BEURY MOUNTAIN, WEST VIRGINIA
Bill McCreary could barely see out of the face mask they’d put over his eyes, nose, and mouth. In frustration, he ripped it off his beefy face for the third time. “It keeps fogging up,” he complained.
The radiological control technician at the guard station was apologetic, but firm. “I’m sorry, sir. But you’ve got to wear that mask at all times beyond this point. No exceptions. Try breathing through your nose. That should cut down on the fogging.”
“Jesus,” McCreary muttered under his breath. “In all the years you’ve been here, have you ever detected radiation levels above background?”
“No, sir. Not down here. But we don’t usually go up to the entrance where you’re going. That’s a highly restricted area with special radiological controls. In fact, I’m surprised you even got clearance to go up there. I mean . . . everything checks out, so you are clear to go. It’s just . . . well, you have to have the proper protective gear if you want to go up there. So if you’ll please bear with me . . .”
McCreary waved away the man’s assistance. “I’ll do it.” He slipped the face mask over his broad face once again and tightened the four rubber straps.
“Ready?” asked the technician.
McCreary nodded that he was. He was suited from head to toe in yellow coveralls, cotton gloves, rubber booties over his shoes, a cotton hood, and now the face mask. With his large frame and oversize physique, he looked like a bright yellow Sasquatch.
The technician quickly donned his own face mask, and the two men climbed into an olive drab Polaris Ranger—a two-seat all-terrain vehicle with the Department of Energy seal on the hood. Once they were both buckled in tightly, the technician gunned the ATV, and they began their three-mile ascent to the entrance of the abandoned Thurmond National Laboratory.
The trip took about twenty-five minutes and was bone-rattlingly bumpy at points. This road doesn’t get much use, McCreary figured. They stopped twice to clear fallen tree limbs and once more to open the final security gate, a heavily padlocked section of barbed-wire fence about one hundred yards from the lab entrance. A large red-and-white sign on the gate read:
WARNING: HIGH RADIATION AREA
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED
The technician opened the metal gate and returned to the ATV. “Okay, sir,” he shouted through his mask. “Beyond this point is a twenty-minute exposure area. You stay longer than that and you’ll exceed your maximum quarterly radiation dosage, which is a violation of federal law. I’ll wait right here for you. There’s a fifteen-minute alarm on your dosimeter. When that goes off, you’ve got five minutes to come back. If you’re not back here at the end of that, my orders require that I sound the RADCON alarm.” He locked eyes with McCreary through their visors. “Please don’t make me do that, sir.”
McCreary nodded.
“Do you know how to operate your radiation monitor?”
McCreary nodded that he did.
The technician held up the portable radiation detector that was attached to McCreary’s coveralls with a lanyard. It was a yellow handheld unit with several buttons and a small digital screen. “It’s set to detect gamma and beta radiation,” he said. “You’ll get audio clicks and a digital readout in milliroentgens per hour. You can change the scale by pushing this button and toggle to counts per minute by pressing this one.” He pointed to the two corresponding buttons. “You’ve got a two-way radio in this pocket.” He patted his left breast pocket. “And a flashlight in this pocket.” He patted the other pocket. “Any questions?”
McCreary shook his head.
“Okay, then. Good luck, sir.”
With that, McCreary lumbered in his radiation suit through the security gate and made his way toward the only structure in sight: a rectangular, bunkerlike building constructed entirely of exposed concrete, with a flat concrete roof, no windows, and a single gray metal door. Attached to one side of the building was a square, windowless tower—also constructed of exposed concrete—that looked to be about thirty feet high. McCreary had a pretty good idea what that was. The radiation monitor began clicking a few times per second as he got closer to the building. He glanced down at the digital display, which indicated less than 0.1 milliroentgen per hour. Nothing to worry about.
He stopped a few feet from the entrance and read the sign that was hanging crookedly beside the door. In faded letters, it read: THURMOND NATIONAL LABORATORY. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. He approached the heavy steel door and tugged gently on its handle. To his surprise, the door began to open. It squeaked loudly at first as the rusty hinges got their first workout in decades. Then the door suddenly fell off the hinges and crashed to the cement sidewalk with a resounding clank!
