“And nobody complained about it? Locals? Folks in government?”
“You have to consider the time, John. The 1960s. The big, bad Soviets. There wasn’t a twenty-four-hour news cycle. People actually trusted their government, even though Vietnam and Watergate were about to change that. And since nothing has happened in the interim, I guess the locals just assumed everything was okay.” He paused. “Is it right there out in the open?”
“Nothing is out in the open here. And the forest has mostly reclaimed it.”
“What do you think is going on?”
“The same thing you’re probably thinking is going on.”
“You need to get this up the chain of command fast.”
“I would, except for one thing.”
“What?”
“I’m not sure I can trust my own guys.”
“Is there anyone you can trust?”
“Yes. But I need you to do me another favor.”
“Me help you? I’m sitting in prison, John.”
“Doesn’t matter. You can still help from there. CID is behind me on this. They can give you some flexibility even from there. But I really need you, Bobby.”
His brother’s answer was immediate. “Just tell me what you need.”
CHAPTER
84
PULLER DROVE to Cole’s house and waited. Then a call came in two hours later. Then after that came the call that Puller had been waiting for. When the military wanted to get something done, it could move with amazing speed. It didn’t hurt that the Secretary of Defense had thrown his weight behind them.
Cole sat across from him in her living room anxiously watching.
Puller answered the call.
On the other end was a retired colonel in his late eighties named David Larrimore, who lived in Sarasota, Florida. The man was Puller’s last best hope because he actually had been an engineer and the military-side production supervisor at the Drake facility back in the 1960s. In fact, according to DoD records, he was the only person left alive who had worked there.
Larrimore’s voice was weak but steady. He appeared to have all of his faculties as Puller began talking to him. Puller hoped the man’s memory was faultless. He would need every scintilla of information he could get.
Larrimore said, “I guess you’re never really retired when you wear the uniform.”
“Guess not.”
“You related to Fighting John by any chance?”
“He’s my father.”
“Never had the pleasure of serving under him, but he did the Army and his country proud, Agent Puller.”
“Thanks, I’ll let him know.”
“Got a call from a two-star. I’ve been out of uniform nearly thirty years and it still scared the crap out of me. He said I was to tell you everything. Didn’t say why.”
“It’s complicated. But we really need your help.”
“Drake? That’s what you want to know about?”
“Everything you can tell me.”
“It’s a sore spot, son, at least in my memory.”
“Tell me why?”
Puller looked over at Cole, who was staring at him with such intensity that he thought she might stroke. He pressed the speaker button on his phone and set it down on the table between them.
Larrimore’s voice floated into the room. “I was assigned to Drake because it was the latest facility the government had in its nuclear weapons development program. I had my degree in nuclear engineering and had been stationed at Los Alamos and also did some work on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Now this was the 1960s, so we were way past the A-bombs that we dropped on the Japs in ’45, but there was still a lot we didn’t know about thermonuclear weapons. The Hiroshima A-bomb used the gun method. Compared to what they do today, that’s kindergarten stuff. We were measuring A-bombs that topped out at a .7-megaton yield. The Soviets dropped an H-bomb in the Antarctic called the Tsar. It was a 50-megaton blast, the biggest ever. You could wipe out a country with something like that.”
Puller watched as Cole collapsed back in her chair and put a hand to her chest.
“There’s a classified file I saw that said the facility was used to make bomb components. There might have been some radioactivity left behind, but that was it.”
Larrimore said, “That’s not correct. But I’m not surprised there’s an official record out there like that. Military likes to cover its tracks. And back then the rules of the game were a lot more liberal.”
Puller said, “So you were building nuclear fuel for warheads. To be used in the implosion method?”
“You a nuke head?”
“What?”
“That’s what we used to call each other back then. Nuke heads.”
“No. But I have friends who are.”
“We were working with a defense contractor. Name would mean nothing to you. It’s long since been snapped up. And the company that bought it has been sold, and sold, and sold.”
Puller could sense Larrimore taking a walk down memory lane and he didn’t have time for that.
“You said it was a sore spot for you. Why?”
“Way we went into that area, built that monstrosity, didn’t tell anybody what it was. We shipped in everybody from outside the area. We didn’t encourage mingling with the locals. And when they did go into the little town there, we had them followed. Just the way it was back then. Everybody was paranoid.”
“I don’t think things have changed all that much,” commented Puller. “Was that the only reason you were sore?”
“No, I was also upset how we left things.”
“You mean the concrete dome? Three feet thick?”
“The hell you say!”
“You didn’t know that?”
“No. The facility was supposed to be dismantled and shipped away, every molecule of it. It had to be that way because of what we had there.”
“It’s all still there. At least I guess it is. Under a huge dome of concrete. I don’t how many acres, but it’s a lot.”
“What the hell were they thinking?”
“How come you didn’t know about that?” asked Puller.
“I did my job as part of the phase-out. Then I was shipped out to another facility way down south. I was a supervisor on the military side, sure, but the private-sector guys really ran it and the generals signed off on whatever they wanted.”
“Well, apparently what they wanted was to cover it with concrete rather than dismantle it. Why would that be the case?”
Larrimore said nothing.
“Mr. Larrimore.”
“I’m here.”
“I need you to answer that question.”
“Agent Puller, I’ve been out of the service a long time. Shocked the hell out of me when I got the call today. I got a good pension that I earned and a few years left to bask in the sunshine down here. I don’t want to lose that.”
“You won’t lose anything. But if you don’t help me a lot of Americans might lose their lives.”
When Larrimore next spoke his voice was stronger. “Might have to do with why we shut down in the first place. That’s what I meant when I said I didn’t like the way we left things.”
“Which was why?”
“We screwed up.”
“How? Did something go wrong in the diffusion process?”
“We weren’t doing gaseous diffusion.”
“I thought that’s what we were talking about. Like they do in Paducah.”
“You ever been to the Paducah plant, son?”