Diablo Mesa(69)

Tearing off the sheet, she examined it closely, turning it this way and that. Clearly, the sheet in Morwood’s pocket contained this single word. He had never filled out the list. But why would he have torn it from the pad and taken it with him? It made no sense. She put it in her pocket.

Five minutes.

Her eye caught the garbage can sitting beside the desk. It held a few crumpled sheets that appeared to be from the same pad. She took them out and, one at a time, smoothed them on the desk.

These were equally mystifying. One said, in Morwood’s hand, E: boosting. Another, 1947/51 DATE?? They made no more sense than the first had. Nevertheless, Corrie slipped them into her pocket as well.

With time running out, she turned her attention to the book that lay facedown on the desk. It was a fat volume entitled Encyclopedia of the Atomic Age. Carefully, she grasped it by the edges and turned it over.

It was open to a chapter entitled “Operation Greenhouse,” and as she scanned it, she saw that it covered early nuclear tests, in particular the U.S. fission “shots” of 1951. The first test, the book went on to explain in vague terms, had apparently been devoted, at least in part, to testing the feasibility of the dial-a-yield device, the kind Nora had dug up with the two bodies.

The initial explosion, George, was undertaken to validate the theory behind the “classic Super” thermonuclear bomb, and paved the way for the full-scale Ivy Mike test that would take place the following year. The second Greenhouse explosion, code-named Item and conducted on May 25, 1951, was the first true boosted fission weapon, with tritium gas being injected—to a greater or lesser degree—into the fissile core of the initial detonation. This more than doubled the potential yield of…



Corrie looked up from the book. Jesus Christ. She recalled Eastchester’s words: This was extremely classified work…with compressed tritium gas, dating from the “Super” program of the Greenhouse tests in, let’s see, 1951.

The “Greenhouse” test, he’d said. But apparently, it should more properly be called the Greenhouse-Item test.

Item. This wasn’t the start of a list, at all: Item was the name of a nuclear test. And this discovery must have been why Morwood laid the book facedown, left his house, and rushed to the lab.

But what the hell did he realize? And then the revelation came.

The two bodies Nora had dug out of the ground near Roswell—buried with the device—had been conclusively dated to 1947. But as the book clearly implied, the dial-a-yield device was not ready for testing until 1951.

1947/51 DATE??—Morwood had written it himself, before crumpling the sheet and tossing it away.

Her time was up. Rising, she made sure to arrange the desk precisely as she had found it. Moving to her duffel, she used her cell phone to take a dozen flashless photographs of the room and desk from various angles. Then she zipped the duffel closed, slung it over her shoulder, opened the shutters, and silently exited the house the way she had come.

Driving back to her apartment, she found her gaze straying, now and again, to the rearview mirror. But the roads were empty, and no one was following her.





45



SKIP KELLY WAS up at four, groaning and cursing. He took Mitty for his walk, fed him, then packed a day pack with water, snacks, a thermos of coffee, and several granola bars for lunch, doing his best not to disturb Nora. With the stars still glittering in the sky, he saw the lights of Watts’s SUV approaching.

Watts pulled up and Skip hopped in, tossing his pack in the rear.

“Morning,” said Watts, turning the vehicle around and heading down the new road toward the dry lake bed. “Coffee?” He indicated a cup sitting in a holder in the console. “That’s for you. Might be a little cold.”

“You’re a mind reader.” Even though he had his own, he didn’t want to show a lack of appreciation, so Skip took the cup and sipped the lukewarm coffee. Watts was even younger than he was, but the sheriff projected self-reliance and had a calm, confident manner Skip admired. He looked more than a little like a Western movie star, with the silver-belly hat and those matching revolvers, currently hung by their belt on a rack in the back window. Somehow Skip felt the look was natural, and not a disguise or some kind of sheriff-y dress-up.

“I’d like to go first to the place where you saw the lights,” Watts said. “You think we can find it?”

“I think so.”

Watts headed cross country, bumping along the prairie. The broken tower soon loomed up on the edge of the mesa like a giant tooth. They drove past it and Watts edged the Explorer down the nearby ridge to the bottom of the cliffs.

He stopped. “Let’s see if we can pick up your track. You’re wearing the same shoes? And your dog was with you?”

“Yes to both.”

They got out.

“Walk off about a dozen yards, then come back,” Watts said.

Skip did as he was told, and Watts scrutinized his footprints. “Okay, thanks. Stay here for a moment while I cut for sign.”

He went off, stooped and moving slowly, eyes on the ground, holding a flashlight at a raking angle. The eastern horizon was coloring a pale yellow.

Watts raised his hand. “Got it!” Skip came over and stared at the ground but couldn’t see anything beyond a few blurry scuff marks.

“That’s my track?”