McCreary jumped back to avoid the heavy door. When the commotion subsided, he entered the building cautiously and switched on his flashlight. The radiation monitor was clicking more rapidly now. He glanced down through his foggy visor and saw that it was spiking at about 1.5 milliroentgens per hour. Approximately one hundred times background, but still nothing to worry about.
The building was entirely bare inside except for an L-shaped metal security desk that was bolted to the floor and a large, metal, boothlike structure behind the desk, which was centered within a framework of heavy steel beams that rose high into the enclosed, three-story tower above.
McCreary shined the beam of his flashlight all around the interior of the building, especially the desk area. Nothing. No logbooks, no name tags, no security manuals, no remnants of any human activity whatsoever. As expected. This place had been well sanitized many years ago.
McCreary now trained his flashlight on the tall metal structure behind the desk. It looked like an oversize phone booth—about seven feet tall with a five-by-five-foot base and a gray metal door in the front. The scaffolding above the structure was draped with steel cables, and there were several large spools attached to what appeared to be hydraulic motors. McCreary recognized this equipment as the lifting mechanism for a mine elevator.
He approached the elevator and noted that his radiation detector was now clicking much more rapidly. As he neared the elevator door, the detector began clicking so rapidly that he had to change the scale by two orders of magnitude. Even then, the clicks were so close together that they sounded like a single, steady tone. He checked the digital readout with his flashlight: 250 milliroentgens per hour. An elevated exposure rate, to be sure. Although not a twenty-minute zone, he thought. At this exposure rate, it would take six hours before he exceeded his quarterly limit.
With a gloved hand, McCreary attempted to open the gray steel door that provided entrance to the elevator. It was a bifold design, similar to a bus door, with a sturdy steel handle near the hinge and a narrow rectangular window on each side. He pulled gently on the handle. Nothing. He pulled harder, and the door still did not budge. Finally, with all his strength, he yanked hard on the door handle. The door creaked slightly at the hinge but refused to open. It was definitely stuck.
Pressing his Plexiglas visor against one of the two windows in the elevator door, McCreary attempted to see inside, shining his flashlight through the other window to illuminate the space. But, with his foggy visor and the glare of the flashlight on the glass, it was difficult to see much of anything. All he could make out was a tangle of cables and something lumpy on the floor. Frustrated, he gave the door handle another hard tug, but, once again, it did not budge.
McCreary checked the timer on his radiation monitor. Six minutes left. Crap. Using his flashlight, he quickly scanned the tower section of the building for something that might be useful, although he had no idea what that might be. After nearly half a minute of searching, he finally spotted something. He made his way quickly to the rear wall of the tower and pried an old fire extinguisher out of its rusty bracket. It popped out with relative ease.
Working quickly, McCreary brought the fire extinguisher to the elevator door, felt its weight in his hands for a moment, then prepared to smash it into one of the glass windows. Just before he did, however, his dosimeter alarmed loudly, adding a shrill overtone to the steady clicking of his radiation detector. Seconds later, he heard the technician’s voice crackling over the radio. “Five minutes, sir.”
McCreary hesitated just a moment, then proceeded with his plan. He smashed the bottom of the fire extinguisher into the narrow glass window of the elevator door . . . and was amazed when it did not break. Shatterproof glass. Redoubling his effort, he again slammed the extinguisher into the glass window. This time, the glass fractured in several places but stayed stubbornly in place. Undeterred, McCreary repeated this process several more times until, finally, his effort was rewarded with a hollow puncturing sound. He’d broken a hole in the glass. With two additional blows, he managed to enlarge the hole enough to get his arm through.
McCreary quickly put the extinguisher down and glanced at the timer on his dosimeter: three minutes left. Wasting no time, he thrust his flashlight through the broken glass and pressed his visor into the opening. With the interior of the elevator shaft now well illuminated, he could finally see inside.
It took several seconds to figure out what he was looking at. Then he realized what it was.
It was a giant blob of concrete.
Just then, the radio crackled to life. “Sir, you’ve got to get out now. Or I have to sound the RADCON alarm.”
Perplexed, McCreary took one last look at the large blob of concrete in the elevator shaft. In one corner, he noticed a cubelike metal box with a yellow-and-magenta trefoil symbol on it. He immediately recognized this as a controlled radiation source. But why would there be a controlled radiation source up here?
