As Miranda and I reached the end of the structure, I saw something that caused me to slam on the brakes. The truck slithered to a quick stop, and close behind me I heard another set of tires — Arpad’s tires — rasping across the gravel as he, too, locked his wheels. “Look,” I said to Miranda, pointing up and to our right. Just beyond the end of the shedlike building rose a tall, cylindrical structure — a concrete silo — capped with an octagonal metal roof. Tucked beneath the roof’s overhang were grimy horizontal windows and rusting steel gunports. The state wildlife officers were housed in what had once been a top secret uranium storage bunker, although the charming wooden barn that had once disguised the bunker’s entrance had been replaced with a boring blue box.
My adrenaline surged. In the blink of an eye, history had jumped off the page and become alive to me. This tiny speck of East Tennessee woods had once been a top-secret installation, heavily guarded and cleverly camouflaged. Oak Ridge’s eighty thousand wartime workers — and the Manhattan Project’s hundreds of millions of scarce dollars — had funneled into a small bunker tucked beneath this isolated hillside. I suddenly thought of an immense magnifying glass, focusing the rays of the sun into one tiny, intense point of light and heat and energy. The uranium-235 stored under the watchful eyes in this concrete tower had been such a focal point. It was here that the genie of atomic energy was squeezed into the smallest of bottles, so it could be unleashed later with devastating force.
I looked at Miranda; I wanted to express everything that had just raced through my mind — the sense of awe and humility and excitement that had gripped me in an instant — but I wasn’t sure I was capable of it. She studied my face for a moment, then looked again at the stained concrete with the filthy windows and rusting gunports. “Yeah,” she said. “Pretty damn amazing, huh?”
“Pretty damn amazing,” I agreed. Behind us, a car horn tooted briefly. I took my foot off the brake and made my way back to the present, back to the caravan of vehicles, and back to the task at hand: searching for an unknown and unreckoned casualty of the Manhattan Project.
CHAPTER 28
The gravel road continued along the streambed for another hundred yards or so, then crossed a steel culvert and began snaking up the opposite hillside. As it climbed, the road narrowed; the gravel gradually gave way to dirt, and the dirt soon disappeared beneath a layer of leaves and branches. It appeared that the road had not been used in years.
We had negotiated several switchbacks and climbed well above the silo when the procession stopped. I heard a brief whoop from a siren, which I guessed might be a signal that we had reached our destination. I put the truck in park, set the brake, and got out to look. Up ahead a huge, mossy tree trunk blocked the rutted track.
Off to the right side, the hillside fell away sharply, almost vertically; looking down, I saw the roof of the TWRA building and, beside it, the octagonal roof of the fortified silo. From this angle, I could not see the windows at the top of the tower — and that meant the guards in the tower could not have seen anyone who was standing in this spot back in 1945. I felt another surge of adrenaline as I realized that I was standing near the place where a body had been hidden some sixty years before. Near the place where human bones might still lie hidden, awaiting discovery.
I walked back to my truck and opened the door. “We might be right where we need to be,” I said. “Can you hand me the photograph?” Miranda reached into a manila folder tucked down beside the console. Without the barn as a visual reference, it was hard to be certain, but the angle of the silo — seen from above, from what appeared to be a ledge or shelf — looked remarkably similar to what I’d just glimpsed.
Emert and Dewar got out of the Oak Ridge police cruiser, each clutching a copy of the photo as well. Roy emerged from the F-150, eyeing the pictures with obvious interest, so I handed him the print I’d brought. His eyes widened as he took in the body, then his head swiveled and he scanned the valley down below. A broad smile spread across his face. “This is getting interesting,” he said. “A lot more fun than asking, ‘What’s the smallest line you can read?’ or ‘Which is clearer, 1 or 2?’”
“Beats grading papers, too,” I said.
Thornton was the last to join the group. Instead of the photograph, he was clutching the Starbucks cup in one hand. He tapped Miranda on the shoulder and, without a word, took her copy. “Make yourself at home,” she said.
“Thanks,” he said. He looked briefly at the silo, then at the photo, before handing it back to her. Then he looked back at the group. “Now what?”
I looked at Arpad. Arpad looked at Roy. “I was thinking maybe Roy and Cherokee could do a sweep through the area, see if the dog indicates any interest, to narrow down where we need to probe.”
“Sure,” said Roy. “He feels cheated if he doesn’t get to hop out and sniff around.” Roy bent down and picked up a dry leaf. Then, raising his arm to shoulder height and extending his hand, he crushed the leaf and sifted the fragments through his fingers, watching them drift in a breeze almost too slight to feel. “Looks like the air’s moving downhill and downstream,” he said. “Which means that the scent — if there is any — would be moving in that direction, too. Scent is like water — it tends to flow downhill, and tends to pool in low spots. Cool spots, too.” He glanced at the steep hillside and the line of vehicles, frowning slightly. “I hate to be a bother,” he said, “but could we maybe all back up a couple of hundred yards? I’d like to work him along the road, but the gas and oil fumes will pretty much overpower anything else that’s here.”
Roy ambled back to his truck, and the rest of us headed for our vehicles. After a few moments of tense, hesitant backing down the narrow pair of ruts, we all parked again. Roy opened the hatch of his camper shell and dropped the tailgate. I heard him talking in a low, soothing voice, and then a large German shepherd on a stout leather leash jumped down from the truck. Roy stood at least six feet tall and probably weighed somewhere around 200 pounds, but the dog was pulling him as if he were a child. “As you can see, he really gets into this,” Roy said. As they pulled alongside the group, Roy gave a quick tug on the leash. “Cherokee, sit,” he said firmly. The dog sat, but even sitting, he strained at the leash.
Miranda leaned slightly toward the dog. “Is he friendly? Can I pet him?”
“He’s a sweetheart,” said Roy, “but he’s more interested in work than love.”
Emert laughed. “Reminds me of my ex,” he said.
“Reminds me that dogs are more useful than men,” said Miranda. The rest of us — the six men she had just skewered — laughed briefly and changed the subject quickly.
Roy led the dog upslope to pee, then had him sit again, slightly apart from the group this time. “Okay, the smell from the vehicles has probably dispersed enough now,” he said. “I’ll start by letting him off leash for what’s called a hasty search — pretty much what the name implies — and see if he picks up anything. If he doesn’t, I’ll work him through the area again on a grid pattern.”
Thornton raised his hand, like a kid in elementary school. “Yes sir?” said Roy.
“The dog doesn’t work on commission, does he?”
Roy looked puzzled, and so did everyone else. Everyone except Miranda, who snorted. “Like, ten percent of the bones?”
“Ten percent seems a little steep,” the agent said with a grin. “Anything over five seems greedy.”