Dead Zone

by Robison Wells

  She knew what her role would be then: get thirteen kilometers behind enemy lines, so that the front of Fyodor’s bubble extended to the front of the American lines. Then, just as they had done with the Navy, the Russian guns would open up on a sea of powerless targets.

  “We’re going to give you the drug,” Doctor Safin said, and Zasha winced at the words.

  “I know you don’t like it,” he said, “but the battle will be long.”

  “That’s why we need the glider.”

  “You know you’re better than the glider,” he said. “And the glider can only be used at night.”

  “How long will Fyodor be active?”

  “No longer than he’s been active in the past.”

  She stood and walked to the window. A platoon of infantry was there, preparing surface-to-air defenses. When Zasha moved forward, they’d be vulnerable to any plane that didn’t fly through Fyodor’s bubble.

  “When do we move?” she asked, checking her antique watch.

  “Tonight.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  AUBREY WAS DRESSED IN HER full ACU, including helmet and heavy Kevlar vest. She was carrying her M16 and a full complement of ammunition, grenades, and equipment.

  Everyone in the passenger compartment of the armored personnel carrier—a Bradley—was also in uniform: Jack, Tabitha, Sharps, Chase-Dunn, and Lytle. The rest of the group was in another Bradley following out on the battlefield, though they couldn’t tell where without windows. It felt claustrophobic in the tiny compartment, three on each side, their knees touching. There were no windows; light came from the open turret, and even that was minimal. It was five o’clock, and that was late enough this time of year to turn the sky a dull gray.

  “When is Thanksgiving?” she asked as the Bradley rumbled forward.

  “Five days,” Jack said.

  “You’ve been counting down?”

  “Gotta keep sight of something,” Jack said.

  “I don’t think we’re going to be home for turkey dinner,” Tabitha said.

  “Probably won’t be home for Christmas either,” Lytle said.

  Aubrey adjusted her glasses. The movement of the vehicle kept making them slip down her nose. “You think this war is going to last through Christmas?”

  “You know as much about this war as I do,” Lytle said. “But I do know this: I’ve never been in a short war.”

  “If we can stop them here, won’t that be a big deal?” Aubrey asked. “If we can keep them west of the Cascades?”

  Nick answered. “There are three main ways they can get out of the Cascades—up by Vancouver, down by Portland, or right here.”

  “Or can’t they just go straight down the West Coast?” Tabitha asked.

  “They could,” Nick said.

  “If they wanted to do that, wouldn’t they have landed farther south?” Aubrey asked.

  “That question’s above my pay grade,” Nick said. “For all we know, they have landed or will land to the south.”

  Lytle grunted approval. “That’s one thing you have to get used to. In a war, you only know what your unit is supposed to do. You don’t worry about what everyone else is doing.”

  Nick and Chase-Dunn nodded.

  Rumbling started. It sounded like distant thunder, but within moments it began to roar all around them.

  Aubrey tensed, and she wished she could hold Jack’s hand. Instead she gripped her rifle.

  “Is that ours or theirs?” Tabitha asked nervously.

  “Ours,” Jack answered. “It’s coming from behind us. I can hear planes, too.”

  Lytle looked at the ceiling of the tight compartment as though he could see the stars. “Let’s hope to hell they stay up in the sky.”

  The commander standing in the turret climbed down and closed the hatch, leaving them with the few lights glowing inside the Bradley.

  The worst part of this mission was that they didn’t know what they were looking for. They were part of the offensive—part of the overall attack on the mouth of Snowqualmie Pass to stop the Russians from breaking through their lines to the geographic freedom of the east—but Aubrey didn’t know what she was going to be doing. This wasn’t like the infiltration at the roadblock, where Aubrey would be listening to Tabitha and reporting to Jack, and they knew they had to create a distraction and sneak up on the vehicles. This wasn’t organized at all. There was no real plan.

  She noticed she was shaking, and not from the movement of the vehicle. She clutched her rifle tightly again, feeling the trembling moving up her forearm.

  The roar of the artillery was louder, and getting louder still. Aubrey was certain they had to be close to the battle.

