“You are good to go. Don’t bother trying taking off the cones once they are unbolted, they weigh fifty pounds each and they are fitted very tight. Just remove all the bolts on the missiles on this level and then come down. Once you’re done I’ll take the shield components up, take off the cones, and fit the superconducting shields between them and the warhead’s ceramic heat shielding underneath.”

Jack nodded, focusing on his task, and John went on, “In the meantime, I’ll finish getting the boxes stacked in each missile silo. This is one of six. When you’re done here you can get started on the next. Sound good?” They nodded at each other once more.

“You’ll need this to get down,” said the Agent finally, indicating the lift mechanism he was standing on, “so I’ll leave it here for you. Just shout if you need me, or walk back down the main corridor and you’ll find me soon enough.” He nodded once more, Jack smiled back at him, and with that John stepped off the side of the lift platform and slipped between the platform’s side and the missiles. He plummeted the thirty feet to the floor and Jack stared after him, his heart skipping a couple of beats until he saw the man land with a loud clang on the floor below. Jesus Christ that was weird to see. John glanced back up momentarily, waved and then walked off to grab another half-ton crate, leaving Jack to his work.

* * *

Jack managed to keep up with the Agent for an hour or two. It took a while for John to carry all the shielding to each of the six missile silos, but there were eight SLAMs in each of the tall loading rooms, and it was already 11pm when they started. He continued to work even as John started to catch up to him, finishing whole silos in just the time it took Jack to remove the bolts. By one in the morning, Jack was exhausted, a profound, bone-deep fatigue that he could no longer ignore. He had worked his way through three of the missile rooms, clambering over twenty-four of the huge missiles to remove the tight-fitting bolts, eight bolts a piece.

For each missile, Jack only had to take off the bolts, while John had to carry up the thin, black shielding components, remove the fifty-pound nose cone, place the sheets in precisely the right positions, weld them there using his onboard lasers, and then replace the cone. The pressure required to squeeze the cone back into place alone was roughly three thousand pounds, roughly the weight of a small SUV, which had to be evenly and consistently applied. Jack had kept ahead of him for a while, but now John was able to do all this in less time than it was taking Jack to unscrew the bolts from each missile.