Northeastern Japan
Randi Russell ducked under the branches of a tree and continued upward toward the intermittent flashes of blue sky. The mountain was just one in the endless rolling carpet of green that covered this remote part of the island. The complete lack of trails was comforting from an anonymity standpoint, but not ideal for speed. The foliage was nearly as dense as she’d run into in Laos, though it wasn’t as hot, thank God.
She put her back against a tree and lifted the nozzle of her CamelBak to her mouth. Visibility was only about ten feet but she was confident she wasn’t being followed. In order to even approximate silence, someone would have to slow to a rate of no more than a couple hundred yards an hour, and that would have left them crawling along the canyon below.
She’d decided that plausible deniability was completely lost—no one was going to believe that an American bushwhacking toward a nuclear storage facility was a lost hiker. In light of that, Randi had equipped herself with ultralight hiking boots, fatigues dyed specifically for the environment, and a silenced Beretta with two spare clips. If anyone spotted her, there would be no doubt about her purpose, but at least there would be a reasonable chance for escape.
She started out again, weaving between trees and crawling under bushes as she made her way methodically to the summit. Hopefully, this one wouldn’t blow up like the last.
When the terrain started to level out, she dropped to her stomach and slid across the dead leaves and sticks, scanning for surveillance equipment and booby traps. Not that she really had any idea what to look for. Based on the latest from Fred Klein, goddamn space-based lasers and genetically modified, glow-in-the-dark rottweilers weren’t out of the question.
Randi slowed further, slithering through the tall grass until the slope turned downward. It took a few moments to mat down a hole sufficient to see though, but when she did, she was pleased to learn that her map-and-compass skills hadn’t entirely disappeared in the GPS era. Below, at a distance of about a mile, was exactly what she’d come to see.
It looked pretty much like the pictures she’d found on the Internet. The entrance was a natural cavern about twenty yards high and a bit less in width. According to the publicly available plans, it descended into the mountain for nearly two-thirds of a mile before dead-ending into a set of blast doors. Beyond those doors, the cavern was human made, leading into the main nuclear waste storage area.
There was one access road, paved to allow heavy trucks to travel along it safely. The entrance was ringed with a not particularly formidable-looking chain-link fence, creating a courtyard large enough for a semi to be unloaded in. Steel tracks were visible going into the cave entrance, but none of the transportation carts that traveled along them were in evidence. She guessed that they were stored just inside to keep them out of the weather. Other than that, there was nothing but a tiny guardhouse with a single guard.
Randi let out a long breath and retrieved her binoculars, studying the area in more detail. Even magnified, there wasn’t much to see. Or, more precisely, she was seeing exactly what someone would expect at this type of installation. Either Takahashi was as clever as he was given credit for or this really was nothing more than a radioactive trash heap.
Randi focused her lenses on the guard and felt a glimmer of hope for the first time in days. He looked too hard to be of the hourly variety. She waited for him to exit the guardhouse and watched as he walked the fence line, peering into trees that had been cut back about seventy-five yards. No gut hanging over his pants. No wheezing or waddling. He moved with graceful efficiency and was carrying a Belgian assault rifle. Not a particularly common weapon and one that she herself had taken a liking to a few years back.
Randi shifted her gaze back to the cavern entrance, but all she could see was darkness and shadow. Was Smith in there? Was he alive? And if so, what was his condition?
Her gut told her that this was it. Takahashi was all about efficiency and it was a hell of a lot more efficient to commandeer an existing facility than to build one from scratch. Case in point: Fukushima’s Reactor Four. Add to that the decidedly non-doughnut-eating guard and she had a reasonable leg to stand on. A thin, weak leg to be sure, but there weren’t a hell of a lot of other options at this point.
Based on what she was hearing from Klein and what she was reading in the papers, there wasn’t any more time for hand-wringing. The shit was about to hit the fan in Asia and it wasn’t clear whether even the full diplomatic and military might of the United States was going to be able to do anything about it.
So, that left her. A lone woman lying in soggy grass. Outstanding.
She pulled back slowly, covering about fifty yards before she stood and started back down the way she’d come. What wasn’t she seeing? What had Takahashi’s scientists been doing for the past three decades? Sure, the nanotech, torpedoes, EMPs, and germs. But that was just the big stuff. What kind of defenses had he set up around that entrance? Had he built things that she’d never even dreamed of, let alone trained for?
And what about the nanotech? If it was indeed being developed and stored inside, was it possible that an assault on the facility could release it? According to Greg Maple, that had the potential to be an end-of-days scenario.
Bottom line? She was screwed. Takahashi had won.
Randi jumped off a boulder, dropping to the dirt five feet below. When she landed, she shook her head violently and forced a few deep breaths of the mountain air.
This wasn’t the time to start feeling sorry for herself. Nothing was impossible.