Assault on Alpha Base (2 page)

Chapter 1

Earlier the same day: Wednesday, I June, 0730 local

Wendover Air Force Base, Nevada

Major William McGriffin stopped before the command post. Set into the door, a one-way mirror reflected the major’s image back to him. His blue eyes inspected his hair. He liked to keep his hair thick on the sides and long in back, but he had just plastered the locks down in anticipation of meeting his new boss, the Wendover base commander. He was pushing the weight limit for his height, but all cargo pilots seemed to be slightly pudgy. It was the twenty-hour flights to exotic places like Diego Garcia, Pusan, and Thule that gave him his padded frame.

But there were not going to be any more exotic places for McGriffin, at least for a while. He had just about accepted being yanked off his flying job and forced to work at Wendover AFB. Wendover was about as far away from a flying assignment as the Air Force could get him. It just didn’t make sense: spend a million dollars to train a guy to fly, then send him to this desert hole in a nonflying job.

Sure, he knew the rationale: only a pilot could effectively run a base command post.

And only monkeys could effectively eat bananas, too.

Wendover AFB required a pilot in the command post as much as the Sahara needed sand. There just wasn’t any need for it. If Wendover had a flying unit, it might make sense. The closest thing to flying Wendover had was the helicopter squadron—and they flew only to support Alpha Base security.

Helicopters. The word tasted bitter in McGriffin’s mouth. Helicopter pilots went through a glorified six-month training course at Fort Rucker—an
Army
base—and called themselves pilots. They even wore the same wings as real pilots. McGriffin shook his head. Flying helicopters was as different from piloting a jet as driving a car.

The only consolation about this assignment was that he was away from Linda. When she had left him, it was hard enough having her move in with that aerospace contractor—a nonflyer to boot! And for him to run across her in Tacoma—every time he went into town he dreaded the possibility that he’d see her. He had even changed churches, fearful that he might catch a glimpse of her … her red hair, her laughing … there were too many memories.

At least here he’d have a chance to get over her. And from the looks of the sparse female population, he wasn’t in any danger of latching on to someone while he was on the rebound.

Setting his jaw, he rang the buzzer on the door to the command post.

A disembodied voice came over a speaker. “Good morning, sir. Could you hold your CAC card up to the mirror?”

McGriffin pulled out his wallet. He held the white CAC card—a high-tech ID with a radio-frequency chip that held his personal information—up to the one-way mirror.

“Thank you, sir. Please step away from the door.”

McGriffin took an awkward step back as a security policeman held the door open for him. “This way, Major.” They walked down a narrow hallway to another barred door.

“Sir, Chief Zolley will escort you into the command post area.”

Two airmen, resplendent in their Class A’s, white gloves, and ascots, stood on either side of the causeway. McGriffin nodded as he passed. The guards stood mute.

A single enlisted man greeted him. The man appeared to be a few years older than he—close to forty—but even so, to have someone so young attain the highest enlisted rank impressed McGriffin. The man firmly shook hands with him.

“Major McGriffin, welcome to Wendover. I’m Chief Master Sergeant Zolley, NCO in charge of the command post. Colonel DeVries is waiting in the back. He’ll call for you momentarily. Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

McGriffin shook his head. “No thank you, Chief. Caffeine makes me jumpy.”

The senior enlisted man smiled. “How about a tour of the CP, then? It may be a few minutes until the colonel is ready.”

“Great. Sounds good—especially if I’m going to be working here. Lead the way.”

“This way, sir. But I’ll need to have you stop off at the verification center.”

Chief Zolley led McGriffin to the back of the command post. A black rectangular object resembling a microfiche reader sat on a desk. Zolley explained, “We need to get a picture of your retina for positive identification. It’s an old system we’re still using until we get the new genetic scanners in. No one can duplicate the pattern your blood vessels make in your eye. It’s kind of like a fingerprint, except much more accurate.”

Zolley held out a chair for him. “This will only take a second, sir. If you’ll look into the goggles …”

Moving his head to the plate, McGriffin squinted into the blackness. As his eyes adjusted, he made out a narrow lens and what appeared to be a flashbulb—

“What!” The bulb went off, startling him. McGriffin pulled back from the device, rubbing his eyes.

“Sorry, sir. If I’d told you what to expect, you might have blinked.” Chief Zolley punched buttons on the device and helped McGriffin out of his seat.