The radio crackled loudly: “Sir, you need to leave right now!”
McCreary quickly retreated from the building and waved to the technician beyond the fence as he exited through the doorway. Two minutes later, he was through the gate.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” asked the technician as he closed and padlocked the gate behind them.
“Actually, no,” said McCreary, shaking his head and breathing heavily. “Is there any other way to get down into the lab?”
The technician looked confused. “No, sir. The lab is sealed shut. You can’t get down there at all. I figured you knew that.”
McCreary’s earpiece suddenly activated and Ana Thorne’s voice came on the line. “Hey, I just got an update on Holzberg’s burial site in Germany.”
McCreary tapped the transmit button beneath his protective clothing. “Go ahead,” he said, still breathing heavily.
“Empty. As we suspected.”
McCreary was not surprised by this news, but the confirmation that Holzberg’s grave was empty still left him baffled. He tapped the transmit button again. “I just checked the entrance to the lab.” He paused to catch his breath. “The elevator shaft is sealed with concrete. Solid concrete. And the radiation is not coming from below. It’s coming from a controlled source on the surface.”
“That’s . . . surprising,” said Ana. She paused for a moment. “So there must be some other way in and out.”
“Agreed,” said McCreary. “But where?”
Five miles away, Mike Califano listened to this conversation with considerable interest. It proved two things he’d suspected since late last night. First, both McCreary and Thorne apparently believed that Dr. Holzberg had emerged forty-eight hours ago from the lab—a lab that was decommissioned and sealed shut in 1959. Which meant they believed, as he now did, that Holzberg had somehow been transported through time. Like a boomerang. Califano hadn’t wanted to be the first to bring up this theory because it sounded . . . well, crazy. But now that it was out in the open . . .
The second thing this conversation confirmed was something Califano already knew: there was a second entrance to the lab. In fact, at this very moment, he was looking directly at it. Califano tapped the transmit button on his radio. “Hey, guys. I think I know where that second entrance is.”
There was silence for several seconds before McCreary’s voice came on the line. “Where’s that, Michael?”
“On the other side of Beury’s Ridge. Near an abandoned branch line that connected Fire Creek to the Thurmond depot. The entrance is actually to an older mine called Foster Number Two. I noticed it last night on an old U.S. Bureau of Mines map from 1919 that turned up in my search. Back then, all these mines were operated by the New River Coal Company, and it looks like some of them got interconnected at some point.”
“Where are you, Michael?” asked McCreary with rising concern in his voice.
“I’m, uh . . . standing at the entrance to Foster Number Two.”
On the other side of Beury Mountain, McCreary motioned frantically for the radiological control technician to stop the ATV. The technician complied and brought the vehicle to a skidding halt on the gravel road. They were about a mile from the guard station.
“Michael, listen to me,” said McCreary sternly. “Do not go in there, understand?”
There was silence on the line.
“Michael?”
Silence.
“Listen to me. The radiation levels could be sky high down there. Not to mention toxic gases, the lack of oxygen, cave-ins . . . snakes. Michael, are you listening to me?”
Silence.
“Shit,” McCreary hissed, transmitting that sentiment over the radio. He motioned for the driver to continue.
A short time later, Ana Thorne came on the line. “Bill, you still there?”
McCreary shouted above the noise of the ATV, which was bumping violently along the gravel road. “Yeah, I’m heading back to the guard station. You heard anything from Michael yet?”
“No, but something else has come up. They just found that stolen car. The one from last night.”
“Where?”
There was a short pause. “Frostburg, Maryland. At a motel right off Highway 68. The local police have it under surveillance right now.”
“Tell them not to move in until we say so.”
“Already did that.”
“How soon can you get there?”
Another pause. “About three hours, driving.”
“No good.” McCreary thought for a moment, weighing his options. Then he pressed the transmit button and said, “Tell the state police we need their chopper. If they give you any flak, have Admiral Armstrong make a call . . . to the governor if necessary. I’ll meet you at police headquarters in thirty minutes.”
“Got it.”
“And tell the Frostburg police that if they see this guy, they are to follow him closely but don’t engage him.”
“Understood.”
McCreary waited for the voice-activated feature to time out. Then he turned to the ATV driver and shouted: “Can’t this damn thing go any faster?”