Critical Reaction (25 page)

“Yes. Because I heard a gunshot on the roof of LB5 that night,” he said slowly. “I don’t know why and I don’t know who’s behind it, but I’m being asked to change my statement about it. I won’t.”

CHAPTER 26

The bustle of activity by the new Wolffia team in the bowels of LB5 was heartening tonight. Adam surveyed the scientists and techs making final testing preparations approvingly, listening to the snippets of discussions audible to him here at the primary monitoring station.

Most of the talk was unintelligible to him. Adam was a manager. He was not a nuclear scientist. Nor did he aspire to be one. He’d studied enough physics and been in his job long enough to follow a conversation between two of this breed. But he couldn’t begin to contribute, any more than a beginning Spanish student listening to the banter of two native speakers.

But then again, he didn’t need to. If the talk grew too complicated, he had a Project staff person who could translate. What Adam
did
need to understand was whether Project Wolffia was achieving its goal. And tonight, he was standing in the LB5 laboratory with high expectations.

It was his boss, Cameron Foote, who defined success for this Project. Project Wolffia, he’d say, would be worth its seven years and nine figures in research costs the day it produced a high-energy chemical trigger—the device that made the radioactive heart of a nuclear bomb detonate with its enormous capacity for destruction. Only in this case, the dramatically smaller trigger could make possible smaller bombs with proportionately more
plutonium—capable of delivering a neutron pulse of radiation ten times that of current nuclear weapons. Bombs would become far cheaper, far more lightweight, and far more capable of being transported to a battlefield to irradiate men and material, rendering both permanently useless. Smaller, more potent radiation weapons would change everything, bypassing the stalemate of heavy thermonuclear bombs.
The West,
Vice-President Foote would say,
would instantly
capture the high ground
.

That was it, pure and simple.

Adam always permitted his enthusiasm to show when Foote spoke on the subject. But underneath, he was keenly interested in a more tangible result: billions of dollars more in profits flowing to Covington Nuclear. Which meant an extraordinary bonus trickling to Adam.

Adam looked around the lab at the scientists settling in, preparing to begin the test. Development of this trigger was not, he reminded himself, necessarily illegal under international treaties. But the United States had been denying any effort to produce such components since the late 1990s. Which was why this team was working for a private company seeking to achieve the trigger on its own, working secretly in the lower levels of a defunct plutonium facility. Totally bypassing the cumbersome oversight, bureaucratic roadblocks, and political barriers of a congressionally approved program.

“Moving through channels,” Foote had told Adam when he’d brought him on board, “the Project would require triple the time, tenfold the cost, and more political guts than the whole of Washington could muster in a thousand years. That’s not an option for America.”

Foote had concluded his lecture, saying, “And what better use of resources than setting up the lab in this moribund plutonium facility, already under Covington’s supervision and control—a place already contaminated and slated for demolition. A location where Covington need only complete experimentation
before LB5 is torn down—a convenient fact since Covington is in charge of the cleanup and destruction schedule for the entirety of Hanford, including this building.”

Adam had often wondered, given the secrecy of the Project, how many others even within Covington knew of it. Less than half a dozen key executives and managers, he’d guess: people capable of keeping the flow of research dollars coming to Sherman and LB5. And how many, he’d wondered, were driven by the patriotic principles that motivated Cameron Foote—as opposed to the enormous expectation of profit to be garnered from the sale of the new chemical triggers to the United States military?

And most curious of all, of those “in the know” about Project Wolffia, how many had ever heard Adam’s name? Except for Cameron Foote, he would bet not a single one.

“We’re ready to proceed,” Dr. John Wilson said. As the replacement head of the Wolffia team, Adam had insisted he be at his side during the test. Adam nodded in response, instinctively checking his protective eyewear.

The gear should have been unnecessary. They were outside of the specially constructed (and since the October explosion, reconstructed) concrete-and-steel-reinforced chamber where the red mercury trigger was about to be tested. All contingencies had been evaluated and controlled to avoid pressure changes—such as those caused by the errant Vat 17 that had spelled failure for the previous experiment. Besides, their observation of the event would be indirect: through the video feed from within the chamber.

