Page 115 of Casualties of War
“Fuck,” Jonesy breathed as he stirred packets of freeze dried soup into the pot on the burner. “That’s ridiculous.”
“You’d be surprised by what people care about when fame and money get involved,” Adán said.
“Doyoucare about that shit?” Ramirez asked.
“Right now? No. Not for a while now.” Adán looked downat his hands. “Not since the war started,” he finished.
Parris saw nods around the circle. No one said anything. That wasn’t their way. They observed. They saw everything.
Locke stirred. “What are you thinking, captain?”
She looked at him, hiding her surprise. They always stepped away from the men when they were conferring. He never exposed her like this.
Locke’s gaze was steady. His browlifted.
Everyone, she realized, was waiting for her to answer, their attention sharp. Including Adán.
She made herself relax. “We still need to find the cobalt, only I’m starting to think we won’t find the core in a neat little lump anymore. I’ve been playing it in my mind. They brought the core over from where they first got it and dumped it a hundred meters down at the end of a rope, so itwouldn’t show up on monitors. They had to do it because they weren’t ready to take it to where they needed it. The place or the equipment wasn’t ready.”
“Equipment for what?” Donaldson asked, voicing the obvious question for everyone.
“To make the bomb,” Adán said.
Everyone looked at him.
Adán grimaced. “Doomed City,” he said, his tone apologetic.
“Shit, yeah,” Amos said. “The dirty bombin San Francisco that Smokey Silva stops from going off.”
Adán nodded. “Radioactive isotopes are metals. They’re in a big mass. Dirty bombs can’t spray a big lump of metal around, so the ore must be broken down. Shaved or ground, usually. It lets the radioactive material spread as far as possible when the bomb goes off.”
Odesky shook his head. “We’re in the middle of nothing up here. They’dhave to build a buried bunker with fail safes and fences and a shit ton of remote handling equipment for a job like that. We’ve been all over the area…there’s nothing here or we would have found it.”
Parris’ gut clenched. “You don’t need all that equipment if you’ve got people who can do it for you.” Her heart thudded unhappily.
Odesky looked as though he had swallowed rotting fish. “Peoplecan’t do it. They’d all die from radiation sickness.”
“Yes, they would,” Parris breathed.
Adán groaned. “The missing people.” He hung his head. “They’re using Vistarians to build the bomb.”
The silence throbbed.
“We gotta find this thing, captain,” Rockman said softly. “We gotta find the people.”
Parris nodded. “Odesky, you said twelve feet of concrete shields Cobalt 60. Would twelve feetof rock do the same?”
“Absolutely, sir.”
“Shit,” Donaldson breathed. “A cave.”
“A cave,” Parris confirmed.
“We know they didn’t carry the core overland,” Ramirez pointed out. “We’d have seen traces all over the goddam forest if they had and there was nothing.”
“It was heavy, even without the container,” Parris said. “I think they would have let natural buoyancy do the heavy lifting. I thinkthey used a boat—a bigger one than the little dinghy they left behind. A faster one with an outboard, perhaps. Adán, you said you don’t know the land this far north, but do you know if there is a cave that is accessible only by sea?”
Adán lifted his head. “Dozens of them,” he said, his tone strained. “The whole top end is riddled with them. Seals live in them. Naturalists love the place.”
