Holding Their Own: The Toymaker by Joe Nobody

think you’ve just provided me with a solution that will protect our little irrigation project. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go and research the hazardous materials storage units at Los Alamos. ”
    Grissom knew immediately where Hack’s mind was going, and it made him ill.
     

    They looked like a wagon train from a B-grade Western, straining teams of horses pulling dilapidated, weathered wagons through the scenic valley.
    Surrounding the rusty wheels and horseflesh were the mounted scouts and warriors. With rifles pointed skyward and resting on saddle leather, some were Santa Domingo, others Cochiti. The toymaker’s Apache escorts made up the rest.
    Hack had instructed the elders to prepare enough food and supplies for a three-day excursion. Not knowing what to expect, he’d also suggested a significant amount of ammunition be added to the manifest. That had taken the entire cargo area of one of the wagons.
    And then there was the anticipated looting.
    Everyone around the Caldera knew Los Alamos had been abandoned less than a year after the electricity had vanished. The mountain town’s unmaintained sewers had bled into the water supply after a heavy spring rain. Disease had racked the population in a matter of days. The survivors had fled in droves.
    Since then, the larger and closer cities of Santa Fe and Albuquerque had been more accessible targets for the tribe’s scavenging parties to plunder. Los Alamos, at its peak, had attracted only about 12,000 residents, and many had survived and consumed supplies for months after the collapse. Early scouting expeditions had found the town nearly void of items high on the looters’ priority lists.
    But that didn’t mean that the entire area was void of valuable assets. Since Hack and his party were going to be making the difficult trip anyway, why not bring along an extra wagon or two to fill with anything useful?
    The highest priority, however, wasn’t batteries, medical supplies, foodstuffs, or weapons. Hack wanted to harvest the nuclear materials from the lab. With those in his possession, he could protect the tribes and the Valley Green project. Thus, the extra wagons.
    The ex-engineer had no illusions of converting his small patch of New Mexico into a global nuclear power. He knew enough to realize that building a fission bomb required extensive capabilities and knowledge that were beyond his grasp.
    But radioactive materials had more than one use.
    For years at the Skunk Works, the threat of a terrorist’s dirty bomb had been a perplexing problem for those who earned their living protecting the USA. Hack had worked on aircraft-mounted sensors and early detection devices more than once in his career.
    There had also been a project that revolved around performing damage assessment if a U.S. city ever experienced the horror of a dirty bomb detonation.
    The toymaker knew that the concept struck fear into the hearts of the bravest of men. He fully understood how political leaders reacted to the ramifications of the threat.
    If he could safely capture whatever the Los Alamos labs held in their vaults, it would be a potent deterrent for anyone trying to interfere with their project… or the tribes in general.
    The chiefs and governors had grasped this immediately. “If we had commanded this capability three hundred years ago,” remarked one of the council elders, “the whites would be the ones relegated to life on reservations.”
    The constant plodding of hooves on pavement was causing Hack to grow drowsy. He was fighting a nearly constant stream of yawning when the outline of Los Alamos appeared over the crest of a rise.
    From a distance, the mountain city looked like any other town bathed in the afternoon sun. With beautiful vistas and diverse surroundings, Hack had to admit that the government had made a wise decision back in the 40s when they had established the Manhattan Project at the remote locale.
    An hour later, the entourage was entering the