“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….
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.