Northeastern Japan
You can’t just kidnap me, throw me in the back of a plane, and steal my invention!” Max Wilson said, pulling the collar of his leather jacket tighter around his neck and looking into the dense forest surrounding them.
“I don’t understand why you keep saying that to me when it’s pretty clear that I can,” Randi replied impatiently.
That man was a good four inches shorter than her, with a heavy build, callused hands, and a nose that looked like it had been broken more than a few times. Not a person you’d guess had PhDs from both Stanford and Cal Tech.
His father had died in an accident in a West Virginia mine when Wilson was only twelve. Out of what seemed like an extremely misguided sense of loyalty, he’d followed in the old man’s footsteps—dropping out of high school and descending into those same shafts.
It hadn’t taken long before the mining company’s engineers noticed that young Max seemed able to come up with solutions to problems that were cheaper, more workable, and more elegant than their own. And then there was the matter of his hobbies: number theory, quantum mechanics, and paleomagnetism. Apparently, he was a pretty fair bowler too.
One of the company’s geologists recommended Wilson to his alma mater, and he was immediately accepted. He spent the next ten years in academia but eventually returned—in his own way—to the mines.
“Well, you are smoking hot. So I suppose that’s some consolation.”
“Thank you, Dr. Wilson. That’s very kind of you to say.”
“Call me Max. And you are?”
“Randi.”
“Randi…”
“Just Randi.”
“Government,” he muttered.
“You came highly recommended by Greg Maple.”
This time his words were too low to fully understand but she was pretty sure they had something to do with kicking his colleague’s ass when he got back to the States.
Randi put a hand on his back and led him deeper into the trees, winding along until they reached an area that had been covered with a camouflage canopy.
“Where are we anyway?”
“The woods,” Randi replied.
“Not American, though. Too long a flight.”
“It’s not important.”
“That’s because you know where you are. And you weren’t kidnapped.”
She shrugged. Hard to argue the logic.
They came over a rise and Wilson stopped short. Just ahead was a silver cylinder about twenty yards long and a little less than two in diameter. It had been in multiple pieces when it arrived, making it a hell of a lot easier to smuggle into the mountains of middle-of-nowhere, Japan, but the five kids swarming around it almost had it back together.
“Hey!” Wilson said. “Those are my grad students!”
“I thought you might appreciate the help.”
He spun toward her, obviously infuriated, and she countered with what she hoped was a disarming smile. It would have to do. Her normal methods of persuasion were completely off limits with civilian academics.
“Help with what?” he said, his voice straining with anger.
Randi pointed north. “Tunneling through that mountain.”
His face went blank. “You can’t be serious.”
“Don’t I look serious?”
“It’s a goddamn prototype! It’s never even gotten dirty.”
“Yeah, but your last version got dirty and worked pretty well from what I hear. It’s my understanding that this model’s even better.”
Wilson’s invention was a next-generation tunneling machine. On the surface, it didn’t seem much different from the ones currently in use, but the similarities ended pretty quickly when you looked deeper. Traditionally designed machines ejected enormous amounts of dirt that had to be hauled away, and braces had to be placed at intervals to keep the shaft from collapsing. And then there were the massive power cables necessary to keep them running.
Wilson’s system did away with all those complexities. It had a nuclear core that powered the diggers. The excess reactor heat was used to fuse the earth lining the tunnel into a substance stronger than concrete. The unit he was ultimately working toward would be larger than a locomotive, but this much smaller prototype was perfect for the very stupid idea she and her team had settled on.
“There’s no way to power it,” Wilson protested. “You wouldn’t believe the red tape I have to deal with to get nuclear fuel from the government.”
“I had it gassed up before it was shipped.”
“Bullshit.”
Again, Randi shrugged. “When I ask for something, I get it, Max. You should keep that in mind.”
He eyed her suspiciously for a moment and then jogged toward his invention. When his students saw their professor approaching, they abandoned what they were doing and surrounded him, all talking at once in panicked voices that were a little too loud.
Randi watched for a few seconds and then turned and started back through the trees, angling toward a small table where Eric Ivers and Vanya were poring over a topographic map. Reiji had taken Karen on another of their endless supply runs. Everything had to arrive in small shipments so as not to attract attention.
“How are we looking?”
Vanya gave her a worried glance and Ivers just laughed.
Neither reaction was difficult to understand. They were halfway up the side of a mountain that contained a nuclear storage facility that they believed housed the most dangerous weapon ever built by human hands. Their plan? If you can’t get in the front door, bust a window and go in the back.
“So not good?”
“No, no,” Ivers said. “We’ve got this by the ass. All we have to do is crawl through two miles of extremely hot tunnel, hand-dig the last bit so no one in the facility hears Wilson’s little underground nuclear missile, and then leap out and yell Freeze! You’re under arrest!”
“What could possibly go wrong?” Randi said.
Vanya winced. Obviously, her attempt at humor had fallen flat. “What couldn’t? You think that a prototype digging machine put together by a bunch of students in the woods isn’t going to break down? You think Takahashi doesn’t have seismic sensors that are going to lock onto us a mile away? And how are we going to hand-dig the last portion? Half that mountain is solid rock. But let’s, for a moment, ascribe to the fantasy that we actually get into that facility. How many guards are we going to be up against? Is the layout still what’s on the original plans we have or has Takahashi changed it? What weapons are they armed with?”
He fell silent, though Randi knew he probably could have gone on for another hour.
No one spoke for a long time. Vanya had said what they were all thinking, but what alternatives did they have? As inconceivable as it was, Klein had been clear that her team was the best hope of averting the greatest humanitarian disaster in history. She knew herself well enough to know that she wouldn’t be able to live with stepping to the sidelines. For her, it would be better to go down fighting. But that wasn’t necessarily true of the people who had gotten stuck with this detail.
“Look,” Randi started. “Normally when I say this I don’t mean it. But today, I do. If you want out, no one’s going to think any less of you. Hell, most likely no one’s going to be around to think any less of you.”
Vanya thought about it for a few moments. “I’d be dead twice over if it weren’t for Mr. Klein. I will see this through. No matter how it ends.”
“Eric?”
His normally broad grin faltered. “I knew this was a shitty job when I signed on, Randi, but that thing Wilson built is a grave digger and you know it. We’re going to die in that tunnel and no one’s ever even going to know. No parades or newspaper articles or statues at the academy. Just a cozy hole in the side of a Japanese mountain and a few friends to share it with.”
“So you’re out.”
He shook his head. “Karen says she won’t leave. And since she’s the only family I have, I figure we might as well die together.”