McGriffin squinted. Red, yellow, and green splotches filled the room.

As Zolley led McGriffin to the front of the command post, an airman removed a digitized image of his eye from the verification unit. Zolley noted McGriffin’s wings. “I hear that you used to fly out of McChord, sir.”

McGriffin rubbed his eye and blinked. Things began to swim back into view. “Best tour of my life. I flew 17’s darn near everywhere they could go.”

“I was a crew chief there for three years. Tacoma was quite a place.” He led Major McGriffin into the command post area.

They squeezed in between an array of computer terminals and stopped before a huge screen depicting an aerial map of Wendover AFB. To the right a computerized board listed the various squadrons and tenant units on the Air Force base: 2021st Maintenance Group, 37th Airbase Wing, 1977th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron, and the Sixth Security Police Group.

Unit emblems decorated the wall behind him, barely visible in the low light. A row of five clocks lined the wall. To his right a status board listed twenty-five critical areas on the base. McGriffin noted that twenty of the areas were located inside of the Alpha Base complex.

From the aerial map, McGriffin picked out the town of Wendover, Nevada, lying northwest of the base. Dugway Proving Grounds was to the east, and, barely visible on the map, the Hill Air Force gunnery range. The crater containing Alpha Base showed up as a small spot on Wendover Air Force Base.

Chief Zolley stopped before a desk in front of the main board. Enlisted personnel worked quietly in the background, answering phones and updating information into their computer terminals. A green light burned softly over the status board. Chief Zolley noticed McGriffin lingering over the aerial map. “This part of the country is mostly a dried-out lake bed.”

“I noticed. It looks like a beach on the Gulf of Mexico with all that white sand.”

Chief Zolley grinned. “After a year here you’d wish you were there. If it wasn’t for Salt Lake City being two hours away by interstate, we wouldn’t have any visitors at all. Most of them drive from Salt Lake City to gamble in Nevada, so we get a bit of the spillover, that, and the Enola Gay Museum here on base … you know, the plane in World War Two that dropped the first atomic bomb? They actually trained here, so we get a fair amount of tourists.”

A voice called out over the command post. “Major McGriffin, the base commander requests your presence.”

McGriffin straightened and flashed Chief Zolley a quick smile. “I’m looking forward to working with you, Chief.”

“So am I, sir.”

McGriffin turned for the exit. An airman stood by the door. “This way, Major.” The airman held out a white-gloved hand, directing McGriffin out of the command post area.

Ducking into a hallway, McGriffin strode past several doorways: communications, nest & broken arrow liaison, and base commander were posted on the walls. The enlisted guide stopped before the last door. He rapped sharply. When a voice answered, the guide nodded McGriffin in. “Major McGriffin, sir.”

Colonel DeVries rocked back in his chair and surveyed McGriffin before answering. McGriffin noticed that the base commander was nonrated, a nonpilot. DeVries allowed a few unspoken moments to pass before he stood, leaving the chair bouncing in his wake. “Morning, Major. Welcome to Wendover.” He extended a hand. “Charley DeVries.”

“Thanks, sir. Bill McGriffin.”

“Have a seat.”

McGriffin pulled up a chair as DeVries walked behind his desk. “So you’re from McChord. A C-17 driver?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We get quite a few 17’s in here, carrying in nukes to store in Alpha Base. Ever been to Wendover, Bill?”

McGriffin turned in his chair. “No, sir. For the most part I just ferried trash across the pond.”

DeVries smiled at McGriffin’s nickname for the Pacific Ocean. “This will be a change of pace for you, then. We’re a little different here from most bases you’ve been to. Wendover was used after World War Two as a test base—they used the salt flats and seclusion to practice taking off on short runways. In fact, we’ve got a war memorial here that’s open to the public. As a result, there’s a lot of tourists around, kind of unusual for our mission nowadays. The base was deactivated after the war, then reopened ten years ago when Alpha Base was built.” He swiveled his chair around and pointed to a map of Wendover AFB hanging on the wall.

“Alpha Base was built to house America’s stockpile of nuclear weapons. It’s roughly seventy-five square miles of storage space, five miles due west of Wendover’s main complex. Alpha Base is actually a base within a base, complete with its own security and barracks, taking up only a small fraction of Wendover’s twenty thousand total square miles.

