Ground Zero (The X-Files) (20 page)
But Sawtooth had worked—spectacularly well. It was in the days before spy satellites, and the perimeter of the atoll had been ringed with gunboats, calmly confident that they wouldn’t be seen. These waters were infrequently traveled, and the captains of the cutters had instructions to chase off any fishing boats or sightseers. Even so, the anticipated flash of the Sawtooth device was visible for hundreds of miles across the open water, rising like the brief glow of sunrise in the wrong part of the sky at the wrong time of day.
Everyone had been so naive then. They had assumed that the small, barely charted atoll was uninhabited, and so the scientists and sailors had not looked too hard to find any indigenous islanders.
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The Navy expected to find no one on Enika, and so no one had ever really searched.
During preparations for the Sawtooth explosion, the engineers and sailors had not bothered to report signs of encampments, tools, nets found washed up on the rough reefs. They dismissed the junk as old artifacts and looked no farther, because they didn’t particularly want to find anything else. Such information might cause problems. The perimeter boats had all pulled back and the main destroyer, the USS
Yorktown
, had moved out to a safe distance beyond the reef line. Those lucky few observers who had been assigned welding glasses stood on deck to see, while the others promised not to open their eyes at the critical point. Still, when the Sawtooth detonation went off, several dozen crewmen suffered from brief flash blindness. Ives remembered. Some things were impossible to forget. The roar sounded like the world cracking open, and the mushroom cloud rose like Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone—only about a million times as big—sucking up vaporized coral and sand along with an immense volume of seawater. The incandescent plume towered like an awesome thunderhead heralding Armageddon. The shockwaves slamming through the water caused the
Yorktown
to rock like a toy boat in a bathtub….
Several hours later, after it was all over and the sea had grown calm again, initial inspection teams from the
Yorktown
suited up and took their small cutters back to the atoll to plant radiation counters and to map out the effects of the fallout. A seaplane drifted overhead, taking photographs for before-and-after images to determine how the atoll’s topography had changed. Being one of the most junior seamen, Ives had been “volunteered” to be part of a small group on a 179
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perimeter cruise around Enika to study any anomalies in the aftermath. What they found proved even more astonishing than the detonation itself.
Standing out in open water more than two miles from shore was a boy about ten years old. All alone. Just waiting. At first young Robert Ives had quailed in terror, thinking that some vengeful angel had come to punish them for what they had done to the pristine island. The boy appeared to be standing right on the surface of the water like a marker buoy, aimless and lost. Only later did the rescuers remember that the low reefs stretched in a labyrinth just beneath the surface far from the actual island. The boy had somehow walked on them, following the submerged reefs away from what had once been his island.
They hauled him aboard. He was speechless and shaking, horribly burned, his face puckered, his eyes sunken and sightless from the glare of the blast. Most of his hair had been scalded away, and his skin was an angry red, as if he had been boiled alive. The agony of the boy’s burns must have been even greater due to the constant lapping of saltwater that drenched him. No one expected him to live when they brought him back to the
Yorktown
. In fact, the ship’s doctor seemed ambivalent, as if he didn’t
want
the boy to survive, because he would be blind and hideously scarred for his entire life…and because the very existence of a survivor was an accusing finger, proof that natives had lived on Enika Atoll. An entire tribe had been wiped out in the Sawtooth blast, save for this sole survivor. But to everyone’s surprise the boy had recovered, despite his festering injuries. He remained utterly silent for days, and then finally croaked out words in a strange language that none of the crew could understand.
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The data obtained from the Sawtooth test were filed away with the Defense Department, and the Navy placed the entire event under the strictest order of silence. When the
Yorktown
finally docked again at Pearl Harbor, the horribly burned boy was taken quietly to an orphanage in Honolulu. Official records showed that he was the only survivor of a terrible house fire that had killed the rest of his family. Having no other living relatives, the boy was raised as a ward of the state, although he received a generous (and mysterious) allowance from the Navy.
