eyes, laughing, and allowed the crowd to carry her along. Northern California, summertime, the drugs, the movement: it seemed so, so... perfect, so right to participate in the most wonderful, the most down-to-earth, the most necessary and critical activity that she could ever have imagined. She felt one with the crowd, and just knew that they would succeed, bring the nation’s death factories to their knees.
A hand squeezed her shoulder, a separate sensation from the jostling that permeated the crowd. Opening her eyes, Vikki saw Dr. Anthony Harding. She smiled as a torrid memory of last night raced through her mind. The reminiscence was fogged in a marijuana haze, but the excitement and enthusiasm still shined through.
She turned her shoulder and slipped an arm around Harding. Her hand ran under his backpack and down his side, feeling hard, firm muscles. It had been his mind, his intellectual prowess, that had first drawn her to him; but that seemed nothing now compared with his physique, strong and protective. She had never been happier.
He had been elusive earlier that morning, teasing her about something special that was to happen. She was swept up in the protest now, eager just to experience whatever it was that he had promised.
Harding’s arm enveloped her. He drew her close and spoke into her ear, over the crowd noise. “What do you think?”
“Perfect.”
Harding took her by the shoulders; his eyes seemed to shine. His voice sounded a little loud, cocky, even over the crowd. “It’s about time we started getting serious again, trying to stop the nuke factories. Even after the freeze movement petered out, glasnost and the peace dividend should have closed this place decades ago.” He shook his head. “What a waste. All these bright minds in one place, the opportunity to work on something really worthwhile, and what do they do? Spend their lives chasing after new ways to refine their weapons. And all they have to show for it is the Lawrence Award.”
East Avenue continued to fill with people, a dancing mob surging without constraint. The sweet smell of hashish drifted across the crowd, mixing in with wine and beer. A chant started to ripple across the crowd.
“N-U-F-A … Nuke Free America today! N-U-F-A … Nuke Free America today!”
Vikki brought her hands up and started clapping. She screamed at the top of her lungs, joining in.
The crowd stopped in front of the main gate, squeezing up against the fences.
Harding removed his backpack and held it tightly against his chest. Uniformed Department of Energy guards stood quietly just inside the gate and watched the throng of people. Remote-control TV cameras set on top of buildings panned across the crowd.
Vikki jumped up and down, her blond hair flying from side to side. Young, dedicated, and filled with a lust for life. She couldn’t ask for anything more. And not even the sight of Dr. Anthony Harding, coolly watching the guards on the other side of the fence, could shake her from the feeling.
She turned to Harding and brushed back her hair. “Anthony—”
“Hold this.” Harding shoved the backpack at her. He held what appeared to be three black balls. The crowd around them surged toward the main gate.
Vikki frowned. Since she was high, it took some effort to understand what Harding was doing. She held the backpack to her breasts. “Anthony, what are you doing?”
Harding grinned, the sun shining off his premature bald spot. “Get ready to run like hell.” He knelt down and rapidly pulled pins from each of the three balls.
Vikki pushed back against the crowd. “Anthony?”
Harding stood, scanned the area, then drew back and threw one of the balls as hard as he could. He let go of the remaining two just as quickly. The balls flew high into the air, tumbling in an arc. “Come on!” He grabbed her elbow and started pushing through the crowd.
“Ooof!” Vikki was hit in the side of her face by an elbow; she kicked out and held on to Harding’s hand. The crowd continued to jump up and down, unmindful of their flight.
Brrooooooom! Brroooooom, brrooooooom.
Screams—the three explosions set the crowd scurrying backward. People fell, were trampled as the horde panicked.
Sirens, bells, the smell of smoke. Vikki and Harding were halfway through the crowd, keeping up their momentum. Most of the people moved in random directions, unmindful of any obstacles in their path. The wire fences channeled back along East Avenue, away from the golden brown hills surrounding the valley.
Harding continued to drag her along. It seemed like a nightmare, the screaming and cries for help pounding into her ears.
Harding stopped when they reached the vineyards, just outside of the Livermore complex. They turned and watched the people stream past. Smoke billowed up from a building just inside the nuclear weapons laboratory. Alarm bells and sirens ran up the scale as a fire truck inside the fence attempted to quell the blaze.
