by Jeff Carlson
“Can you hear me?” Deborah asked. At first Cam wasn’t sure who she was speaking to. He felt very far away, but then Deborah said, “Ruth? Ruth, honey, please.”
“I’ll take care of her,” Ingrid said, kneeling. She tried to soothe Ruth’s jerking leg with one hand. Ruth was oblivious. Ingrid looked back up at them. Her eyes were frightened, but her voice was firm. “I’ll stay with her, Cam. You can count on that. I’ll feed and bathe her and keep her safe.”
“Yes.”
It didn’t matter if he made it back. As long as they beat the Chinese, that was okay. Even if they failed… It’s okay, he thought. If there is anything on the other side, I’ll find you. If we do go to heaven or anyplace like that, I’ll wait for you. We’ll be together.
Allison was in his mind, too, but his love for both women was the same. It hurt him and filled him with resolve at the same time, and it was better than anything else he’d known.
Cam bent and kissed Ruth’s sweaty hair, lingering against her scalp as he remembered the good smell of her. I’ll find you, he thought.
Then he turned and walked away.
General Walls couldn’t risk himself on the plane. If they did establish contact with other U.S. forces, he needed to be alive to coordinate them, so Walls intended to remain in Colorado with only Rezac and Ayers in his command, plus Ingrid and Bobbi as nursemaids for Ruth. They would go south. Another small squad would drive east.
Foshtomi herself refused to stay behind. “Sir, I’m responsible for what happened to Goldman,” she said. “You have to let me be a part of this.”
Walls agreed. He also allowed Sergeant Huff to stay with Foshtomi. He put Pritchard in charge of the second squad, which consisted only of Pritchard, Emma, and the other two survivors from Foshtomi’s group. Cam thought it might have made more sense to leave Foshtomi or even Huff in charge, but Walls must have trusted his commandos more. Lieutenant Pritchard would be on his own. In fact, if Walls was captured or killed, Pritchard would become the acting U.S. commander in chief. Captain Bornmann outranked Pritchard, but Bornmann would be radio silent in the plane, thus removing him from the chain of command. Walls also refused to send any of their codes or data on the mission into California. He gave one of his laptops and several files to Pritchard instead.
Rezac had a different sheet of notes for Bornmann. She also passed around her laptop. An hour ago, she’d brought up several file photos of Kendra Freedman — but she had no printer. There was no way to share the pictures, except to commit them to memory.
Freedman had been in her early forties before the machine plague. She was chubby and very black, an African American woman with pitted, rich chocolate skin and even darker lips. Her hair was straightened. She had surprisingly small eyes for her broad face, maybe an illusion caused by her fat cheeks.
While everyone studied the photos, Rezac discussed the Osprey’s transponders with Bornmann. “Leave ‘em on,” she said.
“I can disable the Mode II,” he argued, but Rezac said, “That’ll flag you as a problem as soon as you’re on radar. None of their stolen aircraft run dark.”
“Take care of Ruth,” Cam said to Bobbi and Ingrid. Bobbi kissed him. “God bless. Be safe.”
Bornmann powered up the plane and trundled out of the warehouse. Cam didn’t look for Ruth before he climbed in. He preferred to recall her bright, laughing face instead of the rag doll she’d become. There were no seats. The only restraints were a trio of cargo belts that had been bolted across the struts on the port wall. Cam sat with Foshtomi and Huff against the canvas straps and Deborah joined them, looking grim.
The Osprey heaved into the sky. It lurched out of the narrow space inside the depot’s fence, thrumming with its rotors overhead. After a few minutes, Cam heard the wings squeal on either side. The familiar chopping sound of a helicopter’s blades intensified into the softer blur of an airplane’s propellers. Their speed increased. Somewhere below, General Walls and the others were leaving, too, but their Humvees were already far behind.
Cam had fifty questions for Deborah. She probably wanted at least as many answers from him, but neither felt like talking. They both drowsed. So did Foshtomi, Huff, and Medrano. The drone of the V-22 lulled them, and everyone had been pushed beyond endurance. Nor was there anything to see. The interior of the plane fluttered with shadows and light, which grew more distinct as they escaped the fallout. Sunlight gleamed in the windshield. Cam should have slept, but his thoughts wouldn’t quit. His muscles wouldn’t relax. The best he could manage was a light, waking doze.
