FSTS-317/NATO Site 93
Classified Location
Edge of the 1K Zone
Fulda Gap, Western Germany
26 April, 1986
1800 Hours

Stillwater led us to the road, where we stood there for a long second. I knelt down, taking out one of the small detectors out of my pocket, and stuck it in the mud at the bottom of a shallow puddle. It immediately started rising.

It was already dangerous. Long term exposure would start the risk of cancer, and if it kept rising we ran the very real danger of the radiation rising to the point where if we spent longer than a few hours in it we'd be shitting out our intestinal linings. It was a singularly unpleasant activity that I'd happen to me more than once.

Goddamn it, Stillwater, you're gonna be the death of me, I thought to myself, watching the radiation level plateau out. Judging by the fact it was from rainfall, high altitude, it was probably spread over a large front. It was measurable, and since it was in the rain, it was concentrating in our sensors and driving them crazy, making our sensors show higher readings that we were getting from out portable devices. I checked the open air sensor at my hip, noting that the levels weren't as bad as the ground sensors were reporting.

"How it look, Bomber?" Stillwater asked me.

"Levels aren't too bad, they could be worse," I told him.

Timmons was watching us closely, and I reminded myself again that he was one of the few people that understood the kind of brain that was locked in my thick Texas skull and what kind of analytic engine was hidden behind Stillwater's face.

"Gimme a analysis," Stillwater growled, looking around the site.

A bullet went between, the spiteful vweep sound followed by the supersonic crack and a second later the sound of the Soviet SVD sniper rifle. Timmons flinched while I kept looking at the readouts and Stillwater lit a cigarette.

Their side needed a little ego boost, and I noticed that the round didn't hit the door of the bunker in front of us and had missed all of us. If he wanted to kill one of us, he would have.

"There's a serious nuclear event somewhere deeper in the Soviet Unions," I said. I closed my eyes, bringing up the weather reports I'd read. Keeping track of the high altitude jetstreams was part of our job, mainly for computing fallout patterns. "If I had a better look of the fallout detection waves, of where and what levels and when they were detected I could narrow it down effectively. Problem is, I don't know how long this has been up there or the strength of the initial event."

Stillwater nodded. "Give me some WAGs then."

I closed my eyes, visualizing the weather patterns. Well, first bring up a globe, then zoom in on Europe. Overlay that with the maps of the weather patterns, specifically jet streams at this level. Add in rain fall, projected and existing. Adjust for humidity and air temperature gradients.

When I opened my eyes and looked at Stillwater he nodded.

"It's deep. This is coming out of high altitude jet streams, any traditional fallout probably already dropped to earth, so this is high altitude contamination. Heavy particles have already dropped," I stared at him.

"Nuclear test?" Timmons tried.

Stillwater shook his head. "For this kind of level, either the cap would have to be destroyed or damaged, or it would have to be an airburst, maybe a ground effect burst, but even then, it would have registered on seismic sensors ."

"Then what?" Timmons asked.

I watched Stillwater's brain go through the permutations. That was one of the big fears that Nancy and I had. Stillwater's grey matter had taken repeated trauma, repeated damage, over the last year, causing vision damage, migraines, psychotic episodes, hallucinations, and more. Nancy and I had been worried about his mental faculties since we weren't quite sure how to really stress them.

They were being stressed now.

"Steam," He said finally. It was only a few seconds and I wasn't sure if it would have taken him less time back when I'd first met him.

I nodded.

"The Soviets blew a powerplant," Timmons guessed. "China Syndrome?"

I shook my head, "No, that would be a different type of radiation release."

"Core explosion," Stillwater guessed. "There's be a massive outpouring of steam as the reactor went critical, if they managed to SCRAM,"

"SCRAM?" Timmons asked.

"Safety Control Rod Axe Man," I said, "It's because back when the built the original reactor under the seating at Stagg Field. If the control rods didn't work there was a guy who's whole job was to cut a rope with a sharpened fire axe." I looked at Stillwater and nodded, "The core would burn, throwing up smoke, shit even concrete and basalt would burn that those temperatures."

"Shit, the explosions was sub-nuclear in explosive weight, but still, the smoke, fine particulates, the steam, all of that shit would be highly radioactive. We're getting the higher up stuff, the stuff that could drift on the jetstreams, but that got dropped by high level rain," Stillwater looked up. "Cloud cover is probably at twenty-five thousand feet." I noticed he was slurring his words again.

I could see Timmons was rapidly adjusting his thought process.

The Gypsy Wagon came around the north corner, the engine sounding like the timing was off. At least the mechanics had fixed the broken motor mount, the warped power train, and just told us to deal with the fact the frame was slightly bent.

"So you think the Soviet Union lost a nuclear power plant due to core explosion?" Timmons asked slowly.