  “How are we supposed to find the device?” Tabitha asked, a note of panic in her voice.

  “We’ve already talked about that. We don’t know,” Nick said, his voice more calm than his words would suggest. “We’re going to find it because we have to find it. We’re moving toward the center of their lines, which is where we expect them to move the device when the battle gets in full swing.”

  “We think it’s like a spray bottle, radiating out in a cone,” Lytle said. “So, if it’s at the front of their lines they can still use it, but it stops us cold.”

  Tabitha’s voice appeared in Aubrey’s mind. She sounded frightened. “This is suicide. We don’t even have a plan.”

  Aubrey looked at Tabitha, but she had her eyes closed. It looked like she was grimacing against every loud rumble of artillery fire.

  “If they disable us, they’ll disable themselves, too, right?” Aubrey said. “Will this turn into an infantry fight?”

  “In the dark with no night vision,” Tabitha said out loud.

  “We don’t know what to expect,” Nick said. “So far our artillery is firing, which means they must have targets and we’re not disabled yet.”

  Just as he finished the sentence, all the lights in the Bradley went out, and it came to a sudden stop.

  Lytle swore.

  “What do we do now?” Tabitha asked, plainly terrified.

  There was silence. Complete silence.

  The commander climbed up and opened the hatch on the turret. A little light trickled in, but they were still mostly in darkness.

  “Everything’s out,” the commander called down to his crew.

  “What do we do?” Tabitha asked again.

  Aubrey watched the commander, who was scanning the horizon with binoculars.

  “Hold tight, darlin’,” Lytle said.

  “Don’t call me that,” Tabitha snapped, but it was obvious her concerns had nothing to do with the word darlin’.

  “Nothing’s moving,” the commander relayed down to them. “It’s like the whole world just turned off.”

  The gunner called out, “Chain gun’s down.”

  “Get up here on the machine gun.”

  “This isn’t good,” Tabitha said telepathically to Aubrey. “We’re sitting ducks.”

  Aubrey searched the darkness for Nick’s face, but she couldn’t see well enough to make out an expression.

  “I’m seventeen years old,” Tabitha continued. “I shouldn’t be here. Not like this. Not in the middle of a war.”

  Aubrey wanted to say that Tabitha was a private—that she’d been through the same shortened basic training just like Aubrey—but the words were frozen in her mouth. It wasn’t even Tabitha’s telepathic thoughts that prevented Aubrey from talking. It was her own fear.

  She wanted to disappear, but there was nowhere to go.

  “Shit,” the commander yelled. “Get down! Close the hatch! Incoming!”

  There was a long moment of deadly silence, of intense quiet that was so heavy it squeezed all the air out of Aubrey’s chest.

  And then the world exploded.

  The Bradley rocked as artillery shells seemed to detonate right on top of them.

  Tabitha screamed, and Jack grabbed Aubrey’s arm. She fumbled with his hand until their fingers were laced together. It
was completely, utterly black inside the vehicle, but it felt as if they were in an earthquake.

  “What do we do?” Aubrey shouted, but her cries were covered up by the noise. She doubted even Jack could hear her.

  There was nothing they could do, and she knew it. They were under heavy artillery fire. If they went outside they’d be torn to shreds by shrapnel. Already she could hear flecks of metal scraping the sides of the vehicle, and the thought seemed to make her leg flare with pain.

  “No one’s answering me,” Tabitha said in Aubrey’s mind, her telepathic voice cutting through the deafening noise. “What are we supposed to do? We’re going to die!”

  Aubrey let go of Jack’s hand and reached across him to where Tabitha sat. She grabbed at Tabitha’s jacket and then their hands met. They clutched each other for a moment, fingertips to fingertips, until an enormous explosion seemed to lift the Bradley a few feet and drop it again. Their hands were torn apart.

  “We’re going to die,” Tabitha repeated. “We’re going to die.”

  Aubrey wished she could get Tabitha out of her head, but there was nothing she could do.

  “They’re going to keep firing. Nothing can stop them. We can’t get out of here.”

  “Calm down,” Aubrey shouted, her voice smothered by the noise of the artillery.