His view through the front of the aircraft was blocked by Sweeney, who stood between the two pilots’ seats, keeping his head down with Bornmann and Lang. They expected trouble. It didn’t happen. The Osprey hummed into the west. Sweeney continued to study Rezac’s notes, ruffling through the few pages with nervous energy. He rearranged and folded the paper and scribbled in the margins with a blue pencil.
They’d been flying for twenty minutes when Lang began to chatter in Mandarin. Just as suddenly, he stopped.
They had more than eight hundred miles to go. The Osprey could push as fast as 315 miles per hour, yet Bornmann said he’d keep it at cruising speed, which was closer to 275 mph. He didn’t want to look like trouble. Also, he wanted to conserve fuel. With full tanks and a small payload, the Osprey’s range was over 2,400 miles, but someone must have bled off its fuel for other purposes during the long peace. The tanks were barely half full. Even so, with nothing on board except eight people, small arms, and other gear, Bornmann estimated their max range at 1,500 miles. It wasn’t inconceivable that they could fly into San Bernadino and escape again without needing to refuel. They wouldn’t be able to go far, but that extra margin might make the difference between life or death.
Once they hit a pocket of turbulence. Several times, Bornmann banked through minor course corrections or Cam’s stomach felt the aircraft ease up or down. His impression was they’d never lifted far from the ground and he wondered at one big sweeping turn to the left. Were they avoiding mountains?
The flight became mundane. Medrano excused himself to go to the bathroom by the rear loading ramp. Deborah and Cam each took their turns. Foshtomi passed around water, coarse bread, and dried peppers. Cam reveled in the strong flavor, chewing with his eyes shut. He thought of Ruth. Allison. Everything that could have been.
“Heads up!” Lang shouted, looking back from his copilot seat for Sweeney even he began to jabber into his headset in a much calmer voice.míng hi,“ he said.míng hi. Wán bi.”
Someone’s seen us, Cam thought.
“Here we go,” Foshtomi murmured as Lang said, “W dn wèi zhng yòng zhè jià fi j yòng yú yì liáo chè tuì. W mén zài fi j shàng yu q ming shng yuán hé ling ming s zh. Wán bì.”
Beside him, Sweeney said, “You have to give them a name. Here.”
Sweeney pointed to his notes and Lang said, “W shì shn yáng meng h duì Bi duì zhng. W zhòng fù y biàn. W shì shn yáng mng h dui Bi dui zhng. Yu xin y y si míng hi. Wán bi.”
Cam didn’t think they’d been flying for more than two hours yet. That meant they were still over Arizona or Nevada or just barely inside California’s borders. The game was only beginning.
The NSA had caught and decrypted thousands of exchanges between Chinese aircraft and ground control. Some of those signals were very recent, and Rezac had given Bornmann and Lang as much intel as possible. They could only hope their codes worked. In their favor, China had never been as advanced as the U.S. at data sorting or systems integrity. Even better, the Chinese Air Force had been confused even before the missile strikes. U.S. Command estimated that less than 40 percent of the enemy’s strength consisted of Chinese aircraft. The rest were captured American planes, both military and civilian.
Cam wasn’t sure what Lang was saying, except for what he’d gleaned from hearing the commandos discuss their cover story. They would pretend they were a squad of Shenyang Fierce Tigers, whom Rezac believed were
involved in the assault on Grand Lake. Lang would assert that the Osprey had been commandeered to bring the worst of their casualties back to California.
“Què rèn,” Lang said. Then, after a moment, “Bù w zhòng fù y biàn. Y y si míng hi. Wán bì.” His tone was level but he grimaced up at Sweeney.
“This was a mistake,” Medrano said.
“Shut up,” Foshtomi snapped. “We can outsmart those fuckin’ Chinamen any day of the week.”
That’s right, Cam thought. He gave Foshtomi an admiring look yet didn’t say anything, touching her arm and then raising one finger to his lips. It wouldn’t help Lang to have Americans chatting in the background.
The silence was anticlimactic. Lang hit two switches above his head. Bornmann continued to fly the aircraft, and, in back, Cam and Foshtomi exhaled at the same time. They were both pleased by the small coincidence. Foshtomi bumped his shoulder with her own in a blunt, sisterly way.
