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By Root 871 0

’d thought he’d left that all behind when he got his honorable discharge and went to truck-driving school. He’d spent ten years doing that, doing long hauls from coast to coast, sometimes taking his wife along, but mostly eating up the miles while listening to classic rock. God love XM satellite radio, he thought, and thank God the government was going to let him keep it for this new job. He hadn’t relished the idea of working for the government again, but the pay had been too good to pass up, what with the hazardous-duty bonuses and all. They didn’t call it that, exactly, but that’s what it amounted to. He’d gone through a special training program and background checks by the FBI, but he had nothing to hide and he was a damned good driver. In truth, there was nothing extraordinary about what they had him doing—except for the cargo, that was, but he never had to touch the stuff. Just show up, let someone else load it, then get it safely to its destination and let someone else unload it. Mostly they drilled him on emergency procedures: what to do if someone tried to hijack the load; what to do if he got into an accident; what to do if a UFO came down and beamed him out of the cab … The Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission trainers had “what-if” drills for everything you could think of, then a hundred more you’d never imagine. Besides, he’d never be driving the route alone. They hadn’t told him yet whether his escorts would be in marked or unmarked cars, but you could bet they’d be armed to the teeth.

There’d be no guards this time, though, which surprised Weaver a bit. Yeah, it was only a trial run and his load would be empty, but given the way the DOE played everything as if it was real, he’d expected an escort. Then again, maybe they were lying; maybe he’d have an escort he wasn’t supposed to see. Still didn’t change his job.

Weaver downshifted and braked, swinging the rig into the entrance drive of the Callaway Nuclear Power Plant. A hundred yards ahead he could see the guard shack. He braked to a stop and handed his ID card down to the guard. The entrance was blocked by five steel-core concrete pillars.

“Engine off, please.”

Weaver complied.

The guard looked over his ID, then slipped it into his front shirt pocket and had him sign in on the clipboard. Weaver’s flatbed was empty, but the guard did his job, first walking a complete circle around the rig, then checking the undercarriage with one of those rolling mirror-cart things.

The guard reappeared below the window.

“Please step out of the truck.” Weaver climbed down. The guard again examined Weaver’s ID, taking a good ten seconds to check to make sure the faces matched. “Please stand beside the guard shack.”

Weaver did so, and the guard climbed into the truck’s cab and spent two minutes searching the interior before climbing down. He handed Weaver his ID card.

“Dock number four. You’ll be directed along the way. Speed limit is ten miles an hour.”

“Got it.”

Weaver climbed back into the cab and started the engine. The guard lifted his portable radio to his lips and said something. A moment later, the concrete pillars retracted into the ground. The guard waved Weaver through.

Dock four was only a hundred yards away, on the back side of the plant. At the halfway point a hard-hatted man in coveralls waved him on. Weaver did a Y-turn, backed up to the dock, and shut off the engine.

The dock foreman walked up to Weaver’s door. “You can wait in the lounge, if you want. Take us about an hour.”

It took almost ninety minutes. Though Weaver had seen pictures of the thing during training, he’d never seen one in person. He and the other drivers had nicknamed it “King Kong’s Dumbbell,” but the DOE people had gone to a lot of trouble drumming the particulars into their brains. Officially known as the GA-4 Legal Weight Truck (LWT) Spent Fuel Cask, the container was an impressive piece of engineering. How they’d settled on the dumbbell shape Weaver didn’t know, but he assumed it had something to do with durability. According to the trainers, the GA-4