A tech began a countdown. Adam’s cynical side wanted to dismiss it as melodramatic—but after the effort of the past two years, he couldn’t stay removed from the excitement of it all.

It reached zero.

Viewed through the video feed, the flash was like a miniature sun going nova, spreading across the length of the chamber at
terrific speed—like a ball of fire shot from a cannon. Then, as quickly as it had happened, it was over.

The half a dozen scientists and analysts spread across the room were transfixed by their monitors. Adam turned to Dr. Wilson, who was looking over the shoulder of a team member’s monitor to his left.

“Was it successful?” Adam asked.

Dr. Wilson demurred for a moment. Then he stood up. “We have to examine the data, the heat production, whether it properly detonated the assays of plutonium in the chamber. And we’ll have to reproduce this a few more times at different heat gradients to ensure reliability.”

Adam wanted to shake the man for a simple response. “Is the trigger a success or not?”

The dour scientist couldn’t even bring himself to smile. “Well, if you must have an immediate answer, I’d say yes. A qualified yes.”

Adam wanted to shout out loud at these words. He grinned for the both of them. “Congratulations, Doctor,” he said. Across the room a ripple of muted high fives and smiles were visible.

Did physicists ever party, Adam wondered through his own exultation.

He savored the moment. And there was another positive from this event as well. For the first time in months, he could look forward to his call to Cameron Foote later this evening.

CHAPTER 27

T
EN
D
AYS
U
NTIL
T
RIAL

Seated near the window, Ryan examined the latest email from Dr. Strong on his laptop. More reassurances that the report would be done on time—which meant within the next two days. Still missing were any details about his conclusions.

Maybe Ryan should have insisted on a face to face with Strong before moving forward—like he had with Dr. Nadine. He’d decided not to make the trip to California based upon his hard-earned experience that the more exalted an expert’s pedigree, the more their capacity to punish pushy lawyers by demonstrating their “intellectual independence.” More than once that had resulted in aloof, scholarly opinions rather than ones that advocated a client’s case. Ryan didn’t want that to happen in Kieran’s case—especially with no time for revisions to the expert’s product.

Still, in their numerous phone conferences, Dr. Strong had made no noise about an inability to support Kieran’s claims. He’d just stayed maddeningly vague.

The knock at the front door startled Ryan from his thoughts. It was likely Dr. Trân, twenty minutes early.

Neither Kieran nor Emily had stirred from their seats on the couch to answer the door. Kieran was staring across the room while Emily looked near to taking his hand.

The young man was understandably nervous today: Trân was coming to share his opinions—including those about Kieran’s radiation exposure. It hadn’t helped that the doctor insisted on explaining them in person. Ryan hadn’t seen Kieran this withdrawn since their first meeting at the Atomic Café nearly two months ago.

Ryan opened the door to face the smiling figure of Dr. Trân. He stepped aside and waved him in.

Dr. Trân looked as though he hadn’t stopped smiling since their last meeting in Spokane. Still dressed casually, his reading glasses remained balanced so close to the edge of his forehead that Ryan felt the urge to nudge them back.

He introduced the doctor, who took a seat in a spare chair. Without any fanfare, the man opened a leather valise and produced multiple copies of two binders—the first titled “Cause of the Explosion at LB5”; the second, “Blood Study Results—Kieran Mullaney.” The instant everyone had received a set, he settled back and began addressing them in the objective tone of a lecturing professor.

“The explosions that injured Kieran Mullaney were not caused solely, or even principally, by detonation of the contents of Vat 17,” he said.

Ryan couldn’t have heard that correctly. He asked the doctor to repeat his statement. He did so—word for word.

“How do you reach
that
opinion,” Ryan burst out.

The doctor’s smile did not waiver. “Vat 17’s contents lacked the explosive potential to breach the safety doors between the mixing room and the third-floor corridor to LB5. Yet those doors were destroyed after Mr. Mullaney left the room. So while the Vat 17 chemicals were involved, they could not have been the primary fuel for the October sixteenth explosions.”