“They bought it,” Sweeney said.
Lang nodded. “They’re a mess. We’re cleared into Bakersfield. Sounds like that’s the nearest base they’ve got operational.”
“What about Edwards or Twenty-Nine Palms?” Bornmann asked.
“Blown away,” Lang said.
“We need a better story before we divert into Los Angeles,” Sweeney said, fidgeting with his notes. “Let’s stick with the idea that we’re a medevac. There’ll be casualties in L.A., too. We can say we have room to evac some of their—”
An alarm sounded in the cockpit. Bee bee bee bee bee.
“Oh fuck,” Bornmann said. “Strap in.”
“Bogies at four o‘clock!” Lang yelled.
The Osprey was already rolling to its portside. Cam banged against the curved wall with Deborah and Medrano on top of him.
Through the tangle, looking forward, Cam saw Sweeney hanging onto Bornmann’s seat. Then Sweeney opened his arms. He leapt for the same area where the rest of them were piled on the wall, which had almost become the floor. Cam felt the port engine screaming somewhere beneath him. The fuselage shuddered as if buffeted by the wind.
“Strap in!” Sweeney yelled. “Strap in! Strap in!”
The Osprey carried no armament. Nor was its top speed any match for fighters, much less ground-to-air missiles. Their only hope was evasive action, and the plane lifted and spun. Cam was still pulling free of the others. He grabbed at a cargo belt but swung away from the wall, wrenching something in his wrist and back. Deborah hung beside him from one hand. Everyone else seemed to be roped to the fuselage above. Huff clawed at his jacket. With that slight help, Cam kept his grip, but the accelerating torque was too much for Deborah. Her arm twisted and then her hand sprung free.
“No!” Foshtomi shrieked, snatching at her. Foshtomi had deftly slid behind two straps. They sawed into her waist — but even bent in a horseshoe, Foshtomi didn’t have enough reach to catch the other woman.
Deborah tumbled away from them. She smashed into the ceiling and then the far wall. Then the dizzying sideways-and-up motion changed as the Osprey plummeted to the starboard. It threw Deborah back into them. Cam was too off-balance to grab his friend even when her leg thumped him in the chin, but Foshtomi seized Deborah’s waist, trusting the straps to hold them both. She’d never lacked for confidence, and Cam felt another glint of admiration for her.
“Here!” Foshtomi yelled. “Here!”
Unbelievably, the aircraft leveled out. The six of them worked to clip themselves down in a furious panic. Cam finished with himself — the canvas belts seemed too thin — and turned to help Foshtomi with Deborah. Somehow they wrestled her in between them. Deborah’s forehead was swollen with a fat goose egg that had been cut open on one side, throwing blood through her yellow hair. Her blue eyes were groggy and dim.
Up front, Lang chattered in Mandarin again as his hands danced over the consoles. The Osprey was climbing now and Bornmann hollered back, “Missiles! Two fighters on our tail! We’re going to ditch this bitch if we can just—”
The wall exploded. Fire and heat burst through the rear of the plane in a hundred tiny holes. Metal fragments clattered through the fuselage. Then the fire was replaced by smoke and sunlight. Air whistled through the holes at a deafening pitch. Most of the swirling black fog was stripped away, but it was replaced by the red mist streaming from Foshtomi’s chest.
“Sarah!” Cam yelled, fumbling past Deborah to help her.
The explosion must have been a near miss, he realized. Otherwise they’d be gone. But the damage was bad enough. Wind and sunlight howled through the aircraft as he tried to catch the meaty organs spilling fromFoshtomi’s side. Herintes tines were hot. Her face was white and dead. Cam screamed and tried to apply pressure anyway, his arm trembling against the wild force of their descent.
The Osprey was in a tailspin.
No, Cam thought. No! He glanced forward again, looking for the sky — for God — for anything other than this horror. Beyond the pilots, he saw a patch of blue. Then the horizon tilted into view.
The hard orange color of the desert filled the windshield. The ground was very close.
It’s not supposed to end like this! he thought, but the Osprey caught its starboard wing against the earth and whipsawed into an uneven leaping cartwheel as the fuselage disintegrated.