  Aubrey reached for Jack’s hand again, and found he was covering his ears. She grabbed his leg instead.

  She didn’t want yesterday to be the last thing she did with her life—the killing of nine men. She had resolved to be so much more, to make her life more meaningful. To be a better soldier, a better person.

  She couldn’t die here.

  And then the darkness turned into bright yellow light, and the noise was so loud that it didn’t even seem like noise—it felt like weight, like heat, like death.

  TWENTY-THREE

  JACK’S WORLD EXPLODED IN PAIN as all his senses overloaded in an instant—too bright, too loud, too pungent, too bitter. Too everything.

  For a moment he couldn’t hear, couldn’t think. He saw the fire in the front of the compartment. Aubrey was on her feet, the closest to the flames and desperate to get out.

  Lytle was next to the back hatch. He should have been opening it. But he wasn’t moving. By the light of the blaze Jack saw slick wetness running down the front of Lytle’s unmoving body.

  Tabitha jumped up, pounding on the door, panicking, no idea how to get it open.

  Nick was dazed, unable to stand because Aubrey was in front of him, filling up the tiny aisle space. Chase-Dunn stood and shoved Tabitha back into her seat, and then began yanking on the handle to open the hatch. Something was stuck.

  Jack’s hearing came back all at once, and for a moment the world seemed to be moving in double time to catch up with what he had missed.

  “Come on, Nick,” Aubrey was shouting, yanking at the Green Beret’s vest straps. “Get up. We have to get out.”

  “It’s not opening!” Tabitha cried.

  Jack glanced back at the fire and saw the slumped, lifeless body of the Bradley commander. The gunner was nowhere to be seen.

  Then Jack noticed he could see outside—through a split of twisted metal in the turret.

  “Open, damn it,” Chase-Dunn bellowed.

  “We’re going to die.” Tabitha was standing, her back pressed against the damaged wall. “We’re going to burn in here.”

  “We’re not going to die,” Jack said, and climbed over Aubrey’s seat toward the turret.

  The heat was tremendous, and he wondered if he had started to blister. He stepped over the fallen commander—what was left of him—and climbed up the ladder to where the top hatch was blown wide open.

  “This way,” Jack shouted, his hands stinging on the hot metal.

  No one heard him and he jumped back down and grabbed Aubrey. “We can get out through the turret!”

  Nick nodded in groggy agreement, and Aubrey turned to reach for Chase-Dunn. “The turret,” she yelled. “Hurry.”

  Jack turned back around and darted up the ladder, fighting to ignore the bloody mess around him and the pain in his fingers. When he reached the top he pushed what was remaining of the hatch out of the way.

  Outside was a nightmare of flames and explosions. He stopped on top of the Bradley, looking down into the turret as Aubrey climbed out and quickly jumped to the ground. The front of the vehicle was a gaping hole spitting fire and sparks.

  After Aubrey came Nick. He was tottering on the ladder, moving in shaky, uncertain motions. Jack grabbed him by the forearm and pulled him out. Tabitha came next, darting as fast as her feet would carry her, and jumping off the Bradley as soon as she could.

  There was a long pause before Chase-Dunn appeared at the bottom of the ladder, and Jack could only assume he was taking a final check of the other soldiers. Finally, after Jack was sure he was starting to roast in his Kevlar suit, Chase-Dunn jumped onto the ladder and scrambled up. He waved Jack’s outstretched hand away.

  “Get on the ground,” he said, pain on his face. “Everyone needs to get down.”

  Jack checked his gear and then jumped over the edge of the Bradley, hitting the hard earth and stumbling forward. A moment later, Nick landed behind him, and then Chase-Dunn followed.

  There was a sudden screech across the sky and a firework show of explosions lit up the Russian lines. Jack recognized the shapes he had memorized during training. Four F-22 Raptors—stealth fighters—had just dropped bombs on the Russians, seemingly unaffected by the power outage.

  Instantly, the artillery bombardment from the Russians slowed.

  Chase-Dunn grabbed Jack and pulled him to the rear of the vehicle where the team was gathered.

