The biplane buzzed the mesa like an angry hornet.
Jason shielded his eyes from the desert sun. He watched a small canister drop from the plane's belly. It tumbled through the air, trailing a red streamer, and thudded into the dust ten feet away.
"Mail call," O'Malley grunted, racking the slide of his Thompson gun.
Jason walked over and popped the canister open. Inside was a single sheet of paper.
It wasn't a surrender demand. It was a death warrant.
TO THE OCCUPANTS OF GHOST RANCH:
SURRENDER THE DEVICE IMMEDIATELY. YOU ARE DECLARED ENEMY COMBATANTS UNDER THE ESPIONAGE ACT.
YOU HAVE ONE HOUR BEFORE ARTILLERY BARRAGE COMMENCES.
SIGNED, J. EDGAR HOOVER.
Jason crumpled the paper.
"Hoover convinced the Army," Jason said, walking back to the group huddled in the shade of the adobe lab. "They think we're Soviet agents building a doomsday machine."
"Aren't we?" Oppenheimer asked, lighting a cigarette with shaking hands. "Technically?"
"We're the only thing stopping the Soviets," Jason snapped. "But Hoover doesn't know that."
He looked at Howard Hughes. The billionaire aviator was polishing his sunglasses, looking bored.
"Howard, can we fly the core out?"
"Not with that heavy artillery moving up the road," Hughes said, pointing north. Through the heat haze, the silhouette of a tank—a primitive Mark VIII Liberty—was visible. "They'll shoot us down before we clear the ridge."
"So we're trapped," Sarah said. She checked her revolver. "North gate is the US Army. South gate is..."
She looked at the southern perimeter, where Ricardo and his 'bandits' were guarding the pass.
"Ricardo is solid," Jason said. "He hates the Feds more than we do."
"Does he?" Sarah asked quietly. "He's been spending a lot of time on the radio lately. Speaking Russian."
Jason froze.
Before he could answer, the air raid siren on the lab roof began to wail.
WHOOOP-WHOOOP.
"Movement at the South Gate!" O'Malley shouted from the watchtower. "They're opening the doors!"
Jason raised his binoculars.
Ricardo was standing by the heavy wooden gates. He wasn't aiming his rifle outward. He was waving someone in.
Trucks painted with red stars roared through the opening. Men in mismatched uniforms jumped out. They carried Mosin-Nagant rifles and Molotov cocktails.
"Soviets," Jason whispered. "Ricardo flipped."
"Moscow pays in gold too," O'Malley spat. "And they probably promised him a governorship."
"They aren't here for us," Jason realized, watching the Soviet trucks bypass the living quarters and head straight for the main hall. "They're heading for the Pile. They want the core."
"If they get the plutonium," Oppenheimer said, his voice trembling, "Stalin wins the game."
Jason turned to the group.
"Sarah, O'Malley—hold the lab door. Don't let them breach. Einstein, shut down the reactor. Scram it. I don't want a meltdown in the middle of a firefight."
"And you?" Sarah asked.
Jason looked at the water tower on the highest point of the mesa. The "Gadget" was stored there. A prototype tactical nuke. Crude. Unstable.
"I'm going to the tower," Jason said. "I'm going to end the argument."
The firefight was chaotic and loud.
Bullets chipped away the adobe walls of the lab. Sarah fired through a window, dropping a Soviet soldier who tried to rush the door.
Inside, Einstein was frantically turning valves.
"Coolant pressure is high!" Einstein shouted over the gunfire. "I cannot drop the rods!"
"Just cut the lines!" O'Malley yelled, reloading his tommy gun. "Kill the machine!"
Outside, Jason sprinted across the open courtyard. Bullets kicked up dust around his boots.
He reached the ladder of the water tower and scrambled up.
Oppenheimer was already there, huddled next to the device.
It looked like a metal sphere covered in wires and detonators. It was the size of a beach ball.
"It's not ready!" Oppenheimer screamed over the wind. "The implosion lenses aren't calibrated! It will fizzle!"
"I don't need a megaton, Robert!" Jason shouted, checking the arming sequence. "I just need a really big stick!"
He looked down.
The US Army tank was breaching the North Gate. The Soviet trucks were hammering the lab door at the South.
They were being squeezed to death.
"If I detonate this here," Jason said, "we all vaporize."
"Then don't!"
"I'm not aiming for us," Jason said.
He grabbed the sighting mechanism. He tilted the device.
He pointed it at the canyon wall, five hundred yards to the south. Directly above the Soviet approach road.
"If I drop the cliff," Jason yelled, "I bury the Soviets. And the shockwave will scare the hell out of the Army."
"It's too close!" Oppenheimer grabbed his arm. "The radiation! The fallout!"
"Better cancer than a Gulag!" Jason shoved him back.
He flipped the safety switch. The device began to hum. A high-pitched whine of capacitors charging.
Jason looked at the battlefield below.
Sarah was shooting. Einstein was praying. Hughes was probably hiding under a table.
"Forgive me," Jason whispered.
He turned the key.
There was no sound at first.
Just light.
A flash of pure, blinding white that erased the world. It was brighter than the sun. It bleached the color out of the desert, turning the red rocks into stark, white ghosts.
Jason squeezed his eyes shut, but he could still see the bones in his hands through his eyelids.
Then came the heat. A wave of oven-air that singed his hair instantly.
And finally, the roar.
CRACK-BOOM.
It wasn't an explosion. It was the sound of the earth screaming.
The canyon wall simply disintegrated. Millions of tons of rock vaporized, turning into a landslide of molten slag.
The Soviet trucks were buried instantly. Erased.
The shockwave hit the mesa a second later.
The water tower shook violently. Jason was thrown against the railing. He grabbed Oppenheimer, holding him down as the metal groaned and twisted.
Below, the US Army tank stopped. The soldiers cowered behind their vehicles.
The shooting stopped.
Silence fell over the desert. A heavy, ringing silence.
Jason pulled himself up. He looked south.
A mushroom cloud was rising over the canyon. It was small—a tactical fizzle—but it was perfect. Purple and black, swirling with radioactive dust.
The "Glass Desert" had been born.
"My God," Oppenheimer whispered, staring at the cloud. "We broke the sky."
Jason looked at the stunned American troops retreating from the North Gate. They weren't attacking anymore. They were fleeing.
"We didn't break it," Jason said, his voice hollow. "We just bought it."