As they watched, Vikki felt a sudden sense of accomplishment.
Something swelled inside her. She clasped hands with Harding and watched. Guards openly brandished weapons now, shoving people away from the laboratory, beating them over the head. Garbled orders emanated from bullhorns.
They had brought the death factory to its knees. The feeling overwhelmed her, the sense of power … of, of righteousness. To think that Dr. Anthony Harding had fought, had won!
And she knew that her life was forever changed.
She finally had a purpose….
Wendover AFB, Nevada
Harding pointed to Alpha Base. “They’re stopping traffic again while they open the gate.”
The guards dispersed from the armored personnel carriers and lined the main gate to Alpha Base. The Bronco led the two flatbed trucks onto the complex, moving past four barbed-wire fences. Men trotted into the area and formed up in a block. Once inside, the gates swung shut and traffic began to move. The flatbeds seemed to disappear into the ground.
Harding squinted at a sign near the entrance. “Turn left. The picnic area is down that way.” Approaching Alpha Base, they climbed to the lip of the crater.
Vikki crept passed the main gate complex while Harding took copious notes. “It looks like one of the fences is electrified. And from the signs they’ve got posted, they probably have the place overflowing with sensors.”
Vikki pulled into a grassy area fifty yards from the fences. A sign read, alpha base picnic area p-1. Other cars followed them.
A group of youngsters spilled from the automobiles. The kids wore colored stockings, matching shirts and shorts. A few of the children carried soccer balls. A beleaguered adult yelled shrilly and tried to get the kids to gather around him.
Vikki slumped back in her seat. “Well, what do you think?”
Harding pointed to the flatbed trucks inside the fence. From their vantage point, Alpha Base spread below them, the crater opening up in a giant yawn. The flatbeds stopped before one of the bunkers. A steel door swung slowly open, allowing access, and affording them a quick glimpse inside.
Harding whistled. “Those bunkers look impossible to break into.”
Vikki was silent for a moment as they watched the white canisters being moved from the flatbeds to the bunker. “Are you going back to your original plan of hijacking the convoy?”
“Not with all that security. They’ve got those nukes covered tight.”
“But you just said it’s impossible to break into the bunkers.”
Harding pointed inside the fence. “It is. But look at those security policemen.”
Vikki leaned over the steering wheel. “They’re pretty relaxed.”
“That’s right. Inside the fence, they’re in their own territory. They’re safe, and they know it. They don’t need to be as alert. And this picnic ground—if they let kids from military families up here, you know they think they’re safe.” He reached over and unfastened her seat belt. “Step outside.”
“Huh?”
“Go ahead, get out of the van.”
Vikki frowned, but stepped from the Chevy van and kept the door open. She held a hand up over her eyes and slowly scanned Alpha Base. She nodded to a group of airmen horsing around just inside the fences. Vikki called to Harding: “I wouldn’t think they would be so casual.”
“That’s what’s going to make our chances better. The way to rip off the nuclear weapons is to do it right under their noses. We break into Alpha Base when they least expect it and blow one of the bunkers.”
Vikki looked disgusted. “I’m sure you’re going to waltz up to the gate and ask, ‘Pretty please, can I have one of your nukes?’ Get real, Anthony. Are you going to call this thing off or not?”
Inside the fence one of the security policemen elbowed a buddy and waved at the van.
Harding urged Vikki, “Go ahead and wave back to him. I’ve got a plan how this whole thing will fall together. In fact, you’re the key to how we get onto Alpha Base.”
“I’m not sure if I like what you’re thinking,” Vikki said. “Look at those Neanderthals—slobbering over each other trying to get my attention.”
“Keep waving. After we leave, I’ll fill you in with all the details.”
Vikki forced an insincere smile for the men and waved once more before climbing back in the van. “Let’s get the hell out of here. If I’m sacrificing my body, I want to know how you plan to do it.”
She thought to herself that Harding was getting more difficult to live with; it wasn’t like the days when they were younger.
It had better be one hell of a plan.