  “What’s everyone’s status?” Nick asked, breathing heavily.

  “I’m okay,” Aubrey said.

  “Me too,” Jack answered.

  “Freaking out,” Tabitha said, but tried to keep a calm face on.

  “Lytle’s gone,” Chase-Dunn said. “Shrapnel to the neck. I’m good. How about you?”

  “Hit my head,” Nick said, “but I’ll be okay. Do we know the status of the other guys?”

  Jack turned and leaned out from behind the Bradley, searching the devastation for the second half of their ODA. There were burning vehicles everywhere, providing the only light on a motionless, powerless field.

  Up ahead was the other Bradley—maybe three hundred yards in front of them. It was stopped, but didn’t appear to be damaged.

  “It’s okay,” Jack said. “I think. It’s not on fire.”

  The American planes appeared again, flying in a line parallel to the Russian battle lines. Jack saw a rocket fly up and miss one of the fighters, and then they each dropped another bomb.

  “Wherever the device is,” Jack said, returning to the relative safety of the back of the Bradley, “it’s not over there. The Russians are able to fire their artillery, and their tanks are firing on ours. And our planes are making it through.”

  “How can the planes make it through?” Nick asked.

  “They’re not flying over us. I think that’s the key—they’re not flying above the device, so the device isn’t affecting them.”

  “So it’s over here somewhere?” Chase-Dunn asked, his face full of fury for his dead brother-in-arms.

  “It’s got to be,” Jack said. “That’s how it’s stopping all of us.”

  “Well, let’s go find that son of a bitch.”

  Nick nodded sluggishly, obviously more injured than he was saying. “Everybody, rifles up. Follow Chase-Dunn. I’ll take the rear. Let’s get the rest of our team.”

  “We’re going out there?” Tabitha said incredulously.

  “It’s no safer here,” Chase-Dunn said, and then turned and began jogging across the churned earth. “Let’s go free our compadres from their coffin.”

  Aubrey shared a look with Jack and then followed. Jack ran after her, and listened to the frightened protests as Tabitha came behind. Nick’s footfalls wer
e irregular, like he wasn’t running in a straight line, but Jack focused on Aubrey in front of him and tried to keep up. She didn’t run like someone who had eight stitches in her leg. She didn’t run like she was carrying almost a hundred pounds of gear and body armor.

  An explosion rocked the ground beneath them and Jack stumbled, nearly falling on his face. Clods of dirt landed all around, and Jack turned back quickly to make sure everyone was still standing. Nick was steadying himself, but Tabitha was right behind Jack, running like the devil himself was chasing her.

  There was a scream of engines—much louder this time—and two more planes came strafing the enemy. These were Warthogs, one of the most heavily armed attack aircraft in the air force. They dropped their payload, blasting with rockets and cannon while surface-to-air missiles flew up all around them. None of the Russians’ defensive missiles hit their mark, and the Warthogs disappeared over hills to the north.

  Jack was out of breath by the time they reached the second Bradley. Chase-Dunn pounded on the back hatch with his fist, but Jack was sure the people inside wouldn’t be able to hear it above all the other noise.

  “Tabitha,” Nick said, catching up. “Tell them to open up. And get out of the way—that door is going to hit you when it opens.” Jack noted a slight slur in his speech. Did he have a concussion?

  Tabitha stared at the door for a long moment, and then the small hatch on the back cracked open, revealing Captain Gillett.

  “We got hit, sir,” Nick said, trying to straighten up. “We lost the crew and Sergeant Lytle.”

  There was a roar of engines again, and Jack watched the Warthogs coming back for another pass. Their cannons lit up for a moment and then went dark. Instead of flying over the enemy, the two planes drifted, powerless, and then crashed into the enemy lines.

  “The device moved,” Jack said urgently, turning to Nick and then to the captain. “Those planes just went down and they were flying in the same track both times.”

  “What are you talking about?” the captain asked, stepping through the hatch and outside.

  “Two Warthogs,” Jack said. “They flew north and were fine, but when they tried to fly south along the same course they were knocked out of the sky. The device is moving.”