Slither - Edward Lee [69]
"Exactly, and you're right, the government uses them all the time, in places where there's no practical way to deliver fuel to run gas and diesel generators. A small radioactive pellet produces heat that's changed into electricity through a thermocoupler. Same sort of thing NASA puts on satellites, Mars probes, things like that. It's a battery that lasts a hundred years." Trent sat down on one of the old picnic tables, rubbed sleep out of his face. He looked worn out. "Since I had to escort civilians to the island, my orders were to lie about the power source. No one knows about the RTG and there was no reason to think it might be discovered-it's all the way on the other side of the island." He looked right at her. "What the hell were you doing that far into the woods?"
"I was going for a nature walk," Nora said, and she didn't feel the need to apologize.
"Great. Now you'll have to be debriefed when we leave-big-pain in the ass."
"Debriefed?"
"The location of the RTG is classified. You'll have to be interviewed in Jacksonville by the Army Security Agency and sign a National Secrets Act nondisclosure form."
Nora felt outraged. "'That's ridiculous!"
"Hey, you're the one who had to go on a nature walk."
My God, she thought, frowning. "So that thing was installed for the missile site?"
"Right. It provided all the needed electricity for the control station and the launch circuitry."
"How come it wasn't removed when the missiles were dismantled?"
Trent smiled and shook his head. "The RTG itself is only the size of a lunch box ... but it's seated in a thousand-pound shielding box, and then they embedded the box in fifteen tons of steel-reinforced concrete."
"Too big to move."
"Yeah, but if no one knows it's there, it's not a security risk." He rubbed his eyes again, aggravated. "Now someone does know where it is. You."
"Well, I'm certainly not going to tell anyone about it."
"Good, because if you do, you can get five years in jail and a quarter-million-dollar fine. In this day and age, can you imagine the uproar if the public found out there was an RTG on an island two miles off the coast of Florida? Every nut job and wannabe terrorist would come out here trying to dig it up. You know, the psychological element. Theoretically, if you took the uranium out of that RTG core--someone could make a dirty nuke. So mum's the word here. If Annabelle mentions in her bristleworm article that there's a friggin' nuclear battery on Pritchard's Key, I turn into a buck private real fast. My whole career will be in the toilet."
Now Nora got the gist. RTGs were safe alternate power sources whose fuel was inaccessible, but in today's climate of terrorism, dirty bombs, and overall radiological paranoia, public knowledge of their whereabouts provided a huge security breech.
"All right, now I get it," she said. "And of course I won't tell anyone. So we can skip the debriefing part, okay?"
"Not okay. I'd lose my job."
Nora grimaced. "You really are by the book, aren't you?"
"Pretty much. That's the way it's got to be. Next time you go on a nature walk-don't go. Most of this island's unexcavated. There's quicksand, sinkholes, all kinds of trouble. Please. Stick to the safe areas. And I couldn't repeat it enough: Don't tell Annabelle or Loren about the RTG. And once you're back on the mainland, don't tell anyone else. Ever. The military's really paranoid about this stuff. You'll have your phones tapped, your mail swiped, all your data sucked out of your computers, oh, and the IRS. And all because you know about a little piece of radioactive material that's smaller than a BB."
Nora looked bug-eyed at him. "Lieutenant, trust me, I'll sew my mouth shut."
"Good, 'cause this is no joke."
Damn. The riot act, Nora thought. Can I help it I decided to go for a friggin' walk? There were better ways to start a day.
"Oh, I forgot to tell you," Trent said next, the sour topic finally closed. "Remember when