CHAPTER 1
2 pm PTSaturday, April 7The Amargosa DesertNevada
The fugitive clawed at the hard sunbaked earth, refusing to believe hewas digging his own grave.
Over the sound of his labored breathing, he heard the shouts of thehunters as they followed his trail. He dug even more frantically, ignoringthe pain of his ripped nails and skin. They don't know the tracks they'refollowing are a man's, he told himself. They'll think it's an antelope or acoyote. They'd never believe a human would be way out here. They're not realApaches. Not like in the old days. He tore at the earth, forcing his bloodyfingers through the gritty soil.
Eons ago, when the Southwest was an inland sea and a Jurassicswamp, this region had been home to countless prehistoric creatures,crustaceans and amphibians, dinosaurs, and flying reptiles. Even aftercenturies of blazing sun and heat, their fossilized shells and bones couldstill be found in the rocky earth, the only evidence that rich teeming lifehad once inhabited this desolate land. But the fugitive had no regard forthe history he was destroying. His every sense was focused on the menpursuing him. They were getting closer. He kept digging, clawing theground furiously, driven by the fear his skeleton could soon join thoseothers, staring soullessly into the glaring sun for the millenniums tocome.
Finally, he lay down in the small trench he'd scratched out of thedesert dirt and pushed the loose soil of his shoveling over his legs andtorso, hiding the outline of his body. With his one free hand he scoopedsand over his shoulders and head so that only his nose and mouth wereexposed. Then he burrowed his hand deep into the earth beneath him andlay quietly, trying to calm his breathing, afraid the slightest movementwould destroy his thin blanket of soil.
Through the ground he heard the hoof beats of the hunters' desertponies grow closer. Keep on riding, you bastards. You can't see me. There'snothing here.
The sound of hoof beats stopped. The fugitive froze under his coverof dirt. He imagined his pursuers standing in their stirrups, searchingthe land around them for a moving target. The silence continued. All hecould hear was the wind sweeping across the desert and the sound of hisheart pounding in his chest.
He screamed in terror as a rough hand suddenly plucked him fromhis burrow, shedding dirt and pebbles. He struggled helplessly, unable tobreak the brutal grip ripping him from his refuge and his dream of escape,freedom, and safety. Even through a veil of pain and fear he could see theglint of steel sweeping down toward him.
He screamed again as he felt the sharp knife against his throat.
... A short distance away, in the hollow of a stone outcrop, thefugitive's companion, Roberto, listened as his friend's cry rose in agony.In his mind, he envisioned the Apache bounty hunters scalping theirvictim alive.
Trembling, he forced his body further back under the boulder, intothe hiding place he'd refused to leave when his friend, Miguel, insisted oncontinuing across the desert. They'd escaped from the private prison workcamp at Yucca Mountain the night before, crawling under the electrifiedfence at a spot where heavy rains had washed out the base and shortedthe security lights that lit up the perimeter.
They'd made good time, but Miguel was anxious to reach the safety ofthe satellite monitoring station, across the Nevada border in California.It was the heart of their escape plan. The soldiers who guarded the stationwould take them in for humanitarian reasons or simply to find out whatthey were doing there. Through them, he and Miguel could contact theproper government officials, people with the authority to lift their prisonsentences in exchange for the information they'd brought with them fromthe camp.
The only problem was reaching the station. It was more than seventymiles from the work camp, on the other side of Death Valley. But in aland where the merciless sun pulled moisture from a man's body in amatter of minutes, it might as well be on the other side of the moon. Andthere were other dangers; poisonous snakes, scorpions, coyotes—and themurderous bounty hunters.
Now Miguel was dead, and he was alone. He'd tried to convince hisfriend that it was too early to leave their hiding place and travel across theopen land, but Miguel had been impatient.
"Miguel," he moaned aloud, recalling how he'd pleaded with hiscompanion to wait for nightfall, when the hunters and scavengers slept.But Miguel wouldn't listen. "No one's after us," he'd argued. "There's no signof anyone looking for us—not even a patrol plane."
Roberto had said no more, even though he knew better. Duringhis imprisonment he'd heard countless stories about what happened toprisoners who attempted to escape across the desert. He wasn't afraidof the reptiles and the scavengers, and months of hard labor at the workcamp had inured him to heat and thirst. But he knew the renegade Indianbounty hunters were always there, waiting. Capturing fugitives was morethan a living for them. It was revenge. This was their land. It always hadbeen.
He remained hidden in his shelter until long after the shouts of themurderous hunters no longer carried over the desert air. It was only afterhe saw the shadows outside soft en with dusk that he crawled cautiouslyout from beneath the boulder. He looked out at the open plain. The bountyhunters were gone. For the first time, he allowed himself to feel relief. I'malive, he thought triumphantly. He'd survived the years in prison and hardlabor at the work camp. He was tougher than the desert, more patientthan the hunters. He would reach the satellite station. He would tell thegovernment about the danger at Yucca Mountain, and be rewarded witha pardon. Never again would he be forced to endure the burning sun, theoverwhelming silence of the desert, and the constant fear of radiationpoisoning.
