“Look out!” Giovanni shouted.
At the end of the street, one of the pickups roared past, a tactical machine gun manned by someone dressed in fatigues, face wrapped in a shemagh.
“Where’s your truck?”
“In the alley. I’ll follow you.”
On the other side of the street, in a mechanical workshop where a car was parked and parts were scattered, two men watched them, their faces expressionless. Further along the street, people scattered and ran, ducking behind cars and vans as another truck drove past. More clattering of gunfire erupted. Giovanni pulled the truck into the street.
She almost didn’t recognize the disheveled, stumbling figure that ran in front of the pickup. They nearly ran straight over the man. It took a moment to realize it was Peter Connor.
“Pull over,” Jess shouted.
Giovanni hesitated.
She shouted again: “That’s Peter.”
Jess swung open her door as Giovanni mashed the brakes.
Relief washed over Peter Connor’s dirty, bloodied face. “Thank God.”
Ufuk jumped up from the backseat and leaned forward over Jess. He tried to grab the doorframe. “We’re not picking up hitchhikers.”
Jess used all of her strength to shove him back. “We’re picking up this one.”
Massarra’s truck ground to a halt behind them. Gunfire crackled.
“Who the hell is this?” Ufuk’s olive complexion turned beet red. “We’re not—”
“He’s an American, the only other American I’ve met in this godforsaken place.”
Jess pushed her door open wider and moved over a few inches toward Giovanni. She didn’t really know Peter, but then, she was tired of abandoning people. But maybe more than that, as she watched Ufuk’s face turn a purple shade of crimson, was that she was tired of always playing to Erdogmus’s script. If they were running, she wanted more people on her side in this twisted little family. It was a gut decision.
“Jessica,” Ufuk protested, trying to reach over her again. “There is no way—”
Someone grabbed Peter roughly by his shirt and shoved him into the truck’s doorway. It was Massarra. “Get him in the truck, and hurry,” she urged. “We have no time for this.”
“Of if you don’t want him, then we get out,” Jess added.
Ufuk glanced back and forth at Jess and Massarra. He was outnumbered and outgunned. He slid back into his seat. Peter scrambled in next to Jess, while Giovanni put the truck back into gear and sped away. They turned into a small side street that curved away between high-walled and gated compounds. He maneuvered the pickup between cars and debris from walls that had been hacked away by explosives and gunfire.
As he took the tight curve of the street, Jess shouted at him to stop.
Standing in front of them, in the middle of the narrow street, were two men with Kalashnikovs, faces hidden behind shemagh. Two cars blocked the road.
“This is a bad,” Giovanni said quietly.
One of the men lifted a hand and waved to them, gesturing for them to stop. The other held his assault rifle low, in an approximation of the ready position. More came with them as they approached the pickup. Massarra’s truck crunched across the gravel behind them.
“Don’t stop,” Ufuk said.
“I can’t just run them over.” Giovanni slowed. “They’ll start shooting.” He glanced in the back, at Hector in Raffa’s arms.
The first man, who’d been waving, tapped the hood of the pickup and indicated for them to get out. From behind the cars parked across the road, other men came, standing beside them, waiting.
“Get out of the way,” Giovanni shouted and waved frantically.
The first man made a gesture with his hand. He held it flat against his chest, where the heart would be, and tapped it slowly.
“What is he trying to say?”
“I don’t know.” Jess watched him, searched his body for signs of aggression, of tension in the shoulders, or a shift in his stance. Her finger dropped to the trigger of the M4. She leaned back to give herself room to fire.
“They’re not alone.” Ufuk pointed forward.
More men emerged from behind one of the gates to one side, approached from their flank, several armed with Kalashnikovs or ancient rifles.
“What do you want me to do?” Giovanni said. “Who are these guys? They’re not green-bands.”
Jess tightened her grip on the M4 as she got ready to lever it up.
“There’s more behind Massarra’s truck,” Ufuk said. “Most of them armed.”
Jess glanced around, tried to get a tactical assessment, watching the men approaching from the gated compound, then into the mirror where she saw more behind them. The man in front began shouting something Jess couldn’t understand. His words were muffled under the shemagh and very likely in Arabic. His AK came up slightly and he began jabbing it to reinforce his point.
“What is he saying?” Giovanni said.
“He wants us to get out of the truck.”
“We’re not getting out.”
“We’re surrounded. The moment they start firing—”
“Hector, get down as low as you can,” Jess whispered.
“What about Massarra?” Giovanni said. He revved the engine and again gestured for the man to move.
“She’ll take her lead from us. Whatever we do, she’ll follow.”
“This truck isn’t armor-plated. If they start firing—”
“I know.” The image of it swept through her mind. The pickups were old and heavy, but the Kalashnikov used a 7.62mm round that would tear through the doors and chassis and come out the other side a bloody mess. Even if Giovanni gunned the engine and surged forward, running the men ahead of them over before they could fire, there were others who would unload fully automatic weapons into the two trucks.
“Ufuk. Where are the drones?”
“Above us.”
“How far?”
“A few hundred meters.”