“The crater provides a way to keep watch on all the storage bunkers at once. All they had to do was to fence off the crater—the storage bunkers are burrowed into the crater’s side. After the INF and strategic limitation agreements, Alpha Base was agreeable to the Russians as the place to house our weapons.”

McGriffin frowned. “Agreeable to the Russians?”

“Their satellites fly overhead nearly once an hour, and with our good weather, they don’t have to worry about clouds covering the storage sites—you know, so they can monitor activity here. It blows the dispersion policy for operational readiness all to pieces, but we have the same arrangement with the Russians at their storage site.” McGriffin nodded as Colonel DeVries continued. “Over five thousand warheads are contained within Alpha Base’s perimeter.”

McGriffin whistled. “You must have some security detail guarding it.”

“We do. It’s a crackerjack outfit. In reality, there’s so many checks to the high-tech security system, it’s mostly a baby-sitting job.”

DeVries turned back to his desk and scanned a sheet of paper. “You’ll be rotating the command post duty with two other officers. Since you’re the new kid on the block, I’ve assigned you to the night shift—1800 to 0200.” He shoved the paper across the desk to McGriffin. “I hate to throw you right into the job, but we’re low on help around here. Any problem starting your duty tonight?”

McGriffin’s eyes widened. “No, sir. I guess not.”

“Good.” DeVries stood and extended his hand. “Glad to have you.”

“Thanks, Colonel.”

As McGriffin turned to leave, DeVries called after him. “Bill?”

“Sir?”

DeVries nodded his head toward McGriffin. “Nice hairs—but they won’t hack it at my base. You aren’t flying trash haulers anymore.”

“I was just going to get a haircut this afternoon, sir.”

“That’s what I like to hear.” DeVries turned to a pile of paper on his desk.

Red-faced, McGriffin turned on his heel, executing the first perfect about-face he’d done since he was a dooley.

Chapter 2

Wednesday, 1 June, 0830 local

Wendover AFB, Nevada

White noise washed over the area. Vikki Osborrn scrutinized the craft as it taxied off the end of the runway to the east of them. Although the plane was half a mile away, the sound from the jet’s engines made it impossible to speak. A truck with an oversized sign exclaiming follow me led the shrieking jet across an access road and past ten armored vehicles. Dozens of men clutching M-16’s stood vigil along the plane’s route.

Engines running, the camouflaged aircraft slowly pivoted on the concrete apron. Sand, kicked up from the exhaust, swirled overhead in crazy patterns.

A uniformed airman decked out in tan battle-dress uniform and wearing earphones held two bright orange flashlights. He kept his left arm parallel to the ground and urged the plane to keep turning with his right. Through the jet’s multifaceted window, the pilot kept his eyes glued on the airman until the airman crossed both arms over his head. The engines cut back and started winding down.

When the plane’s engines grew quiet, Dr. Anthony Harding spoke.

“Have you found it?”

Vikki flipped through
Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft,
a large book filled with pictures of aircraft from every nation. “Not yet. I’ve found something like it—a C-5—but it looks too wide.”

Harding glanced over at the book she held, then squinted back at the jet. “Keep looking. It’s got to be in there.”

Vikki pushed her hair back. Bleached from the sun, long blond hair adorned her tan face. She’d cause a man’s head to turn, but only once. The appearance of glamor was striking, but up close the seriousness in her eyes overwhelmed the rest of her face. Upon inspection, the initial mid-twenties guess for her age melted to a figure closer to thirty-five.

Premature wrinkles tattooed the area around her eyes, and her skin had started to show the effect of too much sun. In a few years her skin would take on the leathery look that cursed those who worked in the field. Her tank top fit nicely, revealing small, rounded breasts. She crossed her legs and nervously bounced her sandals against the van’s interior.

Harding turned back to the plane. Along with the rest of the tourists gawking at the convoy, Harding and Vikki were inconspicuous in the long line of cars that were stopped by the runway.

Harding studied the plane. “There are ten armored vehicles, two flatbeds, and about seventy-five men, all with automatic weapons. Not counting the fuel trucks, I’d guess the armored vehicles each have bazookas and various other nasty weapons on them.” He lifted his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

Vikki stopped flipping through the pages. She squinted at one of the photographs, comparing it to the plane off to their right. “I’ve found it.”

Harding moved the binoculars back to his eyes. “Well?”

