But why hadn’t the Secretary called back? The classified fiberoptic line to Washington was one of the only systems besides the countermeasures and monitors that were independent of the reboot, working on an isolated power supply.
Harris glanced at a digital clock, one of three in the office set to various time zones: Eastern Daylight Time for DOE Headquarters, Mountain Daylight Time for Albuquerque, and Greenwich Mean Time. Another minute ticked down. There was nothing he could do to accelerate the restart. Five hours and thirty-nine minutes remaining, and the team was stranded inside.
The functioning monitors showed the storage chamber tunnels deserted, as expected during a lockdown. Since he had sent the normal weekend crew and construction teams home during the committee’s review, Hydra Mountain was mostly empty anyway. Holding its breath.
The new digital fiber-optic link in the sealed storage chamber had let him talk to Mrs. Garcia, who was not happy, but at least she was safely tucked inside. Her only wish was that she had a book to read while she killed another five and a half hours, but her boredom wasn’t a crisis.
Rather than staying put, as he had instructed, Adonia Rojas and the rest of the review team had moved from the side tunnel, driven off by the active countermeasures. Obviously, that wasn’t supposed to happen. Now Harris could barely track where they had gone. Only a few sensors in the tunnels were active, and the conflicting logic instructions in the integrated new and legacy systems had made a mess of the automated defenses inside.
Judging from the last active countermeasures they had triggered, the multifrequency light and infrared bombardment, he knew the team was being driven down the inclined tunnel to the large interior cavern where warhead assembly had once taken place. That would have been part of the tour anyway, and he would have led them from breadcrumb to breadcrumb. Right now in their scramble for safety, though, he doubted if any of the team members were paying close attention to the details of the review.
Harris felt guilty for dumping that responsibility on Adonia’s shoulders; he had only meant to be gone for a few minutes when Drexler dragged him away. Now she had to try to keep her companions safe, even though she knew very little about Hydra Mountain.
He wished he could help and explain what was happening, but the intercoms had shut down. He had to rely on her intelligence and judgment. At least Colonel Whalen was at her side. Together, they would make the right decisions.
Right now they were in among the piled construction materials, rolls of fiberglass insulation that had been stripped out of the reconditioned chambers, sacks of concrete mix, metal bars from scaffolding, wooden boards, panels of thick plastic. As long as they kept moving and continued downhill for another few hundred feet, they would encounter no additional defenses. Once they reached the guard station that blocked access to the lower level, they could take refuge and just wait out the last few hours. The phone there might even work.
It was only a matter of time. Nail-biting, but straightforward.
Unless they triggered another detector and released more countermeasures.
Harris felt frustrated and helpless. Why didn’t Secretary Nitta call? He could do nothing to help those trapped people, couldn’t even reassure them. At least Drexler had been able to reboot some of the infrared sensors in the tunnels, connected by the new fiber-optic lines. From the readouts, Harris was reassured that the team members were still together, and hopefully unharmed.
Every tech in the operations center knew this was no drill, that they had to do everything possible to get the team members out of there. Hydra Mountain had already suffered a severe black eye, thanks to the screwups today and the bumbling small plane intrusion. Valiant Locksmith would not get the glowing report and clean bill of health that Senator Pulaski needed for his oversight meeting. It might even be a fatal blow to the program.
And he was the site manager. After this, Rob Harris might find himself back in retirement — not a bad thing, after all — and Valiant Locksmith might be shut down until these problems were fixed. Although that would solve his immediate concern about the interaction with Victoria Doyle’s SAP, he did not want this to become another Yucca Mountain fiasco, which would leave the nuclear waste problem unaddressed — again.
But if the solution was almost as bad as the problem at hand…
Even though the system reboot would prevent them from entering the interior for six hours, his staff searched for any kind of workaround. On the floor below, technicians shouted on secure phones with various contractors, subcontractors, and consultants, anxious to thwart a system that had been designed not to be tampered with. Hydra Mountain had been built to protect nuclear weapons from both outside and inside threats; the systems would not allow for a simple bypass just because a review team was inconvenienced.
The best solution would be to wait out the remaining time and do his best to unruffle feathers afterward. Harris just hoped he could convince them to continue the review, though after being held hostage for six hours and subjected to some of Hydra Mountain’s countermeasures, Adonia and her companions would not be in the best, objective mood. Now that Undersecretary Doyle had been read into Valiant Locksmith, however — a huge victory for Harris — he could privately discuss his concerns with her. One way or another, that problem would be addressed.
At last, the red STE phone on his desk rang; the digital ID on the fiber-optic link read SECDOE. He snatched it up. “Harris here.”
“Mr. Harris, we’re going to program level. Stand by.” He waited a moment until the phone hissed the unique sound of double encryption, and the male voice came back on, sounding tinny. “I have you at… Valiant Locksmith.”
Harris read from the desktop’s digital display. “I concur.”
“Here’s the Secretary of Energy.”
The phone line was silent for a moment, then, “Rob, Caroline Nitta again. I’ve just been briefed that your countermeasures are herding the committee to the Mountain’s lower level rather than to the exit. Is that by design? It seems counterintuitive, according to the specs I have been shown.”
“It took a while to figure out, ma’am, but apparently the safety and security systems interacted in a nonlinear fashion when they were simultaneously triggered. There are unforeseen incompatibilities between the legacy DoD systems and the newly upgraded DOE hardware.”
“English, Rob. You’re speaking to a public defender, not an engineer.”
“Sorry.” Harris stood at his desk, pulling the STE phone cord tight so he could keep watching the ops center through the windows. “That small plane intrusion simultaneously triggered both security and safety sensors. Though the crash itself was a minor mishap and the passengers suffered only superficial injuries, all hell broke loose with both the old legacy systems and the new systems responding at the same time, at cross-purposes. Remember, Hydra Mountain was made to protect nuclear warheads, and the defenses were not meant to be… subtle.” He drew a breath.
“The real tipping point, though, was when one of the team members attempted to make an unauthorized cell phone call in the middle of a volatile situation. That transmission triggered a cascade of increasingly severe responses.”
The Secretary made a disgusted sound. “How the hell did anyone get a cell phone inside the Mountain? I was read the riot act about wearing even my digital watch when I was out there.” The encryption distorted her long sigh. “I swear, I’m going to have you conduct full body cavity searches from now on.”
Harris continued his report in as objective a voice as he could manage. “No voice or data were transmitted, but whenever a phone is powered up, it automatically emits a radiofrequency ping. Our detectors are so sensitive that they’re triggered by any electromagnetic emission — intentionally so, in order to detect intruders and prevent espionage.”