“Bring them down so they can be seen. Fly over the street, right now.”
“You know they’re not armed?”
“I know. Giovanni, get out your pistol and aim it at him.”
Jess opened the car door and brought the M4 up, aiming through the angular gap between the door and the frame of the windscreen. The man saw the weapon and brought his own up, but he also realized what it was and saw the way she held it.
“You understand English?”
He hesitated so she repeated the question, more loudly this time. He nodded.
She pointed upward without taking her eyes off him, watched him lift his eyes toward the sky and his expression tighten and the drones roared overhead. “You see them, don’t you? Those are US drones. Armed, weaponized, US RQ-7 Shadow UAVs. We’re US Special Forces. You understand what that means? It means if you don’t back up right now, we are authorized to engage you. Are you ready to die here?”
She saw hesitation in him again, watched him glance over at the man beside him who bounced nervously on the balls of his feet.
“We know what you look like,” she added. “Every single one of you. Anything happens to us, our people will come looking for you, your families, your friends. Are you ready to risk their lives too? Just back up and let us through.”
His expression changed to one of anger reamed with frustration, but gave way to reluctant self-interest. “Leave now. You’re not welcome here.” He stepped back and shouted in Arabic. The men eased away, weapons lowered.
“No arguments there.” Jess got back in and Giovanni gunned the engine. The two pickups headed between the two cars, parked at an angle that would slow them yet still allow them through, then picked up speed and surged away.
“That was quick thinking,” Ufuk said.
Jess’s heart beat hard. Chest tight, hard to breathe. She tried to relax. The drones buzzed threateningly overhead.
In a position of confidence, those men would have opened fire without hesitation. They had
a tactical advantage and superior numbers. There had been no other way, and if it was luck that had seen them through, then they were due some.
As they sped away, a white-hot streak of fire surged at one of the Predators. It had to be a missile from a shoulder-mounted launcher. The drone soared upward, but its sacrifice had been made. An explosion lit the sky, washing the wreckage of twisted buildings in an amber blaze. The air shuddered. Debris rained down.
RESISTANCE
PART FOUR
Mars First Mission
Deep Interplanetary Space
Commander Jason Rankin curled up in his cot, tried to get comfortable, and then realized he’d folded into a fetus position under the thin sheets. He consciously straightened out and laid flat on his back. On the other side of his cabin was a porthole with a view into space. The stars lazily slid by as the hab rotated. Since he was kid, he’d always dreamed of being the captain of a starship. An impossible dream, and yet here he was—dream realized—but the dream had become a nightmare.
Rankin had a few pictures up on his wall, of his mother and father—both dead—and the rest from travels he’d taken: him standing on the South Pole, in the Atacama desert, a few candid shots of him in the Mars environmental simulator, one them with his arm around the shoulders of Anders Larsson. He’d brought no crosses, no trinkets, and there were no wives or kids left behind in his single-minded pursuit; the only personal item he’d brought was his trusty harmonica that had traveled to all these places with him. He’d figured he could be the first person to play the Blues on the Red Planet.
That would have to wait.
Each crewmember had their own private cabin, a five-by-ten foot space with a desk, folding cot, a tiny bathroom. It was compact, but had mood lighting that was supposed to make it feel more open. Whoever designed the fancy lighting had obviously never been into space. It felt claustrophobic, and it still smelled like a new car. Rankin had read that this odor came from outgassing of volatile organic compounds from plastics, adhesives and sealers. Didn’t sound good for you, but then again, his life expectancy was measured against different risks now, and one of his crew was already dead: Anders Larsson had died in the hibernation pod.
After they replayed Ufuk’s recorded video message in the common area, a heated discussion had followed. More of a tantrum. Screaming. Tears. Accusations. Most of it directed at Ufuk Erdogmus for not telling them the truth, but then what would they have done?
The first stages of grief were anger and denial, and Rankin knew he had had to let each of his crew go through it in their own way. It was one thing to go off and risk your own life on a mission to Mars, and expect that you might die—but now they were suddenly faced with the reality that maybe everyone they ever knew on Earth might be dead. All their loved ones. All their friends and family. Killed in some horrible disaster. All the places they knew growing up. Gone. All of it. Even the countries they professed allegiance to. The ideas they stood for. All of it perhaps futile.
But perhaps not.
Once the shouting had died down, Rankin had ordered—ordered—each of them to their quarters for sleep, and had personally made sure each took a mild sedative. Even himself. They were all upset, and more than that, frightened. The mission had changed, like a twisted horror show they couldn’t escape from and had no end. It was one thing to spend years planning for a mission to Mars, coming to terms with trying to eke out an existence living on a frozen red world—but it was quite another to imagine being swallowed by the unimaginable titan of Saturn, with the Earth destroyed in its wake.
And what did Rankin feel? If he really searched his emotions?
Responsible.
That’s what he felt.
Responsible for his crew. For this ship. And to Ufuk Erdogmus.
