Ursov held up his hands, cooperative, while the NEST volunteers sprayed him with some sort of decon foam. They scrubbed his skin raw with coarse brushes. He winced, but endured all of it.
Craig looked up as another pair of helicopters approached, flying low under the diminishing rain. One was identical to the NEST helicopter; the other looked like LtCol Terrell’s escort chopper. The second NEST helicopter landed near the first. Ben Goldfarb jumped out and trotted toward the group, shading his eyes and searching for Craig. Dressed in a dark suit, the curly-haired man spoke into a walkie-talkie, coordinating with the rest of the FBI team. The NEST workers waved him away from the Russian general and possible contamination.
Craig pressed a hand against his throbbing and bleeding knee, then staggered toward the others. Blood oozed from the wound, but he knew it wasn’t serious. Yellow sunlight poked through a gap in the clouds, making him squint. He had lost his scratched sunglasses somewhere back at the land rover. Wearily he checked his watch. Not even nine o’clock in the morning, and already the day had been too long.
He saw someone signaling him from inside Terrell’s chopper as it bore down, returning from the horizon, the direction in which Sally Montry’s land rover had fled. He spotted a flash of blond hair beside the lieutenant colonel in the back. Paige. She waved at him.
Two men in white protective gear ran toward Craig, jogging in their full-body suits. One held out a radiation detector and motioned to the other. “He’s clean. No radioactive debris made it this far.”
“Get him out of here then. The Russian guy needs to go to the hospital, ASAP. We’ve got to mitigate this exposure.”
Wincing, Craig limped toward the rescue helicopters.
His knee wrapped in a field bandage and his leg elevated on a chair in front of him, Craig sipped a cup of stale office coffee as he eased himself back on the Naugahyde-covered couch. Despite its highly classified location, the Groom Lake auxiliary base headquarters looked like any average military office building.
Air Force memorabilia filled LtCol Terrell’s office: photos of Atlas, Delta, and Titan rocket launches; a painting of a mountain range with a plane in the background; two plaques bearing different Air Force seals; a photo of Terrell with two general officers. A portable stereo, complete with CDs and speakers sat on a black metal credenza.
Through the miniblinds over the window beside Terrell’s desk, Craig could see a bustle of activity at the Groom Lake flightline: helicopters took off and trucks criss-crossed the black asphalt surface, bringing in teams, evacuating NEST workers, wrapping up the aftermath of the morning’s excitement.
Paige plopped onto the overstuffed couch beside Craig and scooted herself nearer to him. A thick white gauze bandage covered her broken nose, but her smile still showed through when she looked at him. “We make quite a pair,” she said. “Like we had a knock-down, drag-out brawl.”
“Sometimes I like it when the sparks fly,” Craig said with a smile. He had washed off most of the mud-splatters and dirt, but he still needed a long, hot shower.
Terrell stuck his head into the doorway on his way past. “One more report to Washington. Be right back.” He closed the door on them.
Craig smiled. “Your nose is okay?”
“It’ll heal — just don’t ask me to sing anytime soon.” Paige brushed her hair over her shoulder. “How’s your knee?”
“Better than it looks,” said Craig. “Just don’t ask me to dance for a while.”
“I didn’t think you knew how to dance.”
Craig looked at her with mock seriousness. “FBI agents have to undergo rigorous and diverse training, ma’am.”
She laughed, then became silent. She folded her hands together, as if in deep thought.
Craig took a sip of the bitter coffee and watched her. Now, after the past four frantic days, it felt good to know the pressure was finally off, both the threat of the militia and Nevsky’s murder investigation.
But Paige had been caught in the middle of this, unexpectedly hit by Waterloo’s involvement. So much had happened, but Craig could still feel for her. He said, “I’m sorry about your Uncle Mike.”
She kept her blue eyes down and nodded. “I don’t know what to think. He was so much a part of my life for so long. It’s hard to grow up thinking you really know someone, and then they turn out to be a completely different person. Like Jekyll and Hyde. About two years ago Uncle Mike stopped coming to Livermore, quit calling me. I thought he just wanted to start over, that the memories were too much for him.”
“He did start over,” said Craig. “He just hooked up with the wrong crowd, directed his anger in the wrong direction. Sally Montry played up on that.”
Paige grimaced. “God only knows how much power that woman had over him, but an aggressive person can really dominate someone whose defenses are down. Because she worked with him so closely, Sally knew Uncle Mike’s weak spots, knew the buttons to push — after Aunt Genny died, and then my father, he was an easy target — lost at sea. She manipulated PK Dirks, too, though she never got him to do anything illegal. He was the perfect scapegoat. Just like Uncle Mike.” Paige shook her head. “But that doesn’t excuse what he did.”
Terrell returned, brisk and businesslike. “Good news about your Russian general. He was exposed to over a Rad — serious, but not deadly. He’ll live. He was lucky he didn’t get more debris blown on him when the casing cracked, and that the decon team arrived within minutes to scrub him down.”
“Have they cleaned up the rest of the radioactivity that was released out at your hangar facility?” Paige asked.
“Everything except some tritium and trace gases that escaped,” Terrell answered. “We’re all lucky only one of the high explosive lenses detonated, otherwise the dispersal would have been disastrous. The fail-safes worked.
“We all owe our lives to General Ursov… much as it amazes me to say that. He destroyed the weapon’s symmetry — everything needs to fit perfectly in these warheads in order to cause a nuclear explosion. Once he damaged the explosives with the screwdriver and cracked the casing, Ursov knew the warhead wouldn’t go critical. These things don’t detonate accidentally.”
“But when General Ursov cracked the casing, he got dusted with radioactive material,” Craig said. “He couldn’t get the PAL to engage, so he tried to bypass it and damage the warhead directly. He knew he might receive an exposure, but he took that chance.”
“Good thing you ran, then,” Paige said, pursing her lips as she looked at his injured leg. “Otherwise you might be undergoing the same decontamination procedures. I hear it’s about as pleasant as a root canal.”
Ironically, Craig thought of his former girlfriend Trish, who continued to study the treatment of radiation exposures at Johns Hopkins. Maybe they would call her in to consult on Ursov’s case.
Paige leaned back on the couch and studied LtCol Terrell, narrowing her blue eyes. “There’s still something that bothers me, Colonel, and I do hope you’ll be forthcoming with an explanation.”
“What’s that?” Terrell sat up stiffly, guarded.
Paige glanced at Craig, then stared down the black officer. “Something big overflew Sally’s land rover. I saw all our power systems go out. My watch still isn’t working. I know there are rumors about UFOs kept here in hangars up at Groom Lake —”