Ives had never seen or heard of the boy again, and he wondered how the poor victim had managed to fare in life. He had not thought of the boy in some time, but now all those memories had come flooding back with nightmare intensity—ever since Ives received his orders to take the
Dallas
out to the Marshall Islands.
Captain Robert Ives had hoped never to see Enika Atoll again. But now he had returned…for yet another secret nuclear test.
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Alameda Naval Air Station,
Alameda, California
Thursday, 2:22 P.M.
Mulder and Scully arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area, red-eyed and exhausted from the non-stop travel, knowing they had a much longer trip still in front of them. Mulder rented a car, and they drove toward the Alameda Naval Air Station, then spent the better part of an hour at the gates showing their paperwork, answering questions, and finally arguing with a stoic military policeman who made repeated phone calls to his superiors inside.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the MP came back for the third time, “but your story doesn’t check out. We have no C-5 transport plane leaving for Hawaii this afternoon. We have no record of you coming, or of your place on board such a plane, if one existed.”
Mulder wearily pulled out the paperwork again. “This was signed by Brigadier General Bradoukis, directly from the Pentagon. It’s regarding a classified
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project out in the Marshall Islands. I know you don’t have the authorization sitting on the top of your desk, because they wouldn’t make it so blatant—but my partner and I are authorized to go on this flight.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but there
is
no flight,” the MP insisted. Mulder heaved an angry sigh, and Scully squeezed his arm to calm him. Before he could speak again, Scully broke in,
“Why don’t you talk to your superior again, Sergeant,” she said, “and this time mention two words to him:
Bright Anvil
. We’ll wait here until you come back.”
The MP retreated to his guard shack wearing a skeptical expression and shaking his head. Mulder turned to Scully in surprise. She smiled at him. “You rarely accomplish anything by getting angry.”
Mulder sighed, then forced a chuckle. “Sometimes I wonder if I ever accomplish anything—period.”
Within minutes, the MP came back and opened the gate for them. He offered no apologies or any explanations whatsoever. He simply handed them a map of the base and directed them where to go.
“Wasn’t your father stationed here at one time?” Mulder asked. He knew how deeply the death of her father had affected her.
“Briefly,” Scully said, “around the time I started college at Berkeley.”
Mulder looked over at her. “I didn’t know you went to Berkeley. As an undergrad?”
“Just for my first year.”
“Ah,” he said and waited for her to continue. But Scully seemed uncomfortable about the subject, so he didn’t press her for details.
Exactly where the guard had directed them, they found the whale-sized C-5 transport. Small hydraulic vehicles hauled cargo, stuffing crates into the swollen, olive-colored belly of the plane.
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Forklifts raised pallets filled with the final loads of equipment, while civilian passengers and military personnel climbed aboard, using a set of steps that had been hastily rolled up against the plane.
“See, Scully,” he said, “they have no C-5 transport plane here on the base, and nothing whatsoever is scheduled to depart.” He opened his hands in a helpless gesture. “But then, a tiny aircraft like this must get misplaced all the time.”
Scully, who had long ago accepted the secrecy and the denials surrounding classified projects, made no rejoinder. Carrying his suitcase and briefcase, Mulder bounded up the metal steps that led up to the aircraft passenger compartment.
“I hope we can get ourselves a window seat,” he said.
“Nonsmoking.”
“I think I’ll try to take a nap on the way,” Scully answered. Inside the no-frills transport plane, Mulder looked around the sharply shadowed interior, which was lit from behind and below by the open cargo doors. Other passengers—naval officers and enlisted men, as well as half a dozen nonmilitary types—milled about, finding places to sit. Mulder saw no baggage compartment, only webbing stretched across the metal wall panels, where others had already secured their personal baggage. He went back to tuck his suitcase into an empty spot, then returned to take Scully’s bag, securing it next to his own. He kept his briefcase with him so that the two of them could look over notes and discuss the case during the long flight to Pearl Harbor; after a brief stopover, they would change to a much smaller plane and head out to the Western Pacific.
When he returned to Scully, she reached inside her purse and handed him a few sticks of chewing gum. “What, is my breath bad?” he asked.