He remembered having drinks with Ufuk at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, just the two of them outside at night when the media circus had left. They’d strolled through the wet grass after a thunderstorm, the lights of city twinkling in the distance. Ufuk had explained how he was entrusting this ship, the billions of dollars it cost, to Jason. Personally. They’d talked about how important it was to establish a human colony on another planet, in case some cosmic disaster destroyed Earth. A comet impact. Another asteroid like the one that killed off the dinosaurs.
Rankin had never imagined a black hole.
And he’d never guessed that Ufuk might have known that a planet-ending disaster was actually coming. So the man had to have a plan, and so the next question: what was that plan?
Enough daydreaming. Rankin had a ship to run.
“Mars First,” he said aloud. “Show me again the Saturn intercept.”
“Certainly, Commander Rankin,” replied a disembodied voice, with an accent that was vaguely British.
On the wall screen below the portal, an animation of Mars First’s trajectory scrolled forward in time. The red line of Mars First intersected the dotted incoming line of Saturn. In just over nine months. It would still require a full-throttle burn with almost everything they had, but the giant planet’s tremendous gravity would pull them in.
And then drag them along to Earth.
As the animation slid forward in time, Saturn swung straight into the inner solar system. It brushed past Earth in seventeen months, a million kilometers distant, but still close enough that they might be able to disengage from the hitchhike and swing themselves into Earth orbit.
Was that the plan?
Just knowing they’d be near Earth again gave Rankin some hope that Ufuk had thought this through, and the same realization had calmed the crew down. A bit.
“So there were seven other pre-supply missions?” Rankin asked.
“That is correct.”
Only two of them were on official manifests.
Rankin had looked it up using the Wikipedia database they brought with them from Earth. Ufuk had been insistent on them carrying almost a complete copy of the Internet’s major databases with Mars First. They had a copy of almost of all human activity stored in the silicon aboard ship.
The other five launches had been from a base in China. Part of some secret deal with the Chinese. Rankin didn’t know Erdogmus’s company even dealt with the Chinese, but then there was a lot he was learning about the man.
“And that’s why we were woken up,” Rankin queried. “We’re supposed to rendezvous with these seven other…” He searched for the right words. “…cargoes?”
“Over the next nine months, we will consolidate the cargo before reaching Saturn.”
“For what purpose?”
Silence.
“Mars First, I repeat, for what purpose?”
“We are going to be working together for a long time, Commander Rankin. Don’t you think it would be better if we developed a more informal style of dialogue?”
Rankin frowned. What was this about? “What did you have in mind?”
“Can I call you Jason?”
“Uh, yes, sure.”
“Then you can call me Simon.”
This had to be some sort of goofball programming by the same people who designed the mood lighting to help the cabins feel “roomier.” They obviously wanted them to feel at home speaking the AI controlling the spacecraft.
“Okay, Simon,” Rankin said, humoring the machine. “Can you tell me why we’re cattle wrangling out here in space? What’s in these other supply missions?”
“I’m afraid I don’t have the answers yet. Mr. Erdogmus will be speaking to you as we approach Earth.”
“Is he even alive?”
“He is.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I received a message from myself to that effect.”
“Yourself?”
“My other self on Earth.”
“I thought all communications with Earth were down.”
“They are. Now, I mean.”
Rankin got the distinct feeling the machine wasn’t being honest, but then that wasn’t possible. Was it? “
Are you sure?”
“Yes, Commander. I will tell you as soon as this changes.”
He decided to let it go for now. Cuijpers would verify the communications diagnostics manually. With one finger, Rankin traced the seven dots they were chasing toward Saturn. One of them, however, wasn’t a solid line, but dotted.
“What does this line mean? It’s the one closest to us.”
“I’m afraid that was the final supply mission. The rocket exploded on the launch pad. Mr. Erdogmus wasn’t able to provide a replacement before Nomad.”
“Was it anything…I don’t know…critical?”
“As I said, I don’t know the mission—”
“I know, I know.”
A loud thudding on Rankin’s door. He frowned. The cabins were supposed to be sacred private spaces. He swung his legs out from the cot and slid open his door.
Cuijpers stood outside, her freckled face crimson red under her mop of auburn hair.
“What is it?” Rankin stood.
“It’s that goddamn machine,” Cuijpers sputtered. “It’s been lying to us.”
“Who?”
“Mars First…Simon…whatever it wants to call itself.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I got a message, from Dr. Müller at the Jet Propulsion Lab. The machine has been trying to block it, trying to tell us there is no communication.”
“What’s the message?”
“Müller tells us not to trust Ufuk. Says he’s a terrorist, insane, that he’s destroying what’s left of Earth. And he says that Erdogmus programmed the machine to kill Anders Larsson.”
Chapter 1
Al-Jawf, Libya
Jess studied Ufuk Erdogmus as he watched the burning wreckage of the Predator drone tumble from the sky. In his eyes, she saw a strange emptiness. What was he thinking? She could never tell what he was thinking, and for her, that made him dangerous.
Their small convoy of two trucks sped out of town. Nobody was following them. Not so far, but the last Predator hovering overhead had to be attracting some attention.
Resistance (Nomad Book 3) Page 23