While she was here, Adonia hoped for some quality time alone with him for a no-nonsense debriefing. As Assistant Secretary, van Dyckman knew full well the pressure she was under at Granite Bay. Overseeing the nation’s nuclear waste was his primary responsibility, and the inadequate temporary spent fuel storage area at her site was a problem that wouldn’t solve itself. She was swamped, far behind schedule, and she needed to oversee the additional holding pools being built after the plane crash. In the meantime, she had to monitor the crowded reconfiguration of the immersed fuel rods.
She had no interest in joining in some blue-ribbon review committee. Stanley must be in showoff mode, especially after his promotion to Assistant Secretary. Why couldn’t he just hold a videoconference like everyone else?
As she followed the officer to the pedestrian gate, Adonia saw two flatbed eighteen-wheelers, side by side near an enormous metal vault door set into the mountainside. Gray canvas covered both flatbeds, disguising the huge load, which was twice as high as each tractor unit.
Adonia frowned. After being decommissioned back in the post-Reagan era, Hydra Mountain should be empty, so why were the big trucks delivering a substantial cargo load? Something was definitely going on here.…
Adonia presented her ID to the guard stationed at the next sally port gate. It was a bad photo, par for the course in government-issued identification, showing her long dark hair, large brown eyes, naturally thick lashes, generous lips, and a startled-looking goofy expression. Years ago Shawn had teased her about the picture, not that his Air Force photo ID was any better.
The sergeant at the gate inserted the common access card into a reader that verified her identity. “Are you carrying any cell phones or other electronic devices, Ms. Rojas?”
“Just my NRC cell. I need it to keep in touch with my facility back in New York—”
The guard didn’t flinch. “You’re not allowed to bring it inside, government cell phone or not.”
Adonia couldn’t afford to be cut off from her Granite Bay team, not even on a Sunday. “It’s an operational necessity, Sergeant. Nuclear power plants don’t take care of themselves. I have the necessary clearances, and I have to be available on a moment’s notice.”
With the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s urgent orders to reconfigure Granite Bay’s overcrowded storage array of fuel rods, she needed to oversee the high-risk activity. They were pointedly aware that her spent fuel rods were packed to capacity — beyond capacity, for her own comfort level — and even repacking the array would buy only a little time. Nuclear waste couldn’t just sit there, swept under a rug, yet Granite Bay wasn’t legally allowed to move the rods anywhere else. Even after the near disaster at her site, no one seemed in a hurry to pick up the political hot potato.
Adonia started to insist on keeping her phone when Lieutenant Peters intervened. “Sorry, Ms. Rojas. It really is a classification issue. In addition, strict protocols prohibit electromagnetic transmissions inside the Mountain, as it may affect the sensors. No exceptions. Brand-new safety and security systems are being installed throughout the facility and the integration has been… problematic at times. If you accidentally trigger a lockdown, you’ll have to cool your heels for six hours while the systems recycle.” Peters gave her an understanding look. “Better safe than sorry, ma’am.”
The guard pointed to a metal cabinet set in concrete at the side of the sally port, which held two dozen lockboxes. Keys dangled from the locks of the few available ones. “Pick an empty box, lock your phone inside, and take the key. You can pick it up when you leave, ma’am. Nobody will touch it.”
Adonia sighed. Knowing that further argument would solve nothing, she powered down her cell, stowed it in an empty lockbox, and placed the key in her purse. “I’ll look on the bright side. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished I could be away from the phone.”
The sergeant waved them through the port, and the gate behind them rolled shut, closing them in an arched tunnel of barbed wire under the hot sun.
5
When the opposite gate swung open and granted them access to the squat admin building, Adonia felt a welcome blast of air-conditioning. The building held only a few small offices, a closed conference room, and, at the end of the hall, a large vault door that led into the Mountain. Just outside the conference room, an older Hispanic man sat behind a table covered with neatly stacked government forms. He gave Adonia a smile that seemed full of anticipation.
A different kind of gauntlet, she thought. Red tape instead of barbed wire.
Lieutenant Peters bowed out. “That’s all I can do for you, ma’am. Out of my jurisdiction. Once you enter Hydra Mountain, you aren’t officially on a military base anymore, so I’ll hand you over to Mr. Morales.”
The man at the table picked up a stack of forms and gestured her to the seat in front of him. “Good morning, and welcome to the Mountain. Prior to receiving any programmatic information in the conference room, you need to sign these required security documents and waivers.”
She looked at the size of the stack. “Looks like I’m refinancing a house.”
Adonia knew that the military and DOE each had convoluted and mutually exclusive administrative protocols, which doubled the red tape. Morales asked for her ID — again — and Adonia dug out her white government common access card. She was accustomed to having her ID verified at every turn, although back at Granite Bay or in NRC meetings, her colleagues recognized her on sight. But she had never been inside Hydra Mountain, and she didn’t even know the names of the other review committee members who were already inside the conference room.
What a fine Sunday outing. She picked up the top form and scanned it. Stanley van Dyckman certainly had some explaining to do.
While the clerk accessed a security database with his laptop, Adonia could hear voices in muted conversation from behind the closed door. After Morales verified her clearances, he pushed another set of forms across the desk. “Please acknowledge and sign these security statements before you enter the conference room.”
Reading the documents in detail would have taken her hours, but Adonia already knew the standard DOE security forms; she’d left the government only two years ago to run Granite Bay. She flipped through the form, spotting the clear and explicit warnings, then noticed that the terms were more draconian than usuaclass="underline" divulging any information about any Hydra Mountain program constituted a felony offense, punishable by what looked to be an infinite number of years in Federal prison. Somewhere in the fine print she was probably also offering up her firstborn if she ever had children, or her left kidney if she didn’t.
Adonia grimaced. “This makes me accountable for something I don’t even know about yet. Why am I signing these?”
Morales smiled at her again. “I can’t tell you, ma’am, because I really don’t know.” He nodded toward the large vault door at the end of the corridor. “I’m not allowed inside the Mountain. Although this perimeter facility qualifies as a SCIF, a Special Compartmented Information Facility, you’ll have to wait until you actually go inside before you can discuss any program-specific material. At that point, someone will explain everything.” He nudged the pen closer to her and lowered his voice. “At least according to Regulation Rob.”
That again. Adonia grunted and picked up the pen. “I wouldn’t want to miss out on all the fun. After all, this is my day off.”
In the past, some national security programs had been so hush-hush that their very existence was highly classified. Even Vice President Harry Truman had never heard of the Manhattan Project until he was sworn in after the death of Franklin Roosevelt. That had been a crash program to develop an atomic bomb at the height of World War II, though, and this place was just an old, mothballed nuclear weapon storage site. Maybe in Stanley’s mind the two programs were equivalent. It was the sort of melodramatic maneuver her former boss loved, since it made him seem important. Another Stanley-ism.