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“No, but you’ll need it for the flight. I’ve flown on these Navy planes before with my father. They’re not pressurized. Chewing the gum helps equalize the pressure in your ears—trust me, it’s my professional medical advice.”
Mulder took the sticks skeptically and slipped them into his shirt pocket. “I knew we were getting a bargain ticket, but I at least expected some oxygen.”
“Blame it on military budget cuts,” Scully said. Mulder and Scully searched for a comfortable seat, but all the chairs were hard and stiff-backed. They both buckled in. Finally, the cargo doors closed, and muffled shouts from inside announced the plane’s readiness for departure. One of the sailors pulled the thick passenger compartment doors shut as the engines began to power up with a loud vibrating hum.
“I guess they don’t have a first-class section,” Mulder said. He turned around in his seat and recognized some of the civilians already buckled into their seats, scientists and technicians he had seen at the Teller Nuclear Research Facility. Mulder smiled and waved as a bespectacled redhead blushed and tried to look small. “Hello, Victor! Victor Ogilvy—fancy meeting you here.”
Victor stammered, “Uh, hello Mr. Agent…I didn’t know the FBI was scheduled to watch the test preparations.”
“Well, Victor, I told you I was going to make some phone calls,” he said feeling like a bully, and somewhat embarrassed at it.
Scully leaned closer to Mulder. “We’ve got a long flight ahead of us, so let’s be friends. We’re all here with our country’s best interests at heart, right Victor?”
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The young redheaded technician nodded vigorously.
“Right, Mulder?” She elbowed him in the ribs.
“Of course, Scully.”
The hulking transport plane began to lurch along, lumbering into motion like a behemoth, as aerodynamic as a bumblebee, but orders of magnitude louder. The C-5 accelerated down the runway and gracefully lifted off, hauling its enormous bulk into the air with a roar of jet engines. Before long, the aircraft had gained altitude, circled over the hills east of Oakland, and then headed straight out to sea. Mulder turned back to look at Victor Ogilvy. “So, Victor, why don’t we make this into a regular tropical vacation with sun and surf and sparkling beaches?”
Victor looked surprised. “No such luck, Agent Mulder. Did you both bring along your rain slickers?”
“What for?” Scully asked.
Victor blinked again behind his round eyeglasses. “And I thought you two had done your homework. Maybe you didn’t get as many details as you thought.
“The Bright Anvil test—we’re heading directly into a hurricane.”
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Airborne over the Western Pacific
Friday, 8:07 A.M.
Leaving Pearl Harbor behind on a perfect picture-postcard morning, Scully, Mulder, and the entire crew took off in a smaller plane headed out over the monotonously blue, sundappled Pacific. While dawn chased them over the horizon, Scully looked out the window, her mind drifting far away.
“So,” Mulder said, slouched next to her in a cramped seat, getting comfortable, “did you enjoy our all-expense-paid government trip to Hawaii? A fine day of boredom and waiting, but you can’t beat the hospitality.”
Scully squirmed in her seat, then pulled down the window shade; she couldn’t find a comfortable position as easily as Mulder seemed to. “It was everything I’ve come to expect from a government-paid vacation.”
The plane rattled and hummed as it roared over the ocean. Clouds began to gather in the western
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skies, and Scully had no doubt that as they proceeded the weather would get worse. Mulder didn’t seem the least bit concerned for the safety or integrity of the plane—but then traveling never seemed to bother her partner. Curious to see how the rest of the passengers were holding up, Scully turned around to look at the small cliques scattered throughout the plane. Victor Ogilvy and some of the other Teller Nuclear Research Facility technicians had gathered in the back and were poring over their notebooks and technical papers.
The Navy troops all sat by themselves, talking loudly, completely relaxed as the plane rattled along. Scully knew from her own background that sailors traveled often on a moment’s notice. Thrust together with new groups of seamen, either with plenty in common or few shared interests, they found ways to amuse themselves without difficulty. Mulder had fixed his attention on two young black men diligently playing a game of Stratego with a travel-sized board that used small magnetic pieces. He watched them for a few moments, then looked away with a troubled expression on his face.