He saw in his mind the image of the long, undulating, dun-coloredridge that was Yucca Mountain. It loomed up from the Nevada desertlike a serpentine monstrosity, hoarding inside its cavernous body thelong rows of storage casks filled with 80,000 tons of deadly high-levelradioactive waste. Every day, cargo trains filled with steel canisters andconcrete-covered drums of nuclear waste arrived at the waste repository.Every day, convict workers from a nearby private prison, sentenced tohard labor workfare tours at the camp, unloaded the heavy canistersand drums, and bullied them to their storage space in the network ofunderground tunnels.
The lethal threat of those tons of deadly waste terrified even thetoughest convict. And now that threat would be used to terrify the entirecountry.
Roberto wasn't a murderer, and he would never hurt innocentpeople. He'd tell the government about the threat at Yucca Mountain,save millions of lives, and win his freedom in the bargain. Surely thegovernment would be grateful enough to release him from his sentence,give him a new identity, and find him a home and a decent job somewheresafe.
If only Miguel had waited, he thought, before crawling back intohis shadowy hiding place. He wouldn't be so foolish. He'd wait for thecoolness and cover of night.
Reaching beneath his worn prison shirt, he brought out his sealedZiploc bag of water, the extra one he'd kept secret, even from hiscompanion. He'd had the foresight to bring an extra bag. Miguel hadn'tbothered. Within hours his thirst had made him desperate. It had drivenhim into the open desert, where he could be easily seen. It had drivenhim to his death.
He took a careful sip of the warm, bitter fluid he'd carefully hoarded.At this moment, it tasted like sparkling wine. He deserved a toast. Hewas still alive.
Hours later, with only the brightness of the stars to guide him, hemoved out from the hollow beneath the boulder and began the last partof his long trek, avoiding the place where desert hawks and coyotes wouldstill be tearing at the body of his dead companion.
... It was almost nightfall of his second day in the desert before hesaw the outline of the satellite station against the horizon. The long trekacross the desert had taken its toll on his body. His feet felt scorched fromhours of being dragged through hot sand and his legs wobbled beneathhim, causing him to stumble with almost every step.
Ignoring his thirst and the pain of his body, he willed himself to goon. His water supply had been exhausted, but sanctuary was in sight.He would never return to prison. Never, he promised himself. Never. Herepeated the word over and over again, calling upon it for the strength totake each step.
He slogged through the heavy sand, refusing to give in to pain andexhaustion. His tongue was swollen and the skin of his face felt stretchedacross his skull. When his legs refused to support him, he forced himselfto crawl and claw his way forward, measuring every inch of agonizedprogress.
When he allowed himself to look up again, he could see the adobewalls of the monitoring station only a short distance away.
With a last burst of willpower, he rose to his feet and staggered to thehuge steel entry doors. He leaned against the warm metal and pounded hisfist weakly against its sand-scoured surface. The thick steel absorbed thesound. He saw the rope hanging nearby on the wall. Stumbling, he madehis way over and grabbed it, holding tight even as he finally collapsed.
Above him, the rope pulled at bronze tower bells, relics from the timewhen this walled building was a mission church, an outpost of the Spanishempire. Their ringing ended the silence of his journey, proclaiming he'dreached sanctuary.
The huge steel doors swung open. Uniformed soldiers in desertfatigues rushed out, holding assault rifles at ready. The officer of the unitwore bars that identified him as a Captain. The name patch above thebreast pocket read HAWK. He bent over the fugitive, and gently dabbedhis sun-blistered lips and face with a wet cloth.
"You're safe now," he murmured.
The escaped prisoner's eyes opened. He gripped the captain's arm."No," he said hoarsely. "They're going to kill us all."
CHAPTER 2
8:30 a.m. ETMonday, April 9The PentagonArlington, Virginia
General William Stowd's hurried footsteps echoed in the narrowcinderblock corridor of the Pentagon's underground CommandCenter, where Secretary of Defense Lou Frazer had insisted they meetprivately. It was an inconvenient choice for Stowd, who had to travel fromhis office on the top floor of the most distant corner of the Pentagon'ssixteen miles of corridors. But then, he reminded himself, he hadn't beengiven a choice. Secretary of Defense Frazer liked holding meetings in theCommand Center. He enjoyed the sense of absolute power it gave him, tosit in his big chair at the head of the table in the bunker's conference room,within arm's reach of the computer board that could allow him, with apush of a butt on, to launch missiles almost anywhere in the world.
Built of steel and reinforced concrete, and covered by more than athousand feet of rock and dirt, the Command Center had been designed toensure that no matter what happened to the rest of the country, America'smilitary command could survive a direct thermonuclear hit. But at themoment, that assurance held little comfort for Stowd. All the defensesin the world wouldn't be enough to stop the threat he was hurrying toreport.
