Silent Source by James Marshall Smith

Author:James Marshall Smith [Smith, James Marshall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Medical, Fiction, Action & Adventure, Thrillers, General
ISBN: 9781939398703
Publisher: Stealth Books
Published: 2016-06-04T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 26

On the way home from the West Coast, Keane kept repeating to himself what Andy had said about “the rules.” He couldn’t leave the monastery for a while to have dinner, to talk things out. Because it was against the rules? It was also against the rules to ignore family. It was against every rule in the book to just take off like you know what the hell you’re doing when you’re just out of high school. Andy wasn’t thinking, he was rebelling because he was eighteen and he could. He was shaking his tail feathers for his dad and mom and the world to admire.

A string of messages had been coming in on Keane’s phone during his flight, including the one from Oak Ridge National Laboratory he’d been waiting for. He told Taylor and Roberto to plan on a short trip for the next morning.

*

Keane’s jet rolled into a private slot at the Oak Ridge Airstrip. He was met inside the terminal by a man in his sixties wearing a checkered shirt and sporting a hunting cap. They quickly departed in a Ford pickup with a gun rack and headed for the hill country of middle Tennessee. Keane sat silently listening to the driver’s stories as he rode along the narrow highway across green rolling hills to a fortress atop Chestnut Ridge: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, one of the world’s leading nuclear research laboratories.

Colin Hickman, a thirty-year veteran of the facility, said that he was often called upon to pick up special visitors because of his knowledge of history. “The Oak Ridge nuclear reservation was an absolute key part of the Manhattan Project.”

He spoke with a soft Appalachian twang. “An army of bulldozers began work in the fall of ‘42. Less than three years later, the scientists developed a large-scale method to separate the rare uranium-235 isotope from uranium ore. They delivered enough of it to Los Alamos during the spring and summer of ‘45 to make the critical assembly for Little Boy. You know that one, don’t you?”

“You’ll have to remind me,” Keane replied.

“Code name for the bomb dropped over Hiroshima.”

A chain-link fence topped with thick-gauged razor wire encircled the isolated facility. After receiving his visitor’s ID badge—APD had called in advance—a security guard drove Keane into the depths of the complex. A jumbled array of buildings, they were both single-level and multistoried, and all of 1950s vintage.

The guard escorted him into a brick structure where they climbed two flights of stairs to reach the conference room. It sat next to a large lab area where a host of gadgets flashed lights and spewed paper graphs and digital readings on LED displays. Lab assistants in white lab coats and carrying clipboards roamed among the instruments. A large window loomed on one inside wall so that the laboratory could be viewed from the conference room. He was introduced to four scientists who were sitting around a rectangular table in government-issued hardback chairs.

The introduction was delivered in staccato chunks by Dr.

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