23
In the cyclone of bodies and metal, Deborah felt a snapping pain through her left shoulder. She breathed hot dust and smoke. Then it was done. The tornado stopped, but the pain stayed with her, crippling that arm.
She was outside the plane. The ground beneath her was tough and dry, and she felt a breeze and daylight. Despite the curtains of dust, she saw most of the fuselage nearby. Then the hazy sun disappeared. When she lifted her head, she’d moved into the shadows beneath the high, broken line of one wing.
There must be other survivors.
“Bornmann!” she shouted, rasping for air. “Cam? Hey!”
Why didn’t they answer?
Somehow she staggered up, twisted nearly in half by the dislocated shoulder. Her ribs on that side were hurt, too, and she was covered with grit and blood. Most of it wasn’t her own. Foshtomi, she thought, trying to calculate how badly the other woman was hurt by how much of her uniform was soaked. Is there any way she’s still alive?
Gnarled oak trees and scrub brush covered the hillside. The brown plants were peppered with gray and white debris. Fire licked at the brush in several places. The Osprey had flung jagged chunks of aluminum and steel into the hillside along with wiring, glass, and plastic. The wind stank of jet fuel.
Deborah didn’t think to run away, not even faced with the rising flames. She was nothing without her squadmates. She barely remembered the self-doubt she’d felt before Walls led them out of Complex 3. Deborah had come a very long way just to find herself back where she’d begun, as a reliable cog in the machine, but she was pleased to be that woman again. It was all she’d ever wanted. Her suffering had reinforced everything that was best in her — her willingness to give of herself. The team needed her, not only as another gun but as a doctor, especially now.
She turned into the wreckage. There was a man crumpled beneath a flat chunk of a propeller blade. She hurried toward him but Sweeney was dead, his neck wrenched backward. His legs were broken, too, and maybe his spine. Looking away, Deborah noticed one of the engines behind her. In one sense, she was still inside the plane. The main bulk of the aircraft surrounded her, forming an uneven barricade.
The sky reverberated with the distant roar of jets. That seemed unimportant. Within two steps, she spotted two more human shapes. Deborah heard someone groan and lurched closer. “Bornmann?” she said. “Hey—”
The first man was Lang. A small area on the left side of his face was unharmed. Otherwise she might not have recognized him. Impact had rubbed most of the skin and muscles from the side of his skull.
Translator, copilot, commando — Lang might have been the most versatile element of their team and Deborah paused over his corp
se, feeling demoralized and lost. Then she banished her grief with a bit of gallows humor she’d learned from Derek Mills, the pilot of the shuttle Endeavour. “Pilots are always the first to the scene of a crash,” he’d said when they were planning their descent from the ISS. She had to honor Lang. Her sense was that their pilots had pulled the Osprey out of a death spiral, bringing the aircraft up at the last minute. If they hadn‘t, she would have been killed, too, so she moved past him with a firm sense of gratitude.
The next man was Captain Medrano. He groaned again. “It’s me,” Deborah said meaninglessly. He was barely conscious. His arm was broken and his face was cut. His pulse was steady, though, and her cursory examination detected no other bleeding or major injuries.
In the short time they’d known each other, Medrano seemed like a badger to her. He was short and roundish and skeptical. Deborah wasn’t sure if she liked him, but he was her brother nevertheless. There weren’t enough of them left to pick and choose.
As she applied pressure to his face wound, she glanced through the wreckage again. She felt as if she’d failed Ruth for being unable to find Cam. Had Cam and Ruth become a couple at last? What if he was dead like Sweeney and Lang?
Deborah had never approved of Cam. He was dangerous, untrained, and seemed to bring out all the worst in Ruth. He made her so emotional. He was also fiercely loyal. Deborah couldn’t help but respect that level of commitment, and, like Medrano, she was also bound to Cam.
“Get up,” Medrano said as if to himself.
“Easy,” Deborah warned him, but he spoke again, clearly, trying to focus his dazed eyes on her.
“Get up. Run. The fighters—”
The Chinese fighters were coming back.
Deborah had been listening to the distant engines change in volume and pitch without realizing what it meant. The sound galvanized her. “You’re coming with me,” she said, flush with new strength.