He pushed open the wood-veneered steel door of the center'sconference room, and found himself confronted by the Defense Secretary,who sat in his big black leather chair at the head of the room's gleamingmahogany conference table, gripping a printout of the Top Secretencrypted e-mail Stowd had sent him late last night. "Are you tellingme I'm faced with another Chernobyl?" Frazer shouted at him, as if thegeneral's alerting him to a potential nuclear disaster at Yucca Mountain,Nevada, represented a personal affront to his leadership.
Ignoring Frazer's outburst, Stowd slipped into another, smaller chairat the table. He took a minute to smooth the front of his Army tunic, agesture that failed to soothe the burning knot in his stomach. His e-mailreport had obviously alarmed the Defense Secretary. Frazer appearedfrightened. Which he should be.
"Actually, Mr. Secretary," he answered, managing to keep his voicecalm, "an explosion at Yucca Mountain would be roughly ten thousandtimes worse than Chernobyl. The Chernobyl explosion involved onlyone reactor containing twenty tons of radioactive fuel. The nuclear wasterepository at Yucca Mountain contains more than eighty thousand tons ofour highest-level radioactive waste, including enriched weapons-qualityuranium and plutonium. That's enough to kill every man, woman, andchild in America."
Frazer half-spun in his chair, as he looked down again at Stowd'se-mail. "According to your report, the problem is that a recent earthquakecaused a new stream to emerge in an underground cave inside YuccaMountain, near the storage tunnels. Is that correct?"
Stowd nodded. And that's only half the problem. "As you know, sir," headded, diplomatically attributing more knowledge to the Secretary thanhe knew the man possessed, "the presence of water in the vicinity of thewaste storage containers can be catastrophic. Radioactive waste decays,and as it decays it throws off heat. If the stream gets into the undergroundstorage tunnels, it will be like throwing water on a hot rock. The water willturn into steam, and the steam will build up like in a pressure cooker untilit blows the top off of Yucca Mountain, and sends a column of radioactivedebris into the atmosphere. That's what happened at Chernobyl."
He spoke slowly, in the stiff, formal tones of military correctness,being careful not to allow his personal disdain for Frazer show in hisvoice. Before being appointed Secretary of Defense, Frazer had beenChief Financial Officer for a major defense industry company thathad close ties to the current occupants of the White House, and alsoraised substantial contributions for the President's election campaign.According to Beltway rumor, the White House figured Frazer wouldknow how to control the Pentagon's budget, even though the former CFOhad no military background, had never set foot on a battlefield, lackedcombat experience and, apparently, had no respect for the dangers ofnuclear power.
Few things frightened military professionals as much as havingamateurs in charge of operations, and now Frazer was in charge ofhandling the country's greatest domestic threat of nuclear annihilation.
It was enough to make Stowd reach into his pocket for his roll ofanti-acid pills.
"But the nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain is stored in steel casks,"Frazer was saying. "Even if water got into the tunnels, it couldn't penetratethose containers."
Stowd felt his esophagus burn even more fiercely. Since beingtransferred from active duty in Afghanistan to a desk job at the Pentagon,he'd developed either an incipient ulcer or chronic acid reflux, two stress-relatedconditions he blamed on Frazer, who seemed determined to provethat his idea of leadership consisted mostly of magical thinking.
"I'm afraid moisture could penetrate the containers, sir," he said,forcing himself to speak respectfully. "The tops of those casks are weldedon, and those seams are always a weak point. Also, a lot of the waste isstill stored in concrete-covered metal drums that are more than sixtyyears old. We can expect their integrity to be compromised by rust anddecay."
Frazer responded by picking up the memo and reading it again. Stowdcynically wondered if the Defense Secretary had become a little palerthan usual. It was hard to tell. Frazer had a naturally pallid face and grayeyes as evasive as fog. Everything about him was gray; his suit, his tie, thestubble of beard on his jowls, and even his carefully combed thinninghair.
"Who's your source for this information?" Frazer demanded,looking up from the memo. "Who told you about the emergence of thisstream?"
"The information is from a fugitive who escaped from the West Nevadaprison's hard labor work camp at Yucca Mountain," Stowd answered. "Hemanaged to cross the desert and reach our satellite monitoring station insouthern California. He was questioned by one of our men, Captain JamesHawk, the officer in charge of the Army unit that guards the station."
Frazer peered at Stowd over his reading glasses. "I find it amazingthat a convicted criminal, a lowlife and social misfit, would undertakesuch a dangerous escape, with no certainty of success or reward. Yet yourcaptain believes his story?"
The disbelief in his voice caused a fresh wave of hot acid to burnStowd's throat. He could almost sympathize with Frazer's wanting to takerefuge in denial, rather than deal with the monumental implications ofthis threat. But that was the Defense Secretary's job.
(Continues...)