I nodded, "Can't tell where though. From the evidence, I'd say probably deep, other side of Poland. Western Russia, maybe the Ukraine," I shook my head, "Problem is, the Soviet Union uses portable nuclear generators. Drop them somewhere near a body of water, run the hoses to keep the thing cool, and it puts out steady electricity to remote regions."

"Those could be it. They're designed to flood the reactor with cold water if they start running unstable. You can restart it after a few days maintenance. If it ran too hot, you'd get serious radioactive steam output," Stillwater added as Nancy brought the truck to a stop.

I shook my head, "No, those things are like the size of a VW Bug, not enough radioactive particulates, even if it blew off in the kiloton range." A memory bubbled up. "Wait, they could have lost a lighthouse!"

Stillwater nodded, "That would have thrown up a shitload of debris, plenty of steam, wind currents would have brought all that crap down here."

"Lighthouses?" Timmons asked as Nancy walked up, shaking her head.

"All the bunkers are secure, no hot rounds, no simmering stacks," She said. She stepped up and used her middle finger to pull down the bottom of his right eyelid. "Lemme see your eyes."

"Dammit, get off me," Stillwater said, but I noticed he held still.

I looked at Timmons, "The Soviet Union has a huge stretch of northern coast. We're talking hundreds of miles from civilization or any kind of towns or anything else to support a lighthouse. So the Soviet Union, back in the 1960's, built lighthouses run by analog systems, powered by small scale reactors."

"How the hell do you know this shit?" Timmons asked.

I grinned at him, "It's our job to know." I tapped the side of my head, "They taught us more than just about weapons. They taught us about things that can be used as weapons, to create weapons, that would be used to supply  the infrastructure, that the Soviet Union or its allies use regarding anything that might touch our job, from inoculation manufacturing to pesticide production."

Timmons nodded slowly. "I think I get it," He looked around. "Total War, huh?"

I just grinned.

He shuddered. "I'm an analyst, Mister Bomber, this whole thing makes my skin crawl."

The rain tasted like metal as I stared at him. "Every correct analysis, or even partially correct analysis, that you guys come up with, every fact and figure that you manage to excise from the Soviets, increases our ability to wage war effectively. Don't ever think that analysis doesn't make a difference," I told him. "All the firepower in the world doesn't matter if we can't deliver it effectively."

He nodded slowly as Nancy stood in front of me.

"We need to get out of this rain, get back uprange. I want you guys decon'd after Miranda and I. The longer we let this shit sit on our skin, the more damage it's going to do, and you're already more than likely going to have low-level radiation burns."

"You heard her, mount up," Stillwater's voice had the whip-crack of command that he'd picked up during Copper Window last year.

Little-Bit was sitting next to Stokes in the cab, leaving just room for Nancy. Timmons followed me and Stillwater around the back of the truck. I walked over and picked up the M-60 as the others got into the truck. Stillwater jumped in bed, and gave me a hand to help heave me up over the tailgate. I set the pig down and sat with my back against the cab next to Stillwater. Timmons sat beside us, looking shit ass miserable.

"How much of the gear do you think is going to have to be destroyed?" I asked Stillwater.

"I told Nancy to park underneath the overhead cover where the Ready Vehicle Storage is. That'll save the Gypsy Wagon, but all the gear inside is probably going to have to be destroyed," he said.

"We'll either send it back to the States, or we'll go out to where the EOD guys dug that blast pit and toss everything in it and pour concrete over it," I suggested. "We'll grind up some of the lead shielding from the wreckage of the bunkers, mix it in with the concrete, and dump that in on top of it. Mark it good so nobody gets stupid."

"What's the half-life, do you think?" He asked.

I shrugged. "Minutes, maybe. Hours, probably. Doubt it's days or years, not enough particles, radiations too low for the half-life to be that long. It'll decay to standard Earth background count within a couple weeks out here."

"Wherever this shit is coming from is going to be hot for a long time," Stillwater said.

"Think it's one of the light houses?" I asked him. I noticed that Timmons was completely staying out of the conversation.

He shrugged, "Good theory, but I don't think there'd be enough material. Probably the sats will have picked it up, but Russia's a big fucking place and it might be hard to spot from that garbage fire of a country they have."

That got a chuckle from me. "They're burning off sections of forest again to clear land. Christ, it's wasteful as shit."

Stillwater suddenly perked. "Wait, could it have been a harbor cutter?" He asked, referring to the fact that the Soviet Union had used nuclear weapons to cut harbors.

I shook my head. "No, once again we get the seismic."

"Damn," He said, and went silent.

Nancy hit the cattle-guard and almost bounced us out.

"We still got that list of Red reactors?" I asked him.

He nodded.