Ryan had hoped for an expert who would contest Covington’s contention that Kieran caused the explosion by turning the Vat 17 valve, but this was a giant leap beyond even that. How could
Vat 17 not have had a significant role in the explosion? His paranoia about the man kicked in once more. Was Trân creating a theory so absurd that no jury could accept it?

Ryan had never told Emily or Kieran about his skepticism regarding Dr. Trân—nor his reasons for it. He hadn’t wanted to undermine their confidence in the man until he was sure he had Dr. Strong’s report. Now he wished he hadn’t kept silent on the topic.

“Explain,” Ryan demanded firmly.

Dr. Trân nodded, then directed them each to a diagram in the center of his cause report. It showed a vat, with a description of its contents and chemical formulae beneath it.

“Vat 17 contained tributyl phosphate, hydrochloric acid, and other chemicals capable of detonating if sufficiently concentrated. The Vat 17 sampling data for the year before the explosion, coupled with Mr. Mullaney’s description of the container that night, supports a conclusion that the active chemicals in the vat were reaching a concentration of reactivity after years of water evaporation. Assuming Mr. Mullaney opened the valve under the vat, that action likely released a stream of fluid out of the steel tube beneath the tank, further concentrating the chemicals and accelerating a likely explosion.”

“Then you agree with the Covington experts,” Emily said.

“Only to this point,” Trân responded. “The Covington experts go on to conclude that the Vat 17 chemicals then exploded immediately, followed by chemicals in containers elsewhere in the room. I don’t agree. The accelerated concentration of the Vat 17 chemicals may have resulted in an explosion minutes or an hour later, but not likely within seconds. And more importantly, Covington’s conclusion fails to account for the fact that the chemicals in Vat 17 lacked sufficient explosive potential to blow through the mixing room blast doors after Mr. Mullaney escaped the room. I’ve evaluated the tolerances
for those doors, and the Vat 17 chemicals were insufficient to achieve that end.”

“Couldn’t Vat 17
plus
the chemicals of other vats have been enough?” Kieran asked.

Dr. Trân shook his head, directing them to a bar graph identifying the eighteen vats in room 365 and their contents.

“My examination of the mixing-room matrix document that you recently obtained demonstrates that there were no chemicals elsewhere in 365, even combined with the Vat 17 materials, capable of opening the blast doors.”

This was starting to sound like blather on blather. Ryan held his tongue as Dr. Trân flipped to yet another diagram.

“I’ve examined seismographic data from Spokane, Boise, and Portland which detected the October sixteenth explosions. Covington postulates that the later explosions resulted from chemicals in vats elsewhere in the room, ignited by the Vat 17 explosion. But the seismographic data confirms that the second and third explosions were nearly as powerful as the first. That would only be possible if chemicals elsewhere in the room had the same explosive potential as those of Vat 17. They did not. In fact, they were considerably less explosive.”

“If the Vat 17 chemicals couldn’t have ruptured the doors,” Emily said, “and the other vats in the room weren’t powerful enough to cause the later explosions, what powered the three explosions that night?”

Dr. Trân shrugged. “I can only conclude other explosive substances unaccounted for.”

“What substances?” Kieran asked, agitated. “From where?”

Dr. Trân set the Cause binder down. “Building diagrams show that the steel tube below Vat 17—the one you came into contact with, Mr. Mullaney—was once used to convey its contents to glove boxes and production rooms in the lower levels of LB5. By opening the valve on that pipe, you not only sped the occurrence of an explosion of the Vat 17 chemicals, you also opened
a conduit for the pressure and heat developing in that vat to the lower production areas in the building. I believe that heat and pressure caused an explosion of materials in the lower levels.”

“I’d like to hear an answer to Kieran’s question,” Ryan demanded. “What materials are we talking about?”

Dr. Trân leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. “I can’t say. But given the magnitude of the three explosions, substances of high explosive potential. Very powerful materials, based upon the seismic data alone.”