CHAPTER 11: THE ACCIDENTAL INTERCEPT

 Note - this story was compiled from many conversations with "Mark Hendricks" but written by Steve Douglass.

CHAPTER 11: THE ACCIDENTAL INTERCEPT 

When the flash came, it was as if the sun had cracked open over New Mexico. The light swallowed the horizon, pure white—too bright to be real. I felt it before I heard it, a silent pressure in my chest that turned a moment later into a roaring shockwave that rattled my teeth. Dust lifted off the desert like a curtain.

When the air settled, I stepped outside to inspect the antenna array. Part of it had been knocked down—the directional antenna now faced the sky. I cursed under my breath and started checking my gear for damage, had a cable been broken. That’s when I heard it: a sound on the headset I didn’t recognize. Short bursts of tone—compressed, layered, fast. Not Morse. Not anything I’d ever logged before.

I recorded it on the wire recorder, thinking it might be stray telemetry from one of the B-29s circling above. A curiosity, nothing more. Later that day, the heat and exhaustion buried it under the paperwork. The wire spool ended up in a drawer with the rest of my routine logs. Later it was boxed and filed somewhere. Outta sight, outta mind. 

After the war, I took a job offer at Los Alamos as a radio technician. Seemed like a good way to keep using what I knew. The place had its own rhythm—security clearances, badge checks, and long hours spent among humming transmitters and the smell of ozone.

A few years in, they called me down to Security. Two men in gray suits, not military. They asked if I remembered a recording from the Trinity site—a strange signal I’d captured that morning. I told them yes, vaguely. They asked what I thought it was. I said maybe telemetry from an orbiting aircraft, maybe interference from the blast.

They didn’t seem convinced. One of them said there’d been a “leak,” that Russia had the bomb now, and they were tracing every possible transmission from that time. They wanted to know if I’d seen anyone out there who might have been sending something. I told them no, nobody but our own crews.

They handed me a paper—non-disclosure, stamped and dated—and told me to sign it. I did. Then they sent me back to work, as if nothing had happened.

Sometimes, late at night when the static hums through the receivers, I think about that signal. It was only a few seconds long, but I can still hear it in my head: rising, falling, repeating. Not quite random, not quite human.

Maybe it was just the echo of the blast bouncing through the atmosphere. Or maybe, for the first time, something else heard us light up the sky.

Looking back now, with the technology we have today, I realize that what I intercepted that morning sounded remarkably like a digital radio transmission—compressed, coded, and far ahead of its time. Whatever it was, it didn’t belong to 1945.

Years later, word came down that the spy they’d been hunting wasn’t anyone from the Army Trinity group at all. It turned out to be Klaus Fuchs—German-born British physicist, closely tied to the dark history of Trinity than most wanted to admit. The whole investigation had nothing to do with my recording. I remember feeling surprised, and relieved. 

For my cooperation—and maybe for my silence—I was rewarded in quiet ways. Promotions came. I advanced through positions at Los Alamos, and eventually put myself through college, earning more degrees than I’d ever imagined possible when I was a farm boy with a radio kit.

Then one day, another man from Security came looking for me. Said there was someone who wanted to meet me personally. I followed him through corridors I didn’t recognize, past rooms I’d never been cleared to enter. He led me to a part of the complex I could have sworn didn’t exist—a squat, windowless building with no markings.

Inside was a massive steel door with a combination lock the size of my hand. The guard turned the dial with slow, deliberate precision until the bolts gave way. The door opened onto a small, empty room—two chairs, a table, nothing else.

A man was already sitting there. I’d never seen him before, but he knew me. He smiled, said my full name—my real one—and spoke like he’d been waiting for this meeting.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said. “I’ve heard only great things about you, and you’re a man who can keep a secret.”

The door shut behind me with a heavy metallic sound.

“If you are that man,” he said, “I have a job for you.”