Craig Kreident #2 Fallout by Doug Beason Kevin J Anderson Page B
Authors: Doug Beason Kevin J Anderson
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facts.”
Paige stared across the wide-open desert, aghast. “Mr. Adams, I’d like to get guidance from the State Department and the DOE.” At the back fringes of her shock, she began to feel the impending political implications to Nevsky’s death. Murder . . . In a flash of panic she hoped no one was listening on this cellular band. “You know about the President’s upcoming disarmament summit, the whole reason for the visit of this Russian inspection team. How long can we keep this information from the press?”
“I’ve got to complete a lot of tests and document the formal autopsy,” Adams answered. “Besides, in a sensitive case like this, I’m going to double- and triple-check every result. In the meantime, if people want to assume it was an industrial accident, there’s no reason we have to change their minds.”
“I understand,” Paige said. “I’ll get the FBI on it right away.”
Paige continued with the formal briefing. “The Nevada Test Site was chosen as a nuclear proving ground in December 1950, to reduce the expense and logistics of conducting U.S. nuclear tests out on Pacific Islands.” Speaking the familiar words helped her to wash away the settling numbness. She tried to focus on the task at hand, to keep the Russians from suspecting anything. She took a deep breath. “Our first nuclear detonation occurred a month later, dropped from an Air Force plane onto Frenchman Flat.”
“Here?” Vitali Yakolev said excitedly, scratching his flame-red hair and looking around the barren lakebed. The team members seemed fascinated by the wreckage around them, like a Hollywood set depicting a city in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust.
PK Dirks answered, hands on hips. “You’re standing on ground zero.”
Paige said, “President Eisenhower declared a moratorium in 1958, but testing started again three years later, after the Soviet Union resumed testing.”
Smiling broadly, Dirks tossed a pebble into the distance. “All told, we conducted about eight hundred tests out here, most of them underground.” He trudged across the dried mud toward the town ruins just off the road. “Don’t worry,” Dirks said jokingly, “it’s not too radioactive any more. You hardly notice the glow at night.”
Paige knew the background levels were barely higher than anywhere else on the site. She had checked for clearance before putting the mock towns on their schedule; the ruined buildings and bomb shelters were some of the most impressive sights at NTS.
Her mind still whirling about what she had learned from the ME, Paige continued the charade of the tour, waiting for a return call from DOE Headquarters, playing the attentive hostess and tourguide . . . a good protocol officer even in jeans and a denim shirt. She followed the group onto Frenchman Flat, into an uninhabited city that never was.
To study the blast effects of an atomic strike, samples of different architecture and construction materials, arranged in varying orientations, were erected at incremental distances from ground zero. Paige had seen films of the test explosions, how the flame front swept through the artificial town, scattering buildings like matchsticks, igniting rubble as if it were gunpowder.
Cameras planted inside the buildings showed mannequins seated on the furniture, play-doll families engaged in typical household activities, eating TV dinners in front of their black-and-white television sets. The blast wave swept them aside like chaff.
“So this was a town,” Nikolai Bisovka said, lighting up another Marlboro. He had grown immensely fond of American cigarettes. “But where is the saloon? Academician Nevsky would have felt right at home.” General Ursov glared as Bisovka blew a puff of smoke. The other Russians exchanged nervous glances.
The tour group crunched through the shattered rubble, the stumps of buildings, thick walls
Paige stared across the wide-open desert, aghast. “Mr. Adams, I’d like to get guidance from the State Department and the DOE.” At the back fringes of her shock, she began to feel the impending political implications to Nevsky’s death. Murder . . . In a flash of panic she hoped no one was listening on this cellular band. “You know about the President’s upcoming disarmament summit, the whole reason for the visit of this Russian inspection team. How long can we keep this information from the press?”
“I’ve got to complete a lot of tests and document the formal autopsy,” Adams answered. “Besides, in a sensitive case like this, I’m going to double- and triple-check every result. In the meantime, if people want to assume it was an industrial accident, there’s no reason we have to change their minds.”
“I understand,” Paige said. “I’ll get the FBI on it right away.”
Paige continued with the formal briefing. “The Nevada Test Site was chosen as a nuclear proving ground in December 1950, to reduce the expense and logistics of conducting U.S. nuclear tests out on Pacific Islands.” Speaking the familiar words helped her to wash away the settling numbness. She tried to focus on the task at hand, to keep the Russians from suspecting anything. She took a deep breath. “Our first nuclear detonation occurred a month later, dropped from an Air Force plane onto Frenchman Flat.”
“Here?” Vitali Yakolev said excitedly, scratching his flame-red hair and looking around the barren lakebed. The team members seemed fascinated by the wreckage around them, like a Hollywood set depicting a city in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust.
PK Dirks answered, hands on hips. “You’re standing on ground zero.”
Paige said, “President Eisenhower declared a moratorium in 1958, but testing started again three years later, after the Soviet Union resumed testing.”
Smiling broadly, Dirks tossed a pebble into the distance. “All told, we conducted about eight hundred tests out here, most of them underground.” He trudged across the dried mud toward the town ruins just off the road. “Don’t worry,” Dirks said jokingly, “it’s not too radioactive any more. You hardly notice the glow at night.”
Paige knew the background levels were barely higher than anywhere else on the site. She had checked for clearance before putting the mock towns on their schedule; the ruined buildings and bomb shelters were some of the most impressive sights at NTS.
Her mind still whirling about what she had learned from the ME, Paige continued the charade of the tour, waiting for a return call from DOE Headquarters, playing the attentive hostess and tourguide . . . a good protocol officer even in jeans and a denim shirt. She followed the group onto Frenchman Flat, into an uninhabited city that never was.
To study the blast effects of an atomic strike, samples of different architecture and construction materials, arranged in varying orientations, were erected at incremental distances from ground zero. Paige had seen films of the test explosions, how the flame front swept through the artificial town, scattering buildings like matchsticks, igniting rubble as if it were gunpowder.
Cameras planted inside the buildings showed mannequins seated on the furniture, play-doll families engaged in typical household activities, eating TV dinners in front of their black-and-white television sets. The blast wave swept them aside like chaff.
“So this was a town,” Nikolai Bisovka said, lighting up another Marlboro. He had grown immensely fond of American cigarettes. “But where is the saloon? Academician Nevsky would have felt right at home.” General Ursov glared as Bisovka blew a puff of smoke. The other Russians exchanged nervous glances.
The tour group crunched through the shattered rubble, the stumps of buildings, thick walls
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