David Koepp - Cold Storage

The T-41 was a product of the Operation Nougat tests in the early 1960s, after Eisenhower had first authorized and implemented the concept of battlefield nuclear weapons. Subsequent models were refined and deployed throughout the late ’60s, most of them to various Western European hotspots. The idea behind the weapons was that they could be used to stave off a Russian invasion. They were to be delivered where needed by U.S. Army Green Light Teams, elite squads of soldiers specially schooled in the care and activation of portable nuclear weapons. The weapons were designed so that they could be carried behind enemy lines by a one- or two-man squad, set with a timer or radio detonator, and used to destroy strategic locations such as bridges, munitions dumps, or tank encampments. They could also be delivered by parachute or into water, or buried to a depth of up to twenty feet, although detonation was significantly less reliable than when accompanied by a technician.

The T-41, like most of the W54 series of special atomic demolition munitions, SADMs, could be adjusted to a yield as low as ten tons or as high as one kiloton, which was enough to destroy either two city blocks or the entirety of the country of Lichtenstein. In the latter circumstance, the safe escape of the Green Light Team was highly in doubt, and the soldiers who had taken the job had been told to view it as a kamikaze mission.

This particular T-41 had been built and deployed in 1971, for use in the Fulda Gap in West Germany. Strategically critical for most of the modern era, the Fulda Gap contains two corridors of lowlands through which it was feared Soviet tanks might drive in a surprise attack on the Rhine River Valley, their entrance to Western Europe. To prevent a drawn-out tank battle, the idea was that a single T-41 would remove the threat in a controlled burst of destruction. Nuclear weapons, in those early days, were viewed by some in the Pentagon as just bigger and more effective versions of conventional bombs. By 1988 sentiment had changed, the INF Treaty had taken firm hold, and the last three hundred SADMs were removed from Western Europe, decommissioned, and dismantled.

Except for this one. For three years after confirmation of the success of the Kiwirrkurra firebombing, Roberto, Trini, Gordon Gray, and two other cohorts in the DTRA had been on a fruitless and frustrating quest to warn their superiors of the need for a contingency plan should Cordyceps novus ever escape its confinement beneath the Atchison mines. The nature of the storage facility was ideally suited to a controlled detonation of a nuclear device, they’d argued. With proper planning and placement, they could closely limit loss of life. Even an underground nuclear blast would be impossible to conceal, they granted, but after all, this was a break-the-glass scenario that would likely never have to be used. Still, shouldn’t they be ready for it?

Rebuffed or ignored at every turn, they had finally taken matters into their own hands. As disarmament activities swept through Western Europe, they falsified movement records within the Joint Elimination Coordination Element, and, thirty years later, here it was. The contingency plan, in a box in a basement, underneath Trini’s stamp collection.

Roberto started to lift the unit out of the crate and felt a twinge in his back. He stopped immediately— Don’t push it, moron —bent his knees, straightened his torso to vertical, and lifted. The T-41 weighed fifty-eight pounds, heavier than he expected or remembered. He set it on the edge of the crate and looked up at Trini. “Hold on to that for a second, will ya?”

She reached out and steadied it. He turned around and squatted down, facing away from it. He looped his arms through the straps, tightened them as much as he could, exhaled, and stood up again. He could feel it in his thighs already. This thing was heavy, and he was not the man he used to be. “Okay to go.”

She turned, shined the light on him, and laughed.

“What?” he asked.

“The shit we get ourselves into.”

“Keeps retirement interesting,” he said. “After you.”

They headed off, back to the other side of the curtain in the unfinished storage area, around the bumper pool table, past the broken recliner, and to the stairs that led to the kitchen. She was on the fourth step up and Roberto had his foot on the very first one when the basement fluorescents all switched on.

They froze, momentarily blinded. They looked up, wincing at the light, and could make out the silhouette of a man at the top of the stairs, a guy in boxer shorts and a Kansas City Chiefs T-shirt, pointing a shotgun at them.

Roberto’s mind flicked through options and found none, not with this refrigerator strapped to his back, and not in this position, second up at the base of a flight of stairs facing a guy who already had the drop on him with a twelve gauge. For the first time in a long while, he searched his mind, instincts, and experiences and came up with exactly nothing. “Uh,” he said.

The guy at the top of the stairs sighed. He pulled the gun back, looking at Trini. “Mom. Really? ”

Trini smiled. “Hi, sweetie.” She looked him up and down. “You look heavy.” It was true, Roberto noticed; that T-shirt was a little clingy in the paunch.

The man came down a few steps, cautious with the shotgun and even more careful with his voice, keeping it low. “What are you doing ?”

Trini continued up the stairs toward him, and Roberto followed. “Oh, just grabbing something,” she said. “Out of your hair in two seconds.” Remembering she wasn’t alone, she turned around. “Sorry, Anthony, this is my friend Roberto—”

Roberto came up another step, reaching a hand past her to shake. “We met. I think you were about three years old.”

Anthony took it reflexively. “Uh-huh.” He turned back to Trini. “Janet would kill you. And me.”

Trini made a zipping motion across her lips, gestured up the stairs, and Anthony turned. He trudged back upstairs, reached the kitchen, and stepped out of the way, letting them pass. He couldn’t help but see the enormous military-looking thing Roberto had strapped to his back, but he just rolled his eyes and looked the other way. He went to the kitchen door and opened it, showing them out wordlessly. Trini turned back to him when they got outside.

“Maybe Thanksgiving?”

“Maybe. I’ll work on it.”

“Love you, sweetie.”

“Love you too, Mom.”

The door closed softly. As they made their way back across the darkened lawn to the minivan, Roberto couldn’t take the silence.

“Seems like he turned out nice.”

“Yeah, good kid.”

Roberto looked at her as they approached the van. “I’m just wondering…”

“Yeah?”

“Well, the, uh, location. That you chose to store this.”

“What about it?”

“Um—the children?”

Trini rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on. It’s not like they know how to activate it. Jesus, you’re overcautious.”

Roberto dropped it. Trini was Trini, and that’s what he liked about her.

TEN MINUTES LATER, THEY WERE PARKED OUTSIDE TRINI’S HOUSE, HERwork done. Roberto was behind the wheel now, item number seven in the back. He’d been on the ground in Kansas for thirty-two minutes.

Trini gestured, pointing down the street. “Turn right here, second left after that, you hit the on-ramp in about half a mile. It’s a straight shot up the 73.”

“How long to Atchison?”

“Twenty-five minutes. Sure you don’t want me to—” She cut off, going into a hacking cough that sounded painful.

Roberto looked at her. The night had drained her almost completely, and they both knew there was no way she could or should go with him. “I’ll be okay,” he said. “You still got it, you know.”