They are gathered on a Tuesday morning to do a routine inspection on a bunker of M55 rockets containing the nerve agent GB, also known as sarin. The bunker sits under a layer of earth. Its concrete face looms in a clearing, surrounded by trees. In Army parlance, it's called an igloo.
An immense concrete block, nicknamed the King Tut, bars the doorway and has to be lifted and moved away by forklift. Behind it is a steel door with two locks, shielding a cache of weapons sufficient to kill millions.
The crew places an air monitor through a hole in the gray face. It tests the air before the crew opens the door and enters the igloo to ensure that no agent lurks inside.
Before the advent of sophisticated monitoring equipment, large rabbits served the same purpose. Workers would place Belgian hares inside the igloo and wait. If they opened the door and found dead rabbits, they knew to put on their protective gear.
Then as now, the crew is always looking for leakers, those aging rockets that may spring an invisible vapor leak or, occasionally, a liquid leak.
Two weeks ago, the crew cracked open a bunker to find that a rocket had leaked half a cup of sarin. One quart is enough to wipe out 850,000 people.
The air monitor went off the scale and they entered the bunker in their Level A suits and cleaned up the mess with bleach and rags. The crew later received testing for exposure to nerve agent.
The crew was tested again this week for nerve agent exposure after the initial air monitoring found no signs of nerve agent. After conducting a visual inspection, they found nothing suspicious and removed their gas masks. As they did, a second, portable alarm sounded, alerting them to the presence of nerve agent. They evacuated the igloo and closed the door.
Although none showed signs of exposure to nerve agent, they had blood tests that later came back negative.
Today all is quiet as three different instruments scan the air. Inside the crew's van, Mrs. Baskin and Paul Kirby don gas masks, white coveralls, rubber boots and gloves for the initial inspection. The crew rotates its duties and it is Kirby's and Mrs. Baskin's turn to go inside.
Her kids want her to find another line of work, Mrs. Baskin says.
"God is always here," she says later, pointing above her shoulder. "I'm not going in there without a prayer."
The conditions are still and sunny as they enter the bunker. On some days a strong north wind can shut down operations as computer modeling shows it could carry a plume of nerve agent outside of the depot's perimeter.
In which case, the surveillance team won't even crack open a bunker. Paul Bailey, chief of the surveillance branch, calls it a "maximum credible event." It is defined as two rockets detonating or 13 rockets leaking.
As Bailey and the other crewmembers stand away from the door, Mrs. Baskin and Kirby begin the visual inspection. They scan the rows of pallets and silver storage tubes with a flashlight, looking for any signs of a leak.
Mrs. Baskin remembers her first day on the surveillance crew 15 years ago. She had been a conventional weapons inspector for six years and had not worked around chemical weapons.
The alarm on an air monitor sounded and she was struck with panic. Her heart raced and her adrenaline surged and she thought about running outside until she looked to her co-workers. In their faces she saw only a patient determination to fix the problem. That event helped instill the confidence that she still carries.
Now Mrs. Baskin is one of the crew's steely veterans. In some ways the job has molded her personality, she says. She is always focused on details and the task at hand. Her job doesn't allow for guesswork and Mrs. Baskin will not answer a question unless she knows the definite answer.
"You never do anything off the top of your head," she said.
The crew strictly follows their standard operating procedure. She keeps a checklist in her mind as she works through the inspection.
Inside, the igloo is cool and dark, except for the natural sunlight flowing from the open door. A passage, approximately seven feet across, cuts down the middle. Packed with rockets, it doesn't allow for much room.
The igloo is 60 feet long and 16 feet high, and there is some space at the back for when the crew needs to move the weapons.
A warning sign by the door reads without a hint of irony: "Always handle ammunition and explosives with care."
These are the workers that got down on their hands and knees in their hot, dark, Level A suits and mopped up an eight-ounce spill of sarin two weeks ago.
This is the chemical that can kill you with one drop.
Following the incident, twelve of them were tested for exposure to nerve agent. All were clear.
The incident caused a lot of conversation among Mrs. Baskin's friends and neighbors.
"I think everyone blew that out of proportion a bit," she says. She doesn't know how many liquid spills she has seen, although they are an uncommon occurrence. Most leaks are mere vapor, trace amounts detectable only by highly sensitive equipment.
"Fifteen years ago a liquid leaker was rare. Now it seems like we have them every six months, and that's not good," Mrs. Baskin says.
But in some respects a liquid leak is easier to handle because it is easier to spot, she said. A vapor leak requires locating the exact rocket. Using detection equipment, the crew narrows down the stack, the pallet, the row and then the individual rocket.
Isolation, as the process is called, creates the most grumbling among the crew - other than, of course, the Level A suits.
After the crew locates a leaking rocket, it must be removed and packed inside a second container. To get at it, the crew will have to shuffle rockets around the bunker for 15 minutes to an hour.
Lt. Col. Bruce Williams, who oversees the stockpile for the Army, said it will be easier to remove the rockets for destruction in the depot's chemical weapons incinerator. Instead of moving several pallets around in a tight space, the crews will only have to take one pallet at a time out of the bunker.
To remove the liquid leaker two weeks ago, the crew spent more than an hour restacking weapons with a forklift just to reach the one that was leaking. Then they had to put back the pallets. And they had to do it all while wearing Level A suits and oxygen tanks.
"You really don't have a lot of room to work. You're all jammed up," Mrs. Baskin said.
Nothing turns up on today's visual inspection, so Mrs. Baskin and Kirby put on Level B suits - rubber aprons and gas masks - and return to the igloo to take samples inside the rocket tubes.
They unfasten the plugs on the shipping tubes with an Allen wrench. The tool's handle is guarded by a disk of Plexiglas to prevent nerve agent from directly spraying on the workers if there is a liquid leak.
Kirby and Mrs. Baskin put five hoses into five rocket tubes. The hoses converge and run outside to a van called the Real Time Analytical Platform, or RTAP. Inside, Tim Poole watches the graphic spikes and valleys on the computer screen, looking for traces of lethal nerve agent.
Nothing on the first set. Kirby and Mrs. Baskin test another five tubes. Nothing on the second set. They test 30 rockets in all.
All clear.
The two exit the igloo and rinse their boots and gloves in bleach, which neutralizes any trace sarin that may cling to their clothes. In case any of the workers get splashed with a large amount of nerve agent, a tractor-trailer equipped with water tanks and showers is parked beside the igloo.
Like most days, it's not needed on this day.
They pull off their aprons and masks. Kirby's face is red and his hair stands up. He takes a breath and wipes away the sweat.
Mrs. Baskin does the same. They pull off their gear and rest inside the changing van.
Gene Mitchell and Pete Maisano work the King Tut block back into place. Slowly, the team pulls away from the bunker and heads back to their office in a convoy.
"Today was a good day," Mrs. Baskin said. "Today was not a Level A day."
