Dead or Alive - By Tom Clancy Page 0,135

girlfriends had displayed. God, he was a lucky man. To find a woman like her, and to have her attracted to him . . . And the sex. God almighty. Admittedly, his experience was somewhat limited, but the things she did to him, with her hands, with her mouth . . . Every time they were together, he felt like he was living a Penthouse Forum letter.

His musings were interrupted by a telltale plume of dust appearing over the hill opposite the main tunnel entrance, indicating vehicles approaching. Sixty seconds later, two black Chevy Suburbans appeared on the north road and pulled into the parking lot. Afternoon work had been halted, and all the trucks and equipment pallets moved to the perimeter of the lot. The Suburbans slowed to a stop about fifty feet away and sat idling. None of the doors opened, and Steve imagined the occupants dreading the idea of leaving the air-conditioned interiors. And it wasn’t even hot, he thought, not summer-hot, at least. Funny how delegation visits like this one tended to taper off in June, July, and August.

Now the doors opened, and out climbed the ten staffers who had been dispatched by their respective governors. Two for each of the five bordering states. Having already rolled up their shirtsleeves and loosened their ties, the group stood for a moment, blinking and looking around, before seeing Steve waving his arm at them. En masse, they walked over to him and gathered in a semicircle.

“Afternoon, and welcome,” he said. “My name is Steve Jenkins, and I’m one of the senior on-site engineers here. I’ll do my best to learn your names before we’re through, but for now I’ll leave it to you to sort out your visitor badges.”

He held out a shoebox, and one by one each delegate came forward and found his or her badge.

“Just a couple quick reminders, and then we’ll get out of the heat. I’ll be passing out information sheets that will cover everything we’re going to talk about this afternoon, and everything I’m allowed to say.”

This got a few chuckles. Steve relaxed a bit. Might not be so bad after all.

“That said, I’ll ask you not to take notes, either on paper or on a PDA. Same with voice recorders and cameras.”

“Why is that?” one of the delegates, a blond California-type woman, asked. “There are plenty of pictures on the Internet.”

“True, but only the ones we want there,” Steve replied. “Believe me, if I can answer a question, I’ll do it. Our goal is to give you as much information as we can. One last thing before we step inside: This contraption next to me that looks like part rocket booster, part mobile home, and part oil pipeline is our TBM, or tunnel boring machine, known affectionately as the Yucca Mucker. For those of you that love facts and figures, the Mucker is four hundred sixty feet long, twenty-five feet wide, weighs seven hundred tons, and can cut through solid rock at up to eighteen feet an hour. To put that into perspective, that’s about the length of one of the Suburbans you arrived in.

There were appreciative murmurs and chuckles from the delegation.

“Okay, if you’ll follow me to the tunnel entrance, we’ll get started.”

We’re now standing in what we call the Exploratory Studies Facility,” Jenkins said. “It is shaped like a horseshoe, about five miles long and twenty-five feet wide. In several places in the ESF we constructed eight alcoves about the size of pole barns, in which we store equipment and conduct experiments, and six weeks ago we completed the first experimental emplacement drift.”

“Which is what?” one of the delegates asked.

“It’s essentially where deposits will be stored when and if the site goes active. You’ll see the entrance to the drift in a few minutes.”

“We’re not going inside?”

“No, I’m afraid not. We’re still conducting tests to ensure its stability.” This was a vast understatement, of course. The digging of the emplacement drift had taken a relatively short time. Testing and experimentation would take another nine months to a year. “Let’s talk a little geography,” Steve continued.

“The ridge above us was formed about thirteen million years ago by a now-extinct caldera volcano, and is comprised of alternating layers of rock called welded tuff—also known as ‘ignimbrite’—nonwelded tuff and semiwelded tuff.”

A hand went up. “Did I hear you right? You said ‘volcano.’”

“I did. But it’s long extinct.”

“You’ve had earthquakes, though, right?”

“Yes, two of them. One measuring five on the Richter and one measuring

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