"My bet is on a catastrophic failure in one of their older reactors. Probably one of the old pieces of shit they've had out there since the 1950's," I told him. I frowned, something coming from deep in my memory. Something from training...

We got out of the truck, and I ignored what people were saying trying to unpack the memory. It was classwork. History work. Recent history of... recent history of nuclear power. Three Mile Island? No, a later event, one out of the Soviet Union that we didn't learn about until 82, making it very recent data when we went through...

Nuclear accidents and events...

I stopped, turning and staring East.

"What?" Nancy asked.

"In 1981 the Number One reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine suffered a partial core melt-down. They're the first and second generation RBMK design plants, and that partial meltdown was in a gen-one plant," I said.

"Write it up, I'll do any appendices needed," Stillwater said, nodding. "Those RBMK designs are twitchy."

"How so?" Timmons asked as we started walking through the rain again. The alarm on my ruck started howling when I walked under a steady stream of water coming off the vehicle shelter and Stillwater moved behind me to turn it off.

"RBMK style reactors are Gen-Two systems, still using 50's Era Soviet tech and theory, they're notoriously unstable due to the lack of failsafes and there's some serious instability issues in the control rod systems and other areas," I told him. "It's about a two hour lecture on them."

"It has to do with steam pressure and heat/radiation emmission," Nancy added. "It's complex shit and mostly theory."

"RBMK's use uranium-dioxide fuel rods," Stokes said.

All four of us Special Weapons troops nodded, Timmons looked confused.

Lightning flashed up in the clouds and thunder rumbled around us.

"I doubt it's the Chernobyl facility. They'd have corrected any flaws," Timmons tried.

That got laughter from us.

"What?" He asked.

"Soviet design philosophy since Stalin has always been: Good enough." Little-Bit told him. "Remember, they feel that a missile system that wastes a hundred rockets to get a handful of hits is a successful weapon."

"Quantity has a quality all of its own," Timmons said.

I nodded, "Right. But what a lot of the people who pay slavish attention to those words don't understand the context, or the fact that it was a cheap missile system designed for a specific purpose."

"Unfortunately for the Reds, and fortunately for us, their R&D teams seem to believe that more is better no matter what," Nancy said, stopping outside the fort.

"Drop it all, we ain't taking it in with us. We'll just have to replace it all," Stillwater said, dropping his soaking wet ruck into the mud outside the Fort. "That includes your dog-tags. Keep your wallet, we'll put them in the safe, everything else goes."

I dropped my ruck and looked at Timmons after I dropped my helmet on the ground and stripped off my poncho. "It's a flaw in their political thinking that infected their scientific community."

Timmons gave me a wry look, then turned away as I started stripping off my battle rattle and dropping it into the mud.

"It's easy to forget, working where I do, that other people can be as smart or smarter than you," He said.

That made all five of us laugh as we stripped naked in the rain. I slowed down, same as Stillwater, to let Stokes, Little-Bit and Nancy hurry up and get into The Fort before us. Timmons realized what was going on about the time Little-Bit stripped off her panties and bra and hurried into The Fort.

The rain was leaving black marks on her skin, and I noticed she looked like she had a light sunburn. Same with Nancy and Stokes.

"How can you two be so calm about this?" Timmons asked as we stood there in our underwear after Stillwater told us to wait.

Stillwater shrugged, about as helpful as always and I faced Timmons, taking off my dogtags and dropping them into the same puddle as everyone else.

"We've trained for this. Even if the contamination levels stayed steady, or even doubled or tripled, for the next three to four months, we could still fight in this shit," I told him, "We wouldn't survive to die of cancer, to be honest. We'd die either in a cloud of nuclear vapor, or in some ditch somewhere during the drive to Moscow."

"Ten for every one," Stillwater said. He sneezed.

"This is a whole different side of the two of you," Timmons said.

"Not really," Stillwater said.

"No, he's always like that," I grinned. Stillwater gave me the finger, then waved at the door.

We headed in, the decon shower already open. Stillwater waved Timmons toward the shower. "Three minutes, wash your hair, make sure to clean your balls, pits, the crack of your ass. Get all the contamination off of you."

Timmons nodded.

"Corporal, how bad is it?" Sergeant Bonnham asked. I looked around and noticed that Sergeant Reddings was sitting on a cot looking despondent.

"Not bad. It's light fallout, Bomber thinks the Soviets took a core explosion at a reactor and we're getting the fallout from it," Stillwater told her.

"Get decon'd, call it up," Bonnham ordered. "Is it safe to send out guards?"

Stillwater shook his head, "No, we need to give it a couple hours to see if the contamination level rises or starts to drop."

Bonnham nodded. "We'll have to send people out to take readings," She said.

"Wake a member of Special Weapons, nobody else," Stillwater said.

She nodded, "Crew expendable," She quoted.