“C-17 Globemaster III, cargo aircraft of the U.S. Air Force,” she recited. “Twenty-five hundred nautical mile range carrying a max payload of 170,900 pounds, and a top airspeed of 0.77 mach.” She looked up. “So what does that tell us?”

“Not much,” answered Harding, “except if we can believe the intelligence NUFA gave us, the next time a C-17 lands at Wendover, chances are it will either be loading or unloading nuclear weapons. And if we’re going to steal one of them, this is the time to do it.”

Vikki stared. “Steal a nuke? Are you crazy? Look at the mouseketeers out there. They’ve got this place locked up tighter than supermax. I don’t want to die doing something stupid.”

Harding was silent for a moment.

Vikki narrowed her eyes at him. She studied his dark, squat features. His once solid body had given way to a slight paunch. The wire-framed glasses added to the studious look. Gray peppered his hair, and a large bald spot adorned his head. He was on the wrong side of forty, and looked more like Vikki’s father than her lover.

She scanned the concrete apron where activity began to pick up. Armored trucks encircled the C-17, reminding her of covered wagons closing in to keep attacking Indians away. A hundred and fifty years and they’re still using the same tactics, she thought.

Men scurried around the plane and took their positions on the ground, prone, with their weapons pointed outward. In the distance four helicopters hovered, not moving from their posts. Sun reflected off a deserted hangar behind the apron.

Harding spoke to himself. “They certainly seem to be covering all the bases.”

“What?”

Harding pointed to the helicopters Vikki had just noticed. “They’re guarding the C-17 from the air as well as the ground. They don’t want to chance anything going wrong.”

Military police stood at a roadblock, blocking traffic to allow operations to continue. A police car sat off to the side of the road.

The C-17 sat on a pad, north of Vikki and Harding; the runway was east of them, and Alpha Base to the west. Vikki could barely make out the town of Wendover fifteen miles north of the C-17.

She leaned her head out the window. No breeze blew in the dry desert air. Heat rippled up from the road.

The flatbeds positioned themselves behind the C-17’s gaping rear door. White, oversized barrels were carefully taken from the aircraft and gingerly strapped onto the flatbed, anchored by a series of straps and cables, keeping them upright and secure against tilting. Each barrel took less than a minute to position. After ten minutes the first flatbed pulled away to allow the second one access.

Once the drums were securely fastened to the second flatbed, two armored personnel carriers drove away from the plane, followed by the two flatbeds. A Ford Bronco, resplendent with machine guns and an official-looking flag waving from the front, sped in front of the convoy.

The convoy inched west down the main road. Several armed men guarded the route. Scanning the area, they kept close watch for anything that might approach the convoy.

Once the convoy had passed, security policemen started waving the traffic on. Vikki started the van. “What now?”

Harding pointed to the road. “Just follow the convoy.”

Vikki put the Chevy van into gear and started slowly off, heading west.

“You had better begin thinking fast,” she said, nodding ahead of her. “They’re sending one of the guards to stop us.”

A security policeman stepped from the side of the road and stopped the cars following the convoy. He walked straight toward them.

The guard sauntered up to the van. He shouldered his rifle and grinned at Vikki, all but ignoring Harding. “Afternoon, ma’am.”

Harding leaned past Vikki. “Good afternoon, sir. What seems to be the problem?”

The security policeman looked surprised. “You don’t have to call me sir. I’m not an officer or anything.” He didn’t look at Harding when he spoke, but instead smiled at Vikki.

Vikki furrowed her eyebrows. “What’s the holdup? Are we doing anything wrong?”

“You’ll have to wait here until the convoy gets back on the road.” The security policeman pointed down a dry arroyo. “The bridge can’t take the convoy’s weight, so they have to drive down into the arroyo. Once they’re back on the main road, you can proceed.”

“Thanks,” Vikki said, smiling.

The man tried to make conversation. “Heading for the picnic area?”

Harding answered before Vikki could open her mouth. “Yes, sir.” He nodded to Vikki. “My sister and I are visiting the base and wanted to get some pictures of the crater before we left.”

The security policeman hitched the rifle a little higher on his shoulder when Harding referred to Vikki as his sister. “Well, Alpha Base is certainly the spot to take pictures. It’s the free world’s largest storage facility. The picnic grounds are right outside the main gate. Are you planning to stay long?”

“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….

Livermore, CA

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.