Pump conducted us through two blast doors and along a passage to the warhead storage room: a small, echoing vault that boasted an empty bomb rack and a wheeled metal carriage that ran on tracks set into the concrete and the platform out to the rocket. A winch and movable boom were attached to the carriage’s sturdy frame, obviously to assist the loading process. While Pump was providing this tour of the staging area of megadeaths, Jay had taken a tape measure and assorted screwdrivers from Pump’s backpack and departed to measure the bird’s payload chamber.
We met Jay returning down the corridor. His face looked stern. “It’s all off.”
“What?” Edward said.
“We’re finished. Let’s split.”
“Why?” Willow asked.
“What’s happening?” Pump added.
Jay stepped behind Pump and slipped the tape measure into his pack. “There’s a fucking hydrogen bomb in that missile. That’s what’s happening.”
We dashed by Jay in a clump onto the ramp, with me careful to stay in the middle of the group. A large panel had been swung open in the nosecone of the rocket. When we bent one by one to peer in, I saw a squat black canister secured by a cradle in the confines of the missile’s top. On the canister, which resembled a large barrel perhaps four feet in diameter and five feet high, was painted in white: U.S. GOVERNMENT PROPERTY. FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY. Under that were some numbers, the radiation warning sign, and the words NUCLEAR MUNITION, followed by more numbers.
“You sure it’s the bomb?” Phil blurted.
“Oh, my God!” Willow cried.
“What’s it doing here?” Edward demanded.
Remi straightened from studying the object, then turned to Jay, who had followed us out onto thin air. “Didn’t you say they removed these?”
“It can’t be here then,” Willow insisted.
“It’s here,” Jay said.
“It can’t be.”
Pump shrugged. “We were told the warheads were removed from the sites even before we started decommissioning them.”
“They don’t just leave hydrogen bombs lying around,” Phil declared.
“No?” Edward countered. “Remember that B-52 in Spain? Dropped one in the drink, and they were going to forget it until they noticed the Russkies were doing some fishing nearby.”
Willow sighed. “I guess we do have a lot of them.”
Pump nodded toward the opened compartment. “Heav-vy!”
We filed back onto solid ground, with me in the lead. At the elevator, we slumped down in a row against the wall to evaluate the situation. Pump produced a doobie, which circulated despite Willow’s voiced concern about whether we were endangering ourselves by smoking too near a warhead.
Nobody else spoke. A couple of times somebody passed the joint to a neighbour, heaved himself to his feet, walked out onto the ramp again, and leaned in to peer at the bomb. Then he returned, shaking his head. “Bummer.”
Pump eventually sucked the last smoke out of the roach and ate it. “Let’s roll.”
“Hold on,” Edward said. “Why does this have to wreck the whole plan?”
Edward’s question startled me. I stared at him. Others did the same.
“What do you mean?” Phil asked.
“That’s a hydrogen bomb in there, Eddie,” Jay said. “I’m not going to fuck around with a nuke. Can you relate to that?”
“Cool it, Jay,” Pump said.
“Can’t we run it back into the armoury?” Edward asked. “How is it secured? If it’s just bolted in, we could wheel out the dolly and store it behind those blast doors, safe and sound.”
His suggestion of a solution astounded me. “I thought you weren’t that keen on putting up the satellite,” I said before I could stop myself.
“I’m not saying I’m in favour of it. I’m not saying I’m against it. Being here, seeing this —” he waved an arm to encompass the passage we were sitting in and the missile “— intrigues me. That’s all.”
“What does that mean?” Willow asked.
Edward smiled.
“No can do,” Jay declared.
“Why not?” Remi asked.
“I’m not going to fool around with a missile anywhere near one of those nukes.”
“Hey, man, Eddie’s got a point,” Pump said. “You know it’s got to be armed before it can detonate. Even if the bird blew up, there’s no chance —”
“Go ahead if you want. Count me out.”
Silence hung in the air.
“Suppose . . . suppose we move the thing out of the silo completely?” Edward stated.
“How?” Willow asked.
“There has to be a procedure,” Phil said. “They got them in here.”
“Would that satisfy you, Jay?” Edward asked.
“Judging by the rig on the dolly,” Phil continued, “it looks like the warhead weighs under a ton. We could rig a winch over the silo’s edge on top and haul the thing out.”
“Sounds right,” Remi said. “Hoist it up to ground level, load it on a trailer, and tow it someplace.”
Phil nodded. “Yeah.”
“But where would we tow it to?” Willow asked.
“The house,” Edward suggested. “We’ll stick it in the garage with our other junk.”
Jay waved away the notion impatiently. “You’re uptight about having a few secret documents around the Bay? But you don’t mind stashing a hydrogen bomb in the garage?”
“They know the launch manuals are here,” Edward reasoned. “If they ever figured out where the missile was launched from, they’ll scour this place to see if anything has been ripped off.”
“Besides the rocket,” Remi added.
“If nothing else is missing, maybe after ten or twenty years they’ll stop looking for the culprits. From what you and Pump say, they don’t know an H-bomb was left behind. So they won’t freak about one of their toys being unaccounted for.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Phil declared.
“What would we do with it, man?” Pump asked. “Leave it in the garage for whoever rents the house next?”
“You’re assuming we could lift it out of this hole without dropping it,” Jay said, “either trashing the bird or blowing up half of Southern California.”
“Man, that’s not how these are detonated,” Pump protested. “You know that. They can fall out of planes and absolutely nothing —”
Jay raised his hands. “All right, all right.”
“Once it’s safe in the garage, we’ll worry about how to dispose of it,” Edward said.
“Maybe we can get the neighbour’s kid to enter it in the high-school science fair,” Willow joked.
Remi